When we got to the beach on Saturday morning, the day after we were set free, Charlene came charging up to me. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘We’re having photos taken. You haven’t dressed up or anything.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘Nobody told me.’ It was really good seeing her back to her normal bossy self again after she had been so subdued in Alan’s flat. It felt as though the old Charlene was back, the one who was in charge and usually told me what to do instead of the other way round.
My brother James was messing around, holding up a finger to the journalists when Mum and Dad weren’t looking, so I had to keep an eye on him, and answer the questions everyone was asking, and it all felt weird. As soon as I said to the TV cameras that I’d missed my boyfriend Stevie I thought, Oh no, why did I say that? He’s going to kill me. It had just slipped out.
The photo-call was over quickly and I had to say goodbye to Charlene again when I would have preferred to spend the afternoon sitting chatting with her in her room – not talking about Alan but just being friends again without all that stuff in the way. It seemed as though my life wasn’t my own any more, because every hour was booked up with people who wanted to come and visit us to say ‘welcome back’ to me. The doorbell was ringing every five minutes.
All the visitors brought flowers until the kitchen was filled up with so many bouquets that we ran out of vases and they were piling up in the sink. I got some great presents as well. My godmother Angela, who was my mum’s cousin, brought me a cute cuddly toy dog that I called Toffee. Mum and Dad bought me the video of the musical Cats, which I had wanted for ages, and I was really chuffed about that. Then Tracey Christmas brought me two Furbies, which was fantastic. She said Charlene had told her bodyguard Paul that we both wanted some, and that she thought when we got together maybe our Furbies could talk to each other. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
No one asked me anything about what had happened in Alan’s flat and I was trying my best not to think about it but at night, when the lights were off, all the memories came flooding into my head. I started having nightmares that I was back in the flat, trying to get away from him but I knew I couldn’t. He was on top of me and I couldn’t breathe. I could smell his smell. In one of the nightmares he was holding a knife to my throat. I’d wake up panting, my throat tight with fear until I heard Christine’s calm breathing in the next bed. The darkness of the room disturbed me, so I asked Dad if I could maybe leave the light on.
The next day, Dad went to a lighting shop in town and picked out a gorgeous lamp. The base was a pink ceramic pig and there was a pleated shade on top. I loved it and called it my ‘piggy lamp’. From then on I left it glowing beside my bed at night. The nightmares continued but at least I wasn’t lying in pitch black when I woke up. That lamp really helped a lot.
On the Monday, three days after we were rescued, the headmistress of our school came round for a chat. I liked her. She smiled a lot and talked quietly, but I had to sit and be polite and to be honest I could have done without it.
‘Everyone at the school was praying for you,’ she said.
What was I supposed to say? ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled at last.
‘All the children have been told that they are not to ask you any questions when you get back. I’m sure you don’t want everyone pestering you for details. If anyone does get inquisitive, you should just tell Mr Okrainetz or me and we will deal with them. We want to make this as easy as possible for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said again.
She started chatting about the work the class had been doing while I was away, and the new school uniform we had to get because the old one had been kept by the police as evidence. I sat politely nodding and thanking her and reassuring her that I was fine. She meant well, but I felt very awkward talking to her after everything we had gone through. I didn’t know how much she knew or what she thought about it all and I didn’t want to know. I was dreading the first day back at school when I imagined all the pupils and teachers would be staring at us and wondering what had happened to us, but we’d just have to get through that before things could go back to normal.
Later that afternoon, Tracey Christmas came in to have a word with me. ‘Lisa, I think you should know that Alan’s lawyer has released a statement in which he apologises to you and Charlene.’
‘He’s done what?’ I could hardly speak, I was so surprised. You can’t kidnap someone and do all those things to them and then just apologise. What did he think? That we would just say ‘It’s OK, don’t worry about it’?
She saw my expression of horror and hurried on. ‘It’s good news, because it means he’s going to plead guilty at this trial. That means that you don’t have to go along and answer questions at the court case. The evidence you gave when you were questioned at the police station will be enough.’
‘Will he go to jail?’ I asked.
‘Definitely. For a very long time.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s OK then. Does Charlene know?’
‘Paul will tell her.’
I felt strangely unmoved by this news. I remembered the morning in the flat when Alan apologised to us. His words meant nothing. I didn’t want any of his pathetic self-pity or attempts to justify what he had done. Basically I just wanted to know for sure that he would get a long jail sentence and then I wanted to forget all about him.
‘If you want to ask me questions, you can do it any time,’ Tracey said. ‘No matter what.’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘there is one thing.’ I’d heard her mentioning to Mum the day before that she had once lived in Australia and I’d been dying to ask her about it.
She laughed when I asked my question, and then she started telling me about the beaches off Perth where everyone goes surfing and there are nets to keep out the sharks; about the markets and outdoor cafés in Fremantle; about the bushland that surrounds the town; and the beautiful Swan River flowing through it all.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to Australia,’ I told her.
