Daddy's Prisoner (9 page)

But how could I stop it? Dad kept an even closer eye on me now – he watched me all the time as he told me to drink more water because I had terrible morning sickness and he thought it would make it better. I knew nothing would make it better when I crouched over to be sick. It wasn’t what was inside me that was making me ill. It was my feelings pouring out. I felt trapped like a caged animal as Dad waited and watched to get what he wanted. I felt so alone. I knew Mum was angry with me even though she didn’t shout and scream. Instead, she kept asking questions I couldn’t answer.

‘How could you have been so stupid, Alice? Are you still seeing him? What’s this boy’s name? He needs to know what’s happening because he’s as much responsible as you are.’

I told her many times it was an older boy who’d left school so I didn’t know where he was. But Mum wouldn’t stop asking questions until The Idiot finally told her to leave me alone.

‘Will you shut up?’ he yelled one day. ‘Just leave her alone. There’s nothing to be done. We’ve just got to get on with it.’

I supposed he wanted me to feel grateful he was protecting me. He’d even stopped wanting to have sex or hitting me since he found out I was pregnant but it made me feel even more afraid because he seemed so happy. I’d never felt anything like it before; my heart would hammer inside me when I thought about what was going to happen and I wanted to tear at my stomach to stop whatever was growing inside me. I was so afraid that Mum would find out that I’d betrayed her by letting Dad touch me or that the police would discover I had done something so wrong. But most of all I was afraid that my baby might actually be born.

‘Another little one,’ The Idiot would say as he looked at me from his bed. ‘How are you feeling today?’

I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know. It was as if I were watching a film of someone else’s life or having a nightmare I could not wake up from. Was I really so bad that something this terrible could happen to me? I hated what was inside me so much that I wanted to die.

There were moments when I thought about telling someone. But who would possibly believe what my own father was doing to me? He’d always told me I’d get in trouble if I told so what would happen to me now I was having his baby? I also thought about running away. But where would I go? And what would happen to the kids if I went? I couldn’t take them with me because there were too many of us and I couldn’t leave them – or Mum – alone with him.

So my life carried on as normal: I got my brothers and sisters up out of bed and did them a breakfast of bread and margarine before taking them to school. Some days I then went into school myself but on others I walked home after dropping off the kids and spent the rest of the day in the house before going to pick them up again. Each day dragged by and I felt more of a prisoner than ever before; I was trapped by the baby as well as Dad and all I could do was hope that I’d lose it. I waited several weeks before I woke up one morning to find I was bleeding.

‘It happens sometimes when a woman is carrying,’ Dad said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’

But when Mum took me to the accident and emergency, I was told the baby had gone. Relief crept around the edges of my numbness as I went home and Mum told The Idiot what had happened.

‘What did you fucking do?’ he later hissed.

‘Nothing. I just woke up and I was bleeding. The doctor said there was nothing I could have done.’

‘Well, you must have done something. Did you jump around too much or have too hot a bath? What have you been up to?’

‘Nothing. I’ve done nothing.’

‘You’re telling me that you didn’t want this to happen?’

‘No, Dad. Of course not.’

‘So that means you’re just fucking stupid then. So useless you can’t even carry a baby. You’re good for nothing, aren’t you? Just a fat, stupid lump.’

I didn’t speak as I turned to walk away. I felt confused by how nasty he was being when he’d been so nice before. Dad was right. I’d wished this baby dead and I was glad it was gone.

Reaching out to open the door, I felt a hand on my arm.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dad said softly. ‘Maybe you’re too young now and your body’s not ready.’

I looked at him, wondering if his kind words would come with a kick or a slap. I knew he was angry with me and he wouldn’t let it go this easily.

‘We’ll leave it a year or so,’ he said as he drew near.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked dully.

‘Just what I said,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll leave it a year and then we’ll try again.’

My heart went cold as I heard those words. This was not an accident that would never happen again because Dad would be more careful. He had wanted this baby and he’d stop at nothing to get another one.

A few weeks after the miscarriage, I left school just before my sixteenth birthday without taking any exams. I’d liked to have stayed on but knew I wouldn’t pass any exams even if I took them because I’d missed so much school. Besides, Mum needed help at home and Dad had told me I had to start signing on so he could get some extra money. I was as trapped as I ever had been as my world closed down to the four walls my father ruled. I wanted to die, to let the blackness which filled me drown me for ever. Soon after the miscarriage, I gulped down a handful of painkillers I’d been prescribed for migraines but woke up feeling drowsy hours later.

I wouldn’t get my wish and knew I had to carry on because the little ones needed me. What would they do if I was gone? I might not protect them from Dad’s belt and stick but I dried their tears when he hurt them, whispered comforting words when they were scared and held them in the night. Mum and I were all they had and she needed me almost as much as they did. But the despair I felt had to be released somehow and I started cutting my arms and legs with razors because as the blood ran out of my skin I felt the pain leave me for a moment. I couldn’t stop thinking about the baby. What had I done to make my own father do that to me?

I lived more and more in the shadows and The Idiot’s desire to control me only got stronger. I wasn’t allowed to go shopping for my own clothes – instead he picked them for me and I wore the same shapeless leggings, skirts and jogging bottoms as Mum. Later my hair was cut and permed in the same style as hers so that we looked very similar. I was not even allowed to choose what underwear to wear and was never measured for a bra or given any clothes which clung a little tightly or dipped too low on my chest.

