Authors: Cathy Wilson
Escape From Evil
CATHY WILSON
with JEFF HUDSON
PAN BOOKS
Dedicated to the memory of my beautiful, talented but troubled mother Jennifer, for giving me life, to my grandparents for the stability they gave me, and my gorgeous son Daniel for breaking the cycle.
Also to my patient, caring and fabulous friends Gaynor and Maeve and partner Stuart who have endured my emotional roller coaster since the truth came out.
When I was a child I spake like a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. XIII 11–13
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
This is Where it Ends
17
Another Thirty Seconds . . .
EPILOGUE
This is Where it Begins
PROLOGUE
‘Cathy, turn on the news – now!’
It was September 2006, a Saturday morning, and my aunt sounded anxious. I hung up the phone and flicked the flatscreen remote. A second later I screamed. Shock turned quickly to confusion.
It can’t be him. It’s not possible.
I don’t know why my teenage son, Daniel, was up at nine o’clock on a weekend, but as he ran into the room, I was glad he was.
‘Mum, what is it? What’s wrong?’
But I couldn’t speak – I just stared at the screen, shaking and pointing at the picture of the man they said was wanted for the murder of a young girl.
‘You’re scaring me, Mum,’ Daniel said. ‘Who’s that man? Do you know him?’
Until then I’d been able to protect my son from the poison of his past. Now it was time for the truth. I took a deep breath.
‘Daniel – that’s your father.’
Part of me wishes I’d never set eyes on Peter Britton Tobin. Part of me wishes he had never taken a single breath. I’m sure I wouldn’t have any trouble finding people who’d agree. Just ask the grieving families of Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol. If I were them I would definitely consider death too good for the man who took my daughter’s life.
Just ask the two young girls he tortured, raped and left to die, the prostitutes who were hurt because of his excessive, brutal tastes or the countless others rumoured to have been his victims over a possible forty-year campaign of terror. Ask any of them and I’m sure they’d have nothing good to say.
But mine is a hideous, unique position. It’s why I can only ever partly wish he’d never been born. Because, like it or not, the serial killer Peter Tobin is the father of my only child, my beautiful son. And as any parent will know, there is nothing you wouldn’t do to protect your child. Unfortunately for me, Peter Tobin knew that.
With knowledge comes power and Peter knew without a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing stronger than the bond between mother and child. He played on that. That was how he controlled me during our marriage. One word out of place, one step out of line and he didn’t have to threaten me. He just threatened Daniel.
Our poor, innocent baby boy, from the moment he was born, was just a tool with which I could be manipulated. I see that now. He was a bargaining chip. A means to an end.
I was a wild child when Peter Tobin, twice my age, fell for me. A free spirit, confident, loud and independent. I was the sixteen-year-old with the world at my stilettoed feet. That’s how I felt and that’s how everyone saw me. Everyone except Peter.
He alone saw the confused, scarred girl beneath the veneer. The hurting, abandoned teenager desperate for validation, hiding behind her image of the life and soul of the party. To Peter’s expert eye, I wasn’t a wild child in need of taming. I was vulnerable, fragile, damaged – ripe for falling under his control.
That’s why he tricked me into getting pregnant. I don’t think he ever wanted a child. He just wanted leverage.
The day I made my escape from him was the scariest day of my life. It had to be timed to perfection. One error, one delay, and he would catch me. And he would kill me.
I knew in my heart that he would have no choice. In Peter’s eyes, I was no more than a possession, maybe even his most precious possession, but not a person with rights of her own. When I ran away, he didn’t feel abandoned; he felt like he’d been robbed. And I knew he would exact his revenge.
Smuggling my son out of Scotland and fleeing the five hundred miles to the sanctuary of my family in Portsmouth was the longest night of my life. I was convinced Peter would be following, waiting for the coach to pull over, biding his time before storming on and reclaiming his property.
Every set of headlights that passed my window was his, I was convinced. Every time we slowed, it was because he had caused it.
I told my family and friends that I thought I would die that night if he found me. They all said the same thing: ‘It can’t be that bad.’
But they didn’t know. I hadn’t told anyone about the abuse, the beatings, the violence, the atmosphere of terror he’d forced me to live under for three years. They wouldn’t believe me when I said he would have killed me to stop me escaping. But I knew.
Then, in September 2006, he was arrested for the murder of Angelika Kluk.
And then we all knew.
My son was so young when his life was in peril, but he has recovered. He has had his counselling, he has had his therapy and, more than a decade later, has emerged as a healthy, unscarred young man. I’m confident he’s found his closure.
