Daddy's Prisoner (14 page)

‘Is it true what they’ve been saying?’ he shouted. ‘Is it his?’

‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous,’ The Idiot roared. ‘How dare you? Get out! Get out now!’

‘Not until I’ve found out the truth.’

‘Fuck off, you little bastard,’ Dad screamed. ‘Do you hear me? Get out!’

But Michael did not move and I stared at him, feeling the words bubbling up inside me but not moving into my mouth. The anger I knew so well as a child was filling the air once again between Dad and Michael. I felt so afraid of what my brother might do if he knew, so ashamed of how disgusted he’d be by me. It had been so long since we were children and he’d promised to protect me.

‘Don’t worry about this prick, Alice,’ my brother said, his voice soft. ‘I won’t let him touch you. He won’t get past me. Whose is it?’

‘Pete’s,’ I replied.

‘Pete – as in Pete whose sister I went out with years back?’

‘Yes. I met up with him. It was just a couple of weeks.’

‘Really?’

Michael did not speak as he looked at me. I could see uncertainty and confusion in his eyes.

‘Yes,’ I told him as The Idiot started yelling again.

‘How dare you!’ he roared. ‘Get out of my house.’

Michael turned and looked at Dad.

‘Let me take the kids and give them a home. I’m twenty now – old enough to look after them. I’ll see them right.’

Suddenly a burst of hope flared up inside me. Michael had come home just as he’d always said he would. Surely he’d take me with him too? I’d persuade Mum to come with us and wouldn’t we be safe? It would be just as we’d dreamed when we were kids.

Dad sniggered as he looked at Michael.

‘Why should you have them?’ he sneered. ‘They’re not even your proper brothers and sisters.’

It was as if a shutter had slammed down in Michael’s eyes. I saw the hurt flash in them for a moment before rage poured out of them again.

‘I don’t give a shit what you say,’ Michael yelled. ‘I know who my mum is and they’re my blood. Just give me the little ones.’

‘No fucking chance,’ Dad barked.

There was no way The Idiot was going to let Michael get his hands on any of us. When the shouting finally ended, Mum and I huddled around Michael – desperate for news of how he was now, what he was doing. He stayed long enough to tell us that he had a girlfriend and two young daughters. I felt shy as we spoke to him – seeing in Michael the boy I’d loved so much but not really knowing the man.

‘Let me know if you need anything, Mum,’ he said as he left. ‘You only need ring and I’ll do it.’

He turned to me.

‘Look after yourself, sis,’ he said.

Nothing more was said about what Simon had told the police and I’m sure Michael didn’t ever really think it might be true because some secrets are too terrible to even consider. He promised to phone more often now and I hoped he would because part of me still dreamed that somehow my big brother would come back to rescue Mum and me. Only then would I think about telling him my secret – when we were far away from here and safe. Until then I’d wait. I couldn’t leave without Mum.

I was over eight months pregnant when I realised I hadn’t felt the baby move for a few days. Everything had been fine when I’d had a scan a few months before but I’d recently missed one because Dad wouldn’t take me and now I wondered if something was wrong. I tried to remember when I’d last felt the baby move but couldn’t – it must have been at least a day ago but I didn’t want to think about it too much. For the next couple of days, though, I was alert, trying to feel the baby inside me – any kind of sign that I wasn’t imagining its stillness. I’d got used to it wriggling around and the baby was so big now that sometimes I could see a lump in my tummy where an elbow or foot was resting; it scared me because even though my due date was just a couple of weeks away, I still could not think about what was going to happen. Sometimes I’d remember the kids as babies and the feelings I’d had for them – even when I was tired and they woke me in the night or cried for hour after hour, I had still loved them. But I was sure I could never feel anything like that for this baby. I could not imagine how I would look Mum in the eye every day carrying it in my arms, feeding it and washing it as she helped me.

‘I need to go and see the doctor,’ I told The Idiot when I first realised how still the baby was.

