I Won't Forgive What You Did (14 page)

My mother also added that once people like that ‘got me’, I’d never get away. They’d alter my mind and make me believe all sorts of evil rubbish and, anyway, as I’d been confirmed in the Church of England, if I went to any church, it had to be that one, so I’d end up with Jesus in heaven. Despite the fact neither she nor my father went to church (in fact my father told me he couldn’t go because he was too wicked) my mother had been telling me all my life about the importance of this; that it was only because she had bothered to christen me that I wouldn’t be going straight to hell. Except now I might still go to hell in any case, because people who went to
that
sort of church were definitely not welcome in heaven.

In a rare burst of defiance, I ignored her. I continued to go to church, albeit in secret, because everyone who went there was so kind and friendly – and I’d hardly ever known such a thing. It was also much better than being in my house with all the anger and swearing and arguments and filth. By now my mother had produced two further children – a girl called Mary and a boy called Mark – and there seemed to be more blood and mess than ever. She’d leave her bedsheets pulled back and her bedroom door open, and the sheet would be covered in drying blood.

I kept going to the free church for several months, having at last found a place where I mattered. My nan found this annoying too. These days I avoided her as much as possible, but on the odd occasion I did see her it seemed to make her really angry, and my going to church clearly made her even more wild. ‘Who do you think you are?’ I remember her saying to me one day. ‘You come into this village and now you think you own the place.’

Eventually, and entirely without my knowing it, the pastor made a visit to my parents’ house and asked if he might adopt me. My father’s response was unequivocal. ‘Don’t you ever come near this fucking house again,’ he warned him, ‘you fucking daft cunt.’

My mother gave me chapter and verse on all this some months after it happened, and I was deeply moved when I found out. The pastor never spoke to me about it personally, but I found out he’d been concerned about my welfare, and was only reassured when a lady at the church, who’d been at school with my father, convinced him all was okay.

I don’t doubt both he and she believed this. As with everyone who only knew the face my father presented to the outside world, she’d have known nothing of what went on behind the facade. And this was compounded by the fact that her son and my brother were close friends.

I continued my relationship with the church even so and began increasingly getting involved. I started going to rallies with the pastor that Cliff Richard sang at, and would often take boys from both school and the church along too. One boy, called Ted, I liked very much and we began seeing each other as girlfriend and boyfriend – my first ever proper teenage boy–girl relationship; he was the first boy I’d spent time with who didn’t touch me.

I’d met him at the youth group and I really fancied him, even though on the surface he was an unlikely boy for me to like. He was confident, big-headed even, older than me, and a carpenter. I couldn’t believe it when he asked if he could walk me home and didn’t touch me – only very gently kissed me.

His parents were dead and he’d moved to the area from the south-west, in order to live with his sister and her husband, who owned a pub a few miles away. I felt so special when I was with him – once again, I genuinely seemed to matter – and we began seeing one another regularly. Often, on Sundays, when my father was out working, he’d come to the house and spend the afternoon with me, which was wonderful, but also made me anxious. I was always terrified my father would arrive home before he left, and start shouting and swearing and being vile; he hated anyone being in the house, but especially someone male, and would have taunted me into saying something so he’d have an excuse to be really aggressive.

But I couldn’t cope even with Ted. Much as I liked him, I couldn’t seem to accept that he liked me too. In fact, I was increasingly scared, as I got to know him, that the more he got to know me, the sooner he’d realize what I was really like, and then he wouldn’t like me any more. I couldn’t bear this. I couldn’t bear the thought of the hurt I knew I’d feel. So before that could happen, I decided to finish with him. He was so upset, and when we parted I was all over the place, but somewhere in my fourteen-year-old, desperately unhappy mind, I felt convinced it was all for the best.

Better, I decided, to stick with what I knew; that I was ugly and uninteresting and useless, not worthy of the attentions of a nice boy. Better to stick with the sort of boys who only wanted me for one thing, boys who were definitely not too good for me. Boys who were able to reinforce my feelings of self-loathing, by insisting evenings out always ended the same way.

