Escaping the Darkness (2 page)

Why was he here, invading my time and my space, impinging on my world like a virulent disease that was once again mounting an attack, threatening to destroy my defences?

I quickly did the calculation in my head.

How old was he?

Yes, I know, he must be in his seventies by now.

Surely my mind was playing tricks.

Was this really him?

No, impossible…

I must be seeing things.

It couldn’t be…

But inside I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me!

It
was
him. There was no point doubting my reaction because there was absolutely no possibility that I could ever be mistaken when it came to identifying this man.

Bill was back.

Why had I even bothered to question my instincts?

Of course it was him!

I all-too-quickly realised I had been having a conversation with myself, and I must have spoken some of my thoughts out loud because I noticed other people passing me by,
looking at me as if I was slightly mad or ill. Bill was seventy-eight years old – surely he was old enough to die?

I knew he was…

Why had he – my tormentor, the thief of my childhood, my abuser – been spared, when so many nice, kind, loving granddads had been snatched from their caring families by death in this selfish, uncaring world? I didn’t understand.

Why now?

Why me?

Why here?

WHY AGAIN?

It was just a few short weeks after my twenty-seventh birthday when I first saw the man responsible for my childhood abuse, the first thief of my childhood. He was there as large as life in front of C & A, standing on the same pavement, his feet touching the same paving slab I would have stood on, had he not already been there. He was in my way, interrupting my life,
now
, yet again. Bill was blocking my exit, my only escape route. He resembled everything I hated and much more. It was this man, and this man alone that made me afraid of every single, short, grey-haired, brown-eyed, spectacle-wearing old man I ever subsequently saw or met.

This beautiful, crisp, sunny February morning now seemed tainted; shadowed by darkness as a single, solitary, cloud which chose that very moment to move across the sun’s path. I hastily averted my eyes from his direction, hoping he hadn’t noticed me. Yet instantly I knew in that
fraction of a second I hadn’t been that lucky. He called to me just as I was crossing the road, trying to make my getaway, as I pushed the pram containing my youngest son dangerously fast.

I heard a voice, a word being spoken. ‘Sarah’, he called out, in that pathetic, inconsequential voice of his. I’d almost forgotten how bad a sound it was, or how uneasy and frighteningly on edge each word he spoke had once made me feel. I tried to ignore him but he just called louder.

‘Sarah!’

I continued pushing the pram, moving away from him…

‘
Sarah!
’ he persistently called again, then again, ‘Sa-rah!’

I looked away, desperate to ignore his anxious advances. I tried to quicken my pace even more, without making it too obvious. But within moments he had quickly caught up with me. Obviously he hadn’t had any major health problems since we’d lost touch, because he moved as quickly as he had done all those years before. As he came level he grabbed me, his fingers painfully digging into the flesh of my arm, even though I had my winter coat on. I tried to tug free but his grip was too firm.

‘Hello Sarah how are you doing?’ he asked cheerily, a hint of pure, pleasure-seeking satisfaction in his voice.

He behaved and smiled as if I was his dearest, long-lost friend. The delight at seeing me again gleamed brightly in his eyes, which were twinkling like hundreds of brilliantly cut precious stones. Yet I could clearly see the nasty flaws in each and every sparkling gleam.

My heart was thumping like a base drum at a military passing-out parade, every beat bringing nausea bubbling closer to the surface – I felt as if I was a volcano about to erupt. I quickly took a breath but the air that surrounded me tasted rancid, as if every particle had been corrupted by his presence, all the freshness and clean crispness gone. It was as if someone had come along and turned out the only light that showed the way to the exit, a door that lead to cleaner surroundings and would take me away from the nightmare I now found myself trapped in. I turned to walk away; I was a woman now in charge of my own destiny, but at that moment I was transported back to my childhood. I felt as afraid as I had been when I was just a small girl of eleven.

Everything inside me was screaming:
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be talking to this man.

Not him.

Not now.

Not again.

NEVER AGAIN, EVER.

Even though I had become an adult, a ‘grown up’, I felt as if my world had rapidly become infected with a deadly, airborne virus. A virus I knew I had to take cover from.

As I hurriedly turned to walk away, he grabbed my arm again. I could feel his tenseness and the onset of bruising under his overpoweringly tight grip as he held on. I knew he didn’t want to let go, especially now that he had found me again.

I wanted to be a million miles away…

And I remember praying and thinking this was my last chance to get praying right:

Please God, open up the ground and swallow me, just for this moment, then if possible can you let me out again by my gate?

I laughed at the impossibility of my wish while, at the same time, I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before. But it didn’t work – I was still here. And Bill was still here. No one heard my momentary call for help; no one listened to my silent plea. My ruined life was returning to the surface of my mind at such lightning speed. I knew I would have no way of suppressing it. I felt dizzy, as if there was a merry-go-round in my head, which was speeding out of control.

As people passed me by, I looked at them with such desperation, my eyes begging them for help. But they were all too busy to notice, doing what people do, getting on with their own lives. I wanted someone to catch on to my situation and help me to escape. Why had no one noticed my pain and anxiety? Were they all walking around with blinkers on, unable to see what was happening right in front of their eyes?

Nothing happened. Nothing would.

My bravery had gone. I couldn’t escape.

