Escape From Evil (33 page)

In the days leading up to Peter’s arrival, Granny and Grandpa were beside themselves with nerves and even talked about having a man in the flat for protection. I genuinely couldn’t see what the fuss was about. I felt a completely different person to the broken wretch who’d done a moonlight flit weeks earlier. I looked different and I felt different. I was stronger. The weight had lifted from my shoulders and I was standing tall again. I had my family five minutes up the road and my own two-room flat – on housing benefit – in Middlesex Road. I’d reset the clock to 1986 and I was ready to take on the world again. Peter was no threat, as far as I was concerned. He’d only ever hurt me when we’d lived together, when I was under his control, and that was never going to happen again. He didn’t bother me and he didn’t scare me, not anymore. He was nothing to me – just like I was convinced I’d meant nothing to him during those rape fantasies. So why was I letting him come?

In an ideal world, I would not have let Peter Tobin within a hundred miles of me or my son. But that wasn’t fair on Daniel.

I don’t think anyone with a normal background could ever appreciate just how much value I placed on giving my son two parents. Unless you’ve known the aching chasm of loss in your life, unless you have a gaping hole in your heart where your mother or father should have been, you’ll never appreciate the lengths I was prepared to go to to keep both Daniel’s parents in his life as much as possible. It was like an obsession for me. I was possessed with the promise I had made Daniel to give him the two parents I had been denied. In simple terms, I genuinely believed that any father was better than no father.

For a while, I honestly thought it could work. The second Peter stepped through the door, he hoisted Daniel up and played with him more lovingly than I’d ever seen in the past. That counted for a lot with me, so by the time he turned his charm in my direction, I had warmed slightly. When Peter suggested taking our son to the beach, I thought,
Why not? You have no hold over me anymore and Daniel will like it.

So that became our life for a while. Every couple of weeks Peter would drive down from Bathgate and we’d have, I have to say, a really nice family time in a park or on the beach. We even took the hovercraft over to the Isle of Wight. We’d never enjoyed a single family day like this before I’d left. Yet here he was, riding on mini steam trains with his son, while I sat on a bench and waved. It was sad. It was like the night Peter had charmed my father and his partner. He obviously could turn it on at will, but just chose not to.

I was happy to see Daniel enjoying himself. I even smiled to see Peter having fun with his son. But Peter, as ever, had another agenda, which soon became clear.

‘Come back to me, Cathy,’ he said one day as we strolled along the beach. ‘Come back to Bathgate and we’ll give it another go. We owe it to Daniel.’

That line didn’t wash with me anymore.

‘No, I owe it to Daniel to give him two parents and that’s what I’m doing now. He doesn’t need us back together.’

‘But I do!’ Peter exclaimed. ‘I need you, Cathy. I want you. I love you.’

Once upon a time, those last three magic words would have been enough to cast the spell that saw me packing. Not anymore. I was immune to Peter’s powers. He had nothing I wanted.

‘You weren’t very nice to me before,’ I explained. I didn’t want to pick at old wounds, but, on the other hand, he needed to know where I stood.

‘It’s my depression,’ he said. ‘You know how I suffer.’

I had to laugh. ‘I know how you like to say you suffer. I know you like the tablets.’

‘Cathy, I’ve changed. You’ve got to believe me. Come on, come back with me. Give me one more chance.’

How many times had he said those words to me? And how many times had I fallen for it? But not anymore.

‘No, Peter. My life is down here now.’

When straightforward wooing didn’t make an impression, Peter went to phase two of his plan. I was surprised to step out of my flat one day to find Peter unloading some of my belongings from Scotland from his van – including my motorbike. It was a genuinely thoughtful thing to do.

Of course, then he went and ruined it. In Peter’s mind, that should have been enough for me to be swept off my feet and say, ‘I’ve been stupid. Please take me back.’ When I didn’t, he asked again for the hundredth time. For the hundredth time, I said no. He was asking so regularly that I didn’t even feel mean anymore. I just couldn’t take it seriously and I think that night he realized it. On his way out of my building, he stopped to use the communal toilet. A few minutes later I heard a commotion in the hallway. There was screaming coming from the bathroom. When I got there, the door wasn’t locked.

Which meant I had a perfect view of Peter, in the bath, with blood streaming from his wrists.

He was shouting, ‘There’s no point living without you, Cathy!’ but I just wanted to laugh. Obviously I was meant to be won over by this act of sacrifice. But the thing about blood is that it often looks worse than it is.

‘You’re a joke,’ I said. I know it sounds cold, but he’d tried this stunt the night I’d fled Bathgate and he seemed to come through that one okay. To be on the safe side, I ran outside to dial 999. After I’d asked for an ambulance, I added, ‘You’d better send one from St James’s.’ That was our local nut house, after all. As far as I was concerned, that was the place where Peter needed treatment, not A&E.

Amazingly, the doctors who arrived agreed and Peter was taken to St James’s for two days of recovery and tests. He had a full psychiatric assessment while he was there. I don’t know what they discovered, but it was obviously nothing that worried them because he was soon released.

It was another few weeks before I let Daniel see Peter again, but soon after that we were back to once or twice a fortnight. I’d dismissed the suicide attempt almost as soon as it had happened, electing to concentrate on wanting the best for Daniel. Watching him enjoy a fun and loving relationship with his father at last meant the world to me. It helped that Peter appeared to be really trying to be nice to both of us. The wrist-slashing episode aside, I have to say, we did have fun together once again as a ‘three’. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than seeing Daniel happy. As long as he perceived that I trusted Peter with him, that was okay by me. In fact, as the weeks and months passed, I soon realized it was a perception I was beginning to share as well.

