God, I was going a bit off-piste with my responses. I was sounding almost accusatory. But she didn’t seem to mind.
‘I had a child. A little boy. And I left him there with my mum. She wanted to bring him up because I was so young. She made out he was hers. I’ve hardly seen him since.’
‘That must’ve been tough, Lindsey.’
‘Sometimes.’
Oh. Bit hard-faced.
‘And the other times?’
‘Other times it was easy. I looked and him and hated him. Because he reminded me of . . . he reminded me of . . .’
And there she went again, with her crying.
Maybe I should fill in the blanks, I thought.
Because he reminded you of Mark Reynolds, love? Is that it, Lindsey?
That would’ve freaked her out.
And then she said it. Quietly. Quickly. But it was out there.
‘I was raped.’
I sat up quickly, my stomach lurching.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was raped,’ she said again, louder this time, and sounding maybe a bit pissed off.
‘Who raped you, Lindsey? Your boyfriend?’
‘No.’
‘D’you think it would help to tell me?’
‘It was my mum’s boyfriend.’
I tried to cast my mind back to all those years ago. I couldn’t think of who her mum was with at the time. And then I remembered: that’s why Adam surmised that Jocelyn’s mum hadn’t been pregnant, because she didn’t actually have a boyfriend.
‘He’d just come out of prison and was kind of hiding out in our house.’
My stomach lurched again.
‘Mum was sort of seeing him, and then he took this shine to me. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But he forced himself on me. She walked in on it. And she had the cheek to kick me out, and not him. My own mum found me being raped, and took his fucking side.’
Prison?
I now had to physically stop myself from being sick.
Jocelyn started to cry again. ‘And what made it worse was that he was my friend’s dad. So I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. And they wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Like she never believed me. They had me down as the local slut. And then Mum came up with this plan. To hide it all, and say the baby was hers. I wanted nothing more than to get rid of it. I wish I had got rid of it. I lost so much that night. I lost everything.’
I dropped the phone. I ran to the bathroom, threw myself on the floor and vomited into the toilet.
Noel hurried in. ‘You OK?’
I shook my head, kneeling by the toilet.
Could that be true? Had my dad hid away at Jocelyn’s house after getting out of the nick? Had he been sleeping with Jocelyn’s mum, and then raped Jocelyn?
I was sick again.
‘Is it food poisoning?’ Noel asked.
I nodded my head. ‘Fucking party caterers,’ I said. ‘The caller’s still on the line.’
Noel nodded, then hurried into the bedroom. I heard his reasonable tones.
‘I’m so sorry, but Kirsty has been taken ill rather suddenly. Would it be OK for me to talk to you? My name’s Neil. What’s yours?’
I stood. I washed my face in cold water. Dried it on one of the dayglo towels that Angela-Dawn had decided would stop us all from getting depressed. And then I walked out of Late Night, and I knew I would never go back.
I stood outside on the busy, smoky street. It is my fortieth birthday, I think, and I’ve just discovered my dad is a rapist.
My dad raped my friend from school, and she was only fourteen.
This was too much for me to handle. This was too much of a coincidence. I happened to be doing a shift at Late Night and I get a phone call from an old mate, and she tells me that? Oh, I got it. It was one of those TV prank shows. Someone was going to step out from behind that phone box over the road, laughing. A camera crew would file out of the kebab shop. Noel would come out behind me, pissing himself. Jocelyn would pull up in a limo, switching off her mobile, screeching You fell for it! Oh that was TOO MUCH! Oh Kathleen! You are funny!
I waited. I looked around. No-one came.
I forced a smile in case anyone was watching, filming. I even did a laugh, hollow though it was, as if to convey that I wasn’t stupid and I had got the joke.
And I wasn’t stupid.
And it wasn’t a joke.
But coincidences like that didn’t just happen, did they? Might Jocelyn have known I was working there, and . . . but how would she have known? It was a confidential service. I hardly told a soul I went there. I don’t think I’d even told Adam, though I couldn’t remember. And even if she did know, how would she have worked out when I was doing a shift? And that my name was ‘Kirsty’?
