Page 52

CHAPTER 52

OLIVIA – B EFORE

I will probably always torture myself over why I didn’t get away from my father sooner. But for so long, I had no money. No confidence. No independence. I simply had nowhere to go . And once I was pregnant, I had the baby to consider.

It was after Julia left for London that I first decided to try to find my mother. To see if she’d help. I had no idea if my mother would step up – she’d left me after all – but she was still sending me birthday cards so I figured she must still care.

My father gave up trying to hide them. The cards. I started setting my alarm early in the week of my birthday and creeping downstairs every day to get to the post first.

So my plan after Julia left was to find my mother and throw myself on her mercy. Her guilt. Her maternal instinct. Whatever. To plead with her to take me in, at least for a little bit, while I had the baby and sorted myself out. I rehearsed in my head that I would share how seriously weird my father was getting. The spiralling obsession with religion. The controlling and suffocating behaviour. A part of me wondered if that was why she left? The reason she fell for another bloke. I wanted to ask her straight . Was it Dad’s weirdness? And if so, why didn’t you take me too?

The pregnancy was progressing OK but I had terrible bouts of exhaustion. I told my father I was seeing the doctor for anaemia blood tests, but instead I went to see a local private detective on the outskirts of Oxford.

I’d found her online. She had a swish website and I had no idea that counted for nothing. The reality was a shock. Grubby office with papers everywhere. No receptionist and the PI was offhand. All the same, I showed her the birthday cards and the postmarks. I shared my mother’s details and her maiden name and everything I could think of. She interrupted me quite quickly to talk about fees and I realised it was all a pipe dream. The quote was ridiculous. I had no work back then and there was no way I could raise the money.

I asked her about her success rate next and she became quite spikey, clearly wanting me out of the office. I realised then that even if I could find a way to raise the money, I didn’t have confidence in her. So in the end I parked the whole idea and decided I’d try to find someone else after the baby was born.

Of course, I had no clue what was coming. Chloe arrived two months short of my sixteenth birthday. And it was a nightmare. I did feel love for Chloe from the off. She was tiny and perfect and so innocent. But the bigger part of me was just in complete shock. I was too young. All I did was feed her and change nappies. Make meals. Do the shopping. Worst of all, with no Julia around, I was desperately lonely. Isolated. Tired all the time.

I remember having a conversation with my father that now makes me feel ashamed. I said I couldn’t do it. I asked him if we should consider putting Chloe up for adoption. He hit the roof. Said she was our flesh and blood and I had a responsibility to bring her up as a child of God. To make amends for my ‘mistake’. He also said something that I would only later come to see for what it really was. He said that it was his job to protect me and Chloe too from the world out there. From the sin out there.

When I think how much I came to love my Chloe, it feels terrible to admit how hard that first year was. But I was just a kid myself. And my father wouldn’t let me go back to school. I’d passed a few GCSEs and wanted to try A levels but instead he enrolled me in some teenage mother education programme which I realised was just a scam. Home schooling by another name. I had group sessions once a week with other young mothers but most of the time we were left to our own devices. No mention of A levels.

It was only once Chloe was much older – once I’d grown to love her properly and learned how to both look after her and enjoy her – that I started to think again about finding my mother. Another option for us. An escape ...

By this time, Chloe was in school and I was doing waitressing shifts at a local gastro pub in the evening while my father babysat. Just three evenings per week but I saved all the money. My father was back teaching full-time but I got the impression our finances were tighter after his time off, home schooling me while I was pregnant. It was the only reason I think he let me work. He knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave or run away because of Chloe, I suppose.

I lied about how much I was being paid. I told him I was keeping some money for clothes for Chloe whereas in truth I was squirrelling away as much as possible. He still checked my phone and restricted my life. He made Chloe do the hand-washing nonsense, the chanting and also Bible lessons. I’m not going to make the same mistake with her that I made with you. No boys. None of that ...

