Nipper (27 page)

After all this time, I still miss her. I can’t seem to get her out of my head, and the memory of her seems to follow me around; every day. I look around and there’s a heartache following me.

She’s been the only good thing I can remember from this hazy part of my life. I still love her and every woman that I am with knows it as well. If I have arguments with any woman I’m seeing, I’ll compare them to Sophie.

‘Sophie wouldn’t do that, Sophie would never have said that.’

It’s driving me crazy as I have done something worse than Dad ever did to me. I have broken a young girl’s heart.

I never have a number, any address or any idea of where Sophie might be living, and I have no idea whether she would talk to me again even if I did find her. I just want to talk to her to apologise for the pain I have caused her. I also pray every week that she is happy and that she’s found someone to take care of her.

And I’m always thinking, maybe I’ll meet someone like Sophie again. And if I can get myself back to normal and if it happens again, I won’t blow it this time.

I’m older and wiser – though not that much older or wiser – but maybe because of what I’ve been through, when people look at me they seem to know that I’ve had a hard life just by talking to me. I seem a lot older than my 27 years. It’s obviously to do with my upbringing: even at 21 when I moved abroad people always thought of me as older. But now, if there’s any kind of violence around me, I walk away. I want to be a different person. I’m doing it for myself. And for someone like Sophie who might come into my life. I’m doing it for her, that person.

I’m out in town in Dublin. It’s around two o’clock in the afternoon, and me and Bjorn, a friend from Sweden, are shopping for clothes. We’ve given up hope of finding anything as the shops are beginning to close up for the day. I look at my watch and then have to step to the side so as not to bump into people coming in the opposite direction.

As I look up to apologise, I see her standing there in front of me, about six inches away – and my heart explodes.

She is holding hands with a guy but we are now staring at each other in shock.

I can’t believe it – her beautiful face only inches from me. Then she lets go his hand as we lunge at each other. I’m squeezing her harder than I have ever held anyone in my life.

‘Sophie!’

‘Charlie!’

Everything around me has disappeared. I stand back to have another look at her, still holding her hands.

‘How are you, what are you doing here?’

By this time her boyfriend must be thinking,
Who the hell is this?

‘I’m on a weekend break! Oh! This is Steve.’

I shake his hand – well, squeeze as he’s standing with my Sophie. We talk very briefly then say our goodbyes. I walk in one direction, she goes the other.

I can’t think. I can’t see straight. And my heart is still pounding out of my shirt.

‘Who was that, Charlie?’ asks Bjorn.

‘The woman I should be married to.’

‘Oh! Was that
the
Sophie?’

‘Yeah that was her!’

‘I didn’t know before what you meant when you said you were stupid, but stupid is the wrong word – I would say insane!’

‘Thanks for that, mate.’

I still can’t believe I’ve seen her and let her go without telling her I’m sorry, but I’m glad she’s OK and looking fantastic.

Actually, she’s looking incredible. I just can’t believe how incredible she looks.

As I walk along the road my head is all over the place.

‘Why don’t you go and find her,’ Bjorn says. ‘Tell her how you feel.’

‘No, she’s with someone. Just leave it, mate—’

‘
Charlie!
’

I feel someone jump on my back and wrap their arms around me.

It’s Sophie – she has come back to find me.

I can’t help it. I start to cry.

‘Sophie, I still love you, I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I’m really, really sorry.’

‘I still love you as well,’ she says.

I’m sobbing now and so is she, and we’re kissing and hugging and wild horses couldn’t tear us apart.

I feel at this moment that my life has turned full circle and my heart wants to burst with happiness. I do have some unanswered questions about my time on this planet still, like: Who is the guardian angel that keeps saving me? Who keeps answering my prayers? Who controls my fate? Is it my angel from above and why in this year, on this month, on this day, at this time, in this place do we end up six inches from each other?

I will probably never know but for me I don’t care. My Sophie is here.

And to be honest with you, the only time in my life I’ve felt as good as this was when Dundee United beat Barcelona at Tannadice.

