The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [77]
‘Give us your number,’ they said. ‘We’ll pass it on to Janey and she can call you if she wants.’
I had been wanting to get in touch with Tom for years, fearing that he might be the one Richard would pick on once he didn’t have me to kick around. He and Dan had always been my favourites. When he was a baby and I was trying to get him to sleep, I used to suck on his ear lobes so much that I ended up stretching them and making them floppy. He was the one I’d thought about rescuing when we first escaped from the area. I’d heard through friends of Steve’s that he had been beaten up badly and chased out of the house and had been living on the streets and getting into drugs.
I had an old pay-as-you-go mobile which wouldn’t be traceable, so I passed that number to him.
‘Don’t you live with them, then?’ I asked when he called.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just found out about the court case because I bumped into Dan up the market.’
‘Yeah?’
‘But I ended up with two black eyes.’
‘How come?’
‘Well, Dan told me you weren’t our real sister, but you are, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m only your half-sister.’
‘Oh.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, I called him a liar and he was saying stuff about you and I wouldn’t have it. I said we love each other.’
‘Still got your wobbly ears then?’
‘Yes.’ He laughed at the memory.
I was very pleased to have got in touch with him again.
After the sentencing had been announced the local papers asked if they could report it. I was happy to agree. I knew how helpful it had been to me to read A Child Called It. If just one child read an article about me and realized that they too could do something about what was being done to them then it would be worthwhile.
A journalist was sent to interview me and at the moment she arrived at the house the mobile phone I had used to talk to Tom went off. Somehow the rest of the family had got hold of the number and now they were all screaming down the phone at me, telling me on the one hand I’d torn the family apart, that I’d taken away someone they loved and that they were going to do the same to me, and on the other hand that I had brought them all together for the first time in years. It seemed that family members who hadn’t spoken to one another for ages had suddenly come together to confront the common enemy: me.
‘We know where Steve works,’ one of them was yelling. ‘We’re gonna fucking kill him. We know where his parents live, they’re gonna end up fucking burned alive in their beds.’
Buoyed up by the successful verdict, I was giving as good as I got, screaming that they should be grateful that I’d put Richard away and that he wouldn’t be able to hurt any of them any more, but none of them were having it. Families, apparently, should stick together and protect their own, even when their own have been proven to be monsters.
A woman I’d never met came on the line, hurling abuse at me for taking away her kids’ grandfather. She was married to one of my brothers and would still have been a kid herself at the time I left home.
‘I’m gonna beat the fucking shit out you!’ she screamed. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m well ‘ard. And we know where you live.’
Alright then, if you know where I live, I’m on the doorstep, come and get me. Don’t forget I know where you live too,’ I said, naming the street.
Some other bloke I had never met in my life then came on telling me how he was going to cut me open.
‘You don’t even know me!’ I said.
‘We know where your husband works, so tell him to keep checking the brakes on his car.’
Then Silly Git’s sister came on the line and was trying to convince me that the boys were heartbroken at losing their father.
‘So do you think I should have let him get away with it then?’ I asked.
‘All I’m saying is that I’ve just had to run round the block with your brother who’s being chased with a knife