The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [47]
‘He just went fucking loopy,’ she told me, ‘kicking in all the doors and everything.’
Although she never told me the cause of their row, I believe he’d picked a fight with her for producing so many boys and never giving him a girl of his own.
She was begging the nurses to keep me in for longer to ensure that Emma and I were safe. They weren’t keen to keep me in hospital any longer than they had to, as they needed the bed for new cases, but they agreed to give me one more day.
A few hours after Mum had gone, Richard turned up, all smiles and charm.
‘You ready to come home then?’ he asked, picking Emma up and giving her a cuddle. He was always so lovey dovey with Emma. He was never like that with anyone else.
‘Yeah,’ I said, careful not to let a flicker of my true dread show through as I got Emma’s things ready.
As soon as we got back to the house he made it obvious that he was going to do nothing to help Paul and me get rehoused, his only concern being how long it would be before he and I could start having sex again.
‘You think you’re going to get out of here, don’t you?’ he taunted me. ‘But you ain’t going nowhere. I’m never gonna write that fucking letter for you.’
The only way that the council would find us a place would be if we were going to be made homeless, which meant that Richard or Mum had to write a letter saying they were going to be throwing us out onto the street. Richard refused to do it and forbade Mum from doing it either. As long as they said they were happy to house us, the council would not give us anything of our own.
Paul did his best to cope with living with Richard but I could see that if we didn’t get a place of our own soon he would be driven away and Emma and I would be left there with Silly Git on our own. I began to wonder if maybe that was Richard’s plan. Now he had Emma, why did he need Paul around any more? There were moments when he seemed to believe that Emma was actually his own daughter, as if she was a product of one of those dreadful nights when we had slept together like a married couple.
A health visitor came to see us and not realizing Richard was only my stepfather, she commented how much Emma looked like her granddad. I felt a chill run through me. Even though I knew it wasn’t possible she was his, the thought of it made me want to die.
‘I can’t cope any more, Mum,’ I told her once he was out of the house. ‘I have to get out of here, you know I do.’
Then Mum did the bravest thing I can remember her doing. Maybe the fact that there was a baby in danger now as well as me made her decide to take a risk. Maybe she could remember the early days when she used to have to take me to the toilet with her in order to protect me from my stepfather. Whatever it was, she wrote the letter for me.
‘Get down to the council offices now,’ she said, pushing it into my hand, ‘as quickly as possible, before he finds out and comes after you. Don’t look back, just get on the bus and go.’
All the way there my heart was in my mouth, my eyes swivelling round every corner, terrified that Richard would appear behind me and start a scene, grabbing the letter and dragging me back home by my hair, as I’d seen him do to Mum so many times when we were children. I knew that he was perfectly willing to make scenes in public. I sometimes thought he could kill someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight and no one would have the nerve to do anything about it.
The council acted quickly once they had Mum’s letter and we were allocated a flat four weeks later. I still wasn’t sure that Richard would allow us to physically leave the house but, to my surprise, he let us move out without making a fuss.
I couldn’t believe it. I was actually out of his house for the first time since I was four. How could it all have ended so easily when it had been so hard to escape him for so long? One minute I was telling