Whatever her thoughts, whatever she sensed, she failed. My father grabbed her firmly by the arm and escorted her to the open door. ‘Leave now, Agnes. I’ve said “no”. We don’t need your help, we’re fine on our own. Tracy is my daughter. I’ve made my decision.’ He closed the door on Agnes without another word. For some reason, the moment he did that, a wave of dread came over me.
Dad came into the lounge, lit another cigarette and opened another can of beer. The room was filled with silence and he stared at me for a few minutes with no glimmer of emotion on his face. I wrapped my flimsy nightdress tightly around me and squirmed into the softness of the sofa. Gary was unusually quiet too, keeping his eyes down and saying nothing. Finally, the silence broke. ‘Get yourselves back to bed. Now.’ We both scuttled off the sofa and ran through to our rooms, where I fell asleep much more quickly than I expected, no doubt glad of the comfort and safety of my own bed after such an emotionally exhausting late night.
I woke up next morning to the sound of Dad swearing yet again. ‘Up! Up! Fucking move it! Get your arse through for breakfast now.’ I was confused when I got there to see an empty table. ‘Where is it then, Dad?’ I asked, sitting down. Standing behind me, he slapped the back of my head with such force that my forehead hit the wooden table. ‘Your breakfast will be there when you fucking get it,’ he snarled. ‘Get something for your brother as well – and make me a cup of fucking tea.’
I was stunned and hurting. I was only little and was used to being told to keep away from the kettle and hot things, not being told to make cups of tea. I stood up, but was flustered – was Dad tricking me? Did he really want me to do this? His next words left me in no doubt. ‘Move it, I fucking said! Or do you want another slap?’
I went to the cupboard, choking on my tears and rubbing my forehead. He had never hit me before. Just like his swearing, his violence was totally out of character; it was as if he was a new daddy, someone who had been brought in when my mum was ill the night before. He looked like my father, but his voice and his actions, his words and his behaviour, were totally foreign to me. I had to accept that I was at risk of being hit again if I didn’t do what he wanted, even if what he wanted was so hard for me to grasp. He was making it very clear that no matter what he told me to do, I had to do it. Go to bed. Go to sleep. Keep away from Agnes. Stay with him. Make tea. All of it was at his command.
I dragged two stools to a place in front of the worktop and climbed up on my tiptoes to take breakfast bowls and cornflakes from the cupboard. I had watched Mum do this a hundred times, and although I had to stretch and make sure I didn’t wobble or drop things, I knew I could do it. My little hands were shaking, but I pretended I was getting a teddy bear’s picnic ready and focused on the job in hand. I reached down with everything, one thing at a time, while I stayed on the higher stool. I could feel my dad’s eyes burning into the back of me as I climbed down and got the milk from the fridge. It splashed out of the bowls, over the top of the cornflakes I had poured, and I paused, wondering if he was going to hit me again, but nothing happened. I looked at him questioningly and he moved his eyes to the china mug in front of him, then flicked his gaze over to the kettle. I gulped and walked over, switching it on and realising that I had to do this.
Gary came in and asked what I was doing. One look at the red mark on my forehead and the tears on my cheeks silenced him. He hurriedly ate his breakfast as I struggled with the full kettle and, against all odds, managed to make my first ever cup of tea. It should have been a moment of triumph but it was far from that. I could feel sweat pouring down the back of my nightdress. So much was going wrong and Mum had only been away a few hours. I was in charge of feeding everyone and I was five years old. Was this going to continue until she came back? Was I now a grown-up? How many slaps would come with that role?
Thankfully, the drama of making breakfast and using the kettle had taken up a lot of time so, by the time it was all over, I had to get ready for school. Dad barked instructions at me again as I rushed through to my room and pulled on my clothes. I tried to brush my hair as best as I could and then walked through to the living room.
‘Are you walking me to school today?’ I asked him.
‘No, I’m fucking not,’ he shouted, slumping into his chair with a can of beer and cigarette already in his hand, despite it being eight o’clock in the morning.
Although I had been going to school on my own for a few days now, which was what I’d wanted, I felt the need for someone to look after me that day. I looked imploringly at Gary, willing to even take a few pinches from him so long as it came with a bit of brotherly care, but he sneered at me, muttered ‘baby’ and ran out of the door before I could even hoist my satchel onto my shoulders.
