Daddy's Little Earner (15 page)

Even though I loved Kathy, and wanted her to be
around all the time, I still felt like an outsider in the family
when we were with her kids, and Dad did nothing to
make it any better for me. One year we were actually all
together for Christmas Day. Dad was out of prison and Terry and I were home from school, and we were able to
spend it like virtually every other family in the country. I
was looking forward to it because I could remember all
the Christmases he had put on for us when we were little,
plucking the turkeys and all the rest, so I knew he
would almost certainly be in a good mood. Kathy had
made the house look really festive and we were all in the
front room on the day handing round presents from
under the tree. I watched as Kathy and Dad gave Kathy’s
daughter a box, which turned out to be filled with loads of
little perfumes, all beautifully packaged. Then they gave
each other gifts and as it gradually dawned on me that
everyone else had something except me a pain began to
grow inside my chest. I forced myself to smile and hold
in the tears as I watched all the parcels being handed
round and prayed I was mistaken, but still nothing came
to me. Dad must have noticed my fixed expression
because he laughed and chucked a packet of Maltesers
into my lap.

‘There you are,’ he joked, ‘that’ll do for you.’

The most hurtful thing was that he thought it was
funny to humiliate me in front of the others. He actually
enjoyed reinforcing the idea that I was just a piece of shit,
not worth any kindness or consideration, not deserving
of anything nice, even on Christmas Day. I understood
that he needed to save his money for drink so I never
asked for new things, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want them, especially if everyone else had them. I wouldn’t
have wanted anything expensive, just something
thoughtful and nicely wrapped to show that someone had
put some time into it.

I’m not sure why Kathy hadn’t got a present for me,
but perhaps she hadn’t been expecting me that day. It
could be that she thought I was staying in school, or
maybe Dad had assured her he’d got me something; I just
don’t remember. She was always kind to me so I know
she wouldn’t have left me out deliberately.

I tried to get on with Kathy’s children whenever we
were together, but they were older than Terry and me, too
old to play with us. We never fell out or anything, but I
always felt they were better than me and that I was an
intruder in their family, just as I had been an intruder in
the foster families we’d been farmed out to and with my
own cousins when I was with them at Nanny’s. There
didn’t seem to be anywhere in the world where I truly
belonged except when it was just Dad and Terry and me.

In the end Dad even recruited Kathy in his pursuit of
easy money earned at other people’s expense. I would never
have believed it possible, and I still find it hard to understand
even today, but somehow he persuaded her to go on
the game for him in exactly the same way he had persuaded
Mum. She was the nicest, most intelligent, clean, beautiful
woman I had ever met but still he managed it
somehow. I know she put up a struggle but he literally beat her into submission. He even killed her cat in his campaign
to intimidate her, swinging it by the tail and smashing its
head against the wall. It was as though he could put some
sort of spell on people like Kathy and me and eventually
break us down and make us do whatever he wanted. If he
could force strong, grown women like Mum and Kathy to
do these terrible things, what chance did I have of avoiding
the fate he had planned for me down on the block
when I was no more than a child, a child who was still
besotted with her daddy?

D
ad’s attitude towards me seemed to be changing as
I matured, becoming more sinister and suggestive.
He was beginning to see me more as a grown woman
than as a child. It was as if I was part of some fantasy life
he was living in his head, part of some plan that he was
brooding over. Once when I was twelve, we were back
home from school and we were invited to a party with
him and Kathy. Dad insisted on dressing me up like
a tart in a tight red dress that belonged to Kathy’s daughter
and talked me into getting all done up, my face painted
with make-up and my hair done in an adult style,
behaving like he had the time he persuaded Lucy to
dress me up when I was nine.

To begin with I was excited to see how grown-up I
looked, but then I started to feel less comfortable about it.
I tried to back away a bit but he insisted I kept the dress and make-up on, saying he wanted to make me look
eighteen for the evening. It wasn’t that difficult to make
me look how he wanted. I was quite mature for my age
and had developed boobs before any of my mates did. In
the right dress I more than looked the part.

When we got to the party Dad started acting even
more strangely, more like he was my boyfriend than my
father, all mauling hands, leering looks and suggestive
comments. It creeped me out but I couldn’t say anything
without risking sending him off into a rage in front of
everyone else so I just grinned, kept my eyes on the floor
and put up with the embarrassment. There had been
times before when he had done or said things that didn’t
seem appropriate between a father and daughter, apart
from the obvious abuse of course, but this seemed more
threatening somehow because there were other people
around and he didn’t seem to care if they saw or what
they thought. It was as though he was flaunting me in
front of everyone. He’d given me a birthday card on my
twelfth birthday and I was so thrilled that he had remembered
– I’d never had a card from him before. But the
message written inside it was for ‘my darling Maria’,
which sounded more like it was from a lover than a father
and made me feel sick without really knowing why. This
performance gave me the same feeling.

The day after the party he was still acting weird and he
announced he wanted to take me to show me something. I dutifully trotted off behind him, as I always did, happy
that he was actually talking to me and being a bit like a
proper father. I suppose I hoped he was going to show me
something that I would enjoy, like a funfair, or that he was
going to take me to the shops and buy me something nice.
It was hard to stay optimistic after so many years but I kept
trying. As he led me up towards the block where all the
prostitutes worked my heart began to sink. I didn’t know
exactly what he was showing me, but I knew it was something
to do with his grown-up interests rather than my
childish ones and something to do with sex.

