The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [71]
I hadn’t seen Hayley for so long I was very hesitant to contact her now and ask such a big favour, but eventually I could see that I needed all the help I could get.
‘Of course I’ll help you,’ she said as soon as I asked, and I remembered how we had become blood sisters that day all those years ago. ‘You should have asked me ages ago,’ she went on. ‘Your mum has already been round asking my mum to be a witness for them.’
‘What did your mum say?’
‘She said no, but their solicitors keep knocking on the door.’
It was wonderful to find that there were some people who had found the strength to stand up for what they believed to be right.
The more I found out, the more my head was spinning. I was shocked by how many of the older neighbours said that they had always known what was going on between Richard and me, as if it was inevitable and there was nothing they could have done about it. Maybe there was nothing they could have done, but at least they could have tried. Perhaps they assumed I was a willing participant in the relationship. Was that really possible?
Uncle John, who had been my friend in the days when he lived next door to us, also agreed to stand up and speak out against Richard.
‘I know your granddad would never forgive me if I didn’t help you when I had the chance,’ he said. He would pay a terrible price later, branded a traitor to the family for siding with me against the precious patriarch.
Another of my uncles, who I knew had been beaten and bullied by Richard in the past, rang to tell me that Richard had asked him to be a witness for the defence and that he couldn’t get out of it. I checked with Marie and she assured me that he would be perfectly within his rights to say no. I rang him back and told him he didn’t have to do what Richard asked.
‘But you know, Janey,’ he whinged, ‘I used to go down the pub with him sometimes. He’s really just an ordinary bloke.’
As far as I knew Richard hardly ever went to the pub. The one occasion when he did go with this uncle he rolled back home blind drunk, having picked a fight on the way home then fallen over and dropped his Chinese all over the front garden. I think he knew that he couldn’t handle his drink, which was why most of the time he and Mum just drank endless cups of tea.
‘How can you be talking to me like that about a man who raped and abused me almost every day of my life for seventeen years?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, now hang on there, Janey,’ my uncle cautioned, as if he was some wise elder of the family. ‘We don’t know that for sure. Everyone’s innocent until they’re proven guilty.’
‘Why would I make stuff like that up?’ I yelled, beside myself with fury that I was hearing this from a man who had himself suffered at Richard’s hands. ‘How could I imagine seventeen years of terror and pain?’
In the end they nearly all caved in except Hayley, Uncle John, Paul and Steve. I asked my dad if he would be at the court and he promised me he would. Steve’s dad and two friends sat in for moral support.
Now that I was talking openly with so many people about what had happened in the past, things were beginning to click into place in my head and I was starting to feel better.
By now Steve was doing really well at work and had managed to buy us a better home in a nicer area which was even further from where my family was rooted. He had done brilliantly to earn enough to get a bigger mortgage and afford a nice house on a pleasant estate. The house was modern and nothing like the places I had lived in as a child. I should have felt that I was finally escaping my past. But I still found it impossible to enjoy anything good that happened to us. For so many years I had been conditioned to think that if something nice happened you would have to pay a penalty, do someone a favour or take a beating that I couldn’t now believe it was possible our lives might be getting better.
As the first day of the case loomed closer I became increasingly nervous. What if no one believed me and the jury let Richard off? What if the men in the jury were doing the same