Daddy's Prisoner (21 page)

‘I know,’ the doctor replied. ‘But although we can’t identify the exact cause of Caitlin’s condition, we believe it is a genetic problem. It’s very serious, Alice, and I have to tell you that the extent of Caitlin’s brain damage means she is unlikely to reach puberty.’

I wanted to scream as the doctor spoke. How could he say this to me? How could he know what Caitlin was capable of when he didn’t even know what was wrong with her?

‘Caitlin is severely brain-damaged and has a limited life expectancy,’ I heard a voice say.

My hands started to shake as I bent my head. It was just as I’d feared. The doctor was telling me Caitlin was going to pay the price for my sins.

‘But she’s perfect,’ I whispered.

When the doctor had gone, I bent down to Caitlin’s cot. She was sleeping. She looked so peaceful. I reached out to touch her soft cheek. I wouldn’t listen to what the doctor had told me. He didn’t know anything for sure and I wasn’t going to give up on my baby even if he was. What did he know? I’d make sure my daughter survived. She had to live. She was my life now.

I smiled as I wrapped Caitlin in a towel. I’d just given her a bath and was going to put her down to sleep for the night soon.

‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?’ I sang softly. ‘Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.’

Caitlin made a soft gurgling noise as I patted her dry and bent my head to kiss her. I could never get enough of her smell, so clean and new, and I knew it was true what they said – babies really were a miracle.

I wiped gently around the feeding tube running into Caitlin’s nose. I’d been coping well with it since coming home; in fact, the only problems I had were when she was a little rascal and pulled it out. The health visitor, though, told me I was doing a good job because Caitlin was putting on weight just as she was supposed to. But I worried that the health visitor would complain about the pigsty we lived in – row upon row of units filled with Dad’s video tapes and covered in cobwebs, the stink of his mess in the living room. I’d been keeping my room as clean and tidy as possible but The Idiot wouldn’t let me do anything to the rest of the flat.

‘This is where we spend our time,’ I told the health visitor. ‘We don’t go into the lounge too much.’

She looked around and smiled at Caitlin lying in my arms.

‘Just try to keep the dust down as best you can,’ she said kindly, and I felt as if she knew that I was doing my best.

But I still didn’t want her coming to the house too much so if the weather was good enough, I’d take Caitlin down to the clinic to be seen. Other than that, Dad didn’t let me out and the front door was locked as always. So I’d stay in the house with Caitlin, cuddling and feeding her, changing her nappy and giving her baths. I didn’t mind being locked in the house again – I just loved looking after Caitlin and so did Mum.

‘Let me take her,’ she’d say if the baby vomited up her milk, which she did a lot because she had stomach problems.

‘But she’ll make you dirty, Mum. You don’t have to do it.’

‘Well, it won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last,’ Mum would say with a smile. ‘Give her to me for a cuddle.’

Whispering to Caitlin, Mum would gently undress her but a couple of times her hands started shaking when she lifted the baby up and I knew she was almost scared about hurting something so precious. The Idiot, though, screamed if Caitlin cried too much and ranted when his TV was interrupted by the noise, which happened quite often because Caitlin sometimes cried for hour upon hour and it wasn’t easy to settle her. It made Dad wild but for some reason he didn’t fly at me so much now. In fact, it was Mum who got more of the beatings and insults and I bit my lip as I watched him kicking out her arms from underneath her as she tried to crawl out of the bed beside him or laughing if she had an accident. I knew I couldn’t get involved in their fights as much any more because I had Caitlin to look after and I didn’t want to give him any reason to get in a rage with me and take it out on her. But I worried for Mum because The Idiot just got meaner all the time.

