I started making a loud noise and suddenly Blue jumped into action. She grabbed the man’s wrist with her mouth and bit hard. He yelped, ‘Ow, ow, you fucking whore, you bitch,’ and tried to swipe at Blue. When he let go of me, I wriggled out from under him. Blue was growling and tugging at his wrist now and the man was clearly in pain. He tugged and pulled his arm out, and I could see it was bleeding, and he turned and ran away as fast as he could.
My wonderful Blue! She was barking after him, but stayed with me. I sat on the floor for a few minutes, my heart racing, totally dishevelled. Blue licked my face and wagged her tail. My trousers were halfway down, my top round my armpits. I straightened myself out, as Blue nuzzled me and leant her body against me. I then hugged her and we sat together by the side of the path for some time, as I tried to make myself calm. Counting, counting, counting. I hoped no one had seen this happen to me as it was so embarrassing. Eventually we walked home very quietly, with me shaking like a leaf. Blue stuck to my side the whole way. I felt like I was in a dream.
When I got back Barbara was taking the washing in. By now the tears had started, and shock had given way to me feeling really shaky. I walked slowly into the garden with Blue and didn’t know what to say to Barbara.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked snippily. ‘You look a fright.’
I wanted to tell her, wanted her to put her arm around me, and to listen for once. I wanted her to reassure me, to phone the police, to make a fuss. I began to tell her what had happened. I felt really shy and confused but, bit by bit, I managed to get the words out. It was horrible to say what he had done to me. Barbara stared at me with her beady, hawk-like eyes.
‘What do you expect when you go out looking like a slut?’ she said. ‘It’s your own bloody fault.’ Then she picked up the blue laundry basket and walked away, back into the kitchen.
I went into the orchard with Blue, sat behind a tree and cried my heart out. I felt dirty, hideous, ugly. I couldn’t tell Sean either; it was far too shaming. It was clearly all my fault. Maybe I was a slut. Maybe that’s why everyone kept grabbing at me. Blue leant against me and I hugged her warm body and stroked her fur; she was all I had at that moment. She understood, as she’d been there. She’d saved my life. However, next morning, same as always, I had to do the early-morning walk with the dog. I took Blue out on the very same route. Even so, I was scared to death. When I got to the place where the wild man had pushed me in the bushes, I burst into tears and felt sick. But I got through it somehow and shook all the way home. I thought the worst was over, but I was wrong.
When I got back and had my little bit of breakfast, Barbara said, ‘You’d better go to school today, it’ll do you good.’
My heart lifted. I thought, Wow, she’s actually thinking about me. Barbara didn’t say anything about the incident with the man, and I did wonder why she didn’t call the police. She was ready to call the police if I did something wrong, so why not now, when someone did something really bad to me? I’d been taken to the police station to ‘teach me a lesson’ more than once, so why not report a man who actually attacked me in a public place?
The thing is, with Barbara there was never any logic or reason. She would do exactly what she wanted when she wanted and it was often one thing one day, and another the next. However, it was actually good to go to school even though I’d missed about another two weeks. I was way behind in everything and felt despair that I would never catch up. I didn’t tell anyone about the University Parks man. I tried to push it to the back of my mind where I put all the other horrible things that had happened.
I still felt sick and shaky but, as the day wore on, I realised that being at school had been a good idea. Maybe Barbara actually cared about me after all. When I got home I rushed in to find Blue. I wanted to tell her about my day. Oddly, she wasn’t to be seen. I ran around the garden, looked in the orchard; maybe she was locked in the shed. I couldn’t find her. Eventually I ran into the kitchen where Barbara was at the sink, rinsing soap off some mugs.
‘Where’s Blue?’ I asked breathlessly. Panic was rising. ‘I can’t find Blue,’ I said, tears starting. ‘Where is she?’
‘She’s gone,’ Barbara said coldly, ‘and that’s the end of it.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’ I nearly screamed. ‘Where is she?’ I was losing control.
‘I took her to the vet,’ said Barbara, still rinsing. ‘She’s dead.’
My knees gave way and I fell on the floor in a heap and howled.
‘Stop that,’ shouted Barbara. ‘Shut up, you little bitch. Go to your room.’
I was beside myself. I couldn’t compute what was going on. Or why. Why would she do this to my wonderful dog? Blue was fine, she was healthy and young. I trudged up the stairs and threw myself on the bed. I sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t stop. Whatever happened, there was always something worse just around the corner. I cried for days and spent time in bed, not getting up, staring at the ceiling, sobbing into my pillow. I didn’t want to get up or go to school and that suited Barbara fine. I was forced to do chores, which I did through clenched teeth. I wouldn’t look at her. I didn’t speak. There was a giant dog-shaped hole where Blue should have been.
