No Going Home, page 23
‘I don’t like the way he touches me,’ I blurted out.
As soon as those words left my lips, the tears began to form.
‘I can’t tell Mum – she’d blame me, wouldn’t she?’
‘Tell her what?’
‘That he takes photos of me when I have hardly anything on. And even worse, Luke, who you met at the party, found them on his computer. Not only that, he found a hidden camera in my bedroom as well. Luke told me he was furious and deleted a lot of them before Ned caught him. He’s gone now, but I don’t even know if Ned knows that Luke told me about it – he hasn’t said a word to me.’
‘What happened after Luke told you about the pictures?’
‘He left before Ned came back, he didn’t want to believe that he had done more than that.’
‘Right, so no help from that side of the family then.’
‘Don’t think he’ll tell anyone else, but he told me. He had even noticed that Ned didn’t like him being around me, which was another reason he was heading out.’
‘So, Ned’s jealous of you having friends, is he? Or maybe he’s just worried you might talk to them.’
I thought for a moment before saying, ‘You know, that never entered my head, but yes, now you’ve mentioned it, I think he was.’
‘That’s even creepier, Daisy.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
She managed to wheedle out of me all about the porn he had made me watch. When I described the really ugly stuff, Jess looked completely horrified.
‘God, Daisy, if he watches those, I hope he doesn’t share yours with anyone! Can’t bear to even think about that. So what else has he done to you?’
‘Made me wank him off,’ and more tears came as she put her arm around me.
‘He’s got to be stopped,’ she told me. ‘You’ve got to stand up for yourself, tell him you won’t do anything else with him. Promise me you’ll try?’
‘Yes,’ I said but even though I said the word, I didn’t believe it. Nor did she.
‘So that’s why you never want to go home until your mum’s due back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but you know he sometimes comes to the school to pick me up and what choice do I have then?’
‘Say no, you like the bus, say anything. Don’t be alone with him again.’
Jess gave me another hug, told me that everything would be all right soon and then I left.
* * *
Having stayed later than usual, I made my way home down the highway. I think it was having Ned in my life that had put all the fears of men into me. I had visions of being dragged into a car by those men who like young petite female teenagers – there had been enough written about those crimes in various newspapers to make me very wary.
I had discovered a shortcut that made me feel safer. It was the tunnels that Australia placed in many country roads that were designed as underpasses for mammals not just to cross the roads safely but more to prevent road accidents that I used. I had to be careful that there was no wild pig in there trotting back to its home so I would listen for a moment before I entered. One advantage of being small was that I only had to stoop a little as I made me way through them until I reached the tall grass on the other side. Walking through that was frightening as well, I was scared that there would be snakes slithering around.
I managed to get back just in time for supper. Glancing at her watch, Mum said that she would have preferred it if I was going to be late in future to phone ahead.
‘Not really happy with you walking back down that road once it’s dark,’ she told me.
‘Oh, there’s hardly any traffic on it,’ I said, which was true, before adding, ‘I feel fine doing it,’ which was not.
* * *
It was two days later when Jess arrived at the house. After Mum had greeted her, the pair of us went outside.
‘Thought I’d better tell you my mum asked me why you had looked upset when we came down the stairs the other day. I told her you weren’t, but she wasn’t having it.’
‘Well?’
‘In the end, I told her.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I’m afraid I did, Daisy. She asked if there was trouble in your home and had it anything to do with Ned?’
I couldn’t really blame Jess, but still I felt sick with nerves all day.
Just what was going to happen next? Mum would be so angry with me was all I could think, telling stories like that to the neighbours. Then all I thought about was what if Jess’s mother tried to talk to Mum?
But she didn’t – she did something far worse, she told the police.
And round they came that evening, when we were all in.
* * *
Although they were wearing plain clothes and driving an ordinary car, there was no mistaking who they were. They showed their ID to Ned when he opened the door to them.
I don’t know what he told them, for they talked to him outside. They were clearly telling him that he had been reported because there were suspicions that he had been abusing his stepdaughter.
Not that they were prepared to give the name of who had reported him.
From what I was told, he denied it – which didn’t stop them saying they had to interview me and they asked if my mother was inside. When told she was, they insisted on coming into the house and interviewing me. They said I was old enough to speak up, especially as my mother would be there with me.
Ned must have been praying inwardly that I would deny it for he hadn’t come up with the usual excuses that men like him habitually make, that I was a compulsive liar and an attention seeker who made up stories.
When they entered the house, I gulped with nerves for I knew what it was about. Mum was just worried that it had something to do with Ned’s drink driving or that the neighbour had complained about livestock escaping. When told the real reason, she turned pale and her eyes hardly left my face.
‘My colleague will have to ask your daughter some questions while I talk to your husband outside. . .’ said one.
