I Won't Forgive What You Did (36 page)

My need to help people had already begun to spill over into my personal life. The Christmas before my mother died, Alfie met a young girl, called Amber, in the pub, and had asked me if she could join us for Christmas lunch, as she had nowhere else to go. A few months after that first meeting, around the time of my mother’s death, she told me she’d given birth to a baby boy the previous September. She had turned eighteen only a month earlier, and the baby had been put into foster care; he was now due to be adopted by a nice young couple, who could give him everything she thought she couldn’t. She told me her own mother had had the baby taken away at birth and she hadn’t even seen him. Her choice had already been made abundantly clear: she’d been made to choose between either keeping her baby, or her family; if she chose to keep her child, they’d disown her.

Of course, being so young, and so vulnerable, she’d chosen to follow her mother’s ideas, and her mother, who’d hidden the pregnancy from everyone, told people that she’d brought her daughter home to convalesce because she’d been kicked by a horse.

I was so moved by Amber’s story, and her very palpable anxiety, I told her that if she decided she wanted to get her baby back, I would try to help her.

Several chats later, she reached the decision that she just wanted to see him before he was finally adopted – she couldn’t bear the thought that she would never see him. But, of course, when she did see him, it all became clear. This was
her
child and she desperately wanted him back, so over the next few weeks wheels were put in motion for this to happen, and he was finally returned to her at just eight months old.

Sadly, when her mother found out what had happened, she moved to France shortly after and, true to her word, has had almost no contact with her daughter and grandson to this day.

I, however, very much have. Feeling so involved in their lives, I felt I couldn’t abandon them and when Amber reclaimed her son, who she decided to call Cameron, I found them a little house, close to where I lived, and they became – and still are – very much a part of my family.

It was this experience, perhaps, that was one of the key nails in the coffin of my continuing travesty of a marriage. Ever the upstanding member of the community, and still a respected professional in social care, Warren wanted nothing to do with Amber or Cameron, and was routinely rude and unwelcoming. He made no secret of the fact he didn’t want them around, citing ‘Whatever would I have in common with them?’ as his reason for treating them badly. Indeed, for someone who made so much of his superiority, his lack of charity towards others he deemed of lower standing was breathtaking. He used to treat Amber as if she was less than human, and would also punish me for continuing to associate with her, by ignoring me and them when I had them in the house, which I did often. As Amber had only the reading and writing age of a child, she’d come to me for help with her paperwork. Warren would continue to be cruel to Cameron when he was older – promising he wouldn’t let him go, if pushing him downhill on his little tractor, and then laughing as he did so, despite Cameron’s tears.

Yet still I couldn’t find the wherewithal to leave him. By now, his anger spilled out everywhere; sometimes passively, sometimes scarily and openly aggressively. Looking back, I realize it had always been like this, but perhaps I needed to change myself in order to see it.

When we were out socially he’d routinely drink so much that his abusive comments to me must have embarrassed everyone around him. Once he came home and was sick on the floor. One day, we had a few people around for lunch when, midway through the meal, he disappeared. Embarrassed and flustered, I made my excuses and went to look for him, only to find him in another room watching television.

And his anger was no longer just directed at me. One day, on a train, when we were returning from lunch with his daughter, he got angry with a young man sitting opposite. He had his feet on the seat, which annoyed Warren greatly, but instead of just saying something, quietly and
to
him, he began talking in a loud whisper, in a really aggressive fashion, saying: ‘Someone has to sit on that seat – fucking rude bastard. No consideration for others!’

Already anxious about his temper, I gently suggested that if it was really annoying him, it might be sensible to actually ask the man to remove them, or tell the guard, or even change seats. But Warren didn’t want to do any of those things. He just continued to sit there, getting angrier and angrier and staring continually at the man.

