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Authors: Sarah Preston
Tags: Social Science, Family, True Crime, Biography, Non-Fiction, Violence in Society, Autobiography, Abuse, Child Abuse, Relationships
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there ever being true freedom from the horrors I had lived with. Maybe I was just being too cynical too soon. I really had to give Bess a chance to help me put things into perspective.
I just wanted it all to have been done by yesterday.
My mind continued to wonder and before I knew it anhour had passed me by. I grabbed my jacket and went to collect William. As usual Maria was bursting with chatty, exuberant energy. We drank coffee and discussed the events that had been taking place around us; you know the kind, the usual daytime gossip that friends chat about over coffee.
As I watched Maria making another coffee, I realised for the first time that I wanted to tell a friend about my past, but I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t know what she would think of me or how she would take it. I didn’t want her to stop talking to me, because what I had been through had been the worst thing imaginable for a child and, as a mother, she would want to protect her children as I had instinctively protected my own – probably even more than was necessary. Maria had been talking to me for a few minutes and had turned around to see if I was still there. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t heard what she had said.
‘Hey daydreamer, do you want a sandwich for lunch? It isn’t much but I can run to a bit of cheese if you like?’
‘Yes thanks. I haven’t had anything yet as I wasn’t hungry earlier.’
As her words faded into my thoughts, I decided against telling her, thinking that perhaps this wasn’t the time. As it happens, I waited a long, long time to tell her.
The right time came ten years later.
Chapter Eight
LUNCH WITH MY lovely friend was over all too soon. After leaving Maria’s house, I decided to go to the shops before making my way to the school. I didn’t have far to walk, because the grocer’s shop was right across the road. I only had a few things to get from the corner store, and decided it was perhaps best to go whilst it was quiet. It was just too busy once all the other mums started to call in on their way home from school.
Once I’d got the milk, bread and potatoes I needed, I walked slowly on to the school. It was only quarter to three and school wasn’t finished until twenty past.
The walk would normally only take me ten minutes so I dawdled slowly along, wasting as much time as I could. Timothy and William had both fallen asleep and as I walked, I began to try and put my thoughts in order.
I drifted back to the questions Bess had asked me:
‘How did I feel about what had happened to me?’
‘How would you have felt?’ I found myself whispering gently in reply, even though she wasn’t there to hear it.
My thoughts carried me all the way to the school gates, where I waited for the boys to finish their school day, touched by the cooling afternoon breeze.
As I became older, my thoughts had changed. I knew I had become more accustomed to the feelings that had been so hard to control. My life as a child had been taken, screwed up like an old crumpled newspaper and discarded as if it had been nothing – yesterday’s news. The only difference was my life story had yet to be told, and I held secrets deep within me that no one knew about.
I was never given the chance to be myself, to be a child. I was always afraid that once the abuse started, people would blame me for everything. I wanted so desperately to be like all the other girls, but I wasn’t. I wanted to be able to share in their talk of first kisses and first experiences of love, but I never could. I never once stood and giggled with my friends. What had given my abusers, I wondered, the right to snatch these experiences from me? In place of their ‘new discoveries’ at twelve, I had been treated like a fully-grown married woman, experiencing everything she would and more. New discoveries I wished I’d never had.
I wanted so much at the time to say ‘Stop!’ For it to have stopped and vanished like a dream that had never
I just wanted it all to have been done by yesterday.
My mind continued to wonder and before I knew it anhour had passed me by. I grabbed my jacket and went to collect William. As usual Maria was bursting with chatty, exuberant energy. We drank coffee and discussed the events that had been taking place around us; you know the kind, the usual daytime gossip that friends chat about over coffee.
As I watched Maria making another coffee, I realised for the first time that I wanted to tell a friend about my past, but I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t know what she would think of me or how she would take it. I didn’t want her to stop talking to me, because what I had been through had been the worst thing imaginable for a child and, as a mother, she would want to protect her children as I had instinctively protected my own – probably even more than was necessary. Maria had been talking to me for a few minutes and had turned around to see if I was still there. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t heard what she had said.
‘Hey daydreamer, do you want a sandwich for lunch? It isn’t much but I can run to a bit of cheese if you like?’
‘Yes thanks. I haven’t had anything yet as I wasn’t hungry earlier.’
As her words faded into my thoughts, I decided against telling her, thinking that perhaps this wasn’t the time. As it happens, I waited a long, long time to tell her.
The right time came ten years later.
Chapter Eight
LUNCH WITH MY lovely friend was over all too soon. After leaving Maria’s house, I decided to go to the shops before making my way to the school. I didn’t have far to walk, because the grocer’s shop was right across the road. I only had a few things to get from the corner store, and decided it was perhaps best to go whilst it was quiet. It was just too busy once all the other mums started to call in on their way home from school.
Once I’d got the milk, bread and potatoes I needed, I walked slowly on to the school. It was only quarter to three and school wasn’t finished until twenty past.
The walk would normally only take me ten minutes so I dawdled slowly along, wasting as much time as I could. Timothy and William had both fallen asleep and as I walked, I began to try and put my thoughts in order.
I drifted back to the questions Bess had asked me:
‘How did I feel about what had happened to me?’
‘How would you have felt?’ I found myself whispering gently in reply, even though she wasn’t there to hear it.
My thoughts carried me all the way to the school gates, where I waited for the boys to finish their school day, touched by the cooling afternoon breeze.
As I became older, my thoughts had changed. I knew I had become more accustomed to the feelings that had been so hard to control. My life as a child had been taken, screwed up like an old crumpled newspaper and discarded as if it had been nothing – yesterday’s news. The only difference was my life story had yet to be told, and I held secrets deep within me that no one knew about.
I was never given the chance to be myself, to be a child. I was always afraid that once the abuse started, people would blame me for everything. I wanted so desperately to be like all the other girls, but I wasn’t. I wanted to be able to share in their talk of first kisses and first experiences of love, but I never could. I never once stood and giggled with my friends. What had given my abusers, I wondered, the right to snatch these experiences from me? In place of their ‘new discoveries’ at twelve, I had been treated like a fully-grown married woman, experiencing everything she would and more. New discoveries I wished I’d never had.
I wanted so much at the time to say ‘Stop!’ For it to have stopped and vanished like a dream that had never
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