Escaping the Darkness (18 page)

Now, if I pluck up courage to tell someone, I usually say, ‘Did you know that as a child I was abused for four-and-a-half years? It doesn’t bother most people. I am still the same person and they know that. Some folk think it’s a strange thing for me to say, and then don’t talk to me for the next few weeks. Sometimes they stop talking completely. I hope you won’t react in that way.’ That approach usually does the trick, but last year, when I told one of our newest friends (by ‘new’ I mean I had known him for three years) he disappeared and stopped phoning the house or answering our calls. He was Sam’s friend too, and I find it very sad that someone would ‘unfriend’ him in such a way.

These are the people who I don’t need in my life. My true friends are those who know about my past, ask if I’m
okay and are always there if I need them. These are the ones who are able to empathise with me, even though they haven’t had my experiences. These are the friends who have remained true, stayed with me and loved me for who I am. It’s because of them I have learnt to accept my past. It has been a hard journey but one which has made me proud of who I am.

After writing about living with the memories Bill and my father had left me with, I thought long and hard about what I should do next. I left my story –
Sarah’s Story
– inside my computer for over a year while I contemplated my options.

Late one night, I sat up in bed talking to Sam and told him I wanted to help others but I didn’t know how. I wondered if what I had written was good enough to be published. Sam told me there was only one way to find out. So I posted off a synopsis and had a reply almost immediately from one of the publishers I sent it to: John Blake Publishing Ltd. I was asked to send everything I had written. I was beside myself, wondering if this was really happening to me? I was so excited, thinking, was I really going to get the chance to have my words in print? Secretly I thought they were just being kind, and that once they had read my work they would know it wasn’t in the same league as the books written by the more talented authors whom they normally publish.

I got a phone call a few days later; it seemed that everything was happening so fast. John Blake personally called me and said that he wanted to publish my work. I was
overjoyed, and the adrenalin rush began – it was the craziest feeling I have ever experienced in my whole life, and it was all because of one man’s belief in my abilities as a writer. I suddenly felt like everything I had been through was for a reason. I desperately wanted to give others courage and I also wanted my book to help other women who had been subjected to the ordeal of abuse.

I had said to Sam before any of this became reality, all I wanted to do was help others – if I only helped one woman it would all be worth it. Once I had got to the point where my book was almost in print, I decided I should tell my sons about my past, too. I did not want any of them to see my book in a shop one day and put two and two together. They reacted in completely different ways to how I imagined they would react.

During the early winter of 2007, I told each one of them in the same order as they had been born. Michael was my first-born and I imagined he would be upset but quite calm. He wasn’t calm. When I had finished telling him, his reaction was awful: he couldn’t handle what I was saying, and wanted to go out, find Bill and sort him out. He was convinced it was someone he knew. His reaction made me think twice about telling him about the abuse from his grandfather – I just couldn’t do it to him.

I regretted that decision, because if he ever finds out the truth, I know he will be hurt far worse than ever. Michael cried and was very upset that day and for weeks afterwards. I don’t know how he came through this terrible ordeal that I’d caused him to take part in, but he did, and because of
it, the mother/son bond that was already strong between us became even stronger. I also told Michael about the book I had written and he was so proud of me having the courage to face my past.

James was completely different. I told him and he said he was sorry about what had happened to me. I also told him I had written my story down. James said, ‘Mum if it helps you then great, it’s great that you’re not letting it bother you anymore and you’re getting on with your life. Go for it.’ How young he was and how little he knew of the trauma that I had lived through.

Andrew reacted in a way I half expected. I told him what had happened, and that as a child I had suffered and been abused. He asked me if I was all right, and I told him that I was. And then in his true ADHD-style we started a conversation about twenty different things at the same time. Eventually he said, ‘I’ve got to get up early tomorrow Mum, I’m going out for a long ride on my bike…’ Nothing further was said about what had happened in my past.

The next day William sat quietly on the settee with his brother Timothy. I had decided that as my two youngest sons still lived at home with Sam and me, then I should tell them together. William remained very quiet – he was always quiet so this was nothing new. As soon as the words had left my mouth, Timothy jumped up and cried out, ‘Why are you telling me this crap? I don’t want to know!’ Timothy’s reaction was one of anger. I was shocked and I had not expected it.

Later, when I spoke with Sam about it, he said he knew that was the way Timothy would react.

As the weeks followed, I realised that to tell them about their grandfather as well would have been the wrong thing to do. I had also asked each one of them to promise me that once the book I had written was published, if they ever wanted to look at it, then they should talk to me first. I decided that if they ever ask or tell me they want to read my story, then I can then tell them about the other secret I still hold deep inside, if and whenever I need to. If they don’t ask, it will always stay deeply hidden where it belongs, safe and out of harm’s way. None of my sons have read my first book and I am truly thankful for this. This is my past and it should be just that, mine. They know it has been read by lots of people and they are proud that their mum has helped other people who are in a similar – or sometimes worse – situation deal with their past. I’m so very proud of them and the way they have come to terms with my past.

I hoped that they would never know about their granddad’s secret, and mine too.

Chapter Twenty-One

SINCE I BEGAN my journey of recovery, the road I chose to tread has had lots of bumps and detours. I never believed that so many emotions could be lodged in one body: stuck so fast that they would need to be prised out with such intricate, careful precision, allowing them to be stripped bare and left unguarded – emotions that would be exposed mercilessly and left thrown on the ground for all to see.

