Faith - Lesley Pearse [82]
‘A typical teenager then?’ Stuart replied.
‘I suppose so. But anyway, Laura came in, found the house looking disgusting and of course began washing up and putting things to rights just as she always used to do. Mum was bleating on about how Vince’s sons would take the house and I was in and out of the kitchen earwigging. When I heard Laura say Vince had interfered with her and that was why she left, I was really shocked. It had never occurred to me that was the reason. I wanted to rush back into the kitchen and tell them he’d done a whole lot more than just interfere with me, and that I felt like cheering when he died. But I didn’t say a word, and when Laura left she asked me to walk to the bus stop with her.’
Meggie could see herself walking down the road with her older sister, feeling like a fat waddling duck next to a graceful swan, but she remembered that Laura took her hand, as if she was still a little girl, and that broke the dam of her emotions and she burst into tears.
Laura caught hold of her and hugged her tightly. ‘I never wanted to leave you, please believe me, Meggie. I just couldn’t bear Vince any more,’ she whispered into her hair. ‘I should have come back before to check that he wasn’t doing it to you too, but I was too afraid of seeing him.’
It was such a cold, grey day, but that hug and her sister’s words made Meggie feel warmer inside. Until then she had thought she would never be able to tell anyone about what Vince did to her, much less describe how he made her feel inside. But there was something about the look on Laura’s face, the tone of her voice, that told Meggie she shared all those feelings. And so there, on a cold, windy street, she blurted it all out, how Vince had started on her when she was twelve, first just touching her suggestively, but always buying her presents and telling her she was his special girl.
‘I knew deep down it wasn’t right, but it felt good that he loved me,’ she admitted reluctantly, burying her face in her sister’s shoulder. ‘Mum never seemed to care about me, and he did help me with my homework and made a fuss of me. But then one evening when Mum had gone out somewhere he forced himself on me. I tried to fight him off but he was too strong, and he told me that if I said a word about it to anyone he’d throw us all out.
‘After that he did it to me every time Mum went out. I used to beg him not to but he would say that I liked it really. I felt like I was caught in some sticky kind of web that I could never get out of. I used to go out sometimes and stay out half the night wandering the streets, just to get away from him. I thought if I behaved really badly, at home and at school, Mum would realize what was wrong, but she didn’t even notice. He was doing it to me right up until just before he died, even though we found out he had had another woman all along.’
Laura moved Meggie back from her, and her eyes were full of tears. She put her hands on her sister’s cheeks and caressed them in sympathy. ‘You must come home with me,’ she said. ‘It’s too cold to talk here.’
That day was the first time Meggie had felt entirely safe for years. Laura’s little flat was so warm, bright and clean, and as they sat by the fire on the sofa, talking and talking, pouring out to each other all the hurts trapped inside them, Meggie felt as if all the poison inside her was draining away.
Laura told her how she’d been bullied at school, how she’d tried to make things better at home in Shepherds Bush by stealing things they needed. She said she’d felt like some kind of freak long before Vince came on to her because no one seemed to like her. She explained how once she’d left Barnes she got the idea that if she pretended she had no family, nothing could hurt any more. So she told people her parents had been killed in a car crash.
‘I know it was wrong, but I got admiration instead of people looking down their noses at me, and it felt good,’ she said. ‘It never occurred to me then that I was digging myself into a hole. But I can see now that’s just what