I Won't Forgive What You Did (29 page)

Over the following three weeks we talked in the office every day, and he engaged me in conversation at every available moment. Yet, for all that, he always seemed very slightly out of reach, playing with me, tantalizing me, enticing and tormenting me – just enough to keep me hooked, and off balance. We met again in the evening a further four times. My head was by now whirling with him, even though the knowledge of his family was ever-present. It was as if I’d been taken over by some powerful drug and was unable to do anything about it. Even so, any relationship with Warren was still just in my head.

Not that Warren was the first man I’d strayed with. Three years previously I had got involved with two other men: one an impulsive one-night stand, and one for about two months. I hadn’t felt guilty, exactly – by now it was clear Gary maintained relationships with several women – one of them from back before we’d even married – but both had made me feel dirty and sad, and every inch the ‘whore’ my father had said I was.

This was different. This was not some desperate craving for physical affection. This was a whole other level of intensity of feeling, which had completely swept me away.

The fifth time we met he dropped a bombshell. We were in another pub, near where he lived, and I was, as usual, sipping red wine; not because I liked it, but because it was what
he
liked. He’d already hugged me, and told me how beautiful I looked, but there was still nothing remotely sexual about his actions.

And then, all of a sudden, his tone changed. ‘I’ve been seeing someone,’ he announced. I felt my stomach plummet into my shoes. I felt terrified, and also shocked by the strength of the feeling. Why had he suddenly told me this, out of the blue? Why hadn’t he mentioned it before? My thoughts raced. Would this mean he wouldn’t want to see me again? Of
course
it meant that, I thought. I tried to gather my face into some sort of mask to hide my devastation. ‘Oh, are you?’ I answered, trying, though probably failing, to keep my voice light.

He nodded. ‘I’ve been seeing her for about five years.’

My stomach, with nowhere lower to go now, turned over. ‘Who is she?’ I asked. ‘Do I know her?’

He nodded again, and after a hesitation told me it was Sarah, another of the managers he was responsible for, and who was on the social work course with me. I couldn’t believe it. ‘You’ve been having an affair with Sarah for
five years?
This shocked me too, because when we’d first met he’d told me when he and his family had moved here five years ago, it had been following an affair he had had, and the move had been so they could ‘make a new start’. If what he’d just said was true, then that ‘start’ had been a short one. He must have started seeing Sarah straight away. It felt too much to take in. ‘And you’re still seeing her?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, and my immediate thought was how glad I was that so far at least my relationship with him hadn’t been sexual. I had
so
wanted it to be – for the first time since Joe I had felt desire for a man – but in this case nothing had happened. I could hardly even get him to kiss me.

In an act of bravado I didn’t feel, and clutching at straws, I took a breath. ‘I wouldn’t have an affair with you. I couldn’t,’ I told him. I swallowed again, my mouth dry. ‘I would want
all
of you.’

As if what we’d been doing wasn’t
already
an affair, in my heart, if not actually in reality. He considered me for a moment, as if weighing me up.

‘Do you really mean that?’ he said quietly.

I nodded at him. ‘Of course I do.’

He looked hard at me. ‘Because if you do, Faith, then I’ll finish with her.’

And so it was I fell in love with Warren. I didn’t even know if it
was
love, not really – it was more like an intense infatuation. My feelings were so strong they terrified me, but this time I wasn’t going to run away. This was my chance, there was no choice – it
had
to happen. I simply couldn’t believe any man as perfect as him could be interested in someone like me. To gaze on someone so perfect, after so much ugliness, was wonderful. To look at beauty, and not ugliness, was such a relief. Warren was everything I could ever have wanted, and was completely different from any man I had ever known. He was always really interested in everything I had to say, and spoke to me as if I was the most important person in the world. He would throw his head back when he laughed, and he laughed such a lot. There’d been no laughter in my world for as long as I could remember and it was so wonderful I never wanted it to stop. For the first time in my life I could look across a room and see my partner, and feel optimistic. When I saw Warren, I saw someone beautiful.

Alfie was almost eighteen now, Jennifer fourteen. I could do this, I thought. At last my children and I could be happy.

Once decided, I couldn’t run away from Gary fast enough. Nothing and no one could stop me.

Four years later . . .

It is the 5th of November 1994, and I am thirty-nine years old. I’m lying in a bed, and I’m feeling very drowsy, but somewhere in the background I can hear someone crying really loudly, and disturbing my sleep. I want to tell them to shut up, and stop bothering me, but then I become aware there is someone bending over me, saying: ‘It’s okay, you’re in recovery, you’re just coming round. It’s okay, the operation is over’ It’s the voice that makes me realize. It’s the voice that brings me round. The person I can hear crying so hard is me.

With consciousness comes the realization I feel absolutely dreadful, and my body, of its own volition, starts to heave. I have to keep swallowing, fast, to keep myself from vomiting, and I become fearful about choking because I’m lying on my back, and I can’t seem to get enough air. I take panicky shallow breaths, which only make things worse. It feels like I’m going to suffocate and die.

Eventually, though, I settle, and the next time I wake up I look around and see that I’ve been moved. I am now back in a two-bedded hospital ward that I recognize. I am still groaning from the pain, and a nurse soon appears, telling me to press the little button I have strapped to my finger; she tells me this will help stop the pain. Outside I can hear noises – lots of screeches and loud bangs – that I realize are fireworks going off. I recall that the 5th of November is Bonfire Night, before drifting off once again into sleep.

