I Won't Forgive What You Did (30 page)

As well he might. I was, in every way imaginable, abandoning them. And whatever their home life, it was all they’d ever known, and this was something they could make no sense of. It was madness, but I did it even so; so powerful was the hold Warren had over me, nothing else mattered as much as he did.

Jennifer, realizing she had little option, finally packed, and the three of us moved into our flat on 5 January 1991, leaving Alfie and Polly with Gary. I should have realized he wouldn’t abandon Jennifer’s dog; she was perhaps the one thing he could cling on to. He slept with his baseball bat under his pillow, ready, he said, to kill Gary, if needed. Looking back now it’s almost too much to contemplate – but the person who had most hurt him now was me.

Warren’s children, too, were struggling, and would come to us after school, looking bewildered, a couple of nights every week, and cram in with us every other weekend.

That all of this happened – that I let it happen – still feels unbelievable, and will haunt me for the rest of my life.

And the warnings about Warren began coming thick and fast. Within days of us moving in, things felt uncomfortable. I’d frequently wake in the night to find Warren thrusting away inside me. Not just once, either – up to three times a night. ‘I fancied you,’ he’d tell me, by way of explanation. ‘But you were asleep so I thought I’d do it anyway.’ He’d suffix all this by pointing out that I ‘shouldn’t be so alluring’, and though I was reassured by the compliment, I still had this feeling of anxiety about it – about him doing it being once again
my
fault.

There were lots of things Warren did that made me confused and discomfited, but I naturally reasoned them away. I’d been born a Wednesday’s child and I remained one; who was I to think I could do a relationship properly? I was just being silly and naive.

And there were aspects of Warren’s behaviour that did nourish me. When he slept he would wrap himself tightly around me – both arms and legs, so I was pinioned. Far from this making me feel claustrophobic, however, it made me feel cherished.

So when he was controlling and difficult I forgave him. When he came home, as he did most nights, and drank whole bottles of brandy, I reasoned that was just what he did. I thought that was what
all
middle-class people did. I felt wholly inadequate around middle-class people, generally, and when we went shopping I’d let him choose most of the food. I felt too embarrassed to admit the food he liked – fresh olives, garlic, pasta – were things I’d never eaten before.

After six months we bought a little two-bedroom house, but still Alfie didn’t move in. There was insufficient room – I couldn’t ask him to share with Jennifer, and, in truth, too much damage had already been done, and I didn’t have a clue how to mend it. The only way I could fix things with my sad, angry son would have been to leave Warren, and I simply couldn’t do that. Already I was trapped, by the strength of my need for Warren’s care and attention, a terrifying need – almost a compulsion – and one that would serve me very badly.

Alfie was working as an apprentice bricklayer by now, just down the road. He’d been advised by the doctor not to do something so physical, because of his Crohn’s disease, but he was determined, and I remember sadly wondering if it was perhaps because that had been what his daddy had done.

Having found lodgings, Alfie could at last leave Gary’s house. However, this raised the problem of what to do with Polly, who was now growing old, thin and, understandably, depressed and wouldn’t be allowed in his digs. I couldn’t bear leaving her with Gary because he’d always been cruel to her, and I knew Warren, who didn’t want her, would be unkind to her too. In desperation, therefore, I made another terrible decision. One which at the time seemed the only rational course but that I instantly, bitterly regretted. I decided that the kindest thing for poor Polly would be for her to leave this miserable world altogether.

It was the spur of a moment I fervently still wish had never happened. I didn’t discuss it with Jennifer, I just telephoned the vet and made an appointment to have Polly put down. I then took her, with Alfie, for a walk across the common, reached the vet’s and in no time the job was done.

Even as it was happening I knew I’d done a terrible thing; it was just like when I thought I had ‘killed’ my little brother all those years back and, more recently, hastened my grandad’s demise. But it was too late. The injection was already going in her leg.

My poor son, moreover, had to witness this, and I still had to break the news to my daughter. What had happened to me? Who was I to say who should live or die? I sat, head in hands, for a long time afterwards and sobbed. What
was
happening to me? What had I become?

The repercussions of adultery are huge in any situation, and ours was no exception. Things quickly became very difficult, both in doing my job and on my social work course.

Warren remained in his job, as if nothing had happened, but I, being the ‘home wrecker’, was told that as Warren managed the areas I worked in I would have to be deployed somewhere else. I was offered two roles, neither of which I wanted, but I’d no choice but to take one – it had been my choice to cause all this, hadn’t it? Later on I would come to question how meekly I just accepted this – after all, he was the one in the senior position and I wasn’t the first member of staff he’d had a relationship with – Sarah, I found out, hadn’t been the only one besotted with him as I was – but at the time I just blamed myself. I also had to take the flak from the general assumption that he’d been seeing me for much longer than was the case. Of Sarah, no one knew a thing.

As a result of everything, I failed the first year of my course, and had to spend the summer working for and re-sitting my practicals, or I wouldn’t be allowed to join the second year. I did manage to get through, but the second year was even worse. During it, Warren’s wife divorced him for adultery and, quite understandably, named me, then compounded my already sorry situation at work by becoming a tutor on my course, responsible for supervising students and grading their work. I felt strongly that other tutors – friends of hers – were marking my work down to punish me. I felt defeated by this – guilty, yes, but also angry that everything seemed to fall to me, while Warren was able to carry on as before.

Meanwhile, he was becoming a very possessive partner, and increasingly jealous of the male students on my course. He’d accuse me regularly of wanting to go to bed with them. When we were out socially he’d often make sure he stood in front of me, explaining that he needed to hide me from other men, and so protecting me from unwanted male attention. It got to the point where I went everywhere with my eyes fixed on the ground, feeling ashamed of even existing.

