I Remember, Daddy (17 page)

Suddenly, without any warning, I grabbed the handle of the car door and pushed it open. We were travelling at almost 40 mph at the time and as I tried to twist my legs sideways so that I could throw myself out of my seat on to the road, I heard Sam scream.

Cursing, Jenny swung the car towards the pavement and slammed her foot down hard on the brake.

‘What the bloody hell are you trying to do?’ she shouted at me, banging the steering wheel with the heels of her hands. ‘You could have got us all killed. Is that what you want? Is that what you were trying to do – kill your son and your best friend?’

She turned to reach behind her and touched Sam’s knee.

‘It’s all right, Sam,’ she told him. ‘Everything’s all right now. Your mum was just having one of those moments when she wasn’t thinking straight.’ She glared at me and then her expression softened and there were tears in her eyes as she said again, to all of us, ‘It’s all right now.’

But it wasn’t really all right at all. I’d started drinking again, and again I was struggling to get through each day. Every morning when I woke up, I just wanted to stay in bed and cry with the disappointment of not having died in my sleep.

I was in a relationship at the time, with Jack, who was the love of my life. But when I was ill, it was too much for anyone to deal with, although I know Jack tried, and I know that he loved me too. I’d told him what my father had done to me when I was a child and he began to hate him with an almost obsessive passion.

Jack knew me better than anyone had ever done and I sometimes thought he understood me more than I understood myself. During the time we were together, he saw all my different personalities – including the aggressive side of me and the little girl I sometimes became when I’d sit in a corner and cry. I’m good at hiding how I really feel and at presenting a calm, confident exterior while inside I’m a quivering wreck of insecurities. But Jack saw the demons beneath the mask and – amazingly – still loved me.

My psychiatrist says I had to learn to hide behind a mask when I was a child, because I had to put on the happy, smiling face of daddy’s little girl in public, and conceal the deep distress and misery I really felt. It took me years – in fact, until just a couple of years ago – to come to terms with the realisation that I don’t have to be like that: I don’t have to hide how I feel all the time, because it doesn’t matter if people know that I’m upset.

Jack was a really lovely guy, who was as good to Sam as he was to me. But it seemed almost as though he absorbed some of my distress until, ultimately, the strain of my illness and of not being able to do anything to help me proved too much for him to bear. He became so obsessed with the idea of finding some way to pay my father back for what he’d done that he ended up having a nervous breakdown himself and losing everything he had.

Just before we finally split up, Jack went to stay with his family for Christmas. We’d had a really good relationship for five years and he was the first person I’d been able to talk to openly and honestly. I knew, though, that I was pushing him away – as I always did eventually with people I became close to – and, after he left, I sank into depression and self-hatred. It seemed as though there was a pattern to my life, which was destined always to repeat itself; and I’d reached the point when I knew I couldn’t cope any more.

My father was abroad with Gillian, but my brother and his wife had invited the rest of the family to spend Christmas Day with them. Although I’d been invited too, I just dropped in to see Sam and my mother and brother for one last time. I particularly wanted to say goodbye to Sam, although when I got to my brother’s house I almost couldn’t bear the thought that I’d never see him again. I knew I was doing the right thing, though: Tom’s family would look after Sam, and I didn’t have anything to offer him, other than the constant worry of knowing that his mother was often ill and deeply unhappy.

Jenny had asked me to have Christmas dinner with her and her family, but I’d said I wasn’t feeling great and just wanted to go home.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I told her. ‘I just feel a bit low and I don’t want to drag anyone else down with me. I need to be alone for a while and then I’ll be okay.’

I’d been stockpiling tablets for weeks – the Prozac I took for depression; the temazepam that helped me sleep; the chlorpromazine that stopped me being psychotic; and paracetamol, which never seemed to do very much at all. As soon as I got home, I opened a bottle of wine and I was in the process of drinking it to wash down the large handful of pills I was trying to swallow when the phone rang.

I reached out my hand to lift the receiver, shaking my head and blinking a couple of times as I tried to bring the blurred outline of the telephone into focus.

‘Katie?’ It was Jenny.

‘Yes,’ I said, taking a deep breath and trying to sound normal.

‘Are you okay, Katie? You sound odd.’ Jenny’s tone was sharp.

In fact, I felt as though I was fading away, as though my body was disappearing as it grew weaker, and I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to concentrate.

‘I’m fine,’ I told her. ‘Just … I’m just going to have a bath. I’ll talk to you later.’ Then I put down the telephone and walked slowly and unsteadily up the stairs to the bathroom.

I remember turning on the bath taps and taking off my clothes, but the next thing I was aware of was opening my eyes and finding myself lying in a bed. My heart began to race, and as I moved my arm to touch the throbbing pain in my head, I felt a sharp tug in the skin on the back of my hand. Looking down at it, I realised that I was attached to a drip, and I cried out.