I wandered down the stairs and waited for Debbie and the others at our usual meeting place, saying nothing about what had happened as we walked along. The morning passed uneventfully and school finished at lunchtime, as it always did on Fridays. I had a childlike happiness at the prospect of freedom. I saw Gary playing football with his friends as I walked home and wondered whether he might be the one to get into trouble – we usually had to go straight home after school, and I could only think he was taking advantage of Mum not being there while forgetting how horrible Dad had been since yesterday. As I trotted along with my friends, I started to feel a little brighter. Perhaps Mum would be back? Maybe the doctors had made her all better and I could forget last night and this morning, as if it were all a nightmare.
When I got to the block of flats, I ran up the steps two at a time. Opening the front door, which was on the latch, I ran down the hallway. ‘Mum! Mum!’ I shouted, stopping in my tracks when I entered the lounge and saw only Dad sitting in his chair.
‘She’s not here,’ he said, as he saw my eyes flicker around the room. ‘They’re keeping her in hospital – where’s Gary?’ I told him my brother was still playing football with his friends, expecting an explosion of anger, but instead Dad just nodded as if this was a good thing. ‘That gives us time,’ he reflected.
‘Time for what?’ I asked cautiously.
He paused at my question, as if wondering what to say next, then abruptly stood up and said, ‘Come on, follow me.’ He walked towards the bedroom he shared with Mum, then smiled at me. It wasn’t how he had been for the last day or so, and I was confused again at how quickly his mood and character seemed to change. ‘We’ll change the bed,’ he announced. ‘Your mum was sick on the sheets. Go on. Strip the bed.’
I was bewildered – Dad was smiling but, yet again, he was asking me to do something I had never done before. He had offered me no help when I’d had to boil the kettle and make a cup of tea that morning, so why would he help me with this new challenge? The bed looked massive to me, and I didn’t really know where to start. A sense of relief flooded through me when Dad seemed to read my thoughts. ‘I’ll show you how to do it. Don’t worry. I’ll tell your mum that you did it on your own and she’ll be so proud of you that it will help her to feel better. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Of course I would! I gave Dad my biggest smile and started work, following his instructions.
‘Pick up the quilt, Tracy,’ he began, ‘and undo the buttons at the bottom of it.’
This took quite a while. I was still mastering buttons on my own clothes, but they were easier to open than do up, so I managed eventually. Dad was sitting on a chair at the side of the bed, watching me and telling me what to do. ‘Pull the cover off,’ he continued, then he told me to take the pillowcases and bottom sheet off too. I was so pleased with myself. I was being a good girl for Mum and Dad while I did all of this hard work. ‘Well done, Tracy,’ he said, ‘now here comes the fun part!’
‘What’s next, Dad?’ I asked, out of breath with my exertions.
‘Putting on the clean quilt cover – it’s a lot harder than taking it off, but I’ll help you.’ He stood, telling me to stand in front of him, and shook the cover out. He put his arms around me and told me to grasp the two corners he was holding. ‘I’ll put the quilt in and you grab it once the cover is in place. This is fun, isn’t it?’ he said. He was still smiling, but the smile seemed forced – and it didn’t feel like that much fun, because his arms were tight around my little body and I knew I had no choice about being there. He was pushing into me and it was something that didn’t feel nice at all. I wanted to break free of him, I wanted to get away, but I was still very much aware of how quickly his moods were changing since Mum had gone into hospital and I didn’t want to risk things taking a turn for the worse again.
As we struggled with the cover, I felt his body press hard into my back, harder than before. I held the corners just as I’d been told, but he didn’t let go. ‘I’ve got it, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’ve got it.’
Behind me, he said nothing, but he was pushing his body into me, harder and harder. I wasn’t tall, and my head was at the level of his crotch as he shoved and shoved into me.
‘Dad!’ I almost whispered. ‘Dad – I’ve got the cover, you can put the rest of the quilt in.’ He didn’t move his body from mine, but he did take his hands from my arms and allowed them to travel down my body slowly, finally resting on my waist. ‘Dad?’ I whispered again. ‘Dad? What are you doing?’ I honestly didn’t know what was happening. What could I have made of it at that age? All I realised was that he was rubbing his hands around my waist, pressing in as hard as he could to my body, and breathing in a funny way as if he had run up the stairs too quickly and couldn’t catch his breath. His head had dropped forward and I could feel a warmth on my neck; there were little gasps as he made a strange noise.
