Deliver Me From Evil (19 page)

Relieved, I drifted off to sleep. When I came to again, there was a woman in a blue suit sitting next to the bed. I didn’t know her at all but she looked nice and friendly. I felt very thirsty and I tried to sit myself up for a drink. She noticed and got a glass of water for me. After I’d had a drink, the woman sat down again next to me and introduced herself. She was a medical social worker from the hospital and wanted to know how things were living with Eunice. For a moment I couldn’t work out what she meant.

‘What do you mean?’

The woman paused, smiled and seemed to choose her words carefully. ‘Are you happy living with Eunice? Does she treat you well?’

It suddenly flashed before my eyes: the image of Eunice saying ‘I love you’, stroking my hand and telling me she cared.

‘Yes, very well,’ I heard myself say.

‘No problems, then?’

The woman looked at me, concerned. I could see she wanted to help. But at that moment, in the hospital, I couldn’t really think that Eunice was bad any more. Perhaps she had changed? Perhaps what I had done – my desperate suicide attempt – had made her change her mind about me? Maybe we were going to start living like a proper family after all?

I took a long time before I answered.

‘No. Not at all’

Going back home after the hospital I thought things were going to be different, but the minute I got there, I saw that they weren’t. Within a day, Eunice was back to her old tricks, dishing out punishments and threatening and then enacting beatings. Things were not going to change. I realized then that she had put on a show in the hospital. I’d had my chance to say something, but in my enfeebled state, I’d been seduced and had missed it.

Eunice never mentioned my suicide attempt – nobody did – but shortly after this Eunice decided that we were going to go on a holiday to America. I’m not sure whether this was a reaction to what had happened with me, or whether she wanted to escape herself from the farm for a while. It wasn’t going to be a complete holiday, however. Eunice believed that having a holiday just for its own sake was a sin so we were going to be attending Jehovah’s Witness events.

I didn’t believe in the Jehovah’s Witness religion really. I liked some of the stories, but I hadn’t taken it all on for myself. However, going on holiday sounded a good idea, even if we had to do things with Jehovah’s Witnesses in tow. It was better than staying on the farm and carrying on as usual.

The money for the trip must have come from John Drake, as there was no other way Eunice would have had the cash she needed for such an ambitious trip. She didn’t sell anything and Judith was still living at George Dowty Drive, just the same as ever. Even more bizarre, Eunice decided we would go to Disneyworld and we would spend part of the trip on a cruise ship. When she told us, it seemed unbelievable we would be given such a treat.

I didn’t have a passport so Eunice told me to write to my parents – at last – and ask them to fill in a form to get the passport sanctioned. She was breathing down my neck as I obediently wrote saying we would come and visit and bring the papers for them to sign. I had to say we lived on a lovely farm in the countryside (my parents had no idea up until this point that I had spent nearly four whole years at Eckington Bank), and that we had chickens and pigs, a dog and cats and that rural life was fantastic. We must have had a reply (I never saw it, of course), and we all went over to visit my parents.

I can’t remember much about the meeting – it’s a bit of a blur – but I do remember the first thing my mum said to me was, ‘What have you done to your lovely hair?’ She was shocked that Eunice had chopped it off as she had expressly told her not to cut it short when I was little. I was wearing a hairband that day, so my hair looked flat on top and I remember my mum being upset by it. I also remember Mum showing me her favourite art books, and some of my drawings from when I was a little girl, while Dad was on the computer with the other kids. Charlotte wasn’t comfortable there and wanted to go, but for once Eunice ignored her as she had business to attend to.

My mum was pretty much occupied by Eunice the whole visit and she finally signed the passport paperwork without question. Eunice had drawn up a contract of sorts concerning me and I think my mum also signed that, giving Eunice many more rights over me than she had had before, like ‘parental responsibility’. This was to give her more power and ultimately to make my life more miserable still.

Meanwhile, we were to embark on this extraordinary journey to America for six weeks and we were very excited when we set off for Tampa Bay. Of course, Eunice’s main focus was visiting the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were much less reserved than those we knew in the UK, more like gospel preachers. It was weird. We were all very novel to them and they were pleased we’d come such a long way to see them. We really did go to Disneyworld, too, and went on rides, which was amazing.

There were still clouts around the head or bashes on the feet from Eunice during the trip, and we still had poo inspections and squirts of washing-up liquid, but she dropped most of the more elaborate punishment regime, which was a fantastic relief. It was extremely strange to have a real luxury holiday in the middle of all the torture. It almost felt like life had become a bit more normal and I even started to fantasize that maybe Eunice really had changed, maybe a nice Eunice would come back from America and start feeding us properly and treating us well. Perhaps her heart really had been softened when shed seen me in that hospital bed and she wanted to start afresh?

When we got back to England it was November and it was already cold, with a bite in the air. We came from the warm climate of Florida to a freezing cold farm – we never did have any heating, although Eunice would shut herself in her bedroom with the gas fire blazing – and we went straight back into the old punitive way of life.

Eunice continued to make us children punish each other, but we were a bit older and wiser now and began to get round it by feigning pain. One time Eunice told me to beat Thomas’s feet, but I only did it lightly and whispered to him to scream Aaaagh!’ as if I’d done it very hard. Eunice would be doing something in another room, and I would be meting out the ‘punishment’, with Thomas on the floor, leg in the air. He and I would use sign language with each other and he would groan on cue, making it sound bad, all the while hoping that Eunice didn’t work out what we were doing.

