I Won't Forgive What You Did (20 page)

Once it was clear I
had
survived the initial trauma, I was told that I’d need to stay in for three weeks, and only if we had somewhere suitable to live could I go home. It was here that fate decided to be kind. Because the hospital so badly needed my bed, social services offered us a large, brand-new, centrally heated house, in the town next to the one where I grew up. Suddenly everything had changed for the better, and I felt positive about my little family’s future at last. We stayed at my sister’s while they fitted new carpets, and my father brought our furniture from his garage, where it’d been stored. I didn’t like that our house was on a large estate, full of people, because I’d grown so used to the safe little world we’d created out in the countryside, just me, Alfie and Joe. But apart from that it felt brilliant. How wonderful to think we’d be back on our own as a family and could get back to the way things had been before.

Joe’s behaviour though, once again, was worrying. He’d long since stopped behaving in the ways he had when I’d first met him, and he’d become increasingly distant with me. It was making me feel terribly anxious. I realized my own behaviour was becoming odd too. I started moving ornaments and moving them again, and couldn’t seem to get them quite straight. I was actively having to avoid looking at them or else I’d feel compelled to keep touching them. I was also getting up earlier and earlier each day, in order to get through my housework. I’d become obsessive about cleaning; I’d scrub and scrub, anxious about anyone getting an infection. I had taken on more cleaning jobs to earn extra money, so if I didn’t make sure our own house was completely spick and span, I’d not have time to do it in the evening. But at least we were in a home of our own again, and things would have a chance to settle down. I thought perhaps Joe was feeling the strain as much as I was and that, in time, it would sort itself out.

But perhaps I should have listened to my instincts, because I was wrong. One night, only a few weeks after we moved in, Joe came home and told me he was leaving me and Alfie. Then he got into his car and drove off.

I kept thinking Joe would come back. I told myself he’d just had a bad day, and needed some space. The last few months had been incredibly stressful, what with his job and then my illness and the move and everything. Maybe everything had just got on top of him. It had to be that. He’d be back.

But he didn’t come back. Not that day, or the next day, or the one after that, and I didn’t know quite what to do.

I was still suffering the after-effects of my operation. Though I was working again, my bladder and bowel weren’t working properly, and I’d get home exhausted and in pain. My bladder was very slow, taking for ever to work, and I’d spend ages, taps running, trying to concentrate, to persuade it to empty at all. My bowel, too, was sluggish and I felt sick and bloated; all in all I was completely drained physically.

Emotionally, however, I was like a cat on hot coals. How could he
do
that? How could he just leave me and Alfie without telling us where he was going or what was wrong?

By the time a week had passed, I plucked up the courage to call his work, but I was told he no longer worked there. So I called his mother, but she wouldn’t even come to the phone. This upset me greatly, as I’d thought we were friends, not to mention me being her daughter-in-law, and Alfie being her grandson. How could she show such little concern for us? I began to suspect he might be there.

I kept trying to contact him, over the following days and weeks, but never succeeded, and felt increasingly lost and betrayed. I’d trusted him more than I had any person, ever, and couldn’t bear the new thoughts that began forming in my head; that he was with another woman, just like my father, and that I was, as a consequence, the thing I’d been so terrified of becoming – just another version of my mother.

And then I remembered Joe had once taken me to meet a group of people who lived and worked at the riding stables near where he’d worked, as they’d had a dog for sale that we might like. It had been a strange business because as soon as we’d arrived at the place, he’d wanted to leave again, and couldn’t get me out of there fast enough. At the time, though it had addled me, I had no explanation, and had eventually put it out of my mind. But now something about it jarred and I called his ex-employers again, and then the stables, and was able, through the various comments people made, to piece together an idea of what might be going on.

It seemed he hadn’t been working long hours at all – far from it – but was instead spending a great deal of time at the stables, with one of the female grooms there, called Meg. I was distraught, but also angry. All that time I’d believed him about his employers having laid people off, when the truth was he’d been spending his days with another woman. I was so furious that one day, when Alfie was at playschool, I took a bus down to the stables and hid behind a phonebox so I could watch all the comings and goings, and try to ascertain which one was Meg.

But for all that, I couldn’t bear to tell anyone. I felt such a failure, and so hurt, I couldn’t bear anyone knowing. Life without him felt meaningless and, on a practical level, was becoming scary. With only the income from my meagrely paid cleaning jobs coming in, we’d almost no money to live on, and the bills were piling up. As a consequence, my relationship with Alfie began to deteriorate. I was finding it harder and harder to relate to him. He was clearly anxious too, even though he never actually asked about his father, and we were now back spending hours walking the streets, as I couldn’t bear the silence indoors.

When Joe had been gone a couple of months, Maria and her boyfriend, Alan, turned up, and were very shocked to hear Joe had left us. So much so that, without telling me what they planned to do, they drove straight round to Joe’s mother’s house, and wouldn’t leave till he’d returned home and they could confront him.

Following this, they got in touch and told me I must meet him; and that Joe had agreed we should talk. They then arranged for the four of us to meet at a local pub, and when we did I was shocked at how he’d changed. He’d lost a lot of weight, and had that funny sweet smell about him again. He was almost twenty-two now (I was nineteen) but it was as if, since he’d left, he had regressed to being the eighteen-year-old I’d first met; swearing and being aggressive and embarrassing – not to me, but to everyone else – telling a man who’d politely asked about a free chair to ‘piss off’.

He then came home with me to talk further and eventually, though not, as far as I could see, enthusiastically, he agreed to come home. But that was Joe. It was the way he was and he’d probably never change. And if that meant we had him back, then that was good enough for now. Once he was home, I could try to make things better.