It was just too weird for words.
Hearing her voice, hearing her cry, hearing her.
Too, too weird.
And what she’d told me. How could that have happened? How could that have happened and I didn’t know? Say what you like about my dad, but he wasn’t a rapist.
Was he?
According to Jocelyn, he so was.
Was it a one-off thing? Did he make a habit of it? Had he done it to other girls? Was this the real reason that my mum had left? Had he got into trouble with someone else and she’d had enough and just . . . scarpered? Was this one of the reasons he’d spent so much time in prison over the years? Not so much armed robbery as sexual assault?
I had so many questions, and nobody to ask. My nan was long gone, and Dad was currently back inside for . . . God, that was bad; I couldn’t even remember what he was in for.
But one thing was sure. What Jocelyn had said had a strong whiff of authenticity about it. Whereas some rape allegations, people think, Hang on. Rewind there. Are you sure that’s what happened? – I knew. I just knew.
I believed her.
I tried to figure it all out, but it was too much for my head to handle. I was a phone with too much on the memory card. I was about to implode.
Something across the road caught my eye.
The Mother Red Cap. A pub. It looked so warm, so welcoming. I was shaking. I knew I would go in. I ordered a large vodka and tonic, and downed it almost in one.
There was a folk singer sitting on a small stage at the far end of the pub, hunched over a guitar and a microphone. And – oh, as if this couldn’t be any better stage-managed! Surely this was a set-up too – he was singing that song about fathers and sons, ‘Cats in the Cradle’. About dads being a good role model, and being busy, and the sons growing up to be like them, and . . .
‘Oh why aren’t they just singing “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” and have done with it?’ I said, to no-one in particular. And then I added, with a desperate giggle, ‘Or “Thank heavens for little girls”!’
Because there was no getting away from it. If he had forced himself on a schoolkid, we all knew what that made him.
And yeah, OK, so Jocelyn had been, let’s just say, well developed for her age, but there was no getting away from the fact that she was not a grown-up. She was a kid. Which made him . . . I couldn’t even say it. I couldn’t even admit it to myself. I certainly doubted I would ever be able to say it out loud.
I turned to leave. I needed air. And then . . .
THIS HAD TO BE A SET-UP. BUT WHERE WERE THE CAMERAS?
There was a man approaching the bar dressed in fancy dress, as Jimmy Savile.
‘Oh, come on. A joke’s a joke. What’s going on? I can’t take any more of this!’ I said to him.
WHERE WERE THEY? COME ON, CAMERAS!
‘Sorry?’
‘Yeah, I’m talking to you, Jimmy Savile.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, come on. The bleached bob. The sunglasses. The shell suit. The guide dog.’
Oh. This person had a guide dog. And had quite a high-pitched voice. I then realized it wasn’t someone in fancy dress, it was just a blind woman in
a shell suit with dreadful hair.
I’d just told a blind woman she looked like Jimmy Savile. Time to find another pub.
Oh well. It had been a traumatic night. But the vodka had done the trick; I was starting to feel better. And the jumbled thoughts made more sense in my head. I had another.
Jocelyn must have been raped the night before her birthday. So that when Adam and I called round for her, and her mother was distressed, and claimed Jocelyn was in Toxteth . . . oh my God. My dad must’ve been inside there, too. We’d heard raised voices. She was probably rowing with Dad about . . .
And then Jocelyn had had nowhere to turn apart from the one place she associated with being a safe haven. She couldn’t come to my house – my dad had just attacked her. She couldn’t go to Adam’s because his mum was the biggest gossip in the area. But she could go to the loft at the church. And maybe she went there in tears, and Mark looked after her. Or maybe she didn’t tell him. But she went there, and would have been in no fit state to have sex with him, as we assumed she had the next morning.
My dad had returned home that day. He had had bruises on his arm. He had had a long soak in the bath . . . was he washing the evidence off him?