Immediately, a nurse appeared beside me.

‘You came very close to succeeding this time,’ she said, holding my hand so that she could adjust the needle that was inserted into it and then looking at me with narrowed, appraising eyes.

It turned out that I’d been unconscious and in hospital for two days. Jenny had known what I’d done as soon as she’d heard my voice on the telephone and she’d called an ambulance. When they arrived, the ambulance men had had to break down my front door to get in, and they’d found me, naked and unconscious, on the floor of the bathroom.

As the nurse had said, I’d come very close to killing myself, and I felt weaker and more ill than I’d ever done in my life. I was in hospital for a few days and then in bed at home for a few more, and Jenny refused to speak to me.

When she did finally phone me, she was angry.

‘What in God’s name were you thinking of?’ she almost shouted at me. ‘You can’t keep doing this, Katie. What about Sam? Don’t you ever think of how it affects him? I love you to bits, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t just sit here and wait until one day I get the call that tells me you’ve killed yourself. I know what your father did to you and I know that I can’t even begin to imagine how awful it was or how difficult it’s made everything for you. But you’ve got to stop this. You’ve got to stop being so selfish and start thinking about all the people who love you.’

For a moment, it felt as though she’d slapped me across the face; and then I realised she was right. Each time I didn’t answer my phone and they wondered if I was just out or was lying unconscious – or already dead – on the floor of my home must have been almost worse for my friends and family than if I’d just gone ahead and killed myself. I knew that I had to make a decision and stick to it: life or death? It was tempting to think of closing my eyes and not having to fight to survive any more. But then I thought of Sam and of Jenny and I knew that, although making the decision to live come what may was the more difficult of the two, it was the one I had to make. And never again did I attempt to take my own life.

Perhaps the very act of deciding made me try harder to put the past behind me – as much as I was able to do so – and to concentrate on having a future. Because, without the safety net of that ultimate means of escape, I had to make things work.

Not long after Jack left for good, I met Kevin. I still felt as though I needed a man in my life, and Kevin seemed to be perfect, not least because he was all the things my father wasn’t: he didn’t drink heavily, he didn’t take drugs, he worked hard, had a nice car and his own house but with no debts, and he seemed to have values and a strong moral code that he lived by. In fact, I couldn’t really believe that he’d be interested in me at all. But he was, and I thought I’d found the knight in shining armour I’d been waiting for ever since I was a little girl and had first escaped from the miseries of my reality into the fantasy world of books.

I
was completely devastated by the break-up with Jack. Because I was so ill again, I’d had to stop working, and it felt as though Kevin had thrown me a lifeline when I thought I was going to drown. He’d just come out of a long-term relationship too, and he was looking for someone to fill the gap in his life. So, really, neither of us should have got involved with anyone on a serious level. Nonetheless, we were married just six months after we met.

I knew immediately that I’d made a huge mistake. Even as I was walking down the aisle at our wedding, I was thinking about Jack and wondering what on earth I was doing marrying Kevin. I went through all the motions and tried to pretend I was happy, but inside I was panicking at the thought of what I’d done and because I knew I was facing the prospect of having to spend the rest of my life with the wrong person. I did think I loved Kevin, though, although I realised later that I was probably just grateful to him for being there when I needed someone, and for having tried to create a protective bubble around me.

After we were married, I still wasn’t well enough to work and I’d often sit at home during the day and drink. It was a terrible strain on Kevin, because he never knew what sort of state I’d be in when he got home – drunk or sober, deeply distressed or unreasonably elated. When I was well, I could block out most of the memories of my father for most of the time. But whenever I was ill, they’d all came flooding back and it was as though I really was a child again. Sometimes when that happened, alcohol would prevent the memories tumbling round and round in my head, and sometimes it would just make things worse.

Kevin wanted me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but I refused because, despite the fact that I was drinking heavily – sometimes as much as two bottles of wine in a day – I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic. Eventually, though, he almost convinced me that I was, and I went along to an AA meeting. When I got there, I felt like an imposter. But that was the way I always felt, except this time it soon became clear to everyone that I was looking in the wrong place for a solution to my particular problems.

What was really making me so unhappy was that when I was with Jack, I’d thought I was reconstructing a life for myself and doing well. Then he’d become ill and left me and, as well as being devastated because I’d lost him, I’d felt guilty, because I thought that I was responsible for his illness. So I’d tried to commit suicide, but failed; and then Jenny had made me realise how much hurt I was causing to the people who loved me, and it seemed as though I’d been given another chance. I’d been determined not to give up again, but not giving up was proving to be even harder than I’d anticipated. I’d lost Jack; I’d married Kevin when I shouldn’t have done so; I hadn’t slept for days; I wasn’t eating; and I was drinking heavily. Fortunately, though, I still had just enough capacity for rational thought to decide to go to see my doctor.

