Unfortunately Roy kept coming back and on one occasion in the middle of the night he went downstairs and turned all of the gas stoves on. Dad, who was an insomniac, smelled the gas and rushed downstairs before anything serious happened. Mum got me out of the house to some other good people from the Church. She and Dad bravely stayed with Roy, and when he calmed down he told them he wanted to move to a larger squat in a bigger town, ‘away from small-town life’. In desperation she rang Pastor Collins. Edmund didn’t seem to mind how late it was and offered to ask a couple of people from the congregation to drive Roy to wherever he wanted to go. Mum said she would be very grateful, so he rang them immediately. They didn’t hesitate to take him on the two-hour car journey. Dad was amazed at their generosity and it ignited something deep inside him.
Roy settled in his new squat and shortly afterwards Dad told Mum he wanted to come to church with her. It was a real turnaround for him, because although he had always considered himself to be a Christian in the way he went about his life, he had been very sceptical about the Church as an institution. He thought it was full of hypocrites who went there when it was good for business. But the way so many of the Bethesda Church members selflessly helped with Roy was a true eye-opener and he was overwhelmed by their kindness. He decided to find out more about this Church, particularly as it was having such a positive effect on Mum.
Dad attended a few services and it wasn’t long before he told Mum he could feel that there was someone else in charge and that all situations could be overcome through Him, and that he too wanted to become a Christian. Mum was thrilled and the next time Black came to preach Dad went along to listen. He expected to be very impressed, but was not and instead found him overbearing and insincere. He didn’t want to upset Mum as she was going through so much with Roy, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
Mum was meanwhile keeping a much bigger secret from him. At a recent community charity event Black had whispered a few words into Edmund Collins’s ear implying that Dad had sexually interfered with me. Pastor Collins quietly passed this information on to Mum, adding that he was sure it wasn’t true. Mum knew it was a total lie and although she didn’t mention anything to me, she was absolutely right. My wonderful father had never been anything other than appropriately loving towards me.
It was instead an example of Black’s trouble-making and his sly way of setting one member of a family against another. Mum kept this dark secret from Dad for twenty years, partly because she knew it was nonsense and partly because she didn’t want him to stop being a Christian. Luckily Dad’s new-found joy in religion wasn’t dimmed by his low opinion of Black, so much so that once he started going to church regularly he found the answers to his prayers. About a year after Roy left to go to his new squat, we were phoned by the police to say he had created such a scene in the street that he had been arrested and sectioned. It had happened before and each time he was taken into hospital he was merely given a dose of some sort of tranquillizer and discharged again.
This time he was again taken to hospital, and Mum and Dad rushed there to see him. When they arrived his first words to them were, ‘I am so sorry.’ He had never shown any awareness of his effect on the family before and sounded like a totally different Roy. He continued to be so apologetic for all the trouble he had caused that both Mum and Dad burst into tears. Once they calmed down they went to speak to his consultant, who told them that Roy was suffering from bipolar illness. He had been ill for ten years with all the classic symptoms and it was only now that anyone had offered a proper medical diagnosis. They both believed that it was something God had facilitated.
Roy remained in hospital for about a month and was found supported accommodation, where he has lived ever since. He takes mood-stabilizing medication to control his condition and manages his simple life. Support staff help him with daily tasks and activities, and check he is OK. He phones me once a day and my parents about six times, which is sometimes quite stressful for them, but he needs reassurance that we are still there for him.
Once Dad became a committed Christian he stopped both drinking and smoking, and family life dramatically changed as a result of their new religious beliefs. We stopped going to the more riotous parties, gave up playing cards and barely watched TV. Instead my parents’ social life revolved around Bible-study groups, going to church and the occasional weekend conference arranged by the Society of Christ’s Compassion.
I was still only in my early teens, but the dramatic changes went down like a lead balloon with me. When Mum went to church before Dad became a Christian she was very discreet about religion and made sure it didn’t dominate the house. But suddenly Bibles were everywhere and my parents now played only religious music or recordings of sermons. It was so different from our previous home life and I found it suffocating.
I also felt resentful that they made new rules for me that hadn’t applied to my sister Kerry. She had had lots of freedom and fun, but just as I was old enough to join in, everything disappeared. Mum and Dad were trying to get me to go to church all the time, which I certainly didn’t want to do. I was so cross that it didn’t take long for my rebellious spirit to emerge. In most other households I would have been seen as a fairly typical teenager, but because of what my parents had gone through with Roy, which for years one doctor after another had attributed to youthful rebellion, my general stroppiness seemed far worse than it was.
I had always loved my parents and was basically a decent child, but having endured a pressure-cooker atmosphere at home for so long, I needed to let off steam. Also the change of regime at home, which suddenly switched from being easy-going to strict, occurred at just the wrong time for a lively adolescent girl.
My first teenage rebellion was to become a hippie and I began wearing paisley kaftans, tie-dyed T-shirts and a long Afghan coat that was impregnated with patchouli oil. I also started smoking, like most of my friends. At that time I was a pupil at the local comprehensive school and smoked behind the shed during school hours with a group of friends and, later on, in some derelict woodland once classes were over.
There were some difficult and disruptive children at the school and I knew Mum and Dad were worried about their influence on me. They were right, but the small voice inside me was always aware of what was right and wrong. It was just that at the time it was outweighed by my longing for fun. I started lying to them. I’d say I was staying overnight with a friend and instead went with a gang of about four or five to the woods and stayed up all night drinking and smoking. At about 6 a.m. the next morning we’d all return home bleary-eyed, smelling of fags and cider.
One day as we lay in a clearing in the woods, we made a pact to steal trinkets from the gift shop in the village. It was a ridiculous and horribly dishonest thing to do, not least because the community was very small and everyone knew everyone else. I wanted to back out, but as none of us dared make the first move, I went along too and we all lifted some jewellery. Not surprisingly, a day later a policeman turned up at my home and demanded I hand back what I had taken. I went to my bedroom where I had hidden it all but cheekily decided to give him only half of my haul. Two days later he returned and asked for the rest. This time I handed everything over. My parents were mortified and I was lucky the shop didn’t press charges. Instead, Dad took me down to the police station and made me stand in front of the local senior officer, who gave me a severe talking-to. I was very submissive, felt thoroughly ashamed and said I would never do it again.
Even at the time I could tell that my bad behaviour was a reaction to both what had happened at home with Roy and mixing with the wrong crowd. I felt awful about letting Dad down, as he was such a loving father and worked so hard for us. Because of all of this I never shoplifted again. Instead I started playing truant, which I am not proud of either. Mum didn’t notice anything when I went out in the morning at the right time in my school uniform but with a pair of jeans or a long skirt stuffed into my satchel. Once I was out of sight I changed direction and met some friends who were