I pretended to go along with it all, while secretly saving every spare penny and researching better private detectives. It’s how I found out about Matthew Hill. All his cases in the papers.

And then the cellar happened. And everything went very dark in my life.

It happened just before I went to see Matthew. The desperate trigger to somehow get Chloe to safety.

I was taking extra shifts at the pub when I could, trying to squirrel away money for the search for my mother. My father seemed to be OK about me working. Well. Not OK. He was never OK about anything. But he seemed to have come to grudgingly accept it. He’d bought a new car, a black Volvo, on a loan the previous year and I got the impression our finances were trickier. He kept tutting when letters arrived. Bills in brown envelopes. He seemed to be more stressed. The mortgage had gone up, he said. Energy and shopping bills too. And it had drained all his savings to take the year’s sabbatical when I had Chloe.

So I sensed that it helped for me to contribute, working a bit at lunchtimes and while he looked after Chloe in the evenings. I lied about how many hours I worked lunchtimes when he and Chloe were at their schools. I also lied about my hourly rate so that I could put more aside for my search fund. But my father was still worried about me meeting another man at work. Kept warning me that he didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with Daniel. That I owed it to him to be pure. Be grateful. I need to be sure you will always stay with me. So that I can protect you. You and Chloe.

The upshot was he bombarded me with messages throughout each of my evening shifts and always grilled me when I got home about the other staff and customers. Who I’d been talking to. Who was on shift with me. Had anyone behaved inappropriately towards me? He checked my phone too, though I’d learned by then to delete messages and my searches.

And then one evening shift I did something stupid. It was one of the bar staff’s birthdays. A guy called Mike. I didn’t fancy him or anything like that but he was genuinely nice. A sunny personality. Always smiling and always pleasant to me. He said he was buying a round for everyone at the end of his shift and he asked me to stay.

I never joined in with anything like that. Not worth the fallout with my father. But this evening, I was tired and fed up and I thought – why not. One drink.

Of course, one drink turned into two. Then three. I sucked mint after mint as I walked home, well aware it was going to cause a big row. Me being later home. But I had enjoyed myself and I honestly had no idea what was coming.

My father was in the kitchen and stood glaring as soon as I made it into the hall.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Offered some overtime to prepare for a wedding tomorrow.’

‘Let me smell your breath.’ He marched towards me and sniffed. ‘Mints? You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? You think you can cover that up with mints?’

I should have kept up the lie. But I was tired and so fed up with my life. And it was probably the alcohol that made me bold. Stupid.

‘OK – so I had a drink or two. It was someone’s birthday. Big deal. You should be glad I have a job. Can contribute.’

Chloe was in bed. A good sleeper. But what happened next shook me to the core.

‘Come here.’ He grabbed me by the arm, opening the door down to the cellar off the hallway, and dragged me down the first few steps.

I was used to all his nonsense, the weird hand-washing and the prayer stuff, but this was new. He had never been so physical with me before.

I shouted at him to let me go.

‘No. I need to talk to you somewhere Chloe won’t hear us. I don’t want her upset by arguing.’ His voice was so cold. So angry.

And so stupidly I let him drag me down the rest of the cellar steps. He was so much stronger than me anyway. He flipped a switch and a light bulb flickered on, then he sat me down on an old wooden chair in the middle of the space. Dusty boxes and shelving units along the wall.

I was expecting a long lecture on the evils of drink and men. The usual stuff about how hard he was trying to keep me and Chloe safe from the big bad world. I was feeling cocky. Emboldened by the alcohol. I was in the mood to answer back. Give him a piece of my mind.

But I never got the chance.

He started pacing. I folded my arms. Rolled my eyes. He walked behind me and I thought, Here it comes. The big lecture about sin. Instead, the next thing I knew he pulled down my chin and stuffed a cloth in my mouth. And then wrapped something around my face to hold the gag in place.