I’d known Warren for many years, and through many bouts of violence, but even I wasn’t prepared for what he did next. When the man stood up to get off the train, Warren suddenly leapt up from his seat. He would later claim – though I certainly hadn’t seen it – the man had deliberately shaken his water bottle so that a couple of drops fell on Warren’s arm, but whatever the reason it was as if Warren had gone mad. He started shoving the man, and punching him, over and over, while the man looked at Warren in complete shock. He didn’t retaliate, just put his arms up to protect himself from the blows. Eventually he managed to stumble to the exit, while Warren, now seemingly spent, sat back down. I was so shocked that I could only sit and stare. Warren’s face was by now scarlet. But it wasn’t over yet. He suddenly jumped up again, and began running up the train towards the exit, passing the shocked faces of the completely bewildered passengers, and reaching the man just as he alighted. Once again he started hitting and trying to wrestle with him, and I watched in horror as he half picked up and half pushed the man through the now open door and onto the platform. The man landed on his hands and knees and eventually scrambled up and staggered off, thinking, I imagine, that he’d been attacked by a lunatic and had better get away as fast as he could.

I remember being surprised that at no time did he retaliate, particularly as he was both taller and younger, but what I most remember thinking was how astonished I was that an apparently sane and sober, smart, well-groomed, middle-aged man could behave in such an appallingly violent way.

When indoors, Warren wasn’t any less scary. He’d taken to spending his evenings upstairs, on the computer, apparently working. But it soon became apparent something wasn’t right. Whenever I entered the room, he’d quickly click his mouse so that whatever was on screen would disappear. Before long I found out his ‘work’ wasn’t ‘work’ – he was looking at particularly disgusting kinds of pornography. Feeling predictably, and ridiculously, dirty myself, I eventually confronted him, only to be told that if I gave him more sex he wouldn’t need to look at it. When I pressed him, he also showed me, and it really was truly disgusting, and I asked him what he got from seeing it. ‘It’s curiosity,’ was his considered response. And it was this, I think, this simple thing (and its implications – where would his curiosity lead him – us – next?) that made me realize I had to act. I had to find the courage to make a new life for myself and my grown-up children, and begin the process of finding out who I really was. I could no longer countenance the terrifying prospect of going to my grave without doing so.

My mother’s death affected everything I did. I’d been so tightly enmeshed with her I couldn’t imagine never seeing her again and every time I thought about it I panicked. During this time my therapist, without warning, sent me a letter saying she was no longer practising. As I’d been with her for ten years, this was a huge shock. Finishing without notice and without having made provision for continuing care was the last thing you’d expect from a professional engaged in this kind of sensitive work.

Following this, and still clutching at straws, I suppose, I persuaded Warren to attend couple therapy with me. We saw a therapist weekly for about a year in all, but she appeared unable to hear what I was trying to tell her and seemed, as usual, to be completely taken in by Warren’s quiet, engaging, good-humoured manner. He’d blind her with his knowledge and views on various things until in the end I started shouting and Warren would tell her how awful he found it. She’d then, of course, ask me to try not to do it. It ended suddenly one night with Warren refusing to go back, saying it was a complete waste of time. Nothing, he’d decided, was ever going to change. I felt he’d sabotaged it intentionally from the very beginning.

I continued with my work and coped with it well over the next two to three years; it was actually a welcome distraction. My workload was massive though and increasingly it began to engulf me. It overwhelmed me to the point where even moving from my desk took effort I didn’t have. I’d shuffle papers and put them away in my drawer and get them out and reshuffle them, sometimes throwing them away if they weren’t important, in order to maintain my feeling of being in control. I was continuing to work seventy hours a week, but it still wasn’t enough. I began dreading having to supervise my staff and found myself unable to end the meetings. Consequently they’d go on and on. I felt too dreadful to write up their supervision notes afterwards. This made me feel even worse – the safety of children was at stake here. Children like the child
I
had been.