Slowly my father was moulding me just as he had done Mum: making me so terrified that he could do whatever he wanted with me. Sometimes I tried to refuse what he wanted by pretending that I had my period because I knew then he wouldn’t touch me. But I could never keep away from him for too long because he just got meaner when he wasn’t getting what he wanted. If I refused him, he just got more violent towards Mum and the kids because he knew the best way to control me was to hurt the people I loved.

‘What’s this shit?’ he’d scream at Mum when she gave him his dinner.

‘This tea’s too cold,’ he’d yell before throwing the cup at her.

Without words, he told me that if I kept myself from him then everyone else would suffer and it made me feel so guilty. No matter how much the children cried or begged, The Idiot still did whatever he wanted to them and I would only make it worse by angering him. So in the end it was easier to give in when he dug his fingers into my arm and pulled my face close to his.

‘You’re to do as you’re fucking told,’ he’d snap. ‘Now get your underwear off and get washed.’

I didn’t have a choice if I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt so I’d go to him in the living room after he’d sent Mum and the little ones out to the shops. I felt dead inside as I lay on the dirty bed while he humiliated me and I stared at the wallpaper pattern – a big leaf with a brown centre and small green leaves around it. Over and over, I’d draw pictures in my mind, tracing the edges of the pattern, my eyes going round and round the lines until I reached the bottom of the wall and raised my eyes to start again. I just wanted to be apart from myself until it was over and after the baby died I learned how to switch myself off inside. It was like turning off a light – everything went dark until he told me to get out of the room and I knew it was over. A few months after the miscarriage, I had to go back to the doctor because I was sleepwalking at night – shouting and moaning as I got out of my bed and wandered around my prison. He gave me drugs to calm me down but didn’t ask why a sixteen-year-old would be so anxious – just as the teachers or social workers had never really seemed to want to know. I felt invisible both because I was hidden away by my father and because no one else seemed to want to see me when I was let out.

Nothing got in the way of Dad’s plans: when Simon left school the year after me, he made sure my brother got a paper round so he was also out for a few hours each day. Trapped at home looking after the kids, I started claiming benefits when Dad ordered me to apply for them. Each week I’d collect my money and he’d take every penny from me to spend on himself. Everything I had was his and when the kids were at school, Mum had been sent to the shops and Simon was out, he’d force me to give him sex. Sometimes I wondered if he’d get bored with torturing me one day and decide that he’d had his fun. But that day never came and I could see in his eyes that it never would. I felt that I was just what he told me: worthless, good for nothing, bad through and through, because who else was this happening to? I had seen normal girls at school and was certain they did not suffer as I did so I also knew that I must have done something to deserve it.

Sometimes Mum would arrive home to find the door still locked if I was still with Dad but neither of us spoke a word about it when I eventually turned the key and walked back into the house. If the kids were with her, they’d moan about being stuck outside but no one said anything about the locked door. I think it was almost accepted because everyone had got so used to it. Alice stayed at home with Dad while the kids went with Mum to the shops.

Looking back, I know now that people don’t ask questions they don’t want answers to and I think Mum was like that. I kept telling myself she couldn’t know what was happening because it hurt too much to think that she might. But after the miscarriage something happened that really confused me and for the first time I wondered if she did actually know. It was one afternoon as I was just pulling down my T-shirt because The Idiot had finished pawing me and Mum walked into the room.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said as I ran out. ‘Nothing’s going on.’

Mum did not come after me but that night I heard shouts and knew her questions were being silenced by Dad’s fists. She never mentioned that day again and it convinced me even more that everything must be my fault because if Mum would not talk to me about it then surely I had done something wrong? I’d always felt guilty about what was happening – as if I was betraying her by letting Dad do what he wanted with me – and the suspicion that she knew just added to the million different voices rushing round inside my head.

There were moments, of course, when I felt anger flicker up and wondered why Mum didn’t speak out. I wanted her to stop Dad and protect me. But I pushed my feelings down because I knew she was as scared as I was. A lifetime of curses and insults, slaps and whippings, had made her as much of a prisoner as me. Mum didn’t want to acknowledge what she couldn’t bear to face and by speaking out she’d have made it real, so she kept silent.

But it was real to me and I dreamed of killing Dad over and over again. At night I’d see his face leering towards me, during the day my head ached with migraines as I tried to stop myself thinking. I clung to one dream: that some day Mum would find the courage to run away with me and the kids. I don’t know why I thought that might happen. I should have known even then that Mum was like me – too scared to go against Dad because she knew that whatever she did, he would dream up a punishment far worse than she could ever imagine.

The Idiot made sure we knew that by constantly reminding us what he was capable of – like the day he and Mum went shopping and arrived home to find a crossbow bolt had been fired into the video cabinet. Simon had been messing around with the weapon and accidentally set it off. But although Dad had always encouraged his interest by taking him into the garden with an air rifle and showing him how to shoot or letting him throw knives at trees when we occasionally went into the country, he was furious when he got home to find someone had touched one of his precious weapons without permission.

‘Who was it?’ Dad demanded as we all stood in the living room. ‘Which one of you fired it?’

‘Leave them,’ Mum pleaded. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

‘No, you fucking won’t.’

The Idiot was holding a stiletto knife as he stared at us, twirling it as he screamed. My stomach turned as I stared at it. I was sure he’d use it if we made a wrong move and I didn’t want the little ones getting hurt. Rather me than them.

Walking down the line of children, Dad questioned each one of us.

‘Was it you?’ he shouted at Simon.

‘No, Dad, honest.’

‘Was it you?’ he screamed at me.

My heart beat as I stared at the knife. I knew that he could stab me with it in an instant if he wanted to.

‘Simon done it, Simon done it,’ one of the little ones yelped in fright.