I Won't Forgive What You Did (23 page)

It took a while for me to pluck up the courage to dial the number and to ask the woman who answered, who sounded middle-aged, if I could speak to Melanie. She told me Melanie was out, but that she’d take a message, and it was at this point that I decided to ask the question I badly needed to – was she out with someone called Joe, by any chance?

‘Yes, she is,’ she answered. ‘Is that someone from work?’

‘No,’ I told her, my heart racing. ‘It’s Joe’s wife, and his two children are missing him.’

There was a long silence, followed by a sharp intake of breath, then she said, ‘His wife? His two children? He’s
married?

There was a pause before she went on. ‘But he can’t be!’

I assured her that he was, and there was another pause. ‘We had no idea!’ she said finally, ‘but he’s a really nice man!’ As if she thought that made everything okay.

‘But he
can’t
be!’ she said again, clearly just as shocked as I was. ‘He and Melanie got engaged on Christmas Day!’

The day after I found out about Joe’s engagement I received a return phone call from Melanie’s mother. She wanted to meet me – my mother and father also – and, still not knowing how to say no to anyone, I could do nothing other than agree. It was a daunting prospect, but at least if I
did
see her, I would still have a link, however stressful, to Joe.

It was becoming surreal. In less than a week I had gone from being in a state of blind ignorance about my husband to one in which the mother of a girl I didn’t know was coming to see me to discuss his engagement to her daughter.

The visit itself was even more surreal. I had to welcome this woman into my and Joe’s home, watch while my own mother insisted on showing her around it and, most bizarre, listen to my father, of all people, talking self-righteously about Joe’s infidelity, after he’d been welcomed so wholeheartedly into the family, and given so much support.

Melanie’s mother, who’d arranged a special Christmas Day engagement party for the couple, reiterated that they had absolutely no idea Joe was married with children. She was also clear about one thing. Despite her telling us how much time Joe had spent at her house, about the gifts of jewellery he’d apparently lavished on her daughter, even despite telling us how much Melanie apparently loved Joe, she was clear the relationship had to end.

And to
that
end, obviously being a concerned mother, she begged me to let Melanie come to visit me too, hoping that meeting me and the children would make her see sense. ‘I have to get her away from him,’ she told me earnestly, and I found myself reflecting what it must be like to have such a loving mother take care of you.

I felt powerless, as before, to say no, so at six the next evening, the day before New Year’s Eve, I opened my front door and let her in. I’d been in a complete state about what to wear. I had spent all the intervening period in agonies about looking so dreadful. Nothing I could find seemed to make me look nice. I looked frumpy and old-fashioned – twice my twenty-two years – and couldn’t look at my reflection without wanting to cut off my whole face and chop off my hair.

I walked to the front door in a state of disbelief. If someone had told me, seven days back, that I’d be opening my door to the girl my husband had declared himself to be in love with, I’d have laughed. The idea was too incredible. Yet here she was, a very pretty seventeen-year-old, slim and smartly dressed, with long blonde hair. She looked so young and confident. I paid special attention to her jewellery because, though understated, it was stylish and gave her presence, the jewellery Joe had bought for her, using money that should have been spent on Alfie and Jennifer. Melanie looked so innocent compared with me. And with what little I already knew about her, that didn’t surprise me.

She was terribly upset, and as shocked as I was at the turn of events since her engagement. She asked a few questions, but it was clear she didn’t really know what to say. How could she? She was seventeen and the man she had fallen in love with came with a completely unexpected wife and family.

She didn’t stay long. In fact, she left somewhat abruptly, as if she couldn’t bear to be in my house a moment longer. I watched her climb into a new-looking Peugeot, and felt an awful depression begin to engulf me. The emptiness inside me felt vast. I don’t know what I had been expecting, deep down. That it had been nonsense? That there
was
no other woman? That he’d realize he still loved us and come back? That this Melanie would just turn out to be a young girl with a stupid crush?

All these thoughts had flitted in and out of my mind, and all of them had been easier to deal with than the reality, in the deafening silence. It felt incredible that fifteen minutes earlier I had been dreading her visit, and now it was all over all I was left with was the feeling of how much better she seemed than me in every way.

I’d had only one conversation with Joe during all this. He’d called me earlier, not to see how we were, but to warn me, having been made aware of our meeting, that I mustn’t do anything to rock the boat. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t you dare spoil this for me.’

Had I? I wondered, as I crept into bed. Would she finish with him now, and would he blame me? I woke up on New Year’s Eve with the absolute surety there was nothing to get out of bed for. All hope was gone, and in its place was a void. I had the children, instead, climb into bed with me, and we pretty much remained there all day.

But I wasn’t to be left for long. My sister Susan and her husband were off to a New Year’s Eve party, and told me I had to go with them. Phillip and his girlfriend were going to the party also, and they then asked if they could sleep over at my house. As ever, I felt unable to say no to either request, but straight away became anxious about my finances. No one was aware that I had absolutely no money – why would they be? Our family didn’t discuss anything. And now I would have to turn on the heating, and spend the last £10 in my purse buying food for them.

That evening, I took Alfie and Jennifer to my sister’s, and shared the babysitter she’d booked. And for a time, at the party, I held things together sufficiently so no one would know that, on the inside, I was dying.

But by eleven, I could stand it no longer. I left abruptly, leaping up from the table we’d all been sitting around and running out into the street. It had begun snowing earlier and was still snowing now – everything was now painfully pretty, as if contemptuous of me. I ran all the way through town, running down the middle of the empty streets because the pavements were too slippery, aware of that particular silence that only comes with heavy snowfall, and of the fact that I couldn’t see another human being.

