I Won't Forgive What You Did (35 page)

I asked tentatively if it would make any difference if a close family member was a convicted burglar. There was also the matter of the heroin addict and convicted criminal, and the small detail of the one who was serving a life-sentence for murder. That these people were all closely related to me felt desperately sad – the younger ones were victims, indirectly, just as I was – and it was almost, as I sat there, surreal.

But I had to finish, to my distress, with one of my own children – prosecuted for possession of cannabis.

As it turned out, they weren’t that interested in the roll-call of felons, but more interested in how I managed my own child through that difficult time. But my overriding feeling was one of anger at a family whose history I’d have to drag around with me for all time and whose legacy it seemed I’d never escape. I didn’t think they’d want to touch me with a bargepole.

So saying I was surprised to find I’d been accepted would be the biggest understatement ever. I must be the only JP in the country with such a chequered past.

One member of my family who was central to this was my mother, whose behaviour was increasingly bizarre – if that were possible – though as my experience as her child was the only one I’d known, it was difficult to be objective. I’d always tended to accept it and think it was normal.

But now I was approaching middle age, and with the benefit of distance, I really began to question it. I was puzzled by all the strange allergies she had, and by her depressed and odd demeanour generally. Her repetitive behavioural tics had increased greatly, to the point where she couldn’t do anything at all without tapping or humming at the same time. She’d begun sporadically giving strange gifts to people, some of them through the post: a ‘willie stretcher’, a picture of a topless woman on horseback, a monk whose willie stuck out when you pushed his head, and a lump of pretend poo were examples. She continued to laugh till she cried at anything sexual or to do with bodily functions, and had numerous ‘page 3’ pictures stuck up on the kitchen walls, accompanied by really filthy jokes.

She’d also purchased a parrot which she was trying to teach to swear. This bird was allowed to fly free around the sitting room and kitchen, so, naturally, its excrement fell wherever it was. Although there was some newspaper on the floor where it sat, there’d be poo stuck to the wall, running down the fireplace and in a heap on the floor. The perching area was also strewn with nuts and crisps and bits of fruit.

Most rooms in the house were as full as ever with junk, and although there were only my mother and father living there, it had spread to almost every corner. Every horizontal surface was covered with pictures and ornaments, and carrier bags of food and junk were propped up in rows across the floor in both the sitting room and kitchen, and before anyone could sit down it was always first necessary to locate a big pile of newspapers or clothes. The stairs were also lined, on either side, with further rubbish, and on some treads there wasn’t even room to place a foot – you had to climb them two steps at a time. Upstairs, the room Jennifer used to sleep in was full to the ceiling, and the third bedroom completely out of commission; my mother had made a ceiling-high tower of books right in front of the closed door. My parents’ bed could only be accessed by a narrow walkway on one side, unless you climbed in via the foot end, and the room was festooned with my mother’s clothes, on hangers – things she hadn’t been able to fit into in years.

My mother still had her dolls stationed next to the bed, though; her row of seven ugly, raggy dolls (there were never eight, which always made me think of my dead brother – why was there no doll for him?).

My mother told me, one day, that my father had announced he was going to end his womanizing ways, and stay at home full-time to look after her. The truth was, other women were not so interested in him now. Not now that he’d had a double hip replacement and was walking with a stick, and taking pills for all sorts of health problems. I think the fact was he’d become afraid of dying, and making sure my mother in her chaotic, eccentric way would look after
him.
But his constant presence wasn’t what she was used to and she really didn’t want it. ‘He’s killing me, Faith,’ she said desperately.

I was to remember those words when, on one spring day in 2002, my phone rang at 6.30 in the morning. Just like any mother, my thoughts went straight to Alfie and Jennifer, and I became anxious – who’d be calling me at this hour? But it wasn’t about them. It was my brother.

‘Can you come, Faith?’ he said. ‘Mum is dead.’

‘My mother’s dead,’ I told Warren, as I began getting dressed. ‘That was my brother. My mother’s
dead.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ I continued. ‘I was only speaking to her two days ago, and she was fine. And now he’s saying she’s dead. It must be a mistake.’

Warren stayed in bed, so I had to drive myself there, wishing he was with me to support me, as I felt really shocked. As I drove there, along familiar streets, seeing familiar sights, it didn’t seem possible. What could have happened, I thought to myself, to make my brother think she was dead? Because she couldn’t be. It had to be a mistake.

When I arrived, there were police cars and ambulances outside, and inside my father was sitting in his chair, with a policeman opposite.

When he saw me, my father immediately started crying, grabbing hold of my hand, and really sobbing. He took me upstairs to where my mother was still lying in bed, lay down on the bed next to her and grabbed her pyjama collar. He grabbed it really hard, and bunched it up between his fingers, pushing her chin so that it was raised up at an angle. ‘You bitch,’ he said. ‘How could you do this to me? How
could
you?’

Her eyes were open and she was staring straight ahead. She was, very definitely, dead. I couldn’t stop staring, and I felt anger. How could he
do
that? Even in death, he was still abusing her. So aggressive, so possessive, so completely self-absorbed. Thinking only of what she’d done to him by
dying!

But mostly I couldn’t understand how she could be dead. She’d been fine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her.

‘What happened?’ I asked my father. He said he didn’t know. He said she’d been talking and was going to get up and get him a cup of tea. And then she’d tried to get up and, well, she’d just died. He’d called my younger sister, who’d tried to get her breathing, and then apparently the ambulance men had tried too, but it had been no use.

