‘I can’t keep the unthinkable at bay – did he abuse me?’: an exclusive extract from the memoir of Dominique Pelicot’s daughter
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Version 0 of 1. Caroline Darian relives the moment she discovered that she was also a victim of her father ‘How can you rebuild when your father is the worst sexual predator in decades?’ Read an interview with Caroline Darian I enter my parents’ house, draw in the familiar smells, drop off my bag in the room with the violet colour scheme where I always slept with my husband and son, walk past the family photos in the corridors, glance at my father’s paintings, one of them a female nude. Each step is like a station of the cross. All of my memories of this place – once so comforting, so joyful – are tainted now. The walls around me are silent witnesses of the abominable scenes that took place over the years, as my father drugged my mother and served her up to strangers to be raped. Everywhere I look, I see the shadows of his dark side. A family photo, full of smiles and joy, now strikes me simply as proof of the manipulation and dishonesty that went on for so long. As for his paintings, my urge is to burn them all, starting with the nude portrait. Taking a deep breath, I join my mother in the kitchen. My brothers have taken a decision: we will all be out of this place within three days, fewer if possible. They go to work in the lounge, where my father’s desk is a lurking presence. The footprint of his computer – now in the hands of the police – is clearly visible. He spent most of his free time glued to it, particularly in the evening, and sometimes long into the night. Immobile on his chair, puffing on an e-cigarette, his attention never wavered from the screen. Not even when the house was overrun by his children and grandchildren. We have to pack as much as we can, because we will never let our mother live alone in this house again. My parents thought that this would be the perfect haven for their retirement. It had pale-blue shutters, a sheltered garden with a suntrap corner, a pool just deep enough for my mother, extensive flowerbeds that my father fussed over obsessively, a gravel walkway lined with elegant lights, a wide-spreading mulberry tree, tall pink laurels, and an olive tree that we had given them to mark my son Tom’s birth. For my son, my husband and I, it was our happy place. I had always assumed the same was true for my parents. My phone drags me back to the present moment. A local number, not anyone I know. Expecting the worst, I answer. It’s the police officer we’ve just been with. He asks me to return to the station so that he can give me back some of the digital equipment they have confiscated. He says some of the USB sticks they took have no bearing on the inquiry. I can’t help feeling that he’s holding something back. And that, whatever it is, it can’t be good. As casually as I can, I ask if I couldn’t pick everything up the next day, given how late it is. But, no, my instinct was right. He tells me he has something he needs to show me, something that concerns me directly. Trembling, I end the call and mechanically pick up the car keys and my handbag. I’m heading out when my brother Florian says he’ll drive me to the station, insisting there’s no way he’ll let me go without him by my side. The 20 minutes it takes us to get to Carpentras feel like an eternity. I enter the station convinced that I will leave it feeling utterly demolished. Florian steers me in. Just as well, as I can’t feel my legs. It’s after 6pm, but there are still members of the public and plenty of uniforms in what is supposed to be a quiet provincial police station. I feel jealous of those who are there to report a snatched handbag or a break-in. An officer calls me forward. Florian gets up to accompany me, but he’s told he can’t. He has to stay where he is. Ten paces take me into a room where two officers sit behind their computers. I take a seat, slip my hands down on to my thighs and slowly squeeze them, hoping to distract myself from the anxiety that threatens to choke me. A large blue folder lies on the table. Photos printed on sheets of A4 poke out from it. I’m afraid of what I’m about to discover. One of the officers tries to calm me. “You can handle this,” he tells me. I only have to look at two photos. All they want to know is if I’m in either of them. The first picture shows a young woman with dark brown hair and a straight-cut fringe lying on a bed on her left side. It’s night-time, with a bedside lamp lighting the scene. She’s wearing a thick white pyjama top and beige underwear. She’s asleep, but the quilt covering her has been lifted aside to expose her buttocks. She’s deathly pale, with dark-ringed eyes. I look up at the officer and tell him I’m not sure whether or not it’s me. The officer hands over the second