Escaping the Darkness

by Sarah Preston

  The right time came ten years later.

  Chapter Eight

  LUNCH WITH MY lovely friend was over all too soon. After leaving Maria’s house, I decided to go to the shops before making my way to the school. I didn’t have far to walk, because the grocer’s shop was right across the road. I only had a few things to get from the corner store, and decided it was perhaps best to go whilst it was quiet. It was just too busy once all the other mums started to call in on their way home from school.

  Once I’d got the milk, bread and potatoes I needed, I walked slowly on to the school. It was only quarter to three and school wasn’t finished until twenty past.

  The walk would normally only take me ten minutes so I dawdled slowly along, wasting as much time as I could. Timothy and William had both fallen asleep and as I walked, I began to try and put my thoughts in order.

  I drifted back to the questions Bess had asked me:

  ‘How did I feel about what had happened to me?’

  ‘How would you have felt?’ I found myself whispering gently in reply, even though she wasn’t there to hear it.

  My thoughts carried me all the way to the school gates, where I waited for the boys to finish their school day, touched by the cooling afternoon breeze.

  As I became older, my thoughts had changed. I knew I had become more accustomed to the feelings that had been so hard to control. My life as a child had been taken, screwed up like an old crumpled newspaper and discarded as if it had been nothing – yesterday’s news. The only difference was my life story had yet to be told, and I held secrets deep within me that no one knew about.

  I was never given the chance to be myself, to be a child. I was always afraid that once the abuse started, people would blame me for everything. I wanted so desperately to be like all the other girls, but I wasn’t. I wanted to be able to share in their talk of first kisses and first experiences of love, but I never could. I never once stood and giggled with my friends. What had given my abusers, I wondered, the right to snatch these experiences from me? In place of their ‘new discoveries’ at twelve, I had been treated like a fully-grown married woman, experiencing everything she would and more. New discoveries I wished I’d never had.

  I wanted so much at the time to say ‘Stop!’ For it to have stopped and vanished like a dream that had never occurred.

  I had to put all of this into perspective for Bess, but it wasn’t easy.

  It would never be easy.

  This was me, my garbage, my life, my past.

  As the school bell rang out, echoing around the playground, I was suddenly aware of where I was. Sally, one of the other mums, was standing ten feet in front of me and waved as I looked up. I waved back. I waited another five minutes before the boys appeared. As they came through the double doors, they looked happy, giggling as usual. I was glad of the distraction that was my children. Without them, I would probably have fallen apart. They, along with Sam, kept me upright; able to face the days as they came my way, although I don’t think they ever really knew just how much I needed them.

  I could not believe how quickly the rest of the week passed. Each day the same tasks were completed: breakfasts and packed lunches prepared, playgroup sessions attended and waiting daily at the school gates for the end-of-the-day bell to ring. Dinner making, bath times, family-together times and just-me-and-Sam times.

  The weekend came in the front door and flew out of the back door, and before I knew it, it was ‘that day’ again. It seemed to emerge as quickly as if it were a Tuesday, appearing just twenty-four short hours later. It was a day I now called and regarded as ‘Bess’s Day’.

  So I did all the usual chores that I had to do and took the boys to school. Bess had phoned me on Friday to ask if I minded if she came at ten rather than ten thirty. I’d told her I didn’t mind, but spent the weekend wondering if there was any particular reason for the change. At ten on the dot Bess arrived.

  I answered the door as usual to her cheery greeting:

  ‘Hi Sarah.’

  ‘Hi Bess.’

  We exchanged greetings so familiarly and casually you would have thought we had been doing it for years. Bess walked into the lounge and made her way to her usual place, and as she sat down, she completed her task of laying out her folder, papers, pens and diary in just the same ‘matter of fact’ way as she would have done in her own home.

  She asked me how I had been that week, and I shared with her my thoughts about how I felt responsible and to blame for many of the actions that had shaped my life when I was a young girl. I told her that the only thing I ever wanted to do was grow up without anything major happening in my life, as other girls I knew had. After listening to what I had said, Bess spoke with comforting gentleness to me:

  ‘Sarah, you can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault. You have to believe that. Many adults do things they know they shouldn’t. They know the things they are doing are wrong, yet they still do them. It isn’t the child’s responsibility to make sure adults behave in the correct way; it’s theirs and theirs alone. They are responsible, Sarah, not you.’

  As Bess’s words hit home, I wanted so urgently to believe her, but it was hard. I knew deep in my heart that what she was saying was almost certainly true; yet I felt that I couldn’t allow it to be so. As I listened to Bess’s sentiments, and felt the comfort that they were bringing, it all still felt wrong. I still felt to blame. I should have asked for help and I didn’t.

  After all, I could have run away and hadn’t done so. I don’t know why not. I think it was because of fear, and the fact was, I had no one to run to and nowhere to go.