‘Well, you must do it one day,’ she said. ‘It’s unforgettable.’
I liked Tracey a lot and felt very comfortable with her around. I was relieved that I didn’t have to go out anywhere on my own because I was still feeling a bit anxious that something else could happen. And her presence also meant that the family were on their best behaviour: no arguments at the dinner table, or James and Christine stealing my money, or Dad yelling at us to be quiet. I liked it that way.
As the week went on, I got fed up with all the grownup visitors to the house and wanted to see my own friends, but of course they were at school during the day. Mum took me round to Charlene’s one day but not for long and we had to sit downstairs and talk to the grown-ups who were there instead of going off on our own.
‘Why don’t we throw a little party for your friends next weekend?’ Mum suggested and I thought that was a great idea. It would be nice to see everybody in my own home for the first time without prying ears listening in to our conversations. I thought that I would probably tell my closest friends what Alan had done to me because I trusted them, but I would ask them to keep it to themselves. I didn’t want it to go any further. I called to invite Charlene to the party and we discussed between us who should be there until we had agreed on a final guest list of ten girls from our class. I decided we could make little cakes together and Mum bought the ingredients for me along with things to decorate them.
Charlene arrived early on the day of the party to help me get things ready. Mum had got mixes for both strawberry and chocolate cakes, and some edible paper pictures that you could stick on the top. I made strawberry cakes and stuck Dennis the Menace pictures on top of them. Charlene made chocolate ones but some of hers didn’t work out and she got really annoyed about it.
‘I thought you said you had greased these trays, Lisa.’
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘Not very well,’ she said. ‘You’ve ruined my cakes. And the icing is too runny as well – it’s just dribbling off the sides instead of sitting on top.’
I couldn’t understand why she was being so grumpy but I tried to smooth things over by offering her one of my cakes as a swap.
We took all the food through to the sitting room and set it out on the table. When the other girls arrived, their mothers dropped them off and left. We more or less had the place to ourselves as Dad was upstairs with my brother and sister and the baby, while Mum had gone out. At first, we just messed around, eating the food, chatting about news from school and commenting on each other’s clothes. Then Samantha, my old friend from nursery school, took the plunge and asked what was on everyone’s mind.
‘Are you going to tell us what happened then?’ she asked me. ‘What did he do?’
I looked at Charlene and we caught each other’s eyes for a moment, then shrugged.
‘Let’s all get under the table and we’ll tell you,’ Charlene suggested.
We crawled underneath the long tablecloth and huddled in the space there and started telling them about our ordeal.
‘The first day he took me into the bedroom but he didn’t take Lisa,’ Charlene said. ‘He took me lots more than her at the beginning.’
‘On the last morning, I was in there for about three hours, though,’ I butted in.
‘What did he do to you?’ someone asked.
‘He raped us,’ Charlene said and there were gasps of horror.
We told them all the dramatic bits of the story: about how he had snatched us on Cornfield Terrace, about being smuggled around in the sports bag, about going to his mum and dad’s and then to his place, and about the strange experience on top of the cliff.
‘Did you think he was going to kill you?’ someone asked.
‘Definitely,’ Charlene said. ‘He was definitely going to kill us if we hadn’t been rescued.’
It was odd to be talking about it like this, turning it into a sensational story to entertain our friends. I was aware that we were showing off a bit, boasting about everything we’d been through, but they were such an appreciative audience it was hard to resist. They were gasping with horror and saying ‘Poor you!’ or ‘Oh my God!’ and we were totally the centre of attention.
‘What did you do when he was raping you?’ someone asked.
Charlene answered before I could. ‘Lisa used to cry all the way through but I just focused my mind on something else and concentrated on that so I didn’t have to think about it. It was easier that way.’
Maybe it was true, but I didn’t like the fact that it made me sound like a crybaby. ‘You cried too,’ I said.
‘No I didn’t,’ she insisted crossly. ‘I never cry. When have you ever seen me cry?’
It was true that I couldn’t remember ever seeing Charlene cry but I had definitely heard her crying in the flat. I didn’t argue any more though. It became clear to me that afternoon that Charlene wanted to be the one who told the story of our time in captivity. I didn’t mind. It was all the same to me. Besides, having told my closest friends that Saturday afternoon, I didn’t plan on telling any more people.
‘You won’t tell anyone else, will you?’ We made them promise before they left that afternoon that they would keep everything to themselves. It was naive, of course. Ten-year-old girls were never going to be able to keep such a huge secret, especially as the months went on and allegiances changed, friendships drifted and some former friends were declared enemies. Before long, the entire school would know we’d been repeatedly raped by a disgusting paedophile. That afternoon, though, I felt very close to my little group of best friends and very lucky to have them. Huddled under the table with them all close by, it felt as though I really was back home and getting on with my life – and that’s what I wanted more than anything else.