Escaping the Darkness Read online

  I was me…

  Sarah Preston.

  Grown up, stronger and more in control than I was all those stolen days, weeks, months and years ago, and he could surely see this in the woman who stood before him.

  As the rest of the world passed carelessly by, he asked again, ‘Are you okay? Still married?’

  I snapped out of the subdued, shocked state that had taken me over. I was hearing the words he was speaking but they were falling flat at my feet, as if my ears couldn’t credit them with any semblance of meaning or importance.

  ‘Yes.’ I replied quietly. I sounded so afraid and hated my voice at that moment for letting me down. Yet the words I next spoke gained strength with each syllable, each one louder than its predecessor: ‘I am still married.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I’d love to see you again.’

  What? Did he really just say that?

  I could not believe what I was hearing. Each sound his vile lips produced was registering in my head like an explosion. See me again. See me again. Who did he think he was? More importantly, what did he think I was? Some kind of prostitute? Someone who was so desperate that the only thing I needed was him?

  Never…

  If he were the last person on earth in the last rescue boat after violent storms and flooding had consumed everything else, I would have thrown myself into the rising floodwaters and taken a chance on my survival – even though I couldn’t swim – rather than be with him. I looked down at my small son asleep in his pram and remembered with a slow sense of warm fulfilment the things I now had in my life. I was thankful that Sam, the man to whom I was now married, protected me and loved me. I was thankful too that I, unlike so many other women who have been abused as children, had been given a chance of being reborn into a new life filled with love and security; a new existence where my past wasn’t relevant and a history that had not in any way impeded what was now so vitally important: being a mother.

  As I once more became aware of the man standing beside me, I wondered what had made him think that, just because I was now a woman, I’d be any more willing to take part in his sordid, sexual advances and perverted acts. Furthermore, it appeared that I was a woman whom – it was obvious by the longing in his voice – he now so clearly, desperately wanted.

  Maybe that was it. Was he wondering how I had matured? Did he want to see for himself if all the bits were curving and shaping in all the right places? After all, the last time he had seen my body I was still just a fourteen-year-old girl, a child…

  A child with a newly developing body, maturing as all girls do, slowly over time – entering into adolescence but still essentially a child, who was not quite yet ready to become a woman.

  As I gained the strength I needed to walk away from him, he began following me with his eyes, his face betraying his feelings of frustration. He had not really believed my mood, my response or my actions of a few moments earlier. It was as if he could not understand why I was behaving like this. I knew he was asking himself one question: Why was I being so hostile towards him?

  What else did he, in all reality, expect to happen?

  At that moment he seemed to be stuck to the spot, apparently in some kind of traumatised shock. He had a calculating look, as if he was continually asking himself questions, questions I could see building hurriedly in his eyes, like books stacked on shelves in a library. As I turned and walked away from him, I made a guess at the questions he was asking himself:

  Was this the Sarah I knew?

  Was this the Sarah that was once so polite?

  The same Sarah who never said ‘boo to a goose’?

  My Sarah?

  That was it. That was how Bill had always thought of me, as his Sarah. Not a girl who had a right to her own life, growing up as her friends were all doing. In his eyes I was just…

  His Sarah.

  His Sarah confined and captured like a beautiful songbird in a cage, singing as best she could to gain her freedom. He seemed so stunned, as he reluctantly faced the answers to his questions, that he hadn’t noticed the person approaching him from the opposite direction. Bill’s acquaintance was smiling and happy to see him, as my enemy continued to concentrate on just how far I was now away from him. As the gap between us widened, he began to move forward, heading towards me, but I noticed the other person before he did. This woman was trying to get Bill’s attention with a single, solitary wave. Luckily for me this character, who was now standing at his side, appeared to be someone he knew, who was glad to see him.

  As I quickly glanced back to see if he was following me, I could see the mounting irritation now burning bright in his eyes, along with the mounted frustration nestling in all the creases and folds of his wrinkled, weathered, old face. I had but a few seconds to try and hide myself as far away as possible from him, before he had time to make some feasible excuse to his friend, setting him free to follow me.

  I looked up the high street and saw a bus approaching the nearby traffic lights; it was my bus, the 29A. Every second of my rushed journey towards the bus stop saw me frantically trying to keep all four pram wheels firmly on the pavement. I somehow managed to do so as I ran faster and faster to where I needed to be before the bus swung around the corner. It was a miracle that my son and I made it to the bus stop in one piece, that we hadn’t hurt ourselves, or, more importantly, run into any of the people that hurriedly made way for this mum, racing along the road, pushing her pram at speed.

  I was so glad of that dozen or so people who were all waiting patiently for their own buses to arrive. Unbeknown to them, they were my safety shield, there to protect me from danger, shielding me from Bill’s searching glare. When the bus rounded the corner and pulled up at the stop, I quickly boarded once the doors opened, feeling completely out of breath. I hastily folded the pushchair up, stacked it in the storage area and then carried my small son towards a seat, cradling him in my arms, thankful he was too young to remember the face of the man from my nightmares: a man who had been so unjustly wicked to his mummy all those years ago.