And poor Jocelyn. Her mum hadn’t believed her. Her mum had . . . what . . . accused her of seducing her boyfriend?
And Billy. As well as being her son, he was my bloody brother. Half brother. Sired by a father I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen.
And there me and Adam had been, convinced she’d been fooling around with Mark that night. Mark who I was in love with. She HADN’T ignored my feelings and got off with him. Yet all these years, I’d been convinced she had. I’d even gone as far as to sleep with her man, so she’d get a taste of her own medicine. And she’d been the innocent party all along.
But the worst thing. The worst thing was all those promises we’d made. That night in the loft. With the bauble. The three of us, frozen in time in a glass ball, like the Wise Men and . . . one for all and . . .
She’d not been able to tell her two best friends that she had been raped.
Great friends we’d turned out to be.
Actually, was that the worst thing?
The worst thing, surely, was that I’d found out my father had a penchant for raping kids. He had done that thing that most people considered worse than murder. And what was even worse was I didn’t know if he was still doing it. I didn’t know if Jocelyn had been a one-off. But I couldn’t believe it had been.
I mean, if you had the brass-necked arrogance to force yourself on a kid, thinking they’d never tell anyone, well surely if you could do that once, you could do it more times? And over the years, how many times had he done it? He hadn’t done anything like that with me, at least I could thank my lucky stars for that. But how many times had he robbed other girls of their childhoods? He was. He was a robber of childhoods, a killer of dreams, a squasher of confidences.
Oh, why dress it up? Why be poetic about it? There was nothing, NOTHING poetic about what he was. He was a child rapist.
I had never felt this strange before. Never felt this repulsed. I had never felt this ashamed. I could feel the shame prickle round my body like an angry rash that I wanted to scratch. It’s true, I wanted to claw at my skin. Rip off my clothes and tug at my flesh, peel my epidermis off and somehow get myself cleansed, but I didn’t know how. I felt my stomach contracting in tiny, tight spasms and before I knew it I was doubled over in the gutter, retching my guts up. It was like I was puking up my pain, vomiting up my shame, but the sad thing was that neither disappeared as the bile swilled in the gutter.
I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, dabbed my eyes with my hands and staggered to my feet.
There was only one thing for it. Only one thing that could numb this pain.
I pushed my way into the next bar I arrived at. It was a Mexican place called El Grande Burrito. Someone was dancing on a table. Looked like fun. I walked through the crowded bar, smiling at strangers like they were old pals. This time I got a tequila to go with my vodka. Well, you know, when in Rome. Or Cancún. Or whatever the capital of Mexico is.
I liked tequila. I’d forgotten just how much.
Before long, I felt slightly less ashamed. My prickly skin was soothed. I didn’t think of my dad raping Jocelyn all the time.
I even managed a smile.
Oh well. Looked like I was drinking again.
ADAM
London, 2015
Jay-Jay Velazquez bounded into my office, red with fury, brandishing a tabloid, which he slapped down on my desk.
‘Have you seen this? The BASTARD. What a BITCH!’
Jason popped his head round the door with an ‘I let him in. Sorry!’ look on his face.
‘What’s happened, Jay-Jay?’
‘Your so-called friend.’
‘Jocelyn? What’s she done now?’
‘Your piss is gonna boil. Read it. READ IT!’
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so angry.
‘Call her. And tell her she’s a cunt from me.’
And with that, Jay-Jay stomped off back into the hall. A few seconds later we saw him through the French window, out in the garden, lighting up a ciggie.
‘I see he’s back on the fags again,’ Jason commented, then we both peered at the paper.
And there it was. Jocelyn’s latest column.
GAYBIES? PUT THE HOURS IN, FELLAS!
