Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart (20 page)

He stormed out of the room and I phoned his mum, still in a state. But I got the cold shoulder from her. ‘It’s not about you,’ she said. ‘It was about Jade, who’s dead. Have a bit of respect.’

‘Are you serious?’ I said. ‘I know full well it’s not about me. But all he needed to do was say, “Yeah, we’re happy, things are going well.” I didn’t want to be called the greatest person that ever existed, I just wanted him to acknowledge that he, Blakely and I are a family unit.’

Maybe I was overreacting, I don’t know, but I stuck to my guns and made Jack move out, confirming our split on Twitter:

It was a thoroughly miserable time and Blakely cried continually for Jack – who I knew missed him just as badly. I felt like the wicked witch for keeping them apart.

Two weeks after the show, I was still adamant I didn’t want Jack back, but he called me and said, ‘Look, I know I should have said something nice about you but I was put on the spot. I’m truly sorry.’

‘That’s not good enough, I’m afraid.’

But he was desperate. ‘This is stupid. I’ve not been eating or sleeping. There’s no way I want this family torn apart by a stupid interview on TV. It’s ridiculous. We’ve been through far worse than this. You seriously need to get over it now.’

Something about his words struck a chord with me: perhaps I did need to get over it. In the cold light of day, the facts were simple: I loved Jack and I knew he loved me too. Without him, I felt like I had a limb missing and I knew he was undoubtedly the most important man in my life to date. What’s more, as a parenting unit, we were doing a brilliant job of bringing up our son and that was a big factor to take into account.

So, yes, Jack moved back in with us in summer 2013. Once again, people may accuse me of being crazy to get back with him but what else can you trust other than your gut instinct? In spite of everything, I still see the good in him and it far outweighs any bad or the times he’s been a bastard to me. You could probably count the terrible things he’s done to me on two hands but, in the four years he’s been part of my life, there have literally been thousands of nice gestures and moments to cherish – such as the holiday to Tunisia I booked for the three of us straight after he moved back.

Blakely hadn’t been away since he was 10 months old and he loved the whole experience of getting on a plane and being somewhere hot and sunny. His delight and enthusiasm for
everything made Jack and me as excitable as little kids as well and the whole holiday was brilliant. The hotel was stunning and Blakely adored splashing about in the pool for hours on end. The three of us also went on camel rides and excursions into the desert, where we dressed up in traditional Tunisian clothes. And every night, we ate an early dinner overlooking the beach, before taking Blakely to the disco, where he showed off all his slick moves to the little girls! Even now, almost a year on, he asks me continually, ‘Mummy, when can we live in a hotel again?’ He gets this look of concentration on his face and says, ‘It’s freezing here every day. It hasn’t been sunny for years, has it?’ Seriously, he talks like an old pensioner sometimes! The trip was exactly what Jack and I needed too; proper, quality time together as a family without any phones or stress.

Since then, our home life has been much calmer and, eight months on, we’re making a real go of it. He’s proved himself to be a good dad and a good partner and we’ve both realised we function better when we’re together than when we’re apart.

Jack loves treating me and coming up with little surprises and, on my birthday in November, he got up with Blakely at 5am to bake me a cake, which they topped with my absolute favourite chocolate bar – Kinder Bueno! In all honesty, it looked a bit like tuna fish but it tasted gorgeous! They also hung ‘Happy Birthday’ banners and streamers everywhere and blew up a load of helium balloons, before giving me tons of presents and the best breakfast in bed. Blakely now keeps asking me when my next birthday is so they can do it again!

I’ve also had a constantly bad knee for the past six months and Jack has bent over backwards to help me do the things I’ve struggled with. He even learned to vacuum so that I didn’t have to do it – although, between you and me, he’s no Mrs Doubtfire and I always secretly redo it!

For the first time, he’s also tried hard to immerse himself in life up north and has worked at getting to know my friends better. He and Zoe’s other half, Martin, often disappear to the pub for whole weekends at a time to watch football, rugby, cricket, or any kind of sport. They’d probably sit through the World Chess Championship if it meant they could drink a few pints in peace! Zoe and I love it though because, while they’re off doing their male-bonding bit, we open a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape (the current favourite) and get stuck into a French-cheese platter while putting the world to rights.

Feeling brighter about his own prospects, Jack’s now starting a new business venture, which will help enable him to provide for Blakely and me in the future. And with my career going steadily too, the next few years are full of all kinds of possibility. Of course, we still argue and we probably always will – although never in earshot of Blakely, I hasten to add. But show me a couple who doesn’t fight? They don’t exist.

While a lot of men would simply have found a single mum with a toddler an inconvenience, Jack has only ever showered Blakely with love, affection and endless amounts of fun. And whatever your personal view of us as a couple, my son is at his very happiest when he’s with his mummy and his daddy, and the sound of our laughter fills the house.

It really is as simple as that.

W
hat can I say about the experience of telling you my story? It’s certainly been a challenge to confront some of these memories and get them down on paper.

What I have realised in reading it all back is that, in my 26 years so far, I’ve probably experienced more sad things than the average person will endure in a lifetime. But there’s no way I want to sit and wallow in it or say ‘poor me’. I refuse to play the victim card – I firmly believe you’re only a victim if you let yourself be.

Now I’ve got my share of hardship out of the way, I’m kind of hoping my next 26 years (and all of those thereafter) are filled with a bigger slice of the good stuff. I can’t wait to see what Blakely grows up to be and I hope I’m lucky enough to have more children in a few years and be happily married too.

So many wonderful things have come out of the bad for me and this was perfectly illustrated at Blakely’s third birthday party last summer. I’d thrown a circus-themed party in my back garden with a bouncy castle and all the kids’ faces were painted.
Everyone was really happy that day and, as I looked around me and saw all the people I loved, it was like the cast list of my life: Jack, Blakely, Mum, Dad and David were there, alongside my Aunty Susan and Uncle Paul, my sister Melissa, her lovely partner Dillian and their four-year-old twin girls, Africa and Aamori. Then there were all my closest friends too – Rachel and her fiancé Jason with little Seb, as well as Zoe and Martin, Alison and Becca.

It brought home to me the fact that, no matter how broken and messed up things had been in the past for me, my friends and my whole family – both blood and adoptive – had pulled together to get me through it.

And as Blakely begged his cousins Africa and Aamori to play football with him and they instead covered him with make-up and put sparkly clips in his hair, I was filled with a gratitude that almost took my breath away. It was one of those split-second moments that proves, whatever else might be going on behind the scenes, by far the most important thing in life are the people in it. Wealth and success pale into insignificance in the grand scheme of it all.

How best to summarise my tale? Well, I’ve had tough days and, yes, at certain times I’ve felt like I couldn’t go on but I proved to myself that I could. And I did. It’s not like I’m sitting on millions of pounds and have conquered the world but I’ve beaten a hell of a lot of demons and that’s enough for me.

To everyone who helped me along the way, thank you. I’m certain you all know who you are…