  I sat for the next hour telling Bess how Bill had first touched me: slowly with his fingers at first (I remember feeling like he was exploring me), and then how he had actually used his penis to penetrate me a few weeks later. I hated him. I hated this man for everything: for my sleepless nights, for my dreams and for all the bad memories that had entwined themselves, like creeping vines, in every available nook and cranny in my mind. I hated him for the fact that I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I hated him for taking trust away from me before I got chance to even know what trust actually was. But most of all I hated him for making me feel ashamed of who I was.

  Sarah, used and abused.

  Discarded,

  Leftover,

  Waste.

  As the memories flooded uncontrollably back to the front of my mind, escaping out of the box I had tried to secure them in, the tears once more flowed copiously down my cheeks.

  I couldn’t stop them. I cried for what seemed like hours, although it was in fact only ten minutes, and felt unable to prevent the overflow building like a river from within. Bess moved across the room, sitting on the floor in front of me, and held me tightly yet so softly, protecting me in her arms in the same way as a grandmother holds her first grandchild. Bess handed me a tissue, but one wasn’t enough. I needed three or four to mop up my tears.

  And I felt so foolish, crying like an injured child that had fallen over and grazed her knees for the very first time in her life.

  I knew deep down I was made of stronger stuff, but that day my strength had gone into hiding. It had deserted me just like the sun deserts a thunder-laden, stormy sky in the bleakest, coldest and deepest of winters. I tried hard to make logical sense of the words that had queued up regimentally in my head, each word waiting patiently in turn to be spoken. As I sat back, Bess moved back onto the settee, easing her arms quietly from around me, her comforting task completed for the moment.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do about what had happened,’ I told Bess. ‘Bill had told me not to tell anyone about the things he had done. He told me no one would believe me, and I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? He was an adult and I was a child. That’s why up until a few weeks ago, when I spoke to Dr Tranor, I had never spoken out about what I had been through.’

  Bess spoke a few seconds later, making sense of what she had heard.

  ‘It’s normal
behaviour, Sarah, for adults who abuse children to tell them not to tell. They still use their age and the fact that they are adults as a threat to children, knowing that a child won’t speak out against an adult. I have seen this happen lots of times before. Sarah, the adult always uses this threat to silence the child and unfortunately it always works.’

  I understood what Bess was telling me. Now that I was a grown up too, I realised that an adult would say these things and a child would have believed it, just as I had believed Bill all those years before. I was so frightened of telling anyone that I never spoke out. I was afraid that if I said anything, I would be taken away and locked up in a home where I wouldn’t be allowed to see my family.

  Bess’s time with me had once more drawn to a close. It was over, for this week anyhow. I had six days rest before I had to dredge up the memories of my past life again. Suddenly six days weren’t long enough. I wanted more time.

  I needed it.

  Although I wanted help to put things into perspective, I still needed to take things at my pace. I wondered how slow I really wanted to go with all of this. I really had no idea, but strangely enough I remembered I just wanted the sessions to be over. At first I found myself thinking I wanted the memories to be recollections that belonged to someone else. That someone else could have been anyone, as long as it wasn’t me. I felt sick inside; the memories were in fact poisonous. I found myself wanting them to be the memories of someone who had never even existed – that was the only way they couldn’t hurt me.

  Chapter Nine

  I CANCELLED MY session with Bess the following week because it was half term, and I knew it would be hard trying to sort out the boys with a sitter so that Bess could call as usual. I knew that if I asked Maria she would willingly have said ‘yes’, but I didn’t want to have to explain what I was going to be doing. She would never have asked, but somehow I would have felt obliged to tell her the reason I wanted her to help me.

  Cancelling Bess meant I would be able to spend this week with the boys without any interruptions. I actually used the week as an excuse to have extra time to think things through; so that I could try and work out what areas I wanted to talk about with Bess next time.

  I was lucky the weather was particularly mild for late October, and I took the boys on lots of walks to the park and out in the country lanes that surrounded our house. We had our usual trip to the dentist, which took up a full morning – not unusual with five boys to be seen – and because we were so busy I had no time to think about other things. I was fortunate really, because the boys kept me fully active and didn’t allow me any ‘daydreaming’ time.

  We had a great week together – it was one of the best. We played lots of games and even managed a picnic too, particularly as the weather was so accommodating. It wasn’t long before it was the end of the week and we started preparing for the return to school on Monday: sorting out uniforms, making sure reading was done and gathering washed PE kit from the laundry basket.

  Sam and I enjoyed our weekend. We took the boys into town to the library to change their books, and on our way home had lunch and then played cricket and rounders on the field close by. On Sunday the weather deteriorated and it rained all day.

  As I sat in the bath that night, I lingered longer than I normally did, thinking for the first time about tomorrow, when Bess would return. I wanted so badly to say, ‘I’m okay I don’t need your help, thanks but I’m fine now,’ when she called in the morning, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. I knew I wouldn’t say it, because I knew deep down I was still a complete wreck.

  Another Monday morning came around. I felt Mondays were like ‘bad pennies’ – they always turned up. With Mondays came Bess: a good penny, a regular occurrence, desperate to help me, even though there were times when I had found it difficult even to talk to her. I had about ten minutes to spare before she would knock on the door and be there, standing in front of me, too cheerful to empathise with how I now felt inside: lost.

