Читать книгу Stolen Voices: A sadistic step-father. Two children violated. Their battle for justice. - Terrie Duckett - Страница 8

It was in early April 1981, when Dad was away working in Portsmouth, that Mum made an announcement over breakfast.

‘We’re going to emigrate to South Africa.’ She paused, looking at our faces. ‘What do you think? It’s all happening in September, so Terrie, you won’t be starting upper school.’

‘Oh, wow!’ I was stunned. I glanced over at Paul, trying to read his expression. He was smiling and then began manically leaping around the kitchen. I raised my eyebrow, pretending to look disapproving, and after a few moments joined in.

I was very excited. I’d loved our holiday to South Africa. Anywhere had to be better than grey old Northampton. I wondered if Mum and Dad might be happier in the sunshine too. It also meant a fresh start, maybe a place I could make friends and fit in.

At school, I told all my classmates about it. ‘What? The Ducketts are going to live abroad?’ laughed one. ‘Not that we’ll notice you’ll be gone.’ They just poked fun at me and I could see they didn’t really believe that we were moving.

My friend Lisa, who was more of an enemy I kept closer, looked a bit sad when I told her. ‘But I thought you were really poor,’ she said, looking confused. ‘How comes you can afford it?’ I shrugged. I didn’t actually know the answer to that.

That evening I had a chat with Paul about our fresh start. ‘I don’t care whether we move or not,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t have many friends anyway and I doubt anyone will miss me.’

‘Aww, Paul. What about Mark Millar? I thought he was a friend.’ I gave him a hug. But I understood how he felt. I wasn’t going to be missed much either. Paul struggled as much as me to fit in; relentlessly bullied about our surname, haircuts and never having the fashionable clothes or the latest toys meant we couldn’t join in many games. Thankfully, we had each other, and we enjoyed playing out with bikes and exploring.

That summer, before our emigration, was one of the hottest for years. Dad had flown out to South Africa to try to get a home and job sorted ready for when we flew out, and meanwhile Mum worked all hours to pay the rent and bills. She’d started packing up the house into tea chests, sending what we thought would be important over to South Africa. Other items she sold to friends: the cooker, the sofa, our beds, my lovely bike. Gradually each room in our house became more and more bare as furniture and bits and pieces were shipped off or sold.

‘I don’t see how I can carry on like this.’ Mum was stressed and was sitting chatting to Dad on the phone. He rang once a week, giving her updates on our new life, telling her what needed doing back home in England.

She’d left the shoe company and had got herself a job as a saleswoman for a carpet company called Rainbow Carpets and worked nine to five every day. She couldn’t afford childcare so we were left to our own devices all day during the holidays.

Paul and I were getting good at entertaining ourselves. One afternoon Paul, my friend Lisa and myself got hold of a couple of pairs of old tights, cut them at the knee and then pulled them over our heads.

We roared with laughter as we saw each other’s squashed noses and hooded eyes. ‘Let’s pretend to be bank robbers and scare some neighbours,’ said Paul, sniggering from behind his tight mask. His nose was puckered upwards like a pig’s snout.

At the same time we looked at each other. ‘Doris!’ we said in unison.

Doris was a little old lady who lived three doors up. She was a proper busybody, always peering out the corner of her window, or twitching her net curtains whenever anyone went past. We crept along to her half-open kitchen window and saw her standing doing some ironing, her head down focusing on the crease she was pressing into a shirt. Arranging our tight masks over our faces we nodded at each other and then leaped up as high as we could. ‘Boo!’ we yelled.

She screamed and dropped her iron onto the floor in fright, while we ran off around the corner and rolled around on the floor, clutching our stomachs as we laughed hysterically.

Later on in the week rain set in, so we stayed inside to play board games and watch TV. Paul thought it might be fun to make a few prank calls and get a carpet delivered to Mary next door. We’d get a good view from the kitchen window and we could have a laugh at her reaction.

Later, when Mum came home from work, she was not best pleased with us.

‘Today my boss stuck the speaker phone on,’ she said crossly. ‘And I heard two giggling voices ordering a fuzzy blue carpet for Mary next door.’

I tried not to look at Paul. I knew if I just took one look at his face and saw a twitch of his lip or an eye movement I’d laugh.

‘My boss asked me if those voices belonged to my kids and I said I was sure it wasn’t you as you were with your grandparents all day. But I would know your voices anywhere,’ she scolded, a twinkle in her eye.

We all started laughing and we couldn’t stop.

‘Right,’ said Mum, getting her breath back. ‘A lock is going on this phone so you won’t be able to use it at all.’

‘Awwww,’ said Paul, realising how much it’d spoiled our fun.

