The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [43]
Also, once he’d discovered that I had lost my virginity, Richard instructed me to dump Joe, just like I’d dumped Nick. I felt my heart breaking all over again as I thought about telling poor sweet Joe that we were over. He used to come and meet me from work and I was going to have to tell him on the bus between work and home, with everyone else listening in. The bus was always packed, but I couldn’t risk missing it and being late home. I told him I was going to have to end it and we sat with our heads together, crying for the whole forty-minute ride. People were looking at us as if we were mad. When I got home I told my stepdad that it was done and I managed not to cry in front of him, but I cried whenever I was on my own for months after that.
Suddenly impatient to get what he wanted, Richard started laying his plans for this new stage in our relationship and told Mum that he and I were going out to get some parts for the car. As we walked out of the house together it felt as if someone had filled my stomach with ice cubes. In all the years that he had been torturing and abusing me I had always hung on to the fact that I was lucky he had never actually done this to me, and now he was going to.
‘If you do this properly,’ he told me as we got into the car, ‘you can go out this evening.’
He also told me that this was the last thing I would ever have to do for him, but I knew that was a lie because he had told me that so many times before and there was always a reason why I had to do just one more thing. As a child I might have believed him, but it was no longer possible to fool myself so completely. If he was able to do it to me today, why wouldn’t he want to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that?
Still, as he was being so nice, and was obviously so keen for me to co-operate, I felt I was a tiny bit in control of the situation, more than I had ever been in the past. I thought it was possible I might be able to get at least one little concession.
‘Will you use a condom, please?’ I asked, thinking that I couldn’t bear the thought of him being inside me and leaving his mess behind him.
‘You don’t need to use those,’ he said, ‘you’re on the pill.’
‘Oh please,’ I begged. ‘The pill isn’t always 100 per cent safe.’
‘Okay,’ he agreed, and we stopped at a garage to buy some. I felt as if I was on my way to my own execution.
It was the middle of the afternoon. We drove around the country lanes looking for a spot that Richard thought would be safe. Eventually he found a relatively secluded car park. There were a couple of other cars already parked there, one with some people in.
‘We’ll wait for them to go,’ he told me, making me kiss him and touch him while we waited. To any casual passerby we would have looked like any couple out on a date – a sixteen-year-old girl with a thirty-year-old man, not such an unusual sight – and I hated the fact that anyone might think I was actually with him by choice.
About ten minutes later the people in the other car still weren’t showing any signs of going and now and then other people were walking past with their dogs, enjoying the scenery. I was beginning to hope that I would get away with it, for one day at least.
But now that Richard was aroused there was little chance that he was going home without having what he had been thinking about all day. Eventually he couldn’t wait a moment longer. He was going to do it whether there was anyone