It was difficult at first, because I was so tentative and anxious around him, constantly waiting for the next time he’d leave us. It had happened once, so why wouldn’t it happen again? This was compounded by my own turbulent feelings. Did I really still want to be with him, feeling like this? And it all must have been my fault, I reasoned, not
un
reasonably. Must have been something about me that made him leave. So strong was my conviction that it was my fault, I didn’t even feel he owed me an explanation.

So when he suggested we have another baby – that it might help us – I felt a profound sense of relief. He wanted another baby, which meant he
did
want to stay. Which meant we
were
supposed to be together, and it would all work out. Somehow, I just knew he would never leave again.

I fell pregnant almost immediately. And, more relaxed now, I felt my anxiety slip away. But more trauma was just around the corner. I was still working for the family whose children I’d always looked after, and with Alfie now growing older, he’d come along and play happily with them. It was here, when I was about eleven weeks pregnant, that I started bleeding. I went to the toilet to investigate and became very, very frightened, as the blood simply wouldn’t stop. The toilet wouldn’t flush, and I realized it was broken, making it even more obvious how much I was losing, and adding to my panic by making me feel dreadful about leaving my employers this horrible bloody toilet to clean up.

I tried to call my employer, but couldn’t get hold of her and, not wanting to wake the children’s father – who’d worked all night and was sleeping – I decided to telephone my mother. She’d just passed her driving test, so perhaps she could come. But it seemed she couldn’t. ‘Call an ambulance,’ she said. ‘I’m at work. It’s really busy.’ I was distressed by now and asked her to please come and get me, and she eventually agreed, though warned that she’d only be able to spare a short time. She’d recently got a new job, working for a car-repair workshop, and was adamant she’d have to hurry back.

By the time she arrived I was very relieved to see her, because I was terrified to even stand. When I did, I could feel the blood still dripping out of me. I still hadn’t woken the father of the house, as I’d felt awful about disturbing him, but with no choice now, and my mother very agitated about the time, I told the eldest of the children to go and wake him if they needed him, to explain I hadn’t been able to contact their mummy. Then, feeling horribly guilty, I gathered up Alfie and took him out to my mother’s car.

She drove Alfie and me home at great speed. Her driving was a terrifying spectacle at the best of times, but today she was even more frightening. Once home she instructed me to get undressed and into bed, and then told me she must now get back to work. ‘Should I call the doctor?’ I asked, terrified that she was now going to leave me. ‘Yes, do that,’ she answered, and was gone.

In retrospect, I cannot understand how anyone could leave her own daughter bleeding and alone with her three-year-old child, whatever the circumstances. At the time, though, I had no choice but to deal with it. I went to bed and called the doctor and asked him to come, with Alfie sitting beside me on the pillow.

He arrived promptly – it was the same doctor who, when I was thirteen, had told me to lie in a hot bath and try to ‘find’ myself. He had no such creative advice today. Having examined me, and noting the amount of blood I was losing, he told me it would be a miracle if I hung on to this baby. ‘You are going to miscarry,’ he said. ‘You are just going to have to let it happen. Call me again, of course, if you are worried about anything.’ He also told me I’d have to attend hospital afterwards, so they could make sure everything had gone.

When he left, I just lay there, shaking with fear. I had severe stomach cramps and I knew I was still bleeding, and now I just wanted it to happen. But what
would
happen? I had absolutely no idea what to expect and I had no one to ask. What happened when you had a miscarriage? Would I go to the toilet and suddenly a whole tiny baby would fall out? Would I have to scoop it out of the toilet and wrap it in a cloth? It made me think of the kittens being drowned when I was little, being put in a sack and then drowned. And what if the bleeding didn’t stop and I bled to death in front of Alfie?

But, frightened as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to be a nuisance and telephone Joe. He was back working at his old job, as a bricklayer’s labourer, and I really didn’t want to disturb him, so I just continued to lie there, Alfie beside me, waiting for him to come home.

When he did I felt much better, and calmer, and when the doctor rang to see how I was I was resigned to hearing it would definitely happen soon. Yet it didn’t. Not that day, or the next, or the next. And on the third day I was taken by ambulance to hospital, so they could give me a proper examination and see if the baby was still there. I stayed in overnight and had my answer very quickly. It appeared that this baby was hanging on.

It was an interminable, tedious, depressing pregnancy. I bled almost throughout, and was constantly in and out of hospital, and even when allowed home I was mostly confined to bed. I also suffered from repeated urinary infections, which tracked up to my kidneys and were excruciatingly painful.

Social services, concerned, arranged some home help for us. Someone came in for an hour and a half a day, to pick up Alfie from play school, and do some shopping and housework. However, the rest of Alfie’s days were spent on or near my bed. He’d sit there beside me, playing quietly with his cars, making
brrm brrm
noises as he tracked them up and down the pillow.

It was to be another truncated pregnancy. One evening, at 10.30, when I was just eight months pregnant, my waters broke and we had to call an ambulance. Joe had to stay with Alfie, so I travelled to hospital alone and once there became the subject of a great deal of rushing around. Unlike my first birth, which seemed to go on for ever with nothing happening, this one was already causing concern.

They soon established that my baby was in the breech position and were also fearful that because my blood loss was significant, there may also be damage to its brain. Several times they tried to turn it – and, this being a teaching hospital, there were about fifteen junior doctors present – before deciding it wasn’t possible and that they needed to deliver it straight away.

It was the sort of birth that today would have been done by caesarean; the pain was so intense that I kept losing consciousness, and required several injections, forceps, and to be cut to get the baby out.

But come out the baby did – I had a daughter. And though they rushed her off immediately, concerned about brain damage, something inside me told me I didn’t need to worry. That when they finally gave her to me, she’d be okay.