It was 1.30 am and David was still up keeping a discreet window vigil.  His sister had long since hit the hay after a quiet and uneventful night’s spying.  It had crossed Sarah’s mind that she’d probably be considered a bad mother allowing the kids to stay up at all hours.  But she decided that when everything was put in context - her life hardly being normal, what with the constant threat of impending doom hanging over their heads - she formed the attitude, ‘to hell with what others think, we should not be having to live under such intolerable conditions and the authorities’ crime is worse than ours by allowing it.’  She also believed that there was no point forcing kids to go to sleep when they weren’t tired [adults don’t have to] especially since they didn’t have to get up early to go to school.

            David decided to re-charge his batteries with a cup of cocoa and went into the kitchen to find his mum sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea, deep in thought. 

            “I’ve been thinking about what you told me earlier on about how much you hated Greg.   What exactly did he do to you?” queried his mother.

            “Well sometimes, when you weren’t there he’d pick on me and shout at me for no reason.  He was always blaming me for things that went missing or got broken and if there was a mess in any of the rooms, I got blamed, even tho I wasn’t at fault - Kim and Lee were.  A lot of the time they deliberately did things just to get me into trouble.”

            “Did he hit you?”

            David looked down and hesitated:

            “Are you sure you’re never going back to him?” he asked his ashen-faced, panic-stricken mum.

            “God no; never in a million years.  You don’t have to worry about that,” she blurted out.

            “Well I just thought you might; cos you have done before.”

            “Er, well, yes.... But that was after a few days.... not after a few weeks.... and not after all we’ve just been through,” she stammered, feeling the guilt welling up inside her again.

            “I was worried that if I told you and you did get back with him then you’d tell him and he’d call me a liar and I’d really be in for it then.”

            “You can tell me anything; nothing will get back to him; honestly,” she urged, dreading his disclosures.

            “He used to threaten me and Anna not to tell you or we’d be dead meat,” he began.  “We were so scared, we couldn’t tell a soul.  When you were looking after nan in hospital he used to send us to bed early cos he was always telling us that we’d been naughty.  He used to put lots of vegies on our plate and make us eat them all.  Kim and Lee were allowed to leave theirs tho.  He’d tell Kim to push food into our mouths if we didn’t eat our veg.  That used to make Anna sick; but she wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom and had to sit at the table and look at the sick on her plate.  She wasn’t even allowed to cry.  I once told him that she hadn’t deliberately been ill and that she was sorry that she couldn’t eat all her sprouts and I asked if he’d let her clean herself up.  But he put his hand around my throat and squeezed so much that I began to choke.  Then he forced me to stand up and he thumped me in my tummy.  I was winded.  Then he told me to clear off to bed and mind my own business.  He made Anna sit at the table like that for another hour before telling her to clear everything up and go to bed.  We cried ourselves to sleep when you weren’t there.”

            Sarah sat in horror-stricken silence.  No words could adequately express her intense loathing for the detestable hate figure whom she, staggeringly, used to love and whom she trusted to care for her children in her absence; while all the time he was abusing them, viciously and violently robbing them of their carefree childhood innocence.  She was out of her mind with rage.  She was furious as the despicable bastard.  But she was more furious with herself, for not being there for her children when they needed her most, for not protecting them when they were crying out for help, and for being blind to the awful truth about the lying evil beast that she’d befriended and courted.  She was blazing mad with herself for the abhorrent situation she’d allowed herself and her children to be part of.  She was numb and inconsolable with grief, hating herself so much for not dumping him after that first date and for being weak, naive and gullible in allowing their doomed predicament to drag on.  And all in the pathetic vain belief that things might change.

            “I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry,” she gushed; crushed in remorse.

            “Don’t be.  It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know,” David bravely protected his mother.  The lid was off the can of worms now though and David had so much to get of his chest.  He had his mother’s full, anguished, attention:

            “We tried to be good but whatever we did was wrong.  We could never please him.  He’d change the rules all the time, depending on his mood.  Sometimes he didn’t care if we had to get up in the night for the loo, but sometimes he’d shout at us if we needed to go and he’d make us hold on until the morning.  One night Anna couldn’t hold it and I heard her having a wee on the floor at the bottom of the bed.  She used a blanket to wipe it up and left it smelling in our room.”

            Sarah was horrified, “Oh God I wished you’d told me.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t realise he was.... Oh God…. Oh no.  I’d’ve left him straightaway; taken you away from that horrid low-life wicked brute.  Don’t ever blame yourselves.  He is wrong and bad one hundred percent.  Don’t ever forget that.  There was nothing you could’ve done to stop him.  It was never your fault.”

