No One Listened: Two children caught in a tragedy with no one else to trust except for each other

Chapter One

Alex

Normally my sister Isobel would have got home from school before me, but that afternoon she’d been held up because she couldn’t find her PE kit in the changing rooms and she and a friend had stayed behind to look for it. I’d been let out of class a few minutes earlier than usual and I’d walked straight home, just as I always did. If Isobel had left at her normal time and got home before me, she would have let herself into the house before the police arrived to stop her and she would have seen everything. Maybe he would even have attacked her as well.

The day it all happened was the 11th of January, 2002. It was a little after three-thirty in the afternoon so it was already on the verge of growing dark as I crossed the busy main road that ran between our home and our school. I was thirteen and Isobel was fifteen and we had been walking to and from school on our own for a good few years by then. There was nothing unusual about the journey, nothing to alert me to the waiting danger or to the horror of what had just happened behind our locked front door. I was thinking about normal, routine things like the homework I had to do and the after-school activities planned for that evening, and I was wondering what was for dinner.

The first thing I noticed as I came into our quiet road was that Mum’s red Vauxhall Nova was parked outside the house. She wouldn’t normally have got home from her job as a school teacher for a couple of hours yet and she hadn’t said anything about being early when she set off that morning, so that puzzled me.

I turned into our front garden and walked the few paces up to the house, then pulled out my front door key, just as I always did, without even thinking about it, ready to let myself in. As I lifted the key to the lock, a movement in the street behind made me turn and I saw a police car drawing up at the kerb, its vivid markings making it stand out amongst all the other parked cars. I paused for a second and watched as a young uniformed policeman, dressed in a bullet-proof vest and looking a bit like one of those SWAT teams you see breaking into people’s houses in television dramas, got out of the driver’s door. There didn’t seem to be any great sense of urgency in his movements so I turned back to the door and inserted my key in the lock. The policeman called out, making me jump.

‘No, no lad,’ he shouted. ‘Stop there. Don’t go in. Wait over there a minute.’

He walked up behind me and nodded towards the low wall that separated our front garden from next door’s. There wasn’t anything particularly dramatic in his tone as he gave me those instructions; it all seemed a routine matter to him, although I found it odd that I was being stopped from going into my own house. Isobel and I had always been brought up to be respectful of authority figures so I did as he told me without question, leaving my key still in the lock, unable to work out what was going on and unsure what to ask. It’s always been my habit to stay quiet in new situations where I am unsure of myself, and wait to see what happens rather than launch in with lots of questions, demanding to know what was going on, which is probably what Isobel would have done if she had been in my shoes at that moment.

Under my curious gaze the policeman composed himself and then politely rang the doorbell, as if he was just paying a visit. I wondered if perhaps Mum and Dad had been arguing again and neighbours had rung to complain about the noise or to express their concern for Mum’s safety. I decided I wasn’t going to interfere, in case it was Dad who came to the door; I would leave it to the policeman to sort it out.

Dad had often threatened to hang himself or set fire to the house with us all in it. It might sound melodramatic but I believed anything was possible as far as he was concerned. Maybe this time he had actually carried out one of his threats and Mum had had to call the police. Isobel and I were so worried about his threats to set fire to us that before we went to bed at night we used to try to find all the matches in the house and hide them – which was pointless really as we had no idea what Dad kept inside his room. We had never been allowed inside the upstairs bedroom where he spent most of his days and nights; we didn’t even have any idea what it looked like in there.

A few seconds after the policeman rang the bell, the door opened and Dad was standing there, holding it wide open and giving the officer a clear view right through to the kitchen at the back of the house. I was over to the side so I couldn’t see past them. Dad didn’t seem at all surprised to find a uniformed policeman standing on his doorstep; it was as if he had been expecting him. He’s a big guy, quite scary-looking, with a mean expression permanently set on his face. Whatever the policeman was able to see from there was enough to make him step back in shock and fumble for his radio, bringing it up to his mouth.

‘There’s been a blue murder,’ he announced to whoever might be listening at the other end.

I was momentarily puzzled by the phrase. ‘Screaming blue murder’ just meant screaming at the top of your voice, as far as I was aware, but maybe this was police code for something else – or had I not heard him correctly? The policeman certainly looked very shaken and it was more because of his agitation than anything else that I guessed someone was dead in the house. My throat felt tight, but I continued to sit where he had told me, not saying a word, just watching and waiting, trying to work out what was going on and what I should do about it. That was how I reacted to most things. The policeman seemed to have forgotten I was there, or at least he didn’t look in my direction. He stepped back from the door and peered anxiously down the road.

