Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page A

had hurt themselves and were sobbing their hearts out – this was how I could see my life going. I had a mission, a purpose for my existence, and at last I was fulfilling it.
    The months flew by so quickly and I started feeling confident enough in myself to agree to dates with boys once again. I suppose most 18-year-olds reading this will wonder why on earth it took such reserves of confidence. I wasn’t ugly – I had a nice slim figure, curly brown hair and I knew men found me attractive. But I wasn’t really interested in sex: it hadn’t done me much good in my life and I didn’t want to get hurt again.
    And anyway, I didn’t think of myself as attractive. I felt small and powerless; plain and uninteresting. Why – apart from the chance to have his way with me – would a bloke want to go out with me ? And so it was a slow and cautious process of dipping my toe back in the water. I was still living with Mum at the time and so it was perhaps inevitable that I met someone else through her.
    Chris – once again I’ve not used his real name here – was another of Mum’s boyfriend’s mates. The two of them were members of the same golf club and he came across as a real gentleman. He was seven years older than me and much more settled. I told him about the way my life had been – what Dad did, the abuse in Care, even the abortion – and he listened without ever judging me. We started seeing each other regularly and were soon very much a couple. We went everywhere and did everything together, and before too many months had passed we had agreed to live together as well.
    I’d learned one good thing from my dad: he always insisted that renting was a mug’s game – ‘get on the property ladder, own your own home’ was something he hammered into us kids from an early age. So when Chris and I started looking for a place to live I knew that we were going to buy, not pay out money to a landlord.
     
     

    We found a nice little house in Birtley, a pleasant area on the outskirts of Gateshead itself and close to Chris’ beloved golf club. It was clean and neat and modern. It had just the one bedroom but I knew I could make a lovely home for us. We were both working – Chris had a good job and I was doing really well as a nursery nurse – so there was no problem in getting a mortgage. The day I moved our possessions in through the front door I felt that I was finally a real grownup woman. I was 18 at this point and it seemed as though at last I was going to find real happiness.
    I loved that little house. Once the door closed it was just Chris and me (unless Mum or my brother and sister came over to visit). I began to decorate, giving full rein to the passion for art that I’d discovered at Riverside. The walls were soon treated to the fashionable styles of the day – rag-rolling , sponging, colour washing – and at weekends I worked to make the tiny garden as neat and trim as a shiny new pin.
    Chris and I settled into our new life together really quickly. I suppose we were a married couple in all but name. We did everything together and enjoyed taking holidays in the sun – Rhodes was a real favourite – it all added to my sense of security and happiness.
    I suppose I should have known it wouldn’t last. There’s a pattern to my life and it’s hard and cold and unfair. Whenever something seems to go right, whenever I appear to be in control and I’m not having to face up to yet more turmoil, that’s when something is absolutely guaranteed to turn up and smack me in the face. And sometimes it’s my fault – at least in part.
    I yearned for the life of a normal teenager. I longed to go out dancing and clubbing and generally throwing my cares to the wind – at least for a night. I didn’t necessarily want to go wild and get blind drunk – those days had long been cauterised out of me by the abortion – but I did want to feel alive and act my age. And therein lay the problem.
    Chris may have been a real