Never a Hero to Me (20 page)

She said I could stay in their cellar that night as her parents were going out and they wouldn’t be back until late. When they got in, they’d go straight to bed so wouldn’t be suspicious of anything. I went straight down and actually managed to sleep quite well that night – it was as if a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.

The next morning, Holly came down for me and said I had to go. Her dad was going to be at home all day and she couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t come to the cellar. She seemed a bit nervous but I put this down to her not wanting to anger her dad.

‘I know where you can go though,’ she told me. ‘My auntie has a cellar she never uses. I’ll give you the address. She’s on holiday just now anyway so you can go there without anyone disturbing you. It’s always open, there won’t be any problems.’

Holly was a life-saver. I hugged her and took the bit of paper with the directions. Hours later, I finally found the place. Just as Holly had said, the cellar was unlocked and I made my way into it. I was a little scared as this time I wasn’t with a friend, but I knew I would be willing to do anything to survive and stay away from home.

I spent the rest of the day there. I only had a few tangerines with me which I had brought from home, and I was really cold. When I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, I was relieved. Holly had said her aunt was on holiday so I assumed it must be my friend coming to see me – hopefully with some food.

When she put her head around the door, I was delighted.

‘Holly!’ I yelled, running over to her.

She didn’t smile and I could see she was wary of coming close to me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry, Tracy,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Behind her stood her father – and my dad.

‘What have you done?’ I whispered, trapped in the cellar, with no way of escaping his clutches. ‘What have you done?’

‘I had to tell,’ she said. ‘Your dad came round looking for you and mine said I had better tell him everything if I knew what was good for me.’ I recognised the hidden threat in that. ‘It’s only hitting,’ she said, dropping her voice. ‘You’ll get through it. Everyone gets hits by their dad.’ She had no idea. No idea at all.

Dad put out his hand for me. I ignored it and climbed the stairs, resigned to going back to my own personal hellhole. When I got out to the street, there were two other men waiting there as well: military police.

‘You see, Tracy?’ said my dad in a superior voice. ‘Do you see how much trouble you cause? Your mum was so worried about you that she had to call the police. You’ve done so many bad things in the past that this is really going to have terrible consequences for you.’ He could hardly keep the smirk off his face, but as I looked at the police officers, I didn’t see a threat – I saw a way out.

‘I want to talk to them,’ I stated.

‘What?’ said Dad.

‘I want to talk to the police.’

His face dropped. ‘Well, that’ll probably happen. They might want to talk to you. But, for now, let’s get you home.’

‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I want to talk to them now.’

One of the officers stepped forward. They had obviously been listening. I’m sure my dad would have thought they would scare me enough simply by being there, that they would know my track record, that there was something troubled in my background.

‘Actually, Mr Black, we’d like to speak with Tracy, too,’ the officer said.

‘Let me get her home, she’ll be tired,’ he said. His fake concern only alerted me to the fact that he wanted to get me alone to manipulate me again.

‘No. We want to talk to her now.’

‘I want to talk to you as well,’ I said, and walked over to their car, which was clearly marked. I opened the door and got in, while Dad tried to follow.

‘I need to talk to you without my dad,’ I said quickly to the officer in front.

‘We need to have him with you because of your age.’

‘No. No, you don’t,’ I maintained. ‘He’s the reason I’ve been doing all of this, starting fires, running away, vandalising things.’

He looked out of the window at my dad standing with the other military policemen. ‘What do you mean?’

I closed my eyes and gathered my strength, then said the words which no one had believed at any other time. This was my last chance, I knew that.

‘He’s been touching me. My dad’s been touching me since I was five. I can’t go back; I can’t take it any more. Please help me.’

And he did.

Someone finally did.

They didn’t let Dad in the car, and I had to wait until another vehicle arrived for him, which followed me to Army headquarters. Nothing was said to me in the car, but the officer I had spoken to had stepped outside before we left and had a quiet word with his colleague, presumably telling him everything. I kept my eyes closed and didn’t even look at my father.

When we arrived, I wondered how many people already knew what I had said –
alleged
, I suppose – as I felt everyone was looking at me. That was probably my imagination, but I felt so vulnerable, so naked.

I was told I was being taken to speak to ‘the boss’. By this they meant Commanding Officer Stewart, someone I had never met before. It was terrifying to think that my future was in the hands of a man who was a complete stranger to me. I hadn’t met many men I could trust, so I had low expectations of this one too.

I sat outside his office for two hours. There was a clock on the wall and I watched the hands slowly crawl round, wondering what decisions were being taken about me without my input. By this time, I knew it wasn’t my imagination which made me think people were looking at me – they definitely were, and I’m sure the story must have spread like wildfire.

By the time I walked into the office, I was shaking.

The CO was a posh man. To me, he sounded like someone off the telly or radio, but he had tremendous warmth to him as well. He was tall and quite thin, with a great gentleness to him.

‘I’ve had a chat with your dad,’ he said, ‘and he denies it. He denied everything, all of those accusations you made, and told me that you were just saying all of this to cover up getting into trouble.’

I wasn’t too surprised by the CO’s reaction. There may have been a tiny sliver of hope that he would have believed me, but ‘tiny’ was the operative word. I thought he would throw me out of the office there and then, but he continued to speak.

‘Why did you do those things? Why did you keep getting into trouble?’

‘To stop it all, to stop him touching me – and all of that,’ I admitted, not having the power of the word ‘abuse’ to throw at him at that stage.

‘How would that stop it?’ he asked.

I hadn’t actually thought it out that well myself, but the words came to me without any prior working through of it. ‘I thought that, if people saw that I was being bad, they’d ask why. No one had ever paid attention to me – not when I was smelly, not when I was covered in bruises. I thought that, maybe, if I started damaging things, property, they might sit up and take notice.’