  I couldn’t really blame Bess for how she was when she visited me, but sometimes her smiles were a little too much to bear. It felt as if she always had a purpose, while I was struggling so hard to keep in touch with my own sense of purpose. I felt more trapped than ever now my dreams had started recurring. They had become more prolific over the last two nights, and everywhere I looked within my dreams the smiles had always been absent. It was as if they had been captured and imprisoned as far away from me as they could get…

  Out of touch, out of reach.

  They had been taken away because they just did not fit the equation. It was like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Smiles were simply the wrong shape for my world, a world made up of night time dreams. But smiles had always been good before. Smiles were the tonic for making you feel good inside. I knew this; I had used smiles on the boys after tears had dried, and when they’d fallen and scuffed their knees playing football…

  But the way I felt at the moment… I would have needed at least a ton of smiles stolen back and brought to me on a lorry. Today was a day I knew smiling would be hard to achieve. As I drifted in and out of my ‘smile’ thoughts, I realised that the door was being knocked on for the second time. I lifted myself out of my daydream and walked quickly across the lounge and into the hall to open the front door. Bess looked a little perplexed.

  ‘Hi Sarah, I was beginning to think I had been stood up,’ she told me.

  ‘Sorry, I was just busy and didn’t hear the door.’

  ‘Oh that’s okay, don’t worry, at least I’ve found you now.’

  As she sat down in the lounge, I noticed she hadn’t occupied her usual spot but she was sitting on the armchair at the far end of the room. Today felt different. She didn’t take out a notebook or her customary bundles of papers. She just sat, putting her bag on the floor at the side of her. I wondered, for the few seconds before she spoke, why she hadn’t got all her usual things with her. I wanted to ask, but I knew that asking would have been nosy. I didn’t want to appear unduly curious. I was drifting off onto another train of thought when Bess’s voice nudged its way into my consciousness.

  ‘I thought today I’d do things differently,’ Bess explained. ‘I thought I’d just listen and not make notes. I know you’d probably feel more comfortable that way. What do you think?’

  I wasn’t sure if this would help. She was still Bess, no different, even though she had no book to write in. She would still think about what I would tell her in the same way, nothing would change that. She was still the therapist. I still saw her in this light. Not having her notebook wouldn’t change that either.

  ‘All right let’s give it a go if you think it’ll be different,’ I suggested. ‘Do you really think it will make a difference to me and how I will tell you things?’

  Bess replied to my query speaking quite softly, looking at me more intently with each word.

  ‘Not having my notebook should make a difference because you should be able to focus more on what you want to say, not be sitting there wondering all the time about what I may be scribbling down. You’ll also be drawn away from thinking why I wrote down one thing and not the next, when you may feel that the last thing you said was more important than the one before, yet I failed to note it down. Do you see what I mean Sarah?’

  ‘I think so but I’m not sure really.’

  ‘Shall we just give it a go and then we’ll see how far we get?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Even though I told Bess I thought it was worth trying, inside I still felt very cynical about everything that she had said to me that morning. I honestly didn’t think what she was about to do could possibly work until I started talking. I took Bess on a journey, travelling back in my memories to the first moment Bill had taken me to the flat and washed me. I hated every second when he was touching me. Talking of it made me physically feel his touch once more, and this shocked me so much that I shivered. It felt as if I was going through that terrible experience for the very first time.
I was so desperate to get away, yet I remember feeling as if I had been glued into place.

  Unable to move.

  Unable to speak.

  Unable to run.

  Unable to cry out.

  And I was so alone, so afraid, so very much an unwilling prisoner.

  I glanced at Bess to see what she was doing. She was just looking at me, an expression of sheer bewilderment on her face. Although she didn’t speak, it was as if her questions communicated to me telepathically and were darting around looking for answers.

  ‘Didn’t he stop at all when he realised you weren’t comfortable with what he was doing to you?’ I heard the unspoken words so clearly and gave her the answer she sought without saying a word.

  A little while later I heard my voice, saying:

  ‘No. He just continued doing what he had planned and intended to do. Nothing I said changed his mind. He was driven by a purpose, his purpose. I wanted it to stop. It didn’t. It never did. He didn’t want it to.’

  As I looked up, I thought I saw a tear in Bess’s eye but she didn’t actually cry, so maybe I only imagined it. As I continued to look deeply into her face, trying to read her thoughts, she asked me to tell her more about the events on that particular day. I certainly felt different. Bess was right: talking without the interruptions and presence of her notebook was having the desired effect. At least it was until I revealed my next recollection of that day:

  ‘Once he had washed me he sat, drying me for ages whilst he kept looking at me, telling me how lovely I was. I knew he didn’t mean me, by that I mean my face, because he was looking at my private parts.’ I sat uncomfortably, shifting and wriggling around on the chair, pulling my legs up tightly against my chest to defend myself from all the invading memories. At the same time, I was trying to block out the clear memory that made his face appear so photo-perfect in front of me. I closed my eyes and shook my head, yet he was still there. He was a memory ghost. I knew that, so why then did he not start to fade?