Rose West: The Making of a Monster by Jane Carter Woodrow Page B

reaction to it.

10
Birthday Surprise
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 1969
    I T WAS FEBRUARY; ROSIE had just turned 15 and was coming up to leaving Cleeve secondary school. The young girl loved baking and rushed home to help
     her mother with the birthday cake she was making for her dad’s birthday. Today her father was 48 and her mother was trying
     to make the best of it. Daisy had tried to separate from Bill in the past, even going down the official route of applying
     for an injunction on the basis of his violence to make sure he never came near her or the children again. But this hadn’t
     worked either, as Bill was manipulative and there was little public understanding or sympathy as regards mental-health issues
     at the time. Bill told the court all about his wife’s depression and the electric-shock therapy she’d received for it, and
     the case simply collapsed. Ironically, had Daisy known about Bill’s own psychiatric problems, the outcome might have been
     different. As it was, the police had not intervened when Andy had asked for help and the authorities had not taken notice
     when neighbours heard the children’s screams and raised the alarm. Numerous failures had conspired to keep the family together,
     and now they were going to celebrate ‘Dad’s’ birthday together – except that Daisy had run out of the ingredients she needed.
     Still in her school uniform, Rose popped to the shop for her mum, and picked up the extra supplies. The shop was just fifty
     yards from her home,beside the Swallow pub – a 1960s-built establishment, and the only pub on the estate.
    Daisy and the children always spent their time in the kitchen, even when it wasn’t Bill’s birthday. They used the side door
     to it rather than go through the front of the house and risk disturbing Bill as he watched television. When Bill went to bed,
     the television set went off and stayed off. When it was on, the children would rarely want to watch it with their father,
     as they were expected to sit as quiet as church mice beside him. As Andy’s girlfriend Jackie said, ‘I used to find it strange
     that Andy would tell me to open the sweet wrapper quietly when we sat watching TV with his dad. I didn’t like that, I wasn’t
     used to that. We used to joke and laugh around when my dad was watching telly. When I went round Andy’s house after that,
     I used to stay with Daisy in the kitchen. She was always there.’
    On this particular day, Rosie had only been gone to the shops a matter of minutes when Bill returned home from work. The moon
     must have been full again as far as Daisy was concerned, as before she’d even had a chance to say ‘Happy Birthday’, Bill had
     ripped the bowl from her arms and tossed it at the wall, and flung Daisy behind it. After battering his wife, he then turned
     his attentions to the house. Rosie returned with the margarine to find the place wrecked, blood and cake mix everywhere, and
     Daisy packing their bags, resolving this was the end.
    Glenys, a petite blonde, was 18 and heavily pregnant with her first child when her mother, black and blue from the beating,
     arrived on her doorstep with Rosie, Graham and Gordon in tow. It was a tight squeeze at the rented terrace in Union Street,
     but to her credit – and that of her young husband, Jim Tyler – they made room for them all. Bill, however, was noticeably
     absent; he neither chased after his family, nor seemed at all concerned about his sons having to change schools yet again.
     Rather, he sat back and luxuriated in having the house all to himself.
    Rosie tried to do her bit to help out at Union Street,donning a pair of Marigolds and cleaning the windows. She was supposed to be attending school in Cleeve, but was in her last
     term, so finding a job and earning some cash had suddenly become more important to her. Her sister Glenys had only recently
     married Jim, a tall, personable young man who was something of an entrepreneur. By trade Jim was