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

class were horrible to me, and even though I only had four or five pimples on my chin, they would always pick on me and call me ‘acne face’. Every day they did this. When I walked into class, if I looked at them or smiled, they would always say, “What you looking at acne face?” The teachers at school never heard their taunts or saw what they did to me.
‘I hated school for that reason, but I loved the lessons. History and English literature were my favourite subjects. I loved reading books and used to get really excited when I knew it was English Literature day. We were reading A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow. It was really good. If I could have gone to school and been left alone by the other kids, I don’t think I’d have been willing to give up any school day no matter how much I enjoyed being with my mum.
‘At first Mum didn’t go to the bingo very often, but over the next few months she seemed to be going almost every day, and on most of those days I went, too. Bill asked her one day if I could help her make the sandwiches for the snack bar in the bingo hall and she said “Yes”.
‘It didn’t matter how I felt about helping this man. Each time I objected she always said to me: “Oh Sarah you’ll be fine, after all I’m only sat here.” From that day on Bill planned, carried out and instigated his plan of how to start abusing an innocent eleven-year-old.
‘Me.
‘At that time I didn’t know why I felt uncomfortable around him and I just didn’t know the plan he had for me.
‘He carefully manoeuvred his way into my mum’s trust and gained enough of it to be alone with me. At first it was just twenty minutes, but as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, these precious minutes turned into longer periods of time. Hours were far harder to forget, the memories of which were not just engraved in my memory, but deeply chiselled in, as if a stonemason had created them, anxious that his work would never wear out.’
Recalling all of this to Bess was beginning to show in my face. I began to get upset as I remembered and recalled the words that would be used to describe the events that would shortly follow the last ones I had spoken of. Eventually, I would have to speak of the things that he did to me and share them again. Saying them out loud, letting them break free. For me, once I speak about the way he moved, acted, and abused me, the words take on shape, forming themselves into dramatic visions that suddenly assume reality. I then start to see them as if I am still living them at that very moment. Once more, each memory is unblemished and alive. Recreated in a new, fresh instant, when time hasn’t quite built up enough distance to tarnish and discolour them.
Bess wrote notes as we talked, scribbling away in a small ring-bound, tattered dark blue notebook; each word was formed in a spidery, pencil-woven scroll. I wondered which bits she thought were important and which she was leaving out. She paused each time I paused, asking if I was okay to continue talking about things that have, and have had, such a huge impact on my life.
‘At first,’ I continued, ‘it was just making sandwiches, then it was helping get the shopping for the things to make the sandwiches, then he took me to his flat.’ My voice started to wobble and then tears pricked and stung the backs of my eyelids, desperately trying to stay there without falling into their normal escape route down my hot flushed cheeks. A second later they succeeded. I was unable to stop myself crying uncontrollably. Bess moved across, taking my hand in hers, slowly stroking the back of it in that familiar, motherly way that seems to be so natural for women of her age.
‘I think we’ll leave it there Sarah,’ she told me. ‘This is obviously getting harder and harder for you and I know you haven’t even touched the surface yet.’
I nodded to her, still trying desperately to control the heaving within me, caused by the pain of