I decided I could cope with this better. Better to give them what they wanted sexually, than to panic and run away and feel even worse. Better than having someone make me question myself, like Te d had done when he’d bought me a beautiful suede handbag for Christmas, that I knew someone useless like me didn’t deserve.

So I was grateful, mostly, for the sexual attention. It was simpler, less anxiety-inducing and it was familiar. Because by now, even though I didn’t consciously know it, I was already on the edge – full to bursting – with all the horrible secrets I was keeping.

* * *

But if I’d written off the idea of being worthy of a boyfriend, I was still lonely and desperate for a friend. So I was thrilled when Ellie, who’d taken me to the Honey Globe cafe eighteen months back, started spending time with me at school. I worked hard at this friendship, because it was one of the few I’d ever had, and being Ellie’s friend mattered greatly. I stopped going to church, because she said it was boring and old-fashioned, I took care not to upset her, and I always tried to please her – if I crossed her, she’d tell all the other girls and then I was bullied again.

Ellie was fun to be with, though – full of confidence and always laughing. She taught me how to smoke Embassy cigarettes, down the bank, in the school grounds, which made me cough, and reminded me horribly of my mother, but I persevered because smoking seemed to help me fit in.

Ellie was also a bit wild. She was the daughter of a chauffeur who worked for a local aristocrat, and they lived in a huge old tied house. Her bedroom was massive, and it was always a treat if we went somewhere and I was allowed to stay at hers. Always, that was, except when she wanted to bring a boy back; on one occasion, she managed to sneak one upstairs. I was made to sleep underneath her bed, where I had to lie there and listen to them doing it. Though nothing to do with me, it made me feel dreadful. Dirty, for some reason. Ashamed.

Ellie also stole £10 notes from her father’s wallet, which horrified me even more. It was something I’d never dare do myself,
ever
, yet I felt sure, from the way Ellie’s mum used to look at me, she thought it wouldn’t be happening if not for me. I was a bad influence, because I came from a rough family. I’d say things to Ellie – suggest she shouldn’t do it. But she’d just laugh and carry on regardless.

One day, Ellie asked me if I’d like to go to a disco with her. It was held in the village near to where Grandpops lived, so, though close to where she lived, it was a long way for me. I knew I could sleep over at her house afterwards, but I wasn’t sure how I could get there.

‘Simple,’ she told me. ‘You just thumb a lift.’

I’d never done anything like that before, and wasn’t even sure how you did. So she showed me and, on and off, I spent the rest of the day practising. I squashed all the feelings of anxiety that kept surfacing as I made my way, on that first cold, dark January evening, to the main road, to wait for a car. I’d heard a lot of stories about hitchhiking, and was pretending a boldness I really didn’t feel. But I was determined to do it.

As it turned out, hitchhiking was to be the least of my troubles. Yes, it was invariably a man who picked me up and, yes, it was always scary; I already knew more about certain types of men than I’d have liked, and no amount of perfectly unthreatening experiences made my relief any less when I got out of a car. But at the same time it was exciting. I was fifteen years old now, and I was going off to discos with a friend.

Ellie and I went to the disco a lot at the weekends in the spring and summer of 1970. It was called
Flames
and was at the edge of the village, behind the pub, and was always dark and mysterious and throbbing with young people. You’d have to get a stamp on your hand when you first arrived so they’d know, if you went out, you’d paid. They played all the music that was popular at the time: ‘In the Summertime’ by Mungo Jerry, ‘I Want You Back’ by the Jackson Five, and ‘All Right Now’ by Free. Everyone drank alcohol and ID didn’t exist. If you looked old enough you got served, and everyone did. I didn’t like alcohol much – and still don’t – but I did enjoy Babycham, and sometimes had gin, though I needed lots of Coke to hide the taste. The boys always seemed to drink lager.

It was where boys and girls danced and ‘got off with’ one another and the atmosphere was always exciting; dark, very smoky, full of people. Boys would come, boys would go – we’d sometimes accept the offers of one or two that looked nice – but mostly Ellie and I would put our handbags on the dance floor and happily dance round them all evening.

