Escaping the Darkness

by Sarah Preston

  I continued talking to Bess. I decided to tell her about the morning I was due to sit my exams in more detail:

  ‘When I was sixteen, after Michael was born, I wanted to sit my exams. I had asked Mum if she would babysit, and she agreed. On the first morning of my exams, I caught the eight o’clock bus to Mum and Dad’s house from town. I got there at eight twenty and Mum was in one of her bad moods. It was obvious she and Dad had been arguing. She asked me what I was doing there so early. I was tense because of the exam and told her: “I’m dropping off Michael remember? You said you would mind him while I sat my exams.”

  ‘She looked at me even angrier than before and said, “Why do you want to sit your bloody exams, what good will they do you, you’re tied to a baby or hadn’t you realised Sarah?”

  ‘“I want to sit them, for me,” I told her.

  ‘“What do you mean for you? Who are you? You are just a silly girl who got herself pregnant at fifteen and hadn’t sense to get rid of it!”

  ‘I looked at Mum in disbelief that day. Was she really so angry that I had had a baby at sixteen? Was she angry because I had left home, moved in with Paul and not let her have sole custody of Michael to bring him up her way like she had wanted to do? Or was it the fact that she no longer had easy access to money for bingo tickets? I left a few moments later and didn’t see either Mum or Dad for six months.’

  As I finished speaking, Bess knew as well as I did what the real reason for Mum’s anger was; like me she couldn’t quite believe a mother was angry because she could no longer ‘market’ her daughter to the waiting paedophile. Bess said nothing for what seemed like the next minute or so; in reality it felt far longer. Eventually she looked up at me and saw me watching her. I thought that was the moment Bess was going to say something but she just looked at me. Deep within her eyes I saw disbelief and bewilderment, yet reflected within their glossy sparkle was understanding too. As we looked at one another our thoughts collided in the emptiness in the middle of the room. In one very emotional, highly-charged moment we both let out a sigh which became one, united in sorrow.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AS BESS WALKED to her car, I felt a sense of relief and real understanding for the first time since we met. Bess was slowly bringing meaning back into my life, but at the time I didn’t know that. Even though I had once again felt trapped by the thoughts of Bill and the awful memories he had left me with in my heart, I knew these memories were not part of my future. I just wasn’t sure how to remove them. All I had to think about now was me, the rest of my life and my family.

  Bess had somehow, without me knowing, helped me to face the reality of what was now happening to me. She was helping me to understand and accept my feelings so that I could put them back into a part of my mind where they wouldn’t cause me any pain. Bill had reappeared in my life and I saw him as a huge threat – even though I had only seen him on one occasion in town. Yet that one time was all it had taken to turn my world upside down. It made me feel as vulnerable as I had when I first met him and he had begun to abuse me, when I was that small, insignificant, unsuspecting, vulnerable child of eleven all those years ago.

  Seeing Bill had brought back every memory, every degrading second of the time I had endured with him racing back to the surface of my mind. These memories had haunted me far more in my sleep than they should have done. Bill’s loathsome ‘memory ghost’ had been born and had invaded my dreams. Each one of my dreams brought his memory ghost back to life.

  I had spoken to Bess about each separate incident on each of her Monday visits. Trying to tackle more than one issue at a time had become too demanding. I remember at first being sceptical and never really believed the sessions with Bess were helping, mainly because an hour never felt long enough to say all I had to say. Yet each minute I was trapped in that hour seemed like an eternity, lost forever in the land no one spoke of but everyone knew existed. A land inhabited only by the abused children of yesterday. Bess had talked and listened, but I wasn’t really sure she knew how deeply seated my memories were or how disturbed they made me feel.

  As I had more and more sessions with Bess, I felt a huge sense of support coming from her as she listened to all I had to say; inside, however, I still had a profound feeling that she would never really understand the full extent of my dreams. This wasn’t the first time I had felt like this either. I remembered having the same thoughts a few weeks earlier. All around me people were getting on with their lives, yet each day my own life seemed to fall apart a little more.

  I knew my family and friends were on hand to give me support, but how could they do so if they didn’t know I was sharing the secrets I held close, locked away, out of reach from every prying mind? I had come to the point where I was telling Bess about the worst part of my past: Bill ejaculating over my body. Although this time, as each new word left my lips, I didn’t feel any of those extra weighty boulders being lifted off my shoulders. Instead, I felt as if I was still trapped in the world of vicious memories, where the same movie was still being run through the projector day after day. The boulders remained unmoved and untouched, as if they were a permanent part of my body.

  Bess left that day having not been much help to me. Her words of encouragement to keep talking were the exact same words as they had been before; her advice was the same, too. It was at this particular moment I wondered if there was any real point in continuing with the sessions. Had I now come to the end of the road with Bess? After all, I had been seeing her for almost a year now.

  This was just another question to stack with the many others, but it was a question that tipped me over the edge that week. I wandered around the house each day in a daze not really comprehending the hours as they passed or the chores I did that day. My mind was buzzing as I tried to feel my way through this minefield of unanswered questions. Questions that I had piled against the walls of my bad memory box. Each question’s answer was becoming lost in time. Only I didn’t know that then.

