I was really struggling not to cry by this point. Fortunately for me a French woman lived in the next house we knocked at. She recognised my parents’ accents and started talking to them in French. They were delighted and began jabbering back. The woman was pleased but a little bemused to find two of her countrymen selling Christian literature in a Buddhist country and was curious to find out more. Where had they come from? How long had they been here? She invited us in. I could have wept with joy when we walked into her hallway with its cool marble floor. She ushered us into the living room. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.
There was a big sofa with fat velvet cushions, long flowery curtains and bookshelves lined with hundreds and hundreds of pretty candles in all sorts of different colours and patterns. My eyes roamed wildly, trying to take it all in. She saw me and smiled. ‘I see you like the candles? I make them. That’s my hobby.’
The house was so clean and tidy, nothing like the overcrowded, worn-out living spaces in the commune. I wanted to touch everything.
The lady had a son a couple of years older than me. While she sat and talked to my parents she instructed her son to take me into his bedroom and show me some of his toys. He opened a huge box stuffed full of teddy bears, cars and figurines. He was generous, letting me touch any toy I liked. At one point the lady came up to check on us and brought us an ice lolly each. I began to think this place might even be heaven.
All too soon I heard Mom shouting up the stairs. ‘Natacha, ma chérie, we must leave now. Say thank you to the lady.’
I didn’t move. I think I hoped if I said nothing they might forget I was there or go without me. Not to be. A few minutes later my father came bounding up, looking cross. He reached down to pick me up. I clung onto a small fluffy bear that I had fallen in love with. The little boy looked at me, then at the bear, then back at me.
‘She can keep it,’ he said to my dad firmly.
‘No, she cannot,’ said my dad, more for my benefit than the little boy’s.
‘It’s OK,’ the boy replied. ‘I have lots of them and I think she really likes him.’
My father didn’t reply. Instead he grabbed the bear out of my vice-like grip and put it down on the bed. ‘No.’
We were barely a few feet away from the gate when I started to yell – great big gulping sobs of anger and hurt. By the time we caught up with the other teams I was sobbing so much my breathing was erratic. My parents studiously ignored me, presumably thinking I’d stop when I got bored. Usually my occasional temper tantrums didn’t last long, but this time I just couldn’t stop crying.
Everyone was hungry, having not eaten all day. The mission now was to find a restaurant that was willing to feed us for free. We hadn’t raised enough to be able to buy dinner for the ten adults and children that formed our total party. As we paced a nearby market, the adults asking stallholders to donate some food, my father had to tow me behind him, my feet dragging in the dust, snot dribbling down my filthy cheeks. I looked like a sad ragamuffin clown, such a pathetic sight that eventually a food vendor took pity.
‘Little girl is sad. Poor girl. Come inside,’ she said, ushering us towards the wooden bench seats outside her little restaurant.
She bent down so she was at my height and looked at me with kindly brown eyes. ‘No cry, little girl. Be happy. Always be happy.’
I know she was trying to be nice but her kindness just made it worse. I paused for a split second before letting out another series of great gasping sobs.
I don’t think I was crying because my father wouldn’t let me keep the little boy’s teddy bear. I was crying for the life I had glimpsed. I was crying for the kindly candle-maker and her neat house. I was crying for a normal family like theirs.
However, compared to my brother Vincent I was a blissfully happy child. From the day he was born Vincent was different. He was sensitive, quiet, teary and thoughtful. He was also always in trouble.
Within The Family, parenting was a shared responsibility. If an adult saw you do something wrong they didn’t have to tell your parents about it, they just went ahead and sorted you out themselves. For the aunts and uncles, themselves often hungry, tired and under stress, the burden of dealing with other people’s children was often a pure annoyance. Of course there were exceptions like Joy who genuinely loved kids, but most adults I came across, even those with their own children, seemed to treat us as an irritation at best, devil spawn at worst. And Vincent had an innate ability to bring out the worst in them.
When he was 11 months old he was caught sucking the sugar coating off a packet of tablets. He didn’t know what they were and, of course, if he’d eaten them it could have been dangerous. They shouldn’t even have been left within a small child’s reach. But fortunately he licked them and then put them back in the packet after reaching the bitter centre. Ezekiel found him. He picked him up by his skinny little arms and screamed that he was going to thrash him. Vincent yelled at the top of his lungs, and my eldest brother, Joe, ran in. When he saw what was happening he begged Ezekiel not to hurt little Vincent but to thrash him instead. The monster took him outside into the garden and beat him black and blue with a plank.
Getting hit – be it with fists, fly-swats, poles and planks – was all part of the cult children’s daily routine. On one occasion an uncle, I don’t know who because they were too scared to say, threw all of my brothers into an empty bathtub naked and hit them with a wooden paddle as they dived under each other to shield themselves from the blows.
I don’t think my parents ever really knew just how much the other adults meted out violence to their children. Dad was so rarely there and my mother didn’t seem to notice how unhappy we were. Perhaps that’s because in the few moments of quality time we did get to spend with her, we were so delighted by it we never stopped smiling.
The closest they got to understanding came about four months after Clay had abused me in the shed. One of the bigger girls told me in hushed tones that two senior Shepherds were here and they wanted to see each kid individually. I didn’t believe her until we were all called into the dining hall and told to sit in silence and wait our turns. We were not given the chance to ask what was going on and were expressly forbidden from talking to each other. When it was my turn to go in the room I was shaking with nerves. Why would Shepherds want to talk to me? Had I done something bad?
I walked into the room where an aunty and uncle I didn’t know were sitting on two chairs with another facing them. They gestured me to sit down.
‘Now, Natacha,’ said the uncle, ‘I am going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth. Don’t be frightened.’
I nodded.
‘Has anyone ever touched you? Touched you in a bad way?’
My legs started to shake and my mouth went dry. I wanted to scratch an itch on my face. I could have told them the truth about Clay but my survival instinct kicked in. Instinctively I knew the answer they wanted.
I looked them straight in the eye and said no. They asked me a few more questions, and then told me I was a good girl and I could go now.
The next morning after breakfast the children were told to stay behind because the grown-ups had something important to say to us. Salome spoke. In low calm tones she asked us if we loved The Family.
‘Yes,’ we trilled in unison.
‘And are you grateful for your loving family?’ she asked. Yes again.
‘And are you aware that God loves you? Are you aware that the devil wants to take you as his own? Are you aware that unless we love and appreciate our family we will fall into the path of evil?’
On and on she went as we repeated yes to