Making Beds in Brothels Read online

  Making Beds in Brothels: A Memoir

  One man’s fight for redemption after a lifetime of sexual exploitation.

  Adam Brock

  Copyright © 2019 by Adam Brock All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is dedicated to the children and men of the streets and the city, those who survived and those who didn’t make it. And to the memory eternal of my irreplaceable, much missed, beloved sister. I made you a promise and kept it.

  I would like to thank the many people who have supported me in the writing of this book, including my family and friends who kept me sane during what has been at times, a gruelling journey. And those who prompted sometimes dimmed memories of place or person. I would like to specifically thank my friend Kate Williams who made it clear several years ago that my story had to be told regardless of my anxieties. Without her encouragement it’s unlikely I would have had the courage to begin. Names and addresses have been changed to protect the identities of those still living.

  Please look this book up on Facebook a Making Beds in Brothels or email me at: [email protected] with any queries.

  Chapter 1

  We had rented a country cottage on the Felbrigg estate in Norfolk; it was idyllic. The cottage was low, secluded, the walls thick and durable. We were in a clearing in the woods, where lawns ran from the cottage up to the trees, and by the gate a path led, through ancient woods, to a small lake. Further up through the pasture stood the exquisite Jacobean hall, isolated and grey against the sky, its windows glittering jewel-like in the sun. Just yesterday I had been wandering the state rooms, wondering at the beauty and craftmanship, at humanity’s master over its environment. The gardens were overflowing with beautiful plants. It was the height of flaming June and the world looked marvellous.

  This holiday was something of a celebration. I had just finished my BA and in a couple of weeks I would be graduating from university with first class honours and the university award for academic excellence. It had been a tough three years. I had struggled through a foundation course and turned down an offer from York University to study History of Architecture, accepting instead a place a Lincoln’s Bishop Grosseteste University to study History and Theology. The city of Lincoln is tiny, not much bigger than the town I lived in as a child. I loved the winding streets, ancient buildings, the cathedral and churches. It was a quiet place, away from the temptations of the big city. My first year wasn’t amazing, but I applied myself and my grades rapidly improved.

  That morning, as I returned from walking the dog in the grounds, I was on a high; birds were singing in the trees, and we had a full day planned ahead. I had just started cooking breakfast when my friend staggered into the kitchen, her face ashen, “Adam you need to sit down”.

  I knew with crushing certainty, the moment she said those words, that Deborah was dead. She didn’t have to say another thing. I had been waiting for the first blood to be drawn and I knew instinctively it would be my sister’s.

  The police told us Deborah had been found by a concerned neighbour who, seeing her kitchen door open all day, had contacted my sister’s close friend, Beth, who lived around the corner and had a key. Letting themselves in the front door, they instinctively knew something was terribly wrong. They found Deborah semi-clothed, slumped on the kitchen floor. Dialling the emergency services, Beth desperately tried to revive her. “I can’t wake her up!” she screamed down the phone to the emergency operator, “She’s so cold and I can’t wake her up!” After what felt like an eternity, the emergency services arrived, crowding into the tiny house. The paramedics and police took over.

  Nothing could be done for Deborah; she had been dead for hours and everything that could be done had been. She, who had battled so hard, who was driven by her anger and her exquisite nuanced understanding of injustice, had fallen. My beautiful sister was dead, aged just forty-two.

  The immediate conclusion was that she had committed suicide. They found a suicide note among her letters and saw that she had also, apparently, taken an overdose a week or two earlier. They contacted Marcus, Deborah’s ex-partner, in the middle of the night. Marcus, knowing we were staying a remote part of England, recommended that they not contact us till the morning. To this day I’m grateful we were not caught up in the trauma of her discovery. We were saved a frantic, and ultimately futile, rush to her home, then to the hospital, as well as the fear and confusion that would have generated.

  It was a comfort to know that she hadn’t lain undiscovered long, and that the person who found her was a close friend. Even so, the impact was instant and devastating, but we were miles from home so I couldn’t give in to grief. On autopilot, I cleaned the cottage, packed the dishwasher, loaded the car and prepared water and food for the dog. I knew it was imperative to get this done before the shock wore off. It was a day’s drive back to Manchester, and we could not afford to lose time.

  The long drive home was hell on earth, and I was glad to see the front door of the red brick terrace where I lived. We were a household in grief; the type of anguish experienced after a suicide being spectacularly more magnified than following a normal bereavement. We sat in the house, curtains drawn, rapid-cycling between anger that she could have done this, and shuddering elemental grief.

  Yet things had to be done, and done quickly. This was the first death I had encountered where I was in charge of the arrangements. My mother was far too devastated, so it fell to me to organise everything. I hadn’t spoken to my father in over twenty years and tracking down a contact number wasn’t easy. He was living somewhere in a caravan in the wilds of England, forgotten.

  Weeks passed without him crossing my mind, and when he did I pushed the thoughts away quickly. Yet he needed to know that Deborah was dead. I wanted him to know that he had finally killed one of us, that he had succeeded. I had it all planned in my head: his ears would burn with my anger as I poured my rage out on to him, my furious truth bringing home to him the misery he had caused. I wanted to scream, “You murdered Deborah! Murderer – you fucking monster. You killed her, you bastard – I hope you rot in hell!”

