Slave Girl (22 page)

As it turned out I spent a great deal of the next year or so in the hospital wing. My body had once again been racked by drugs and drink, and the staff worked fantastically hard to get me clean. The prison psychiatrist was a wonderful man – gentle and determined to help me find a way of dealing with what happened to me in Amsterdam. He also realised that I’d never come to terms with the sexual abuse I’d endured from Dad or the men in the care home, and set up regular counselling sessions.

It sounds a strange thing to say, but as the time passed I grew to really like it there. For the first time in a long while I felt safe and like I was finding a way of getting my life back on track. And in the therapy sessions I discovered that I was far from alone. The statistics about the number of children are something politicians and normal people argue about constantly. All I can tell you is that just about every woman I met inside had a horror story to tell – and every one rang completely true to me.

I learned a new word in that unit, too: Survivor. The staff encouraged us not to think of ourselves as victims but instead to congratulate ourselves on having survived. As part of that process and to help us find some basic self-belief, we took responsibility for running parts of the life of our little community – gardening and doing the cooking for ourselves. It was a very effective form of rehabilitation.

But there’s a real problem with locking up women like me. And it’s not just that most prisons are brutal jungles where vulnerable people are thrown and then left to sink or swim. (Though I do question why this country locks up so many women for prostitution and drug offences. If they spent as much money on trying to help these women and get to the bottom of their problems as they do on locking them up – well, there might be a fewer women on the streets in
high-heeled
shoes and tatty lycra mini-dresses.)

No, the real problem is what happens when the system spits out those it has caged and tried to clean up. The support services for women like me, emerging back into the ruthless reality of life in Britain today, are just not up to the job. They’re not – as one recent Home Secretary famously put it – ‘fit for purpose’.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denigrating the work that they do, nor am I ungrateful for the truly dedicated efforts many social workers have made to help me over the years. I owe them a great debt of thanks. No, I’m not whining or moaning, or selfishly demanding that someone comes and sorts out my problems. I’m simply saying that it makes no sense to lock a vulnerable and damaged person up for more than a year; to get her clean and begin the process of helping her discover enough basic self-worth to keep her head above water – and then just to toss her back into the vicious, murky waters of modern inner-city life. The chances are that she’ll sink, not swim – and all that effort and taxpayers’ money will have been wasted.

End of soapbox.

I was 28 when I walked out of prison. Nearly nine years had passed since I’d escaped from Amsterdam – and what had I done with them? Come to think of it, what – apart from a short, happy period as a nursery nurse, and who was ever going to let me do that again – had I done with my life? The answer wasn’t too cheerful; nor was I.

I had managed one small triumph, though. With the help and support of the staff in the prison I had managed to reduce my daily intake of methadone quite dramatically. From a high point – no pun intended – of 120 milligrams a day, I was down to just 50 milligrams, and confident of one day getting to the point where I would throw away the little bottle of synthetic opiates once and for all.

It was 7 July 2005 when I met the woman who would legally become my wife.

I had been out for a drink to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was sat in the Union Bar, opposite the central bus station, and was just about to leave when a short, tough-looking woman walked in with a young man beside her. She joined a group of other people in the corner – some of whom were my friends. It wasn’t long before we started talking.

The woman’s name was Tracy and the young man with her was her son. He had been to visit her and as the next bus wasn’t for nearly an hour, they’d popped in for a drink. There was chemistry between us straightaway. We seemed to have quite a lot in common – Tracy was honest about having made some mistakes in her life and having done a spell in prison, too. So just before she left to put her son on his bus, we arranged to go out together that night.

It could have been a one-night stand. It had been a while since I’d had any sort of love in my life and even a few hours of affection would have been very welcome, but something told me that this could be more than just a much-needed one-off. Something about being with Tracy felt positive and promising, and as if I could – at last – find real happiness with another human being.

And Tracy felt the same. So after that night there was another night, and another night after that. And days too and then more nights and more days until we realised that almost without noticing it we had become a couple and were living together full-time.

On New Year’s Eve 2006 we got engaged to each other. Ten months later we prepared ourselves for a civil partnership and booked the registrar at Gateshead Town Hall.

A week or so before the due date Tracy did something wonderful. Without telling me she got hold of my mum’s phone number and got in touch. I hadn’t seen Mum since I got out of prison. We hadn’t been close for a few years – the result, I’m sure, of my spiral down into drugs and crime.

But Tracy knew how important Mum had been in my life, and knew how much it would mean to me if she came to our wedding. And so one night Mum came round to the flat Tracy and I shared. It was fantastic to see her and I wanted to hug and cuddle her and tell her how much I’d missed her. I think I managed to get some of that across, but I was so surprised by her arrival and so nervous about what she thought of me that I’m sure I didn’t seem as pleased as I really was.

Nonetheless, Mum said straightaway that she’d come to our wedding. In fact she agreed to be help me with my hair and to be my witness. I was so happy that I cried.

On Saturday, 24 November 2007 I went to a local salon to have my hair and make-up done. I’d not treated myself to this sort of luxury for as long as I could remember and it felt absolutely wonderful to see my mop of curls teased and transformed into something elegant and lovely. Back at our flat, Mum helped me slip into the deep crimson dress I’d bought to get married in.

As she zipped me up at the back I felt like bursting with happiness and crying my eyes out all at once.

Tracy was in the bathroom getting herself ready for the big day. She looked wonderful in a traditional-looking outfit of black tailcoat and cravat, complete with its long gold pin. And she had bought us both a corsage. Flowers – another first for me!

