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I watched Mum cry on the floor with her face cut from Richard’s rings when he hit her. At the time, I felt so sorry for her. I wanted Richard to love her, to be nice to her. I would have even settled for Richard hitting her just a little less hard, or taking off his rings before he slapped her face.
That would have been enough, I was sure, enough for all three of us to be happy.
Then, one day, school closed early for a teacher training day. I didn’t want to go home; I begged the teachers to let me sit in the library.I’ll be so quiet, I said to them.Please.
I was used to being quiet. I learned to be silent as the grave when Richard was around.
But they said that nobody was allowed to stay because of safeguarding rules. Looking back, I could laugh. Safeguarding. When was a single child ever safeguarded in this country? In the world? Little girls everywhere suffer at the hands of the world, every single fucking day. Who’s safeguardingthem?
So I went home, even though I really didn’t want to. I took the longest way possible. I didn’t have many friends back then, and I was nervous and shy. My entire body was shaking by the time I got to the front door—it started shaking the moment I saw Richard’s car—that big ugly monster of a car—parked outside.
At first, I didn’t have the courage to use my own keys to go in. I knocked a couple of times, as quietly as I could. No answer.
Finally, I forced myself to take the key out of my pocket, to slide it into the lock, to open the door. There were voices coming from the living room, half-drowned by music. The voices sounded like a fight between a man and a woman, but I knew it wasn’t a fight.
I knew that if I got to my bedroom without being noticed, everything would be okay. But to do so, I would have to get past the living room, which is past an arch without a door. I took off my shoes, and I began to tiptoe past, heart in my mouth.
“What the fuck—”
Richard’s voice came out strangled and vibrating with fury. He was always especially furious when he and Mum were having sex. Back then, I didn’t know why. I kept my head down, and I tried to run to my room. If I could just cross the threshold, Iwould be safe, I told myself. Like reaching the safe house in a game of tag.
It was just a lie I was telling myself, of course, but it didn’t matter because Richard caught me anyway. He was fully dressed, buckling his trousers as he emerged from the living room. I didn’t see my mum, I just heard her scrambling around.
“Why is she alwaysaround? Why isn’t she inschool?”
Richard’s accent was posh and whiny, and his voice was high with anger.
“Why aren’t you in school?” he said to me, looming closer.
I tried to step back, but Richard reached me first. He pushed me back, slamming his palms on my shoulders. I fell back, banging my head on the wall with a thick, dull crunch.
Later, I found out that the impact had left a cut on my head, concealed by the thick mass of my hair. Later still, I noticed the tiny smear of blood my head had left permanently on the wallpaper.
It was the first time Richard had laid his hands on me. Mum was so upset she cried all night. To comfort her, he stayed with her even though he hated spending the night. I heard her crying all night, and I heard his whispers as he tried to soothe her, probably making all sorts of apologies and excuses and promises.
They both went silent, eventually. They’d fallen asleep.
I lay awake all night. I knew that something had changed irreversibly, and I was more afraid than I had been my whole life.
The escalation of Richard’sviolence towards both my mother and myself was as fast as it was inevitable. Mum, who never once had been able to establish a boundary she didn’t allow a man to cross, was, I knew, completely unable to protect me.
At first, I comforted myself thinking that no matter how badly Richard hurt me, he hurt my mother more.
Later, I comforted myself thinking that no matter how badly Richard hurt my mother, he hurtmemore.
Eventually, I didn’t need comforting anymore.
After I turned thirteen, things went from bad to worse. Richard insisted that people would look down on us if I didn’t go to a “decent” school. I was sent to his old prep school, St Agatha. Richard said I would receive a proper education there, become less rude and weird and stupid. Mum dove deeper into debt just to pay the school fees, and Richard got what he wanted: I was taken out of his sight.
My pain stopped being his responsibility and became the responsibility of my public school classmates.
There’s something particularly awful about the cruelty of rich people, especially rich teenagers. I found that out quickly. Soon, there was no respite. If I was away from Richard, then I was in school, being tortured by the other students. If I was away from school, then I was in Richard’s power.
The day I turned fourteen, I wore a dress my mother had bought for me so Richard could take us out to dinner. It was a designer dress, the same kind she wore, with a short, puffy skirt and a sweetheart neckline. It wasn’t exactly the sort of clothing I ever wore, but Mum insisted, and I wanted her to be happy.
Richard hated it when Mum was sad; it made him angry. So I wore the dress and went to the dinner, hoping both would be happy with me.
Mum was. She was shiny and full of laughter the entire evening. She clapped when the waitresses brought over my cake, all alight with candles. But Richard’s eyes on me were heavy and greasy with barely repressed fury. I was so scared—my stomach curled up into a tight, hard knot. I had to force spoonfuls of cake down my throat, and later, I threw it all up in the restaurant toilet, my entire body shaking.
