Sarah's Story

by Sarah Preston

  I knew I should have been trying harder, but how do you rid yourself of a plague that is destroying your life with a force you have no chance of stopping because you are still nothing more than a child? How could I stop him now after three years?

  I had been trying for so long to make things right. Bill was set in his own routine: he would pick me up, go straight to the flat, do whatever he wanted – which usually included the washing, oral sex and sexual intercourse – and afterwards he would kindly drive me home again, as used and abused as usual.

  Making the sandwiches was now just a front, an excuse so that Mum and Dad didn’t stop me going with him when he asked. Each visit to his flat got gradually worse. Most of the time he would wash me obsessively. He ejaculated on to me more times than I care to remember and he subjected me to oral sex until I hoped I would pass out. He was now sixty-one years old; I was still only fourteen.

  Why did he do these things?

  What did he get out of it?

  Did he do this for fun?

  Did he really enjoy doing this to me?

  Why did he not have a normal relationship with his wife?

  Why was he attracted to me?

  Why did he abuse me?

  Why did any man abuse a child?

  Maybe he didn’t see me as a child now. I was growing up, developing into a young woman. Did he now see what he was doing to me as being OK?

  I tried to uncover answers to these questions but I never found a way. Many times I wanted to ask him why, but, as I approached the verge of letting the words form, I looked at him for a split second and I saw that look in his eye, the look that made me fearful of him. It was as if I would never know, never understand the truth. I asked myself then as I have asked myself now: did I really want to know why? What would I gain from knowing after such a long time?

  I had to try and be stronger than I was. I had to find a way to beat what was happening to me. I asked for help each night before I closed my eyes. Again and again I asked. In the end I knew no one would answer me.

  Why?

  Because I had not told them. I hadn’t told a single soul about this.

  How could I find help if they did not know?

  I began to block out my memories of abuse, clearing my head in order to become a different person. I felt stronger now, but still I remained frantically hysterical about people finding out about my life. I didn’t want Bill coming to the house. I didn’t want my friends to see me getting into his car. I didn’t want to face questions. I didn’t want to pretend we were related so that any questions they might ask would stop. I didn’t want them all to know.

  I didn’t want to be called a slut. I had heard some girls talking about a girl in the year above me who had slept with an older boy. They had called her a slut. They said it was a name she deserved. It continued throughout the autumn term and into the next one too. Was that what I was? A slut? No, I knew deep down I wasn’t; but sometimes I just felt as if I was.

  I couldn’t do anything about what was happening to me, even though I had gained a feeling of strength. It felt like a truckload of strength, but it wasn’t the right kind. I just had to figure out how to turn it into the right kind.

  I started to realise that Bill would never willingly release me from his controlling clutches. My body felt as if it was bound tightly to him by chains that only I could see. The chains felt real. The weight of them multiplied, crushing me day by day, swallowing any strength I had newly found.

  As hard as I tried to make up plausible excuses not to go with him, each time he called at the house or saw me with Mum at the bingo hall I always failed in my quest to be free of him. He became the successful one every time. Mum always dismissed my complaints and said whatever I had to do would surely wait. Wasn’t it more important to help a friend?

  If only she knew the truth. The only way I was helping him was by not telling anyone. By being too afraid to tell anyone, and, more importantly, growing more afraid with every passing minute.

  I was keeping his secret.

  Keeping him safe.

  Keeping Bill from being found out.

  Keeping him from being caught.

  Keeping my abuser from jail.

  I was protecting a paedophile.

  I had been protecting a paedophile for years.

  I wondered if Bill knew other girls. Other girls he was abusing. Others he wanted to abuse. In my heart and deep down within my soul, I hoped there weren’t. I hoped he hadn’t. I hoped he never would. But he had always spent so much time with me I don’t think he would have had time for any others. If Mum had not been so insistent on me going with him all the time, I knew he would have had the opportunity to get to more girls, who would be subjected to the same nightmares I had already lived.

  Did Bill’s abuse of me for almost four years protect them? I just did not know.

  As I grew up, I seemed to understand the wrong more clearly. The questions inside my head were not being answered but the wrongs appeared to be getting more comprehensible. I had to do something before I became trapped forever.

  I came up with a plan. Lucy had visited earlier and had told me about a new church disco; it was in town, which meant catching the bus. It was held three times a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Lucy said it was great – she had been the week before and she wanted to go again this week. That night we asked my mum and dad if they would let me go too.

  ‘How much is it?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Fifteen pence to get in on Wednesdays and Fridays, twenty pence on Saturdays,’ Lucy replied. ‘Plus bus fare to town,’ she quickly added.

  ‘What time will you be going and coming back?’ Mum asked.

  ‘I would have to leave at quarter to six,’ I said.

  Lucy looked at me, puzzled, but like a true friend she said nothing. She knew we didn’t have to leave until the twenty-past-six bus, and it would not take me thirty-five minutes to get to her house.

  ‘And we’ll be back for ten if we can go,’ Lucy continued.

  ‘OK,’ said Mum and Dad together, ‘you can go on Wednesday as long as you’re home on time.’