W
e walked over to a hotel and chatted about how much we had missed each other, and how sorry I was for what I had done, still holding on to each other’s jackets, in case someone stole the other one away. She had told Steve that she had to be alone for a minute and came and found me.

We exchanged numbers, said our goodbyes and kept in touch for the next six months. I was over the moon. Sophie finished with Steve when she got home, and started visiting me in Ireland as she had now become an air hostess, and had free flights to everywhere. She could see that I’d stopped taking drugs and stopped drinking so we decided to start afresh, all over again. A clean slate, as if we had just met.

The first time Sophie visited me in Dublin, we went out for a meal, then a drink, catching up on lost time. I told her
how sorry I was for what I had done to her; how things had changed in my head. I wasn’t that aggressive thug I used to be.

We had a good night, talking about what we had been up to for the past few years. She kept commenting on how different I looked and how calm I had become, as she knew me as hyperactive, someone who would be running around a dance floor, who never sat and had a serious conversation for two minutes. And I wasn’t looking around the room any more, waiting for trouble. When we had a dance now, my eyes were fixed only on her.

I made another life-changing choice after that. I was going to move back with Sophie, as she had been the one making all the sacrifices up until then. I wanted to prove to her that I was as much in love with her as she was with me.

But before we could move on with our lives there was one thing I needed to do. I had decided to go back to Scotland to see Dad, and to let Sophie meet him too. I flew into Liverpool airport and arranged to meet Sophie at Preston Station. We couldn’t risk meeting in Chester in case I was spotted by one of her family as our being back together was still top secret. Her parents only knew me as the guy that broke their little girl’s heart.

Then I took her to see the man who had made my childhood a misery and who turned me into the monster I used to be. She was curious what he was like as I had told her
everything that he had done to me. I think she was a bit scared too, but that was outweighed by anger.

He’s still living in that semi-detached in St Fillans Road, the one I walked out of after I beat him up for the first and last time.

But he isn’t the big strong man I remember – he’s now a frail old man with grey hair, a bit wobbly on his legs, with an old-looking face. He’s changed his bottle of vodka for cider now, and the house smells of old people, a musty kind of smell. My reaction is different to what I thought it would be. I kind of feel sorry for him, as he has clearly tried to drink himself to death, probably because of all those years of guilt. I’m glad I never killed him back then, as he has done a better job of it to himself than I could ever have done.

He isn’t as threatening as I remember him either. After chatting, mainly small talk, we decide to watch a video on the VCR and choose
Braveheart
, one of his favourites – and still one of mine, to be honest.

As he sits on the floor watching the movie, he’s crying, ‘Look what they English bastards did to oor women and kids. Bastards, fuckin’ bastards!’

‘Watch yir mooth, Dad. Sophie’s English.’

‘Sorry son. She’s aright.’

I think he has run out of anger and is now depressed beyond belief. Drink does that to you. Drugs are illegal but alcohol has probably ruined more lives than anything else on
the planet and it’s still available over the counter. I spent my childhood witnessing first hand the effects of what alcohol did to my dad and what he then did to me in turn.

But I think Sophie is quite shocked at the fact that he is so small and weak, as she is expecting some huge evil man. She has seen me take on three or four lads at a time, and this grey-haired old man is nothing compared to them. Sophie’s anger has turned to pity too, and she’s gazing at me with a sad look on her face.

‘Is he OK?’

Dad is now swaying from side to side and shaking.

‘Don’t you worry aboot me pal, just dinna use all mi toilet roll,’ he chuckles away to himself. At least his hearing is still OK.

I don’t know what I’m expecting from him. Maybe I think he’s going to apologise for what he did to me all those years ago. But he can hardly remember yesterday, never mind my childhood.

Or maybe I think that seeing him again will help me come to terms with all that rage in me, even if I have calmed down over the last two or three years. But seeing him now only leaves me with a sense of pity. Not for him – he’s way beyond feeling sorry for. And not for myself – I’ve exhausted all my self-pity in too many late nights in Spanish bars.

