The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [62]
‘I just want to talk to them,’ I said, ‘so I can tell them that I haven’t forgotten them. Can you ask them to come to your office after school and I’ll ring at three-thirty. Please don’t tell them why you want to see them.’
She was very understanding and said she would do what she could. I waited by the phone until the exact moment that I’d said I would call and then dialled with trembling fingers.
‘I’m so sorry, Jane,’ the headmistress said, ‘because you asked me not to tell them why I wanted them in the office they assumed they were in trouble and ran off the moment school finished.’
I felt so sad not to be able to communicate with my brothers. I found myself thinking about them a lot and wondering how they were coping. When it was their birthdays I would buy cards for them, although I never sent them, and thought about them all day. I used to plan how we might be able to get hold of Tom, who seemed to be the most vulnerable one, and bring him to live in safety with us. Steve was quite happy to go along with the plan, but we never worked out how to do it.
Although I was now physically free of Richard, I was still suffering mentally from everything that had happened before, as well as from the ever-present fear that he would track me down and turn up on the doorstep. Sometimes I would resort to drink to try to fight the depression, picking up a couple of bottles of wine after dropping Emma at school in the morning, or I would just stay inside the house for months on end, terrified to step outside.
If you have been a slave all your life, used to being ordered about and abused from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, it’s impossible to adjust to normal life overnight. I had never been free to make my own decisions before and had no idea how to do it. I was like a bird that has been bred in captivity suddenly being released into the wild: I fell apart.
When other people were around I could keep up the pretence of being a carefree, zany person, but I knew I was close to the edge and needed to talk to someone professionally. I kept telling my doctor that I needed help, but she didn’t seem to see any urgency in the situation. As far as she was concerned, I was someone who had arrived from nowhere and seemed to be coping. She had no idea of my history and there was never enough time for me to be able to explain fully what I’d been through.
‘I’m alright at the moment,’ I kept saying, ‘but I know I need to sort my head out or it’ll all blow up later. I’ve seen too many people who have fallen to pieces because they haven’t dealt with their problems early.’
My doctor just looked puzzled and referred me to a counsellor.
I made an appointment with the woman, but I said I would have to bring Emma along because I couldn’t get her looked after at that time.
‘Oh that’s fine,’ the counsellor assured me. ‘This meeting is just to get the formalities out of the way and get the names and family tree straight.’
She was a nurse who had just finished a counselling course. When I started telling her what had been happening, her jaw dropped and she looked at Emma.
‘So d’you think he could be her dad then?’ she asked.
That was the end of the session for me. I didn’t feel confident that she knew what she was doing.
But I knew that one day I would have to face my demons once and for all.
Chapter Ten
I had given birth to my second daughter, Sophie, a few months after going into hiding. Richard and Mum had never even known I was pregnant again and I liked the idea that they didn’t realize Sophie existed, that she never had to be connected to them in any way.
We were working so hard to create a nice family atmosphere for our girls, but the demons were still at work deep in my head, trying desperately to push me off the rails with the memories and the confusion