Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [37]
Then he let me go and my knees buckled. I wanted to run to Mum, but I couldn’t. She came over to me instead and led me to the bedroom. As we went inside, I heard the man talking to the others about football or something. They were laughing. It was as if the last few minutes had meant absolutely nothing to him at all.
The sensation of the knife pressing into my skin and seeing the light reflecting off the sharp steel blade had been awful. It was a wake-up call, I suppose. After what had been done to Mum in the kitchen, I knew he wouldn’t have been afraid to use it. He was prepared to back up his threats with action – which just made the threats themselves all the more potent.
I don’t know if the men sensed I was more scared than ever, or whether they enjoyed the power, but even though I tried to behave, they never stopped the ultimatums. ‘If you don’t do this, I’m going to do that.’ Everything was a threat now. It became their currency. Consequently, a lot of the time, the intimidation barely registered. I was programmed to behave anyway. It didn’t matter what the specific details were. In a sense, accepting that gave me a little bit of power. I was the one deciding to obey them. I had control. All their menacing strong-arm tactics were water off a duck’s back. I remember thinking, There’s nothing you can say to hurt me now. But I was wrong.
Mark came up to me in the kitchen. I was rolling joints like a good girl. In the past he’d leave me to it or even chat to me while I beavered away. That time was long gone. The relationship had changed. He seemed to take pleasure in reminding me that I was doing it for him.
He was looking out the window when a thought seemed to strike him.
‘Cathy, you know what I’ll do if you or your mother don’t behave today, don’t you?’
‘No,’ I said, not interested. We were going to behave, so it wasn’t an issue. I didn’t need to hear the gruesome details.
‘See the cathedral?’ he continued.
I looked up briefly. Of course I could see it. It was my favourite view. When I was alone I loved staring out at that amazing structure.
‘See the spires?’
I nodded. I didn’t have to look. I could picture the four shards tapering towards the sky with my eyes closed. They were my favourite part. But Mark wasn’t interested in what I liked or didn’t like.
‘If you give me any trouble today,’ he said smiling, ‘I’m going to drag you up to the top of that tower and I’m going to hang you by your neck from one of those spires. Do you understand me?’
I tried to nod again, but my head felt so heavy. The idea of being tied by my throat to the spire weighed on me more than anything else he’d ever threatened. I could see the spires, just like I could see the knife when that was brandished. These weren’t idle threats.
He’ll do it. I know he’ll do it.
In one fell swoop that vile man in our kitchen had quashed every romantic dream I’d ever had staring out of that window. Gazing across to the church and imagining its marvellous past had always filled me with a sense of wonder, a feeling of hope. The majesty and the magic of the building sometimes made my head feel like it might explode. But all that was over now. He’d killed it. The spires were no longer things of beauty. They were threats. Weapons that taunted me.
For days afterwards I couldn’t look out of the window without crying in genuine fear for my life. Irrational, but real at the same time. How would he have managed to drag me up there? If I’d thought about it, I would have realized it didn’t make sense. But you don’t analyse when you’re too afraid to breathe. To this day, I can’t see St Peter’s without the pit of my stomach churning.
After that I was a changed person. More compliant than ever, meeker. I tried to be strong for Mum, but it was hard. Mark seemed to notice that he’d struck gold with this threat. He only had to gesture towards the window and I’d shrink, hide, do whatever he wanted. He’d won. My one sanctuary in the whole mess had been desecrated.
The thing about bullies is, they only succeed if you let them. That’s what I’ve always been