For a few minutes nothing happened and then the eerie quiet of the afternoon was shattered by screeching tyres and brakes as another squad car arrived and disgorged four more officers. I could hear further vehicles arriving behind them, stopping wherever they could, filling the street. Now there was a real sense of urgency buzzing all around me as I sat on the wall and waited for someone to tell me what I should do. I kept wondering where Mum was, but at the same time not wanting to think about the possible answer to that question. Please no.

Dad was still standing in the doorway as if he had been expecting the police all along and he didn’t protest as one of the policemen read him his rights. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’ Dad didn’t struggle as they searched him; he raised his arms to let them pat down his jeans and t-shirt top. They removed a knife from his jeans pocket, handling it carefully as if it was something precious.

‘Can I say something to my son?’ Dad asked them, glancing over towards me for the first time.

‘You should have thought of that before,’ the senior officer said and I was quite relieved. I couldn’t imagine that I would want to hear anything he might have to say to me at that stage. I never wanted to hear anything he said, in fact. It felt good to have the protection of the policemen, but I just wished I understood why they were swarming all over us now when they had never done anything to help us before, on any of the occasions when Isobel had called them because Dad was being violent.

I watched from the wall as they led Dad out of the house. Several policemen formed a kind of ring around me and I got the impression that they thought I might try to go with him, but they needn’t have worried; I wasn’t intending to go anywhere, certainly not with Dad. They led him to the second police car and bent him down so he could slide into the back seat. I watched as the shiny bald crown of his head disappeared inside. By that stage seven more police cars had arrived, as well as five unmarked cars, two ambulances and a paramedic car. It was hard to imagine where they could all have come from to get there so quickly. Had they just been sitting around waiting for something to do? The whole street was jammed solid with vehicles.

None of the police said anything to me, all of them apparently too busy trying to work out what they should be doing. I was just waiting for Isobel to get there because she would know what we should do; she would talk to them and find out what was going on. I could always rely on Isobel. Where on earth was she? A few minutes later, I was filled with relief when I saw her familiar figure turning into the road.

Chapter Two

Isobel

The greatest mystery is why Mum and Dad ever got together in the first place because Alex and I never saw the slightest sign of any bond of affection or attraction between them. Even when couples have been worn down by years of money worries, job worries and family worries, you can usually see some remnants of the love that must once have been there – but not with our Mum and Dad. You could see that Mum wanted to please him, but only because she was frightened of what he would do if she didn’t, and because she wanted a quiet life more than anything else. He, on the other hand, could never hide his loathing of her for even a second and took great pleasure in making her life as difficult as possible.

If there was any sort of romance or love story in their background, neither of them ever mentioned it to Alex or me, and there’s no one else we can ask because there are no other family members who knew them when they were young. Our family was never very good at talking about emotions or soul-searching. We all just got on with the business of daily life, pushing unpleasant thoughts to the backs of our minds in the hope they would go away if we ignored them for long enough.

The only source of information we have about the past is Jillian, who was Mum’s good friend at the school where she taught for twenty-three years, and one of the very few people to whom she ever confided any of those sorts of secrets. Mum didn’t believe in sharing personal information with anyone unless she had to. She kept everything locked inside her head, probably trying to forget most of it herself. Several teaching colleagues who had known her for twenty years or more didn’t even realise she was married, although they knew all about Alex and me and our achievements. She wouldn’t have encouraged conversations about her marriage and there certainly wasn’t anything nice she could say about Dad. I know she wouldn’t have wanted to let anyone else know that her personal life was a horrible nightmare.

As far as we could see, Mum and Dad were totally unsuited to one another, and Dad was totally unsuited to family life in any form at all. He should probably never have married and he should certainly never have had children. Of course we didn’t realise that when we were young; we assumed lots of fathers behaved the way he did. Our friends’ dads were at work most of the time so we didn’t have much contact with them; our social world was largely made up of other children and their mothers, so the fact that our Dad remained locked inside his bedroom most of the time didn’t seem particularly odd to start with. It was just the way things were done in our house.

