I Won't Forgive What You Did (32 page)

One afternoon in particular, I left work early after an upset in the office, hoping to get some sympathy from my partner. When I arrived at about three o’clock it was to find him prostrate on the sofa, clearly having been drinking – and a glass of red wine on the floor beside him. Straight away he was irritable and confrontational, as if I had no right to turn up at my own house. I was really scared, so much so that when he went out to his car to see if he could find some cigarettes, I quickly went and locked the back door. He often stomped out angrily to do something or other, as a prelude to getting into his car and driving off. Hopefully, I wouldn’t see him again for a while, and when I did perhaps he’d be nicer. Locking the door felt safer.

But my relief, as I flopped down on the sofa, was short-lived. Almost immediately, I heard a loud banging at the front door. I jumped up and ran towards the kitchen, not sure what to do, and as I did so I saw him walk past the kitchen window, moving fast, with a big metal thing over his shoulder, which looked like a car exhaust. I had no idea where he’d got that. The next thing I heard was the sound of breaking glass as he smashed it into the conservatory door. He then put his hand through and unlocked the door, and then went through to the back door and smashed the window there too, once again putting his hand through and unlocking it. Next thing, he was in the kitchen, angrily walking towards me, with the metal thing on his shoulder, aimed right at my face. ‘Oh, my God,’ I thought, terrified. ‘He’s going to kill me.’ But he didn’t. He came right up, so his weapon was mere inches from my face. ‘Don’t you
ever
,’ he said coldly and very quietly, ‘lock me out of my own house again,
ever.
Do you understand me?’ I nodded, petrified, unable to get a sound out of my mouth. He then threw the metal thing down and stalked off through the back door. I heard the car leave a few moments later.

I stood there, in the sea of glass, shaking and stunned, repeating to my own shocked reflection, ‘I thought he was going to kill me. I thought he was really going to kill me.’

By the time I’d gathered myself together enough to find a broom and start clearing up the broken glass, Jennifer arrived home with a friend. I couldn’t stop crying, so I didn’t dare look up, and just muttered something about doors slamming in the wind. I didn’t think she believed me – as she stepped over the glass she looked angry and embarrassed – but at the same time I knew she didn’t want to know. Not that I wanted her to, in any case. I wanted my children shielded from all this.

Warren arrived home again, two hours later and, as usual, completely ignored me.

After several days he finally agreed to talk about it, and made the usual array of non-apologetic proclamations, all of which I swallowed. We then got a firm in to fix the broken windows. But it wouldn’t be the last glass he smashed.

The incident with the metal thing – I never did find out what it was – really shook me. I’d been so sure I was going to be killed, and was repeatedly having nightmares, and when awake was constantly jumpy around Warren. Though on the surface I carried on as though everything was okay, inside I was completely screwed up. I decided I needed to find somewhere else to live, and went to the council to see if they could find somewhere for me and Jennifer, telling Warren that I was doing so on the basis of our finances; now he was earning so much less, I told him it would be better if we rented somewhere smaller and sold our house. We’d already sold the one Alfie had been staying in, as now that he’d finished his apprenticeship he’d gone to work abroad for a while.

The woman I saw at the council was very understanding and though I didn’t tell her anything about what had happened she was obviously aware something was going on. This wasn’t surprising, as I couldn’t stop crying, but when she said, ‘You’re a victim of domestic violence, aren’t you?’ I was completely in shock. ‘You’ll get priority, of course . . .’ she began to explain, but I interrupted her. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘I’m not here because of domestic violence!’ And I believed it, as well. I thought she was mad. How could she think such a thing? I wasn’t a
victim –
how dare she suggest it!

She carried on writing, nevertheless, and then added that, in order to be made a priority, Jennifer and I would need to be homeless too.

And so it was that we spent two nights sleeping in a hostel for the homeless, and then were given a brand-new two-bedroom house to rent, close to where the children had grown up.