I’d invariably sleep at Ellie’s afterwards, and get the bus home in the morning. But one night, in October, she suggested something else – that we go and stay the night at a hotel. I felt immediately uneasy, and said so. I explained I’d never stayed at a hotel before,
ever
, had no money, and besides, how would we get there?

Which made Ellie cross. ‘God!’ she said, irritably, ‘why do you have to be so boring and old-fashioned?’ It turned out this boy – who she’d been dancing with all night, and who she’d been after for weeks – had come by car with his friend so could give us a lift.

Now I felt even more anxious. I hadn’t spoken to this friend – I hadn’t even seen him – but, as ever, I felt I had to go along with what Ellie wanted. So we climbed into the back and drove off to the hotel. Once there, I felt even more mortified. I had on a long green and white maxi dress, but no coat and, crucially, no shoes.

Looking back, it seems almost inconceivable that in October I’d go out without shoes. But I’d actually do it regularly, and had done all summer, because I always felt too tall (I
was
tall) when I had my shoes on, and was as sensitive to Ellie’s jibes about my height as I was to her jibes about my weight.

I was also not expecting to be walking any distance. I danced barefoot at the disco anyway, so it wasn’t an issue, and the only outdoor walking, or so my logic went, would be from the pavement to whichever car picked me up when I hitchhiked.

Now I realized this only compounded my problem. I didn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, look like someone who’d stay at a hotel. I also now realized I’d got things all wrong. The boys weren’t just dropping us off at the hotel. They intended to stay there as well. I tried to keep calm and reason with myself:
Why shouldn’t they stay? They have driven all this way. What difference will it make to me and Ellie?

But then we were taken upstairs and shown to two rooms, and the full extent of my naivety dawned. The first was a big double, which Ellie immediately claimed. ‘This one is our one!’ she whooped. I went to follow her, and she placed a hand on my chest. ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘you’re not staying in this room. This one,’ she said, taking the boy’s hand, ‘is for me and Ben.’

I just stood there, agog, while she closed the door behind them, and then realized the porter was holding a fire door open for us further down the corridor. Not knowing what else to do now, I turned and followed him, Ben’s friend behind me, my heart now banging against my chest. We passed through another two fire doors and more corridors – the upstairs of the hotel was like a maze – and by the time he finally unlocked a door and ushered us inside, I didn’t have a clue where we were. I was relieved to see it was a twin, and not a double, like Ellie’s, but even so I felt almost as if I was having one of my mother’s asthma attacks; I was struggling to find breath.

For the first time that evening I looked properly at Ben’s friend, and could see he was older than the rest of us. He had thick black hair and a dark shadow of facial hair too, and I imagined he must be well into his twenties. Neither of us spoke for a long, long moment, and I almost felt relieved. Was he as embarrassed as I was? But my hope was short-lived. He’d obviously had quite a lot to drink, and didn’t seem embarrassed in the slightest.

‘Oh, well,’ I said, laughing nervously and gesturing to the nearest bed. ‘I’ll sleep in this one.’ I then got in, fully clothed.

I lay there for a bit, my face close to the wall, listening to what I assumed were the sounds of him undressing, and then, to my horror, I was aware of the covers being pulled back, and felt him getting into my bed behind me.

I held my breath, feeling a sick panic rising in my stomach, and almost gagging at the feeling of his body up against me, and the obvious erection he had pushing against my lower back. He grabbed my shoulder then and started trying to yank my dress up and pulled at my pants, attempting to force himself inside me from the back.

I grappled desperately with him, trying to keep him away from me, but he kept trying to push his penis in me from behind. My arms hurt from the pinching of his fingernails and I could feel his hot breath in my ear. It seemed a long time before he finally gave up and got out again. I heard him climb onto the other bed. I lay rigid in my own bed, then curled tight against the wall, like a foetus, hardly daring to breathe, wide awake, afraid.