Over that summer I had to get some work to earn money, as I never had any pocket money. I found a job in a greengrocer, and loved handling all the colourful fruit and veg. I wasn’t great at the adding up, which I had to do in my head, and even on my fingers, but I gradually got better at it with practice. I enjoyed working with people, and discovered I could chat to them quite well and make them laugh. I was good at the job. This made me feel better about myself. I also picked up some cleaning work. I heard, on one of our pub visits, someone saying they needed help around the home.
‘I can help you,’ I piped up. I had no money, and I began to pick up cleaning jobs for posh Oxford people who lived in gorgeous houses with stripped wooden floors and lovely interiors. I had cleaned all my life, so it was easy to get the work done. And I got paid cash in hand.
During this summer, a friend of Tim’s family, an American author, was going away for a month and asked for someone to house-sit. Barbara protested and shouted, slapped me and threatened care, but I ignored her. Tim offered, and we both moved in with several of our friends. We looked after the place and had a little commune for a few weeks. The freedom at last was wonderful, and they were all amazed that I could clean up so well. They didn’t realise I’d spent my life scrubbing and making hospital corners. I could also cook to some extent, and I could look after the garden, do pet care, and they were actually in awe.
We played David Bowie at full blast, drank wine and had a lovely time in this house. When the author returned he said he was amazed that the house was in such good condition. He’d been away before and left it with students and it’d been wrecked. With us, he’d had a great deal. All this time Tim and I were sleeping in the same bed, but I still knew I wasn’t ready to ‘do the deed’ and he was still kind and patient. I really loved him for being such a genuinely kind and thoughtful person. He was writing me sonnets every morning, and telling me he loved me every day. He taught me to make posh food, like ratatouille, and to know my Chianti from my Pinot Grigio.
All this time Barbara said she had ‘washed her hands of me’. There had been some correspondence with the school, who said they wanted me to think about coming back for my last year, until I was sixteen. They would only consider me coming back, of course, without the punk hair and make-up. In fact, some girls at school had got up a petition to get me back – they all thought it was unfair I’d been expelled for my looks and setting off the sprinklers. The school was dealing with the issue of the men on the Cowley Road preying on its girls, so my problems seemed small in comparison, at least to the girls (who also wanted to wear crazy-colour hair). They wanted me back!
I couldn?
??t see the point, and this was the cause of a lot of rows with Barbara, which quickly descended into violence. I would then go back to the commune and spend a lovely evening laughing and drinking wine with my good friends and Tim.
On Barbara’s birthday, which was in August, I baked her a vegan Victoria sponge cake in the author’s house, borrowed Tim’s bicycle, dressed up nicely and went over to see her. All I wanted to do was say ‘Happy Birthday’ and give her a card I’d made, with some flowers and the cake. I’m not sure exactly why I wanted to do this but, oddly, now I had some space away from Barbara, I felt some shards of affection for her. It’s difficult to explain why. She was always horrible and cruel to me but still, I suppose, she had been a mum of sorts over the whole of my lifetime and I felt I wanted to show her I was all right and I appreciated her for something, at least. I was happy, I suppose, and felt I could spread a bit of the love. I think I knew, intuitively, that Barbara had never experienced love in her life.
When I got there, she didn’t smile when she opened the door. She grabbed the flowers out of my hand, saying sulkily, ‘You’d better come in.’ It was a summer’s day and I was hot from cycling.
‘Why are you so red?’ she asked me, snappily. I explained I’d been cycling. She moved towards me with a venomous look in her eye, like an eagle attacking a small rodent, and sniffed at me: ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you? You’ve been having sex.’
She was spitting as she said this. I looked at her pointy, grey face, her grey clothes and mean features, and thought, Is that it? I didn’t answer. I just got back on my bike and left. That is all she was obsessed about: sex. I had no idea why. That night I said to Tim: ‘Okay, it’s time.’
We carefully set the scene and had the most romantic, loving, wonderful time together, as I thought I was ready, finally. We were very careful, as I didn’t want to get pregnant, like Julie. If Barbara never believed me for a moment, what was the point of continuing not to do it? I might as well do it and enjoy it. I was probably reacting, but I also thought, what the hell. Enjoy! And enjoy it, thankfully, I did, with the right person at the right time and in the right way.
However, summer was coming to an end, and Tim was finally going to leave. I couldn’t face it. I felt heartbroken, but I didn’t want to hold him back at all. In September he set off for uni, and my heart went through the floor. We said we’d see each other as often as possible, but he was going miles away and I was stuck in Oxford and in Colditz.
He was always encouraging me with my art, as the whole summer long I had been drawing, painting and creating to my heart’s content. He told me over and over that I was good enough and that I could make it. Once he had gone, and I was back in the house all the time, it was terrible. The school wanted me to go back in what they called a ‘phased return’, and Barbara was pressing me to do that, despite having kept me home for so much of my schooling. I was way behind because she had held me back for her own selfish, mad reasons, yet now she was making out I was the one responsible.