I am grateful for the sessions I had with Bess, because at the time I thought they were all I needed to recover from the abuse in my life. Bess was a wonderful woman and without her entering my life at that crucial time, I don’t think I would have ever made it this far. Yet I now know that you can never really recover from something this big. You just learn to manage your feelings and live with it in a more accepting way.

Bess taught me that talking was a good thing to do, and I remember thinking at the time that I had been helped so much by Bess that I didn’t need to do anything else: I was cured! As time went by, I found I had a past of pain that wasn’t curable, and that knowledge of those experiences would always be there, sheltering in my memory box under the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. It didn’t matter how deeply that wretched box became buried and pushed aside by new memories; it was there, always there.

This thing, this abuse of the worst imaginable kind that a child could ever be made to endure, has altered my life in ways I didn’t want. I have had to come to terms with losing friends and being treated as a leper. I was even told that I should forgive the men who effectively stole my life. Forgiving them, I was told, was the only way I could be freed from the torment and unrest I felt. How do you bring yourself to that point, where you readily accept what has happened to you in such a way that forgiveness is possible? I have wrestled with so many emotions over the years. That was perhaps one of the hardest parts to deal with.

The reaction from my mother through all of this, when she eventually found out, was shock for about five minutes, and then a desperate hope that no one should find out in case they blamed her. She still wants no one to know about it, even now. She even told my sister not to tell her friends that I had written a book, because she didn’t want people to find out I was
her
daughter. I get the distinct impression that she is ashamed of me – shouldn’t that be
the other way around? Each time she voices her opinion I feel like saying, ‘But Mum this was my life, and yes, you were to blame, how can you not be, you left me with a man who was forty-seven years older than me and I know that you knew exactly what was happening to me.’

I never say that though, I just think, oh well, if that’s how she feels I must have been to blame, too. So far I have never said anything to her and I won’t, even when she says, like she has twenty times already, ‘I hope you don’t blame me!’ In my heart I hope that other mothers aren’t as bad at handling the truth if they are unfortunate enough to hear similar words from their daughters. I long to know that they would be supported, nurtured and loved in a way a mother – and only a mother – can love and support her child after such an ordeal.

I know from a letter I received, however, that there are mothers out there who are far worse. Mothers who tell their daughters, ‘It never happened, you dreamt it, you’re making it up, and don’t you know it’s a sin to say Daddy did that? He was only playing.’ As a mother I don’t know of any games that you play with Daddy where you take all your clothes off. I only know of the illegal ones that I was forced to play when I was young. These so called ‘games’ aren’t, and never will be, games to any child. Why is it that these women continue to protect the husbands who abuse and have abused their children? When I received that letter, it prompted me to think about other victims of abuse. For the first time I had confirmation that I was not alone. For years I secretly believed I was. Of course I
knew I wasn’t the only one, but no one had actually put it in writing for me. The woman who wrote to me told me she now knew she had been abused. She was now aware that she wasn’t imagining it, like her mother had told her she had been. She said she had gained strength from me. This was one of the best tonics I could have had, for I had helped her and she, in return, had helped me, too.

If I could, I would like to give the mothers who do this to their vulnerable children some of my memories to live with. At least that way they would have a slight insight into the lives they are subjecting their children to, and they can see just how much their children will be affected by what is happening to them.

I wonder do they ever stop and think,
‘How much therapy will my child need? How will it affect their relationships in adult life?’
Or do they just think,
‘Well she’s only a child she won’t remember when she’s older?’

But
we
, the abused, do remember. Memories stay raw, they never go away, and just one word can transport you back to a time you thought you had successfully buried and rid yourself of.

I still have colourful flashbacks, flashbacks that have lessened in time but still remind me nonetheless. Sam could just whisper one word to me, and without him knowing, it would have been a word that I heard Bill say many, many moons ago. It’s like being in a time machine that delivers instant transportation back to 1972. I won’t tell Sam this because if I did, I know that he will never freely talk to me in bed at all, and then the new memories we create will be
affected and tarnished by the past I still have to live with. Sam has never read my first book in its entirety, although he has read sections as I wrote them, and I shared some of the memories with him over those darkened nights when we lay together in our tent in Cornwall. He knows about as many of the details about my past abuse as he needs to know. I don’t have to enlighten him further, or paint a graphic picture using nothing but words for him to see or read. He has been hurt enough with me, and for me, by my memories.

If I had to be truly and totally honest with myself, I suspect that Sam knew of many times when he had said something that had made me think about the past, because when such a thing happened, I would usually go quieter than I had been previously.

My past is there in the background but it’s a past I cope and live with now, mainly because I took the time to write down my memories. I did a little research a while ago into Bill’s life. He died in 2002 in a town less than three miles from my front door. He lived until he was eighty-four years old.

When I look back at what he did to me, I wanted so dearly to punish him. I thought of reporting it to the police. If I had, there would have certainly been a court case and publicity. I have wrestled with my conscience because yes, I know what I should have done, but the abuse from this man, and from my father, and the abuse I very nearly got from a neighbour, was enough for me to handle. I had to deal with all of this while at the same time being the kind
of mother to my children my own mother never was to me. I could never have exposed my boys to the publicity of an inquiry – I needed to protect them. They were, and still are, my priority.

Many people will judge me for this, but it is only when you have suffered this systematic kind of abuse that you are really in a position to judge. Living with the humiliation and disgust you feel is exceptionally hard for anyone, but for a child it’s almost unbearable. As a young girl facing this all those years ago, I was told not to tell, so I didn’t, regardless of what had already been done to me or would be done later on.