Mummy, Make It Stop (6 page)

Still unsure about what to do, Tanya and I stood silently, confused and scared, watching the madness unfold. Why was Mum crying so much? We just didn’t understand.

The phone rang and Mum picked it up.

‘You bastard, what have you done, George?’ she yelled. ‘Don’t go anywhere, they’re coming for you,’ she shouted, and she slammed the phone down.

Mum turned to look at me and Tanya, but without connecting or focusing on us. It felt as though she was looking straight through us, as if we were not really there. That’s how it felt inside as well.

For the next half hour, Mum paced up and down, crying and saying to Auntie Coleen, ‘What if he comes here? If he does, that’ll be it. Make sure the chain’s on the door.’

Mum and Auntie Coleen carried on talking to one another, while Tanya and I stayed where we were. We had no idea what to do. It seemed like Mum hadn’t known about what George was doing - she was in a dreadful state. And it wasn’t OK, like George had said. It was wrong, because Mum had called the police and shouted at George.

Now George knew we had told he would get us, I was sure. Thinking about the beating we would get, I started to cry.

Suddenly there was a bang on the door. We all jumped. Then a voice said, ‘It’s the police,’ and Auntie Coleen opened the door. Two officers came in, a man and a woman. The man went into the kitchen with Mum and Auntie Coleen, while the woman officer came and sat with us, smiling awkwardly at us both, but not saying anything.

When they all came back out of the kitchen, the police officers said we needed to go to the police station. They took us all outside and put us into their car. No-one spoke for the whole journey. Tanya and I sat in the back, our heads down, looking at the floor. What had we done? What was going to happen now?

When we arrived, Auntie Coleen put her arm around Mum as we were taken to a door at the back of the station. The lady officer gently ushered me and Tanya inside, walking between us with a hand on each of our shoulders. We were all taken into a room and asked to sit down, and a few minutes later another woman appeared. She was small and round, with glasses and wavy brown hair and she told us her name was Anna Smithson and she was from the social services. I wondered what they were.

Mum and Tanya were asked to go into another room, while Auntie Coleen and I stayed where we were. The lady officer brought in some orange juice and a plate of biscuits and showed me a box of toys and books in the corner of the room, saying I was welcome to play with them. Her voice was gentle and that made me feel a bit better. I was grateful for the drink because my mouth felt so dry, but I didn’t feel like playing. I wanted to know what was happening, but I was too scared to ask anyone and no-one seemed to want to tell me.

It seemed like hours before Tanya came back, and when she did it was my turn to disappear with Mum into the other little room. Inside were a man and a woman sitting on one side of a table. I didn’t know if they were police officers or not, as they didn’t have uniforms on. We were asked to sit in the two chairs facing them, on the other side, while the lady from social services, Anna, sat nearby. She smiled at me reassuringly and that made me feel a tiny bit less scared.

‘Hello, Louise, me and my colleague are just going to ask you a few questions,’ the woman said, leaning towards me. ‘There’s nothing to be worried about, we just want you to tell us as much as you know.’

Mum was sitting next to me and I looked at her. I hoped she would nod or smile to let me know it was OK, but she was looking down at the table with her head in her hands.

Slowly and falteringly, I began to describe what George had done. Whenever I stopped they asked questions in nice, soft voices and, feeling encouraged, I was soon in full flow, telling them everything. In a funny sort of way, I liked the attention they were giving me. They kept saying I was doing well and to keep going, and that felt nice.

Next, they handed me a pencil and paper and asked me to draw pictures of what had happened and where I was and where George was when we did the dusting. I did my best and when I had finished I looked up and saw that the woman looked upset. I looked over at the man, and he looked very solemn. There wasn’t a warm feeling in the room any more and I burst into tears and turned to Mum, who turned away from me. What had I done that was so wrong that all these people, including my mum, looked so upset and angry? I felt so empty and alone, even though there were four grown-ups there with me.

The two officers got up from their chairs and nodded towards the woman from social services. She quickly stood and, touching my back, ushered me out of the interview room and into the room where Tanya and Auntie Coleen were. Mum followed and a few minutes later we were told that we could go home. We were given a lift back in the police car.

Paul and Jamie, who’d been out when the police first came, had been found and taken to the police station as well. They arrived back home soon after us, both of them looking upset.

When we got home there was an angry silence. Mum didn’t cuddle us or reassure us and she didn’t make any tea for us - but I don’t think I could have eaten anyway. I felt awful, as though we had spoilt everything, we were the ones in the wrong and it was all our fault. I felt sick inside, my head was spinning and I was finding it hard to focus on anything at all.

The police had told us that George had been arrested and we wouldn’t have to see him again, but we were all still scared that he would come back to the house and find us and then punish us for telling. Every time we heard a sound outside the door we all jumped.

That night, lying in bed, I felt the whole world had come to an end. I should have been happy that George wasn’t around any more and couldn’t hurt us, but I wasn’t. I was afraid that Mum would never forgive us - she seemed so angry. I felt alone and cold and unable to sleep. I wanted to speak to Tanya but didn’t know how to. It was as if there was some kind of unwritten rule that we must never speak about it.

The following day, we were all driven into the centre of Manchester by a lady from social services. We were taken to a big building which we were told was called a medical centre, where there were doctors. When we arrived, Anna Smithson was there. She explained that a doctor was just going to check us over, to make sure that we were all right, and no damage had been done.

We were introduced to a lady doctor who was a lot older than Anna and not as nice as some of the other people who had helped us before.

