by Anya Peters
Chapter 22
Mummy is on the phone, smiling. There’s a Biro behind her ear, and only one other person in the office, a grey-haired woman in a pale-pink jumper, with her back to us.
The office where she works on Saturdays is in a tiny, mock-Tudor building tucked away at the end of a small parade of shops a few roads down from ours. It has a big, plate-glass window, and we stand outside waiting for her to look out. Liam tells me through clenched teeth to stop crying, that it’ll make Mummy worse. They know I’d jump off the edge of the world for Mummy. But now that the tears have started I can’t stop them. Not even for her.
We aren’t meant to disturb her at work on Saturdays, except in an emergency, and we rarely do, but if we have to, usually she’ll beckon us in. Looking out at us today, she obviously senses something more than the usual fights and bickering has happened. When she’s put down the phone she comes out, her lighter in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. By the time she closes the door she is already crying. Seeing her standing there, so helplessly, sets off more panic in me. She’s always telling me I’m ‘too sensitive’, and not to let things bother me so much, but she must realise this is something different.
‘What have you done to her?’ she yells at Liam. Then, looking back at me shuddering, unable to look at her, tears streaming down her face as I sob, she is trying to force me to tell her. But I can’t. I’m not allowed…he’ll kill me. Eventually I manage to get out through shuddering, stuttering sobs that I want to go.
‘Go where?’
Hyperventilating, shoulders heaving, gasping for breath, the words hiccupping out through gulps of air, I finally get out that I want to live in Ireland.
She’s stunned. She can’t believe it. Of course she can’t. Not after all those years of having to whisper me secret assurances that no one would ever take or send me away from her.
‘Why?’
‘I just want to.’
She tries to get me to tell her why, but I can’t get any words out or look up at her. Her crying is unbearable. She doesn’t believe it’s just because of the boys’ teasing. I’m eleven and a half now, and when my uncle isn’t there I can stand up to the boys. She knows it has to be something else. I feel like I’m going to collapse onto the pavement.
‘What’s happened, what’s caused this now? I want to know the truth, Liam,’ she says angrily. ‘What have you done to her?’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I just…I just want to go. Please, Mum…I don’t want to stay at home any more. Please phone Kathy…’
Her crying is as loud as mine. ‘What have you done to her?’ she says, shaking Liam by the shoulders. ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ Liam says.
’Tell me, Anya, what have they done to you? Just tell me.’
My eyelids are flickering shut and my head feels like it is cracking open with pain. Any minute he’ll be here. ‘Tell her, Liam,’ I say in the end. I don’t know what else to do to get her to let me go.
Liam shakes his head.
’Tell me what? I’m warning you, Liam, tell me, what is it?’
I can’t say it, can’t put it into words. ‘Tell her, Liam…so she’ll let me go.’
Nobody breathes.
’Daddy has been doing things to her.’
’Things? What things?’
And in the silence that follows the penny drops and she knows.
The colour goes from her face. She stares blankly at us.
Then she breaks down, crying, saying, ‘No! When? Where is he now?’
‘Just let me go, Mum, I’m alright,’ I say, looking over my shoulder. ’I won’t tell Kathy…I just want to go.’
But Mummy won’t agree. She knows I don’t want to go.
’Please, Mum…he’ll…please…he’ll kill me.’
Nobody knows what to do. Liam stands rooted to the spot, still a head taller than me but looking thin and small, standing too still, his hands curled into fists at his side. Mummy pulls out another cigarette, her face white and puffy, her eyes wild and staring. My right knee spasms; nothing inside me will stay still. Everyone and everything is falling apart.
’What’s gonna happen, Mum?’ I ask.
But she doesn’t know. We all look at the pavement, trying to shush each other, none of us touching or knowing what to do. Eventually she pulls herself together and promises that when Marie and Peter arrive they will know what to do. I still can’t stop crying or shaking, even when someone Mummy knows walks past. I wish someone would hold me.
Since having their baby, Marie and Peter have been visiting us about once a month. They come up on the train and pop in to see Mummy at work first as it’s closer to the station. They won’t get to the house for a few hours yet.