This book, I hope, will be mine. I have never told this story before. Not even my closest friends know what I suffered as the plaything of Peter Tobin and no one has ever heard how the parallels with my mother’s short life led me into his clutches. I’ve gone to great lengths to rebuild my life, but I’ve wasted too much time running from the truth. Until I face my past, my escape from evil will always be incomplete. If I don’t share my story, it will always be there to haunt me. And I don’t want that anymore.
This is where it ends.
And this is where it began . . .
ONE
‘Who’s this, Grandpa?’
I was fourteen years old and sitting at the kitchen table in my grandparents’ house. In front of me, spread out in neat little piles, were dozens of small, square photographs. One had caught my eye.
Grandpa pushed up his glasses and studied the picture I was holding.
‘That’s you,’ he said, a warm smile lighting up his face.
I stared at the mop-topped little bundle in the duck-egg blue cardigan with navy trim. Was I ever so blonde and curly? And look at those chubby little legs!
Baby me, grinning towards the camera, looked so happy on the hip of the slim woman in the gorgeous, white, thigh-length A-line dress. If anything, she looked happier still. No prizes for guessing who that beaming lady was, but I checked anyway.
‘And this is Mum?’
Grandpa nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, a flicker of pride in his voice, ‘that’s your mother. Doesn’t she look beautiful?’
He didn’t have to ask
me
that. I’d never seen anyone look so stunning. With long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and slim, tanned legs, Mum looked like a film star to me. At the very least, a model. And as for her amazing little white outfit . . .
‘I love the dress,’ I said. ‘She looks so smart.’
I noticed the smile fade slightly from Grandpa’s lips. ‘She does, doesn’t she?’ he said quietly. ‘But then people tend to make an effort on their wedding day.’
Wedding day? But I’m in the picture.
I don’t remember if I couldn’t work it out or I didn’t want to.
‘Grandpa, I don’t understand.’
As he handed back the picture, I’m sure I saw his shoulders sag a little, then he took a breath and pulled himself up straight. ‘I’m afraid, Cathy,’ Grandpa said, a steely tone to his voice, ‘there’s no other way to put it: you are a bastard.’
There must have been a dozen different ways to break that news to me, but it was typical of Grandpa to use the correct term. I was technically a ‘bastard’ and that was the end of it. That was him all over: Mr Correct, Mr Proper. He liked things done and said the right way – however much it hurt other people. As far as Grandpa was concerned, he was the one who’d been hurt most.
Admitting his daughter had had a child out of wedlock was still as shameful to him fourteen years later as it had been back in 1969. From Grandpa’s point of view, that wasn’t the worst part. The wedding took place on 26 May 1970 – my mother’s sixteenth birthday. I’d been born the previous November and that was the earliest she could legally marry.
Wow
, I thought.
Born out of wedlock to an underage mum. Not exactly the start a girl hopes for.
Glancing at Grandpa, now furiously polishing his shoes, I realized it was definitely not the start he would have wanted for me.
Reginald Ralph Seaford Beavis was a proud man. He’d served as a major in the Royal Corps of Signals, the army’s intelligence division, and years after his discharge still conducted himself with a strong military bearing. He worked as a salesman for the Wills cigarette company, who made brands like Strand, Embassy and Woodbine, and enjoyed some success and the recognition of his peers without ever really rising to great heights.
Reg had met his future wife, Daphne, while still serving in the army. Granny was a hairdresser at the time and had once styled the hair of the wonderful Peggy Ashcroft, as she never tired of reminding us. Granny only worked for two years, but till the day she died she refused to let anyone else perm, dye or set her hair. ‘Why would I, when I’m a trained hairdresser?’ And so, in all the years I knew her, Granny’s hair never changed once. It was like she was stuck in a time warp.
My grandparents married in the late 1940s and moved from Bristol, where the Wills factory was based, to Peterborough. In 1950 they had their first daughter, Anne, and couldn’t have been happier. They were the perfect family unit. Grandpa was the warden at the local church, while Granny used to do the flowers. She didn’t work anymore, but his career was solid, if not amazing. They were both dependable, respectable people. Everything was just so. Everything, that is, except my mother.
Jennifer Mary Beavis was born in May 1954. By then Granny and Grandpa had settled into a nice routine with little four-year-old Anne. I’m sure they expected Mum to just fit into their schedule. From what I know of her, I doubt very much that happened. But for a while everything was fine. Church played a role in the family’s life, there were nice holidays on a beach somewhere, days out to Stonehenge, everything as it should be. Neither daughter wanted for much.