The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [53]
‘Best of three?’ we both said simultaneously.
The first three were all yeses, as were the three after that. Wondering if we had made a mistake, we checked all the others, both of us in tears, and the nos were all still there, but something or someone seemed to be telling us that we were meant to be together.
Anxious to avoid Richard at all costs, we took to living in Steve’s car all the time we were together, eating our meals in McDonald’s and using the toilets in service stations. I even had a newspaper that I’d cut two eyeholes in, so that I would hold over my face as we drove around in case anyone saw us. It was hardly a conventional relationship.
I don’t know what finally gave me the strength to stand up to the man who had been bullying me all my life. Maybe it was because he had succeeded in making me almost as hard as himself, or perhaps it was having Steve and his family as an example of how good life could be if you could live free of fear. Whatever it was that triggered it, just after my twenty-first birthday, seventeen years after social services sent me back to ‘that hell-hole’, I decided I’d had enough. Maybe it was because Emma was getting closer to the age I was when Richard first started abusing me, or maybe I had just reached a point where I couldn’t take any more without cracking up. I was beginning to have dreams in which I’d turned into a lonely old woman because no one had ever been allowed to get close to me, and sometimes I would imagine that Emma and I were dead, just because I couldn’t think of any other way out of the situation. It seemed that it was worth one last try to break free of Richard before giving up once and for all.
To begin with, I started to find the nerve to defy him in tiny ways, ways that no one else would ever have noticed but which were huge acts of courage for me. He and Mum idolized Emma, always wanting to have her up at their house and taking her whenever they wanted, regardless of whether I wanted it or not. Their house had become like a shrine to her; Richard had even erected a swing for her in the garden. All day he and Mum would be playing with her and I would sit there, glowering at them, trying to make it as unpleasant for them as possible.
Eventually, one day when Richard came round he said, ‘From now on I’m picking Emma up on her own. I don’t want your miserable fucking face around our house no more.’
I realized my plan had backfired badly. From then on he just came and took Emma, leaving me alone to think dark thoughts until he decided to bring her back to me.
Then one morning, I thought, ‘She’s my daughter and you’re not having her.’
I was waiting in the flat with her when he arrived, muttering over and over to myself and trying to stoke up my courage as I went to the door. I opened it a crack, keeping my foot against it so he couldn’t just walk in as he usually did. If I’d kept it closed he would just have kicked it in – at least this way I felt I stood a chance of running past him if he turned nasty.
‘Is Emma ready?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘What?’ He was obviously so shocked to have me talk back to him that he couldn’t take in what I’d said. ‘Better get her ready then.’
‘No,’ I said, hardly able to breathe with fear. ‘I’m not getting her ready.’
‘Get her ready!’ he screamed, his face turning bright red as he shouted and spat. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes. I’ll be waiting in the car for her.’
He knew I didn’t have a phone, so as long as he didn’t let me out of the flat he could come back in for Emma whenever he was ready. He’d also told me countless times how I had ‘an eggbox front door’ which was only designed to be an interior door and could easily be kicked in.
‘You see the plastic filling round these windows?’ he’d said once. ‘It’s only council stuff. All I need to do is take that out and the panes will just pop out.’
It was true that he always seemed to be able to get into the house whenever he wanted to. Once I had thought I was in there on my own and turned round to find him standing behind the curtains,