A few days later Barbara had a couple of women from the village round for coffee. Numb and exhausted, I crept out of my room and sat at the top of the stairs listening to them. If Barbara caught me there’d be hell to pay, but today I didn’t care. I was totally heartbroken. I listened to the women talking, as the living room door was half-open, and I heard Barbara explaining I was home as I was getting over the shock of being attacked in the park. I heard her say, ‘Yes, we’ve all known about that man in the Parks for weeks now, and sadly he struck my poor Louise.’
I stopped breathing. So Barbara had known there was a man in the Parks who was a problem – and yet she let me wander about on my own with poor Blue. She never warned me, or came with me. I heard the other women say it had been in the paper for weeks that women shouldn’t go out in the area alone. Yet I’d been blamed for being a ‘slut’ and told it was my fault. Worse, my darling Blue had been destroyed in the process. Why? What had she done wrong? She had paid the ultimate price – but for what? Saving me? Maybe saving me is why she’d lost her life.
I knew then that I really wasn’t safe; my life was one long punishment. I didn’t know what it was I’d done that was so bad to make my life such a living hell. But I knew then that I would have to leave this house, to find a way out, to find some safety and care as soon as I was big enough to go, or I would end up being destroyed like Blue. One of Barbara’s favourite phrases was ‘I will kill you one day’, and I feared she would actually do this. What I didn’t know was that for years she had been working on a plan to get rid of me.
13
Nobody’s Child
As long as I could remember Barbara would say really rude things about my birth mother. She didn’t have a name for her, as such. I had no real information about her, or who my family actually was. It was all shrouded in mystery. All I knew for definite, because Barbara had told me so many times, was that she was a ‘whore’ and a ‘stupid bitch’. I would be swiped by her hand, or kicked by her foot, spat at and told I was a ‘stupid bitch, just like your mother.’ So the picture I had in my head was of a terrible person, like a witch, who I was just like. Or some awful floozy woman in terrible clothes – was I like that too? I simply had no proper, hard information about where on earth I came from or how I ended up living with Barbara and Ian (and the really horrible Kevin – who was a permanent fixture in our house now because he hated his dad).
As I grew older, Barbara began to change her tune about my mother, a bit. I didn’t believe this because I knew she had thrown me away. But when I was about nine years old, Barbara had begun to tell me that my mother missed me, or wanted me back. How did she know? Was it true? I had no letter from her telling me that it had broken her heart to give me away and that she was sorry. I had no picture of her, and no idea what colour her hair was or where she came from. I had no picture of her family, her town, her house. Did she have other children? Was she married? I couldn’t ask Barbara any of these questions. And then there was the confusing issue of me being painted with the ‘tar brush’ and being an ‘oily Jew’, as Barbara threw at me, over and over. How was that? If that was so, where were they? And where was my father? Why wasn’t he with my mother? Were they married? Had he died? Why didn’t he want me either? I had an endless list of questions and nobody to answer them for me.
When I was alone at night, or wandering round the garden, I wondered if Barbara had ever met my mother. What I did know was that Barbara was always late picking me up from school wherever I was, and I heard one day that she’d been off driving quite a distance. What I didn’t know then, and only found out later, was that from when I was really very small Barbara was on a personal mission to give me back to my birth family. She did a lot of hunting down of my real family members without talking to the social workers or going through the proper channels. She wanted to be rid of me. She had also done the same with William, I found out much later. She had actually gone and located his grandparents and tried to give him back. It didn’t work, and he ended up in care, as nobody wanted him.
During this time I wondered about Rene and Fred, the two old people she’d driven to when the male social worker tried to touch me and took me away to strange foster parents for a few days. I found out much later that these were actually my mother’s parents. So I’d met my grandparents without knowing it was them. But they didn’t want to know me either, so they sent me away. Yet another rejection. I didn’t know at the time what was going on, but
Barbara had developed a plan to find my birth mother so she could give me back.
It was Barbara who wanted to throw me away. Just as she had William. And our dogs. She often threatened me with: ‘I’ll send you back where you came from’ and I eventually realised she actually meant it. Naturally she had no idea whether my birth mother – when and if she found her – would have any real interest in taking me on. I had no idea about this until one Saturday morning when I was twelve, Barbara barked at me: ‘Go and get a dress on and get in the car. Your mother wants to meet you.’
I was feeding the chickens, pulling old straw out of the hen’s boxes, and what she said set my heart racing. I stopped and looked up at her, stunned.