The Step Child (26 page)

Nothing had changed much since my mother’s time. Fifteen-year-old girls like Sandra could still be playing hopscotch in the street one day, and then whisked off to an anonymous family member with their bellies full the next. Despite having her marked down as a general ‘friend’, Sandra and I hadn’t really spoken of anything important. I didn’t even know she’d been having sex. I’m not sure whether the gravity of the girl’s situation hit me at that time. Pregnant, unmarried teenagers were still considered bad girls, with little said about the men who had got them into that condition. Even with my own experiences, I had no idea what Sandra’s story was.

I knew what was all around me. I had lived it. And yet the community was still incredibly prudish and judgemental. Within parochial areas like Easter Road, men seemed to get off scot-free. It was the girls and the women who carried the shame and the guilt; they were the ones who were called names and whose families disowned them. It never ceased to amaze me that this charade continued so effectively. I sometimes felt as though all the grown-ups must have sat down together and worked out a plan. If that had happened, what were women getting out of it? There was still an over-riding notion that women should ‘save’ themselves for marriage, and yet men were allowed – encouraged – to sow their wild oats and be one of the lads. When Sandra arrived back from her Auntie’s with a baby boy in tow, she was the only one who had to face up to the consequences, the whispers behind her back, and the harsh appraisals of the women who seemed to put so much energy and vitriol into keeping other women in their ‘place’.

Looking at Sandra with a baby at 15, and seeing how hard she was working, made me swear I would never be in her shoes. I
would live some before I brought new life into this world, and I’d find myself before finding a baby at my side. Although there were teenage hormones all around me, to some extent I was safe. No one had ever had the slightest idea about my abuse while it was going on, which meant that, in the little world of those around, I was a ‘good girl’. I did have one or two boyfriends in my early teenage years, but I felt so soiled by what had been done to me that I probably had much less experience with them than other girls my age. I always felt that they would know what had gone on in my past if we ever got to a sexual relationship, so I avoided that sort of development at all costs.

I took what lessons I could from my relationship with these girlfriends. From Joan’s family, there was such basic goodness; from Sandra, a warning that things were still very different for girls and hypocritical. Put together with what Auntie Nellie had given me, I looked forward. I really, really wanted to leave Edina Place. Despite everything that had happened to me, I could build on the good parts of life I had glimpsed – I truly felt I could achieve something. Mostly, books had taught me that there was a very different world out there. I just had to go and find it.

I harboured wild dreams at that time of becoming a famous artist and returning to Edinburgh in splendour, to show that I was something or somebody. If it didn’t quite happen like that, it would be enough for me just to say: ‘You didn’t keep me here. I got away.’ I didn’t want to stay in that tiny little world, and just end up with someone for the sake of it. I needed to avoid that, to avoid falling into a relationship which would simply perpetuate my unhappiness and prevent me from finding out who I really was. I had to get away from what I saw as my prison.

When I look back on the time I left the family home to set out on my adult path, I am shocked by just how naïve and unprepared I
was. I’d had so many experiences and seen so many things a child should never go through, yet I was lacking in many vital skills that any young person needs when they are starting out. The list was endless. I didn’t have any basic social skills at all. I didn’t know how to form relationships. Amazingly, I was undeterred. It’s only now that I realise what I didn’t have and what I didn’t know. Back then, I just went for it. I didn’t feel at all sad or sorry for myself; instead I was filled with a quiet excitement about what was in store for me in my life. And the prospect that I was – finally – getting away.

At 17, I ended up almost 200 miles away in the Highlands of Scotland. In Inverness, I finally settled in a job as an auxiliary nurse at a rest and rehabilitation centre for geriatrics. I didn’t have a particular penchant for this sort of work – I took it because it came with accommodation. At last, I had my own place, or the nearest I had ever come to it – a room in nurses’ quarters on the top floor of the residence building alongside other hospital staff. There were quite a few young women my age living there, and although I did go out with them at times, I was never really that close to them. They all seemed to manage some easy bond, sitting in each other’s rooms swapping clothes, makeup, stories about boys, tales about their families. They seemed different. They seemed normal. I wanted to be part of it all, but I spent a lot of time on my own through choice. I was too embarrassed to ask if I could join in. I’m sure, looking back, that if I’d asked to join in they would have been more than happy to let me, but I still had a fear of being let down or turned away when I tried to enter ‘normal’ worlds.

Instead, I bought a bike and would cycle anywhere and everywhere. It was the summer of 1976 and it was incredibly hot, giving me the chance to be outdoors most of the time. I made the most of my freedom, which was always what had mattered most to me, and I had other things that brought me such joy too. I loved dressing up, and would scour antique and charity shops for
wonderful things to wrap myself in. I went on my own to local discos and pubs, knowing that the other nurses and auxiliaries tended to hang out there. I felt more confident that they would talk to me, include me, if I was there ‘by chance’ than if I had deliberately made myself vulnerable by asking to go along with them in the first place.