  I was overjoyed. At last I had found a way of not being around Bill on Wednesdays. He always came on Wednesdays.

  It was one of his days.

  On Wednesday evening, I was getting ready to go out when Bill called at his usual time. Mum met him at the door – she was just about to leave the house to go to the shop. I was so glad I’d delayed her by talking to her. She explained to him how I was going out with Lucy and wouldn’t be able to help him. I heard raised voices. Luckily, Dad was out the back so he couldn’t hear. Bill was getting angry at Mum, telling her that he had already paid for her bingo tickets once that week, so he expected me to help him with the snack-bar preparations. Mum told him she had already promised I could go with Lucy. He muttered something and went hastily back to his car. As he looked up, he saw me watching him from behind the upstairs bedroom curtains. I jumped back in shock when his eyes looked straight through mine with an intensity that hurt. He had a look in his eyes that was worse than anything I had seen before.

  It terrified me. I felt every muscle in my body tense up. It was a look of hate and anger all in one. Bill would be calculating his revenge. He would get back at me; he always did. I tried not to think about it. Yet at the side of my mind his look crept into position, waiting to be brought forward to take centre stage in the dreams I was yet to have.

  Bill was still angry with me for not going with him when I went out again the following Wednesday with Lucy, avoiding his visit a second time. The following Friday he called half an hour earlier than normal. He told Mum he had extra to do and asked if it would be OK if I stayed with him for longer than usual. He also said he was going on holiday the following week for five days, and asked if it would be OK if he took me out as a treat for helping him so much. He wanted to take me to see where he was staying on holiday. I didn’t want to know where he would be and wished wholeheartedly that
Mum would say no to his stupid request. If I didn’t know where he was, I could freely imagine he was on the other side of the world, far, far away, unable to get to me easily.

  I just could not believe it when Mum readily agreed to his suggestions. Even Dad agreed too.

  Had I heard right? Had they both said yes?

  Bill was furious with me when he got me alone. He told me I was selfish and horrid for not going with him. After all, he had given me some spending money. In fact, he had given Mum the money, but it seemed to be the same thing to Bill. If I wanted to have some more money, he told me, I had better make sure I didn’t let him down again.

  Was he now in the frame of mind whereby he thought he was paying Mum for my body? I felt like a cheap, backstreet, overworked prostitute, his very own working girl. I hated what it meant. I hated even more how it felt. I hated him for turning me into someone who would be seen by people I met as having no morals.

  I wanted to curl up and die.

  As each day passed I made secret plans. I never wrote them down because I didn’t want anyone to see them. These were my plans, plans that I knew would be destroyed instantly if anyone saw them. I kept my plans locked and stored away in a special box deep inside my head where only I could access them.

  This box was kept with all the other boxes I had already stored away within my memory. Boxes were safer. No one could see them; no one could get into them except me. My boxes held furtive memories, secretive memories that, with time, had become bulky, heavy and unbearable. Secrets that weighed me down. The first box held my questions, questions that would be set free from the individual compartments they were placed in, and the box they were secured in, when at last I found the answers.

  The second box was filled with all the bad, unthinkable memories of my life. In my mind I didn’t keep this one locked; it was always kept with its lid slightly open so that other bad memories that were still being created could be slipped in.

  In the third box were my good memories. This box was smaller than the other two. It didn’t have a lid. It didn’t need one. It would never be overflowing. The good memories that were there already barely covered the bottom. There was lots of room in this box; it was just good memories that were hard to find.

  I knew I had to set a plan in motion. I decided to help Mum and Dad lots more than usual in the house and garden. Helping in the house was Mum and Dad’s rule; it was the same for us all. We all had one room in the house to clean at weekends before we did anything we wanted to do. If I wanted to go out, I had to do extra jobs for them, as well as my usual weekly tasks. By helping them a little more, I was using up as many of my free hours as possible doing chores. If I did extra work in the house, Mum and Dad would realise I had done enough jobs to earn a little extra money to be able to go out with Lucy much more than before.

  Over the next week I worked harder than ever. Every spare moment I had I did jobs around the house. I did all the ironing, the washing too. I even changed all the beds for Mum. And I worked hard in the garden once I had finished all Mum’s work. Dad was away fishing with his brother for a couple of days so I mowed the grass, weeded the garden and watered all the plants in the greenhouse.

  My plan worked. Although I had seen Bill four times the previous week, the following week I only saw him twice because I went to the disco with Lucy with the extra money I earned.

  I was so excited that I had managed to remove the chains for a couple of nights, yet I remained slightly subdued knowing that Bill wasn’t that far away and he could shatter my plans at any moment. I may have managed to escape him this week, but could I do the same next week? Would I be strong enough to succeed a second time?

  As I lay in bed and the house had been quiet for what seemed like hours, I sat up in my bed and prayed for three things.

  For strength.

  For salvation.

  And for forgiveness, because I knew my plan was based on lies. I had told my parents I was helping more so that they wouldn’t have as many jobs to do.

