The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [61]
One of the estate agents we went to took us to a place that was on the market for less than £50,000. It was a repossession and the people who’d lost it had taken their revenge by trashing the place before they left, even down to smearing the walls with excrement. It was grim, but at least it would be a home of our own once we’d managed to clean it up. I was used to cleaning places up anyway – the flat the council had given me when I first managed to get away from home had been in an even worse state – and we were grateful to get anything. I also knew a lot about doing places up, having watched my stepdad do it so many times, and about keeping them nice, having been his domestic slave for so many years. Steve’s dad, being a painter and decorator, promised to help us to make the place habitable.
When the deal was finally done and we had the keys to our new home, we had to move in the middle of the night to be sure Richard wouldn’t turn up halfway through and create a scene. Even though we didn’t have much stuff it was still going to take an hour or two to get everything into the van and we couldn’t risk someone seeing us and ringing him. I’d already given a lot of things away to friends and neighbours, telling them that I was buying new and didn’t need any of it any more. I especially didn’t want to take anything to do with Richard, anything he’d sold me or even touched, particularly the bed, which held so many terrible memories. I’d even given away the carpets, since all the flats in the block were the same size and shape. For the final few days before the move I’d been sitting on bare boards in garden chairs, praying Richard wouldn’t turn up and see what I was up to.
Steve’s dad and some of his friends came round at midnight to help and even though we tried to be quiet, the activity brought the neighbours out, lights flickering on all over the block and people asking why we hadn’t told them we were going. I couldn’t give them any explanation, which was hard, as some of them had been very friendly to us in the past. I was just frantic to get away before Richard turned up to stop us, stuffing everything into the van and fielding the questions of curious, offended neighbours with helpless shrugs. Emma had already gone to stay with Steve’s mum. We were going to spend the rest of the night at their house before going on to our new home at first light.
The following morning we set out early in the van, taking Emma with us. Steve’s dad came too, to help with the moving in. It felt good to be finally leaving the area, even if it did mean moving into a house that smelled so bad we all had to eat outside in the garden for the first few days. We spent every waking hour scrubbing and scraping, but finally the place was habitable.
It must have taken a fantastic amount of courage for Steve to decide to move to an area he didn’t know, cutting himself off from many of his friends and relatives in order to give me and Emma a safe home and taking on the whole financial burden.
On top of all that he had to deal with my fragile state of mind. On the one hand I was relieved to finally be away from my family, but at the same time I was still looking over my shoulder the whole time, expecting Silly Git to turn up at any moment. Every time the phone rang I was sure he had tracked down my number. Every time I saw a Cortina my blood would freeze and the familiar sense of panic would rise inside me. I had a small child to care for and a pregnancy to deal with, at the same time as trying to hang on to my sanity. I can’t have been easy to live with.
Although it was an enormous relief to be free from Richard, I missed my brothers