Daddy's Prisoner (15 page)

‘Jonathan Peter? Why didn’t you give him my name?’ he hissed. ‘What’s wrong with my fucking name? Change it.’

He held up a pencil which I took before sitting down on a chair beside the bed and carefully writing his name on to the certificate.

‘There you are, Dad,’ I said as I lifted it up to show him.

‘Piss off,’ he yelled as he grabbed the paper and threw it at me.

I picked it up off the floor, knowing I’d find a place secret enough to hide it. It was all I had to remind me of my son.

‘Can I go to his funeral?’ I asked as I looked at Dad.

‘Can you fuck?’ he sneered. ‘The police will be there, won’t they? There’s no way you’re showing your fat, ugly face. Now get the fuck out of here.’

The day came and went when Jonathan was buried and I could only think of him as I sat at home with The Idiot watching me. Weeks turned into months and I felt as if I was going to die – numb and in pain at the same time. From the moment I opened my eyes to when I closed them again at night, I couldn’t stop thinking of my baby. How would I ever forgive myself for what I’d done?

I thought over and over about Jonathan and the life I’d taken. The tranquillisers and painkillers I’d been given couldn’t crush how I felt and I stole some of The Idiot’s pills to take with them. I wanted to kill myself and never wake up again but when The Idiot realised what I’d done, he started keeping all the medication in a carrier bag by his bed so he could keep an eye on it. It didn’t stop me from wanting to hurt myself though and I started sticking pins into my legs to cause blisters or cutting myself – once gashing my right arm so badly using a piece of broken glass from a bottle Dad had thrown at me that I had to go to hospital where a nurse packed the wound with gauze. When I looked at the scar I’d made, I knew I’d never forget Jonathan and after that used razors to cut myself on my lower arms or ankles. As I watched the blood run out of me, I knew Dad had been right all along: I was bad through and through and there was just one good thing left that I could do with my life – look after Mum.

But just as something had died in me, she had also lost a part of herself. Without the children, she wasn’t the same. There were no smiles or hugs, no laughs or whispered jokes. She just sat on the bed beside The Idiot for hour after hour as he ordered her around. When he slapped her or threw something now, she didn’t even flinch – just stared at him with empty eyes.

‘What’s wrong with you, you daft bitch?’ he’d scream, trying to see the fear in her face that he enjoyed so much.

Dad just got lazier as he made us do more for him than ever before. By now he didn’t even bother going to the toilet and instead used a commode which had been given to Mum because she found getting around increasingly difficult. But Dad decided it would save him some effort so he’d sit on it as we watched TV before making one of us empty it out when it got too full.

It was as if nothing could touch Mum now that she was losing hope. As the months passed without the children, it became obvious that the social workers would never allow them home, even though the police hadn’t charged Dad with anything. Mum longed to have the kids back but towards the end of 1989, more than a year after they were taken from us, we were told they would never come home. By now we knew they wouldn’t even be kept together because they’d already been separated: Kate was living with a foster family who wanted to adopt her, which Dad refused to allow; Simon had moved to a home in another city and Laura and Charlie were also still in homes.

Something finally snapped in Mum when she realised her children were scattered and she was losing them for ever. After being so silent and withdrawn since they were taken, she now started talking about them all the time – pleading with Dad to allow her to see them even though it made him angry and earned her more slaps. But Mum didn’t stop asking Dad for his help in getting the kids back until one night when he finally snapped.

‘Can’t we just try to get them home?’ Mum asked for the hundredth time. ‘Can’t I go to them and see what happens?’

‘You stupid bitch,’ Dad yelled. ‘You’re never going to get them back, can’t you see? And why do you want them anyway? Remember what they’ve said about me? It’s their own fault they’re where they are.’

‘They didn’t say anything, I promise you. They just want to come home.’

‘Liar. Who was it that told the social workers about the videos? It was those little brats. I don’t want them back here.’

Mum looked at him.

