Deliver Me From Evil (5 page)

When I first began living in Tewkesbury, going to a new school and getting used to new people, I think I simply accepted the situation. That was how life was. I was seven and a half, going on eight and I was quite a character by then – very chatty and curious about things, and not frightened to ask questions. One day Eunice told me, categorically, that I wouldn’t live beyond ten years of age. I don’t know why she told me this, but I believed it. Most children do believe what adults tell them, and to me, a seven-and-a-half-year-old, the age of ten seemed a long way off and so I thought defiantly:
I don’t care.

Not long after I arrived Thomas came to stay with us full-time. Then it was suddenly announced by Eunice that a new baby was going to come and live with us too. Again, I didn’t really question who he was, and it didn’t feel that strange, although now, being a mother myself, it seems quite odd. Eunice seemed to want to have loads of children around, so I just accepted it.

I remember visiting the baby in hospital. He looked very delicate, very tiny and weak. He had lots of tubes going into his little body and a bigger one up his nose, which I remember looked a bit scary. I know now that he was methadone-addicted at birth, poor little thing, and he was underweight. I remember singing to him in my squeaky voice, kissing his cheek and smelling him – that lovely smell of newborn babies, that warm, milky, cosy smell. He was in hospital for a few months as he needed to get stronger before Eunice could take him home.

By the time I was eight I was used to being at Eunice’s, but I missed my parents a lot. I would tell Eunice I was missing them and she would say, ‘You’ll be visiting them soon,’ but the promised visit would never materialize. Now I realize that from the minute I got there Eunice wanted me to forget about having had any past life and to adopt a new one in her Tewkesbury fiefdom.

The first step was to break down Thomas’s and my identity, so that we lost all touch with ourselves and our heritage, just as she had done with Sarah and Charlotte. After we’d been living a while at George Dowty full-time Eunice made it clear that we were to think of her as our real parent: ‘Call me Mummy,’ she insisted, and as everyone else there did, we did too. However, she stressed that on the rare occasions when I was at my birth parents’ house I had to remember to call her ‘Auntie Eunice’.

The second thing we had to do was change our names. Eunice didn’t like my name, Alloma, because it was a ‘magic’ name in her eyes and therefore ‘demonized’. One day Thomas and I were at the table with Charlotte and Sarah when Eunice gave a book to Charlotte and said mockingly, ‘Pass this to the Devil’s child next to you’.

This was me. I blushed and felt very embarrassed. I looked up and Eunice showed no emotion at all. Charlotte smirked and looked at Eunice, who said maliciously, ‘Yes, they’re the Devil’s kids all right.’ Meaning both Thomas and me.

Thomas looked annoyed, but said nothing, just squirmed in his seat. Then Eunice put a piece of paper in front of me. ‘There’s a better choice of names for you,’ she said. ‘Better than your demonized name, anyway’

I looked down and saw four names: Rebecca, Harriet, Wilhelmina and Jemima.

‘You can choose one of those. Better than that evil name you’ve got.’

I sat and tears stung my eyes. My mother had chosen the name Alloma. It was a link with my family. But I looked up at Eunice’s mean mask of a face and I knew I had to choose. No question.

There was a little girl at my school called Harriet and I quite liked the name, so I became Harriet Gilbert and dropped Alloma altogether. It felt very weird at first, but oddly, I got used to it fairly quickly. I was having to get used to a lot of new, weird things. Thus, from the age of seven I was known as Harriet and when a school friend asked me why I’d changed my name, I just said it was because I liked it. I knew better than to say, ‘My foster mum thinks my real name is demonized.’

Thomas had to change his name too but because all these different names are confusing, I’m going to keep calling him Thomas!

I don’t think Eunice told my parents, and anyway, I rarely saw them now. If I did, I had to pretend I was still Alloma, just as Eunice was Auntie Eunice’. The final touch was when Eunice insisted I drop the Gilbert part and adopt her current surname, Spry, as well. So I was forced to give up on my parents, my nan, my heritage and everything to do with my past family and home. I didn’t like it much, but even at this early stage in our life together I knew better than to question Eunice. I believe that in her mind I now belonged to her, as did the other children.