I knew full well where I was running – I was running home, from the wretched party – but even though my feet seemed to be taking me there, I’d never felt less like I had a home to go to, or more keenly the sense of having nowhere I belonged; that not a single person anywhere cared about me.

I turned a corner, and saw a police car up ahead, lights flashing, sirens blaring, travelling very fast. I wished in that instant I was under its wheels.

Joe never came back. Not that week, or the next week, or any time after, and my depression returned with a vengeance. I took up eating, as a way of trying to comfort myself, tipping very quickly from moderate overeating to bingeing on anything I could find. I would eat whole packets of biscuits at once, dunked in coffee, sweets of any kind; packets of the things, and potatoes and bread in terrifying quantities. I would eat any sort of chocolate I could stuff into my mouth, Crunchies and Mars bars, Toffee Crisps and Dairy Milk, and if I ran out of chocolate I would eat cubes of raw jelly, and devour enormous home-made rice puddings.

Despite a new regime of making myself sick every day – sometimes using washing-up liquid to help me do so – and of taking laxatives and water pills every morning and forever having to rush to the toilet, I went quickly from eight and a half stone to thirteen, a whole two stone heavier than I was when I gave birth to my children.

I would look in the mirror and think, ‘No wonder Joe left me. Look at me. What a disgusting sight.’

As well as myself, I found it difficult to face other people, and as the weeks went on I became more and more hermitlike. With so little money to live on, we were forced, when the children weren’t in school and playschool, to spend much of our time in bed. Our diet, when I wasn’t secretly devouring anything I could lay hands on, was often little more than porridge, made by Alfie.

I couldn’t bear going back to the old people’s home, so gave in my notice and began working again for the family I’d cleaned and child-minded for before Jennifer was born. I felt more comfortable spending my time with children; no one could judge me or ask me questions. But this too proved shortlived, as one night, when driving me home after babysitting, my employer’s husband stopped the car outside some garages near my house and proceeded to kiss and try to touch me.

This didn’t come entirely out of the blue. Their marriage was very strained; had been all the time I’d worked for them, and he and his wife slept in separate bedrooms. He was generally known as being a dirty old devil – his reputation for trying it on with women was known by every girl who’d worked there. Plus he drank a lot – had been drinking that evening – but thus far I had managed to avoid him.

Not tonight, alas, but at least one thing had changed. For the first time in my life, in a situation like this, I didn’t have that familiar sense of powerlessness. Instead I was imbued with sudden strength. What had happened with Joe had had a powerful effect, and the thought of another man trying to touch me made me feel more like a whore than I’d already long felt, and it repulsed me that this man even tried. I broke free from his arms, flung open the door and ran away.

I handed in my notice the following day, citing the need to find full-time employment. She might have known why – I suspect she knew what her husband was like – but she accepted my resignation without question. I was glad, but also sad to leave a job I enjoyed. But there seemed little choice. After Joe, no man was
ever
going to touch me.

Indeed, touch, in all its forms, was very difficult. I had grown up in a world devoid of
any
affection, let alone the physical affection a parent normally shows their child. And now something similar had started happening to me.

I had always had difficulties relating emotionally – my childhood meant I would find normal physical intimacy confusing and scary. My mother had never touched me with affection, ever – the only physical intimacy I had ever encountered invariably meant something sexual was happening, and though I wouldn’t understand how much this had damaged me until much later, it caused me great anxiety in dealing with my children. Though with Joe I had enjoyed my first sexual relationship, I was still unable to do all the physical bonding that a parent would normally make with their child. I couldn’t hug them at all. Found it almost impossible to bear them touching me. I couldn’t hold their hands, stroke them, or run my hands across their heads – I was so frightened I might hurt them or abuse them in some way. Not intentionally – I just thought it might happen without my meaning to, and the more frightened I was the harder it became.

I shouldered every bit of blame for all this. It was something in
me
that caused men to abuse me, and something in
me
that had caused my brother to die. It was simple; I was bad, but if I kept my distance, then my children would be safer. I couldn’t even tell them I loved them.

For a while, with Joe’s love, I’d believed we stood a chance. But now he was gone I could feel myself withdrawing from them. I couldn’t bear to be touched; I would angrily brush Jennifer’s little hands away because the pain I felt when anyone showed me kindness was so immense I couldn’t bear it.

My fear of hurting them had also become intense. I had become increasingly angry around Alfie, shaking him by the shoulders, shouting if he was taking too long putting on his coat. I would tug at the hem repeatedly, unbalancing him, shouting: ‘We have to put your coat on! Put it on, do you understand? Do up your buttons. Do them up! We have to go out! Do you understand?’

Alfie would just stand there, saying nothing with words, but just watching me, seemingly unafraid. Just sad – terribly sad. I could hardly bear meet his eye, so powerfully did this affect me. It was almost as if I was so useless I couldn’t even frighten a small boy. I didn’t want him to be afraid of me – of course, I didn’t – I just wanted to come across as stronger than I felt so no one would ever mess with me again. Yet his eyes were so assessing. As if
he
were the older one; as if he really had the measure of me.

I knew I must stop crying in front of the children. I had never said – or would say – anything bad to them about their father, but I knew my crying would hurt them even so. So I taught myself not to cry anywhere in the house except the bathroom, where sometimes I would have to clasp the cold enamel basin, just to feel its weight and strength. I couldn’t feel my own, and I was afraid I’d just float away, cease to exist.

Eventually, I made myself return to the doctor. I knew I couldn’t survive as I was, because it terrified me to realize that the feelings of darkness and futility about everything were so strong that not even the thought of my children seemed enough reason for me to live. This time, I was grateful to be put on another course of antidepressants; to sense some strength seeping back felt like such a relief.