We do know that when Mum and Dad first met, her parents weren’t at all happy about the match. Maybe that was part of the attraction for Mum – her one and only act of rebellion against Granddad, who was the big authority figure in her life. She had come from a very disciplined background and it may be she wanted to prove to my grandfather, who was in the military police, that she could make her own decisions, that she wasn’t going to be under his thumb all her life. If that is the case, it was a very bad decision and one she must have regretted bitterly. But once Mum had made a commitment to something there was no way she would ever go back on it. She had agreed to marry Dad and to stay with him ‘for better and for worse’, and she never for a second wavered from that path even though the places it led her were always ‘worse’ and never ‘better’. Maybe she just wanted to have children and Dad was the first person to propose to her. I’ll never know now.

Nan and Granddad lived in a bungalow in Torquay and we would go with Mum to visit them every half term and during the holidays, but Dad never came with us. They wanted nothing to do with him and I imagine he wanted nothing to do with them either. There must have been something about him right from the beginning that made it obvious he wouldn’t make a good husband for Mum, or for anyone come to that. Neither Granddad nor Nan ever said anything about him in front of us; in fact I don’t remember his name ever being mentioned in their company. As far as they were concerned, it was as if he didn’t exist.

Even once he’d retired from the army, Granddad was still incredibly strict and humourless, constantly barking out orders and finding fault with everything we did, as if he was inspecting us on the parade ground. By the time we knew him he was already an old man who spent most of his time sitting in a chair puffing on his pipe and glowering at us if we made a sound, but it was easy to imagine how fierce he must have been with Mum when she was young. We were never allowed to play when he was around; we had to sit still and keep quiet. We could only have fun if we went out somewhere with Mum and Nan, or played outside with the other kids in the area with whom we had made friends during our visits. Alex and I were always quite good at making friends in new places, never troubled with shyness.

Granddad didn’t seem to care much for any of us, and Alex and I certainly didn’t like him. Maybe he was disappointed with the way Mum’s life had turned out, but he didn’t seem to make any effort to improve things for her, apart from letting us come to stay with him in the holidays. If he was as irritated by our invasion of his peace and quiet as he seemed to be then I suppose that was a sacrifice we should be grateful to him for making.

Nan was Mum’s stepmother. Her real mother had died very young, while Mum was still a teenager, but as far as Alex and I were concerned Granddad’s wife was our real grandma; she was the only one we ever knew and no one told us that our real grandma was dead until we were much older. It was another of those things that wasn’t talked about. Our family was full of secrets like that; things that were just never mentioned because they were felt to be too personal and private or possibly even too painful. Alex and I knew instinctively not to ask questions, that Mum didn’t want to talk about any personal things. None of it really mattered to us as long as she was around anyway. Children only really care about their own little worlds and because she took care of everything in our lives we never had any reason to delve into the shadows of our family history.

By the time we were old enough to want to understand more about the past, it was too late because Mum and Nan and Granddad were all dead. As long as we were small we didn’t have to question why anything was how it was because Mum made sure everything worked out okay. We knew her world revolved around us and that she would do anything for us, so there was no need for soul searching, no need to try to poke our noses into corners of our family business that she obviously preferred to ignore. We had enough to occupy and stimulate our minds as it was. Children are usually happy to accept life at face value as long as they feel secure and loved and know where they stand. We always knew exactly where we stood with Mum.

I was about ten when Granddad died, and Alex was seven. Nan moved to King’s Lynn and died not long afterwards herself. It must have been a blow to Mum despite her difficult relationship with her father, because the trips to Torquay had been an escape for her and us, allowing us to get away from Dad and all the problems at home. Although Granddad was a joyless man, he was still a lot nicer to her than Dad, and Nan was always sweet and friendly. Apart from anything else they had provided us with holiday accommodation and there was no way Mum could afford to take us away so often once we didn’t have somewhere free to stay.

I think Dad’s family background must have been very different to Mum’s, although we never met anyone who knew anything about him or his childhood. It was almost as though he had arrived in our house fully formed as a reclusive middle-aged man, with no history and no past that was ever spoken about. Mum never talked about him and we certainly wouldn’t have asked him any direct questions. We knew a few basic facts, and we found out a few more at his trial, but nothing that actually shed any light on how he became the man we knew.

