Escaping the Darkness (14 page)

I asked myself familiar questions as to why I loved him: was it because he told Mum I was keeping my first-born child when I gave birth to him at the age of just sixteen? (This was despite Mum telling me I was too young to bring up a child.)

Or was it because he had always made me feel welcome over the past couple of years when I had visited him with my sons?

I wasn’t sure why, but I did grieve and grieve sincerely – he would have been proud of my continued loyalty.

When I look back at that point in time, I don’t sense the need to be sad anymore. I just feel an anger and hatred for the man I never really knew after my twelfth birthday. I wasted so many months of my life feeling sad. Had he felt sadness for me? I wondered about this and doubted very much that he’d ever lost sleep or felt remorse for what he had done. Was he in heaven or hell? He was probably in the former, but he, like so many other sick and twisted men, almost certainly belonged in the latter.

For almost a year after his death, I longed for answers to these questions in my dreams, but they never came as I had hoped they would. At night when I got into the bath, I would lie there with a small towel across me, covering my otherwise exposed, naked body, because I was convinced he was watching me from a little spot in the ceiling. How daft was I? But I found it increasingly more and more difficult to sit in the bath and not cover my intimate parts. There were even times when I tried to have a bath in the dark! I wouldn’t even let Sam leave the light on in the bedroom when we undressed. I used to tell him I didn’t want him to see my body as I had gained a few pounds. He said he didn’t mind, but turned the light out anyway because he knew I wanted him to. Sam knew me, he knew there was something else, and he
just never asked me or fished for answers until he knew I was ready to be asked.

After the next couple of months had passed, I pulled myself together the best I could and I gradually returned to my study at university. It was hard at first but eventually I sorted out my feelings and decided to concentrate on the here and now. I had essays due in and even more essays overdue. I don’t know how I coped but I did. I just think I must have been a little crazy back then. I had to deal with my father’s death, university, running a house and home, and being wife and mother. It was ten months before I started feeling safe in my own bathroom and stopped sitting there with a towel over me. I just quietly spoke into the space that surrounded me one night: ‘Go on look if you want to, you were a pervert then, what makes you being dead any different?’

From then on, after I had uttered those words, I knew I was all right, that some small part of my mind was healing and I never worried about being in the bath again. As the rest of the year drifted past, I continued to busy myself doing everything I had done all my married life. It was therapy and for a time my past stayed buried and didn’t haunt me.

Chapter Sixteen

AS ONE DOOR of my life closed, another one had opened, letting me into a world that I found difficult to get used to, but desperate to succeed in. I wanted so much to make a go of university, but my father’s death had affected me so badly that I had taken three months out and had also asked for extensions on my essay deadlines. Now, after giving up my job, I was back for the new semester. I found it hard to write essays, as I didn’t have my notes, because I’d missed some lectures.

My friends willingly gave me their notes to help me, but it wasn’t the same as having my own. I sat up late into the night but found I was too tired. Not only did I have my Christmas term essays to write, but I had the spring term ones to do, too. I decided to tackle my work in a different way. I went to bed a little earlier and set my alarm to go off 3 am.

At first I still felt tired, but by the end of the first week it was working out really well. I would get up, write for two hours, and then go back to bed for an hour. It was wonderful working when the house was so still and quiet. Sam worried at first that I would wear myself out, but he knew it was how I wanted to tackle the backlog of work so he went along with it. At weekends, he spent even longer than usual with the boys, giving me more time to catch up. I don’t know quite how I managed to get four essays written and handed in in five days, but I did it. By the end of my second year, I had passed my entire course for that year. I was amazed at my achievement. My marks weren’t brilliant, but at least I was still on my course.

Wow, this was totally unbelievable. I had succeeded! Study didn’t come easy to me either. I constantly recorded my lectures and listened to them repeatedly each day. I had, and still do have, problems remembering and recalling information, so I used to take twice as many notes as most students normally would. As each new essay question was posed, I had to get out my dictionary to decipher words I had heard before but wasn’t sure of their meaning. Once I had done this, I could then think about tackling the question.

I did this throughout my degree course. If I hadn’t, then I would not have been able to do the work. It was a hard two years and during this time I was perhaps the most relaxed about my past – once again I had buried it deep in the back of my mind. There were many days – months even – when I never gave it a second thought.

At the end of my degree course, I couldn’t believe I had passed. Despite having no academic qualifications after leaving school, I had done what so many people only dreamed of doing: to become a graduate. It was my dream and I had made it come true.

Years before, when Mum had refused to mind Michael, I had told myself that I would finish my education and finish it well. I never once imagined that I would be thirty-four years old by the time I actually went back to do it, but that was just the way things turned out. I wanted to raise my family and give them all the love and support they needed. I always wanted to be a good mum and vowed that I would never leave the children to be looked after by anyone other than me or Sam.

I had been so wrapped up in family life that nothing else seemed to matter, until Sam said I should follow my dream and take some time for myself. So that was what happened. I studied, raised my boys and lived a happy life with Sam. At first I don’t know how I coped. I don’t know anyone else who was as mad as I was, who would tackle a full-time degree course at the same time as raising five boys. I don’t think I could have done any of it without Sam’s support.

One of my close friends at uni, Janet, was also married. During her first year of studying she got pregnant again, this time with her third child. Her husband didn’t understand her desire to learn, and after her son was born, he assumed she would stop chasing the impossible dream and give up her studies to become a full-time housewife.

