I Won't Forgive What You Did (15 page)

The room fell silent and finally I risked turning over, finding being able to hear him but not see him too scary. But what I then saw was him once again advancing towards me, fully naked, his erect penis out in front of him.

We struggled again and, despite the alcohol I could smell on his breath, he was slim and fit, and clearly very strong. He seemed determined to pull me over onto my back so he could force his erection between my legs, and I had to use every ounce of strength to stop him.

Out of breath, momentarily, he then gave up, flopping heavily on his back on the bed beside me, alcohol fumes coming from his mouth. Not a word passed between us at any point.

I should scream, I thought. Cry for help
. Scream
, get some
help
! But even as I thought it, no sound came out. All I could think of was how much trouble I’d be in. I didn’t know where I was, didn’t know where Ellie was. Didn’t know anything of any help at
all
– just how much trouble I’d be in. This was my fault. I’d made this happen by letting myself be brought here. Had let it happen because I hadn’t said ‘No’ at the start. I was on my own with a man who was drunk and determined to have sex with me, and it was obviously all my fault.

Perhaps sensing that I wasn’t going to shout the house down, he roused himself for another attempt to overpower me. This time he took hold of my arms and tried to pin them to the bed, while again trying to throw me over onto my back. In response, I immediately rolled back onto my side, pulling my legs as tightly as I could towards my chest, but he then straddled me and, clearly not concerned where he was jabbing, started trying to ram his penis into my bottom.

Now I lashed out and hit him, rolling back over as I did so and, still wordless but now, at last, apparently discouraged, he climbed off and went back to the other bed.

My relief, once again, was short-lived. He persisted for the rest of the night, his attempts only interrupted by him going into the en suite bathroom and urinating noisily with the door open. And though I was mostly able to wrestle him off me, at no point, except to lie there and pant and get his breath back, did he ever completely give up.

At some point near dawn I must have finally dozed off, because I awoke relieved to see it was finally morning, but also in a state of disbelief. Yet we walked down to breakfast as if nothing had happened. Almost as if he hadn’t spent the entire night attacking me, but we’d simply climbed into our beds and gone to sleep. Ellie and Ben were already at a table, eating a hearty cooked breakfast and laughing.

I crossed the room, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, and my heart sinking at the thought of the sight I must have looked. I whispered to Ellie – how on earth were we going to pay? But she smiled and told me I mustn’t worry. Ben and his friend were going to pay for the rooms, and she’d already agreed she’d pay them back. The men both left soon after, and I knew she never would pay them and, inexplicably, given the night I’d been through, this knowledge made me feel even worse.

And we still had no way of getting home. ‘Oh, don’t worry’ Ellie said. ‘I’ll ring this boy I know. He really fancies me. He’ll come and get us.’

As we waited, I was entirely lost for words. She didn’t ask and I certainly didn’t want to tell her what had happened – besides, she was too busy telling me all about Ben, and what a lovely night they’d spent together.

Then the boy came and got us and, as promised, drove us home. I sat in the back, listening as they chatted, all the time with her hand firmly on his knee. What made me incredulous was that she didn’t just
not
fancy him. She didn’t even
like
him. She just used him.

I couldn’t get my mind around that at all.

I was no stranger to feeling worthless and dirty, or to feeling cross and remorseful about myself either. But the incident at the hotel was a watershed. As the days turned into weeks the feelings persisted; I began feeling dangerously angry at myself. I had such intense feelings of self-loathing by now, it was as if I needed to try to destroy my very being. I began binge-eating, or not eating, and taking laxatives and diuretics, all of which made me feel awful. I hated myself on the inside
and
the outside. Hated my ugly face, my horrible hair, my height, the size of my feet. I hated the sound of my voice and how stupid I was – hated every last thing that made up Faith Scott, and came very close to trying to take my life again.

Why hadn’t I acted more boldly? Yes, I’d fought him, with every ounce of strength I had, yet why hadn’t I summoned help? Why hadn’t I simply fled? Or hit him even harder? Even killed him? And why, once it was over, had I not reported him? Gone to the police and shopped him for being the rapist that he was?

Because, at that point in my life, I didn’t even
see
it as rape. I saw it as the natural culmination of the damning fact that I’d never said ‘No’.

I thought a lot about Ellie, too. Ellie liked sex. She told me. She seemed to
do
it all the time, so she clearly wasn’t lying. Crucially, too, she didn’t
just
do sex. Boys who had sex with Ellie still wanted to be around Ellie. Still pursued her, flirted with her, wanted to spend time with her. Ellie was proof that having sex with boys was normal. It was obviously
me
who had the problem.

Yes, I was angry with her. How could I not be? I couldn’t ever imagine setting her up with a stranger and just expecting them to get on with it. That said, if I had, she probably wouldn’t have minded. She loved boys. She loved sex. The problem of hating it was mine alone. So, in the end, it was easy to internalize everything. Hope the nightmares – in which he was usually faceless; just a menacing form, often just an erect penis – would eventually lessen and go away. And to accept that because there was something so wrong with me, I really needed Ellie in my life.

And I needed to think more like Ellie. As the year drew to a close I started going out even more. I decided I’d blot out the horrible memories by making new ones. I took up drinking and smoking and dancing with boys with an almost religious fervour because, temporarily, it helped blot out the pain.

It was at the same disco –
Flames
– that we’d gone to that fateful night, I first laid eyes on Robert. Robert was older than me. He was in his early thirties, while I was still not quite sixteen. He was really good-looking, and I liked him immediately, and it seemed he was keen on me too.

