Escaping the Darkness (10 page)

Yet I knew that wasn’t so. My dreams were all still real. Seeing Bill in town was still real. Making the appointment with the doctor was real and Bess’s visits were more real than I felt I could cope with.

It was Monday again. As usual Bess showed up at 10 am. As usual I remained cynical. I longed to be in a position to believe her, but all the sessions seemed to be doing at the moment were giving my nightmares the fuel they needed to come alive. Each session felt as if it were laced with a flammable accelerant just waiting for a match to be struck. As each dream unfolded from within my memory, the way in which they were portrayed back to me was becoming increasingly crystal clear. My old memories shone out
like new ones, such as the last word I spoke, or the last movement I made.

Bess told me that day during our session that this was just part of the healing process. A process that had longed for the right time to begin within me. This process of remembering and ordering would, in time, help me. It would not help me forget, but would enable me to move on and experience the new life I had already begun with my family, without any of the bad memories getting in the way.

As Bess and I sat and talked, she asked me to continue to tell her about Bill. I remembered the point where we had left things the last time she called and took it slowly from there:

‘He used to wash me every time he took me to his flat, I felt I must be dirty, not just dirty,
really dirty,
because he always insisted on doing this. Then without warning one day he said he wanted to make me into a real woman. I had no idea what he meant but I knew I would soon find out. The next thing I knew he was taking out his penis and playing with it to make it hard. The only thing was, back then I didn’t know that’s why he’d played with himself. I used to think at first it was all part of his ‘touching and washing’ game. The next twenty minutes lasted years.

‘He knelt in front of me, on his knees, fully clothed apart from his trousers and underpants, pushing inside me. The fact that I asked over and over again for him to stop just seemed to excite him further. He grunted and groaned as he moved inside me then suddenly he pulled away sharply. I hated every moment I was made to go with him, Bess.

‘I hated the times when Mum said, “Yes she’ll come with you and help you make the sandwiches Bill”, because helping make sandwiches signalled the beginning of yet another session of abuse. Alone, unloved and trapped with him in his miserable little flat. It’s these memories that haunt me the most, not so much the abuse, well not at first, but the fact that I was trapped and he wouldn’t let me go, no matter how hard I pleaded with him. He never listened and he certainly never cared. It was as if there was another person inside of him, driving him from within. I often wonder, Bess, if it was his daughter being abused by an old pervert and he found out about it, would he still have abused me?’

I sat up and breathed a sigh of relief, glad at last that this chapter of my relived memory was over. I knew it would take time to put the memories away, but I hoped that one day I would be able to do just that. Recalling these incidents always made Bill more real somehow.

And I remember that as I spoke to Bess about him, telling her about him kneeling in front of me, I saw him so clearly, each strand of Brylcreem-ed hair neatly in place. It was almost as if I could have put out my hand and touched him. Bess spoke to me once more, telling me I wasn’t to blame, that I was the victim and that he was the perpetrator. He was the one stealing someone’s childhood. It was he that should be ashamed and not I, but, beneath these words of comfort, I thought I heard words that spoke to me when Bess wasn’t there:

Why, oh why, didn’t you run or refuse to go?

Running or refusing to go with Bill was never an
option for me. He was there, always there and escape was never possible. I tried so hard to evade him, but when I started to gain a little of the strength I needed to escape Bill, my courage packed a bag and headed out of town. So many times I sat on the edge of my bed late at night thinking of ways to break free, but as the idea entered my head, Bill’s warning always stood out like a great wall, blocking my strength.

As each weekly session with Bess began and ended, I somehow felt lighter inside. I don’t know or can’t recall when I first began to feel that the burden of abuse was slowly moving off me; it was just what happened. Inside my body the weight of time was uncoiling itself, but even though my body was lighter, my mind still felt buried in a sandstorm of the worst kind imaginable.

I had had a number of sessions with Bess so far, but even though I felt this new lightness inside, I didn’t feel we had actually made any real progress. I don’t mean that unkindly. Bess was a wonderful woman, who had her own special way of making you feel comfortable as she listened to the nightmares the people she visited told her about.

And of course I was one of those people. Just another number on a file in an overfilled filing cabinet in a social worker’s office somewhere on the edges of a busy, bustling town. I wondered if my past was something that had been talked about in planning meetings, or whether everything I had told Bess remained as confidential as I had wanted. Released, but yet still buried and hidden from the waiting world.

I had always wanted to talk to someone about my past, but I waited for many years before I actually took the steps and did so. A new kind of strength was developing inside my body that had helped me escape Bill and his evil ways thirteen years ago, but that strength had not been powerful enough to take me to the next level. I suppose that what was really happening was that I was trying to heal myself. Trying to keep my past hidden. Instead of living with it, I had buried it. Now, finally, Bess was helping me come to terms with its emergence from deep within, to the waiting world outside.

Chapter Eleven

AFTER BESS HAD departed, I realised that I had to tell Sam about this nightmare. Again the more I thought it through, the more I became upset at the thought of hurting him. Sam had always been there for me and was not just my husband; he was my loyal friend, too. We shared dreams of travelling together, of walking up even bigger mountains than the hills we had already climbed once the boys had grown and left home, continuing the ‘love affair’ that began the first day we met.

It wasn’t really a love affair all those years before on that cold November night when I was just sixteen. It was more an appreciation of how drawn and attracted we were to one another. There was just something there as our eyes met that told me we would always be connected in one way or another.

All of me knew that Sam would understand, but it
was just too hard to make the sounds appear as coherent words, as I stood in front of him that night, accepting the welcoming hug he gave me.