‘I do,’ she said quietly.

He stared at her.

‘I’ve been thinking about how we could do it,’ Mum said in a rush. ‘Maybe if you left for a few weeks then I could get the little ones back here.’

‘What?’ The Idiot hissed.

‘It would just be for a while and then you could come home.’

Dad’s face darkened as he looked at Mum.

‘Don’t ever fucking suggest that again,’ he yelled. ‘How dare you tell me to leave?’

‘But I can call the social workers, tell them you’ve gone, then the little ones can come back.’

I felt so scared for Mum as I listened to her. She mustn’t fight him, he wouldn’t let her get away with this.

‘Shut up,’ he screeched. ‘Or do you want a smack?’

But still Mum wouldn’t stop.

‘Listen to me,’ she pleaded. ‘I can get them back and then you can come home once they’re here. It needn’t be for long – just until the social workers have left us alone.’

As Mum stood up to plead with him, The Idiot grabbed a hammer and flung it at her. It caught Mum on the leg and she started crying as she fell on to the carpet.

‘Please listen to me, we’ve got to get them back,’ she sobbed.

‘Get the fuck out of my face, you dirty bitch,’ he snarled.

Finally Mum was quiet but I knew The Idiot wouldn’t let her get away with answering him back like that in front of me. That night I heard soft moans coming from the living room. It wasn’t the shouts or screams I was used to. These noises went on for hours, like the cries of an animal, and I got up the next morning expecting to see Mum with a black eye or split lip. Instead, she was covered all over her skin – up and down her arms, at the side of her neck and down her body – with livid red pinch marks. It was different from anything I’d seen before and, while I didn’t know what The Idiot had said to her, I knew it was enough to make sure Mum never mentioned trying to get the children home again.

For years after, I wondered why she’d stayed after finally realising that Dad would cost her her children. There was a time when I thought it was because she loved him but slowly I came to realise I was wrong. Mum might have loved Dad when she was a teenager who didn’t know any better, but years on it wasn’t love that she felt for him, it was hate. She despised him but was too scared to see a world outside Dad. Fear was what bound Mum to her torturer – just like me.

‘Alice,’ Dad yelled. ‘Get in here now.’

He’d just sent Mum out to the shops and my heart started pounding as I walked into the living room.

‘Take off your underwear,’ he spat as he saw me.

I looked at him. I couldn’t bear him to touch me again. Ever since Jonathan, I’d wanted to scream and scratch at him when he told me to get on to the bed. Why was he doing this? He knew I was his now. Surely he couldn’t enjoy me lying dead beneath him?

‘What are you doing?’ Dad hissed as I stood looking at him, feeling as if my legs were filled with lead because I couldn’t move to take a step nearer to him.

‘Are you listening?’ The Idiot said as he got up off the bed. ‘Do you know how many pieces I could chop you into? How your mother would scream? And do you think anyone would hear?’

I held my breath as he walked towards me.

‘Because they wouldn’t listen even if they did hear, you know,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you see it? No one wants to help you, no one wants to listen to you or see you. You’re worse than useless and if you think you can disobey me then you’re wrong.’

I longed to see him dead and later that day stole some of his sleeping pills to crush into his tea. Sitting quietly, I watched him as he sipped. Would it be enough to finish him off ? Would Mum and I be free? But, of course, the pills didn’t seem to have any effect. Nothing I could do would ever make a difference.

I must have been about sixteen when The Idiot discovered how much he liked karaoke. Most of the electrical gadgets he was obsessed with were thrown in a heap in one of the bedrooms – old video recorders, TVs, stereo systems – along with the thousands of video tapes he bought with the benefit money he raked in thanks to all us kids. He also used it to buy a karaoke machine, which he’d plug in at night and sing along to as we lay in bed listening to his howls. His favourite songs were Jim Reeves’ ‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’, ‘In the Ghetto’ by Elvis or anything by Hank Williams. Of course, after the little ones left, he was short of money because all the child benefits had gone. So to try and get more he made me go to the doctor to ask about being registered disabled because then I’d earn him more money. But, I was turned down so he kept every penny of the benefits Mum and I collected to spend on himself and bought a machine he could record his voice on – listening back and smiling as he heard himself.