Janet and I wanted more, and we promised each other the day we met, back in September 1996, that we would graduate together. We were determined to achieve the goal we set, and when we graduated in 2000, our smiles were so big we could have easily lit up the whole stage in the conference centre without even flicking on a light switch.

After graduation I felt lost for a while, uncertain what to do with my life. I felt as if all the normality had been taken from me; in a sense I felt I had lost my home. It was a very surreal experience. During the time I spent at university, my friends and I had become very close. I felt like I was with a family, not just my peer group. I knew I had Sam and the boys, but the academic side of my life had now gone; there would be no more mad dash bus rides to university, desperate to get to lectures on time, no more coffees and lunches with friends in the refectory. The student routine that I had become accustomed to over the last four years suddenly stopped.

I now had nothing to fill my spare hours or take up my thoughts other than my family. Once my degree was over and I had handed in my dissertation, we went away camping for the weekend in Yorkshire. We had a really relaxed time on holiday. We shared champagne and strawberries with my sister and her husband. We had wonderful weather and everything was perfect. In the village, there was a little second-hand bookshop housed in a quaint little courtyard that stocked rare volumes. It was here that Sam bought me an antique book, which dated back to 1849. This was
The Annual Register or a View of The History and Politics of The Year
1849
. It was remarkably interesting and I loved turning the pages to read something that was printed so many years ago. It was the perfect present for a history graduate.

As usual, we went off to Cornwall that year and camped on the Lizard Peninsula – a favourite spot that held me like a captive spirit since the first time I saw it. Sam and I had always said we wouldn’t go back to the same place twice, but we fell in love in 1996 all over again, except that this time it was with a village and the amazing coastline nearby. We met up with friends, lazed in the sun, visited the Minack Theatre, had trips out to neighbouring villages and totally chilled out. It was how I imagined heaven to be. Life was sweet and so, so special.

After the holidays, I began working in the local government offices. It was completely different from everything I had done before and I loved it – once more I had something else to focus on. At first I felt like I wasn’t clever enough to work there, but Sam reminded me that I was a graduate. I still smile every time I think of that moment. I worked for a year at that job but then left because I wanted to do more with the qualifications I had spent four years studying hard for.

I was then offered a job in a school and went on to further my career and become a history teacher. I don’t know what drew me to this path, because when I was studying at university I wanted to use my history degree to work in a museum as a curator. I loved my subject with a passion; however, the minor part of my degree was in education studies and I was also interested in teaching
children with special needs. The only museum job that came up at that time was in Manchester, which was just too far to travel, especially when I still had to take the boys to school each day. I remember thinking ‘I’ll do that in a few years when they are all older’, but I never did. My life was destined for another path.

My life had been full of decisions that year and I remember hoping that I had made the right ones.

Chapter Seventeen

AS MY SONS grew up and became less dependent on me, I found I had more time to myself. This wasn’t good because the bad memory box began to move around again. It wasn’t wedged as firmly in the back of my mind as it should have been. It was summer 2002, we were back in Cornwall, and I was never happier. We had met up with our friends and were completely relaxed.

It was during this holiday, after only being in Cornwall for a few days, that I remember Sam and I lying awake talking late into the night. I’m not really sure what happened to prompt the words that Sam spoke at that time, but he said he wanted to ask me a question but didn’t quite know how to. I wasn’t sure what he meant or where he was leading, so I told him the best way was just to ask me straight out.

He paused for a few moments and I tried to prompt
him, but he said he didn’t want to hurt me. My mind started on a carousel, moving faster and faster as the ride built up speed. What on earth did he mean? How could he hurt me? What did he think I had done? Or did Sam have a secret I knew nothing about? It was then 12.45 am and he said nine words that I would never ever forget:

‘Sarah will you tell me what happened to you?’

‘What do you mean Sam? When?’

‘You know – when you were a child.’

For what seemed like someone else’s lifetime, I just lay there, feeling the numbness sweeping over my body as the lid of the bad memory box lay tattered and damaged on the floor, the contents exposed to the world. Sam snuggled in close behind me, wrapping his arms around me as I curled up tighter into a position that resembled a defensive hedgehog.

I knew Sam could feel the tension mounting in my body because he instantly started to apologise for asking the question that had left his lips just a few moments earlier. I loved Sam with all of my heart and wondered why he had chosen now to ask about my past. We were on holiday, we were relaxed, and it just felt so wrong to invade such a beautiful, tranquil place with the terrible secrets that lay hidden in my mind. I had always thought that Sam didn’t want to know about those things. How wrong could I have been?

I thought about it for a few seconds more before I spoke in a whisper to him, ‘Why do you want to know?’

He answered in an even quieter whisper than my own, ‘I want to understand you better.’

‘How do you mean, better?’

‘Well Sarah, when we’re in bed together, I’m always frightened that when I make love to you I may say or do something that may hurt you and I don’t want to do that.’

‘But you never have. I know I don’t talk when we make love, but you know that’s not a problem, right? And it never really mattered before.’

Sam said in a whisper that was almost inaudible to my ears. ‘But Sarah I want you to talk to me, sometimes I need to know I’m doing the right things for you and that I don’t do anything you feel uncomfortable with.’

As Sam spoke, all of my past memories hit me in the face full on. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I had just been thrown through a windscreen at eighty miles an hour.

‘I don’t know if I can tell you Sam. It is just so painful for me.’