Mummy, Make It Stop (24 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The new massage parlour was a lot smarter than the old one. Outside, it just looked like any respectable home. Inside, it was all white and clean and professional, with dark-wood furnishings and beautiful potted plants. There were two bedrooms, each with a mirrored wall and a big double bed in the middle of the room, with lovely burgundy sheets and pillows.

The hours were longer - I had to work from ten in the morning until ten at night, but the atmosphere was more relaxed because there was no boss on the premises. Two of us girls worked each day, and we did everything, including answering the phones, taking bookings and totting up the takings, which were also better than at my last place. Here we charged between £50 and £60 for half an hour, and £10 of that went to the boss, who came in the evening to collect the money and lock up.

Tanya was still at the old place, and she was very jealous that I was somewhere classier, making more money. Our relationship had been strained since she lost me my last job, and now it became worse.

Then I heard that Mum had split up with Alan. I was sorry, because they’d been together a few years and he was so much nicer than most of her other men. But I guessed that in the end he’d had enough. Mum and Tanya had started going out together, picking up men. Tanya attracted all sorts of men, and Mum took the opportunity to get in on the action. I was disgusted, and didn’t want anything to do with it, so I seldom saw either of them.

I worked two days a week for the next few months and gradually built up a clientele of regulars. Most of the men who came there were successful, married men with plenty of money, who just wanted straight sex. But there were a few horrible, scruffy types who saved up to come every few months, and I dreaded them. I coped by switching off, and going onto autopilot.

Then there were the odd ones, with weird fetishes and fantasies. Many of them were harmless, eccentric and a bit sad. None of them seemed to me to be remotely sexy. There was one we called ‘jelly baby man’. He looked so ordinary - medium height, pleasant face, in his mid-forties. The first time I saw him I thought he was just an average Joe. But then we got to the bedroom and he pulled out a packet of jelly babies and told me what he wanted. I tried hard to keep a straight face as he asked to lie on the bed, naked and face down, while I, fully dressed, put the jelly babies all over his arms, legs, back and shoulders. Next I had to slowly pick them off him, with my mouth, and eat them, while telling him what I was doing. Before I’d eaten them all he would have climaxed and it would all be over. He would get dressed, pay me and leave. He visited about once a week - luckily, I quite liked jelly babies.

Another guy was known as ‘shoe man’. He looked a bit like Elton John, and all he wanted was for me to stand, dressed, sideways-on to the mirrored wall, wearing my highest stiletto heels. He would get undressed and kneel in front of me, looking at my shoes. Then he would begin to touch, kiss and lick them, before ejaculating on them. We would only have been in the room for ten minutes by the time he paid me and left. I found his behaviour so bizarre, but I knew from my own experience, as well as what the other girls told me, that there were plenty of men with similar fetishes.

Another regular was ‘doggy man’. He loved to have me put a dog collar around his neck and walk him - on all fours and stark naked - up and down the bedroom and then into the waiting room in front of other customers and the girls. As I walked him, he would bark loudly and I would tell him he was a good doggy. Of course everyone who saw him laughed, but humiliation was what he liked - he would often ask me to whip him and tell him he had been a naughty doggy.

Strangest of all was the one we called ‘baby man’, who would arrive late in the evening, with a bag in his hand. I’d heard the other girls laughing about him, but the first time I met him I didn’t realise who he was. Coming to the end of a busy shift and thinking he was just another ordinary client, I asked him to go ahead and wait for me in the bedroom.

When I opened the door, a few minutes later, I did a double-take. He was perched on the edge of the bed, naked, with a very large nappy next to him. While I did my best not to look surprised or amused, he asked me if I knew what he wanted me to do. I did, from the other girls’ descriptions, so I nodded.