But still my dream of making things right with Warren persisted; it was as tenacious as ever and I still believed it. Thus when Jennifer and I moved into our new home, Warren, unknown to the council, came too. I’d by now forgiven him, having once again talked myself into minimizing what had happened, and also accepting that it had been my fault. A new start, I believed, was just what we needed – less outgoings, less stress. And when Warren got a new job – agency work – that seemed to suit him really well, I felt sure I’d made the right decision. The money would be less, but the pressure would be less also, though something inside me must have felt less certain as I still kept the tenancy in my name.

And I’d been right to. It wasn’t long before I realized little had changed. Every time Warren got angry – which was often – he would throw things at me using anything he had to hand. Cutlery, crockery – anything he was holding, though on one occasion it was even worse. We were in the kitchen, and I’d upset him, and I watched, stunned, as he calmly walked over to the cupboard and took out a jar of mayonnaise. He half turned and threw it. It connected with my foot, smashing really hard into my instep. I watched the mayonnaise splash up onto my skirt in great blobs, which then began sliding slowly down. He said nothing – just barged past me and marched off upstairs, and I remember standing there, sobbing, as the mayonnaise and my blood mingled together, falling over the kitchen tiles.

I can’t do this any more, I thought. I really can’t. I had no energy left, and no will to fight on. I felt the same useless piece of rubbish I always had done. Why else had my life come to this? It was just like being a little girl all over again, I thought, as I wiped and mopped and tidied, weeping. Doing my job: cleaning up mess, just like my mother’s.

Things were not improving for Warren with his job either. The agency work wasn’t proving to be either sufficient or less stressful. With his high-ranking position at social services just a memory, he was increasingly angry about going for interviews to be grilled by those he considered ‘lesser’ people.

I actually admired him for putting himself through this repeatedly – even if he
had
put himself in this position – but with every rejection he became angrier and it was beginning to spill out, not only towards me. He became more and more rude to the children, to whom he spoke dismissively and critically, as if his problems were somehow their fault.

Alfie, who was now working in Copenhagen, had escaped him, but Jennifer bore the brunt of Warren’s anger whenever it wasn’t directed at me. It was just such an incident that put me back in hospital in late 1994, this time for emergency surgery.

Warren had returned home after attending yet another interview, and I could see he was in a bad mood. Jennifer had cooked for us – spaghetti bolognaise – and when Warren came in she had just opened a bottle of red wine, so she went into the kitchen and poured us both a glass. By the time she returned, he’d gone upstairs, so she handed me mine – I was sitting on the sofa – and put Warren’s on a side table, ready.

Like anyone who lives with someone who has a temper, I imagine, I had a sixth sense there was trouble brewing. That horrible hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach told me to tread carefully. I could tell, just by the sound of Warren’s feet on the stairs, that he was returning downstairs in a worse mood. He entered the living room. ‘Your room is disgusting,’ he told Jennifer, who’d just come back in. ‘It’s a pigsty!’

Unlike me, Jennifer wasn’t afraid of Warren. ‘What were you doing in my room?’ she shot back.

He muttered something about checking a radiator, which didn’t impress either her or me. I realized he was simply trying to pick a fight. Using Jennifer as a target for his frustration. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my radiator,’ she went on. ‘Why were you in there?’

‘Never mind that!’ he retorted. Now he was shouting. ‘Your room is disgusting.’

This was my daughter he was yelling at. I couldn’t help but speak. ‘Look,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level, ‘why go in there? If you can’t stand the mess, just don’t go in there. I don’t.’

He saw his wine then and, muttering angrily, came over to the sofa, sat down beside me, and picked it up. He hadn’t calmed down but perhaps he had accepted this was not a fight worth picking.

Jennifer went back into the kitchen and dished up the spaghetti bolognaise.

‘TV dinner!’ she said brightly, now recovered from Warren’s outburst, and taking her place on the sofa alongside us.