‘What’ll happen then?’
She doesn’t know any more than we do. She says until they come we have to go back up to the house and pretend nothing has happened. But we can’t go back up to the house, not now, not after this.
‘Please don’t make me, Mum…please…I can’t. He’ll kill me when he knows.’
She’s sobbing like a little girl. ‘Don’t let on, just pretend everything is normal. Do it for me, Anya, please.’ I would have jumped off the edge of the world for Mummy. Poor, poor Mummy—the shame of it all, of having all our private business told on the street, of having to tell Marie and Peter, of having her sister know that she has let her down, that she hasn’t been able to look after her daughter for her the way she promised her she would all those years ago. She doesn’t know what to do. She reaches out to push my hair from my face but I jerk my head away—I can’t let myself respond to gentleness. I have to close myself down, not open myself up.
‘You have to go back there,’ she says, ‘go back and act normal until we come…Don’t let him guess anything…Do it for me.’ She is crying into her hanky, her hands trembling. ‘Say you and her had a fight, Liam,’ she tells him. Her voice hardens. ‘Do you understand?’ Liam nods, without raising his head. Standing there, her words ‘Don’t give anything away…Just pretend everything is normal…’ echo in my head.
It’ what I would try to do for most of my life after that—try not to give anything away, just pretend everything is normal.
Chapter 23
From the moment my uncle comes in he knows there is something wrong. He’s late, but not in a bad mood, and I hear him talking to Liam in the hall, joking. When Liam stays quiet I hear him asking him what the matter is; have we had a punch-up? He doesn’t wait for the answer; he is used to that. He hangs his jacket over the banister and kicks off his heavy, steel-toed boots. I try to keep out of his way, but they will come into the front room any minute, so I have to slip out past them. He’s still holding on to the door frame, pulling off his boots. He’s blocking my way. I shake my hair across my face and look down at the carpet, not wanting him to see the swelling and blotches or the look of terror on my face. But he reaches out and grabs my arm.
‘Are you the go-go dancer?’ he says, pulling me by the wrist, trying to make Liam laugh, which usually he would. I freeze. I can smell the drink from his breath. I bite the inside of my cheek hard but my tears are starting again.
‘No,’ I mumble, trying to pull away. ‘Marie and Peter will be up in a minute.’
He kicks his other boot off. ‘Is that this week?’
Liam nods, and my uncle lets go of my wrist. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asks, but I’m past him, going down into the kitchen.
‘Bring in my slippers,’ he calls. ‘Was this hallway hoovered?’ I call back quickly that it was and can hear him laughing with Liam and saying something about me as they walk into the front room to watch the start of Grandstand.
‘What’s up with her?’
‘You know what she’s like.’ Liam’s voice sounds cracked and tiny. The fear in it makes me shake. I get my uncle’s brown tartan slippers from under the chair in his bedroom and bring them down. He knows our fight must have been a bad one, but he’s used to fights between us;
he’s been encouraging Liam and the rest to pick them with me over the years. But this time he seems worried, a bit nervous. He doesn’t keep to routine; he doesn’t even inspect the housework; and his keys and newspaper are still on the bottom step out in the hall.
When I walk in I overhear him asking Liam again what has happened, but my tears are coming so I put his slippers down at his feet and half-run out of the room. He’s trying to make Liam laugh.
‘Did you give her a few right hooks? What did she get—a busted lip?’
When the jobs are all finished I try to keep out of his way, but the house suddenly seems tiny. A clap of bright white light seems to go off in my head; I feel dizzy, and don’t know where to go. He can get to me wherever I try to hide in this house, he always does, especially on Saturday afternoons; Saturday afternoons are guaranteed. I push open the door to the cellar and sit in the musty gas-smell at the top of the steps in the dark with my knees to my chest, under the coats hanging from hooks on the back of the door, my fist in my mouth to muffle the cries.
