Every sound told me a story. The living-room door opened downstairs and I could sense Richard’s stealthy footsteps on the stairs. I closed my eyes, trying to stop my body from shaking so that I could pretend to be asleep. I thought maybe I would be safe because Pete was lying beside me and Richard wouldn’t want to wake him up. I was always clutching at straws like that to give myself some hope, and I was always disappointed.
I could tell the door was opening beside my head and I could feel Richard moving me about to wake me up. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
‘Come out here,’ he whispered, ‘quietly.’
I climbed out of the warm bed, leaving Pete sleeping peacefully, and Richard closed the door behind me. I stood on the landing, waiting as he shut the other doors on the landing and knelt down in front of me.
‘We’re going to play a little game,’ he said. ‘Shut your eyes and don’t you dare open them.’
I obeyed him without question and heard him unzipping his trousers.
‘Don’t open your eyes,’ he repeated. ‘We’re going to play the game now.’
I nodded, not wanting to make him angry.
‘I want you to play with my thumb. You hold it, and stroke it and move it up and down, and something magic will happen.’
I knew it wasn’t his thumb that he put into my hand, which also makes me think something must have happened before that, but I played along and pretended, just as he had told me. The more co-operative I was, I thought, the sooner I could get back to bed and the more likely I was to avoid a beating.
‘What is it you’re holding?’ he asked every so often as I worked away.
‘Your thumb,’ I replied obediently and then the magic happened and he told me to go to the bathroom to wash my hands. Some of his mess had spilled on the carpet and he rubbed at it with his foot, making the scratching noise that I would hear so many times over the coming years.
As I came back out of the bathroom I looked at the patch of disturbed pile on the carpet and couldn’t believe that Mum wouldn’t notice it when she got home. As the years went by more and more of these patches would appear, reminding me every time I walked past of the things I’d had to do.
‘Do you want something to eat then?’ Richard asked, and I nodded. ‘Come downstairs and I’ll make you some toast and tea.’
He was really nice to me that time, just as if we had been playing a game that we’d both enjoyed, but he wasn’t always so pleasant after he’d had his way. One night he took me into the kitchen and grabbed the long wooden-handled carving knife from the drawer, pinned me against the wall and pressed the razor-sharp blade against my neck.
‘If you ever tell anybody what we’ve done I’ll kill you,’ he snarled in my face, ‘and then I’ll kill your mum and no one will ever know because I’ll just tell them you both ran away.
I believed he was capable of it because I’d seen how hard he beat Mum when she made him angry, slamming her head against the floor or the walls and smashing chairs down on her while I sat on the sofa watching and hugging my little brothers as they screamed. He would always tell me that it was my fault, and I believed him. I felt so guilty, and I was terrified he would kill Mum and then I would have no one to protect me from him at all.
Almost as soon as I got back home I was old enough to go to infant school. I loved everything about it, but most of all I loved the fact that it allowed me to get out of the house and be with people who appeared to like me. All through my school years there were several people who seemed to go out of their way to talk to me and ask me how I was. Only later did I discover that they were friends of my dad’s and that they were trying to find out if I was alright for him. Right from the beginning one of my friends’ mothers was reporting back to him. Because I was always so happy at school, and because I didn’t carry any visible signs of abuse, they were able to report back that all was well. If only I had known that, I could have communicated with my dad through them and maybe he would have found a way to get me out of that house.
I think there must have been some people who had an idea about some of the things going on in the house, though, because social workers would come to the door sometimes, but Richard would physically throw them out and I never knew what happened after that because when the police went to look for my files years later they’d disappeared. None of the social workers ever came to speak to me. I can’t blame them if they were frightened off; Richard frightened almost everyone. I dare say there were people around who were as physically strong or even stronger than him, but when he went into one of his blind rages he lost all his inhibitions and very few people were able to match his levels of aggression and viciousness.
Family life provides so many little opportunities for grown ups to inflict pain on their children if they so choose. Mum always bathed us when we were little, but a couple of times Richard got to do it. I guess Mum was ill or too heavily pregnant and he was able to make it sound as if he was doing her a favour by taking over this chore.
One night he told me he was going to wash my hair and I was trembling with fear as we went upstairs, wondering what horrors he had planned. There was no way out. Stepping into the bath I was like a condemned man walking up the steps to the guillotine. Everything went as it should for a few minutes and I stayed as quiet and happy-looking as I could manage. Richard was giving no clues as to when he might pounce or how, but I wasn’t fooled, I knew it was coming.
When it was time to wet my hair I felt his hand gripping me tightly. He pushed my head under the water and held it there, no doubt enjoying the feeling of having the power of life or death over me. As I fought for breath and the water rushed into my mouth, I thought I was going to die, that he had finally decided he hated me so much he was going to kill me. My childish struggles were useless against the strength of his hands and only served to make him angrier.
After what seemed like an age he pulled me up into the air by my hair, squeezing my face painfully as I wailed and hitting me round the head.
‘Shut up and stop screaming!’ he hissed through gritted teeth.
I forced myself to be silent as he washed my hair as though nothing was wrong, knowing that in a few minutes I was going to have to rinse the soap out and certain he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of repeating the attack. When the moment came I tried to hold onto both sides of the bath, but he ordered me to loosen my fingers and pushed me back under the water again, infuriated even further by this futile attempt at self-defence, this challenge to his power. I came up a few seconds later, spluttering and screaming, and he put