I had to lie him on the bed and put the nappy on him. Then he sat up on the edge of the bed and put a dummy in his mouth, before sitting on my knee, where I had to rock him back and forth as he gurgled with joy. Then I had to ‘wind’ him and tell him he was a good boy, as he mumbled ‘Mummy’ back to me. And that was it. He didn’t even appear to be sexually aroused. After about ten minutes, he got up, thanked me, got back into his business suit, paid me and slipped out of the house, back into the busy city, thronging with commuters, all totally unaware of his secret.

Afterwards, I could barely believe what had happened. Why would an adult man want to pretend to be a baby? A shrink would probably say that he was trying to make up for something he missed out on as a child, but we girls just found him plain odd.

After twelve hours of seeing clients, I would go home, exhausted, have a hot bath and fall into bed.

Some weeks I was making as much as £1000, but I would always blow the lot on going out, clothes, drugs and stuff for the kids. I never saved a penny. I began going out on the town two or three nights a week with Alison. We’d become best friends. I had never really had a close girlfriend before; it was good to have someone to talk to and go out with.

I loved being out in the clubs around town. I was slim and blonde and had lots of nice clothes, so I got plenty of attention from men. I loved it when they told me I was gorgeous - probably because deep down I never really believed it. I still saw myself as the plump, unattractive kid.

Alison and I took a lot of drugs together. She was as bad as I was, and sometimes worse. We encouraged one another, avoiding having to think about our working lives by getting off our heads, first on alcohol and then on amphetamines and ecstasy. We were taking terrible risks, but we didn’t see it that way - we just thought we were having fun.

One night I was in a club when a good-looking boy came over and started chatting me up. He told me his name was Neil, and asked if I knew where he could get some pills. I did, and he was impressed. He asked for my number and I gave it to him - I thought he was gorgeous. The next day he called me and we went out on a date. We laughed all night - I was in love again.

It wasn’t long before Neil moved in with me. I was being just like my mum; I had to have a man around to make me feel secure. The funny thing was that the men I got involved with never did make me feel secure. My last boyfriend had flirted with other girls and went off with my friend, and Neil was unemployed and happy to live off my earnings from the massage parlour. At the time I didn’t think it mattered. My sense of self-worth was non-existent; I was grateful if anyone wanted to be with me, even if I had to buy their company. I just thought that, as I had plenty of money, it was OK if Neil didn’t work. And I closed my eyes to his laziness and selfishness. He didn’t really care about me, but then I had no idea what it was really like to be cared for by someone else. I thought the best I could ever hope for was someone who was prepared to stick around, even if they spent most of their day with their feet up, watching my TV.

One evening I came home from work to find the front door ajar. Neil was out with some mates, and the girls were with my mum, so I knew the house was empty. The door should have been locked. I looked at the lock and saw it was broken. Someone had forced it.

Feeling very scared, I pushed the door open and waited a moment. There was silence. I was pretty sure that whoever had been in had gone, but I was still very, very nervous as I stepped inside and switched the light on. I called out, but there was no answer. I peered into the front room - and gasped. The room was almost bare. The TV was gone, along with my music centre and all my CDs. So were my ornaments, a couple of the chairs, the rug and the pictures off the walls. By the time I got upstairs and saw that all my things and the kids’ things had gone, I was in tears. Most of my clothes and jewellery, the girls’ PlayStation and TV and even their toys were gone. Who could have done this to us?

I wasn’t insured. I called the police and a couple of officers came round, but they told me I’d be very lucky to get any of it back. My stuff would have been sold on within hours, and finding the thieves would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

After the police had gone, I sat on the sofa - which was just about all that was left in the front room - and waited for Neil. I was in a daze, shocked to have lost almost everything I had and scared that whoever did it would come back for the rest. I couldn’t believe that I’d had sex with all those men for nothing - everything I’d bought with my hard-earned money had gone. I felt physically sick.

When Neil finally came in, a couple of hours later, I told him what had happened. He’d had a few drinks and stank of booze, and he didn’t seem too worried. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘you make enough money, you can always buy it all again.’