The next time I wake up the ward is in darkness, though the dim lighting feels soothing and comforting. My bed is snug, and my thoughts are ephemeral – everything feels numb and slightly dream-like. But then, without warning, a bolt of pain shoots through my body and I cry out again, loudly, in agony. Now, all at once, my thoughts begin crowding around me, and they scare me – I just wish they’d go away. I know something dreadful has taken place – I can feel it – but I still cannot bear to think about it. Perhaps if I think hard – about other Bonfire Nights, crackling flames – then the horrible thoughts will keep away.

It’s then that I look up and see my left arm suspended above me, clamped to a tall metal contraption. My arm is covered, from my shoulder to the tips of my fingers, in a huge, heavy, double plaster cast. Seeing it is enough for all the horrible thoughts to crowd me, and I hear myself howling louder and louder. It’s not that loud – intuitively I know I’m not screaming – but inside the noise of it is deafening.

Along with the panic – I feel trapped because I am attached to this machinery – comes a great wave of shock and grief and sorrow. I can’t make sense of it. How did it happen? It must be a mistake. It just must. Warren loves me. What he did to me must be a mistake. He could never hurt me like this. I must have done something to make this terrible thing happen. I can’t think about it. As soon as I do I can’t get my breath. I feel jumbled, confused, all mixed up in my head, and there’s this emptiness where my stomach should be. I can’t believe what is true: that I am lying in a hospital bed, in recovery from emergency surgery, because my hand has been so badly injured.

And I have lied to them. To the doctors and nurses. I’ve told them I did this by tripping on a rug while walking with a glass in my hand. I’ve lied, and I can’t bear to think about why. And yet I must. It was Warren who did this to me.

How obvious it all seems looking back. How readily I can see, now the process of chronicling my life is coming to an end, how some might read what I’ve written and feel incredulous. How did I let the damage done by childhood destroy my adult life so comprehensively?

But that is the central tragedy. That the scars inflicted on me as a result of my childhood left me too broken to make rational adult choices. It could be argued that
all
the choices you make when in the grip of passion are irrational, but mostly – for people with a healthy self-esteem – they are tempered both by self-respect, and experience of what’s appropriate and what isn’t. For me, though, if anything inappropriate ever happened, I would naturally analyse what had occurred and reach the conclusion – always, because I was programmed to do so – that
it was me
. That
it must be my problem
.

Back in the November of 1990, however, I thought I had, in choosing Warren, made the very best decision ever.

I left Gary very quickly. And it had been a shockingly straightforward business. Afraid of his reaction, I was absolutely stunned when his response was simply to shrug and say ‘okay’. All that mattered, it seemed, was that I sign over everything: the property, insurance policies, any claim on his pension – all of which I did. He would very soon hook up again with the now ex-wife of the accountant who he’d wife-swapped with long before he first met me. He is still, I believe, with her to this day.

I left with just two bin liners of clothing, and was happy to do so. After Warren’s declaration about his feelings we very quickly went away together and, though we didn’t see much of each other over that Christmas, had already planned our escape. The one time we did, though – we went to midnight mass together – we were, of course, spotted by some colleagues.

That was it – our secret was out, and on his return to the office Warren was summoned by his boss for a meeting to discuss what to do. Affairs between staff were a difficult business, and once Warren told him that this was no idle fling we were both given two weeks’ leave while the fuss all died down.

I was completely besotted. So much so that the first of many warnings about him sailed, completely unnoticed, over my head. We’d already decided to move in together, but first of all, at his insistence, we attended an appointment at a clinic, to book me in for sterilization. Warren had, he explained, been tricked by his first wife, who’d said she’d used contraception but hadn’t. He’d reluctantly agreed to having one child, he told me, but her dishonesty meant three further pregnancies, one of which she’d aborted.

I recall thinking at the time if this was something that mattered so much to him, then why didn’t he take responsibility for it? But, of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying that. Instead, though I told him I couldn’t have any more children – I’d known that since Jennifer’s birth – I agreed. As it turned out, however, it was Warren who was sterilized, as I don’t think he trusted that I would go ahead with it.

He had the operation and then rolled around in agony all that evening, then became angry that he had to have it in the first place and applied, less than three months later, to go on the waiting list to have it reversed.

It was a year before the reversal itself happened, and it wasn’t long after that he changed his mind and decided that he’d quite like to have a son, by me.

In keeping with everything between me and Warren, if he wanted something – in this case, the baby he now wished for – then it was my absolute priority to give it. I would have had Warren’s child like a shot. In this case, I knew it was never going to happen, but I would have, had nature allowed it. Once again, that now astounds me. I’d found everything about motherhood impossibly difficult, and could barely cope with the children I had – what on earth was I thinking, wanting to have another? Much as I told myself that with Warren as the father, things would be different, what would it do to the children I already had?

And right now – and this is almost impossible to write – I was about to hurt my precious children further.

Straight away, logistically, we had a problem. Warren and I had found a flat to rent but it only had one and a half bedrooms. He had made no secret of the fact that he didn’t want my children – he was leaving his own, after all – but had reluctantly agreed that one of them could come. As Jennifer was the youngest – she was fourteen now – it was obvious it should be her. I could hardly bear it, but I kept telling myself it was just till Warren could be talked round, and we could find a bigger place, and he could be persuaded to find room for Alfie, now eighteen, as well. In the meantime perhaps I could find somewhere else for him to stay – how could he bear for me to take Jennifer and leave him with Gary? There was also the question of Jennifer’s beloved dog, Polly. I agonized about separating Jennifer from Polly; they’d spent every day and night together for eight years.

It was a terrible mess. All of it of my making, and impossible to reconcile. When I told the children I was leaving, just the day before I did, they both just sat and looked at me, stunned. They couldn’t understand how this was happening. They’d had no warning, or time to prepare – just the news that I was leaving, the very next day, to live with a man they’d never met. Jennifer, shocked and angry, refused point-blank to come with me, while Alfie just sat and stared.