As soon as the strange noise had finished, Dad loosened his grip on me.
‘There,’ he said, turning me around to face him. ‘I told you that would be fun.’
The duvet and cover lay discarded on the bedroom floor, forgotten. My father walked towards the door and, with a final glance back at me, concluded. ‘That was fun.’
It wasn’t a question.
It wasn’t a laughter-filled remark.
It was a command.
I stood there, confused and upset, with only one thing certain in my mind – no matter what my dad wanted me to believe, whatever had just happened was not fun.
After it happened, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I was only a little girl, barely more than five years old – looking back with the awareness and understanding of an adult is completely different. At that age, all I knew was that my mummy was in hospital and my daddy had turned horrible, seemingly overnight.
I didn’t really know anything about bodies or the birds and the bees, I didn’t know anything about what grown-ups did with each other in private – but I did know that what my daddy had just done was horrible. I didn’t want to complain; well, I didn’t want a slap again and something told me that if I said a word, that’s exactly what I would be getting.
To my relief, just as these thoughts were running through my mind and Dad was rearranging himself, I heard Gary open the front door. ‘Remember,’ said Dad, ‘that was fun. You did well, Tracy, you did well.’
That was all he said. He had used me to pleasure himself, and he didn’t even look ashamed. With his few words, he left the bedroom to speak to my brother. I heard him welcome Gary back – ‘Nice time, son?’ – as I stood there, looking at the bed. Remembering it now, the main feeling that I know I had was one of confusion. I was so young. After being ill for such a long time, Mum had been taken into hospital. Hospitals seemed scary places to me, where doctors put needles into you and there were lots of sick people. That’s where my mummy was, and since she had gone there, my daddy had been acting like a stranger.
He’d shouted at me.
He’d said swear words to me.
He’d hit me.
And now – what had he done now? I wasn’t sure I even had the appropriate words for what had just happened. I’d been told it was fun, I’d been told I was a good girl, but what was
fun
exactly? What had I done that was
good
?
I heard my dad laughing with Gary, sounding like his old self. Chatting about football. Being
normal
. I thought about how my mum made the bed, and tried to copy her, tried to finish off the job I had been asked to do in the first place. I did as well as I could under the circumstances and went back through to the lounge. Dad and Gary were in the middle of a conversation about Mum’s hospitalisation, and my big brother was asking, ‘Why can’t we go too? Why do we have to wait until Sunday?’ I was glad he had asked that as it was the very question preying on my mind, but I was too scared to bring it up after Dad’s reaction to Agnes last night. It just seemed everything to do with the whole issue was going to put him in a bad mood.
Dad didn’t have to answer Gary as there was a knock at the door. Almost as if thinking about her had brought her there, he opened it to reveal Agnes. ‘How’s Valerie?’ she asked, without any preamble. Dad didn’t invite her in; in fact, he narrowed the space between them by closing the door a little more. ‘Not too good. She needs rest. She needs peace and quiet.’ He stared at Agnes. ‘She doesn’t need visitors.’ That answered Gary’s question and my own unvoiced ones as well as putting Agnes firmly in her place.
By this time, both Gary and I were standing beside our dad. Agnes smiled warmly at us. ‘How are you kids doing?’ she asked us directly. Before we could answer, Dad snapped, ‘They’re fine, they know what’s going on.’ He went to close the door on her, but Agnes pushed it back slightly. ‘My offer still stands, Harry. I’ll take those kids any time. I’ll take them all weekend.’ My heart was in my mouth and I crossed my fingers behind my back. Maybe if Agnes took us, Dad would be happier. I wouldn’t be getting things wrong all the time, and he wouldn’t have to shout at me. Then, my old dad would be back, and when Mum got home from hospital, everything would be back to normal. Even as I stood there, beside the man who had taken the first steps on his horrific campaign to rob me of my childhood, I was wondering how much of it was my fault – and whether it was just a one-off, something I had misinterpreted and which could be forgotten . . . if only he would say ‘yes’ to Agnes.