Deliver Me From Evil (21 page)

I burst into tears. Dead? Judith, dead? And Charlotte? Just like that? I couldn’t believe it. I was in utter shock. Judith! Charlotte! I’d lived with them for years, and although I hadn’t always got on with either of them, especially Charlotte, they were, well, like family. The only family I apparently had now, anyway. The tears flowed as Eunice told us bluntly what had happened. She continued to stand apart from us – no hugs, no kisses, no comfort – and told us that Judiths car had been totally crushed.

‘They were waiting in a traffic jam on the M5 and the lorry driver behind was fiddling with his radio or something – he just didn’t see them. Anyway, he didn’t stop, just ploughed on into them.’

As she spoke I imagined the scene in graphic detail. I couldn’t stop shaking as I pictured the smash, the blood, the screams, the sound of glass and bones breaking. Were they awake? Did they feel it all? Did they experience their lives ebbing away, and what was it like waiting for the ambulance? I pictured Judith driving, Charlotte sitting next to her, maybe chatting as Judith was always more fun than Eunice to travel home with, and Sarah and Robert in the back, looking out of the window, relaxed after swimming. They would have been looking forward to teatime at Eunice’s mum’s, which was always better than being at the farm. I kept thinking, if only they hadn’t gone swimming, they’d still be alive. I could not really understand that I would never, ever see them again. It was so absolute, so sudden and so final.

Eunice said when the lorry hit them full-on from behind – it was a 24-tonne vehicle – it shunted the back of the Rascal over the front two seats, which were crushed flat, killing Judith and Charlotte outright. The two back seats were left sort of dangling over the front ones, with Robert and Sarah hanging precariously by their seatbelts, very seriously injured and bleeding. Robert had broken both his legs and ended up with four pins in each, while Sarah had multiple fractures of the spine and pelvis and internal injuries. She needed a blood transfusion but being brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness meant she was refused one by Eunice, which nearly killed her. It was touch and go if she would live.

When Eunice got to the end of the terrible story, she turned and focused her piercing gaze on me:

‘It’s all your fault, Harriet,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t cut your eye we would have left a day earlier. You’re to blame. They were my two angels, and they died. You two are the Devil’s kids, which is why you’ve been saved.’

I was devastated by her words. If I could have died on the spot, I would have at that dreadful moment. The weight of the blame was like being crushed under an enormous stone. I could hardly breathe, let alone think I should have been in that car. I should have been crushed to death instead of Judith, Eunice’s own daughter, or Charlotte, her favourite. Of course, the accident and the deaths were my fault. Everything always was.

CHAPTER 17:

Life was never going to be the same after the crash. I was obviously very shocked and upset by the deaths of Charlotte and Judith and I cried masses at their funerals. It was very hard to adjust to their having been wiped out so suddenly and completely; I just wasn’t prepared for anything like it. Plus, Sarah and Robert were terribly hurt. In fact Sarah nearly died. I had to get used to life without them being around at home for a long while, as well.

Eunice’s parents took Thomas and myself in while Eunice stayed in hospital with Robert and Sarah during their recovery, which took several long months. Eunice’s parents were far nicer to live with than Eunice and would give us treats, like sweets. Unfortunately Eunice knew we were getting sweets from them and said we weren’t allowed to eat them; so whenever we saw her we’d have to empty our pockets and hand them all over. We felt we couldn’t refuse the sweets from Katie, though, as we were told it would be rude, so it was torture to have them, but not be able to eat them.

In a way Eunices parents were like substitute grandparents at the time. They were quite strict Jehovah’s Witnesses, especially her dad, who now had arthritis and sat in a wheelchair most of the time, but I don’t think they had any idea how violent and bizarre their daughter’s behaviour was towards us. Eunice was still clouting us, even though we were living with her parents. I remember her mum asking me if Eunice hit us, and I just said ‘No’. I knew better than to own up, as more beatings or even worse would follow if Eunice found out.

Once Sarah and Robert had recovered enough to leave hospital, we went back to living mainly at George Dowty Drive. Eunice wouldn’t let us use Charlotte or Judith’s rooms, so Thomas and I still had to share. She kept their rooms as a shrine, allowing nothing to be moved, but making me dust them occasionally. George Dowty was still a dirty mess and the attic was still full of not only her daughters’ clothes, but also Eunice’s old things from the sixties and seventies. Every toy from their childhood was there, too, and the house was like a museum of all those – children and men alike – who had passed through. So now that two of them were dead, I could imagine Eunice would keep their rooms as they were for ever.

Amazingly, Charlotte’s birth parents were not told about the crash or her death by the hospital as Eunice was her adoptive mother. When they found out by reading the local paper, they wrote a letter to Eunice, furious that they had not been informed about the accident sooner and saying that she’d had no right to keep it from them. Eunice was unmoved. It was yet another example of her desire to control everybody and everything.

It was similar with me: there were times when we drove past the end of my parents’ road and I would wonder, wistfully if I would ever see them again. It seemed so strange to know they were there, but to have no contact with them whatsoever. What were they doing? Was my nan still alive? Did they ever think about? Did they miss me? Had they any idea what kind of life I was leading? Eunice would say to me nastily, ‘You will go back to them, the minute you can,’ to try to goad me into staying loyal to her and her way of thinking. And she was still always rude about them, saying they were useless, terrible people and, by implication, I was just the same – it was obviously in the blood.

We were still having our poos checked every morning but Eunice now often left it to me to check Thomas, who often couldn’t produce to order. I would just tell her, ‘Yeah, he’s done it,’ to keep her happy whether he had or not. I suppose I was beginning to feel I was big enough to handle the situation, even if there was a risk.