Mum was true to her word. The following day a silver lock was secured into the number one on the dial of the phone. Annoyed at not being able to play wind-ups on the phone any more, Paul started fiddling around with it in the afternoon, pressing the receiver up and down, up and down. Suddenly he froze, the receiver mid-air. I could hear a faint mechanical voice coming from the phone; by this point Paul was staring at it with a wicked grin, which later on I came to recognise as his ‘light-bulb’ moment.

‘Terrie!’ he yelled excitedly. ‘We can still make calls! Watch this!’ He tapped the black plugs in the receiver cradle in a sequence, almost like Morse code, and then I saw it too – the taps corresponded to numbers.

‘This is the speaking clock,’ I heard the mechanical voice again.

‘Paul, guess what?’

‘What?’ he asked, looking up at me.

‘Mary is hungry. I think we need to get her a pizza.’

Giggling our heads off, we called for a pizza for our neighbour Mary and a cab for the lady across the road who seemed to walk everywhere.

When the next phone bill came through, the look on Mum’s face was a picture. I felt guilty as I realised our fun had cost her. She was puzzled and had no idea at all how it was so high.

The holidays passed by quickly. We spent hours scrumping fruit from around the estate for lunch; we would antagonise local children and spend hours evading capture, or bike for miles and wander around the estate collecting seeds from weeds like poppies and dandelions to drop into nearby immaculate gardens, just out of boredom. Then we’d walk along to the bus stop just in time to meet Mum getting off, and stop off at the chippy on the way home, where Mum would buy two-pence worth of batter bits for us to nibble on.

The date for our emigration drew closer. The worst part of all for me and Paul came about: we had to say goodbye to Nan and Pap. They both held me close, as I breathed in their lovely smell for the last time. I had no idea when I’d see them again.

‘Of course we’ll come back as often as we can,’ said Mum to Nan, cuddling her tightly.

‘I wish you could come too, Nan,’ I said, tears welling in my eyes.

They would both miss us terribly and vice versa, but I knew we’d write and ring as often as possible. We packed our final personal bits and pieces in a big tea chest to be shipped off to our new home and I said my goodbyes to Lisa. The rooms in our house now echoed as they’d been stripped of everything. All we had left were our suitcases.

On the morning of our flight, Mum clattered about in the kitchen, looking tense. She’d just called South Africa from a neighbour’s house as our phone had been disconnected.

Then the doorbell rang. It was Peter. He looked cheery as ever, although his face dropped when he saw how upset Mum appeared.

They spoke in hushed tones, as Mum started weeping.

‘Come and use our phone,’ he assured her after they’d spoken. Mum left with him and returned looking deathly pale.

She’d been crying. ‘We’re not going. Not only has your Dad been looking for somewhere for us to live but also his girlfriend Karen. So I’ve told him we’re not coming. Our new life is cancelled.’

We stood in the empty kitchen. Paul and I looked at each other, not quite sure what to do.

‘Well, you might as well go to school,’ Mum sighed, waving at me. ‘Go on, Terrie, get ready.’

She turned and lit up a fag on the gas cooker.

I frowned, upset. The new term had started two weeks earlier. How could I possibly just turn up at school as if nothing had happened when we were supposed to be on our way to the airport, starting a new life?

‘But I’ve not got a uniform,’ I began. ‘They’ve all been at school for weeks.’

‘Just wear your old one then,’ snapped Mum, looking upset.

Peter put his arm around her, so I dropped it. ‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘Everything will work out. I’ll drop Terrie and Paul at their schools if you like.’

Peter dropped me off outside the school gates at 10 a.m. I looked at my reflection in a large window before entering the building. I felt embarrassed. I had last year’s uniform on, and my socks looked grey. Then there was my chopped, short, spiky hair. I looked down at my feet and sighed. But I raised my head and took a deep breath as I entered the building. I confidently approached reception but inside my stomach was churning, my heart pounding. Both of my hands were clammy and I was shaking. I explained who I was and why I was there. The receptionist looked at me disapprovingly. I could feel her eyes looking me up and down.

‘We have a uniform code. Your Mum should have received a letter.’ My anger rose at her nasal tone. ‘We have a lost property bin, I suggest you look in there for a jumper.’

She took me to a room where I had to rummage for a jumper that was too big and had worn cuffs, and then she showed me to the classroom for my first lesson. As I walked in alone, I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

‘Ah, Terrie Duckett,’ sniped the teacher. ‘We’re honoured by your arrival. You do know term actually started two whole weeks ago and school starts at 8:50?’