Having Caitlin home was as wonderful as I’d dreamed it would be during all those long weeks when she was in hospital. I seemed to spend hours just looking at her, staring at my baby’s face as I imagined the future she was going to have. I knew I’d make sure she had all that I never did: proper schooling, pretty clothes, the chance to go out with friends her own age. I knew what the doctors had said but tried to forget it, even if they thought I was kidding myself. When I took Caitlin back to hospital for regular check-ups, I was sure she was doing better than they’d predicted. For instance, the doctors had said she wouldn’t recognise me but I was certain she did. When I talked to her and tickled her, I knew she gave me little smiles and I was the only one who could soothe her when she cried.

Being a mum made me more tired than I’d ever been in my life before because I had to tube-feed Caitlin every couple of hours whether it was day or night. But I didn’t care because it was exciting – the feeling had never left me since the moment she was born. I wasn’t just The Idiot’s plaything any more and felt as if I’d accomplished something at the end of each day. Before Caitlin, the weeks had slipped one into another as months and then years had passed while we sat silently in front of the TV screen. I was twenty-six years old now and it had been eight long years of darkness and terror since the kids had left.

But now each day seemed different and I knew Mum loved having Caitlin with us almost as much as I did. I could see it in her face as she held her and rocked her. We were always talking about the baby and I was glad Caitlin made Mum smile because it meant that at last I’d given her some happiness instead of all the pain. Even after all this time, the guilt I felt about what happened between Dad and me was as strong as ever. I had betrayed Mum for so long by letting her husband do what he did. I also felt filled with shame as I remembered all my other pregnancies. Now I had a baby, I realised even more how wicked my feelings had been and felt full of guilt at the thought that I had killed my unborn children. But now at least I hoped I might have done something good: I would love Caitlin enough for all my other babies and one day she might be the reason to finally give Mum and me the courage to run.

It was almost impossible to get any money out of Dad to buy the baby what she needed and I had to beg him for nappy money. But in the end I persuaded him to give me a few pounds to buy a cheap cot and pram and Mum and I kept back enough from it to get a couple of teddy bears. At Christmas, I was even given a few pounds to buy Caitlin a colourful plastic half-moon which I hung at the end of her cot. The day was the same as any other – no decorations, no turkey – but she made it special.

Michael was pleased as punch when he came to see her.

‘She’s beautiful, sis,’ he told me and I felt so proud.

It was moments like those when I could almost forget who Caitlin’s father was and smile like any other mum. But then I’d remember when I woke up in the middle of the night and the flat was dark and silent. I told myself that Caitlin would never be his, she was mine and I’d look after her properly, make her safe from him. Sometimes Dad would hold her if I was busy cooking or folding the washing but I hated having her near him and would take her back as soon as I’d finished what he’d told me to do.

The doctor’s questions about Caitlin’s health problems had rattled The Idiot, though, and he’d started using contraception again. He must have remembered all the questions from the police when the kids were taken and known that if he wasn’t careful someone else would start asking more. So while the sex still happened from time to time when Mum went out, it wasn’t as often as before. I didn’t complain, though, because I was too scared of what he’d do to Caitlin if I gave him even the slightest reason to get angry. The one thing guaranteed to send him into a rage, though, was money and he’d started pestering me about it almost as soon as Caitlin came home.

‘You can apply for disability allowance now, you know,’ he kept telling me. ‘You can get extra for her because she’s sick.’

At first I didn’t take any notice. I wasn’t thinking about anything like that, just trying to get used to having a baby at home and looking after all her needs. Caitlin had to have regular medication and a monitor was fixed to her chest all the time, which sounded a bleep if her heartbeat slowed down. When it went off, I would rush to her and usually find she’d pulled the monitor off. But once I had to gently massage her heart as I’d been taught to and it scared me so much – as did the seizures Caitlin had started having after she came home. Sometimes I was sure she wouldn’t survive because she was so tiny and weak. But Caitlin proved to everyone how strong she was in January 1997 when she was seven months old and developed pneumonia.

