Escape From Evil (29 page)

Or maybe, as it turned out, they’d destroyed one home and were desperate for anywhere else.

Where we were living in Brighton wasn’t anything like five-star, but it had fresh air and a sea view from the end of the street. This was like driving into hell. We parked on the outskirts of this grim-looking housing estate and I didn’t want to get out of the car.

‘Come on, it’ll be nice inside,’ Peter insisted, so out we got and set off down a warren of gloomy, narrow paths. I’m sure the whole place had been designed originally to provide green space for children to play in without cars. What they’d actually ended up with was pavements full of hypodermic needles, bottles, fag butts and graffiti, stinking of urine, dirty nappies and leftover rubbish. The idea of pushing my baby’s buggy round there every day made me feel sick, so my mind was made up even before we reached the house.

Let’s just say, I don’t think it was a hasty decision. We couldn’t knock on the door because it was hanging off its hinges. Two panes of glass were broken in the lounge window and there was graffiti all over the walls – and inside was even worse. There was a threadbare carpet, a mattress on the floor in one room, rubbish everywhere and, most revolting of all, piles of dog mess dotted around. I’d never seen anything like it. Even in Mum’s worst days, she wouldn’t have lived like this. Somehow, among all the crap, a family of four was living there. It would have been a squeeze, but I could see how they thought our tiny flat would have been an improvement.

We looked at other places: one in Lincoln and another in Portsmouth, both horrible, although nothing like Corby. I’d pretty much given up on the idea and was making tentative noises once more about working. That must have scared Peter because, out of the blue one day, he announced, ‘I’ve found it. The perfect house.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he said, and handed me a sheaf of photographs. They were of a nice, neat three-bedroom house. The décor wasn’t to my taste, but it seemed well-presented, lovingly so, in fact, and the views from the top windows were of fields and grass.

‘It looks too good to be true,’ I said. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘There’s no catch,’ Peter insisted, but he was lying.

The catch was that the house was in Bathgate, Scotland – about thirty-five miles from Glasgow. That’s why he only had pictures of it – it was too far for him to travel to view. There was no way I wanted to go to another country, of course, but he wouldn’t let it drop. The opportunities, he said, would be ten times better up there.

‘But you don’t want to do anything, opportunities or no opportunities.’

Then he went down the healthy route, talking about the fresh air and the countryside, but I just said the sea air was probably better for you.

Finally he came up with the argument he knew I couldn’t beat.

‘Think of Daniel,’ he said. That old chestnut.

‘I am thinking of Daniel!’ I snapped. ‘I don’t want him cut off from his great-grandparents.’

‘Yes, but my family live up there. He’ll see my mum and dad, my sister and brothers, my nephews and nieces.’

‘Since when do your family live there? You’re from Glasgow.’

‘Get away,’ he laughed. ‘Where’d you get that idea?’

‘It’s what you told me.’

He had, several times, along with the fact that he had six siblings and plenty of nephews and nieces.

‘Scotland’s all the same to you English, isn’t it? No, I’m from Livingston, I told you that. It’s about five miles up the road from Bathgate. Think about wee Daniel and his big, new, happy family. Doesn’t he deserve that?’

The bastard! I couldn’t argue against anything to do with Daniel’s happiness – as well he knew.

For the first time I thought about what the south coast could offer Daniel. I rarely saw my grandparents more than once a month and Aunt Anne just a few times a year. Maybe it would be nice for Daniel to spend time with more relatives his own age.

So that was it. Peter hired a lorry and we loaded it with our belongings, including, pride of our collection, the cooker and sofa from the church. All the overspill, like our pet cockatiel and clothes, went with me and Daniel in the Metro. Then we set off for Scotland in convoy, with Peter and his mate John in the lorry, then me and Daniel and, behind us, my friend Debbie in her Escort. She’d said she wanted to come up to help me settle in, but it was a long old drive just to help me unpack. It was almost as if she were worried she’d never see me again.

FIFTEEN

From the moment I arrived in Bathgate, I couldn’t wait to leave.

The house in Robertson Avenue was nice enough. The pictures hadn’t been tampered with; it really was as cute and homely as we’d been shown. A decent semi-detached on the final cul-de-sac of an estate, with ample parking out the front and amazing views of cow fields on two sides, it was actually as pleasant a place as you could hope for. No graffiti, no dark, drug-filled alleys. There were no people around either. This was unusual for an estate: everyone had jobs, they were at work. They weren’t dossing around like the layabouts who’d filled that place in Corby or our neighbours in Brighton. These were respectable people who cared about their environment. In fact, you would never guess to look at it that we were on a council estate at all.

Inside, the three bedrooms were decent sizes, the lounge was very comfortable and there was even a washing machine! Apart from the horrible pink and blue colour scheme throughout, it was pretty near perfect. On paper, then, I should have been perfectly content. So why did I feel like a mouse about to nibble the cheese on a trap?

I’d been all right as late as packing the lorry and setting off. I might even have been excited. Then we’d reached our first motorway and I began to have kittens. I’d never driven on anything bigger than an A road before and here I was trying to follow Peter’s truck, with Daniel crying and a cockatiel squawking in my face. It was horrible, a real baptism of fire. Then, as the hours began to trickle by and we were still in England, major doubts really began to descend. What was I doing? Why was I allowing myself to be taken so far from the town and the people I knew? How had I let this happen?

Of course, if you’d asked him, Peter would have said it was my idea. I was the one who’d wanted the bigger house, the one who’d said I needed help looking after Daniel. Here was the answer to my problems. A cute house in a picturesque area on the doorstep of the extended Tobin family. It was exactly what I’d requested.