That hurt. I worked hard for my money, and it would take a long time to replace everything. He didn’t seem to care about how upset I was. Lying in bed that night, I decided we had to get out, as soon as possible. We were already under notice to leave, but I hadn’t yet done anything about finding us somewhere new. Now I had to - and fast.

I felt so low that night. Neil was snoring beside me. He didn’t seem bothered by what had happened, but it had shaken me. Why did so many bad things happen to me? Had I been born with an unlucky streak? Had I done something to deserve all the misery and trouble that seemed to dog me? I tried so hard to be nice to people, to look after my girls, to do the right thing. Yet somehow things always went wrong. I wondered if it would ever change.

The next morning I went to see the local council housing manager and explained the situation. She looked doubtful. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said. ‘But there aren’t a lot of properties available, so don’t raise your hopes about getting somewhere nice.’

I knew we had a high chance of ending up on a really rough estate. So when the council letter arrived two weeks later, I was scared to open it. Whatever they offered we would have to take - we were running out of time.

When I read the letter I screamed with joy. We’d been offered a house in a really nice area. I skipped around the kitchen and the girls, seeing how excited I was, tried to join in. ‘We’ve got a new home, girls,’ I said. ‘We’ll be safe there and there will be a nice school for you nearby.’

‘Ooh, Mummy, no more robbers,’ Emily said. She had been inconsolable when her toys were taken, and still wasn’t sleeping well.

‘No more robbers,’ I grinned. ‘We’ll get you some more toys and this time nobody will take them.’

For the next few weeks I saved up all my money. We more or less camped in the house, because I didn’t replace anything. The front door wouldn’t lock and several times I got home to find someone had been in and more of our things - the precious few we had left - had been taken.

By the time we moved into our new house we had almost nothing left to take with us. But I’d stopped caring. I just wanted to be out of that awful house and make a new start. The new place was nice - three bedrooms, a garden and a decent neighbourhood. I got busy painting and decorating it and the first things I bought were some lovely bedroom furniture and new toys for the girls.

Things seemed to be looking up. I decided it was time I learned to drive and I loved it. In a few weeks I passed my test and bought a little second-hand car. I couldn’t believe the feeling of freedom it gave me! No more hanging around at bus stops, lugging shopping and the girls’ things. I could just pile all of us into the car and go.

Emily started at the local school and settled in straight away, while Sophie was looked after by a local childminder on weekdays, and Alison had both girls on Saturdays. Everything seemed to be coming together. But it wasn’t, because despite all the good things, there was a dark shadow hanging over us - a drug-induced shadow.

Neil had always used drugs, but by this time he was using every day. And he had begun dealing. When I realised what he was doing, I became very worried and begged him to stop, but he refused. ‘It’s just a little bit,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem?’

So I tried to turn a blind eye to it. And the best way to do that was to take drugs myself. I began taking more and more amphetamines and ecstasy. When I was high everything seemed good, there were no problems and all I wanted to do was party. But when I came down again the next day, it all hit me - I was on the game, my boyfriend was selling drugs, our lives were a mess. I couldn’t deal with it, so I took more drugs, to blot it all out. I was spending every weekend high and topping up during the week too.

Worst of all, I was letting my kids down, and I knew it. I wanted to be the best mum in the world, and I couldn’t. I did my best to be there for them, and I didn’t take drugs around them, but I was only capable of being half there while I was living that way.

I refused to face it, because it hurt too much. Instead I just took more drugs. They killed my appetite, so the weight fell off me. I was down to a size six - so skinny that everyone who knew me was worried. Even Mum and Tanya, on the rare occasions when I saw them, had started to nag me about the drugs and the state of my health.

Neil was changing too. The drugs were making him aggressive and violent. Several times he attacked me, pinning me against the wall and threatening to really hurt me. I was scared of him and didn’t know what to do. He was always asking me for money, but at the same time he kept badgering me to give up working in the massage parlour and get another job. I decided I would. The job I was doing was soul-destroying; it had stopped being worth the money.