  Later that night, when everything was quiet, I left the comfort of Sam’s arms and my warm bed and made my way downstairs. It was 3 am and even though we went to bed early, I had lain awake for the last four hours listening to Sam’s sleepy breaths. I had tossed and turned feeling desperately tired but unable to find sleep. Every bone in my body seemed to be filled with tension. Bess’s words had left me feeling uneasy when in reality they should have continued to be a comfort to me.

  One sentence rang out over and over again, getting progressively louder in my mind: ‘It was not your fault Sarah, you were not to blame.’

  But who was to blame? It was me who was made to lie on that bed, not her. It was me who was being abused, not her.

  It was me who said ‘no’ but didn’t move. I was to blame.

  For the rest of that night I sat in the familiar cosy surroundings of my lounge. I loved this room. It held so many happy memories – in the pictures and photographs on the walls and the books on the shelves. This was my home, a home I shared with people I loved, and had been all the comfort I needed until that awful day last February. Now I sat here desperate for comfort but not finding any. I glanced around and remembered all the happy times captured in the family photographs: the camping trips, the St George’s Day Parade, and many other happy occasions besides.

  As I looked at each one of the photos, they brought back so many other memories. The many hours of band practice for scouts, which involved out-of-tune bugle playing and drums being beaten out of time to the music (but these were my boys and every sound they had made had been precious). And then there were the camping trips. Photographs taken on a marathon trip where we had started in Cornwall and camped in four other counties on the way home, all in twelve days. These memories were just so precious to me.

  I looked at the crammed bookshelves full of books that Sam and I loved. We had collected a lot of these together and enjoyed scouring round bookshops, both old and new, every time we were in town. We were always seeing if we could find somethin
g else to squeeze into the imaginary gaps in the bookshelves that we always believed were there. I sat and chuckled, remembering the drama every time another book was brought home, and the desperate attempts to shuffle everything along the shelves to make the tiniest bit of room for it. I stood up, went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea and a slice of toast: comfort food.

  It was close to six now so I started thinking about the day ahead. I tried to push my worrying thoughts back under the box lid where they belonged. They never went completely under; instead they poked out from time to time during the rest of that week, reminding me that my past was real and that I would always have to live with it.

  I had two further meetings with Bess telling her about other thoughts and feelings that had been locked deep inside me for more months and years that I cared to remember. As we talked and discussed the events in my life, I was filled with more anger and hatred than I knew what to do with. I hated what had happened to me. It had made me overprotective as a mother. I hated every moment my sons were out of my sight. I didn’t trust anyone, from the stranger who smiled as I pushed my sons one by one in their prams over the years in the park, to the husbands of acquaintances I had begun to get to know from school or cub or scout meetings.

  As my sons grew up, I learned to relax a little around familiar people, but my guard was always firmly in place when I was out in a public place, or when Sam and I took the boys camping. I had to be especially careful with Andrew because he had no sense of danger at all. When we arrived at campsites, he would be out of the car talking to the first person he saw, getting to know their name before Sam and I had even unpacked the tent. We used to say to each other that if someone said to Andrew, ‘I’ve a bag of sweets you can have them if you come for a walk’, then my boy would be gone in an instant.

  We had to have eyes in the back of our heads with him. He had Attention Deficit Disorder and was a born talker – he even talked for most of the night in his sleep. One guy on the campsite we regularly visited asked me how we coped with a son who had verbal diarrhoea! It was easy because we loved him (although there were times when I’m sure he heard ‘be quiet Andrew’ far more times than he should have heard in a day from either Sam or me). Even though I looked relaxed to the outside world, I was never really completely at ease until I knew my boys were all safe in their beds.

  During the rest of that week, I painstakingly thought about my sessions with Bess and whether or not she could help me further. I had already decided by Friday that I didn’t think we could make any progress. It was obvious to me that I had gone as far along the memory road as I cared to go. It wasn’t that I was unwilling to experience my past again; it was just that I thought that it had been relived enough. I rang Bess’s office and left a message saying I wanted to cancel Monday’s session and that I would probably ring again next week to reschedule.

  Over the weekend the boys went off to play crazy golf with Sam in Fleetwood. They loved to go there, have a ride on the tram, have their picnic and then go off to play their little game of golf. I was alone with Timothy for the day, and I was glad I had this time to think about everything and decide what I was going to do next.

  I thought long and hard about my life that weekend. I made a decision when I was fourteen that I would stop Bill abusing me, and now, for the first time since then, I knew what I was going to do. On Monday I was going to ring Bess and thank her for her help, but tell her I didn’t want to see her again or continue with the sessions. I knew this was the right thing for me to do.

  Bess had helped me face the demons that had haunted me, but now I knew it was my strength and mine alone that would get me through the next hurdles in my life. I had to do this alone. For the rest of the day I busied myself with jobs, looked after Timothy and didn’t think too much about the week that lay ahead. The boys returned with Sam later that day, and we ate tea and watched some television. Each one of them told me about their day.

