Escape From Evil (22 page)

That wasn’t all he was offering me, but I didn’t care. The whole package was too good to turn down. By the time the summer of 1986 had turned into autumn, I’d moved in with my knight in leather armour. I’d moved in with Peter Tobin.

TWELVE

For the second time in six months I was in a hired van loaded with my bottom drawer treasures and a combination of suits from my short-lived job and my bike garb. As Peter and I pulled up outside the large chunk of seafront terrace that was to be my new home, I was excited by the prospect of a new beginning. No knife-wielding druggies, no immature boyfriends with irritating friends and no more tedious builders’ tales. It was a new dawn.

Going into the block, I was surprised not to see a reception, but assumed we’d used a trade entrance. Even that seemed strangely impressive.
He has his own door!
The corridors didn’t seem to be in the freshest condition and when Peter stopped and unlocked a door I thought,
Is this it?

Then we stepped inside and my nerves vanished. It was a nice flat, lovely even, and certainly the best one I’d ever lived in. It had a big lounge, six or seven steps leading up into a kitchen and dining area and then you went down a corridor at the side and there was a bedroom and a loo at the back. The pièce de résistance, however, was the view from the dining-area window – miles of glorious beach and sea. I was literally speechless. Standing there, staring out at the lapping waves, my head was filled with all the possibilities that lay ahead. Life was going to be fantastic. And, I was pretty sure, it was going to be with Peter.

If I’m honest, enjoying that view from a pretty impressive flat had probably doubled, trebled even, the allure of the man I’d impetuously decided to set up home with. One day I’d been living with Simon, the next here I was with a chap more than twice his age. But whereas Simon had been in almost as bad a position as me financially, my new partner could offer me a job and this amazing home. It all counted in his favour.

I still hadn’t really got to the bottom of our sleeping arrangements. I presumed Peter thought we were a couple and I was prepared to go along with that. It sounds crass now, but at the time I thought,
It’s the least I can do. He’s doing so much for me.

My other boyfriends had been chosen on the strength of their looks – and look how they’d ended up. I couldn’t say I fancied Peter, but I was infatuated by the idea of being in a grown-up relationship with him. That in itself was enough for Peter to take on some allure in my eyes. My friends were doing A levels or hanging out with teenagers as skint as they were. He was offering me the chance of something different, something mature. Something my parents had never had.

I couldn’t, then, hand on heart, claim I was blinded by love. Not at first. I was blinded by something though because as impressive as the flat turned out to be, when I saw the rest of the building the following morning, I only had questions. Our corridor was typical of the grotty décor throughout the place and, I’d been right, there was no reception – for the simple reason that it wasn’t really a hotel at all. It was a doss-house for old men.

It had been a hotel at one point, quite a grand one judging by the remains of the original features, but that had been years ago. Then some landlord had converted the rooms into self-contained bedsits and begun charging the council to put people up there. Now its only occupants were retired, older blokes on pensions and benefits. It was honest enough, but it was hardly the Ritz.

If it’s not a hotel,
I wondered,
then how can Peter be the manager?

Simple answer: he wasn’t. At best, I could describe him as odd-job-man-cum-janitor. The old boys pretty much looked after themselves, so all Peter had to do was make sure the cleaner turned up, organize the annual fire check and fix anything that went wrong. Apart from that, there was a little bar in the hotel where Peter would serve the tenants their whiskies. It wasn’t to be sniffed at, but no one would call him a manager.

Another thought occurred to me.
If Peter’s not the manager and there isn’t a huge staff under him, what job is there for me?

He seemed surprised when I mentioned it.

‘A job? You don’t have to work.’

‘But I want to work. You said you had something for me here.’

He thought for a moment.

‘Yeah, of course. But you don’t have to, you know.’

The silly young girl in me was flattered that he didn’t want me to get my hands dirty. I saw it as him offering to look after me. That really didn’t fit in with my need to earn my own money and control my own destiny, but it was almost sexy that he wanted to.

Even when I realized that there was no job as such and I’d only be helping out with the cleaning and doing a few hours behind the bar, I didn’t care. I certainly wasn’t going to make a fuss and storm out. After all, whatever my circumstances here, they were a damn sight better than where I’d been a few days earlier. If anything, I was flattered that he’d lied to impress me. Mainly though, I’d be staying because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

There was always Saltdean, but, just like my mother before me, the last thing I wanted to do was admit defeat. I couldn’t face the disapproving glare in Granny’s eyes or, worse, the idea that Grandpa would say those four damning words: ‘I told you so.’

For years since her death, I’d wondered why Mum had never asked for help. Why hadn’t she gone to Grandpa when we were living in fear, with no electricity, no heating, no food? Those questions had eaten me up for eight years. Why, why, why?

And now I knew. Mum’s parents were proud people and they’d made her proud and, in turn, me proud. Too proud for my own good, as it turned out. But I didn’t know that then.

But there was another reason why I turned a blind eye to Peter’s false promises. I would never have admitted it then, but it’s pretty easy to spot all these years later, isn’t it? There was me, who hadn’t known my dad until I was fourteen, abused by a string of evil men, and all the while my life had been crying out for a hero to ride to my rescue. It had been crying out for a father figure. And now I’d found him.

Everyone has 20/20 vision in hindsight. Apart from the father figure thing and my insistence on demonstrating the same character flaws that had done for Mum, there was another obvious clue to what was just around the corner staring me right in the face. I was making excuses for him

I thought nothing of it at the time. Peter had lied about his job.
That’s fine,
I told myself,
he’s just trying to impress me.

He’d lied about being able to find me work.
No problem,
I said,
he’s just being chivalrous. He doesn’t want his young lady to work.