I went back downstairs, but my father remained up there for some time, only coming down to answer more questions. I found out that she’d apparently died from choking – that much they had established – and because of the circumstances there’d be a post-mortem. Her body was then taken to the hospital mortuary, where she remained for the next few days. My father proceeded to visit her daily – this woman who he’d treated so appallingly for fifty years, who he’d bullied, maligned, threatened, never helped, who he’d been unfaithful to, having affair after affair – and cry like a baby. I was, and still am, speechless with exasperation. What a travesty. What a farce it all was.

I was the one who went to register my mother’s death and, following the post-mortem, the death certificate arrived, which said she’d died from respiratory failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchopneumonia – her childhood neglect had finally killed her. Apparently, as soon as she’d moved in bed to get up, something related to the disease – pus, most probably – had lodged in her throat, completely blocking her airway, and killed her instantly.

My father grieved like a man utterly devastated by the loss of a woman he adored. It was all, every bit of it, about him. What was
he
going to do, how was
he
going to manage, how could she do this terrible thing to
him
, surely she would have known how difficult it would be for him? On and on, endlessly, while we all had to listen, and it sickened and distressed me to hear it. He was such a pathetic, useless, entirely selfish man. Except he wasn’t a man – he never had been. He was a self-centred, narcissistic little boy. Particularly when he started one of his bouts of self-indulgent reminiscing about this wonderful woman he’d been oh-so-happily and devotedly married to for half a century. No Holocaust denier could have rewritten history so passionately.

One thing, once the practicalities were dealt with, came to light. My mother had left money in a building society account for the children of one of my sisters. It was the sister she always used to hit so hard. None of the other grandchildren got anything.

In the days following my mother’s death, I walked about in a daze. Something had happened to me through my mother dying. I was desperately sad, incredibly shocked and, day after day, couldn’t stop crying. But there was something else, too; something I couldn’t quite verbalize. My mother’s death, and my jumble of feelings about it, was the very last thing I had expected. It had happened without warning like all the other major things that had happened to me: the deaths of Adam and Pops, Grandad, my friend Sue, and, of course, Nan. Also Joe leaving me, and all the other distressing things – I had not seen any of them coming. It seemed life was just a series of shocking things that harmed you, and it felt as if I’d suffered far more than I could cope with. Being that Wednesday’s child, and so bad and inadequate, I was simply unequal and unprepared. Retrospectively, it now seems clearer. Change – shocking change –
is
a part of normal life, but because such things were never ever discussed or explained, I had no tools whatsoever to deal with it.

The funeral – my mother was to be cremated – was led by the family, and Jennifer agreed to go up at the start of the service and read out a poem written by her cousin. But it was Phillip who had the task of telling everyone about the kind of person she was, and how much she’d be missed. As he spoke it was as if he was describing a different person. He described his memories of her as being very loving, warm, gentle and caring, and how she ‘was always there’ when he needed her. Such a different experience from mine. I simply didn’t recognize the person he was talking about. My mother had been remote, detached, physically undemonstrative, and not loving towards to me. Certainly ‘gentle’ or ‘caring’ or ‘always there’ wasn’t how
I
would have described her. Why had his relationship with her been so very different from my own? What had I done for these qualities to miss me?

I look back at my brother’s life today and one thing is very clear: it has always been so much happier, so much more stable, than mine, and this, I imagine, is why. But then it was really no secret that my mother preferred boys – particularly her eldest, who was perhaps the flesh-and-blood replacement of the brother she had so loved, and lost. He died around the same time as Tony.

On the day of the funeral I cried non-stop. Huge tears, the size of saucers, that flowed and flowed and flowed. It was as if I had no conscious control; as if a tap had been turned on and couldn’t be shut off. As if, on that one day, I was crying for everything that had ever happened between my mother and me. And also, I think, I shed tears of relief too. Somehow I think I knew that, from this day on, it was over. Over, or just starting: I wasn’t sure which. All I knew was my life would never be the same again.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother’s death would be the catalyst for everything that followed. Now that she could no longer hurt me – or, crucially, I her, by confronting all my childhood abuse – I knew I had to do something about my own life.

The day after my mother’s funeral I had been scheduled to attend a second interview for a promotion to a management post, a post I’d already been told was mine, following an ‘excellent’ first interview. I’d telephoned to explain my mother had died suddenly but was told I must either still attend, or miss out. That was simply the way things were in the so-called ‘caring’ agencies. The interview, unsurprisingly, went very badly, and I was told that I hadn’t got the job.

It was here, perhaps, that the strong feelings now being churned up about my mother were first channelled and put to some use. I immediately appealed, as I felt I’d been treated without compassion, and that a post I had been told was mine had then been taken away. The appeal went on for six months. Eventually, at the very final stage, my appeal was upheld and I was given the post, plus awarded back pay from the time I should have had it. My feelings about this were strong. It was almost a metaphorical chance to say ‘Up yours’ to both those in authority who’d tried to deny me,
and
my mother.

Within a few months I was in a very demanding role, managing a large team of staff. My work was intense. I attended child and adult protection meetings, and oversaw the gathering of evidence. As soon as one appalling case was successfully prosecuted, and my team’s evidence upheld, the next appalling case would be stacked up behind it. At the time I saw no connection or irony in doing a job so closely tied up with the childhood
I’d
had. All I knew was that, to the exclusion of any other part of my role, bringing people who harmed others to account for their actions was my most powerful driving force.

But there were no winners in cases such as these, and both this and the hours I was working were beginning to take their toll. It was made worse by the fact that my employer wouldn’t meet their commitment to my role as magistrate, and I was regularly having to work weekends as well, to make up for the time I spent sitting on the bench. Yet I couldn’t stop doing it – I was a woman possessed. I had no idea why I so desperately wanted to make people safe – but I passionately wanted
everyone
who didn’t look after the people in their care prosecuted – and to make sure nobody got away with harming any adult or child.