            He continued:

            “He was always pushing me around and calling me names.  He’d say, ‘get out of my way dip-shit,’ and he’d shove me so hard that I’d always fall over and cut my hands and legs or I’d bruise myself.  You remember when you asked me how I’d hurt myself?”

            She nodded.

            “I used to tell you I’d been scrapping with the other kids.  Well I hadn’t.  It was him.  He’d caused those marks.”

            “Fucking bastard.  He’s going to pay for this,” she spewed.

            “A couple of times I hit my head and saw stars but he just kicked me and told me to get up.  Then I threw up and he told me to clean myself up in the stream like a dog.  He was always warning me and Anna not to tell you or anyone else.  Sometimes he’d say that he’d belt us black and blue if we told tales and sometimes he’d say that he treated us like that because he was trying to toughen us up.  He said it was out of love.  He said you were too soft with us.  He said he cared for us so much and that’s why he did it.  Sometimes he’d call it our little secret and that you’d be pleased because we were being disciplined, which was good for us and was what you wanted.”

            Sarah’s blood was boiling now:

            “Weak and pathetic lying bastard, bullying two defenceless little kids; spineless swine covering his own fat arse.  He should be locked away for life and the key lobbed in the deepest lake.  He’s a danger to society’s women and children.”

The rest of it came tumbling out:

            “I even heard him ordering Lee to dangle me upside down in the thorns.  Even Lee told me not to squeal and cry but to grin and bear it and take the pain like a man, like he does.  Sometimes Greg told his kids to hide our bikes, then he’d blame us saying we’d left them lying around and that we deserved to lose them. He even pretended that we’d lost some things but really he’d stolen them.  He threw my bike in the river and said that I’d done it.  He’d go mad sometimes and smash up our toys, then he’d blame us, saying we were clumsy and too heavy handed.  Once he took all our toys off us and gave them to Kim and Lee telling us that we were bad kids, didn’t know how to look after things and didn’t deserve anything.  I remember him being bladdered sometimes and locking us out to teach us a lesson.  Once he made me and Anna strip naked and stand outside when it was dark and cold and raining; he said it was just to keep us on our toes and to remind us to be good.  He used to give us liver and onions quite often cos he knew we hated it and he never let us have biscuits and cakes or pop; but Kim and Lee were allowed to have them.  Anna once asked if she could have a bigger bowl of cornflakes cos she was starving but he just smacked her, told her she was a fat cow and that you feed her too much.  Another time Anna forgot to put her seatbelt on in the car and she got smacked.  If we forgot to do our homework we were sent straight to bed without any tea.  One night he made me drink a full can of strong lager.  I had to down it all in one go; then he and Lee sat laughing at me cos I was falling about all over the place and slurring my words.  Kim was a lot more nastier to us than Lee.  She’d order us around, tell us to make her coffee, wash up, dust the living room and hoover the floors.  She used to call us names and told us that we were her slaves.  She said if we didn’t obey her she’d tell her dad and he’d give us a good hiding.  She was always telling him anyway that we’d done things that we hadn’t, just to get us into trouble.  All the pocket money that you gave us, he stole.  He even said that he’d found £20 under my pillow and he accused me of stealing.  I said that I hadn’t but he punished me just the same; slapped me a few times on my head and shook me.”

            “Christ you poor little mites.  Oh God, no wonder you were always so rigid and polite and tense when he was around.  No wonder you cried out to God.  How the hell did you keep such a terrifying secret?  How on earth did you endure such pitiful, shameful cruelty?  God you’ve been through the raging fires of hell and back and you’ve tolerated it so bravely and heroically.  I couldn’t’ve coped like you.”  Sarah rambled on and on.  Her words were all jumbled up; such was her state of shock and bewilderment.  She was all knotted up with frenzied fury and stupefied with immeasurable hatred.  Now she was hell bent on knocking the living daylights out of depraved, disgusting Greg Potter.  She wanted to reduce him to a quivering blubbering pulp and avenge her two beloved wounded little children.

            “I’m going to get on to the police in the morning and DEMAND that they press charges.  They’ll have to act now when they hear all this.  It is appalling child abuse,” she vowed as she cuddled her son.

            “I just want to get him back and give him a dose of his own medicine.  See how he likes it.  I’d feel so much better then,” David pledged with steely expression and solemn tone.

            “Well you can’t do much while you’re only a little kid; but just think, you’ll be an adult one day and he’ll be a doddery old man.”

            “Yeah, then I can break all the bones in his body and laugh at him while he’s pleading with me for mercy.”

The two of them giggled as they headed for their beds.  It had been another long and disturbing night.