But in early 1990, Dad discovered something he loved even more than karaoke after deciding he’d had enough of where we were living. We weren’t getting the kids back and there was no point staying where we were any longer. I knew Mum felt the same as I did: we didn’t want to leave the kids behind. But it had been eighteen months since they were taken into care and The Idiot was decided. He told Mum to phone Michael to ask if we could stay with him for a while. He often did things like that – fell out with people for years then swallowed his pride if there was something in it for him. That’s what he did with Michael and I knew my brother would agree to let us stay because of Mum. He couldn’t say no when she asked him for help and I think part of him also hoped he’d be able to persuade her to leave Dad.

‘I’ll get you away,’ Michael would sometimes say after we moved back to the city where I’d been born and into the two-bedroom flat he shared with his girlfriend Julie and their two young daughters. ‘I’ll get you a proper home.’

But I knew Mum would never ask Michael for help. At first, I wondered if it was because she felt as if she deserved to be punished for losing the kids – just like I did about Jonathan. But then I realised that the reason she didn’t want to let Michael help her was because she knew what The Idiot might do to him if he did. Mum didn’t want to bring that kind of trouble to Michael’s door. He’d escaped and had a real family life now. His two little girls were beautiful: two-year-old Paula with her dark hair and eighteen-month-old Jacqueline who was redheaded. They reminded me so much of Laura and Kate that it sometimes hurt to see them. That’s why Mum would never ask Michael for his help – she knew he was happy now and wouldn’t ruin that for him.

I’m not sure what my brother and Julie made of me when I moved in. I was so withdrawn that I think they, like all the people in the years to come, just presumed I was a bit strange, a bit of a recluse. Overweight and quiet, I blended into the background, always aware that I mustn’t provoke The Idiot. While living with Michael, he introduced me to some family, including Mum’s nephew Sam. But apart from quick hellos and goodbyes, I didn’t get to know these people, stayed hidden with my secrets, and no one looked too closely because they didn’t think there was anything to see. I’m sure they all thought I was just a shy young woman and didn’t know that I stuck to tea when the others had a Christmas drink because the memory of sneaking some cheap sparkling wine years before had stayed with me – Dad had given me a smack and I’d never dared try alcohol again. It was the same during all the weeks we stayed with Michael: even though we weren’t alone in the house, I knew that I couldn’t cross Dad.

A couple of months later, we moved into our new council flat and The Idiot was immediately up to his usual tricks. He and Mum slept on a sofa bed in the lounge while I had the bedroom off it – which meant he could keep a constant eye on me – and once again the front door was kept locked. Days blurred one into the other as the world closed down to the four walls we sat within. I worried about Mum more and more because her health was getting worse. She was going to hospital more regularly and a couple of times an ambulance had come out to get her. I did what I could, of course, but knew that however many pills she took, it wouldn’t be the angina, thyroid or high blood pressure problems that would overwhelm her but The Idiot.

We didn’t mark birthdays or the passing of time as the weeks dragged on. While The Idiot watched porn hour after hour, I sat imagining I was somewhere else so vividly that I could almost see the pictures in front of my eyes instead of the filthy lounge and my stinking father. But it was then that Michael introduced Dad to something he loved even more than karaoke.

My brother liked going to country and western clubs – places where people dressed as cowboys, line danced and did pretend shoot-outs with guns loaded with blank bullets – and that equalled a perfect night out for The Idiot. At the country and western clubs, he could indulge his taste for guns among people who innocently thought he just liked the Wild West. So he and Michael started visiting the clubs about once a week and Mum and I were left in the flat together. It was the first time we’d been on our own and the only happy hours I’d known since the kids were taken.