Escape From Evil (12 page)

If only Mum had begged as well. She might have stood a chance. But she wasn’t having a bit of it. I didn’t understand half the words that were pouring from her mouth, but I knew they weren’t complimentary. What happened next will stay with me forever.

Reaching over to the cooker, Mark flicked one of the gas hobs on. Still Mum kept screaming at him, and still he kept swearing at her to shut up and behave. I honestly had no clue what he was doing with the hob – until he gave Mum’s hair a massive tug and dragged her backwards towards the oven.

The next few seconds passed in slow motion. Somehow Mark got Mum’s head right next to the flame and, just as I thought he was going to put her face in it, he twisted her round so her hair trailed across the fire. It went up in an instant.

I’d thought I was all screamed out, but I found a new voice. So did Mum. We were both wailing and I was convinced she was on fire. But suddenly she slumped to the floor and I could see she wasn’t. For a moment I thought Mark had let her go. Then I saw that he was still clutching about a foot of Mum’s beautiful, beautiful hair. The second the flame had burned its way through her tresses, she’d fallen forward. As she knelt sobbing on the floor, I studied the back of her head. She looked terrible. But at least she was alive.

Three days good, one day bad, two days good, one day bad. That was an average week – except there were no averages. We couldn’t predict when Mark and co would arrive. If we could have, maybe we wouldn’t have been there.

I’d really like to think that Mum would have been strong enough to avoid them. Yet even as a child I was aware that there was something that made her keep seeing them. Something that stopped her from going to the police after the hair-burning incident. Something that they had and she wanted.

Just reliving the hair episode now has had me in floods of tears. I wish I could forget the memory, but it just won’t fade, the sight of my mother, dragged around like a rag doll, then terrorized near that naked flame. I can still hear her screams. They’re always with me. Sometimes I wake up at night, shaking, with her fear searing through me as though it had happened yesterday. And every time I remember, I hate myself for not being able to stop it. She was my mum. Why couldn’t I save her? And why did she let them come back?

That whole period is full of pain I’ve tried hard to forget, but two other incidents have stayed with me.

Looking back, realizing what these men were capable of, I question why Mum or I ever dared to argue with them. I guess the answer is, we had to. If you give in blindly, the game is over. I didn’t understand the rules as a seven-year-old, but that’s definitely how it was. If we hadn’t fought with them, then maybe they would never have left. It might have been seven days on, no days off.

Fighting back every so often is what kept us alive inside, I’m sure of that. I hated myself at the time for not being able to stop the vicious bullying, but at least I tried. Time after time, I tried. Even when they held a knife to my face.

One of the men had asked Mum to do something. I didn’t hear what, or at least I don’t remember – maybe this is my brain being kind to me. What I do recall is shouting out ‘No!’ and rushing to her side. One of them pulled me back by the arm, so I tried to bite him. I didn’t make any impression through his leather coat, but he was annoyed. He wrapped his arm around my neck and whispered in my ear, ‘If you don’t behave, you’re going to suffer.’

I was so intent on breaking free from his grip that I didn’t notice what his other hand was doing. Then I saw a glint of light out of the corner of my eye. A second later, I felt something cold on my cheek.

A knife!

It was the Stanley knife I’d cut the kitchen vinyl with. This blade had sliced effortlessly through tough plastic. I knew exactly what it could do to me.

Instinctively, I pushed back into the man’s body, twisting my head, trying to put a few millimetres between my face and the knife. I felt his grip tighten, but at least he pulled the knife back.

That’s when Mum saw what he was doing. The look on her face told me how much danger I was in. This wasn’t a game.

‘Put it down,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ll do anything you want.’

‘You hear that?’ the man said to me. ‘Your mum’s going to behave. The question is: are you?’

‘She’ll behave,’ Mum answered for me. ‘Won’t you?’

I nodded as best I could.

‘Good,’ my captor grunted. ‘Because I don’t want to have to remind you what will happen if you don’t.’

Then he let me go and my knees buckled. I wanted to run to Mum, but I couldn’t. She came over to me instead and led me to the bedroom. As we went inside, I heard the man talking to the others about football or something. They were laughing. It was as if the last few minutes had meant absolutely nothing to him at all.

The sensation of the knife pressing into my skin and seeing the light reflecting off the sharp steel blade had been awful. It was a wake-up call, I suppose. After what had been done to Mum in the kitchen, I knew he wouldn’t have been afraid to use it. He was prepared to back up his threats with action – which just made the threats themselves all the more potent.

I don’t know if the men sensed I was more scared than ever, or whether they enjoyed the power, but even though I tried to behave, they never stopped the ultimatums. ‘If you don’t do this, I’m going to do that.’ Everything was a threat now. It became their currency. Consequently, a lot of the time, the intimidation barely registered. I was programmed to behave anyway. It didn’t matter what the specific details were. In a sense, accepting that gave me a little bit of power. I was the one deciding to obey them. I had control. All their menacing strong-arm tactics were water off a duck’s back. I remember thinking,
There’s nothing you can say to hurt me now.
But I was wrong.

Mark came up to me in the kitchen. I was rolling joints like a good girl. In the past he’d leave me to it or even chat to me while I beavered away. That time was long gone. The relationship had changed. He seemed to take pleasure in reminding me that I was doing it for him.

He was looking out the window when a thought seemed to strike him.

‘Cathy, you know what I’ll do if you or your mother don’t behave today, don’t you?’

‘No,’ I said, not interested. We were going to behave, so it wasn’t an issue. I didn’t need to hear the gruesome details.

‘See the cathedral?’ he continued.

I looked up briefly. Of course I could see it. It was my favourite view. When I was alone I loved staring out at that amazing structure.

‘See the spires?’