I’d been managing a ground-breaking case and my staff and I had just completed most of the work for a big prosecution. It was complex and exhausting, but even before it went to court another was dumped on my desk. I really don’t know how I managed this second case; I was breaking down in tears before court hearings and breaking down again afterwards. It was as if my whole body was refusing to function, either professionally, or in my disturbed marriage. I went to my GP where, once again, I couldn’t stop crying, and she straight away signed me off work, with severe stress and depression.

It was around this time that something else happened that might have signalled all was far from well. I unexpectedly ran into Daniel one day, while visiting one of my sisters. I had, at the time, begun growing out my hair, from a short layered cut to one all the same length – I had intended to grow it to my shoulders. At that time, however, it was halfway between the two; all one length, almost, but still not that long.

On seeing Daniel in my sister’s house, I stiffened, as ever, as he approached with his customary speed. Only this time, his expression was different from usual. ‘No no no no!’ he whispered, with great intensity, intimately, in my ear. ‘Your hair! It looks terrible! You must either have it long or short. You can’t wear it like this!’

I was immediately mortified. It was like being a child again. And knowing I would be seeing him a week later, at a family christening, I rushed to the hairdressers and had it cut really short. There was no time to grow it, so I felt compelled to have it cut off. I simply couldn’t countenance displeasing him.

I attended the christening, as did Daniel. ‘Much better,’ he crooned in my ear as he greeted me. He kissed my cheek. ‘Yes,’ he purred. ‘Much, much better.’

Immediately after that I had a nervous breakdown. A full breakdown; the most terrifying sensation imaginable – to feel so overwhelmed by every little thing, to be unable to do anything, even move. Movement, even movement around me, made me feel like I was falling, and was never going to stop, going down into a black nothingness.

I just sat there, staring straight ahead, gripping the chair arms, afraid to move because I was sure if I did I’d fall to pieces – literally – and never recover. I couldn’t stop crying, and was in the grip of a dangerous depression. Needless to say, the whole thing made Warren cross and he ignored me most of the time. ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘how awful it is, having to live with someone who’s depressed?’ I had no answer to that, even if I had had the mental energy to answer. Which was probably why he also commented that he’d always promised himself he’d never live with a depressed woman – as if I’d planned it. Even so, he was still there.

I begged Warren to stop ignoring me, and I begged him in earnest. I knew – and I told him – that I was in such a bad place that, if I had a knife, I was afraid I would stick it in him. I was terrified by how much I wanted to do that – to kill either myself or him. Naturally, having listened to, and dismissed me, for so long, Warren didn’t take any of it seriously. Though he seemed to hear me, nothing changed.

For two months I existed in this horrible place, being seen by the doctor every week, and with the medication I’d been on since the injury to my hand being increased dramatically. Then, on the spur of the moment, I acquired an eight-week-old puppy. Amber had got a puppy, Buttons, for her little boy, Cameron, and asked me if I’d go with her to collect her. Unfortunately, perhaps knowing his sibling was about to leave him, the other puppy left in the litter became so upset I said we’d take him too. He was called George, and he was such a comfort. It was a bit like having a baby. I’d wrap him in a blanket, and sit and stroke him, feeling not quite so alone. I had really got him for Jennifer, to say sorry for having Polly put down.

Warren was furious that I’d got George without consulting him and so another marital battleground – how to look after a puppy, of all things – gave my tenuous grasp of emotional stability another bashing, and my mental state went back downhill.

I became so ill again my GP wanted me to see a psychiatrist – one she believed was the best in the business. She made arrangements for me to attend one of the Priory Hospitals, and to meet with the same psychiatrist who had been unable to take me as a patient eleven years previously.

This time, to my undying gratitude, he was able to help me straight away. For the first time in any sort of therapy in my life, I felt a real sense of protection. The staff at the centre treated me like I mattered, like I wasn’t just a condition, but a human being, and never made me do anything I didn’t want to do, both in terms of taking medication, and with my treatment. When he encouraged me to become an in-patient and I refused, he respected and trusted my decision. Despite his serious concerns for the way I was thinking and feeling, he arranged for me to attend the hospital for as many days – for day care – as I felt I could manage.