  My heart continued to beat much too fast and my bones felt like jelly. They felt so soft and weak; each one struggling to hold me up and support my son, while I unsteadily made it to my seat in a state of near panic. Up until now I had always thought that my bones were strong and healthy, but today of all days they just felt so useless. While the bus travelled along the town-centre streets I quickly sat down, and we continued onwards to the sleepy, inhabited outskirts of town. I took a deep breath that hurt my chest, but I didn’t care about the pain. All that mattered was that at last I was safe.

  Bill had no idea where I lived now and wouldn’t be able to follow. I looked out of the bus window and slowly the familiar shops faded into the distance as we rode into suburbia. Here we were passing tree-lined avenues, open spaces and familiar parks with every twist and turn the bus made. Even the types of pedestrian seemed to change as we journeyed on. In town there were people moving around with hurried purpose, snatching minutes from their busy schedules to complete urgent jobs that wouldn’t wait till the weekend. Here, as we moved out of the built-up areas towards the gentle pleasant suburban homes, folk appeared to be more relaxed, taking time to chat to neighbours and friends. As the sun shone more brightly, it seemed as if these agreeable people were enjoying their lives, perhaps creating happy memories for their contented children, memories that would be as sweet as fresh, sun-warmed strawberries and fine champagne. Twenty minutes later I was home. Safe, and out of harm’s way.

  Chapter Three

  AS I PUSHED the door quietly closed behind me, I gently picked Timothy up out of his pram and climbed the stairs. I laid my sleepy, young son gently in his cot so that he could finish his nap and went downstairs to the lounge. Just as I sat down the phone started to ring, so I got up and hesitantly picked up the receiver and, as I did, I thought, for one split-second that Bill had somehow, some way found out my phone number. I paused before I answered, desperate to hear a famil
iar friendly voice.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Hi sweetheart, how are you doing?’

  I almost fell over with relief at the sound of my husband’s voice. Sam was ringing as usual to check that I was okay. The pounding in my heart slowly began to ease back to a normal pace as our conversation continued.

  ‘Hiya, I’m fine, missing you, and it’s only eleven o’clock,’ I told him.

  ‘I know, I was missing you too, that’s why I rang.’

  I heard his door open in the background and a muffled voice speaking to him; someone had come into his office.

  ‘Sorry I’ve got to go,’ he apologised. ‘I’ll speak to you later, bye.’

  Within a few short seconds our moment of togetherness was lost. And in his rushed parting words, my brief sense of security disappeared.

  ‘I love you,’ I whispered, just as I heard the click of Sam’s receiver falling into place at the other end of the long, distant line; it hurt to know that he couldn’t possibly have heard the three small words I quietly whispered. I held onto the receiver for five long minutes before I put it down, letting it fall into its cradle. I slipped slowly down the wall I’d been leaning against into a heap on the floor. I cried so much my heart felt it would crumble into tiny fragments. I could feel my chest wall being pounded by my beating heart. It was so painful and with every breath the pounding intensified. I had to stop it; I had to slow my breathing. My mind started working overtime with the thoughts that were flying around in my head.

  Why now?

  Why was I being punished again?

  Why at this moment?

  I began thinking that someone must be playing a sick, cruel game to show me this man again, especially now that I was so happy, so content and finally so in control of my life. I don’t know how long I sat on the floor that day but I was brought out of my traumatised state by a knock on the front door. Not once but twice. It was my friend Maria on her way to collect her son from playgroup. ‘Are you ready to walk up Sarah?’ Maria asked. ‘Or do you want me to get William and take him back to mine with me and the boys so that they can all play together?’

  ‘Timothy’s still sleeping, do you mind?’ I said.

  ‘No. It’s fine, I’ll make a sandwich for lunch then we can have a natter if you like while the kids play in the lounge,’ she cheerily replied.

  ‘That would be great, see you in an hour.’

  I watched her leave, and as I stood on the front doorstep, she slowly disappeared from view, making her way further and further along the path that met and ran parallel with the road outside. Maria had come to the rescue, helping me without even realising it, giving me something else to think about; she was the welcome diversion I so desperately needed.

  Maria was a good friend. We had met shortly after Timothy was born, whilst we were both walking home from the children’s clinic one bright, sunny May afternoon. Maria was on one side of the main road and I the other. We had started talking and had struck up a friendship that seemed to be instantly filled with the stuff that you know only special friendships are made from. During a conversation with the midwives who were visiting her, she had been told that there was a young mum who had just given birth to a fifth child living on the same estate where she lived, a bit further down from her home.

  Just like me, Maria had also very recently given birth. She had produced her third child, a girl that would be a sister to her two sons. When I had given birth to my fifth child, I wasn’t surprised to learn from the midwife at that magical delivery moment that I had a fifth son. I had hoped for a girl but I knew as long as my child was healthy then nothing else in the world mattered. I suppose to all new young mums the ‘midwife grapevine’ was something we enjoyed and was the kind of adult conversation we looked forward to the most when we were alone in the house with our new babies – chats like this always made a welcome change from the usual baby talk. No matter how thrilled you might be to be a mum and have the joy of a new baby in your life, it was these small snippets of conversation that made you feel conscious once more of the world just outside your front door.