The commanding officer was quiet for while. ‘I see,’ he finally responded. ‘It worked, didn’t it? You have been noticed, Tracy.’

‘I just wanted him to stop. I just wanted it all to stop.’

Again, there was a period of silence; then CO Stewart finally said one thing.

‘It’s plausible.’

That was it.

No more, no less, but in those words came the tiny sliver of hope again.

‘There’s nothing we can do right now,’ he said.

‘I’m not going home!’

‘I know that. I’m not asking you to, but I’ve got nowhere really to put you apart from a cell. You’ll be safe, Tracy. I’ll make sure the door is left open at all times and you only need to ask for whatever you want. There will be a female officer sitting outside all night. Do you think that would be all right?’

It would be more than all right. It would be, hopefully, a turning point.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered, ‘thank you so much.’

He smiled at me, and repeated the words that meant a great deal. ‘It’s plausible, Tracy; it’s plausible.’ I know now that he could never have shouted his belief in me or accepted it all instantly, but his reaction made me wonder. Had there been suspicions about my dad or his friends? Had anyone else made an allegation? I would never know – perhaps CO Stewart was just a good man who put children first. His actions over the next few days would certainly suggest that was a major part of his character.

He said goodbye and wished me well when a female soldier came and escorted me to the cell. I wasn’t scared of being in there; I was only scared of going back home. She sat outside the whole time and, although she didn’t speak to me, I was reasonably settled for a while.

As time went on, I did my best to not think of what might happen. It was getting late in the day and the sky was darkening, when I heard voices outside and the door opened. It was Commanding Officer Stewart. He asked how I was and checked that I had everything I needed – he was a kind man, but I knew that he was building up to something, as he seemed a little nervous. ‘Tracy,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that, as a result of what you spoke to me about, I have been asked to ensure that you meet with a doctor.’

That seemed fine to me; I wasn’t ill, so the doctor wouldn’t have to give me medicine or injections, and I’d tell them just that. When I made these points to CO Stewart, he sat down and spoke gently.

‘Actually, Tracy, the doctor will need to examine you for other reasons. We need to know exactly what has happened – we need to know whether there has been any damage.’

There had been plenty of damage, I could tell him that, but I guessed what he was really referring to – this doctor would want to check my body; they would want to look at places I didn’t want anyone to look. They wanted to know if I was a liar. It was something I would have to get through because I knew there would be some evidence, some clue – there
had
to be – but I was under no illusions that it would be horrible and yet another invasion of my privacy.

‘It would be absolutely fine for you to have your social worker with you,’ the CO went on, ‘and I’d be more than happy to contact her now and request her presence.’

I snorted. ‘She’s a waste of space,’ I told him. ‘She didn’t help me when I asked her to, and I don’t want anything to do with her.’ I felt a little bad being so rude to him, but the very thought of that woman angered me, and her attendance at any medical examination would offer me no comfort at all. To be honest, I was feeling numb and exhausted by this point, and the prospect of the examination itself was just something else for me to get through.

About an hour later, I was taken to a little room along the corridor from the cells in the same building. It seemed the sort of place where basic medical supplies were held, so was probably used for minor injury treatment. For those purposes, it was no doubt fine – but for what I was about to endure, it was cold and charmless. The room was small and drab, and didn’t even seem very clinical. It had a sort of musty smell, not one of antiseptic or soap, which is what I might have expected had I given it much thought.

There was a female nurse waiting for me, wearing a white uniform. When I entered the room, she said ‘Hello’ and asked me to take my clothes off behind a screen so that I could put on a medical gown. It was huge and white, and looked like a sack on my childish frame. I could hear the nurse moving about, opening and closing doors, as I changed and placed my clothes on a steel-backed chair. She called to me that I should lie down on the examination table and cover myself with the blanket, which was there when I was ready, and then I heard the door open and close. She had gone.

The table was long and thin, rather like a stretcher. It was black and covered in something like leather – as an adult, I know now that there was something missing; there were no stirrups for an internal examination but I didn’t realise that at the time.

As I lay there, I tried to find something to focus on. The room was at the far end of the building, so there was no noise to listen out for; no snatched conversations to distract me. There was a small window to the side which looked out onto the woods, but it was very late in the day by then and getting quite dark, so I couldn’t be preoccupied by anything there either. The only thing for me to look at, as I waited for the doctor, was an uncovered light bulb in the ceiling. I remember thinking,
if I look at that hard enough, will I go blind?
It was a warning that many parents tell their children about the sun but, for me, I was wishing it was a viable option. I was sick of looking at things, at people, at life.

I got up and sat on a wooden chair while I waited. A few minutes later, the same nurse and a male doctor came in. He was wearing a white coat too.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Fraser and I’m the medical officer who will be examining you.’ He was polite and professional, and explained what he was going to do – but not why. I was told that my heart and pulse would be checked, and that he would
look inside
me. I think I must have looked horrified – which I was – because he said that it wouldn’t hurt, that he would be gentle, and that he just needed to make sure everything was all right. While I sat on the chair, he checked my heart and breathing, rattled off the findings to the nurse, then asked me to lie down.

I walked nervously over to the examination table and he followed me as the nurse stayed some distance away. I lay down and he gently pushed my gown up over my hips and placed the blanket over what he had uncovered. The whole experience, from when he checked my heartbeat to when the internal was over, only took about ten minutes – but what really sticks in my mind is the one phrase I heard the doctor say –
her hymen is broken
. The words never really meant anything to me that day, but I knew from the way he said them – a low voice, assertive, determined – that this was important. It wasn’t until I was a couple of years older and studying biology at school that the meaning of the statement became apparent and I understood that this physical fact had actually given them some objective, incontrovertible evidence to back up my claims.