There was a sense of loneliness and not belonging, but I had at least achieved my main goal – I wasn’t living back
there
any more. Surely now, I would be free of my past?

THE MOVE FROM EDINBURGH
, the cutting of links, wasn’t entirely successful. My past wasn’t quite ready to let go of me.

Before I left for Inverness, I had been seeing a man called Martin. I wouldn’t have said Martin was my boyfriend – but he was one of the first men I had an adult sexual relationship with. The rapes and abuses I suffered as a child never struck me as part of my sex life, not the one I had as a consenting adult. Sadly, compartmentalising life isn’t quite that easy. Martin may not have been my boyfriend, and I may not have been that child of my past, but I still found myself in a situation where I felt I was being used for sex. The relationship I had with him is difficult to unpick now, even in retrospect, but I do know that I almost expected to be degraded and objectified. I still found it hard to believe that anyone could love me, that anyone could treat me with respect. I just thought bad relationships were what I deserved.

All this meant that Inverness was becoming an option I liked more and more. But there were other ties I had to deal with. I still wrote to my Dad and Karen, and sent some of my wages back, but my letters never received any replies. After six months in the job, I was ready for my first Christmas away from home.
Although I had never spent the festive period in a particularly traditional setting, even for me this was to be an especially empty time. Most people were fighting to get home, back to their families, but I chose to work through to stop myself thinking about the fact that, again, I didn’t have all I really wanted.

Christmas morning for me wasn’t quite what dreams are made of. I spent it cleaning out bedpans, changing beds and serving dinner to the residents before going off duty in the afternoon and heading back to empty staff quarters. I had forgotten to get myself any food in, and it had also slipped my mind that the staff canteen wouldn’t be open that day. I ended up with some savoury rice quickly heated up, and a session in front of the telly watching
Charlie’s Angels
. I have to admit that I did feel a bit sorry for myself that day. I didn’t have a single card or letter or present from home. When all of the girls were showing off their gifts or talking about the traditions they were going home to, I felt embarrassed. Again. How could I talk about the memories of Christmas for me? Should I tell them about the empty ‘Tiny Tears’ box? Should I make them feel bad by informing them of how even the smells of Christmas cooking could take me back to days of starvation and torture? Any time they asked what I was getting or where my family was, I felt worse. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I couldn’t rely on what was left of my family for anything. I had to fight the guilt I felt about leaving Karen behind and try to move forward myself.

I can’t explain exactly why, but I stayed in Inverness for only a year before moving back to Edinburgh. I had enjoyed my work in the geriatric home, but there was still too much unfinished business in Edinburgh, too many ghosts to lay to rest. I still enjoyed drawing whenever I could, but my dream of becoming an artist seemed out of reach. I knew I needed to concentrate on
getting a decent job, a recognised profession, to prevent me slipping back into dependency. Being secure, being settled, was all I wanted. Once I had that, perhaps I could look towards what my heart really desired.

When I arrived back in Edinburgh, I got a job similar to that in Inverness, as an auxiliary nurse in the City Hospital, again living in nurses’ quarters. One day I bumped into Martin again, and before long had started back in a relationship with him. Nothing had changed but I was so grateful that someone would even consider taking on me, with all my baggage, that I accepted it as part of the deal.

Before long, Martin had persuaded me to move out of the residences at the City Hospital and to stay in a flat with him and one of his friends. Going ‘home’ was again becoming something to endure. Work was no better. From enjoying nursing and planning to take it further as a career option, I was becoming thoroughly disillusioned. The care of geriatrics at that point wasn’t just archaic – it was cruel. I could barely stand to be around daily instances of people being treated so badly, so inhumanely. Was this the end of the cycle which would wait for me as I became old? Would I end as I had started? Was age – at either end of the spectrum – simply an excuse for people to debase others for their own convenience? Again, I saw the hypocrisy and the charades that went on. Old people, who were treated like dirt for the entire week, would be wheeled out, infantilised and made to put on a show when their relatives arrived for a 30-minute weekend visit. These people, who were often quite deliberately left in their own shit and piss for hours on end, were suddenly patronised for the benefit of other adults who needed lies spun for them so that they could continue their lives, unfettered, for the rest of the time. It was too familiar for me to bear. I honestly felt that my conscience couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Again, my guilt kicked in. I knew that by leaving, I couldn’t possibly make their lives any better – but I had
to balance fighting a system with saving myself.