Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [63]
The look was important. I had matching DM boots and snake-effect trousers for wearing at weekends. Gone were the days of cycling and fresh air. All I was interested in now was drinking and smoking and riding – and I wasn’t alone. Every Friday night I’d ride into Brighton and drink at a pub called the Hungry Years. It’s called the Charles Street Bar now and it caters for a different clientele, but in the 1980s it was where all the bikers hung out. So that’s where my new boyfriend, Simon, and I liked to go in our biker garb.
Simon was a seventeen-year-old apprentice scaffolder by day, but he had the DMs, the leather jacket and the attitude. His hair wasn’t that long, but otherwise he looked the part. Every weekend there was a heavy-metal disco upstairs until the small hours, so I wasn’t getting home until very, very late. But, as far as I was concerned, my grandparents could have no complaints. Yes, I was out, but they knew where I was – roughly. I was usually courteous and I did my best to get along with them. After all, I only had to get through my exams and then it would all be over.
Spring 1986 finally came and I sat down to take my O levels. The level of revision I’d managed to squeeze in was laughable. How I wished I’d taken them a year earlier, when some of the questions would have meant something to me. But I did my best – that was a habit I could never break – and in the end I scored higher than a lot of people who’d worked hard. It was also important to me to keep my word to Grandpa. I’d said I’d take them and I was going to. When they were over, however, that was a completely different story.
I finished my final exam at one o’clock one Friday in June. An hour later I had filled a hired van with all my possessions, including everything from my ‘bottom drawer’. With Simon at the wheel, I was ready to start life as an adult.
It wasn’t a shock to my grandparents. They’d known my plans and put up with my flat-hunting stories for the last few weeks. Now the moment had arrived and we parted exactly as I knew we would. Granny gave me a squeeze and told me to call her if I needed anything. Grandpa just held out his hand. As I reached to shake it, he said, ‘Good luck, Cathy.’
As we pulled away, I didn’t look back once. Tremola Avenue was my past. I had my independence now. I was in control of my own life, of my own destiny.
No one will ever tell me what to do again.
ELEVEN
A Charming Man
I honestly thought this was the start of something new. Mark, Brian and those evil bastards who’d driven my mother to her death were long gone from my life. School was over – no more detentions or tellings off for no homework. And it was also ‘bye bye’ to Granny and Grandpa. There were no hard feelings, not from my side anyway, but I was glad to be out of their house. Out of their control.
Control, I realized, was what I’d always wanted. The hours I’d spent perfecting my dancing, judo, knitting, sewing, homework, drawing – in the end it had all come down to me wanting to master the skill, to be the best. To take control of it.
Because that was something my mother had never been able to do. From the moment she’d fallen pregnant, her destiny was out of her hands. Reading through the box of correspondence that Granny had given me recently, I could see she’d had to fight even to keep me. It wasn’t just her partner or her parents or her school who wanted a say in her life, it was the local council and even, for a while, the police. This wasn’t a woman in control.
Mum had never had the whip hand at any point after that. Apart from, perhaps, the time she worked at American Express, there was always someone calling the shots. Social services removed me, the police arrested her time after time and, of course, there were the men who abused her. I didn’t know if they were the same ones who gave her the heroin or whether she had dealers unknown