Not being able to hear what’s going on is worse. My head is pulsing. Any minute he could burst in. I go back and mop the kitchen floor, sloshing the red tiles with water, but the sun streaming in through the windows dries them too quickly. The minute I hear footsteps coming I mop it again so it’s soaking and shiny, like a moat of red blood that nobody can get to me across. Even my uncle doesn’t step over wet floors; he’d come back and get me later when it was dry. I slosh and slosh until the muscles under my arms tire and I can’t hold the mop any more.
When Liam comes out to get my uncle another beer from the fridge he won’t even look at me. He’s shut me out already. His face looks like a corpse, his eyes empty and staring, with dark smudges I haven’t noticed before on the skin underneath. The way he looks scares me. He steps past quickly as if I’m not there.
‘What’s happening?’ I whisper. ‘Does he suspect anything?’
‘You’ve gone and done it now,’ he says, without looking at me, throwing the tea towel back onto the draining board.
I feel sure that he is just about to go in and tell. ‘Please don’t say anything, Liam,’ I call after him quietly, ‘please…I never wanted any of this to happen. I just wanted you and Michael to stop calling me names.’
He doesn’t answer.
I tiptoe after him, straining to hear over the wrestling on the TV.
‘Was it a bad one?’ my uncle laughs. ‘Did you win?’
When he starts snapping open another beer I run upstairs.
On my pink bed under the window in the corner of the bedroom I share with the girls, I can’t stop trembling. I try to rock myself still, stuffing the edge of the pink counterpane into my mouth to muffle the sounds of crying. I know any minute he is going to realise what has happened. Through the sounds of the rain gunning down outside and Grandstand coming up through the floorboards, I wait to hear his footsteps thumping up the stairs two at a time.
All afternoon, jumping out of my skin at every noise, I wait; trying to keep an eye on the road to see if anyone is coming, my face pressed to the glass to peer further down. I feel drowsy and my head feels too heavy, like I am slipping in and out of consciousness. I don’t hear the gate open or the footsteps up to the front door. When the doorbell goes my heart leaps into my mouth.
I think I recognise Marie’s voice. I can’t hear Peter, but then Peter is always quiet. He doesn’t like my uncle; he sits there reading a newspaper until my uncle goes up to have his sleep in the afternoon. Jack must be asleep in his pram. Through the floorboards I hear the horseracing on the TV, and Marie saying stuff now and again. Why is she just chatting? Why isn’t she coming up to tell me what’s happening? I knew it; this is all a trick—a test, just like he always said when I was a little girl. He’ll be up to get me any minute.
It’s already gone five. Mummy will be here any minute. My teeth are chattering and I can’t stop shivering. Someone eventually comes to the toilet on the half-landing below. It’s him. I reach up for the window latch and think of jumping out. Then the bedroom door pushes open. It’s Marie, with her finger to her lips and her shoes in her hand. I break down when I see her. She tiptoes across the carpet and puts her hand over my mouth, telling me to shush. She’s crying too.
‘Don’t cry. I can’t let him see my make-up run,’ she says. She wipes her mascara with the hem of her blouse. ‘Just keep normal, please Anya, just for a bit longer. We can’t let him know anything is up. Mummy’s at the police station and the police are going to come. They’re going to arrest him,’ she whispers.
No air will go down into my lungs. The reality terrifies me. ‘When?’
‘I don’t know, but I need you to do me a favour. Mummy said if she wasn’t back by quarter past, to go to the chip shop and get chips for tea. He’ll start to get suspicious in a minute when Mummy’s late, start wondering why. We just have to act normal so he doesn’t think anything’s up. If he doesn’t get his tea in time he’ll just drink more.’
She presses a folded piece of paper with the scribbled order and a five-pound note into my hand.
‘Make one of the boys go, Marie, please.’
’No, you have to.’
‘Why?’
‘Mummy said…Please, Anya. It’s okay, look, come on, go behind me. I’ll cover you.’
I half-crouch behind her as she goes down the stairs, stopping at each landing to listen out. She grabs my blue anorak from the coat rack and gives it to me behind her back then moves across, blocking the doorway to the living room to let me run past the other side of her.