  Sunday was busy as usual, filled with washing, ironing and getting things prepared for school. On Monday morning after I came home from the school run, I picked up the phone to ring Bess. She answered her phone almost immediately, saying, ‘Hi. Bess Meyer here, can I help you?’

  For a few seconds I lost my nerve and couldn’t answer her. She began speaking again, ‘Hi. Bess Meyer…’

  ‘Hi Bess, it’s Sarah. I just wanted to let you know that I don’t want to continue with the sessions any longer and to thank you for all the help you have given me so far.’

  I heard a sigh of regret at the other end of the telephone. ‘Oh hi Sarah, I was just thinking about you and wondering if you were all right. Are you sure about this?’

  ‘I’m positive. You have helped me bring my memories out into the open and now all I want is to get on with being a mum and enjoying my life with Sam. I don’t have room in my life to waste time on my memories. I just want to try and be normal again.’

  That was a laugh: I was never normal and I hadn’t been normal since the age of eleven. I could hear the silence on the other end of the line and wondered what Bess was thinking. Bess spoke casually to me, wishing me luck with the future and hoping that I would be okay. I thanked her after she’d said that if I ever needed to speak to her as a friend, then all I had to do was phone and she would come and see me straight away without me having to go through all the usual lengthy channels of seeing my doctor and making a host of new appointments.

  After I finished the conversation with Bess, I thought about what she had said but I wouldn’t see her again. Because I knew that, from now on, it was my battle and mine alone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  OVER THE NEXT seven years, I didn’t have much time to spare for reminiscing, because I submerged myself fully in my family and began working part-time a couple of evenings a week as a waitress in a local restaurant. On Saturday and Sunday evenings I went to work for four hours whilst Sam took care of the boys. I loved this little bit of independence and enjoyed bringing in the few extra pounds.

  I worked at the restaurant for ten busy months before I decided it was time for a change, and I then started work in a nursing home for a couple of nights a week as an auxiliary nurse, looking after old people. I enjoyed this work as it brought me closer to the nursing dreams and the career I had wanted when I was a younger. I moved about a bit over the next few years, working in four homes in total. I ended my career as an auxiliary nurse in 1997, after finding it difficult to return to nursing, having just seen my father die of cancer.

  The memories I had made had been good ones. I especially enjoyed the last two years of my nursing career, when I had worked on a special unit with elderly people who had senile dementia. It was wonderful to hear and share their memories of things that had happened forty or fifty years ago: wartime dances, parties with the American air crews, the women having to wear socks, painting their legs with gravy browning because there were no stockings available. Yet I felt sad too, knowing that these poor people couldn’t remember what they ate for breakfast that day. They were all very special and I loved them all so dearly.

  During this time when I was working, Sam had been made redundant and had been applying for lots of jobs. In the end we made a decision that he would go to university and study for his degree, which was a dream come true for him. He began his studies in 1992 and completed his course in 1996, gaining a BSc in Astronomy and Applied Physics. I was so proud of him and the fact that he had managed to study and still have time to play football or cricket whenever his sons demanded his attention.

  I spent many nights listening to him telling me about black holes and the other galaxies in our universe. I enjoyed every minute but never really fully understood what he was saying to me. I do have to thank him though, for making me more aware of our beautiful night sky, a sky that seems even more dramatic when viewed from a dark field when you’re camping in Cornwall.

  It was during these busy years that I successfully managed to bury my past deep inside the bad memory box. It stayed
there undisturbed for a long time, allowing me to be a mum, a part-time nurse and eventually, a full-time student, just as Sam had been. It was hard work shuffling all three activities but worth the effort. After Sam had finished his degree, I wanted to go and finish the education I had started, but that had been cut short all those years before. We had decided that once Sam completed his degree course, I would start. So in September 1996, with no real knowledge of what I wanted to do, I went to an open evening at the university.

  I felt totally exhilarated by the people and the buzz of energy that seemed to have been set free in the air that surrounded me. I desperately wanted to learn, but I was so terrified I wouldn’t be good enough and that I’d be laughed at because I had no qualifications to my name. Instead I was greeted with warmth, sincerity and a welcoming understanding – after all, I was a mature student, and entry requirements were less stringent.

  Before I knew it, I was signing a slip of paper offering me an unconditional place on a Year 0 Foundation Course (I studied history after), and being given details of where to go for enrolment. The only thing I had planned to do that night was enquire about a place, and now here I was with an offer. All the way home on the bus that night I was shaking with disbelief. What would Sam say?

  When I got home and I told him he laughed. I remember looking at him in disbelief before he spoke, saying, ‘You’ll be fine Sarah, don’t worry.’

  ‘That’s okay for you to say,’ I joked with him. ‘You’ve been there and got the T-shirt.’

  He came across the room and folded me into his arms like he always did when I needed reassurance. I was glad of the closeness. What had I done? He continued to reassure me, telling me I would be just fine. Sam used to say I was already very, very intelligent but that I just hadn’t been educated. He didn’t mean this in a derogatory way. He meant that I just hadn’t had the chance to get the qualifications at school that other people of my age had.