Except it wasn’t. I had a lot of time to reflect during that marathon journey to West Lothian. I knew I hadn’t asked for this. Peter had done all the running and, as usual, had manipulated me so I felt like it was my decision. Of course, I’d wanted to get out of that flat, but not to come here. However it looked to him, I’d given in because I thought it was worth a gamble, to see if it would make him happy. That had to be worth a shot, didn’t it? A happy Peter might be a nicer Peter. He might just take an interest in me again without swearing and scaring. He might just start to play a role in his son’s life too.

There I was again, making excuses like every other battered wife. And I still didn’t see it.

Even the weather tried to tell me to go back. The moment we pulled off the M8, it was like stepping into a dark tunnel. The fog was so thick I could hardly see the lights of Peter’s lorry ten feet in front of me or Debbie’s car behind. We could have been anywhere, but it seemed familiar. With a shudder, I realized,
If we had some scary music, it would be like driving into a horror film, that part just before the killer strikes.

Even without the soundtrack, that thought was more prescient than I realized.

I assumed Peter would find a job and his mum and brothers’ families would be round all the time to socialize and maybe even help out. I think, in all the time we were there, I visited his sister’s home once and called for one brother at a tenement block in Glasgow – but he was out. The sister and her family were nice enough, but my strongest memory is of how uncomfortable Peter looked while he was there. He refused to sit down, preferring to hover nervously in the corner of whatever room we were in. It was weird.
If you can’t be yourself in front of your family, when can you?

That was the extent of our contact with the Tobins. I never met his mum and his dad’s name never once came up. As for the promises of babysitting, no one ever came to our house. In fact, after Debbie and John had both left us, I didn’t see another face at our door for at least a month.

Peter had been polite enough to Debbie while she was helping me to get the house straight. Her departing Escort was still within earshot, however, when he said, ‘You won’t be seeing her again.’

I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard. She’s poison. I don’t want you seeing or phoning her unless I say you can. Understand?’

I didn’t and told him so. Then he called me every name under the sun and threatened to smack me. Suddenly I understood perfectly.

It was only then that I realized I hadn’t been on the sharp end of Peter’s tongue for a while. Admittedly, we’d been busy. Once the exchange had gone through, we suddenly had to sort out packing, vehicle hire, new doctors, utilities – all the usual things that go hand in hand with a move. And, stressful though it had been, Peter hadn’t lost his temper once. Not with me anyway. Seeing how easily he slipped into his old ways scared me. Not because of the words – I’d heard those a dozen times before. No, what terrified me was the nagging suspicion that he’d been on his best behaviour for a reason.

It’s like he planned to bite his tongue until he got me up here – alone.

I hadn’t seen Debbie much over the last few years, so not calling her wouldn’t make her suspicious for quite a while. My grandparents, on the other hand, had been worried enough about me going up to Scotland. If I didn’t ring them, they would marshal the air force to find me.

‘You can’t stop me phoning them,’ I told Peter firmly. He acquiesced, but only on the condition that it was no more than once a week – and he could see and hear me. Every call I made saw him perched on a chair right next to me. I don’t know what he was so paranoid about. I was never going to tell Granny or Grandpa anything. It was too embarrassing. I wasn’t going to heap any more shame on our family.

I had to admit, if it had been Peter’s plan to cut me off from the rest of the world, it had worked. In Brighton I probably wouldn’t have spoken to Granny much more than once a week anyway, but the option was there. And if I didn’t have money for the phone I could get a bus or walk or drive over. I didn’t appreciate the value of that until it was taken away. Only on the drive up, along those seemingly endless roads, did it really sink in. It’s how my mother must have felt when she was abandoned in Stockport.

I’m on my own.

In the rare moments on that drive when Daniel and the bird weren’t demanding my attention, I entertained an idea so farfetched I laughed at it. Was it the council right-to-buy dream that was really driving our move? Or was Peter upset that I’d taken control after Daniel was born and opened the tea shop and made a success of it – and proven I didn’t need him? Was it simple jealousy that made him persuade me to shut up shop and start at the bottom rung of the council-house ladder? Did he just want me dependent on him again? And was that why I was now driving all the way to Bathgate, to a place where I would have to rely on him more than ever before?

I don’t know how my Metro stayed on the road while I was thinking this. The idea was so big, so preposterous, that it obsessed me for mile after mile. But then I thought,
That’s ridiculous. No one would think like that. No one would be so insecure – and so manipulative.

And anyway, I decided, desperately looking for a bright side to the situation, didn’t it just mean that Peter loved me so much he wanted me all to himself? That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

By the time we’d settled in at Robertson Avenue my can-do attitude had kicked in.
I’m here now. I have to make an effort.

I took Daniel to a mother and baby group a couple of mornings a week and enrolled him in swimming lessons – basically any activities that were free. I wanted to get a cat for him as well, but when Peter came home from the pet shop he had two guinea pigs instead. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but a pet’s a pet at that age, I supposed.

And that, pretty much, was my new life. I now had a bigger house to clean and a garden to look after for the first time as well, but apart from that there was absolutely nothing to do. Peter loved it, but it drove me spare. Day after day, night after night, we’d just sit in the lounge, watching telly. I was itching to get out and do something, but he was comfortable where he was. It just felt so unnatural to me. A year earlier I’d been running my own business. Before that I’d made a decent profit turning round second-hand cars. I’d even made a few quid flogging teddy-bear templates. I loved – still love – to be busy and making money is an instinct for me, but Peter wouldn’t let me follow it. And he still refused to work.

It was the same excuse as before. He was not getting a job – ‘not after what I’ve done for this country’ – and I could only go to work if I earned enough to pay for Daniel’s childcare.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, yet again. ‘You’re sitting here all day. What else are you going to do?’ I instantly regretted asking. He flew off the sofa and had his hands round my throat.