There were days when she wanted her father to read to her and days when she wanted her mother to have a chance. Even at the tender age of five she had been mindful of the fact that favouring one more than the other might lead to the one who was left out being upset. If she could, little Jessica was determined to please everybody.
Lying in bed on the eve of her birthday, she listened hard to her father’s voice, hoping it would soothe her. But for the first time ever it did the complete opposite. At first he had sounded the way he always did – calm and serene. The voice of whoever was at the door was nothing like it. Far more excited, far more agitated. Far more angry.
In response her father’s voice began to rise in both volume and tempo until he was sounding so unlike his usual self that it was almost as if he had been taken over by another person.
She had heard her parents argue only a handful of times and it had always been a shock to her. She hated the ugly, brutish tones they used on one another. But now her father was using that tone once more, not to her mother but to whoever it was at the door. Much of the sound was being muffled or distorted and she couldn’t work out exactly what was being said. He was shouting at the top of his voice and Jessica was sure she could hear flashes of the words her mother had told her never to speak, the naughty words that she and her schoolfriends giggled about in the corners of the playground. The one that rhymed with cluck, the one that rhymed with knit.
Her eyes were open now. She pulled her thumb from her mouth and tucked her knees up so that they were touching her chest. The voices were continuing to get louder and more violent, and now her mother’s voice seemed to have joined in, pleading, crying, screaming.
And the sound of movement. Feet shuffled back and forth on the wood floor of the hallway. The door slamming hard, the slim telephone table at the side of the stairs being overturned. The slaps and thuds of punches and kicks being landed with force. Her mother’s desperate, warning scream. ‘Look out, he’s got a …’ Her father’s voice, a grunt followed by hollow, gasping, choking, coughing, spluttering sounds as the very air he needed to breathe spilled out of his chest.
More screams from her mother, footsteps running up the stairs. Footsteps following close behind. Then the voice of the man, the intruder, screaming, cursing, as if he had been tripped up. More kicks, more punches, more impact sounds Jessica simply didn’t understand. Cries of agonized pain from her father. The sound of her name, her mother’s name, her name again, on his lips. Again and again.
Her mother burst into the room, her silhouette illuminated by the lights from the hallway. She scooped Jessica out of her bed and carried her over to the wardrobe. Jessica had never seen her mother look so frightened, so completely and utterly terrified. She had never seen any human being look so terrified. She was speechless with shock.
Her mother opened the door and shoved her daughter into the base at the back. ‘For God’s sake don’t make a sound,’ she pleaded, then slammed the door shut.
Tiny shafts of light slipped in through the door’s wooden slats. Through them Jessica could see her mother quickly, frantically smoothing out the sheets on the bed before picking up the portable cassette player from Jessica’s bedside table and returning to the hall.
By now her father had fallen silent. The footsteps that started making their way up the stairs were slow, deliberate. There was no need to hurry. There was no escape.
The man appeared at the top of the stairs, directly opposite the open door of Jessica’s room, slightly to the right of where her mother stood. The man’s hair was wild and matted, his clothes were filthy and threadbare. He looked like the homeless men they often saw sleeping in shop doorways late at night. In his right hand he held a long, thin knife, the tip of which sparkled in the light like a tiny star.
Jessica’s mother was holding the cassette player high, waiting for her moment. When the man reached the top of the stairs she threw it towards his head with all her might. He ducked easily and moved quickly towards her, knocking her down to the ground with a punch to the side of the head. For a moment it seemed he was going to advance on her with the knife but then he paused, turned and walked right into Jessica’s room.
He looked around slowly, his eyes taking in every detail.
‘Is there a kid here?’
Jessica could see her mother crawling slowly along the corridor floor. She shook her head but he did not see her. ‘Hey, bitch, I asked you a fucking question. Is there a fucking kid here?’
Jessica heard her mother speak through her swollen jaw and loose teeth. ‘She’s having a sleepover,’ she lied. ‘She’s not here.’
The man looked around the room again. The bed seemed unmade; everything else seemed to be in order. ‘Shame,’ he hissed, before turning his attention back to Jessica’s mother, who was now slowly pulling herself to her feet.
The man placed the knife on a bedside table, moved out into the corridor, grabbed Joanne by her hair and dragged her into the little girl’s bedroom. What he did next would stay with little Jessica for the rest of her life.
He threw her down on the floor in front of the bed. She held up her hands, palms outward, in a gesture of helplessness, of powerlessness. He flew at her, knocking her back down. Then he was on top of her, his left hand clasped over her nose and mouth, pushing her head down hard into the carpet, his knees pinning her elbows, his right fist pounding down again and again. As her resistance started to fade, he reached down with his right hand, tugged up her skirt and ripped away her knickers. He then began to undo the waistband of his jeans.
So far as she could remember, little Jessica Matthews had twice walked into her parents’ bedroom when they were making love. Not that she knew what they were actually doing. It was only later, during talks with friends at school, that she learned other children too had seen the strange positions, heard the curious grunting noises and the angry shouts. She had watched that special embrace transfixed for several seconds, unnoticed by either parent, until a change of position brought her face to face with her mother.
What the man was doing to her mother was nothing like what she had seen. Her mother wasn’t moving, wasn’t making any noise. The man was doing everything. He was facing one side, directly towards the door of the wardrobe, as if he were staring directly at her.
Suddenly he stopped thrusting, moved his left hand from Joanne’s face and looked down at her. He slapped her cheek a couple of times, hissed a stream of swear words and then moved off towards the bedroom door. As he did so Joanne’s head rolled to one side so that she too was facing the wardrobe door. Her lips and nose were a mass of blood; there were deep lacerations on her forehead; tufts of hair were missing from her fringe. Her eyes were wide open but utterly lifeless.
Jessica couldn’t help it. She gasped in horror.
The man was in the doorway and spun round in an instant. His trousers were around his ankles but that didn’t seem to slow him down as he flew towards the wardrobe, ripping open the door and pulling Jessica out by her hair.
She screamed. He slapped her face. She screamed again and he slapped her even harder, picking her up and throwing her across the room so forcefully that her head smacked against the wall as she landed on her bed. Now she could only whimper and sob. He was on her in an instant. She could smell cigarettes on his breath mixed with the sweat from his skin. His rough hands were everywhere, pulling up her nightdress, holding her down, shaking her this way and that. Poking, probing, prodding. His black eyes were shiny with excitement.