Two lies, two justifications. I know now that it’s a classic trait of domestic abuse victims. They gloss over the problems and somehow dress up the bad things as inevitable. Often they convince themselves it was their fault. They were only small lies and he certainly wasn’t the only man who’s ever told porkies to get a girl into bed, but I should have seen that a pattern was emerging about the way he was going to treat me in the future. The signs were there.

Very quickly our life settled into a routine. I tried desperately to be the ‘good wife’, keeping the flat spick and span and making sure there was a meal on the table when Peter came in. Unfortunately, Granny had only let me help in the kitchen occasionally on a Sunday, so I had very little cooking ability. But I was willing to learn.
Anything for my man.

Sometimes I worked at the doss-house, sometimes I didn’t. For a while I got a job as a silver service waitress at the Metropole – a proper hotel. Even when I wasn’t busy, contact with the Rising Sun guys fizzled out. Peter didn’t exactly tell me not to see them anymore. He just used to find other things for us to do instead. After a while, I realized we hadn’t been to the Hungry Years in weeks.

Funnily enough, I didn’t miss them. Not at first. I’d look around our lovely flat and think how lucky I was, especially when I’d remember the places some of those other guys lived. In the past, a group of us would go back to someone’s house or flat and even when I was caught up in the whirl of being a biker chick, I didn’t like the way they lived. Every place would stink, usually of damp, and there would be empty cans and fag ends everywhere. I’d come from a world of linen napkins and domestic order. Now I was entering a world where clothes were strewn over the floor, table tops served as ashtrays and last week’s curry remains littered every surface – and nobody seemed to notice but me. They treated their homes like they were squats, whether they were or not. Although they were great fun to be out and about with, that wasn’t the life I wanted to lead.

Yet another reason, then, to be grateful for Peter.

As the group faded from our lives, another figure – somewhat grey, lean and stooped – emerged. John was one of the residents at the doss-house. He was old, about seventy, and was always shuffling around in his crepe-soled shoes. But from the way he and Peter talked, it was clear they shared years of history. They were both from the same part of Scotland, I think, although how they ended up together in Brighton was a mystery. Although he’d been a newcomer to the Hungry Years, Peter told me he’d been in Brighton for ages because of his previous marriage. In fact, he said, his stillborn daughter from that relationship was buried in a local cemetery and he’d already bought the plot next to hers for himself. It was such a tragic story, I never had the heart to ask for more information.

He’ll tell me when he’s ready.

I’d often see John and Peter walking up and down the streets together or going for a drink or watching the world from a bench.

It’s only looking back – there’s that hindsight again – that I realize it must have been Peter’s idea that we put a bit of distance between the bikers and us. Eventually I figured out that he’d been a pretty transient character, not really that close to any of them and not, I didn’t realize till later, even a member of the Rising Sun gang. I, on the other hand, had been at the centre of that community for a couple of years. I’d done my growing up with them. I knew everyone and they knew me. Only a paranoiac would ever think that their partner was actively trying to steer them away from seeing their friends, so obviously that thought never crossed my mind. But that is exactly what he was doing.

Peter’s greatest skill was manipulation. As I mentioned, he never told me to stop seeing the gang. Sometimes he put obstacles in the way – like arranging for us to go somewhere else on a weekend or giving me a few hours’ work. Other times, if he could see I was wavering about going, he’d just let slip a few snide remarks one of them had said about me.

‘You know he thinks you’re cheap, don’t you?’ he said about one guy I’d known for years.

I fell for it.

‘What do you mean, cheap?’

‘It’s not fair for me to say,’ Peter said, suddenly coy. ‘He’s not here to defend himself.’

‘I’ll be the judge of what’s fair. Just tell me what he said.’

‘Okay, but you didn’t hear it from me.’ He paused and looked at me lovingly. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Okay, he says you’re the local bike. You have been since you were fourteen.’

‘That’s a lie!’

‘I know, pet, I know. I told him that. I said, “If I hear you say that again there’ll be trouble.”’

There were plenty of conversations like that. At the time, I’d be ready to march down to the pub and declare open season. But then I’d usually think,
Sod them.
The upshot was, I wouldn’t see anyone – which is, of course, what Peter had wanted all along.

So why, I bet you’re asking, did I listen to him?

It’s a good question and it has a very simple answer: because I honestly thought I’d got the better deal in this relationship! I’d seen the women flocking round Peter at the Hungry Years. Girls always came over to him when we were out; I’d seen it with my own eyes. And, from what I could tell, they all had a lot more to offer than I did. They were older, more mature; they knew how to treat a man.

I had so much to learn, I knew that. When I came back to the flat one day and found Peter having coffee with a woman I’d never seen before, I was angry. That quickly became jealousy –
Why is she here, in my home, with my man?
But then, when Peter explained this Lucy woman was just a friend, no different to John, I just felt stupid. I was so young. I’d had no parents to show me the ways of the world.

That’s obviously how proper grown-up relationships work.

There were times when I considered myself literally honoured to have been chosen by Peter. So that’s why, whenever he suggested something, I listened. I hung on his every word. Even when he tried to change me.

The things about me that he’d said turned him on – my short skirts, stilettos, bright-red lipstick – were the first things to go. I don’t know how he did it. Those were the things I most associated with my own identity. I’d cultivated that look over years of posing and preening and shopping and experimenting. Yet somehow they all gradually disappeared from my fashion repertoire.

The heels went first. I suppose he felt more comfortable without me looming over him, but he never admitted that. He was clever. He said, ‘I’ve got you a present,’ and handed over a shoe box. More excited than you could imagine, I ripped it open – and found the ugliest pair of flat shoes I’d ever seen.