Life in the spring of 1990, I have to say, was good. I had a bit of social security money coming in, I had my friends and family round the corner and Daniel and I even had a home with separate rooms. We still had to share a bathroom and kitchen, which were pretty grim, to be honest, filthy and full of cockroaches. But, with a bit of imagination, I had made our rooms feel like they belonged to us. While Daniel slept at night, I decorated the fireplace with hand-painted pictures of flowers. Then, during the day, we’d collect sticks from the park to spray silver and create a lovely display. They were just cheap, small things, but they really made a difference. After so long, I really was happy. And proud. I remember looking at Daniel sleeping one night and thinking,
I’ve done a bloody good job here.

What is it they say about pride coming before a fall?

After a few weeks of visits and lots of happy times, I could see Daniel was more comfortable with his father than he’d ever been in Scotland. So when Peter suggested one day that the pair of them go out to the park and then maybe to McDonald’s for a treat, I thought,
Why not? It will be good for both of them.

And I needed the break. Single-parenting is tough on everyone. You tend to snatch babysitting offers when they come.

‘Make sure he’s back for bath time at six.’

I felt a bit guilty enjoying an afternoon at home by myself and after three or four hours I was ready to have my son back. But six o’clock came and went. Then it was seven – and I was panicking.

Have they been in an accident? Is everything all right?

I needed to phone someone, but we didn’t have a landline and I was scared to leave the flat in case they returned. By half seven, though, it was decided. I grabbed my purse, left a note on the door and ran out to the nearest phone box.

My first call was to Grandpa. He obviously didn’t want to worry me, but he said, ‘You could call the hospitals, but you really need to tell the police.’

I could barely see the dial on the phone for tears as I made call after call. They weren’t in any hospital in the area – thank God. So where were they?

The police said they’d be round in five minutes.

I was in such a state by the time they arrived, I don’t know how they understood a word I was saying. After months of believing I was back in control of my own life, Peter had brought me back down to my knees at the first attempt.

All I could think of were his words on that staircase in Robertson Avenue: ‘If you leave me, I will fucking hunt you down and kill you. And then I’ll kill the kid.’

Oh God, what have I done!

It was the worst evening of my life. Going over and over everything that had happened in the last few years didn’t help, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d been so desperate to put the past behind me, to start anew, that I’d forgotten that history can always teach us something. My own vanity, that relentless desire to prove that I was free, had blinded me to the truth and now there was a chance my son could be paying the price.

Then, at midnight, there was a knock at the door. Two policemen were standing there and obviously I thought the worst.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Tobin, we’ve found your husband and son. They’re at home, in Bathgate. Your husband has asked if you would call him.’

Bathgate? Now I knew they were safe, I could afford to be angry. What the hell were they doing there? Peter had obviously had no intention of taking Daniel to the park or McDonald’s. As soon as my back was turned, they’d jumped into his van and driven the whole day up to Scotland. Even hearing the policeman’s words, I couldn’t believe Peter had actually kidnapped his own son.

What’s he playing at?

There was only one way to find out. With the policemen standing outside the phone box, I made the call. When he answered, Peter sounded perfectly normal, just as I’d expected. He never got upset or hurt. Only angry.

‘What have you done with my son?’ I demanded.

‘He’s here, at home. He’s fine. We’ve had a lovely day.’

‘That’s not his home!’ I shouted. ‘His home is here with me.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Cathy. So I’m only going to say this once. If you don’t come back to me in the next twenty-four hours, you will never see your son again. I promise, we will leave this country and you will never find us.’

That’s it,
I thought.
He’s won. I’ve got no choice.

I just wanted to sink down to the bottom of the phone box and sob. Then I remembered the policemen. But what could they do?

When I told them, verbatim, what Peter had threatened, there was a sudden flurry of radio activity. Then they told me I had to call Peter back and tell him I was coming ‘home’. I had to agree to whatever he wanted.

At nine the next morning I found myself in front of a solicitor. The radio activity the night before had, among other things, been getting her out of bed and up to speed with my situation. She was like my guardian angel. Just when I needed someone to take control and tell me what to do, there she was, calm and collected and with an answer to everything.

‘I’ve arranged a hearing with a judge to grant you sole custody of your son with immediate effect,’ she explained. ‘I have also requested an all-ports alert around the country. Your husband will be detained if he tries to leave.’

I couldn’t believe how quickly everything was happening, and the scale of it. Out of nowhere, I seemed to have an army on my side. I was whisked in front of the judge and, before I knew it, I had full entitlement to Daniel. From that moment on, Peter was breaking the law every moment he kept my son from me.

After years of being made to feel isolated and alone, it was incredible to have strangers moving so fast to help me. In the past I’d bitten my tongue, worried I wouldn’t be believed. But they all took me seriously. All those other battered wives out there who think they’re on their own need to understand that they’re not. There’s help available, whole battalions of it. You just need to be brave enough to ask for it.

So, within minutes of meeting this solicitor, she’d informed me the whole country was on lock-down as far as Peter was concerned. There were only two problems. One, we both knew that there were many, many worse things he could still do to make good his threat of never letting me see Daniel again. And, two, my custody claim only had jurisdiction in England.

The judge was obviously distressed that he couldn’t do more. ‘Wheels are in motion, but we need to go through the translatory process for it to apply under Scottish law,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll be able to act.’

‘How long does that take?’

‘About three or four days.’

‘But I don’t have three or four days! If I don’t get there today my son will be killed!’

It was incredibly frustrating. I had the full weight of English law behind me, but we were powerless to act for as long as Peter was in Scotland.