The next forty-five minutes were a nightmare. The doctor took me into a small room, while Anna stayed with the others in the waiting area. Mum came with me, and she sat in a chair against the wall. There was a nurse there too, and she led me over to a high bed on one side of the room. I was asked to take off my trousers and knickers, before the doctor helped me up onto the bed. The doctor parted my legs and began to examine me, prodding and poking and sticking instruments inside me, scraping bits out and putting swabs onto small bits of plastic. The pain was almost unbearable, as she opened my legs further and further. It felt as though my insides were torn and cut, and she was making it all worse.

I cried the whole time and I kept looking over at Mum. I wished she would come over and hold my hand or smile at me, and tell me it would all be over soon, but she stayed in her chair and didn’t even look at me. The nurse was trying to calm me down, asking me about school and all sorts of other things that didn’t make sense to me, while holding my legs open with a tight grip on each knee. The doctor also ignored my tears; she didn’t look sympathetic at all, going about her duties in a very robotic way, as though I wasn’t actually a real child, but a toy that she was checking to see if everything worked.

When they finally finished, I was allowed to put my clothes back on. The nurse opened the door for me to go out, and ushered Jamie in next. His face was white and scared. Wiping my tears on my sleeve, I looked up at him quickly and then back down to the floor, before the door shut behind me.

Back in the waiting area, Anna put her arm around my shoulders and led me over to a chair next to her, telling me the worst was over now. If only that had been true. The test results would later show that Tanya, Jamie and I had all been sexually abused, though Paul had not. Jamie had been anally raped and had internal tears and infections, while Tanya and I had to have antibiotics and cream for the internal damage done to us.

We all came home subdued and shaken. But once again Mum said nothing to us, and over the following days she behaved as though nothing had happened at all. She went back to lying on the floor with her feet on the sofa, eating chocolate, and we all carried on as normal. She only referred to what had happened once, asking me and Tanya why we hadn’t said no to George, and why we hadn’t told her about it. We didn’t know what to say. She had always known how frightened of George we were.

I often wished that Mum would give me a cuddle and tell me that she loved me, or that she was glad nasty George had gone away, or that everything would be all right. But, if anything, the opposite happened - Mum was very distant and irritable and often made us feel that it was our fault George wasn’t with us any more. When we didn’t have something, or needed some food or money, she would say, ‘Now George isn’t here’ and look at us in a way that made us feel it was our fault he was gone. She often cried and said she missed him, and we all felt guilty for sending him away.

Looking back, I’ve wondered why Mum chose that moment to ask us if we’d been abused. Her sister had come round worried sick because something had happened to her daughter. Yet instead of supporting her and making sure Auntie Coleen and Emma were all right, Mum switched the focus to herself and her family. I’ve wondered, many times, whether she knew what George was doing, and chose that moment to expose it simply to go one better than her sister. If Auntie Coleen had a child who’d been molested, well, Mum could produce three, with a far worse story. It sounds bizarre, but it fits in with all Mum’s bizarre behaviour. She didn’t know how to really sympathise with another person; her only aim was to go one better. Whether or not this was what prompted her to ask us and to expose George, Mum seemed to regret it and blame us once he was gone.

Over the next few weeks, school was the only place where I was able to forget about what had happened and the trouble I felt I had caused - just for a little while. But although we went more than we had when George was there, Mum often kept us at home if she felt lonely, even though she didn’t talk to us much and would send us out to play.

The fear we’d felt around George had been replaced by uncertainty and fear of a different kind. None of us knew how to be around Mum, and even around other people. We knew we were the reason why George wasn’t there and Mum was always upset. We walked around silently, trying not to upset her any further. Sometimes she was so distant that she would only say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’ to us for days at a time, and it scared us. We didn’t know how to make her feel better or put things right.

And to make things even worse, even though George wasn’t in the house any more, he was still in our lives. He was in prison, awaiting trial, and the worst thing of all for us was that Mum insisted we all visit him every week. We’d travel across the city on the bus and then queue outside the prison with the other visitors. Inside there were metal gates, warders in uniforms and bars on all the windows. I hated it. We’d be searched and then sent into the large visiting room, where men sat at little tables with chairs around them.

George would be sitting at one of the tables, wearing jeans and a jumper with what looked to me like a red netball bib over the top, as though he was in a sports team. It was very odd seeing him out of his usual neatly ironed shirts and trousers, and even odder to see him seemingly calm and relaxed.

Mum would make a big fuss of him, while the four of us sat beside her, and then, at her insistence, Tanya and I had to sit on George’s knee and tell him we missed him and loved him and wanted him back home. I would have given anything not to have to do it, but Mum had told us it would make her happy, and I wanted to please her. I was also afraid that George would soon be back at home - Mum kept saying that he would - and I was afraid that if I said no, he might be even angrier with me than I imagined he already was.

The whole thing made me feel so uncertain. The police and Anna Smithson had told us George had done wrong and that we wouldn’t have to see him again - yet now Mum was asking us to sit on his knee. It seemed that what they had said was all lies and I felt even more stupid and bad for telling.

All around us other prisoners sat with their families, some not saying anything, others shouting and screaming and crying at each other. I used to look around and wonder what all these people had done. Were they in prison because they had done the same thing as George?

I was always so relieved to get out of the prison and go home. But that wasn’t the end of it. Between prison visits, Mum made us sit down at the living-room table and write letters to him, telling him how much we loved and missed him and that we couldn’t wait till he was back home with us again.

She told us that he had admitted everything and was going to plead guilty so that we wouldn’t have to be interviewed over and over again and appear in court to testify against him. He did it for us because he still loved us, she said. I found it hard to believe that this was true. He didn’t show the least sign of loving us, and never had. But I would never have dared to say this to Mum.