  In the end, when he answered his phone, I couldn’t go through with it. “It’s Adam here… Deborah’s killed herself” was all I could say. “What?” he spluttered down the line in reply. “Deborah’s committed suicide,” I repeated. There was a long pause, before he spoke again. “Right. I’m coming over, where are you?” I paused, “That’s not a good idea… I don’t think you would be made welcome here. People are very upset”. His voice bristled, he didn’t appreciate being told what to do, “Okay. What about the funeral?” The phone was shaking in my hand as I told him it would be better if he stayed away, just went somewhere to pray for forgiveness. I hung up. I don’t know why I didn’t take that opportunity to stick the knife in. I suppose I hoped that the knowledge of how Deborah had died, and the part he had played in it, would be torment enough.

  It was strange opening Deborah’s front door and entering her small two bedroomed house on Market Street, Hyde. Like me, Deborah had always guarded her privacy fiercely, but I knew she would have been unhappy with anyone else doing what had to be done.

  As soon as I entered, I was filled with her presence; she was still here in a very tangible way. Her scarf lay on the table next to the door. Lifting it to my face, I found the fabric still heady with the perfume she wore. There were fresh flowers in a vase, fruit sat in a bowl on the kitchen table. It was as if she had simply stepped outside for a moment. The room swam, and as I sat down heavily, t
he grief came over me in waves.

  In the days and weeks after her death, I would often glimpse Deborah standing very still, just beyond my peripheral vision, her arms resting down by her sides, her hair the blond, abundant curls of her youth, her face impassive, observing me silently but intently. I would see her and, startled, turn but she would be gone. I wondered in a distracted way if she was trying to communicate something to me. Once I saw her walking into a building and was so overtaken in my belief that this was really her that I went after her, only to realise, as I drew closer, it wasn’t her at all.

  As I continued to clear out her home, bagging her beautiful clothing for charity, separating her evening shoes and boots, coats and scarfs, handbags, all into separate heavy black bin-bags. One of her friends told me, “Adam, those clothes are valuable, put them on eBay and put the money in trust for her son.” Considering our traumatised state, the sheer logistics of the idea horrified me, and after discussing it with my family I decided to share her belongings among the charity shops of Hyde. The money they generated for those in need would act as a legacy for my sister. After picking out items to be distributed as keepsakes among friends and family.

  Deborah was an organised hoarder; she threw away nothing. Her cupboards were filled with sealed plastic boxes, each one neatly labelled. Inside were folders with a lifetime’s correspondence: bills, letters from the local authority, cards from friends. She preserved everything. And among her letters I found neatly bound folders, each one filled with pages of my sister’s precise handwriting.

  All the time I cleared, I came across more of her writing. There were hundreds of folders of her work, filled with thousands of poems; a lifetime poured onto to paper. As I looked through the bills, I came across loose poems, some half written – scribblings about her feelings and memories, unfinished and discarded letters. These were her legacy, and a task that started as simply a painful but necessary closing down of a life, became something much more important. It was the bringing together of my sister’s lifetime in words. I sensed she wanted our story to be told. She was speaking to me, telling me that words have value.

  As I brought together her writing, pausing to read now and again, I realised that Deborah was a poet of great sensitivity and thought. She put everything she had, her heart, her fears, her soul, into her writing. She held nothing back about her son, our parents, the abuse she suffered at the hands of our father and her subsequent battle with mental illness. It seems [she wrote] an almost insanely normal rite of passage for every poet… and dreamer to find themselves confined between magnolia walls… Everything is recorded in her idiosyncratic prose, in neat handwriting throughout her many journals.

  Although a student, I didn’t consider myself a writer, considering the writing I did to be work rather than artistic expression. Contact with my sister’s writing, and the impact of reading it, lit up something in me. It became clear that, not only did I have something to say, but it was imperative to say it. I committed myself to listening to that new voice: such damage had been done throughout our lives, terrible things had happened and been unrecorded, and now it became my duty to record them, to show other people that they could still rise through terrible adversity. I was going not only to find my voice but provide one for Deborah, and other people who remain unrecognised. What had happened to us pleaded to be spoken. Words have power.

  I decided, during those first weeks after her death, that I would put the skills I had gained at university to positive use. As if to confirm my decision, Deborah’s autopsy results came back. In contravention of all the circumstantial evidence saying otherwise, my beautiful sister had not killed herself, she died of a thrombotic embolism, a blood clot to the heart, the same condition that had claimed the lives of other women in my family. Romantically, perhaps, I was left wondering if she had died of a broken heart.

  The nature of our grief altered. Gone was the spinning mixture of fear, anger and sadness, the never ceasing onslaught of emotion. She had died a natural death, and nothing could have been done. We readjusted and started to grieve in a more or less normal way.

