The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [58]
I put on the kettle and made us all a cup of tea – it’s my answer to everything. I’ve always been a right old teapot. Also, the ritual of sipping from mugs would help to distract us from what we were going to have to talk about and it was only polite to offer poor Cheryl some hospitality after dragging her out of bed to do my dirty work for me. Emma was asleep in her cot, unaware of anything.
Eventually Cheryl and I sat on the sofa together with our mugs of hot tea, huddled like small children, while Steve paced round and round the room, unable to sit still as he waited to hear the explanation for everything that was going wrong in his life.
‘Listen, Steve,’ Cheryl started. ‘I know you know what happened to me when I was a kid.’
He didn’t answer. I could see that he was concentrating hard, trying to take in every word she said, making sure he understood it and didn’t miss anything.
‘Well, the same thing happened to Jane with her dad.’
‘With Richard?’
You could almost see the words sinking into his mind, taking shape, conjuring up images almost too horrible to bear.
‘When did this happen then?’ he asked, his voice shaking.
‘From when she was four,’ Cheryl said.
‘Until when?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
Steve paced faster as he thought about the life I’d been forced to lead while he’d been out at work. Cheryl kept talking, although I’m sure most of her words must have been washing over Steve by that stage, like trying to empty a bucket of water into a narrow bottle all at once. I sat hunched beside her, every muscle trembling, my mug and cigarette shaking in my hands as I rocked rhythmically back and forth, as I so often did.
‘I knew it,’ he exploded once the truth had sunk in. ‘I fucking knew it.’
‘What do you mean?’ I wanted to know.
‘Ever since I met you I’ve been getting these images of you and him in my head and I’ve always thought to myself, “You sick git!” But I never imagined anything like this.’
Cheryl put her arm around my shoulders to try to calm my shaking.
From being gob-smacked Steve became furious, shouting and raging around the room.
‘Stop being angry!’ I screamed, putting my hands over my ears. ‘You’re making me feel like I’ve done something wrong. This is why I didn’t want to tell you!’
Steve didn’t want to know the details, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. As he heard them, and fitted them in with the things he already knew about my family, I could tell that he had grasped the full horror of the situation. He could see that there was no way we could put right what had happened in the past, but that we had to think of ways to make the future better.
Once he’d got over the shock, his first thought was that we had to go to the police. I had to convince him that I truly didn’t want him to do anything about it and wasn’t prepared to go to the police or do anything else that would aggravate the situation.
After that, his only thought was that he had to get me away from the area. We decided to make a run for it, taking Emma with us and not telling anyone where we were going, not even Paul. It was going to be a hard thing to do, leaving friends and people who had been good to us without even saying goodbye, but we couldn’t take the risk of my stepfather going after someone he believed knew where we were. If he thought for a moment anyone had an address for us, he would beat them mercilessly until he got it out of them. Everyone knew that his rages were uncontrollable when anyone tried to stand up to him or frustrate him. It was even more urgent that we got away soon because I wanted to be gone before my family knew anything about my new pregnancy. I wanted my new baby’s life to be completely untainted by them.
The morning after he learned the truth Steve got up at the normal time, no longer willing to wake up before dawn