The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [52]
One thing I was pleased about, though, was that Steve and Paul got on well right from the start, even though Richard tried to set them against one another.
‘You lot make me sick,’ he said when he came round once and found them together. Paul had come to collect Emma and Steve was waiting to take me out. ‘He’s a cunt and you’re just sitting there while he’s shagging your missus,’ he said to Paul. ‘Are you going to let him get away with that?’
‘She’s not my missus,’ Paul pointed out, perfectly reasonably. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend.’
Richard swung round and raised his fist in Steve’s face. ‘If I see you again I’ll fucking lift you.’
‘You won’t do that,’ Steve had said, ‘because then I’d just go to the police.’
‘I’d be willing to do time for you,’ Silly Git sneered, and we all suspected that was true.
If he’d had his way he would have had them both fighting it out with their fists like me and my cousin or Mum and her friends, but they didn’t rise to his bait and together their good natures and good sense were too much for him.
If he’d had a choice I think he would have liked to have had Paul back and got rid of Steve. Paul came from our area and Richard knew better how to manipulate him. With Steve he could never be sure how to act in order to get the upper hand.
My head felt as if it would burst with all the different stresses and strains and sometimes Steve would wonder why I was so moody. There was one weekend when he took me down to the coast to stay in a hotel and go clubbing and shopping and we had a really great time. It was so romantic, with drinks in the car and a red rose for me. On the way back home on the Sunday night I started to think about how the weekend was now over and Silly Git would be round again on Monday morning. The thought dragged my spirits down and I just wasn’t able to keep my good mood going. I couldn’t even pretend to be enjoying myself any more. Steve was hurt and angry that I was being such a cow after he’d done so much for me, but there was no way I could explain to him why my spirits had so suddenly deserted me without telling him everything. The first few inches of the wedge that always came between me and people I cared about had made themselves felt.
Steve did know that I was frightened of Richard, even though he didn’t understand completely why, and to please me he would agree to meet me in his car or would come round late in the evenings and leave early in the mornings, just to avoid bumping into him. We developed a code by which I would leave an upstairs light on in a window if Richard was in the flat when Steve was due to visit, and he would know not to come back until the light went out.
Steve was willing to put up with it all up to a point but, because I couldn’t tell him the whole story, he eventually found it too much and we split up. I heard the news from Steve’s dad when I phoned to talk to Steve and was told that he didn’t want to speak to me any more. Yet again my stepdad had ruined my chances of happiness with a good man and another layer was added to my despair.
This time, however, there must have been some stronger forces at work, because Steve came round to see me again after about six months, during which time his friends had got fed up with hearing him talking about me. He was shocked by the sight of me. During that short time I’d developed an eating disorder and become stick thin. I’d become aggressive and hated the whole world. I didn’t care who I upset. I’d lost all self-respect. I suppose my family were finally turning me into someone like themselves.
I was fed up with falling in love with people and having them ripped away from me and Steve and I couldn’t decide whether we wanted to stay together now or not. In the end we decided to do a test. We ripped up dozens of little bits of paper, writing ‘yes’ on half of them and ‘no’ on the other half. We then put them all into Steve’s woolly hat and agreed that we would abide by whichever answer came out first.
The first