He’d drive round to my house (though never coming in, obviously) to pick me up, and take me to the pub. We’d talk and have fun and I gradually began to feel there was hope for me after all. Robert wanted to have sex with me every single time we went out but I managed to hold him off By now my fear of the consequences if I
did
let him have sex was greater than my need to acquiesce. But he was patient, too – I think he was confident that, eventually, I would cave in.

In short, I knew it couldn’t last. Didn’t normal girls eventually consent to having sex with their boyfriends? And if I didn’t, how long was he going to stick around? Yet if I let him have sex with me, what then? I already felt bad enough about myself as it was because, deep down, I knew I didn’t really ever want
any
man to touch me, even one I really liked. Which was all wrong, surely? I
should
like it.

And if we did have sex, it seemed clear what would happen. He’d no longer be interested in me, because I wasn’t interesting. My refusal to have sex was the one hold I did have, but its grip was becoming increasingly tenuous.

I asked him, after much soul-searching, one evening: ‘If I agree to have sex with you, will you still want to go out with me afterwards?’

‘Of
course
I will!’ he answered, sounding like he meant it. ‘Of course! I’ll want to be with you even more!’

So that night I consented, for the first time in my life, to having sex with a man. We climbed into the back of his car and had sex and I hated every single traumatic, painful moment. He clearly enjoyed it but I felt nothing. I felt hollowed out, empty, disappointed and sad. Why would anybody do this willingly?

He took me home then, his manner playful, jokey and reassuring. When I got in, still anxious about what had taken place, my mother was sitting in her chair. She had a skein of wool over the arm and was humming as she wound it into a ball. She looked up as I entered but said nothing.

I stood and watched her for a bit and when she’d finished she stood up, then went and picked out this horrible, disgusting, goldy-coloured jumper from one of the heaps of stuff around the room. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Now this. What shall I do with this? Hmm. I shall unpick it and make a bobble hat, I think.’

I continued to stare at her, thinking
why?
Who’d want a bobble hat? Who’d want a hat in that disgusting colour – even if she finished it, which I knew she never would. And then I just blurted it out. I felt bad and I needed to tell someone. I needed some reassurance because the thing I’d just done felt not so different to the things that had been done by men
to
me, and which I’d hated so much, and which haunted me. Was I now
like
them? One of them? It was all so horribly, wretchedly confusing. ‘I’ve had sex,’ I told her. ‘I’ve had sex with a man.’

She stood straighter, her expression suddenly changing. ‘You’ve
what
?!’ she shouted, immediately very angry. ‘You stupid bloody girl! You silly,
stupid
bloody girl! Don’t you understand? Now they’ll
all
want it!
All
of them! You stupid, bloody, silly, bloody girl!’

I stared at her, not knowing what to say. She’d confirmed, not just by her words, but by her response, I’d been right to feel bad and alone. That I’d been born a Wednesday’s child and that my destiny was fixed. It would surely lead me to failure, to getting everything wrong and to unhappiness, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I went to bed even more upset than when we’d done it, but at least, I consoled myself, I had Robert. My mother
had
to be wrong. And I had Robert, who loved me. I didn’t care about anyone else.

But Robert didn’t turn up to take me to the pub the next evening, even though that’s what we’d arranged. He didn’t show up the following night either, and when I eventually plucked up the courage to phone him, he told me he was going on holiday and would telephone me when he returned. I waited patiently, but I knew what was going to happen, and it did. I never heard from him again.

I don’t know what I learned from my experience with Robert. What seems obvious seen through so much older, wiser eyes would appear to have been painfully absent. Because from then on, a pattern emerged. I’d go out, I’d dance, I’d ‘get off with older men, I’d consent to having sex – in the backs of cars, mostly – I’d hate it, and just pray for it to end and when, as they always did, they’d ask me how it’d been for me, I’d invariably answer: ‘Mmmm, okay, nice . . .’

The truth, of course, was that sex was loathsome. Just as loathsome as it had been every single time Daniel had pulled those faces, made those noises, made me touch his rigid thing, squirted his warm pungent stuff in my mouth – choking me – or all over my hands and clothes. It was loathsome; as loathsome as Grandpops’ tickles, and I knew I’d hate it for the rest of my life. Though how long that would be was uncertain at the time as I honestly believed I might do away with myself before I consciously realized what I was doing.

I could not, however, hate men. My fear, dread and loathing about the things men sometimes did was obviously because I was such a bad person.

But I’d now become adept at creating an exterior, so I could pretend I was normal, which did allow me some sort of life. At least I went out, and at least I still had Ellie. But what I didn’t have was any sort of plan for the rest of my life.

I was told I was allowed to leave school at fifteen, which I was only too happy to do. By the time I’d endured the assault in the hotel, I was essentially drifting, with no idea what sort of job I might do. I was still working in the grocers, but by now, almost two and a half years after I’d begun, my position felt more and more precarious. I was still stealing food for my mother. I couldn’t stop myself – it was the only way I could ease my guilt about not being able to change her. If I couldn’t make her better, at least I could give her something nice, and food – even with all its scary associations with my childhood – was something that seemed would do that. Some days, I was the only one allowed to use the till, and I knew they were watching me and, though I’d never stolen money from them – only food – I felt sure that soon they’d confront me.

I needed to leave anyway, and get a full-time job. My father was becoming angry and shouting all the time about how long he’d ‘fucking kept us’.

My mother’s input, as ever, was minimal. ‘Your role is to get married,’ she kept reminding me. ‘To have babies and look after your husband. Careers are not important for women.’

This felt terribly depressing. My mother had spent her whole life, one way and another, as a slave to men. First her father, Grandpops, who I’d eventually learn abused her both emotionally and sexually, and then to my own father, who treated her appallingly, was cruel to her, kept giving her baby after baby, and spent what free time he had with other women. My mother was pathetic in the real sense of the word, and the thought I might become like her was horrifying.