The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [68]
She came back a few days later with a broad grin on her face. ‘My guv’nor reckons we should go after your mother as well,’ she announced gleefully.
‘Really?’ I was amazed. ‘What for?’
‘He reckons she knew exactly what was going on and we could get her for neglect.’
In the end, however, they decided that going after Mum would be too difficult and they would focus their attention on proving the case against Richard.
I was thrilled. For a short time it was a huge weight off my shoulders. I felt I was finally moving forward towards a happy ending. But then reality struck. The whole process was going to take a year to come to court, during which time Richard would know we were after him and would be doubling his efforts to find us in order to intimidate us into silence.
The police assured me that once he was arrested he would be held on remand and we would be safe. As it was, they let him straight back onto the streets.
‘You promised me you would hold onto him,’ I groaned when they told me.
‘I’m sorry, Janey,’ Marie said. ‘It was decided that he was on too much medication for them to be able to risk it. If something went wrong and he got ill in custody the whole case could fall to pieces and he could end up suing the police. We just couldn’t take the risk.’
‘But he’ll come looking for me,’ I pleaded. ‘I would never have started this whole thing if you hadn’t promised he would be put away.’
‘We’ll do everything we can to protect you,’ she assured me, and I knew she meant it. But what could she do if Richard or my brothers decided to wait outside the local school and lift Emma for a few hours, just to show me that they still had the power to do it? What would they do if the phone calls started coming in the middle of the night, or the notes came through the letterbox? What would they do if our house mysteriously caught fire in the night or Steve’s car was run off the road on the way to work?
Although I didn’t regret going to the police, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the coming months of looking over my shoulder and jumping every time I heard a car pulling up outside the house or the telephone rang or Emma was a few minutes late coming out of school.
Once inside the house I hardly ever left, apart from taking the children across the road to school, and even then I didn’t always make it, having to ask Steve or a friend to take them for me. It was as if my brain was too exhausted to cope. Every little thing Emma or Sophie asked for seemed as hard as climbing Mount Everest. If they wanted a drink I could barely summon the energy to find a beaker and fill it up.
Ideas of killing myself kept on coming to me and I wrote a long letter insisting that if I died the girls should both stay with Steve. My worst nightmare would be for Emma to be taken away and given back to my mother. I also wanted to make sure it was in writing that I didn’t want Richard or Mum or my brothers coming to my funeral.
Every evening, after a hard day at the office, Steve would have to sit and listen to me drunkenly droning on about killing myself. In the end he lost patience.
‘If you’re going to do it there’s nothing I can do about it,’ he said one night. ‘Just do it and get it over with. I’m going to bed.’
He went upstairs, leaving me snivelling in the lounge.
‘Okay,’ I thought, ‘if I am going to do it then there are a few things I need to sort out.’
I had never got round to explaining to Emma about Paul being her real dad. Steve had been doing such a great job and she was so happy with him it hadn’t seemed to be worth muddling things in her mind. But I didn’t want to leave any unfinished business. It had been five years now since we had escaped. Emma was eight and old enough to understand. I sat her down at the kitchen table after school one day and explained it all to her. She listened with rapt attention, asked a few questions