But pity for the waste of it all – all those years when he and I could have been happy together, when he could have been a real dad to me like Sophie’s dad, caring for his children,
cherishing their lives, and happy for their existence, instead of what he’s turned into – a shrunken shell of a man, consumed by his own anger, and demented and destroyed by years of addiction to alcohol. And when he couldn’t vent all his rage on Mum, me, Bonnie and all his girlfriends, he’s probably turned it all in on himself.

He just sits there drunk, trying to make a joke of everything on his own, in his three-bedroom house. Tommy has gone up to see him, to try and get him to stop drinking. But Dad doesn’t care any more; he just wants to die.

It’s sad really; he chose the wrong road and I nearly did too. I guess he wasn’t as strong as I was after all. Maybe he couldn’t handle the things his father did to him. Or maybe he just didn’t care. And I’m not hanging around to find out. It’s all far too late to make any difference anyway.

I don’t feel guilty for saying what I said the night I walked out of his house when I was sixteen, when I told him I didn’t care less if he lived or died. When I was less than four years old I was in a tug of war between my mum and my dad. I told the judge I wanted to be with my dad. It was a bad choice, but then again, four-year-old kids aren’t very good at multiple-choice tests. And besides, I paid the price for my bad choice for years and years to come. But hey, that’s life.

But that’s all in the past. I’ve got my life back and if there is such a thing as karma – and I believe there is – all debts have been paid.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
.

Couldn’t put Charlie together again
.

But Sophie did.

S
o what has happened to everyone?

Sophie and I left Scotland and headed for England. We met up again in Preston to make sure things were going to be OK between us. She went to tell her parents the news that she was getting back with the boy who had promised to look after her and let her down. I felt so sorry for her. But whatever they may have said to her, they must have eventually given her their blessings to carry on seeing me.

The other reason for going back there with her was to erase all the memories since the last time we left Preston – the years we spent apart and the eight months of hell I put her through. I started a double-glazing job in Lancashire; I was a conservatory fabricator – well, that’s what I told the person who hired me. I could pick things up very quickly, as I would watch other people and copy what they did.

Preston was good for me, as I was getting prepared for life in Cheshire. And it would give Sophie’s parents time to get used to the idea of us being back together. After six months of living in Preston, we moved to Cheshire so Sophie could be close to her family, and I could spend the rest of my life making it up to her and to them, which I’m still doing.

As for me, my anger seems to have disappeared and, after all those false starts and broken promises to myself and Sophie, I have finally, truly turned my life around. I will never even look at a drug again.

I still have problems. I’m more settled in myself, but I don’t even know now whether my head is straight down the middle. I still have split feelings about everything. Every decision I make, even now, I still question the things that I do, from everyday decisions to small moral choices. I hate letting people down and I’ll take it out on myself. But when it gets too much for me, Sophie will just tell me to stop being daft, and I calm down.

To be honest I often feel the fact that my life has been turned around is down to pure luck in meeting Sophie – though I still believe that she was sent to me from heaven. In the last five years Sophie and I have bought a house together, got married and gone to the Maldives on our honeymoon. A lot of people from my past came to my wedding, like Blake, Mum’s second husband, and Calum, my old nutcase school friend and partner in crime.

Garry, the older brother of my late cousin Shane was my best man. Shane was a true friend and an exceptional person
who inspired me to keep going. He died recently of cancer of the oesophagus, aged thirty. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. Shane is the reason I believe there is life after death. If God, or whoever is upstairs, can take someone like him off the earth then I know for a fact that it doesn’t end here. If I can be half the man in my later years that he was in his life, I’ll never be stuck for friends.

Paul, Mandy’s son and still my closest friend, was my other best man. I couldn’t believe how nice Paul and his brother Peter were to my dad while I was away from Dundee and out of the country, going up to his house every now and again to keep an eye on him. Dad was such a nice guy when he was sober, and he was also able to manipulate people in a way that I will never be able to explain – I’ve tried throughout this book, but it’s still a mystery to me. If you can tell me why the whole German nation followed Adolf Hitler, I’ll tell you why Paul cared for the well-being of my dad. And as I said earlier, Paul had mainly blanked out the rest of what went on.