The Middle Child (20 page)

    
"I remember.  It almost broke my heart."

    
"The affairs started the next evening.  I deliberately left phone numbers in my pockets."

    
"I know.  I found most of them."

     Alex’s face coloured with the shame of her actions. 
"But why didn’t you say anything?"

    
"Truthfully, because I didn’t want to lose you.  I knew you were punishing me for something but I didn’t know what it was and every time I tried to talk you became so angry and hostile that I just hoped it would pass.  I knew that we’d been happy once and I prayed that you would return to the person you’d been before and that we would be happy again.  Sounds weak doesn’t it?"

     Alex shook her head, aching for the person that Nikki was and the pain that she had put her through. 
"And because you didn’t say anything I thought you knew and didn’t care.  Again, I turned everything around to suit the pre-conceived ideas in my own mind."

    
"Is that why you brought that girl back?"

     Alex nodded and the old self-loathing returned to devour her soul.  Her body suddenly craved a drink to escape the feelings that were like thick black tar on her heart.

     "And you knew that I’d come home and catch you in our bed?"

    
"Yes," Alex admitted, weakly.  "I knew that there would be no way that we could get back from that.  I knew that my doing such a vile, unforgivable thing would push you over the edge and the voices in my mind would finally be satisfied."

     Nikki sat back into the sofa.  Her eyes were busily darting around the room meaning that she was processing the information.

     "Did you hate me that much?"

    
"I didn’t hate you at all.  Even then I still loved you but in my mind the destruction of our relationship was inevitable.  It was destined to fail."

    
"Why now, Alex?  Why are you telling me all this now?"

     Alex thought very carefully about her next words and knew that after this there would be no going back.  With her next sentence she was committing herself to brutal honesty and awareness of her own failings. 
"Because I’m an alcoholic who has caused a lot of pain and I have to try and put things right."

     Alex saw the surprise on Nikki’s face. 
"Yes, I’ve finally admitted it and I’m trying to take it seriously.  I have a problem and I have to deal with it.  I haven’t come here tonight to ask for your forgiveness.  I’m starting to realise that I have no control over the actions of other people.  I accept how much pain and heartache I’ve caused.  I know that we can never go back but I’d seriously like you in my corner as a very good friend. 

    
"I want nothing from you but it’s important to me that you know how much I loved you and that my time here was the happiest time of my life.  I don’t expect to go back and believe me when I say that I love you enough to want the best for you and I hope that you’ve found it." 

     The words almost stuck in her throat.  The thought of Nikki with anyone else caused her physical pain similar to what she'd felt the night she’d been beaten to within an inch of her life.  But in her heart she meant what she said, which surprised no-one more than it surprised her.  Nikki did deserve the best of everything life had to offer and Alex knew that that could never include her.

     "My biggest regret is that I didn’t have the sense to realise that I was trying to lose the most precious thing I’d ever had.  It’s a mistake that’s mine to live with."

    
"But why, Alex?" Nikki asked, her eyes gleaming and pained.  "Why did you have to push me away?"

     There it was.  The question that she’d avoided answering for years.  The crux of everything that had gone bad between them.  Did she have the courage to share her deepest, darkest fears with the only woman she had ever loved.  A woman who was now lost to her but deserved to know the truth.  Did she have the strength to re-live it or would she come out the other side more damaged than she was now.  Could she take that chance and risk inching closer to the edge of the cliff?

     She took a deep breath.  "I think there are some things about my past that you deserve to know."

Chapter 17 – Catherine

     Catherine marvelled again at the décor.  The room didn’t reek of expertise and knowledge and insightful art.  Instead the walls were plastered with black and white photo’s of
Shrewsbury Town's glory moments. 

    
"Are you really paying me to let you sit in a comfy chair for fifty minutes?"

    
"What?"

    
"You’ve sat and stared for the last ten minutes at items you’ve seen many times before.  We’ve talked at length about your mother and you claim you have nothing left to say yet here you are again.  Why?"

    
"I don’t know."

    
"Yes you do, so be honest."

    
"I really don’t know.  I’ve told you."

    
"You’ve skirted around the issue throughout all our sessions and now the time has come.  You can’t avoid it any longer."

    
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Catherine said, examining the length of her nails.

    
"Get the words out.  Tell me what it is that you want to say."

    
"Okay, I’m frightened that I don’t love my children.  Is that what you want to hear?"

     Emily's expressionless face belied the emotion that had forced the words out of her mouth. 
"Finally, we’re starting to get somewhere."