The main street on the block is called Ber Street,
which is just outside the central shopping area of Norwich.
That was where the better class of streetwalkers
plied their trade. Further on was King Street, the haunt
of girls who might have drug problems or be from out of
town, having come from Ipswich or somewhere similar
and been unable to get a pitch in Ber Street without being
set upon by the local girls.

He proudly told me this was where Mum and Lucy
and Gail and the others had worked and that he wanted
to show me what I would be doing when I was ready to
start work. There were a couple of pubs on the block
where the girls and their pimps all used to drink in those
days and where Dad was a well-known local figure. Most
kids get to visit their father’s offices, shops or factories,
or get to admire their computers or company cars, but Ber Street was Dad’s little kingdom and he laid it before
me like it was some wonderful prize, as if I would be
excited at the thought of being able to work there myself
one day soon.

Some of the girls were out looking for business when
we got there, loitering around waiting for customers.
They all seemed to know Dad and chatted to him as he
went past. No doubt they were eyeing me up as a potential
competitor. There was a real camaraderie amongst
them all, but that didn’t surprise me because I’d already
experienced it at home with girls like the scary Gail and
the wonderful Lucy.

Three years earlier, when Dad had made Lucy dress
me up, I had decided I didn’t want to be prostitute, not
even to please Dad, and by the time he took me out to show
me the block I was even more certain it wasn’t where I
wanted to end up. It all seemed sordid and frightening,
even with Dad there to protect me, but I wasn’t brave
enough to say anything. If I had suggested I wasn’t going
to go along with his plan he would either have become
angry and given me a beating or he would have laughed at
me for being so stupid and babyish, or he would simply
have ignored me and talked over my protests as if I wasn’t
there. Maybe if I had gone to the social services at that stage
and told them exactly what he had planned for me they
would have removed me there and then. But I didn’t want
to be removed from my family home any more than I wanted to be made to work on the streets. I wanted to be
with Dad and Kathy and Terry, so I kept quiet and just
hoped that he would change his mind about sending me
up the block.

Kathy was the first person that I told about what Dad
was doing to me whenever he had the chance and it was
her who informed on him to the social services, despite
her own fear of him. Even if she hadn’t drawn the line at
going on the street herself for him, she knew he had overstepped
the mark with me. It was also her who told the
authorities that Dad had taken me up to the block and
shown me around, preparing me for the day when he
would put me to work. If they had checked back through
their files they might have found the warnings that Mum
had given them when she finally left home six years
before, telling them that he had been threatening to make
me a prostitute since the day I was born. I dare say none of
it came as a huge shock to them – everyone knew what
Dad was like by then – but once Kathy had stepped forward
and confirmed it all to them I suppose they were
forced to take it more seriously and be seen to be doing
something about it.

The day I told her the truth I had actually gone to see
her in order to beg her to go back to him, because as long
as she was around he would leave me alone. I had come
back from school on a weekend to find they had split up
yet again and I was terrified of staying at home with him on my own. As we sat together in her house she was trying
to explain to me all the reasons why she had to break
up with him: the beatings, forcing her onto the game, the
heavy drinking and the bad effects he had on her children.
It was all perfectly understandable from her point
of view and I admired her for having the courage to leave
him, but I still kept begging her to rethink her decision.
My distress must have shown because eventually she
asked me why I was so desperate for her to come back. I
was still terrified of betraying him and I really didn’t
want him to go back into prison on my account, but in the
end I blurted it out. Eventually I suspect every secret
grows too heavy and becomes just too painful to be contained
any longer.

Shocked and angry, she phoned social services and
they immediately moved into action. Even though she
knew Dad well and had witnessed many of his depravities,
Kathy was still horrified by what I was telling her
and immediately agreed that I should stay with her that
night rather than go home to him. I felt scared, knowing
that I had now put my life in someone else’s hands, believing
that if Dad found out I had betrayed him he would
kill me, and maybe he’d kill Kathy as well when he realized
she had shopped him to the authorities. I was desperately
anxious about what the authorities might decide to
do; I didn’t want anyone to stop me seeing Dad – I just
wanted him to stop forcing me to have sex with him. All weekend I felt panicky and scared and nothing Kathy
could say or do would calm me down.

After that weekend I was sent back to Wymondham
without seeing Dad and the social services responded to
the information Kathy had given them by coming to the
school to do tests on me, wanting to gather evidence that
they could use against Dad in court. The fact that they
wanted to do the tests seemed to suggest they believed me,
which was a relief, even though I didn’t like the idea of
having a doctor probing around inside me. They wanted
me to tell them every detail of what had happened and
then they went looking for proof to back up my story. It
felt like I was losing control of my own life, handing it
over to the grown-ups, but of course it was an illusion
because I had never had any control really; that had
always rested in Dad’s hands when he was around and in
the hands of social workers whenever he was taken away.
All I had ever had was a horrible secret, and now I had
given it away.

If I had felt different to the other girls at school before,
I felt like a complete alien now that the staff were moving
discreetly into action to support me. How was I going
to be able to just breeze back into class after all this and
mingle with everyone else as if my life was just like
theirs?

I was taken to see the doctor and to my horror he
announced after doing the tests that although there was evidence of sexual activity, my hymen was still intact.
Despite all the pain Dad had inflicted every time he tried
to enter me, he hadn’t succeeded in taking my virginity.
Despite trying to force himself into me he had been just
too big to get very far. What horrified me the most about
this news was the thought that now they might not
believe me, that they would think I was making it all up
just to get attention. I felt desperately let down and worried
about what Dad would say when I next saw him. He
would be furious that I had tried to betray him, but triumphant
that I had failed to provide the evidence needed
to prosecute him. It was the worst possible outcome.