‘I’m going to do something to myself,’ I told him. ‘I can’t go on like this. Every time I think things are getting better, it all goes wrong. There are just so many times I can pick myself up and try again, and I’ve reached the end now.’

‘I think you need to go into hospital,’ the doctor said. ‘You’re obviously exhausted, both mentally and physically, and that always affects you badly. Go in for a few days and have a rest, and then we can think again.’

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk and pressing his fingertips together, and I could see from the look of resignation on his face that he was preparing himself for the verbal battle ahead as he tried to persuade me. So he was surprised when I wiped away the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and nodded.

I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and this time, because I was so thankful not to have to think for myself for a while and so tired that I could hardly walk from one end of a room to the other, I didn’t even think about trying to escape.

Kevin came to see me just once, and by the time I left the hospital, our three-month marriage was over. I’d told him at the start of our relationship about my illness and what had caused it, and he’d insisted that he wanted to take care of me. So I was hurt and upset that he seemed ready to give up so easily, and disappointed that he hadn’t been the answer to all my problems, as I’d hoped he’d be. But I did understand how difficult it must have been for him when he began to realise the true extent of what he’d taken on, and I knew that I couldn’t really blame him for not comprehending exactly how much effort it was going to involve.

What really hurt more than anything, though, was that I’d always been truthful with Kevin, whereas it turned out that he’d been lying to me.

I’m sure my drinking and erratic behaviour had been really difficult for him to deal with, but he claimed to my friends and family that I was an alcoholic and that that was the sole reason for the breakdown of our marriage. Everyone felt sorry for him, particularly when he said that I’d broken his heart, when in fact the truth was that he’d met someone else shortly after our wedding and they’d discovered while I was in hospital that she was pregnant with his child.

I was devastated when I found out that Kevin had been cheating on me; I felt stupid and duped and I became paranoid at the thought that they’d both been laughing at me behind my back. In reality, though, I think our marriage had been doomed from the outset.

I’ve always been repulsed by sex and I find even the closeness it involves very difficult to cope with. However, until a couple of years ago, I’d been afraid to be on my own, despite being perfectly content with my own company. I think it was because I felt that I needed to have a partner as affirmation of the fact that I’m lovable – although I never actually believed that I was. So I’ve always gone straight from one relationship into another, without allowing myself time to take stock and reassess who I am and what I want, which – again, until recently – was something I didn’t want to look at too closely, because I was afraid of what I might discover. I was always searching for love, without having any real idea what love is.

After I came out of hospital, I stayed with Jenny for four months. She had her own family to look after, but she took care of me too. And it was because of the promise I’d made to her – that I’d never again try to take my own life – that things began to change in a way I didn’t at first understand. Making that promise to Jenny had been like deleting my ‘opt-out’ clause: without the option of killing myself, I had to make things work and get on with living my life; and if they weren’t working and I was becoming ill and unhappy, I had to get help. Somehow, that seemed to simplify things in a way that enabled me to keep looking forward all the time.

I’d been seeing a psychiatrist regularly, and we’d begun to talk about all the things I believed and to revisit the reasons why I believed them. Gradually, I was learning to accept that the wires in my brain were crossed and that they needed to be untangled and reconnected properly. The false connections had occurred as a result of the way my father had treated me and because of what he’d told me repeatedly about myself since I was a very young child: that I was a useless, worthless slut and that the sole purpose in life for women – and for little girls – was to serve the sexual needs of men, whatever those might be. The rational, logical side of my brain knew that the things my father had told me weren’t true, and as the emotional side learned to accept that too, I seemed to turn a corner.

Six months after I’d had to stop working, I rented a place of my own, went back to work and started doing really well – well enough, eventually, not to have to take the medication I’d been reliant on for almost 18 years. Perhaps most importantly of all, though, I stopped thinking about my father and I stopped having flashbacks and seeing images of the past.

When I was a child, I was pushed from pillar to post, and as a teenager I did all the wrong things – drinking and smoking and even, for a while, stealing – so that I could easily have gone too far down the wrong road to have been able to turn back. I think it was fortunate that the drugs that are so freely available now weren’t around when I was young. If they had been, I might well have chosen that path to self-destruction, because I hated my life as a teenager and I didn’t know why.

It’s almost as though I’ve been trying for years to revisit my childhood and find out what I did to deserve all the terrible things that happened to me. Finally, though, I’ve accepted that I didn’t deserve them, and that my childhood can’t be changed. There’s no point going over and over it endlessly in my mind, trying to make sense of it, because it doesn’t make sense. What happened to me was actually the result of my father’s problems – whatever they were. I was, purely and simply, a completely innocent bystander, a film extra, in the life of someone who is sick, perverted and infinitely self-indulgent.

