The One That Got Away - My Life Living with Fred and Rose West. Caroline Roberts
she was not a ‘fit mother’. As for Charmaine, she was of mixed heritage, but that was a different story. Fred was not Charmaine’s father; her biological father was of Asian origin.
Anna-Marie looked like a pretty version of her father, but that was where the likeness ended. Unlike her father, she was quiet and shy, a child who, to me, always looked sad. I felt quite sorry for her as she worked around the house, fetching and carrying like a little skivvy. If she sulked, she got yelled at or caught a back-hander off Rose, who obviously cared more for her own daughters; she looked on Anna-Marie as her slave.
When Anna-Marie cried, she cried quietly to herself for fear of further punishment at Rose’s hands. Fred, on the other hand, never smacked her; sometimes he would wink at her, when Rose wasn’t looking, as if to reassure her that she would be OK.
I didn’t like or approve of the way Rose sometimes behaved towards Anna, and I often got Anna to do something to help me around the house so as to get her away from Rose if she was in a bad mood, though Rose was always nice to me. Rose thought I was very pretty and she loved my hair, which she often played with as we sat watching TV. She thought I had beautiful eyes too and often complimented me on my looks. We became friends and I liked her – until I got to know the real Rose and saw her dark side.
It was because of the children that I ended up living with this odd couple – that and a schoolgirl dream of being a ‘nanny’. That dream didn’t quite match the scenario of living with the Wests in Cromwell Street though. My dream included a rich family, with whom I would travel the world. I’d have my own big room with a TV and a record player, and the children would be beautiful and behave like angels.
With the Wests, I got only one part of my dream – the children were indeed little angels. Two decades later, I would find out, along with the rest of the world, that they were ‘angels born out of demons’.
I had been disappointed when I found out I would not be getting my own bedroom at Cromwell Street; instead, I would be sharing with Anna-Marie on the first floor, in the back bedroom. I was surprised that some of the rooms upstairs were actually rented out as bedsits, and even more taken aback to find that the some of the lodgers were a group of male hippies.
One of the lodgers, Ben, was just a year older than me; he was tall and handsome with long brown hair – he was gorgeous! The first time I saw Ben I developed a crush on him. One day Ben invited me up to his room. I wasn’t used to smoking cannabis, but as we lay on the floor chatting I didn’t want to appear immature, so I smoked a joint with him and listened to music. He kissed me and I responded, feeling relaxed by the infusion of drugs, and we ended up having sex. Afterwards I fell asleep on the floor in his arms.
Later I woke to find someone, an occasional visitor to the house, climbing on top of me. I was still lying on the floor and this man was attempting to have intercourse with me! I told him to get off and leave me alone. He became verbally abusive towards me. Fortunately Ben woke up and told the man to leave me alone.
I felt so ashamed of myself as I crept back into my room and quietly cried myself to sleep. Somehow Fred and Rose got to know about what had happened that night and tried to talk to me about it, but it was something I wanted to forget.
Fred suggested that Tony, my boyfriend, should stay once a week, the night before he had college. It would save him having to ride his pushbike from Tewkesbury to Gloucester early in the morning and we would get some time to ourselves. On these nights, Tony helped me with the children while Fred and Rose went out, either for a drink or to do a bit of work on the side, with Rose labouring for her husband. Tony and I became once-a-week lovers, but my guilt about what had happened with the lodgers had left deep-seated emotional scars and made me feel cheap. Sex with Tony became a chore; I just went through the motions when it should have been something special.
I had one more lover while I was living at Cromwell Street, and this time it was the Wests who had fixed it up. An old flame from Portsmouth, whom had I continued writing to, wrote saying he would like to visit me on my seventeenth birthday. The old flame was Steve Riddall. He was quite snobby and loved himself; I used to fancy him like mad. I didn’t expect him to show up – he never had before – so when he arrived at Cromwell Street, I was gobsmacked.
Fred and Rose tried to chat to Steve, but I could see he was looking down his nose at them, so I suggested we went out for a drink on our own. (‘What are you doing living with those two weirdos?’ he asked me when we were out of the house.) When we got back, Rose told me, ‘You can use our room tonight, I’ve changed the bedding for you.’
That night I nervously got into bed still wearing my undies and a T-shirt, not wanting Steve to see my body. Within minutes he had them off and was making love to me … properly. Steve was a skilled lover with plenty of experience. That night I had my first ever orgasm. He laughed at me when I told him ‘something strange has happened to me’. ‘I feel all funny,’ I said. ‘My legs have gone stiff and a strange, but nice, feeling has come over me and my heart’s thumping so much I think I’m having a heart attack.’
‘That’s an orgasm,’ he told me, still laughing.
Next morning, I saw Steve off at the train station. I never saw him again, though we kept in touch by letter for another year until he stopped replying.
When I got back to the house, Rose asked me how it went with Steve. I told her about my orgasm and how I had never really enjoyed sex before, but that now I knew what all the fuss was about, now I understood why she enjoyed it so much. I didn’t mind telling Rose about it – it was girlie talk – but I was annoyed when, later that day, I discovered that she had told Fred everything I had told her during our chat. He used to make everything to do with sex seem smutty, when in my mind it had been a beautiful experience.
Living in the West household was beginning to get me down. I soon realised that Steve was right; they were a weird lot after all!
One night, a tall, buxom blonde girl named Dee came to the house and, as I opened the door to her, she started shouting and swearing at me, accusing me of stealing her babysitting job. Fred came to the door and led her into their bedroom, trying to calm her down, and Rose followed. After ten minutes, all three of them came into the living room and Dee apologised to me.
Rose made a cup of tea and they sat around laughing and joking with Dee, who obviously knew them well. Dee asked me if I would like to go out with her that night to the Jamaican Club. Her boyfriend was in a reggae band and they were rehearsing there. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. I was wary of black men – the only ones I had spoken to were the two that regularly visited the house once or twice a week and, even then, I hardly spoke to them. One of the visiting black men was old and went off somewhere with Rose as soon as he arrived. The other of the two was young and always had a silly grin on his face, but seemed quite nice. His name was Roy and I used to make him a cup of tea while he waited to see Rose, whom I innocently believed was a masseuse at that time. They were both friends of Fred’s so I never suspected that they were having affairs with Rose in her home, with her husband around.
That night, Fred and Rose both urged me to go out with Dee to the club and, against my better judgement, I took Dee up on her offer. I found Dee to be very loud and embarrassing. Every other word that she spoke was an expletive – but who was I to look down on her after my behaviour? Since moving in with the Wests, I had taken on some new lovers and discovered the satisfaction of an orgasm.
When we got to the club, the band were already packing their equipment away out the back. There were about seven of them altogether, including the one that Dee pointed out to me as her boyfriend. I sat nervously at the bar next to an old man; he tried to make conversation with me. Dee went outside to see her boyfriend and was gone for ages. I tried to be polite and talk to this old-timer, but I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying in his strong Jamaican accent.
One of the boys came up to me and asked me to go outside too, but something didn’t feel quite right about him, or the others, so I said, ‘No, it’s OK, I’ll wait here for Dee.’
After a while, Dee came back in. Her hair was messed up and her clothes were dishevelled.