The day had been filled with indecisions about the past. Yes, it was true. I had already decided to share my experiences with two people, but it still felt wrong to tell Sam the details of my abuse, even though he was the most important person in my life. As we spoke late into the night once the boys were all sleeping, I tried to find the courage I needed but, as usual, I just couldn’t. As Sam looked at me through his spectacles, his eyes shone with warmth and love, and I was desperate not to jeopardise the moment. I felt so safe and protected.

Instead of talking, we just sat folded in each other’s arms, curled up on the settee listening to our favourite music on the record player. We must have fallen asleep together because at midnight we woke when we heard Timothy crying upstairs. We both went to see to our baby, and then once he was settled and we had looked in and checked on the other boys, we went off to bed, still desperately tired, even though we had slept earlier.

I didn’t sleep well at all that night; my memories wouldn’t let me. This time they were far more real than they had ever been before, and at 4 am I found myself sitting up in bed, shaking and sweating profusely, with Bill apparently sitting in front of me. I rubbed my eyes trying to rid them of sleep and of Bill’s image, but he was still there smiling, looking at me through the diseased eyes of a paedophile.

As I rubbed my eyes harder, I tried again to make him go away. He slowly began fading, drifting back into my memory box where I knew he didn’t belong, but where he couldn’t physically hurt me – at least not at this moment in time. I slowly eased myself up out of bed; it was only 4.04 am. I couldn’t believe that four short minutes could cause me so much pain and anguish. I should really have known better than to think that memories hidden so deep wouldn’t hurt me, because I had always known that everything to do with Bill – ‘and the memories he gave me to save’ – was filled with torment.

I went downstairs, filled the kettle and leant against the kitchen cupboards waiting for it to boil. Once it had, I made a cup of tea. I sat in the lounge on the settee, where just a few hours before I had been safely held in Sam’s comforting arms. I tried to put things into perspective as I sat wrestling with my thoughts, but this time I found it more difficult to do than ever before. I couldn’t figure out why this dream was any different to the others; it contained painful memories and Bill. It just wasn’t different in any way, apart from the moment when I woke and found a vision of Bill sitting on my bed after he had escaped.

This really was what had unsettled me. I looked at the clock: 5 am. I was desperate for the next four hours to pass so I could ring Bess. I knew that I couldn’t tackle this particular nightmare on my own, and that I needed to share it right now, today, rather than sleep on it until Bess came to visit next week. I stood up and went into
the kitchen where I started to busy myself with the chores that were waiting patiently to be dealt with.

By 6 am I had my first lot of washing done and pegged out on the line, thankful that the day had started bright and sunny. The lounge had been dusted and the windows cleaned. I was like this: once I set my mind to tasks I was like a whirlwind, never settling until each one had been done. It didn’t seem to take long before I heard Sam’s alarm sound in the room above me.

I set out all the dishes and filled each one with cereal ready for the stampede of boys that would soon come rushing down the stairs. Sam woke them up on his way down and we sat and had breakfast together before he left for work. This wasn’t a good morning. I was tired and frustrated after the events that had unfolded in my dream, and when I drew the curtains back, a large black cloud was lingering overhead, ready to explode and release a heavy shower onto my recently pegged-out washing.

One hour later, as we all approached the school gates, the clouds erupted and we seemed to have the worse downpour of the season. When I arrived home just fifteen minutes later, after I had tried to dodge the rain by running, I lifted Timothy’s pram into the hall.

There was a large pool of water sitting on his rain canopy and water had started seeping in from the back, just below the hood. We were soaked and cold. The last thing I wanted to do was pick him up and hold him against my cold, wet clothes. Timothy looked happy
snuggled in his pram and wasn’t crying, so I quickly dried off and changed my clothes before lifting him out. He was still so warm and absolutely bone dry. I was so thankful he hadn’t got wet. I was thankful for this rainy distraction because it meant I had to focus on other things.

I didn’t have time to let the memories in; they were still crammed into the box. I knew, however, that with every moment that passed that ‘they’ weren’t happy being ignored. I looked at the clock: 9.45 am. I could finally ring Bess and ask her to call. I picked up the phone and dialled, but it was engaged. I tried again a minute or so later. It rang and rang and rang and I was just about to replace the receiver when an unfamiliar voice spoke to me, saying: ‘Hello Bess Meyer’s office can I help you?’

‘Hi, I’m Sarah Preston. Is there any chance of speaking to Bess please?’

As I waited for the reply, I suddenly saw an image of Bill walking in front of me, smiling his pathetic little smile.

‘I’m sorry Sarah,’ said the woman. ‘She has just gone into a meeting, but if I’m quick I may be able to pass her a note before they begin. What’s the message?’

‘Could you just ask her if she can call me back as soon as possible, as I need to speak to her? It’s urgent, thanks.’

‘Okay I will do. Bye.’

I hadn’t heard the noise of the receiver being put down on the other end of the line until the sound in my ear changed to the dialling tone a few minutes later. I had
been distracted by Bill’s image. An image that seemed to be walking round familiarising itself with my home. The space that belonged to Sam and me. A space we shared and created our happy memories in. Memories of our life together. I closed my eyes tight, begging for reality to reappear. I opened my eyes and Bill was gone. Thank you Lord, I prayed mentally.

Seeing Bill’s image so clearly had left me feeling so uncomfortable, but I tried not to let it distract me too much. I gave Timothy a warm bottle and then put him in his cot for a nap. An hour or so later the phone rang and Bess’s familiar cheery voice was on the other end of the line.

‘Hi Sarah, I got your message. Is everything okay?’

‘No, not really. I’m having a few problems with some of my past and it’s disturbing me a lot more than before. Do you think you could come round if that’s possible, as I don’t think I would be able to go through it all on the phone?’