The doctors had told me to prepare for the worst when I took her into hospital and I’d spent the night sitting by Caitlin’s cot and praying she’d be well again. The next morning I was told she still wasn’t over the worst and I asked for a vicar to come and see us. Tears ran down my cheeks as he made the sign of the cross to baptise Caitlin. I couldn’t lose her. She mustn’t be made to pay for all I’d done wrong.

As I watched and waited for a sign that she was going to pull through, I pleaded with anyone who’d listen to save Caitlin. I knew she was sick and had problems but I’d give her a good life, a happy one, the best I could. It was two awful days before the doctors finally told me she was out of danger and I sobbed when I heard the news. I’d always known that despite all her problems Caitlin was stronger than anyone believed and now she’d shown them.

The Idiot, though, didn’t care about any of it: how sick Caitlin was, how much attention she needed. All he was interested in was getting me to apply for disability benefit and he badgered me about it day after day.

‘You could get more for her, you know,’ he’d say. ‘She’s ill. She needs care. There are allowances for kids like her.’

Once again, I went down to the benefits office and filled out the forms before posting them and forgetting all about it. But when a letter came through the front door a few weeks later, The Idiot flew into a rage.

‘How the fuck can they refuse you?’ he screamed. ‘Why won’t they give her disability benefits? Look at her. Did you fill out the forms right? Did you tell them everything they needed to know?’

Suddenly an anger so powerful filled me that I forgot myself as I listened to him screech.

‘Is that all you care about?’ I shouted. ‘What does it matter? She’s a baby. I give you everything I get. What more do you want?’

Dad’s eyes bored into me as I sat with Caitlin.

‘As much as I can get,’ he hissed. ‘Now give me the copy of the form you filled out and I’ll check what you wrote. There must be a way we can get those tight bastards to give us more.’

My stomach twisted inside me as I handed him the form. Everything – his kids, his wife, our sicknesses and births – came down to money. For so long, I’d tried to understand why he’d behaved as he had: had I made him, was I to blame, had any other girl made her father do as mine had done? But now I finally realised that as well as the power, terror and control, it was down to money. That was why Dad got so angry when Mum couldn’t have more children and why he’d forced himself on to me year after year. We’d been earning him a packet when we were kids and he wanted Mum to keep having his children to get even more. Then as soon as I was old enough, he’d put me to ‘work’ – raping me to get another child and another benefit cheque. My head swooped as I stared at him. I’d been too stupid to see it. He didn’t care what he had to do to get more cash in his pocket.

Dad went through the application form I’d filled out with a fine toothcomb before ringing up the benefits people to rage at them for refusing me more money. But he was told Caitlin was still a baby and therefore didn’t qualify. I was happy that he’d been turned down. It would teach him a lesson.

Two months after she recovered from pneumonia, the doctors told me Caitlin needed to have an operation. She was still being tube-fed via her nose and they said it would be better for her to have one inserted into her stomach because it would be less uncomfortable. I listened as they told me and wondered if she really needed to go through something like that. Caitlin weighed fifteen pounds now, which showed that the way I was feeding her was working. In fact, she was so much stronger that I was sure the doctors would soon tell me they’d been wrong to diagnose her as they had. I knew she wasn’t like other babies – she didn’t lift her head or wriggle around, she didn’t coo at me or giggle – but she was my world and, as her mother, I could see the changes in her. The doctors, though, said the operation would make her stronger and I knew I must listen to them. I agreed to have it done and took Caitlin into hospital in late March 1997.

She was going into surgery the next day and I watched as the doctors did all the tests they needed to make sure she was well enough before settling her down for the night. I hardly slept as I worried about the next day and felt so afraid as I dressed Caitlin when she woke up. I didn’t want her to leave me as she was taken away by a nurse. My arms felt empty without her, the world was so quiet now she was gone. The doctors had told me the operation would last four hours and they seemed like the longest of my life as I waited for her to come back. Relief washed over me when she was brought back to the ward.

‘It went really well,’ a nurse told me, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by her cot.