Heads swivelled to look at me. I could hear stifled giggles. I blindly found an empty desk to sit at. After class, everyone brushed past me, wearing new cardigans and shiny shoes, looking down their noses at my clothes. Keeping my head down, I found a bench at break time but soon found myself surrounded by kids from the previous school.

‘Thought you weren’t coming back, Terrie Buckett?’

‘Nice hairdo,’ one sniggered. ‘Did your Mum use a chainsaw?’

‘Yeah, you said were going to South Africa. Change your mind, did we?’

‘I bet they were too smelly to be let into the country.’

‘Terrie is just a little liar. But been caught out now, haven’t we?’ she smirked.

I ran home in tears. I hated my life, I felt nauseous, my stomach was churning and my head wouldn’t stop pounding. Today had been horrendous. How was I going to face them the next day? I didn’t understand why Mum had to send me to that hellhole, yet I was happy because I didn’t have to leave Nan and Pap. Paul didn’t look any happier when he crashed in through the door after school either.

‘The kids chanted “pants on fire” all lunch,’ he said, miserably.

‘I know. We just have to ignore them.’

We sat in my bare bedroom, our voices echoing off the walls.

‘I wonder when Dad’ll send our stuff back?’ said Paul, looking around, lost. ‘I’ve hardly got any toys as it is.’

I gave him a wry smile. Deep down I knew it was unlikely Dad would be worrying about that. Now our belongings had gone I couldn’t see him sending them back any time soon.

Mum looked strained when she came home from work. On the verge of tears, she nipped off again to Peter’s to use his phone. Then she came back, trembling as she told us to sit down.

‘I’ve told your Dad he’s not to come back to this house,’ she said, clutching a ball of sodden tissue in her hand. ‘I’m divorcing him.’

For most kids it’s an earth-shattering statement, but for us it was the one silver lining in this cloud. No more shouting. No more rows.

I suppressed the urge to leap up and punch the air. Paul and I were silent. We looked at each other knowingly. Out of Mum’s earshot, Paul and I shared our own reaction to the news.

‘Isn’t it brilliant?’ I squealed to Paul. ‘We’ll be so much happier without all the arguing.’

Paul shrugged. ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

Despite living in a threadbare house, without the worry of Dad appearing again we felt awash with relief. We played out after school and often came back late for tea. Mum would be standing menacingly at the door, telling us to get inside. We’d have to time running in just ahead of the swipe of the palm of her hand. If we felt like staying up a bit later we did so, reading with a torch under the bedclothes until the early hours of the morning.

Mum sent us on frequent errands.

‘Can you go and fill this up?’ she’d ask, bringing her empty sherry bottle through to the living room as we watched TV.

Every night either Paul or I would carry the bottle to the off-licence to get a top up and stop at the newsagents for more fags for Mum. After drinking a few glasses Mum nodded off to sleep. Once she’d passed out we’d creep back downstairs from bed to watch TV from the bottom of the stairs, or sit together in my room playing board games and reading books. We were relishing our freedom.

Mum would often kick us out of the house early at the weekends and tell us to come home for tea. We’d get back and she would be passed out drunk on the sofa. Then she started to go out drinking with her friend Cheryl. She’d organise a procession of local teenagers to look after us, as no one would babysit us more than once. We would both slip out of Paul’s bedroom window, wobble across the corrugated roof of the shed and walk like cats along the wall before dropping to the grass below. We would then play around the estate for a while and slip back in unnoticed.

Mum would arrive home in the early hours of the morning, a little worse for wear, and wake us up.

‘Hey, let’s make some crisps!’ Mum said, smiling around my doorway.

We rubbed our eyes tiredly, but it was an adventure and we’d join her in the kitchen to slice potatoes super thin and deep-fry them. Mum never had the spare money to buy crisps so it was a big treat as we salted them and sat around munching on them at 2 a.m., giggling. Other times she treated us to ‘poor man’s doughnuts’ – jam sandwiches dipped in batter and fried and then rolled in sugar. They were delicious!

Mum had to work all hours to replace our furniture, as well as pay the rent and bills. The day a second-hand sofa arrived was a big event. The sofa had big soft brown cushions, the kind you can sink into. We were all very excited.

‘Wow!’ yelled Paul. ‘This is great.’ He tried to jump up and down on it as Mum told him off.

‘Calm down,’ she yelled. I understood Paul’s excitement. New furniture felt like a new start. Mum decided to pop over to Cheryl’s two doors away for a cup of tea and a chat, waving to Jim the council man as she left. It didn’t take long for Paul, still hyper from the excitement of the sofa, to start chasing me around with his stretchy Thomas the Tank Engine belt with a metal S buckle.

