Free Daddy's Prisoner by Alice Lawrence, Megan Lloyd Davies

save some of his money and use it to run away, I knew I’d never be able to hide so much as a penny from him now.
    Sometimes Dad used protection when he forced himself on to me, but by the time I was thirteen he decided he wanted me to go on the pill. I stopped taking it just before my fifteenth birthday because it gave me awful headaches. But even though I’d learned more about the facts of life at school by now, no one had ever mentioned what was happening to me. When it first started, I’d wondered if other little girls secretly did the same thing with their dads. Now I knew they didn’t and for that reason alone was sure I could never get pregnant because a daughter couldn’t give birth to her father’s child.
    Deep down, though, I was still scared. But even in my darkest dreams – the ones in which I saw Dad’s face coming towards me and felt his breath on my skin before he pinned me to the bed – I could never have imagined what he wanted from me. My fear, though, didn’t disappear just because I refused to feel it and soon my periods stopped for months on end. The doctors ran tests to find out why but told me there was no physical reason so it must be because of stress.
    I think now that my body was trying to stop me from giving The Idiot what I was terrified he wanted but I did not realise it then. All I knew was that there was nothing I could do to stop him having sex with me whenever he felt like it. If I was upstairs and the house went suddenly quiet, or if I was seeing to Charlie and heard Mum calling the kids to put on their coats because it was time to go out, I knew what was going to happen even before he shouted for me. As sure as waves crash on to a beach and the sun rises and shines, this was the pattern of my life now.

 
CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    The ground swallowed me up in blackness as I fell towards it.
    ‘Alice?’ a voice enquired, and I opened my eyes to see Mum holding a wet cloth above me.
    ‘What happened?’ I asked.
    I felt sick and dizzy as I looked up.
    ‘You’ve fainted,’ she said as she put the cloth to my forehead. ‘Lie still a minute and then we’ll get you up. I think you knocked yourself on the fireplace when you took a fall.’
    My head hurt as I sat up and looked around the room. I didn’t know what had happened. One minute I was fine and the next I’d blacked out.
    ‘What’s the fucking problem now?’ Dad snarled from his bed.
    ‘She’s fainted but I’m going to take her up to the hospital because she hit her head.’
    ‘Well, be quick about it because I’ll be wanting my tea soon,’ he grunted.
    Mum took me up to the hospital and we waited while the doctors did some tests to find out what was wrong.
    ‘Have you been eating right?’ Mum asked as we sat side by side. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re poorly. You’re off your food sometimes these days.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ I insisted.
    We sat and waited until the doctor came back to talk to us.
    ‘Is there anything you want to tell your mum?’ he said as he looked at me sternly.
    I felt suddenly afraid.
    ‘It’s time to tell your mum the truth,’ he said again, his voice hard.
    My head rushed. Did he know about Dad? Could he tell from looking at me? Shame rushed up hot inside me as Mum turned to me. I knew I could never tell her about what had happened. It would hurt her more than she could bear. She was not strong enough.
    ‘Alice?’ Mum asked.
    Silently, I stared at the doctor.
    ‘She’s pregnant,’ he snapped.
    The ground fell from beneath me. My head felt light. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be happening. I could not have a baby. His baby. It wasn’t possible.
    ‘No,’ I whispered as a rush of sickness burned the back of my throat.
    I wanted to run out of the room, away from these eyes staring at me and searching for the secrets I knew I would never share.
    ‘Well, you are and I’m sure you know how it happened even if you are only fifteen.’
    The doctor’s voice sounded rough and