     Catherine felt relief that the words that had been so close to her thoughts had finally been given a voice.  The words themselves hadn’t really formed in her head but a feeling, an emotion had been present for months.  The feeling had represented a dark space within her.  A part of herself that she had no wish to explore but despite her best efforts the feelings had remained. 

     "How do you feel?"

    
"Relieved and disgusted."

    
"Why disgusted?"

    
"Didn’t you hear what I just said?"

     Emily nodded. 
"I heard what you said but did you hear what you said?"

    
"Of course I heard," Catherine snapped.  Sometimes the whole point of therapy wore her down.  Sometimes, just occasionally, she wanted an answer from someone else.  She didn’t want to dig and dissect her feelings.  She just wanted them gone.

    
"So what did you actually say?" Emily asked, unruffled.

    
"I said that I don’t love my children."  Catherine groaned at having to repeat herself.  It was bad enough saying those words once.  Mothers weren’t supposed to feel that way about their children.

    
"No, Catherine, that’s not what you said.  Listen to the difference in the words.  You said, 'I’m frightened that I don’t love my children'.  Do you see?"

    
"How is that so different.  Surely it amounts to the fact that I’m a failure as a mother?"

    
"Only if you want to be but we’ll come on to that in a little while.  The difference is the three words at the beginning of the sentence.  To state ‘I don’t love my children’ is quite emphatic and without doubt.  It is an irrevocable statement.  That’s not what you said.  The first thing is that you said the word ‘frightened’ which indicates that it is not a state of emotion that you wish for.  The thought that you don’t love your children scares you.  You also used the word ‘that’.  If you put those three words together before the statement it indicates both doubt and fear.  Both are positive signs."

     Catherine felt the frustration grow. 
"Why are you picking on the wording of the sentence instead of actually addressing the problem with me."

     Emily sighed. 
"Your wording is important because you didn’t give much thought to the sentence before it left your mouth which often means that it is a true representation of your inner feelings.  Had you taken longer to form the words before saying them we might not have got the whole truth."

    
"But this is not just recent.  It’s not a feeling I’ve had for a few months.  If I’m honest I’ve never been close to either of my girls."

    
"Aaah, now you see, not being close to them is not the same as not loving them.  Don’t give your answer too much thought but just tell me how you felt when you first became pregnant."

    
"Delirious," Catherine said without thinking.  She quickly realised it was true.  She had known before the official test from the doctor that she was pregnant and she’d been euphoric when the test had confirmed it.  She remembered sitting in a coffee shop two streets away from the home she had then shared with Tim, hugging the knowledge to herself for just a little while over a latte and a muffin.  She had devised all sorts of elaborate ways in which she was going to tell Tim the news.  But when she’d walked into the flat the words, "Tim, I’m pregnant" had exploded from her mouth.

    
"We were both thrilled.  Each night we would lie in bed play fighting over names.  Tim teased me mercilessly about wanting the name Wilbur for a boy or a girl.  When we found out it was twins our joy simply doubled.  Many of our friends rolled their eyes but we didn’t care.  There were no disadvantages as far as we were concerned and saw it only as a double blessing."

    
"Were you scared?"

    
"No more than any other mother, I don’t think.  We did everything we were supposed to do.  We attended all the classes and bought all the books.  I remember the first night I felt a kick.  It must have been Jess.  I reached for the book and told Tim, ‘they’re not supposed to be kicking yet’ and he said ‘maybe they haven’t read the same books as us’.  I’ve never forgotten that," she said, growing sad.  For a while she had re-lived the innocent excitement of all their dreams coming true.  The anticipation of seeing the lives they had created.

    
"What went wrong?"

     Catherine remembered the day they were born as if she had just been wheeled out of the delivery room.  Two bundles of wool and flesh had been placed into her waiting arms and the excitement was suddenly replaced by darker emotions that she had never cared to examine.

     "From the moment they were born I wished they belonged to someone else.  I didn’t want them.  How sick does that sound?"

    
"Not sick at all.  It’s surprisingly common.  Tell me more about how you felt at that time."

    
"I didn’t know them," Catherine admitted, re-living the memory of the two similar faces before her.  "They were like tiny little strangers to me.  Tim was enthralled from the second he set eyes on them and I couldn’t understand why.  I watched him with fascination and wondered why he felt this immediate affinity with these things in my arms.  They meant nothing to me and all the feelings I’d had before their birth simply disappeared.  You see, I’d loved them before they were born."

    
"Well, no, actually you loved the idea of them before they were born, before they were real.  Did you feel guilty about your feelings?"