I also think she hated the fact I had Romany heritage and that this contributed to her believing I was the ‘Devil’s child’.

One day she was combing my hair very hard and pulling it aggressively into a rubber band. It hurt like hell. I had always loved my long, dark and curly hair, particularly because it was like my mum’s and reminded me of her.

‘You’ve got gypo hair,’ she said rudely.

I looked in the mirror and instantly saw myself as ugly. I saw myself through Eunice’s eyes, and tears began to well up, but I blinked them back. I was not going to show weakness.

‘We’ll soon get rid of all this,’ she said as she wrenched my hair up and into a tight ponytail. Eunice had always hated my hair and although my mother had asked her to keep it long she could not wait to chop it off.

I would look in the mirror on my own and peer at my face, running my fingers through my hair, and tears would drip down my cheeks. Was I bedevilled? Was I really evil? Eunice made me feel ugly, hideous and worth absolutely nothing.

At first my parents would write me a letter every week and Eunice would stand over me as I read them. Sometimes she would intercept the mail and keep letters from me and when I would ask, ‘Has there been a letter from my mum and dad?’ she would shake her head. But I couldn’t believe that they had stopped writing. I would go and look at the floor below the letterbox, but if Eunice saw me looking, she would turn nasty. I was beginning to see a new, bad-tempered side of her which was very scary and which I didn’t like at all.

One morning I was watching out for the post when Eunice appeared at my side, furious. ‘It’s no good you looking, there’s nothing there,’ she said roughly.

Her eyes glinted and I felt afraid and bewildered. Why was she being so odd about me getting letters from home?

‘Isn’t there any post today?’

‘No. Now get away from the door.’

I felt I couldn’t argue as her behaviour was quite terrifying. Then, soon after that morning, the letters from my parents stopped coming altogether.

I was very confused as initially I had felt that Eunice’s house was a nice place to be. But she was changing and she seemed to be getting tougher towards Thomas and me in particular. I noticed, increasingly, how nice she was to Charlotte, and how harsh she was to Sarah. For instance, Charlotte had a nice room, but Sarah’s room was very cold and untidy. Thomas and I had been put in to share with Sarah and when the new baby boy, Robert, arrived he was allowed to stay with Eunice. It was like there was a ranking order, with Charlotte and Robert at the top, and Sarah, Thomas and me at the bottom. We had to ‘serve’ the other two quite often, making sure they had their food first, had the best toys or watched the videos they wanted. We were made to feel we were second best all the time, which was hurtful and humiliating.

When we’d been there for about six months to a year, Eunice stepped up her campaign to warp my mind against my parents and really began to brainwash me – all of us, in fact – about the nature of my parents.

One day, we were in the kitchen clearing up the dishes after a meal when Eunice suddenly blurted out, ‘Of course, your parents are big drug addicts, they’re hopeless people. You do know that, don’t you?’

Eunice was glaring at me, but I was shocked and outraged, so I leapt to their defence. This was my mum and dad she was talking about. How dare she?

‘No, they’re not, they’re nice.’

Eunice continued to stare at me fiercely through her big glasses for a moment, her lips compressed together in a thin line – a look I was learning to dread; it was really scary.

‘It’s time you knew the truth – your mum’s had loads of abortions. Do you know what that means? She kills babies.’

I was shocked at the idea of my mum killing a baby, and while I know now that this was untrue, at the time it confused me because I did have a very early memory of my mum telling me about a stillborn baby – I think it was a girl – when I was really little. But Eunice insisted my mother had aborted the baby which sounded terrible and upset me hugely. She made it sound as though my mum had killed her with her own bare hands. The stillbirth was something that I had talked about a lot when I was little. I used to tell children at my two different schools that I’d had a sister who had died. But the idea that my mum had killed her, on purpose, well, that was horrible, unthinkable.