Occasionally, we’d go over to the farm to oversee the building and decorating work. A local villager was looking after my chickens and the black pigs, Bunty and Bessie. Some of the cats had died, but we took the duck, goose and rabbit back to George Dowty with us, where they lived in a straw-filled box under the table in the kitchen. I usually had to sleep with them there, too.

Sarah had only just survived the accident, but she was severely injured and came home in a wheelchair, unable to walk at first. She had to have a colostomy bag for some time, which was really difficult for a teenage girl to cope with. However, Eunice was not particularly kind to her when she came home. She forced her to remain wheelchair-bound for some
four years
after she could actually walk I now realize this was probably so that she could claim some kind of disability carer’s allowance. It might also have been that there was going to be a compensation claim and Eunice might have thought that if Sarah couldn’t walk the pay-out would be higher. (I read in the press that Sarah ended up with a settlement of £5,000, which Eunice kept and used to buy a new fireplace.) It’s also possible that Eunice thought, in her typical punitive way, that Sarah should have died instead of the other two, so she would extend Sarah’s misery for as long as she could.

Robert had also sustained terrible injuries and it took him a long time before he could walk properly again. But one extraordinary thing was revealed to the world outside the farm as a result of the accident: that Eunice had kept Robert in nappies even though he was now about eight. (He was still having a bottle of 7UP at night before bed, too). I had just accepted this as part of Eunices warped desire to keep Robert a ‘pure’ baby for ever, but once the nurses in the hospital saw it, I realized how odd it must have looked. It was very embarrassing for Robert to have this exposed in hospital. Of course he stopped wearing nappies while he was there as the hospital staff must have seen it as totally abnormal for a child of his age. What’s amazing, though, is that this didn’t alert someone to look into Eunice’s treatment of the rest of us in any more detail. It was a crucial time when the authorities failed to pick up vital clues. But it wasn’t the first.

While we were living again at George Dowty, I threw a diary I had written over the fence onto the man next door’s back lawn. I had written it deliberately, showing how we were living, and I had written in it, ‘Please help me, please help us’. Imagine my intense disappointment when a few days later the diary was simply tossed back over to our side of the fence. Absolutely nothing happened. I wonder now, if I were to find something similar in my back garden whether I would do the same? Or would I take it seriously and either go and knock on the door and see what was happening, or take the diary down to the local police station, if I thought going there myself too risky? But could I just ignore it? Or, worse, just throw it back over the fence onto the lawn for the persecutor to find? That seems the most bizarre reaction of all.

I suppose it’s possible that the neighbour might not have read it; he might have just thrown it back without looking at it. But it made me feel that absolutely nobody cared about our plight – not even those who lived right next to us – and that there was no hope. Surely they must have heard our screams? They must have seen that we were always around, and not at school, and that we were dressed shabbily, looked scrawny, pale and thin and were often covered with bruises? It is amazing to me that in a neighbourhood with houses in such close proximity, the aggression that went on day and night could have gone on completely unnoticed. Or maybe people did notice but were scared of getting involved, worried about the consequences or of wrongly accusing Eunice? Maybe she frightened the adults around us as much she did us? Whatever the reason, nothing was done, and Eunice was able to carry out her daily violations without anyone’s interference.

Eunice had stopped starving us so much, and was still trying to fatten me up on lard, but it was difficult for her to do that regularly by then as a lot of our usual routines had been disrupted by the accident. Also, there were other people around, like her mum and dad, and hospital staff when we visited the others, so she had to be a bit more careful about what she got up to. However, I still looked gaunt, skinny and hollow-eyed because I was developing anorexia and was also still taking Ritalin at night.

One morning, Eunice came barging unexpectedly into mine and Thomas’s room when I was still only half awake. Her hands were hidden behind her back and she looked incredibly tense and fierce. I knew something was up, which brought me to my senses very quickly.

Eunice held up an empty pill bottle. ‘What’s this?’

I’d finished off Robert’s supply the previous night and I must have got careless and left the bottle lying around as evidence. I said nothing and tried to stay very still.

‘You evil little drug addict,’ spat out Eunice venomously. She came over to where I’d been sleeping on the floor and pulled the duvet off me, then bent down and grabbed me by the arm. I struggled, but could feel her bony fingers boring into my upper arm.

‘You’re not to be trusted, you demonized scum. Where are the pills?’

I still said nothing – what could I say? I could see Eunice was beside herself with fury. She was pulling me across the room, and trying to grab handfuls of hair.

You ungrateful drug addict. You’re evil, that’s what you are, evil scum. You’re utterly untrustworthy. How dare you think you can do this to me? You need teaching a lesson you’ll never forget.’

I was pulled out of the room by my hair and kicked down the stairs to the living room, where Eunice locked me in, got the bamboo stick and beat me and beat me until she was exhausted herself. She kicked me around the room, pummelling me with her fists until I just went limp, taking her blows. I knew better than to fight, although in my mind I wanted to stand up and beat her back. I wanted to hit her and hit her and never stop hitting her, to shut up her nasty mouth and blacken her hateful eyes. But I didn’t. I controlled myself, as ever, and took the punishment.

Inside, however, I felt even more resentful, especially when she gave the pills to Sarah to look after once she came home from hospital for good. It was a great wrench for me to have to suddenly give them up. I felt dreadful, not only from the beating, but from the withdrawal symptoms that gave me the shakes and made me feel grumpy and unsettled. I couldn’t get to sleep at night and I was desperate because my only source of comfort and escape had now been taken away.