    
"Of course I felt guilty.  Everyone was cooing all over them and I felt numb inside.  I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  If I had thought Tim would agree I would have suggested that we give them away.  There, now you know the truth and you can hate me as much as you like.  It’ll make little difference to the way I feel about myself," she said, miserably.

    
"How did you cope?" Emily responded, without judgement.

    
"In what way?"

    
"Well you had all these people telling you what gorgeous, beautiful children you’d produced and you didn’t agree.  I’m assuming that you didn’t share your innermost feelings with a roomful of doting relatives, so how did you cope?"

    
"Ummm… I just did.  I think I watched Tim and copied his actions and hoped that I would look genuine.  I prayed that no-one would notice and I just hoped that the feelings would come in time."

    
"But they didn’t?"

     Catherine shook her head, mortified that she had divulged so much of her darkness to Emily.  She waited for the therapist to order her out of the room whilst refusing to see her anymore.

     "Did you never talk to anyone about how you felt?"

    
"How could I?  It would have made me sound like a monster.  I know how evil it must sound to you…"

    
"It sounds to me like post-natal depression."

    
"What?" Catherine cried, her eyes and mouth forming circles within her face.  She’d heard of the condition but it hadn’t applied to her. 

    
"I couldn’t have had that."

    
"Why not?"

    
"Because it was much worse than that.  I read about it and in most cases it got better within the first few months after the birth."

    
"In most cases.  Not all mother’s with post-natal depression are carrying around your baggage.  It’s far more common than you think.  Do you think every mother looks down at their newborn and experiences unbound joy from that moment on until eighteen years later?"

    
"Not at all."

    
"Then why do you expect it of yourself?  Why do you not allow yourself any negative emotions?  It doesn’t make you a monster, just human.  Ask any mother if she has never felt a modicum of dislike for her child and if the answer is ‘never’ I’d call that mother a liar.  It’s just not realistic."

    
"But it couldn’t have been that," Catherine said, pushing away what she felt was a simplistic view.  "The girls are six years old.  Post-natal depression doesn’t last that long."

    
"It started as PND but you saw it as something else.  What was the predominant thought in your mind while you went through these feelings alone?"

    
"Why don’t I love my children?"

    
"To be accurate that sentence should have had the word ‘yet’ tagged on the end.  Over time that question became replaced by a statement, whether it was a conscious thought or working away somewhere in your unconscious mind, you developed an answer to your own question.  Do you know what it is?"

     Realisation began to dawn on Catherine.  The conscious thought had tried to come through many times but she’d always pushed away the words before they had a chance to become a whole statement, so abhorrent was the idea.

     "Well, what was the answer?" Emily urged.

    
"Because I’m like my mother," Catherine said before covering her mouth in horror.  "But I wouldn’t let myself think that, not on the surface, anyway.  I always pushed it away."

    
"Never underestimate the power of the unconscious mind.  It works away in the background without your knowledge, sometimes protecting you and other times not."

     Catherine felt shell-shocked by Emily’s words.  Dare she hope that anything Emily said was true.  Any hope at all would give her something to cling to.

     "But for years I’ve kept my distance from them.  I’ve been unable to get close to either of them in any way at all."

    
"What you’ve done is protect them."

     Catherine shook her head, vehemently.  Emily was really asking her to take a leap of faith with that one.  She couldn’t see how her actions at any point could be perceived as protecting her girls.

     "Imagine your subconscious mind working in the background and making you believe that you’re like your mother.  Avoidance was the only way.  You were protecting them by keeping your distance so that you wouldn’t hurt them, but it just made the problem worse.  The more you distanced yourself from them to protect them from what you perceived as the evil gene inside you, you made it harder for the feelings that hatched at their birth to go away.  Yet still something inside was maternally strong enough to protect them in the only way you knew how.  Your doubts about your own abilities to be a mother were fed by the post-natal depression and you began to think that you were just like your own mother after all, that some abusive gene had been handed down.  So, you see, what you did was to protect them by keeping away."

    
"It’s just not possible," Catherine said, closing her eyes.  The torment of the last six years could not be explained so easily.

    
"But I hit my child," she admitted, miserably.

    
"And then you did the responsible thing of walking away until you could understand your reasons for doing it.  It would have been easier to stay within your nice, safe life and pass it off as a solitary event until the next time it happened.  Again, you protected them by leaving."

    
"I’m scared of doing it again."

    
"There is no cast-iron guarantee that something like this will never happen again.  Even the most stable of mothers can lose their temper at some time or another but smacking your child once is not reason enough to leave behind the home and family you’ve created for ever.  At some stage you’re going to have to take the risk."