On another occasion, Eunice was preparing dinner, chopping onions, while I sat drawing at the table, when she launched into her now familiar mantra: ‘Of course, you know your parents are hopeless drug addicts. They’re totally possessed by the Devil. They’re evil.’

I looked up at her, furious. I was very loyal to my parents and quite feisty.

‘You can’t say that. You can’t!’ I blurted out.

Eunice turned around, knife in hand, and fixed me with an icy glare. I felt the blood draining away from my face. My mouth opened, but the more she stared, the less I was able to speak.

You were saying?’

I opened my mouth, but again no sound came out. All I could see were her steely eyes boring fiercely into me. My eyes moved from hers to the knife and back I closed my mouth. I felt defeated, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that what she was saying was wrong.

On my eighth birthday I was lucky enough to see my parents alone. It was the only time I’d seen them without Eunice as a chaperone since going to live with her. Dad bought me a little gold-coloured locket that day in a toy shop in the shopping arcade in Cheltenham, which I thought was truly beautiful. It was a gold, heart-shaped frame with a white and pink porcelain rose picture in it. I treasured this present and carried it everywhere until it eventually disappeared when I was about thirteen.

After I’d seen my parents on my birthday Eunice bought a Barbie doll for me from a big shop in Cheltenham, seemingly determined to outdo my parents or to eradicate the good feeling I had about my dads present. These gifts might well have been some sort of bribe to make me think fondly of her, or perhaps she feared she might lose me to my parents as a result of our having spent time together unchaperoned.

Sometimes the phone would go in Eunice’s living room and I would hear my parents leaving messages. One time I picked up the phone and was speaking to my dad when suddenly Eunice snatched the handset roughly out of my hand and hung up. Just like that. She didn’t explain, but the way she did it told me enough to know I was not to pick up the phone again. I was shocked, but I didn’t say anything. Or try to ring back I guess I just felt that I couldn’t, especially when she looked that fearsome.

Another time I blurted out at the dinner table that I’d seen my parents having sex one night back home. I had heard my mum calling out my dads name loudly over and over and had thought, at first, that he was hurting her, so I got up, and then I saw they were doing something odd-looking together in the dark. Just as I said this, Eunice leapt up and clamped her large hand over my mouth, her grey eyes staring at me wildly, her face only a few inches from mine. I learned from this that sex was something not to be spoken about, particularly over a meal. Even though, or maybe especially, if what I said was true.

Thus, the age of eight became a milestone for me because it was at this age that Eunice actually succeeded in cutting me off from my parents.

Another significant event that sticks out in my mind from that early time at George Dowty is one which made me realize pretty quickly how differently Thomas and I would be treated from the new baby, Robert. For two weeks Eunice shut Thomas and me up in a tiny bedroom and wouldn’t let us out. She didn’t lock the door, but made it clear that we were not free to roam around the house or garden. The reason? We had colds and were not allowed out in case the baby got infected. It made no sense to us but showed what Eunice really thought about us in relation to Robert.

While we were shut in Eunice told us to do a strange thing, which we did obediently, of course, no questions asked: we were to count up to a hundred in our heads and then blow our noses. Over and over and over again. So we would spend all day, shut in this tiny bedroom, counting up to a hundred and blowing our noses, then counting up to a hundred again, and blowing again. When Eunice wasn’t around or within earshot, we’d relax and play with each other for a bit. But the minute we heard her foot on the stair or her voice on the landing, we’d start counting to a hundred, then nose blowing again. Indeed, this bizarre ritual went on for two whole weeks, an eternity for two small children. I have no idea why Eunice made us do this, but I’m sure that most of what she did was about control, trying to out-psych us, all the time.

One afternoon after this strange confinement, I went swimming with Charlotte, having some much-needed fun. By chance we met two of Charlotte’s estranged biological siblings at the swimming pool. We came bounding into the house together afterwards and I blurted out, ‘Oooh, we’ve just seen Charlotte’s brother and sister at the pool.’ Eunice looked up quickly from the kitchen sink, turned and then strode towards me, a terrifying look on her face. She seemed to have grown in size and was towering over me, her face white and taut with barely suppressed rage.