The One That Got Away - My Life Living with Fred and Rose West. Caroline Roberts
and my eyes were bursting with the fear. By the time I could see 25 Cromwell Street, only one of the black men was still chasing me. As I hit the door of the Wests’ home, he gave up, turned around and walked off back in the direction of the club.
I told Fred and Rose about it, expecting them to go to the club to see if Dee was all right, but they seemed to think it was funny. All Fred wanted to know was how many men there had been. I went to bed feeling lucky that I had escaped and got in safely.
The next day, while Fred was at work and Rose was out shopping, Dee called round. She told me how she had got to know Fred when he came to her workplace for DIY materials. Fred had invited her and her Jamaican boyfriend back to the house for some supper.
Dee asked, ‘Has Rose tried it on with you yet?’
‘No! She hasn’t,’ I retorted with a tone of indignity to my voice.
‘She will,’ Dee predicted, as she winked at me.
I replied, ‘Rose has never tried it on with me, and if she does I’d be out of here.’
‘Rose likes women, you know. She’ll have you in bed before long,’ Dee said.
It was Dee that first made me suspicious about Rose and Fred, but I think by then I already thought they had a strange sort of marriage, what with Rose giving massages and Fred going with her.
After Dee’s revelations, I started to look at all the visitors in a different light – the old Polish guy they had bought the house from, the old black man, even nice Roy no longer seemed so nice. In my mind’s eye, I started to look upon Fred’s brother, John West, who called around every teatime, with suspicion too. I began to watch him out of the corner of my eye as he chatted to Fred at the kitchen table, and many a time I caught him looking me up and down. John was quiet, not like Fred, but I remember my mum telling me, ‘The quiet ones are always the worst.’
I started to think of the times Rose had come into the bathroom while I was bathing. She always had an excuse, like needing the baby soap or that she was dying for a pee. She always stayed for a minute or two, talking to me. I had found it highly embarrassing but, naively, I never thought she was just coming in to look at my body.
From then on, I would put something in front of the door so I’d have time to get out and grab a towel before she came in. I began to be suspicious of everyone in that house, and realised it was not a safe place at all for a young girl to be. I thought of the smutty conversations that went on between them all and realised they were all bonded together in an unhealthy way.
Then, one day, Fred started talking about sex to me again. This time he revealed to me, ‘Anna’s not a virgin, you know!’
‘What do you mean, she’s not a virgin?’ I replied accusingly.
I looked across at little Anna-Marie, who was sat quietly watching television, and caught her darting a look at her father, then to me. Then she lowered her eyes back at the television screen.
Surprised by the venom in my tone, Fred quickly added, ‘Oh, the saddle came off her bike and she sat down on the bar and it went up inside her. She was messed up for a while, but at least she’ll not have any pain now when she has sex.’
I looked at Anna again and saw that she was blushing. That told me she was most probably being sexually abused – by her own father. As if Fred had read my thoughts, he changed the subject and got on to the subject of my sex life and abortions again, telling me that if I got pregnant he would ‘sort me out’ – he would abort the baby and save me having my stepfather finding out what a naughty girl I was. He went on to say that Tony needn’t know anything about it, especially as it might not be his baby, the way I’d been bed-hopping recently.
Winking at me, he said, ‘It will be our little secret.’
What he really meant was, ‘You keep my secret and I’ll keep yours.’ In other words, it was blackmail. Fred had sussed me out. He knew I wouldn’t want Mum, my stepfather or Tony to know what I had been up to; he knew I felt ashamed, and that was to be his hold over me.
I went up to my room with Anna and read to her till she fell asleep. I watched her sleep and wondered if my fears for her were real. How could anyone hurt her? She was just a baby.
That night, I couldn’t sleep for worrying and decided I would stop Tony from coming to the house. I would keep him away from Fred and the horrible truth about me and my sexual encounters.
The next day, while I sat on the sofa feeding May, I heard Fred and Rose whispering together in the kitchen. When I put May down in her pram, they both came and sat down either side of me. Fred said, ‘We’ve got something to ask you, Caroline. We’d like you to join our “sex circle”. You like sex now, so how about it?’
To say I was shocked would be an understatement! Trying not to sound as scared as I felt, I asked, ‘What do you mean “sex circle”?’
Fred replied, ‘You know – me, you, Rose. You like Rose, don’t you?’
I didn’t answer that question. Fred went on, ‘Yeah, you, me and Rose and a few men friends of ours, you’d enjoy it. You haven’t tried a black man yet, have you? You wouldn’t want a white man again after being spoilt by a black man, they have bigger dicks, you know, and they know how to fuck. They’d fuck the arse off you. How about it then, are you game for it?’
I couldn’t believe that Rose was sitting there letting him speak to me like that. I tried to make light of it and giggled. ‘Tell him to behave, Rose.’
But Rose was grinning at me. Nudging me in the side with her elbow, she said, ‘Oh, go on, Car, you’ll enjoy it, give it a try.’
I could see it wasn’t a joke. He was serious and so was Rose. I told them I wasn’t into that kind of thing, but they weren’t convinced, so I lost my temper and told them I thought I should leave and go back home.
Then Fred got nasty and snarled, ‘Do you want me to tell your mum and Tony what you’ve been up to, ’cause if I do they won’t want anything to do with you any more, will they? And that stepfather of yours won’t want you back living in his house, will he?’
I started to cry, feeling trapped – and I only had myself to blame for behaving like a little slut. Rose put her arm around me and told me to think about it. Fred got up and left, muttering something about ‘fucking lesbians’, telling Rose to have it sorted by the time he came back.
Rose had a visitor and went to her room with him, leaving me downstairs feeling sorry for myself. While she was still busy, Roy, one of the two black men who had called to see Rose earlier in the week, came round. He said hello to me and I just burst into tears, much to his embarrassment.
I wondered if he was a member of the sex circle, so when he asked me what was wrong I told him of the obscene thing that Fred and Rose had asked me to do. He seemed genuinely sorry for me and asked me if I would like him to take me home, so I sneaked up to my room, packed what few belongings I had and Roy drove me back home to Cinderford.
When I arrived home, Mum was surprised to see me and asked me why I’d left the Wests. I told her that I hadn’t got on with Fred, and left it at that.
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