I nodded. I didn’t have to look. I could picture the four shards tapering towards the sky with my eyes closed. They were my favourite part. But Mark wasn’t interested in what I liked or didn’t like.

‘If you give me any trouble today,’ he said smiling, ‘I’m going to drag you up to the top of that tower and I’m going to hang you by your neck from one of those spires. Do you understand me?’

I tried to nod again, but my head felt so heavy. The idea of being tied by my throat to the spire weighed on me more than anything else he’d ever threatened. I could see the spires, just like I could see the knife when that was brandished. These weren’t idle threats.

He’ll do it. I know he’ll do it.

In one fell swoop that vile man in our kitchen had quashed every romantic dream I’d ever had staring out of that window. Gazing across to the church and imagining its marvellous past had always filled me with a sense of wonder, a feeling of hope. The majesty and the magic of the building sometimes made my head feel like it might explode. But all that was over now. He’d killed it. The spires were no longer things of beauty. They were threats. Weapons that taunted me.

For days afterwards I couldn’t look out of the window without crying in genuine fear for my life. Irrational, but real at the same time. How would he have managed to drag me up there? If I’d thought about it, I would have realized it didn’t make sense. But you don’t analyse when you’re too afraid to breathe. To this day, I can’t see St Peter’s without the pit of my stomach churning.

After that I was a changed person. More compliant than ever, meeker. I tried to be strong for Mum, but it was hard. Mark seemed to notice that he’d struck gold with this threat. He only had to gesture towards the window and I’d shrink, hide, do whatever he wanted. He’d won. My one sanctuary in the whole mess had been desecrated.

The thing about bullies is, they only succeed if you let them. That’s what I’ve always been told. They’re just cowards, the theory goes. They look for a sign of weakness then work away on it, concentrating all their efforts there.

Well, by accident or design, Mark had found my weakness. Being hanged from a steeple, it turned out, really was my worst nightmare. But I also knew he’d discovered Mum’s weakness a long, long time ago. Her Achilles’ heel was much closer to home.

Me.

I hadn’t picked up on it at first, not in the early days, when the men had tried to appear nice in front of me. I’d see Mum arguing and then she’d suddenly go quiet. Often one of the men would have mentioned my name. I hadn’t put two and two together at the time, but now the sums all added up. Whenever she wouldn’t stay in line, they’d make a suggestion about me. That was the only thing she couldn’t fight. I was the stick they were using to beat her with.

That dawning realization almost sent me crazy. My initial reaction was:
I have to get away
.
Things would be easier for Mum if I weren’t here. I could go to Granny’s. She’d let me stay. Then the men would stop hurting Mum
.

But what if they didn’t? That was even worse. At least in the same flat I could monitor what was going on.
I can protect her if I’m here.
I don’t know what exactly I thought a seven-year-old could do to help, but in my mind it seemed things had to be better in the long run if we stayed together.

Looking back, these same thoughts must have been running through Mum’s mind as well. I thought I was so in control, but she was the one protecting me. I didn’t know what she did when I was made to sleep, but I know now that it was for my benefit.

Realizing that the men were using Mum’s love for me to manipulate her had a weird effect on me. Partly, I felt ashamed, as though I were somehow on the men’s side. Partly, though, I felt such a swell of pride. To think Mum would put herself through so much pain for me. Her sacrifice still brings a lump to my throat all these years later.

It was a very emotional time. One thing was clear, however. I swore that I would never,
ever
let myself be blackmailed like this by anyone. Even as a child that was obvious.

Don’t give anyone the opportunity to control you, like they control Mum.

If only I’d listened to my own advice . . .

After the spires threat, everything seems to have become jumbled in my memory. Lots of things happened at once, all as horrific as each other in their own way.

One day Brian appeared more attentive than usual. He also seemed very drunk. I know now it was the effects of marijuana, but in those days I didn’t really associate any strange behaviour with the joints I was rolling. I didn’t see, either, that this explained Mum’s up-and-down behaviour – sleepy, mellow or hyper-hyper. It’s obvious to me now that her moods were drug-related.

‘Get your coat,’ Brian said, the words more slurred than I’d ever heard. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

I looked at Mum and she looked back. We both knew what would happen if I resisted. So, weird as it was, I got ready and out we went.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the park. You like parks, don’t you?’

Of course I did. I had such happy memories of illicit meetings with Mum at one. But why did this unpleasant man want to go to one with me? More strangely, why did he want to go for a walk when he was struggling to stay upright?

Preston Park itself is pretty huge, so I didn’t know if we would go to the playground part of it. Eventually we found ourselves at the rockery, apparently the largest rock garden in the country, even then. It’s really beautiful and you can get lost in the wonderful scenery, but as I splashed my way through the puddles there was only one thought in my mind.

Why has he brought me here?

Deep down, I knew the answer, or at least a variation of it. He was going to touch me again, like he did in my bedroom sometimes. For some reason, though, he didn’t want to be near his mates.

The more I thought about it, the more terrified I became. I couldn’t imagine what his intentions were, but if he wanted privacy from his equally disgusting friends then, I convinced myself, it had to be really bad. Before I knew it, I was shaking in fear.

I was so petrified, in fact, that when I saw Brian lose his footing and fall headfirst into a pool of shallow water, I didn’t move. I didn’t help him when I saw he was face down and not moving. I didn’t even ask if he was all right. I just stood there, watching. And then, after about five minutes, I walked back home.

Every day after my walk with Brian I waited for him to come back through our door. I waited for him to hurt me in the privacy of my bedroom. To grab me by the hair and throw me onto one of the spires at St Peter’s. He would exact his revenge, I knew that.

Then I thought,
What if he doesn’t come for me? What if he never woke up?