An hour later we all stood in the big wood-panelled function room at Gateshead Town Hall while Tracy and I quietly said our vows. I know it’s a cliché but I honestly felt that this was the happiest day of my life. I was changing my name – and my life. Sarah Forsyth – who had been to hell and back – was no more. That old existence, with all its troubles and misery was over – finally dead and buried. From this day forth I was a married woman, and as we sipped our ice-cold bubbly and toasted the future together, I knew – I just knew – that everything was about to start going right.

I
am standing in the kitchen of our little flat. A pan is bubbling away on the stove. From the lounge I can hear music – one of our favourite CDs. Tracy is in the bedroom off to the side. I can hear her singing along to the songs.

It has been a long day – for both of us. Tracy has been on the carpentry and home-decoration course she is taking; it’s the key to our financial future, a career path to
self-employment
and standing on our own four feet financially. Tonight she will go out to her night job – security at one of the local entertainment complexes near us. It’s an exhausting and very demanding schedule, but Tracy is determined to make it work for us both.

I have been out all day too. I am a volunteer at a drop-in centre for deprived and disadvantaged youngsters. I love working there. The kids talk to me – they feel able to share some of the pain and misery of their lives because they know that I have been there too. I have inhabited the same invisible prison in which they struggle to survive.

This is my first step on my own path to reclaiming my life. I long to get back to working as a nursery nurse, helping young children in any way they need – be that helping them on with their coats or drying their sad little tears. It’s a long way off, a long way down a road that stretches way, way into the future. But these are my first triumphant steps along it.

I would love children of my own – I am 32 and childless. Perhaps not having them – and I doubt my ravaged, abused body would ever be able to conceive, much less find the strength to carry a child to full term – is the greatest regret of my life. But then again, there are a great many regrets to choose from.

Still, as I prepare the evening’s supper, listening to Tracy’s cracked voice keeping pace with the music in the lounge, my mind can’t help but wonder whether perhaps one day before too long she and I might apply to foster or adopt. I have so much love to give a child, so much inside me that is bursting to reach out and be shared with a small, vulnerable human being.

Maybe that’s just me trying to make up for the abortion but then again, it’s more likely, I think, that I simply want to protect a child from going through all that I went through. Either way, I think I could be a good mother, just as I am a good wife. So who knows what the future holds?

But sometimes this happy life fades like a frail and fragile dream.

The sounds slip into silence: no music playing, no echo of Tracy’s voice from the living room. The warmth of the kitchen grows fainter; the image of the bubbling pot winks out. All is cold and dark.

Because, some days, none of this – the jobs and happy home, the loving marriage and the dreams of raising a child – has come true. Some days, some desperate days, when my life has fallen apart once again, this normal life is something that only happens to other people. Something I wish could be for me, but which I know I don’t deserve.

On days like these I am to be found sitting on a small sofa in the living room of a little flat. At my elbow is a cup of tea; a cigarette burns slowly in the ashtray beside it.

From my window I can see out over the terraced streets and back-to-backs of this old and weary town. I can see the factories – most of them boarded up and gone now – and the railway line. And on a good, clear day I can just catch a glimpse of the Tyne river as its dirty brown waters wind sluggishly into the sea.

There is precious little furniture in this quiet room. An upright chair, a little table; a television to pass the time. A tiny kitchen – no more than a galley, really – is off to one side; a bedroom just a few short steps down the narrow hall.

I am home. Sort of.

Summers come and go; the swallows make ready to leave, building up their strength for the long journey south. I like to watch them dart and swoop through the early evening sky, just as I like to watch the people beneath them – mothers, fathers, children – go about their daily lives.

Are they as ordered and neat and normal as they seem? Do they wake in the morning in a home filled with love and chatter? Do they go out to school or to work, sustained by hope and a belief in a better future?

I hope so.

I like to think of them – real people, normal people – and imagine their lives. I want to believe in the dream of happy families and children growing up secure in the love and protection of adults.

I’d like to be like them. Who wouldn’t? But I don’t think I shall. Not yet at any rate. I’m not especially unhappy – I’m used to being alone like this. Nor am I addicted to street drugs; I am even close to jettisoning my daily dose of methadone forever. Those bad old days of chemically induced oblivion are gone. That former life – that old Sarah – is over, is gone.

So why – on days like this – am I sat here alone with only tea and cigarettes to console me?

The answer lies in my marriage. I would love to have lived the traditional fairy-tale ending: the story of two damaged women rescued by their mutual love and walking hand in hand into the sunset – even the mucky, polluted sunset of a Tyneside sky – and living happily ever after.

But life hasn’t worked out like that. Not for me, not all the time.

The trouble between Tracy and I started soon after our wedding day. The ink was hardly dry on the paper in the big leatherbound book at the Town Hall when Tracy and I began arguing. Both of us believed – oh, how we wanted to believe – that marriage would be the start of a new life. But it didn’t work out like that at all.

We would argue about anything and everything. Both of us had been through very hard times and perhaps neither of us was prepared to give the other enough space. Although we both helped out at a local charity shop, we spent far too much time cooped up inside our claustrophobic first-floor flat.

I’d started having nightmares a little while before we met, so the sight of me sitting up in bed, sweating with fear, my eyes almost out of their sockets with panic, was nothing new. But I guess Tracy believed they would settle down after our wedding. If only.