‘And run into the welcoming committee?’ he snapped. ‘The police will be there and I don’t want any more questions. You’re fine and that’s the end of it.’

It went on like that for three days as I asked Dad repeatedly to take me up to the hospital because I was sure something was wrong. But it wasn’t until the fourth morning that he finally took me and I was shown into a room where a doctor started examining me. After a couple of minutes, he turned to look at me with a serious expression on his face.

‘I cannot detect a heartbeat. I think your baby has died in the womb.’

‘What?’ I said, my voice thick and my head rushing.

‘I said I think your baby has died in the womb.’

Anger was the first thing I felt – anger that this doctor was so blunt and cold, as if what was happening to me was nothing. But then I remembered: wasn’t this what I’d wanted all along? Relief flooded into me as I realised I wasn’t going to have this baby after all. I didn’t want to think about what The Idiot would do to me. The baby had gone now and that was all I’d asked for. I felt nothing inside, just numb.

I was told I would be given an injection to start my labour because the baby was so big it had to be delivered naturally. Pain filled me as the contractions started and Mum held my hand as agony ripped into me. I tried to switch myself off from what was happening. I just wanted it over. But then the pain would come again and I’d have to remember what I was doing: expelling the baby he had put inside me.

‘Try to breathe, love,’ Mum kept whispering.

I knew The Idiot was waiting outside. My teeth sunk into Mum’s hand as another contraction started.

‘Keep pushing,’ the doctor told me.

It seemed to last for ever. I kept pushing and pushing, trying to make the pain stop but it wouldn’t. Over and over the contractions ripped through me as I heard the doctor telling me to keep going until the pain burst one final time and there was silence.

‘It’s a boy,’ a voice said.

I turned my head away. I didn’t want to see him for a second.

That night the doctors gave me something to help me sleep but my head was filled with cries as soon as I closed my eyes. I saw children in my dreams – Charlie and Kate as babies, faces looking up out of cots and wanting me to comfort them. I felt numb as I lay in the grey morning light and knew that I was empty inside now. I’d got what I’d wished for. The baby had gone. Now maybe all the trouble it had caused would be over and the children could come home.

When the police came to request blood samples once again, I refused them, and also told the doctors I didn’t want a post-mortem done on the baby, just as Dad had told me. I wanted to forget all about this baby that had nearly been. But as the days passed, the world felt thicker around me, as if every breath and movement I made was through concrete. It was as if there was an invisible screen separating me from Mum when she came to see me and I could see the tears in her eyes. What had been inside me was real to her, she thought I’d lost something, and while I kept telling myself I hadn’t, I couldn’t stop thinking of the baby. I had named him Jonathan and wanted to scream when I thought of him. Why did I feel so sad? I’d wanted this, wished desperately for the baby to disappear and now it had. Jonathan had died because of me. I’d killed him just as I’d wanted to all the time he was growing inside me.

Mum took me home when I was released from hospital but The Idiot had decided he didn’t want to be around too much while the police were asking questions so he spent a lot of time out in his van. I tried to avoid him, unsure of what he’d do to me now I was home, but I couldn’t keep away for ever and Mum told me to take him some food a couple of days after I got out of hospital. He was hiding in his van parked down the road as I knocked on the door.

‘Get in,’ he hissed as he climbed back into the shadows.

Fear filled me as I saw him. What was he going to do? Would he be angry that the baby had gone? Did he know Jonathan had died because of me? I’d wished for it again and again and someone had listened.

‘Where’s your mother?’ The Idiot barked.

‘Inside,’ I told him. ‘I’ve brought you some food.’

‘I’ll have it later,’ he said as he pulled the tray out of my hands and flung it down on the floor of the van.

Without a word, he climbed into the front and started the engine. As we started moving, I knew what he wanted from me. Crouched in the back of the van, the minutes passed until I felt it shudder over rough ground and come to a stop. We were parked in a lane somewhere.

The Idiot turned around to face me before climbing back over the seat.

‘Please, Dad, no,’ I said softly as he came towards me.