  It was a relief to know that she hadn’t died the violent death, which death by your own hand always is, however people might try to tell you otherwise. It is an act of violence to the self and an act of violence towards those left behind. What death by suicide does to families is indescribably traumatic. I have never been through anything like it. I was at a meeting recently, discussing depression, when someone said flippantly, “Personally I think those who commit suicide are very brave – and it’s something families just need to deal with”. No one who experienced what I had could have said that. I was left with a clear understanding that suicide is never an option.

  My sister died in the June. Well, fools rush in where hero’s dread, and I decided to take it on, What’s the worst that can happen? I thought. My life had always been a fight, I had nothing to lose and, anyway, I needed to occupy myself. I was sober now as well as clean, having quit drinking within weeks of my sister’s death. I would tell our story, mine and Deb’s, that’s what she was telling me to do: Adam, make what has happened to us worthwhile. Make the trauma into something constructive. Her writing, combined with my memories, would tell our story, it would be a collaborative effort. Perhaps something good might come from the pain we had endured? Perhaps we could provide hope for others.

  Chapter 2

  I have a photograph of myself and my three siblings, taken somewhere in the hills above Mobberley: four untidy, thin and anxious-looking children playing amongst flowering yellow gorse bushes, high rocks towering above us in the background. Summer sunshine, lemon sun-cream scents the air… there is no soothing breeze, just dry heat.

  Deborah looks aged about ten, tall for her age and lean. She is all elbows and knees, like a foal, her white blond hair pulled loosely back in untidy bangs, unruly tendrils escaping, having had her abundant curls brushed out straight this morning with the usual screams of protest. Her expression is angry, rebellious. She has described herself as girl in a cage… Calamity Jane in jeans and pumps. My brothers are both curly haired like Deborah. William is the elder, with dark auburn hair and a mass of freckles, James is the same, white blond as Deborah, his face emotionless. I am the smallest and youngest, there is five years between me and Deborah, and the others were born one after the other in a row, with barely twelve months between Deborah and William, so there was always a twin-like connection between those two. My straight messy blond hair needs a brush, I am fascinated by something I have found in the dirt. None of us looks happy; all our faces bear tension and our bodies look clenched and drawn in with anxiety.

  Deborah referred to Mobberley as that thin northern town… the valley between hills… grey stone upon grey stone. It’s a fitting description. Mobberley struggles along the bottom of a narrow valley, the town clawing unsuccessfully up the sides of the Pennines. The terrain halts the spread of development and the town remains low, dense and grey, calcified against the green hills. The area is dominated by mills and factories that churned out the yards of calico that kept the British Empire upholstered in the nineteenth century. The vast moribund weaving sheds, long silent, now provide playgrounds for local kids, somewhere for the homeless to sleep. The surviving industrial units produce chemicals, paints, adhesives and plastics. When I was a child, a dense fog of grey–yellow pollution hung over the valley like a pall, which together with busy roads from the south, that cut through the town heading towards Manchester, made the country air unwholesome. It was a tough, unattractive place, hard on the lungs. You tasted the toxins in air, which gave the atmosphere a soupy, viscous quality that caught in the nostrils.

  Away from the town the air was better. One of my childhood pleasures was being alone in the woodland that ran up the hillsides. In spring, the scent of hawthorn trees filled the air and a mass of native bluebells carpeted the ground as far as the eye could see. Later, in summer, the woods were a patchwork of lady’s lace, golden rod and willow
herb. I acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the flora and fauna of those ancient oak-filled woods during those long childhood days. I knew where the best trees for climbing grew, where the wild garlic could be found, where the sweetest cobnuts and fattest blackberries fruited. I would go out at dawn and return at dusk, having roamed the woods and hills for hours. I would walk up wooded lanes, past cottages and farmhouses, up Battle Hill to Stagrave Church and play on the flag gravestones in the surrounding churchyard. The forest ran down from the hills under Stagrave, high above us, ending just metres away from the front door of my home on Derby Way.

  The Romans built a fort nearby, still visible beneath the bracken and gorse. Deborah wrote that she sensed the Romans marching on, beneath these rocks… a feeling that this was sacred ground… the strange feeling of being watched. I too sensed layers of the past, beneath the surface of these hills. Battle Hill was rumoured to have once been the site of a great fight between opposing forces of a warrior queen and king, where the slaughter of men was such that the hill ran red with their blood. Legend has it that, later, Battle Hill became a stronghold of the brigands; outlaws who plundered and murdered in the surrounding settlements and farmsteads.

  In my mind, as I walked those woods, I fashioned a vast civilization; a place I called the Home. I peopled it with princesses, knights, and monsters. I would invent fantastic scenarios, amazing stories. The streets reflected the streets from my world; the rooms were mirror rooms, what I saw was reflected as I walked – refracted in my imagination. I moved within a world that was both real and imagined, sometimes slipping unknowingly between both.

  This was my only place of escape, and I not only peopled it with complex characters, I gave each an individual persona with carefully thought out traits. And for years I was remarkably faithful to these inventions, providing them with homes, servants and spouses. Each character had a complex biography, and they were all interlinked and related in labyrinthine family trees.