  But they seemed grateful and as a reward they gave me a set amount of money to spend if I wanted to go out. I continued going to the disco with Lucy every week. I deliberately only used enough money for bus fares and the entrance fee so that I would have money left to go an extra night too. I never bought drinks while I was out, or sweets, as this would have been frivolous.

  My money was my escape.

  My way out.

  My ‘get out of jail free’ card.

  Each night I was lucky enough to have money to go to the disco and escape Bill’s visits, I silently rejoiced, grateful for every precious second I was away from him. A little bit more of me had become liberated back into the waiting world, allowing me to spread my clipped wings a little further each time. I had been given a little of my jail sentence back.

  Twelve

  IT WAS AT the disco one Friday that I met a boy called Daniel. Lucy didn’t like him very much but I did – he was polite and fairly quiet. Lucy’s favourites were the better-looking boys who all the other girls went for.

  Daniel was really quite sweet. Although he wasn’t very tall and was a bit cuddly, he had a warm smile that instantly made you feel happy. He was considerate and he had lovely brown eyes – eyes that would smile kindly at me each time I saw him. Daniel helped out at the disco and went to the church there on Sundays. I hadn’t seen him before because he had been away on holiday, and I found out after talking with him that he was a lot older than me. It didn’t seem to matter much about the four-year age gap. We got on well together, he was a good listener and he treated me as if I was really special. Daniel was quite shy, but he plucked up courage to ask me out. He took me home that night in his car. Not only was he older, but he had his own car too!

  We agreed to meet on the following Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t been this happy since Tom had left. Little did I know when I walked through the door that my world was about to take another hard knock.

  Dad wasn’t pleased that a boy old enough to drive had dropped me off. He was angry and I could tell. He asked me lots of questions when I came in about Dan before he would allow me to go to bed. I was up for what seemed like hours being interrogated, but I couldn’t understand why he was so upset. He finished by telling me older boys didn’t hang around with girls my age unless they were after something. I knew only too well what he meant.

  I went to bed that night upset and annoyed. How dare he tell me boys are only after one thing? Hadn’t he already taken that thing from me? What else was left? Who had been watching out for me then, when he came calling at my bedroom door? Who was there to protect me from his grasp?

  I fell into a restless sleep, and dreamed that night about a life with Daniel. He was my salvation and my hope, although he didn’t know it yet. It seemed that someone was trying to help me.

  But Bill also visited my dreams that night, reminding me of his warning to remain quiet about what had happened.

  I woke up in a cold sweat; all Dan’s warmth had long since gone.

  I became more determined than ever that night as I tried to go back to sleep. I was going to make it in my fight for survival. I liked Daniel, and no one was going to make me stop seeing him or get in the way of our newfound happiness. Not even my dad.

  I saw Daniel lots of times after that. In fact, I saw him rather more than I should have done. He took me to the disco every night it was open, and we spent a lot of time together at weekends. He also introduced me to stock-car racing. I loved it. It was great fun watching the cars getting smashed up as they raced around, and feeling the blasts of the air horns of enthusiasts all around me gave me a real buzz. It was just so exciting, and it was in these moments that I found a wider corridor to escape down, a corridor where the doors were never locked.

  Mum told me that Bill had called up at the house a few times over the week, but as it was the school holidays she had told him I was out with Daniel. I saw Bill one evening passing the cemetery as we drove in the other direction. He was goi
ng to the house. I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn’t be there. He would not be able to capture me. Not tonight, at least …

  He didn’t see me in Daniel’s car. I was glad, because it meant he didn’t know what to look out for. Inside my mind, I felt as if I were a convict on the run, even though I knew now more than ever that what was happening to me, what Bill was doing to me, was not my fault.

  I enjoyed being with Daniel; he was like a breath of fresh air. We started going out in a foursome with his friend Paul and his girlfriend Karina. We were all great friends. And slowly I began to fall in love with Daniel, in the same way that I knew he already loved me.

  The last big stock-car meeting of the season was being held in Blackpool at the Norbreck Castle Hotel. We all went to the meeting – it was a lovely hot day and I had a wonderful time. We ate hot dogs, drank pop and for a few short hours I actually let go of my troubled thoughts. I closed the lid on the bad-memories box that had been stored deep in my mind, and I allowed myself to drift into a world I should have known so well.

  Daniel had shown me this new world.

  Daniel had set me free.

  He had helped me in the same way Tom had.

  I didn’t want that day to end. When we arrived home, we sat close together, holding each other, enjoying our cuddle. We kissed for a long time sitting outside the house, warm and snug in his little white Mini with its shiny black roof. I noticed it had become cold outside – summer was drawing to a close – but inside the car we felt so cosy together. I didn’t want this moment to end. I knew I was falling in love with Dan.

  That night Dan told me he loved me.

  I was truly happy for the first time since Tom had left.

  It was a happiness I knew I didn’t deserve.

  I had been so bad.

  I had done terrible things.

  I had let old men do terrible things to me.

  I had lied to my mum.

  I had told so many lies.

  And lying, I knew, was a sin.