I couldn’t believe it. The shock of it and the speed of it all. I could only breathe through my nose. My eyes wide, I tried to struggle against him, take the gag away, but he pulled my arms back behind the chair and tied them up with something. More cloth? Something soft but tight.

It was horrible.

I started thrashing about and trying to free myself, all the while screaming for help through the gag, but he just stood in front of me. Calm as anything. His eyes strange.

‘You think I want to do this?’ he shouted. ‘You think this isn’t as hard for me as it is for you?’

I screamed through the gag.

‘You need to calm yourself down, Olivia. And think about your behaviour. All I have ever wanted is the best for you. To keep you with me. Safe and protected. And what do you do? You get yourself pregnant. You have a baby out of wedlock. And now you start drinking and throwing yourself at whoever comes along next, and let’s be very clear.’ A pause. ‘We all know where that will lead.’

He stared at me for a while as I continued to struggle. Then he walked behind me and I could hear him opening something. The clinking of glass? A bottle? Next, he put a new rag on to the gag with something wet soaking through. A horrible smell. I felt instantly woozy. Sort of drifting and falling as I heard him walk up the creaking steps and turn out the light. Close the door. Draw the bolt across so that I was locked in. Trapped in the dark.

I don’t know how long I was out of it, down in the cellar. Or what was on that cloth. But when I came to in the darkness, my head was pounding and I felt sick. I listened: the house was quiet. I thought he would surely have calmed down by now. I imagined he would eventually come back. Untie me. And I had it in my head that the moment I was free I would get Chloe up and dressed, pack all our things and leave.

But he left me there all night. In the dark. After what felt like a lifetime, I finally heard footsteps above. I found out later that he got Chloe up, made her breakfast and took her to school. He told Chloe I had gone out with a friend and didn’t bother to come home. She was distraught.

After what seemed like an eternity, I heard the bolt go back and he opened the door and turned on the light, coming down the stairs to stand in front of me.

‘Have you learned your lesson?’ he said.

I nodded, desperate to be set free. My arms were hurting, my wrists sore. My face ached from the gag.

He looked at me for a while, as if deciding what to do. ‘If you ever behave in such an ungodly way again, Olivia, I will bring you down here again. Understood?’

I nodded.

‘And don’t even think about telling because nobody will believe you. I would simply tell them the truth. That you abandoned Chloe to stay out drinking. That you aren’t fit to be her mother. That I may need to seek a court order to take my granddaughter into my own protective custody. And who do you think they’ll believe, Olivia? The teenage mum who stays out after hours drinking with strange men, or me, a respectable teacher? The father who sacrificed his career because his daughter got pregnant at fifteen. The grandfather who has to look after Chloe while you stay out all night.’

I was petrified. My head spinning. I wanted to pack all our things – mine and Chloe’s – right that minute. But the horror of having absolutely nowhere to go, no friends and no support, made me feel even more sick. How could my father treat me like this? How could I protect Chloe? And my father’s threat. What if he did convince the authorities that his lies were real?

I was terrified of losing Chloe.

And so instead of doing the right thing – going to the police or social services – I did the wrong thing.

I promised to behave. I begged for his forgiveness. Later, I prayed with him. And I washed my hands with him. Over and over. Then in secret I made an appointment with Matthew Hill. He worked miles away – in Exeter – but he’d been in the papers and had such a good track record, I was sure he was the only one who could save us. Find my mum. So I arranged the sleepover for Chloe. And a hotel for me.

I lied to my father on the phone that I would be working late at the pub and I might have to stay over with a friend to volunteer for a breakfast shift the next day for extra cash.

He flipped. But I didn’t care. Not after the cellar.

I just hung up on him and said I’d see him after I picked Chloe up. I knew he’d take it out on me when I got back but I also knew that I needed to be brave and see this through. Get another option in place for me and Chloe. So I caught a train and went to my meeting with Matthew Hill.

I knew that I now had to find my mother. To throw myself on her mercy. And get me and Chloe the hell away from my father.