But I was also grateful for his attention because, at the same time, where other women would have felt stifled by his behaviour, a part of me was glad he cared so much about me. This protective behaviour was no small thing – no one had ever done that in my entire life.

Not that I ever felt anything but inferior to him. I felt inferior to almost everyone, of course, but with Warren it was more intense. Warren was a terrible snob, and had an obsession with class. I’d never really thought too much about class – as in the class that I was born into – but it was a very big issue for him. He was disparaging about the values of the working classes – somewhat strange, given the work he did – and told me if I was successful in acquiring an education, my own values would change and I’d be in the happy position of moving from lower working class to lower middle class. This really upset me. I wasn’t trying to get an education to move class. His assertion made me angry that he felt I wasn’t good enough for him, though I later realized it wasn’t my class I was ashamed of, it was the way I’d been made to feel as a child.

I did try, early on, to articulate my feelings about my family to him, but Warren didn’t want to know. If I tried to talk to him about my early experiences, he’d start pretending to play an imaginary violin, which just confirmed my feeling that I was a piece of rubbish, always trying to compensate for my upbringing.

I tried very hard to be what Warren wanted me to be, but I was no match for him academically. I thought compared with him I had so little to offer.

And little by little, I began to get to know him even better. Or, more accurately, to get to know two different people, one of whom was as essential to me as the air I breathed, and the other, who was terrifying.

I wonder, looking back, why I couldn’t see what was so obvious. I was in a relationship that, in some ways, resembled the one with my mother, in my childhood. I was often bewildered by Warren, who could change in an instant from loving, caring partner to this cruel monster, treating me like dirt. He really was an archetypal Jekyll and Hyde. If I pleased him, he was attentive and charming, complimentary and affectionate, behaving as if I was the love of his life. But if I displeased him he would treat me as if I was not even worthy of a glance; blowing up into terrifying rages and rants, and then not speaking to me for days and days.

I suppose the truth is that he was not at all like my mother. When he was happy (about me, life, or anything) Warren’s love for me shone like a beacon – why on earth else would I endure the horror of his other side?

Of course, it never occurred to me to question there
were
these two sides. As he began pointing out early on, and continued to insist, it wasn’t
him
– this man who meted out such breathtaking cruelty – it was all about the way
I
behaved.

Today we are all so aware of abusive behaviour in relationships. Women know (for it is still mostly women who endure domestic violence) that when a man says ‘It’s
your
fault – it’s
you
that drives me to this anger’ the problem of the violence is the man’s. We know because young people are being told this now, repeatedly; we know there is no justification for it –
ever
. Until recently hardly anyone dared speak about what happened to them. And, naturally, I had a prior disposition to believe I was wrong, so looking back it’s no wonder that I did.

Warren and I stayed in the house for two years, and during this time it became clear that our relationship was becoming extremely challenging. Little things would cause him to fly into terrible rages. Early on, I dared to question why when we were having sex he would clamp his hands round my throat so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. This terrified me, as did his absolute silence when he did it, and it took a lot for me to bring the subject up. He immediately became angry and dismissive and then cold, and didn’t speak to me for several days. Feeling unhappy, and guilty for making him so cross, I eventually tried to get close to him again. His petulant response was one that would be repeated many times. ‘Oh,’ he said, coldly, ‘I thought you didn’t like what I did. Why do you want to be around me now, then?’

Warren’s silences were by far the worst things I experienced – every bit as debilitating as anything he could do to me physically. When he was ignoring me it was like another chilling echo from my childhood; I couldn’t function, felt anxious, and couldn’t eat or sleep. It wasn’t just his insistence I should be slim and perfect that made me lose two and a half stone in as many months. It was the ongoing torture of being so ruthlessly ignored – something that got worse and worse throughout our time together. But when Warren was happy, it was the best feeling in the world. If I pleased him he was so kind, so sensitive, funny and attentive – a completely different person. When he was nice to me I felt amazing. He was so gifted and he would lavish those gifts on me. He used to read to me, recite poetry to me, make up funny little stories, leave me silly little notes, and when he played his guitar and sang to me I was in heaven. I felt so honoured he wanted to be with me, and that he cared for me sufficiently to want to introduce me to a life I’d never known. We would often sit, him with his Sunday paper and me with the supplements, and I’d pinch myself that this was really happening.

But even then, there was a part of me that continued to feel anxious and sad. How was it no one had ever treated me like this before? That no one had ever taken the trouble to point out the sky and clouds and flowers, and the sound of birds singing in the trees? It did make me happy, but it also made me depressed; how come I’d always been so blunted to such things and had this core of deep misery still inside? And that in turn made me anxious – why
was
he bothering with me? I owed so much to this man, I really did.

So busy was I trying to please him – living this see-saw existence of attempting to maintain harmony and keep his temper at bay – I continued to ignore further warnings. Another of these came when we’d been together eight months and the phone went. It was the woman he’d been seeing before me – Sarah. She told me she was very upset, and really needed to speak to me, and that because she was married and no one knew about their affair she didn’t have anyone else she could talk to.

I didn’t want to speak to her – it felt all wrong – and mouthed at Warren to come and talk to her instead.

Warren refused, and she went on to give me more details. He’d apparently told her he loved her, just before he left her, and asked her to leave her husband and move in with him. She refused, feeling ambivalent about breaking up her marriage, and told him she needed time to think. It was then, she explained, that he abruptly ended their relationship and immediately moved in with me. She also added she’d been interviewed by him only a few days previously, for a promotion, and he’d humiliated her in front of the other panel members and been really unpleasant.