Escaping the Darkness by Sarah Preston Read Free Book Online Page A

backwards. Oh well, it was too late now, this was it. I opened the door.
‘Hi,’ she said cheerily, ‘I’m Bess.’
‘Hello, pleased to meet you, I’m Sarah,’ I replied. ‘Would you like to come through?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
As she came in, I pushed open the lounge door. I don’t know why I did that, just force of habit I suppose, and after all, there was no chance of going through the wrong door because this was the only one in my tiny hallway.
Once I’d closed the front door, I went into the lounge to join Bess. She was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for an indication of where she should sit.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ I asked.
She momentarily looked at the chairs and settee. ‘All right here?’ she asked, pointing to the settee.
‘Yes.’
She settled herself on the settee and laid out her diary and some other papers she had brought with her as I sat on Sam’s chair opposite her.
‘Would you like a tea or coffee?’ I asked her.
‘Oh coffee would be lovely.’
‘How do you want it?’
‘Black, no sugar please.’
I went into the kitchen and made Bess a cup of coffee and a cup of tea for me. A few minutes later I was back in the lounge. As I placed the drinks on the little table between the settee and the chair, Bess looked up and spoke:
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Where shall we start?’
She smiled reassuringly at me to begin.
I didn’t know what to say at first. I just went very quiet, returning to the safe world that was locked inside my head, surrounded by all the things that were secure and familiar to me. Talking to this stranger about the abuse I had been subjected to would probably be one of the biggest hurdles I would ever face. It all seemed so scary, so wrong. Even being here, even though this was my own home, something felt wrong. I was trying to tell someone else about my ordeal, which even now still felt like a betrayal, especially after so much time had passed since it all ended and Bill’s warnings about not telling anyone were first aired. I was now a grown woman and I had a choice to finally speak out. The problem was I was still unsure how to do it. I became a child again. I know very few minutes had passed while I wrestled with my thoughts, but these short pockets of time felt like a lifetime to me.
Bess looked across at me. She seemed to sense my feelings of insecurity, and that talking in my own home, in surroundings that I had created, was a struggle that wasgoing to be hard to overcome for me. She continued to look at me as she spoke softly:
‘Okay, let’s take it a little bit at a time, there’s no rush.’
Inside, my chest felt the burden easing off allowing a little bit of comfort to ease back into the cavity that had just a few seconds earlier felt lifeless and crushed.
‘All right, thanks.’
I was so glad of the words she had spoken; glad of the few things she had said that helped me start to talk about what had happened to me at the hands of the man who always said he was a friend. As Bess sat opposite me in my lounge that day, I started to slowly tell her how the events of those summers way back long ago unfolded; to tell her of experiences that were not meant for a child. It was these experiences that subsequently expanded into years of sexual abuse. These were the events that shaped my life, destroying and stealing parts of me that should never have been destroyed or stolen. I was so angry, but I hid my feelings and continued to hide them until that day: the day Bess Meyer walked into my world.
I began my story:
‘I was eleven. Bill was a man who used to work at the bingo hall my mum used to go to. He became her friend. He used to halve the cost of her tickets so she could go more often, she loved bingo.’ I sat forward in the chair and slowly took a deep breath to go on…
‘Mum used to keep me off school so I could go with her. She liked my company and I didn’t mind missing school because I didn’t have many friends. The other kidsin my