Another time Sarah and I were supposed to go and beat Thomas in the field. We took him out there together, stood around and waited for some time to pass, then went back inside. Eunice asked sternly, ‘Did you beat him?’ and we nodded meekly that we had. It felt good to get one over on her, a bit like taking back our power, gaining our freedom. I guess as we got older it felt important to win these little victories and feel she was not as all-powerful as she had been when we were really little.

We were still supposed to watch each other all the time but, again, we had begun to give each other a bit more space and freedom. We’d make bargains with each other, like, ‘I’ll let you do what you want, if you let me do what I want, OK?’ Just as long as Eunice didn’t get to know, that was always the thing.

We also still took money occasionally – Charlotte was still the only one to get pocket money – and would go on a little raid to the local shops. One day we went to the chemist with some stolen money and bought hairclips, then to the post office for chocolates. Even though it was seldom my idea, I usually got the blame because Eunice always seemed to believe I was the ringleader. Perhaps she sensed that I was more defiant, stronger than Sarah in standing up to her and a bit more rebellious of late. Maybe she was more wary because of the suicide attempt. Who knows?

In actual fact, Charlotte, Eunice’s favourite, was usually the one who suggested taking money and she was the very last one that Eunice would ever have suspected. Not that Charlotte got off totally scot-free either. One time she dropped her pocket money when we were all out in a shopping centre and Eunice lifted her skirt and slapped her thigh, which really embarrassed and upset Charlotte. She was seldom in the wrong like that because she was ‘pure’, having been with Eunice since birth – as was Robert. Knowing I was ‘tainted’ because – like Thomas and Sarah – I’d been influenced by my parents and that I could never do anything right made me very nervous. I was constantly watching myself, believing I was bad, trying to keep myself on a tight rein.

When I was nearly fourteen I gave Eunice further proof, if proof were needed, of my evil nature. Sarah had once phoned a game line that she’d found in the back of a trade magazine which Eunice had left lying around the house among the clutter. Given there was virtually nothing to read in the house, and I was bored and understimulated most of the time, I, too, found myself flicking through the back of things like
Trade It
magazine where there were loads of game lines you could ring. One day, I decided to give it a go myself, holding my breath as phoning wasn’t allowed by Eunice. I must have dialled the wrong number because instead of instructions on how to win money, a woman’s voice was talking about the most extraordinary things. I had inadvertently dialled a porn line and was so amazed by what I heard that out of curiosity I kept calling. The women’s voices were all soft and sexy, describing things I’d never heard before. It was so weird to hear about sexual intercourse, about oral sex and ‘cumming’, and I was intrigued. I was an ordinary girl – I fancied boys I saw on the rare occasions we went out and on pop videos I’d seen. I had so many feelings and questions abut sex that I needed answered, although by then I knew what sexual organs were and I had my periods, obviously.

Sometimes, when I was up all night supposedly doing my homework, I was just dialling the numbers instead, one after the other, over and over. It was a way of keeping myself awake, too. The soft voices sounded so enticing that it was like listening to a short story for seven minutes or so. I kept calling and listening for seven minutes, then I’d call and listen again. But I was too scared to speak

It didn’t make me feel sexy, and I wasn’t getting off on the calls. I just had to keep calling because I wanted to understand what was going on. I was utterly fascinated and it took me ages to work out what on earth it was all about. Being so naive, I had no idea what ‘I’ll make you shoot’ and things like that meant. I had worked out by then that willies went into fannies, more or less, but I didn’t really know much more than that.

I ran up a £1,000 phone bill. Eunice went utterly ballistic and dialled the itemized numbers. She confronted me and I said, ‘It was just a game’. She then said, ‘There are a lot of things you need to know’. I thought,
Well, you should be telling me, then.
I felt more feisty than usual because I was beginning to grow up.

After a vicious beating, during which she had held me down with her foot on my neck so she could get the stick into my mouth, Eunice marched me round to the local shop – the very one where we had gone on our spending sprees – and told them, in front of me, why I needed a job to pay off a debt. Eunice explained – in detail – what I had done and I was very embarrassed indeed. It seemed worse because it was something a boy would usually do, but in my ignorance, or rather, total naivety, I had ended up getting myself into huge debt, without realizing at all what I was doing. Eunice was not going to let this one pass and the issue of the debt would rumble on for a very long time. Like the proverbial elephant, Eunice never forgot. Especially when it came to something ‘evil’ perpetrated by me.

CHAPTER 16:

I was always a small-framed, slim child; even now as a fully grown adult, my feet are still only size three, I’m under 1.5 metres tall and only just a size eight. As a teenager, I was probably about the size of a healthy ten-year-old. I’m sure some of this is down to genes, but it must be due in part to malnourishment, as with the other children.

Under Eunice’s regime I became a binge eater, largely because that’s how she trained us up. There would be food for a few days, then no food, so I had to learn to live without it. I had to learn not to feel hunger, in the same way that I had to suppress pain when the beatings went on and on and on. If I had felt the hunger or the pain I would have gone insane.

Even after I escaped Eunice’s control I would lapse into unhealthy eating patterns. For instance, if I binged on chocolate I would not eat at all for two whole days to compensate. These sorts of behaviours were set up by Eunice in my childhood through her completely inappropriate treatment. She didn’t try to teach me, or any of the other children, how to eat well or look after ourselves and our health. She did the complete opposite of what you should do with children in terms of teaching them about sensible eating. It has taken me a very long time to get to grips with healthy eating. As an adult and a mum, I’ve had to learn how to eat a balanced diet both for myself and for my growing daughters sake.