I could not bear this now. I could not let him hurt me again. It had only been days since I’d lost Jonathan. I didn’t want him near me. I was sore and weak, filled with pain as I thought of my baby.

‘Shut up,’ Dad growled. ‘Get your skirt off.’

As I felt his hands pull at me, I tried to turn my mind off just like I had before. But all I could think of was the baby, my baby, the little boy I’d named Jonathan. Instead of falling into nothing as Dad started touching me, I couldn’t get Jonathan out of my head. I hadn’t seen or held him. I wished I had. Maybe then I’d have been able to say sorry – for hating him, for wanting him dead.

‘Has your milk come through yet?’ The Idiot asked as he crouched in front of me.

‘No,’ I whispered.

He leaned towards me and the smell of sour sweat rushed over me. I stared down at his dirty fingernails, his hair hanging in strands around his face.

‘Lying bitch,’ he hissed. ‘Look at your top.’

I lowered my eyes and saw a wet patch on my chest: milk for the baby I had lost.

‘Take off your top,’ Dad hissed.

I stared up at him. Surely he couldn’t want it? He wouldn’t do this to me?

‘What do you mean?’ I whispered.

‘I said take your top off, or do you want a fucking smack?’

His eyes bored into me as I slowly lifted up my top and took off my bra. As he lowered his head to my chest, my mind at last went blank. I knew just one thing now: I’d killed my own baby and Mum had lost the kids because of me. I was rotten inside. This was my punishment. My father was my punishment and he would be for ever. It was all I deserved.

We got to see the little ones just once a fortnight at the children’s home and each time we left they clung on to us as they asked when they could come home. We could never tell them because we still didn’t know. The children were subject to a care order and there was no sign of them being returned to us even though the police hadn’t pressed charges. I didn’t know if they would do so in future but for now Dad was safe. Even so, he was determined to make things as difficult as possible for the social workers because while he might have been scared of the police, he was more than happy to get the kids doing his dirty work for him.

‘Don’t listen to a word those fuckers say,’ he’d tell them. ‘And don’t do anything they ask of you: if they want you to go to bed then tell them to fuck off, if they want you to eat their food then throw it at them. You’ve got to make their lives difficult so they see they can’t mess with us. We’re not going to listen to a fucking word they say.’

The kids, of course, did as The Idiot instructed them: they were violent, disruptive and caused mayhem in the children’s home. Dad even encouraged them to run away and a few times there was a knock on the door and I opened it to find Laura standing on the doorstep.

‘That’s right,’ Dad would laugh as she walked in. ‘Let’s see if those bastards can find you now.’

Eventually either the police or a social worker would come out to take Laura back but each time she ran away felt like a victory to The Idiot because he’d got one over on the people he hated so much. Within months, he was banned from attending access meetings and the social workers told Mum that she was only allowed to see the kids without him. Dad was furious. Spitting hatred, he kept requesting to see the little ones – as much to waste the social workers’ time as anything else I think. But they saw through his pleas, knew he’d never do anything for the children except use them as puppets for his own hatred and didn’t give in to him. So Dad refused to drive Mum to the access meetings because if he couldn’t see the kids then neither could she and it was more than she dared to try to see them alone.

Now it was just the three of us – Dad, Mum and me – locked into the house and Mum turned in even more on herself when she stopped seeing the kids. I knew she was upset but I couldn’t help her because I was just as lost as she was now. I couldn’t stop thinking of Jonathan – aching for him in a way I’d never known before, a deep, searing pain which confused me because how could I feel sad for a baby I had never wanted?

The doctor had put me on even more medication but it didn’t stop the shame paralysing me and I didn’t care what happened to me because I’d killed my own baby. I’d hurt Jonathan and Mum had lost the kids because of me – I was as bad as Dad had always told me. He never mentioned the baby, though, it was as if Jonathan didn’t exist until the day a letter came from the hospital telling me there was going to be a ceremony for him. In the envelope was Jonathan’s death certificate and The Idiot started grumbling as soon as he saw it.