My life was shrinking back again, having been colourful, bold, sunny and wonderful for a few months. I felt I was growing out of the house, out of my life, out of the whole town. I didn’t fit. I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I was still working in the greengrocer’s for money. I liked working, I liked people and, more than that, I liked having some cash of my own. I’d had a taste of independence.
At home Barbara made a big play of the fact that Kevin had had a girlfriend round. They went up to his room and came down flushed. Barbara smiled. She didn’t give him a hard time about being red in the face. One evening she came into my room – I was still in the same tiny box room, with the blue flowery wallpaper – and she gave me more sexy clothes (I’d never worn the babydoll outfit), saying, ‘Why don’t you entertain Kevin like his girlfriend does?’
Sickened, I refused to play her perverted game and I hid the clothes. I knew now what real love felt like, and proper loving sex, and it was nothing like the horrible ugly experiences I’d had at the hands of nasty Kevin and his gropey friend.
At this time Kevin was aspiring to be some kind of alpha male. One night he came strolling into the kitchen and came right up to me, putting his face in mine. He could smell alcohol on me, as I’d been out with friends. I was quite challenging now to the likes of Kevin, as I had learnt to argue back. Kevin sniffed at my breath, grimaced and started poking at me. I pushed him off and this developed into an all-out wrestling match and fight. Ian was in the best living room watching TV and Barbara was in the garden, with the dog, Mohra (a new one, of course, as Sissy had been ‘put down’, like all the rest).
‘You think you’re so fucking smart and cool,’ Kevin was saying, grabbing at my hair and breasts in equal measure, ‘with all your posh fucking friends and boyfriend.’
He sneered ‘boyfriend’ at me, and punched me in the guts. I fought back as hard as I could. We fought bitterly in the kitchen, with him slamming me into the cabinets, and me pushing him back against the sink. Everything was crashing and rattling as we fought. Barbara was at the window, smirking. I caught her face, briefly, enjoying every swipe that landed on me from Kevin. He was doing her dirty work for her. And then he toppled me. He was about two feet taller than me by now, and well-filled-out, as he lifted weights.
He started kicking me in the guts, stamping on my limbs, kicking me in the face and kidneys. It went on and on, until I was retching and sick. He had boots on. He was twenty-one and I was fifteen.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he kept raging at me, over and over, as he kicked. ‘You’re nothing, you’re nobody, you’re scum,’ he shouted. He was like the thugs at the phone box. I managed to crawl away as he was kicking, pulling myself round the kitchen. He put his boot on my head and pressed me hard into the floor. I couldn’t breathe.
‘I’m going to fucking kill you one day,’ he spat at me. ‘Mark my words.’ And with that he waltzed out the kitchen, leaving the place a complete wreck.
I crawled along the floor on my belly over smashed crockery and past upturned chairs. I managed to get up the stairs, step by step, and into the bathroom, where I eventually splashed my face with water. I sat on the side of the bath for a long time, trying to breathe with bruised ribs. It was Friday night. I eventually got up and looked at myself in the bathroom cabinet mirror. My face was a mess: cuts, bruises, a swollen eye. My clothes were ripped, my arms and hands and legs had bruises appearing already. I hurt all over.
I thought, I can’t do this any more. I can’t let him stop me from living my life. I finally washed my face properly and then carefully reapplied my make-up and did my hair. I went to my room and changed my clothes. It was now or never: I knew exactly what I had to do.
21
The Great Escape
Everything hurts. I’m trembling and shaking as I stumble around my tiny room – so familiar yet so hideously ugly in every way. My heart is racing as I listen out for any sounds downstairs. I can hear canned laughter from the TV but I can’t hear any voices – maybe they’ve fallen asleep in front of it. I slide my chest of drawers open as quietly as I can and pull out a few things: knickers, T-shirts, jeans. I pack my school rucksack carefully. I’ve practised this moment so many times over the years, since the days when I used to pack my little red cardboard case, imagining I was going to a faraway land, where everything was wonderful. Now I’m pulling out a little tin I hid at the back of the drawer under some old socks, where I keep my earnings. I’ve saved something each week from my grocery work and, counting it, I might just have enough. I stuff it in a purse and shove that in my rucksack.
I stop, hardly breathing, still listening out. Nothing. I imagine Kevin suddenly bursting through the door, as he so often does, then marauding round my room or trying to get in my knickers. He has no idea of boundaries, and I am a non-person to him. I think of Barbara coming in and bearing down over me, with her eagle eyes, narrow lips and pointy nose, always sniffing at me, being suspicious, slapping me around the head. I hold my breath. Count one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Heart pounding. Nothing. I don’t have a watch, and there is no clock, but I know it’s late. I’ll have to be quick about it.
I tiptoe downstairs, holding my breath, trying to look as casual as possible. I can hear the news is on, so it’s quite late now. Ian is still in the best living room, and possibly Barbara is with him. Or more likely she’s in bed – I don’t dare check. Kevin is nowhere to be seen, thank goodness. The chaos is still just visible through the kitchen door from our brawl earlier. Barbara will be in my room first thing to shout at me to clear it all up – as it’s my fault.