  I remember so clearly how Maria had started talking to me on that Tuesday afternoon. ‘Hey, are you the mum with five sons who lives on the estate?’ she had shouted to me across the busy main road. Her voice was so loud it seemed to bounce off the houses around me while also overcoming the noise of the traffic that separated us.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, as I continued to walk along. Maria crossed over to meet me, we introduced ourselves, and as we walked we talked, striking up a conversation that would serve as the firm strong roots of our friendship, which would grow and firmly establish itself in the years to come, like a mighty oak tree.

  She only lived five minutes away from me, and if she hadn’t spoken to me that day, I don’t think we would have ever met, even though we lived in such close proximity to one another. She was bubbly and vibrant, a real breath of fresh air and loud, so loud…

  But that’s probably what I grew to love and admire about her: her loudness, her outspokenness and her warmth. She was quite simply amazing, and she took everything in her stride, and no matter whether it was something good or bad, a small or large problem, nothing was ever too big to sort out. There were times in the years that followed that I wished I could capture her strength and her amazing confidence, bottle it, and save it forever. But I knew if I had, Maria would not have been Maria, and I would have stolen the very essence that was my one true friend.

  As the door closed gently behind her that day, I realised I hadn’t unpacked the shopping I’d brought back from town, so I picked up my bag and rummaged through it, looking for the stewing steak for dinner. It wasn’t there. In all the commotion and upset I hadn’t been to the butchers, or the market. No meat, no veg. I had forgotten them in my rush to catch the bus and avoid Bill. I felt so useless; I knew, however, that this was ridiculous, letting the thought of one man, who was of no real consequence, interrupt my life.

  But it was this one man who had successfully stolen a huge part of my life, sabotaging it so severely; because of him, those cherished childhood times were gone forever. My valuable years of adolescence had become irretrievable, dead and blackened within me, each one of them hidden in the box in my mind for all eternity, until now.

  Chapter Four

  EVER SINCE I had remarried I had enjoyed a newfound world, a world I knew was exceptional for damaged people like me. This bright new world was filled with love and understanding. And finally, within this world, I experienced something I never thought would have been mine ever again: freedom.

  Sam had given me back my freedom to do as I pleased, with all the love and all the happiness to help me along life’s way – to be who I wanted to be. Now I felt a happiness I never dreamed could have ever belonged to someone like me.

  I had come a long way since 1972 when my life had been so cruelly torn apart by one man’s longing to wreck a child’s life. I can remember thinking then that my life was ending and I had lost all hope of ever living a normal life with a husband and children by my side. I was stronger now, stronger than I had ever been before, and I had Sam to thank for that. I was a mum who thrived on seeing enjoyment and happiness in the eyes of her five children.

  The most important thing to me was their happiness, and each time I shared or heard their laughter, I knew I had been given blessings that were eternal. I was so lucky. My husband completed this idyllic picture of family life; a life I imagined could have only ever have been mine when, and if, I was lucky enough to marry the man of my dreams. I always thought that no one would want me because I was ‘damaged goods’. Sam was so perfect: he gave me more friendship than I ever thought possible for one person to give and more love than I could handle. He made me feel so special, so alive and so very worthwhile.

  Yet emerging in the background, entering my life, regardless of the twenty-foot high ‘no entry fence’ I had subconsciously erected in my mind as protection against him, was Bill. The man
who’d abused me was there with his bulldozer, waiting for an opportunity to find a small hole, a weak spot, a gap in my defences, which he could easily slip through, like the slug-like piece of slime that he was. At a time when my life was overflowing with love and happiness, this man had the nerve to reappear, and even suggest that he could pick up where he left off!

  I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. I wondered what had made him think of such a diabolical plan, but still, I knew all too well that Bill was no ordinary man. He had no feeling for the hurt he had caused or the people he had damaged. The only thing of any real importance to him was getting what he desired, no matter what the cost. He just wanted what he wanted. Plain and simple…

  His desires, his dreams and his fulfilment.

  He always wanted fulfilment.

  As I stood in the kitchen that evening making tea, I realised I had to talk to Sam about this. Just at that moment I heard the familiar sound of his key turning in the lock and the front door creaking and squeaking as it opened. I was so relieved to hear Sam’s cheery hello as he came through the door. As he entered the kitchen, concern registered on his face. He instantly recognised that something was wrong.

  He looked at me, anxiety growing on his face. I answered before he could ask the question – that way the little white lie I told him didn’t seem quite so blatant. I don’t know what made me tell him I was all right; the fear of having my dream bubble burst perhaps. After all, living with Sam and our children was my dream come true.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I told Sam. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a bit of a headache that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked doubtingly.

  ‘Yes, quite sure.’

  ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Oh fine, you know just the same apart from a few things.’

  We went on to talk about Sam’s day at the office while all the time he watched my every move. He looked so anxious my heart cried out to him, yet the words remained unspoken, like they had done many years before. I was just too scared to tell him. Not scared of what Sam would do or say, but scared of what would happen if Bill found out where I was. I could not believe this nightmare was re-emerging again.