My fingers won’t work properly and I fumble with the lock, sure that he’s at my back.
‘Quick,’ Marie whispers, ‘run.’
I don’t stop running until I reach the chip shop roads away. It’s empty and I slam the door behind me, out of breath, everything inside me shaking, convinced he’s run after me.
I’m in a daze as I walk back with the food. Then I see the two police cars part-way down our street, blue lights flashing against the pavement and the big, pink rhododendron bushes, but I’m almost on top of them before I’ve seen them. I stop dead. They’re parked just outside our house. I see a group of people crowded at the gate, and the dark-blue uniforms and hats of the policemen. I’m just seeing pictures; my mind isn’t back in my body yet. Then I realise what’s happening. I turn to run, but hot pee dribbles down my thighs. I cross my legs, squeezing my muscles inside, trying to make myself stop, and dive into the neighbour’s garden to hide, crouching down behind the privet hedge, the chip bag crushed to my chest.
‘Is this her?’ I hear someone say.
There are footsteps to the gate; I’m trapped. If I run out now I’ll run right into them. ‘You’ve gone and done it now,’ I hear Liam’s voice say inside my head. The gate swings open noisily and four navy-blue legs bend down.
‘Hello, are you Anya?’
Curled up tight into a ball I won’t say a thing. They lean down and take my arm away from around my head, trying to coax me up. I drop all my weight downwards, digging my heels in and leaning back, trying to lie down. He’s going to kill me. They force me up but I cling to the gate, the fish and chips falling open to the ground. They pull my other arm. I’m afraid I’ll snap. One of them picks up the bag of chips, kicking the fallen ones away, and they lead me by the shoulder back down to the house.
The front door is wide open and he’s there, standing in the narrow hallway against the green flowered wallpaper. His big, heavy hands are curled into fists at his side. They want me to walk past him. I can’t. I won’t. There’s another policeman, taller than him, standing next to him, but my uncle is still belting out orders, telling Michael to get his ‘proper fucking shoes…Not them ones, you halfwit,’ throwing back the ones Michael has already thrown down to him, the brown suede slip-ons with tassels on the front. The policemen are standing there waiting, but my uncle isn’t afraid of anyone.
When he throws back the shoes he turns an
d sees me. I shrink back towards the door and flinch, but one of the policemen stands in front of me.
‘Move over, let her pass.’
I fly upstairs, shaking from head to toe. Marie runs up after me.
‘It’s all right; they’re taking him away now. It’s all right; he’s going…Animal!’ She screams the last word down from the top of the stairs. ‘Hope they lock you up for good.’
I put the chips on the bed. ‘Sorry…I dropped them.’
‘That doesn’t matter, forget them.’
I can’t stop shaking. Marie makes me change my socks and underwear.
‘Why?’
’They want you to go to the station too.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘You’ll have to. You just have to tell them what he did to you. Then they’ll put him away. Mummy is there waiting.’
We can’t find clean underwear. The laundry isn’t done until Sunday, when Mummy and I and one of the others take it all down to the launderette. I find clean socks and pull off the damp ones.
I beg Marie to come with me but she can’t. She says she has to look after the girls. I don’t know if they are back from their friend’s house yet. I didn’t see them, or Liam. She says she has to make arrangements.
‘He’ll kill me,’ I say. ‘He’ll get me.’
‘He won’t. I promise. You’ll go in different cars.’
She tries to lead me downstairs but my legs won’t move. The police promise that I won’t see him.
‘The car taking him has already gone,’ they say. ‘Look, you can see it at the end of the road.’ I see the end of it disappearing around the corner past the newsagents. ‘And we’ll drive a completely different way there.’
I’m sandwiched between two policemen on the back seat. One offers me sherbet lemons from a paper bag but I won’t take them. They try to talk to me, asking ordinary, everyday questions, but I don’t know what to answer, afraid it’s all just a trick. I can’t bear the thought of them all knowing what he’s been doing. It’s a secret. It had never been put into words until the boys started teasing me about it. They promise me it will be all right, that I won’t bump into my uncle on the way there.