They had obviously brought a policewoman with them so that I might not be so embarrassed by the questions she was planning to ask. First, she reassured me that nothing would happen to me if I told them the truth and that Ned would leave with them if it was true so I needn’t be scared.
At this Mum’s face turned ashen and all I could hear her saying was, ‘This can’t be true, it can’t,’ and then she bit her lip to stop herself saying anything more. And here was my big chance to talk, to get rid of Ned, for they would have taken him straight out of the house. They would also take Mum for they would want to question her as well; they would want to know if she had been aware of the abuse. The thought of my mother being escorted to the station after so much that had gone wrong in her life was not something I could handle.
That was the main reason I said what I did.
‘Of course it isn’t true,’ I told them and turning to Ned, I spoke directly to him: ‘No, you never did anything like that, did you?’ And I tried to give a light laugh to cement my denial in.
I’m sure the police regretted not bundling us all in their car and taking us to the station, where they could have interviewed us each in separate rooms. By the way, the woman officer handed me her card – I was pretty sure she at least believed I was lying. But there was nothing they could do, except say goodnight and leave. As soon as they had gone, I just got up and walked into my room – there was bound to be an outburst and I did not want to be part of it.
To my surprise it was Ned who knocked at my door and asked if he could speak to me. He had told Mum that he just wanted to know where the story had come from and he had a right to ask me.
I expected fury and had to tell myself that there was nothing more he could do, but instead of looking angry, he appeared grateful.
‘So why did you say I hadn’t, when we both know it’s the truth?’ he wanted to know.
‘What, you’re admitting that you’re abusing me?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
I just cringed at his reply – I wanted him out of my room and the conversation over. Oh, he tried to apologise, said he didn’t know that he had upset me.
But I was having none of that: ‘You knew I didn’t want it so now you’d better leave me alone, hadn’t you?’
I saw for the first time that our roles were slightly reversed.
When he opened the door to leave, Mum was just outside and I could tell she had been crying.
‘Daisy, tell me the truth now, has Ned been molesting you? Because if it’s true, I’ll leave him right now.’
Part of me wanted to say yes, but I just couldn’t. Maybe I thought she wouldn’t leave him and then it would be them against me, or was I just too ashamed to admit it? Or did I not want to break her heart? For looking at her, I suddenly saw her not as my mother but as a vulnerable woman who still had not recovered from losing her son. Or was it a mixture of all that?
‘Daisy, I’m asking you one more time, is it true?’ she persisted. ‘Because I don’t want to live with a man and then find out when you’re grown up that it was.’
She waited.
‘No,’ was my answer.
52
People often ask me where I met my husband and how old I was; the truth was that I was at school and it was when I was about ten. He was in a class a couple of years ahead of me – in fact he and Tommy were friends of a sort. Mostly because the pair of them were often in detention together. Brent had, as he recalled, had a reputation of being a bit of a bad boy who was always in trouble.
I used to see him smoking just outside the playground; a habit he told me later that he had begun when he was around ten. Then, when we bumped into each other, I was just Tommy’s little sister to him, who was hardly worth talking to. Though I did see a more considerate side to him just after my brother died. He was one of a group of older boys who came over to me to say how sorry they were and I could see Brent really meant it. But after that, we rarely talked, for to me he was just one of the boys my brother had been friendly with.
I must have been somewhere around thirteen when he started paying me some attention. Not that I was interested in boys then. Well, maybe a tiny bit, I suppose, and I can’t say it wasn’t flattering as all the girls in my class kept saying he was the best-looking boy in our school. That made me smile because I remembered that was exactly what Mum had once said about going out with Dad. With his thick light brown hair and large sparkling eyes of a darker shade, I had certainly noticed that he was attractive. He might not have been very tall, but that didn’t stop him from strutting around confidently. And his jokes were amusing, I must say.
I might have been persuaded to have responded a little more to the odd compliment he paid me, if I wasn’t engrossed in another interest, dancing, that was taking up a lot of my time. Although that was not the only reason, of course: Ned and my home life stopped me wanting boys as friends. I didn’t want anyone wanting to touch me and as you can imagine, my trust in the opposite sex was pretty limited.
It had been one of the teachers who had encouraged me to give dancing a try. She had started a school dance club and she thought it was something I would be good at. Or I suspect she thought it would be good for me. If she had seen that underneath my rather cocky attitude, I was actually depressed and needed something that would interest me, she never said. It had begun when she approached me after a sports lesson: ‘You are so nimble with everything you do,’ she told me. ‘Why, you simply flew over that horse. Just watching you makes me think you would be a natural at dancing.’ She then went on to explain she had a group who practised dance after classes and she would like me to come along and take a look at them.
‘What sort of dance is it?’ I asked, thinking she might have been talking about ballroom or something equally boring.
She mentioned jazz and I almost snorted. As far as I knew that was music for older people, where the men had scraggly beards and the women wore either cord trousers in winter, or baggy cut-offs in summer, with drab coloured sweatshirts.