What happened next happened very quickly. The first thing I heard was Jennifer scream out, ‘No, no, no!’ as Warren leapt up and threw his dinner plate down on my lap with such force that it broke not only his plate, but also the wine glass in my hand. The next thing I heard was the cry that escaped my own lips, as a bolt of almost unimaginable pain shot through my wrist and up my arm. When I looked down, there was blood pumping out of the back of my hand. My fingers were locked in a bent-up position, and for some reason I couldn’t move them.

I stared at the blood, transfixed – it just wouldn’t stop pumping, and was mingling with the spaghetti sauce and wine. Jennifer stood wide-eyed in front of me. ‘What shall we do? What shall we DO??’

I tried to think. ‘Get me a towel,’ I said. ‘Yes, a towel.’ I had to ask her several times before she moved. Warren, meanwhile, was now seated again, his silence saying I was making a big fuss.

I must get out of here, I thought, rising from the sofa. I must get Jennifer out of here too. I must, above all, make her safe. She brought the towel and I wrapped it around my wrist and hand, propelling her back into the hall as I did so.

I shut the door, then, and went and sat on the stairs. ‘Call 999,’ I told Jennifer, ‘and ask for an ambulance.’ She just stood there, looking horrified. I repeated the instruction and now she did move towards the phone. ‘Pick it up,’ I said softly. ‘999.’

Once again she just stood there. ‘Push 999,’ I repeated gently, and this time she punched out the numbers. I felt relief, and my old friend hysterical laughter rising up in my throat. I swallowed. Warren still might charge out of the living room at any moment. I really hoped there was an ambulance nearby. I was also aware that if I moved my hand even slightly, the blood, which was still pumping from the wound, would start spurting.

I could tell the call had been answered. ‘Ask for an ambulance,’ I told Jennifer. ‘Tell them Mummy has fallen over and cut her wrist badly’ I found out later that what they’d recorded was that I’d actually attempted suicide and hadn’t a clue what to expect when they arrived.

But they were quick – within minutes we could see the blue lights flashing in the road – and their demeanour, which was upbeat and jolly, soon had Jennifer coming back to life. They wrapped my wrist – the gash was pumping in time to my pulse; they couldn’t stop it – in an enormous quantity of wadding, and quickly transferred us both to the ambulance. At no point during all this had Warren emerged, and I was glad. The ambulance men probably didn’t even know he was in the house. But once speeding to the hospital, shock set in with a vengeance, as the enormity of what had just occurred began to sink in. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t seem to inhale enough air, and the pain in my wrist – which was now a powerful throbbing – was beginning to make me feel I might be sick at any moment.

The paramedic, unaware of the true cause of my injuries, was jollying me along, making jokes about me tripping, saying, ‘You want to take more water with it next time!’ but by now I could barely function, so intensely was I in shock.

I had another shock soon after. After they’d X-rayed my arm, a surgeon came in and, taking my wrist and looking at me with a serious expression, he explained the severe nature of my injuries. There were apparently two tendons for every finger of my hand, and six of these eight had been severed altogether, with a seventh hanging just by a single thread. The snapped tendons had, of course, pinged back up my arm to my elbow, and he’d have to operate both to locate the severed tendons and to pull them all back down individually, at which point he’d attempt to re-attach them as best as he could.

The operation was scheduled for the morning, and, in the meantime to minimize the bleeding, my arm would be encased in a full plaster. Thankfully, I was given morphine for the pain, and transferred to a small two-bedded room, where I telephoned a trusted neighbour I’d known for many years, and asked her if she’d come and get Jennifer. She was still just eighteen, and in great shock herself, and the last thing I wanted was for her to go home to Warren.

I watched her leave, finally, all out of strength, the morphine making me drift in and out of consciousness. But when awake I felt Wednesday’s child grim: wound up, afraid, and full of woe.

Having spent most of the day after my operation in a blur, and having fallen asleep to the sound of more fireworks, I woke on 7 November 1994 to a very different sensation: that of someone stroking my hand. It was my right one – the left was still strung up above me, following the surgery. It would be the first of several operations.