He whirled it like a lasso above his head. We were both laughing loudly as we dashed about the house. I dived at Paul, making a grab for the end of the belt and just catching it with the tip of my fingers. The belt pinged from his hand, catapulting into the living-room window.

‘Paul, look what you’ve done!’ He turned worriedly, looking at the chip in the window. We knew any damage done to our council house had to be paid for.

I looked out the window and saw Jim mowing the lawns with his sit-on mower. An idea formed in my head. ‘Don’t worry, Paul, I have it all figured.’ He looked relieved, though, still in an excitable mood, he pounced on me and we rolled around the floor tickling each other trying to get each other to submit. Mum walked in just as I’d managed to pin Paul down and was making him giggle by pretending to bite the end of his nose.

‘Mum, guess what’s just happened?’

‘What have you done now?’ she asked resignedly.

We both look at her innocently. ‘We’ve been good. A stone hit the window as the mower went past. It pinged into the window, chipping it!’

I could see Paul looking surprised out of the corner of my eye and I dared not make eye contact with him. Mum walked over to the window and looked. She didn’t seem to notice the chip was actually inside.

‘For fuck’s sake! I’m not paying to replace it. I’ll ring them now and they can replace the window,’ she said.

We were just about the poorest people on what was already a poor council estate on the outskirts of town, which didn’t help our popularity, so the local kids often gave us grief. Occasionally Mum would stick up for us.

Once, on a Saturday she was hosing the front garden when some of the awful kids from up the road started shouting at us.

‘Oi, look, the Fuck-it Ducketts live here!’ yelled one.

‘Yeah, that’s where Terrie and Paul the tramps live,’ taunted another.

Without hesitation, Mum turned the hose on them.

‘Get lost, the lot of you!’ she yelled.

They continued yelling abuse.

‘Terrie, put the hose in the house; I’m going to give them the fright of their lives.’ Mum passed me the hose.

Then to the kids’ surprise, not to mention mine, she charged across the road. They legged it up the alleyway opposite the house, and Mum charged after them. I stood, stunned, then quickly threw the hose into the house and gave chase with Paul, not wanting to miss any action.

As I got to the alleyway, Mum was on her way out. ‘Buggers ran off too fast.’ She puffed.

She walked back to the house and opened the front door.

‘Terrie!’

I heard the shout from across the road.

We ran over and I gulped as I saw the flood of water. Arrggh! I’d forgotten to turn off the tap in the excitement. Paul was busy grinning at me while dancing in the pool of water.

Sometimes it did feel like the three of us against the rest of the world. We started to feel like a proper family. More of Mum’s friends came in and out, but one person was there most days when we got home.

‘Hello, Terrie.’

Peter was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee as I came bounding in through the door. I’d heard he’d split from Anne and he now worked as a driving instructor for BSM; we’d often spot his red car with the distinctive cone on around the area.

‘How was school today?’ he asked, swigging back a coffee.

‘Oh, okay.’ I raised my eyebrow. No one ever bothered to ask how school was.

‘I had PE today, but was the last one to be picked as usual.’

‘Sorry to hear that. Give it time,’ he assured me.

‘It’s not because I’m rubbish or anything, it’s because I’m not liked.’

Peter listened. ‘You just need time to make some new friends.’ He slurped the dregs noisily out of the bottom of the cup.

‘Maybe,’ I replied, opening the cupboards looking to get myself something to eat. As usual, I was starving.

‘Mum, have we got any peanut butter in?’

‘Don’t think so,’ she called back. ‘Have a look at the back of the cupboard just in case Paul put it there.’

Peter was on the sofa the following afternoon, looking relaxed and comfortable. His face broke into a smile as I came in. He brought up the subject of school again.

‘I love chemistry, I find maths easy and we get to swim. They even have a pool.’

Peter listened intently. ‘Why are you not looking happy then?’

I looked down at my feet. ‘Everyone looks down on me. I don’t blame them, to be honest. Mum can’t afford to get me the equipment I need for school and Dad isn’t here to ask.’

The next day when I arrived home Peter was there again.

‘When I was growing up as a lad we didn’t have much,’ he explained, reaching down the side of the sofa. ‘So everything I did have I took special care of. Here’s my leather briefcase I kept from school.’

Then he clicked it open to reveal a massive collection of felt pens, biros, rulers and even a protractor – everything I didn’t have.

‘This is for you, Ted.’ He smiled. I was a little taken aback. Ted was the nickname Mum used for me.

‘Wow, thanks, Peter,’ I said. It seemed like such a kind gesture.

The following day I took it to school. I was teased, but I just held my head high. Peter was only trying to help, even if all his old felt pens had dried up.