Seeing my reaction, she almost burst out laughing and I could see the amusement on her face: ‘I think you’d better come and see a class before you make up your mind, I’ll just say it’s a very contemporary version.’
‘All right, I’ll come and take a look,’ I said with little enthusiasm evident in my voice.
What a shock it was the first time I went. My feet could hardly stay still, first the drums started their beat and then wind and brass instruments joined in. My body twitched with the desire to move to it. I was just about wide-eyed with excitement when I watched the dancers. Talk about movement, this music was not just about legs moving, it was about every part of their bodies moving to the rhythm – legs, arms, torsos and heads. As I swayed in time to the music, I was just dying to go over and join them.
‘So now what do you think?’ asked my teacher, still with that amused expression on her face.
‘Oh, I love it! I had no idea dance could be like that.’
‘Good, you can start your first class on Monday. We have them twice a week on a Monday and Friday, which means you can catch up at any lost homework over the weekend, doesn’t it?’
‘Eh, yes,’ I managed to get out and saw her smile again – I don’t think she thought homework was my main interest.
Having those two classes after school meant that I would be able to go home with Mum. At least I would not be on my own with Ned for those days. When I told her about the dance class she was really pleased for me: ‘Have to get you some leotards at the weekend and another pair of trainers,’ was just about the first thing she said before adding, ‘We could have some lunch out, just the two of us.’ Another invitation that made me happy. So, Saturday was our shopping day and soon I had a bag stuffed with everything I needed for those classes. Over a pizza lunch, she told me again how pleased she was that I had taken such an interest in dance and that I was learning to express myself so well.
* * *
On Monday I began to feel really excited about my first class, although slightly apprehensive about what to expect. It was brilliant and by the end I already felt that it had started changing things for me. It was as though I had entered another world where the beat of those drums and the voices of the clarinet, trumpet and saxophone spoke to me as they guided my limbs to do as they wished. I felt such freedom as I allowed my body to express my emotions.
Moving to the beat made me feel stronger, more in control and the worries that came into my mind almost floated away as I danced, though there were times when I felt the loss of Tommy even more acutely. Images of his face, with that roguish grin of his, swam in front of me. That smile, that since his death I had come to realise had hidden the pain he felt at being trapped inside his bent and broken body. I know now that he must have felt that every day of those years when he lived his all-too-short a life. It was when my mind saw him that, as I finished my class, I felt the dampness on my face where my tears had streamed down it.
Dance was certainly far more emotional for me than I had ever thought it would be, but it was also great fun. I just knew I had found something that could help me grow physically and emotionally stronger, more independent and more confident.
Around about then, Brent seemed to give up trying to talk to me – I suppose I just didn’t give him any encouragement. When he asked what I did in my spare time, I had just told him dancing: ‘At the school club, not anywhere in town,’ I said in case he got the wrong idea. I received a white sparkling smile after that comment.
‘Oh, there I was, thinking you were sneaking into the local clubs,’ he said and we both laughed at that. I was not one of those girls who could, with a little help from make-up, make myself appear older – if anything, I looked younger than I was.
53
If it hadn’t been for the gradual freedom dance gave me, Brent might have just remained the bad boy who smoked cigarettes at the back of the school. Not that at the beginning of my classes I gave him much thought.
After a year of those classes which I could hardly wait to go to, my teacher told me that she considered me the best dancer in the group. She pointed out that being so tiny and light, I could be swung up in the air more easily, but it was how I did it so gracefully that most impressed her: ‘You really express yourself beautifully,’ she added, though she was tactful enough not to ask me about my tears. Maybe she knew that my freedom of movement made me think of my brother, who with the use of only one limb, strived every day to be in charge of his own life.
‘I know you’re taking your classes seriously,’ she had said, before she started telling me about the competitions that were coming up over the next few weekends and she told me that she would like to put my name down if I could take part in them – how did I feel about that?
‘Great!’ I told her, my face beaming with happiness.
‘I think these classes have been good for you, Daisy.’
‘They have,’ I agreed.
Which was true, for they had made me far more focused. Both Mum and Dad were delighted when I told them about the upcoming competitions. Mum told me that nothing would stop her from being there while Dad told me that he accepted that I would be visiting him less often. I didn’t want him to think it was an excuse to see him less. It was not that he or Julie had done anything to make me feel unwelcome and I loved my baby brother, it was just that seeing the three of them looking so happy together made me wish even more that I was still part of a happy family life.
* * *
I had been right about dancing building up my confidence in the year between my first lesson and confiding in Jess. I had been learning so many movements, but more than anything it made me want my freedom.
It was some days after that evening when the police had arrived at the farm that I began to plan how I could get away from there. For ages I had felt that my life at the farm was stifling me and that I had to find a way to leave. Waiting until I was eighteen and leaving school was just far too long, I decided.