Just over a year ago, I was offered a really good job working with teenagers with behavioural problems, many of whom have been abused. It would mean leaving my home town, moving three hours’ drive away from Sam and Jenny and from my safety net of friends whose support I’ve always relied on. I was scared by the prospect, but I accepted the job, and I’m really glad I did. I’m proud of myself for taking that final step into my future.

From the time when I first started remembering, I could see in my mind the child I used to be and it was as though the child I was seeing was someone else, someone who needed my help, but I couldn’t help her. Now, though, I know that I can help other children who have suffered abuse and who are angry and confused and just want to lash out and make people feel the same pain that they’re trying to bury deep inside themselves.

When I was a teenager, I’d already suppressed the memories of the abuse I’d suffered as a child, so I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I often wished I had someone I could talk to who might help me to create some sort of order in my mind and reassure me that I wasn’t mad or bad. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone for me to confide in, but if I can be that someone for the young people I work with, I’ll feel that some good has come out of all the evil that was created by my father.

It took me 40 years to break the chains my father had bound around me so tightly. But I’ve done it at last, and I know that, in doing it, I’ve also broken the control he’d exerted over me since I was two years old.

I know that ‘the past is always with us’; but that doesn’t mean it has to haunt us or that we have to remain under its shadow. We can choose to move forward and use our past experiences rather than allowing them to have power over us. Even so, I used to worry about how I might react if I was ever faced with some unexpected reminder of my childhood, which was a question that was answered recently when I had an experience that, not very long ago, would have sent me into a rapid, irreversible nosedive towards regression.

I’d gone to court to support a young person who was giving evidence against a man who’d sexually abused her and two other girls. As I sat beside her, she constantly clasped and unclasped her hands, and her misery and distress seemed almost like something solid that I could have reached out and touched. She was white-faced and shaking, a slight girl who, although in her early teens, still seemed to have the thin, fragile body of a child. I could imagine how terrified she was, and I admired her enormously for having had the courage to agree to give evidence against her abuser.

Suddenly, there was a flurry as everyone got to their feet, and I looked up to see the judge, archaically resplendent in his wig and robe, walk in through a door at the side of the courtroom. I gasped and could immediately sense the tremor of anxiety that ran through the body of the girl beside me. She glanced quickly towards me and I nodded and smiled without turning my head, hoping she would take it to mean that everything was okay. Then I reached out to grasp the back of the wooden pew in front of me as I was engulfed by a wave of nausea. Because the judge who’d entered the courtroom with such self-assured solemnity was a friend of my father and a man who’d abused me in my home when I was a little girl.

The judge sat down on the high-backed chair in the centre of the raised dais that faced into the courtroom, and we all sat down too. He scanned the room for a moment, then picked up a piece of paper from the long wooden desk in front of him, examined it and looked up again. And in the split-second while he held my gaze, I knew he’d recognised my name and realised who I was.

My heart was racing and the palms of my hands were sticky with sweat, but I forced myself to concentrate my attention on the girl sitting beside me. She was what mattered now; not me, or the child I used to be, or something that had happened years ago.

The judge never looked in my direction again. His expression was appropriately stern as he listened while the case unravelled, and suitably sympathetic when the girl whispered her answers to the questions she was asked. Then he sentenced the paedophile abuser to five years in prison – which, everyone later agreed, seemed a relatively lenient sentence for someone who’d sexually abused three little girls.

I felt – not for the first time in my life – like Alice in Wonderland; as though I was in a surreal, dream-like world, sitting in a bizarre courtroom where nothing was what it appeared to be, while the Queen of Hearts dispensed summary injustice. But the important thing was that I’d coped. I’d focused on what mattered and provided the girl with the support she needed, and the tightrope on which I was walking had barely wobbled.

Although I still occasionally have bad days, when just getting out of bed seems to require an enormous amount of effort, they’re rare now. And I know I can avoid them occurring at all if I make sure I get enough sleep and don’t get overtired. I don’t self-harm and I’m no longer afraid of my father. I’d been frightened of him my entire life, ever since I was a tiny girl; and then, one day, the fear seemed simply to evaporate – as though I’d snapped my fingers and it had gone.

However, although I’m no longer afraid of him, I’m sure there are many people who are, not least because he has damning evidence that could ruin the careers and reputations of some very influential men in highly respected professions, were it ever to come to light. Mostly, it’s evidence related to their sexual activities, and I’m sure that they’re all very aware of what my father sometimes told me: ‘If I go down, I’ll take the whole lot of them with me.’