Listen. I love a gay as much as the next fag hag. They’re the perfect accessory. No party is complete without one. Who else is going to start the bopping off to ‘It’s Raining Men’ and ‘In the Navy’? Your GBF (gay best friend), that’s who. And yeah, sure, I’m all for gay marriage (though if I hear any more about it then I might have to take a machete to my own skull, pur-lease!) and . . . OK . . . I agree, two guys bringing up a little ’un is really sweet and appealing, and I’m sure they can do it as well as us heterozies.
Heterozies? What the . . .
But . . . let me give you an example here. I heard of some chums of mine. And they were so desperate to appear normal (pur-lease, what IS normal? It’s just a cycle on my washing machine, bitches) that they wanted to have an ickle baby.
Well, you know how much I love them, mofos!!
And yes, give them their due, they didn’t rent out a designer vagina to sire one of their own lookey-likey offspring. Instead they did the decent thing, the socially wonderful, generous thing, of adopting. And before you could say, ‘Whoops, you is gonna get baby puke on dem Prada trainers, fellas,’ they had a baby in da house.
But GET THIS.
Do they look after this kiddywinkle themselves?
No.
Because guess what.
They have . . . A NANNY.
‘How the fuck does she know?’ I gasped, looking at Jason. He was biting his bottom lip with fury. He shrugged.
‘Leon might have told her?’
‘Leon doesn’t speak to her. He wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.’
‘Maybe she has other friends who . . .’
‘I mean, she’s not really our friend any more.’
‘We can’t be the only gay couple who . . .’
‘Even if it’s not aimed at us, it’s still bang out of order.’
Before I could read any more of it, Jason had crumpled it up and dropped it in the bin.
‘Where does she get off?’ I said.
‘She doesn’t. She doesn’t ever get off. She just stays on board the HMS Cuntiness for the rest of time.’
He leaned in to me, and pecked me on the forehead.
‘Don’t let her get to you.’
‘I’ll kill her.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘I’d like to.’
‘Bit of a queue ahead of you. Every decent person in this country she’s offended already.’
He had a point.
‘Anyway. As we gave our nanny a month off to go visit her rellies in Australia, I’m going to take h
im to school. Shocking, eh? Jocelyn Jones?’
‘Shocking,’ I agreed. And he headed out.
I looked to the bin and realized I was shaking with anger. How dare she! How dare she be so . . . so demeaning about what we had gone through? We had given Denim a much better life than he had ever had before and now he was fed, clothed, watered and loved. If she’d bothered to ask before spouting forth I could have told her that we agreed to have a nanny to fit the criteria of what his social workers wanted. That there’d be a female influence in his life as well as ours. It was yet another hoop we’d had to jump through. But oh no, she just went mouthing off for money. And whereas usually it felt like her articles were outrageous for the sake of it – that she’d say what she liked for the shock value and you were left wondering whether she actually meant it – this one felt weirdly authentic.
I knew what had happened to Denim before he was taken into care. It was the sort of stuff that would make your hair curl. But then, I remembered, Jocelyn was the sort who had abandoned her child as well. Only this mother didn’t leave him in his crib while she went off gallivanting. She left him in Liverpool, being brought up by his grandmother, while she went off getting up to all sorts.
But then. One night she’d hinted at something. And I couldn’t tell if it was attention-seeking or her being truthful. Well, she’d hinted that one of her mum’s boyfriends had abused her and . . .
Oh, she was probably lying.
Don’t make me out to be a bad parent, Jocelyn. I’m a million times better than you. And I always will be.
I thought of Kathleen. We’d not spoken in a while. Actually, now I came to think of it, we’d probably not spoken in a few years. But I remembered I had meant to call her a few months before, when Jocelyn did that piece that was so obviously aimed at Kathleen. When she went on about never trusting people who’d had plastic surgery. That they got a new lease of life and fucked your husband. I’d meant to get in touch, but then worried that maybe she’d not even seen the article, so maybe it was best to let it lie.
Why would Jocelyn be attacking us in this way? What had I ever done – apart from visit Kathleen when she was in Jocelyn’s bad books – to hurt her? Very little, from what I could work out. And yet here were these poisonous attacks.
The History of Us Page 29