photo. The bedsheets seem familiar, but I can’t be sure. The pose is the same as the previous image. Not just similar, identical. Creepily so. It’s the same young woman and it makes me recoil in exactly the same way. It was taken in a different room. The woman is wearing a black and white patterned sleeveless sweater. The underwear hasn’t changed, though. I ask to look at the first photo again. Definitely the same underwear. But, once again, I tell them I don’t think it’s me. The officer studies my face for a brief moment. “I hope you don’t mind me pointing this out, but don’t you have a brown mole on your right cheek, just like the young woman in the photos?” I force my eyes back to the images, and finally the veil drops from my eyes. I start to shiver, my vision is disturbed by a host of tiny starbursts, my ears start ringing and I jerk back in the chair. The officer calls in my brother. Florian kneels before me, holds my hands, and tells me to try to breathe along with him. Someone finally thinks to fetch me a glass of sugar water. How did he manage to take my photo in the middle of the night without waking me up? Where did the underwear come from, as I’m sure it’s not mine? Did he drug me? Did he go beyond the photos? Did he – I can’t keep the unthinkable at bay – abuse me? It takes some time for me to be able to look directly at the police officers and admit that it is indeed me in the photos. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion I try to think when they might have been taken. It’s hard to say, but they don’t look recent. Florian asks if he can see the pictures of me. I think he should, because otherwise he might cling to the idea that my father could not possibly have done something so unthinkable. Now we’re both in a state of shock. Several minutes go past. The next step can’t be avoided. I have to file a complaint against my father. I have to step up and join the other victims – my mother, and the three women who reported him for filming up their skirts in a supermarket, triggering his arrest. It’s only two photos, but they, too, must be weighed in the balance, as additional proof of his perversity. Heading back to the house, I call my brother David and tell him everything. Another gut punch. I can’t get over the position I’m in in the photos. It just didn’t look natural to me. I’m a light sleeper, prone to waking at the slightest disturbance. Drugs alone could have made such a pose possible. I find my mother in the lounge, facing down an array of documents spread out before her – unpaid bills, outstanding debts, accounts in the red. My father had hidden them away in a series of plastic folders. She looks up casually, as if I’d just come back from a pleasant walk. Although I’m not sure she’s capable of taking it in, I feel obliged to tell her about the photos. When I do, I’m not surprised when she doesn’t react. She just stands there, a blank look on her face. “Are you absolutely sure it’s you?” She doesn’t believe me. I feel sick. Maybe her doubt is an unconscious attempt to shield herself, but it hurts me all the same. Florian steps up and insists that the photos are of me. His tone is firm, definitive. Even though I’m exhausted, I’m terrified by the thought of sleeping in the violet room that had welcomed me so often before. How many aggressors, intent on raping my mother, had passed through this house? I can’t shake off the fear that one of them might come back in the middle of the night, until Florian brings his mattress and lays it down beside my bed. The next morning we decide to clean everything out. I tackle the desk drawers, which clearly demonstrate that my parents’ finances are as disorganised as they are dire. David and Florian go through the other rooms. Our objective is to leave the house no later than tomorrow evening. None of us wishes to spend any longer than necessary under its roof. Mum wants to keep as few things as possible from her life before. We take photos of most of the furniture and put it up for a quick sale online. We toss things into oversized bin bags and my brothers take them to the local dump. Only a few cardboard boxes containing souvenirs escape the cleanup. I remove his paintings and drawings from the walls, the fruits of his artistic endeavours since he and my mother settled down in this quiet village in Provence. One gets special treatment – the portrait of a naked woman. I grab it, take it out to the patio and smash it against one of the garden chairs. It splits in two. As half of it twists in the wind I spot something written on the back in black pencil. A date – August 2016 – and a title. He’d called it Under My Thumb. This is an edited extract from I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again by Caroline Darian, published by Leap, an imprint of Bonnier Books. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. |