He was from the north-east, Newcastle I think, born in 1948, and we have been told he was one of a family of twelve, but we have never met his parents or any of his brothers or sisters so we have no way of knowing if that is true. Even when one of his brothers came to work in Redditch, the town south of Birmingham where we lived at the time, we still didn’t get to meet him. I don’t know if he and Dad saw each other then, but Dad would never have introduced him to us anyway. He liked to keep each part of his life secret and separate from every other part, as if that gave him some sort of illusion of control. He hated Mum and me, for reasons I have never fully understood, so why would he want to introduce us to his brother? He probably hated his brother as well, although I never remember him even mentioning him. He hated pretty much everyone, except Alex.

Every so often Mum would say something that gave us the tiniest glimpse into the past, but we were too young to find out more. I know that Dad had already been in trouble with the law by the time he met Mum, although I’m not sure what for. I believe he had run away from home and had spent some time in borstal for stealing. He always claimed that that spell in borstal was ‘the best time of his life’, as if he was remembering happy school days. I can imagine that was true, because he never liked having responsibility for anything, or taking decisions, or looking after himself. Being locked up in an institution that took care of every decision for him would have suited him perfectly. He was never any good at dealing with money or paying bills or any of the mundane chores that the outside world demands of you. So although we never knew the details of the crime he had committed to be locked up in such a place, we got the impression he was a bit of a tearaway from the start. That certainly wouldn’t have appealed to a disciplined and authoritative military man like Granddad.

Dad said a few things at his trial about how hard his childhood had been, claiming that was why he was the way he was, but the judge didn’t seem to take any notice. Nothing that could have happened to him as a child in the nineteen-fifties could justify what he did that afternoon in January 2002.

I suspect that even as a girl Mum was always bright and hard-working. I expect she was eager to please Granddad to begin with and that he put pressure on her to do her best at school. She went to university a little bit later than most people, when she was already well into her twenties. She never told us what happened in those intervening years, but once she was set on her life’s course to graduate and become a science teacher, nothing would distract or deter her.

She went from her home in Manchester to university in London and it was while she was there that she met Dad, who had come down from Newcastle around the same time to work as a computer repairman. Maybe they found they had common ground because both of them had escaped from their families and were living alone in a big, strange city. Maybe because she was a bit older than most of the other students on her course she didn’t have many friends in the university, and Dad was almost certainly a bit of a loner himself. Whatever the reasons, they moved in together in Finsbury Park, north London, and embarked on their doomed relationship.

Once she had her degree Mum went to work in a school in Wolverhampton and they got married in 1979. They bought a house in Redditch, a town about an hour’s drive from Wolverhampton. I’ve no idea how they came to choose Redditch and why they didn’t live nearer to the school where Mum worked, but they were still there when I was born in 1986. I never questioned it because that was just the way things were. All our lives the routine was the same, with Alex and me going to school locally, Mum commuting to Wolverhampton and Dad locked inside his bedroom in the house. The hour’s commute meant Mum had to get up early every morning in order to drive herself to work for the start of school, but she would always be back in time to take Alex and me to our evening activities, and she was always there with us during the school holidays. So, apart from her not being around to get us to school in the mornings, she was there for us whenever we wanted her and we had no reason to want things to be any different. Small children are very accepting of the status quo as long as they feel loved and cared for. However bad our parents’ relationship was, we had no reason to feel insecure ourselves.

All the driving Mum had to do at the beginning and end of each working day must have been horribly tiring for her, although she never complained about it. She hardly ever complained about anything when we were young, never discussed anything to do with emotions or feelings, just got on with the practical matters of life in the most efficient way possible. It was only as we got into our teens that the strain began to show, the exhaustion wearing away her patience more and more frequently. If we had only known about the pressure she was under during those years we might have taken more care of her, but she never told us anything, just soldiered grimly on.

She definitely enjoyed her work, maybe because she knew she was good at it and had the respect of all her colleagues. We didn’t really think about what she might be like as a teacher, but I remember that she always seemed to know everything about her pupils – about their hopes and ambitions and the progress they made towards realising them. She seemed to take a genuine interest and to have their best interests at heart almost as much as she had ours.

We went to her school a few times when there was some special event, like a piano exam we had to attend, and it always seemed to me to have a pretty tough atmosphere. I remember sitting outside her classroom once, hearing the pupils kicking off and making a noise in a way we would never have done at our school. She did say once or twice she wouldn’t want to live in Wolverhampton, even though it would be more convenient for travelling, because she would always be bumping into kids in the town centre and they were more than likely to be shouting abuse. I suppose that sort of behaviour happens in most schools but Alex and I never came across it in our own school because we were always in the top sets for everything, where kids tend to be more motivated to learn and better behaved as a result.