And Bill was still in front of me blocking my path. He grinned at me, a look of shear contentment in his eyes; he was happy to think and believe that he was in control again, able to gain back the possession he had very carelessly lost long, long ago. I was the one object he thought he had a right to own, no matter what he had
to do to possess it. Yet I wasn’t that same person anymore. I wasn’t the shy eleven-year-old he first abused all those years ago. The intervening time had contained so many long, lonely insignificant hours.

I was me…

Sarah Preston.

Grown up, stronger and more in control than I was all those stolen days, weeks, months and years ago, and he could surely see this in the woman who stood before him.

As the rest of the world passed carelessly by, he asked again, ‘Are you okay? Still married?’

I snapped out of the subdued, shocked state that had taken me over. I was hearing the words he was speaking but they were falling flat at my feet, as if my ears couldn’t credit them with any semblance of meaning or importance.

‘Yes.’ I replied quietly. I sounded so afraid and hated my voice at that moment for letting me down. Yet the words I next spoke gained strength with each syllable, each one louder than its predecessor: ‘I am still married.’

‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I’d love to see you again.’

What? Did he really just say that?

I could not believe what I was hearing. Each sound his vile lips produced was registering in my head like an explosion.
See me again. See me again.
Who did he think he was? More importantly, what did he think I was? Some kind of prostitute? Someone who was so desperate that the only thing I needed was him?

Never
…

If he were the last person on earth in the last rescue
boat after violent storms and flooding had consumed everything else, I would have thrown myself into the rising floodwaters and taken a chance on my survival – even though I couldn’t swim – rather than be with him. I looked down at my small son asleep in his pram and remembered with a slow sense of warm fulfilment the things I now had in my life. I was thankful that Sam, the man to whom I was now married, protected me and loved me. I was thankful too that I, unlike so many other women who have been abused as children, had been given a chance of being reborn into a new life filled with love and security; a new existence where my past wasn’t relevant and a history that had not in any way impeded what was now so vitally important: being a mother.

As I once more became aware of the man standing beside me, I wondered what had made him think that, just because I was now a woman, I’d be any more willing to take part in his sordid, sexual advances and perverted acts. Furthermore, it appeared that I was a woman whom – it was obvious by the longing in his voice – he now so clearly, desperately wanted.

Maybe that was it. Was he wondering how I had matured? Did he want to see for himself if all the bits were curving and shaping in all the right places? After all, the last time he had seen my body I was still just a fourteen-year-old girl, a child…

A child with a newly developing body, maturing as all girls do, slowly over time – entering into adolescence but
still essentially a child, who was not quite yet ready to become a woman.

As I gained the strength I needed to walk away from him, he began following me with his eyes, his face betraying his feelings of frustration. He had not really believed my mood, my response or my actions of a few moments earlier. It was as if he could not understand why I was behaving like this. I knew he was asking himself one question:
Why was I being so hostile towards him?

What else did he, in all reality, expect to happen?

At that moment he seemed to be stuck to the spot, apparently in some kind of traumatised shock. He had a calculating look, as if he was continually asking himself questions, questions I could see building hurriedly in his eyes, like books stacked on shelves in a library. As I turned and walked away from him, I made a guess at the questions he was asking himself:

Was this the Sarah I knew?

Was this the Sarah that was once so polite?

The same Sarah who never said ‘boo to a goose’?

My Sarah?

That was it. That was how Bill had always thought of me, as
his Sarah
. Not a girl who had a right to her own life, growing up as her friends were all doing. In his eyes I was just…

His Sarah.

His Sarah
confined and captured like a beautiful songbird in a cage, singing as best she could to gain her freedom. He seemed so stunned, as he reluctantly faced
the answers to his questions, that he hadn’t noticed the person approaching him from the opposite direction. Bill’s acquaintance was smiling and happy to see him, as my enemy continued to concentrate on just how far I was now away from him. As the gap between us widened, he began to move forward, heading towards me, but I noticed the other person before he did. This woman was trying to get Bill’s attention with a single, solitary wave. Luckily for me this character, who was now standing at his side, appeared to be someone he knew, who was glad to see him.

As I quickly glanced back to see if he was following me, I could see the mounting irritation now burning bright in his eyes, along with the mounted frustration nestling in all the creases and folds of his wrinkled, weathered, old face. I had but a few seconds to try and hide myself as far away as possible from him, before he had time to make some feasible excuse to his friend, setting him free to follow me.

I looked up the high street and saw a bus approaching the nearby traffic lights; it was my bus, the 29A. Every second of my rushed journey towards the bus stop saw me frantically trying to keep all four pram wheels firmly on the pavement. I somehow managed to do so as I ran faster and faster to where I needed to be before the bus swung around the corner. It was a miracle that my son and I made it to the bus stop in one piece, that we hadn’t hurt ourselves, or, more importantly, run into any of the people that hurriedly made way for this mum, racing along the road, pushing her pram at speed.

I was so glad of that dozen or so people who were all waiting patiently for their own buses to arrive. Unbeknown to them, they were my safety shield, there to protect me from danger, shielding me from Bill’s searching glare. When the bus rounded the corner and pulled up at the stop, I quickly boarded once the doors opened, feeling completely out of breath. I hastily folded the pushchair up, stacked it in the storage area and then carried my small son towards a seat, cradling him in my arms, thankful he was too young to remember the face of the man from my nightmares: a man who had been so unjustly wicked to his mummy all those years ago.