by Kim Nash
I could never have pre-empted that. I was surprised she didn’t tell me to shut my mouth because I was doing a really good impression of a goldfish. Rebecca seemed really put together, it just wasn’t what I had been expecting. I suppose it just went to show that you really didn’t know what people went through in their lives.
‘My husband was abusive, both mentally and physically. I protected my children from it, and let him hit me instead of hitting them. He was a man that, when everyone met him, they thought he was bloody wonderful, he charmed the pants off everyone but the minute the door was shut he was moody and he drank. He had severe depression we discovered years later, but it doesn’t condone what he did to me. One night he hit me once too often, and I’d just had enough. He was making us all desperately unhappy and it was no life to bring children up in.’ Rebecca took a deep breath.
‘You are very easy to talk to, Maddy, I feel like I’m burdening you here.’
I smiled at her. ‘It sounds like you need to talk about it. It’s not always good to bottle things up.’
‘Thank you Maddy, I’ve not told many people our background and it’s actually quite cathartic to say it out loud.’ She breathed deeply before she continued.
‘His behaviour was getting worse with each episode. I should have got out years ago, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t mentally ready. With amazing help from my local Women’s Aid support unit, they put me in touch with Beth up here. I lived over a hundred miles away. She helped to set up a new home for the children and me, without him knowing and then one night I laced his hot chocolate with sleeping tablets so he didn’t wake for a while, and I grabbed the children from their beds, and we just scarpered. Poor lambs, they hadn’t got a clue what was happening. They put coats on over the top of their pyjamas, and we left with literally nothing but what we were wearing.
‘Thanks to Beth, we were able to start a new life. There was a local charity who gave us support and clothes and furniture and when I was ready, I started working at the library, just around school hours so I can take the children to school and pick them up and I help out where I can at the local women’s refuge helping women just like me. It’s really important to me that I help others realise that they don’t have to live that way and that there are options. Without the help I had, I would have still been there. It’s also really important to me that I’m around for those school times for the younger ones, and then we go and shut ourselves away in our house where we feel safe and secure.
‘I suppose I want to make it up to them. Make them realise how much I love them and how sorry I am that they had to go through everything that they did. And it’s so wonderful to see them enjoying life now that the look of fear has left them. So that’s my story, basically, Madison. So what’s yours?’
To be honest, I was speechless. I really hadn’t realised before just what victims of domestic violence went through yet here I was, feeling sorry for myself because I had been made redundant and couldn’t afford the latest Michael Kors handbag. Learning more about Beth’s life was really opening up my eyes to what other people were going through.
I told Rebecca a little of my background and that I’d recently moved to the farm. I suggested that she brought the children over one day and I could show them around. She said that her and Beth had talked about this before, but they were both so busy that they hadn’t got round to it yet, but said that she would make the time because she knew the children would love it. It would be more fun next spring when the ewes had their little lambs dancing about, but they could come over soon and help me to feed them and help me to find the eggs in the chicken coops. I always found it really fulfilling to eat poached eggs on toast when I’d had to find those eggs for myself. I bet the children would love it too.
Somehow, the chickens over the last few days, had become my responsibility and my first job of the morning was to spend a good while rummaging around in the bedding hay to see what delights we’d been left from the night before. And my evening job was to lock them away, which was easier said than done when you had to find and persuade twenty chickens and one gobby cockerel to go into their coop, all at the same time, locking them away so the foxes didn’t get them in the night.
The children could come and look round the allotment too and maybe we could find them their own little patch with their own jobs to do and maybe they could grow some fruit and veg and watch the food literally go from farm to fork. Even though she realised that it would be a long-term project, Rebecca loved this idea and said that they’d never done anything like this, so we arranged for them to come over one evening after school and see how they enjoyed it.
We parted with Rebecca also promising to see if there were any other projects in the community that I could get involved with or whether the women’s refuge needed any help at all. If nothing else, I was sure there was stuff I wouldn’t need any more that I could pass their way while I was moving out. I’d gone from not having anything to do, to filling my days quite easily and I felt that the things I was doing these days, although simpler, were way more fulfilling. I gave her a hug as we left. I’d turned into a right hugger these last few weeks and I felt good that I’d made a new friend.
Chapter Thirteen
As the rest of the week passed we fell into an easy routine at the farm, which suited us all, with me going home each evening and packing my old life away.
Friday soon rolled round. Uncle Tom very kindly let me have the afternoon off and Alex offered to come over with me to give me a hand with all the lifting for which I was extremely grateful. It was great living in a flat until you moved in or out, or had tons of shopping to carry.
I’d learned to calm down a bit more around Alex over the last week and stop blushing every time he looked at me. He was going to be grabbing a flight back to the US soon, so there was no point getting too attached to him again even just as friends.
Mum was coming over later; I was really looking forward to seeing her. She was going to bring a measuring tape and jot down anything that we needed and we were going shopping the next morning. There wasn’t much I needed but there were a few ornamental things that I wanted to pop around the place to make it feel more like mine than a temporary let. I was hoping to catch Mum in a good mood too as I wanted to ask her more about my father.
It seemed like she’d got the same idea as me though, because as soon as she arrived that evening, she was looking pretty serious and said that she’d got something on her mind that she wanted to discuss. I held up the bottle of wine that she’d brought over, and she nodded, so I poured us both half a glass. I wasn’t sure if wine glasses were getting bigger or wine bottles were getting smaller but you could easily lose a bottle in a couple of glasses these days.
As I sat opposite Mum, I noticed her handbag at the side of the coffee table, and there sat on the top was the mysterious red tin box. She clocked that I’d seen it and passed it to me.
‘I’m sorry darling, I wasn’t quite truthful with you when you asked about this box before but I really feel that the time is right to give it to you now. I’m going to pop to the loo, and leave you to look through it. Hopefully it’ll start to make sense as you go through it.’
I had no real idea what to expect, but as I opened the box there on the top was one of those photo booth strips of four black and white pictures of Mum when she was younger with a very handsome man. I turned the pictures over, and it said ‘Josie and Theo, Blackpool, 1981’. Oh my bloody God! Was this my father? I stared at him, devouring every single detail of his face. I couldn’t see much, but I could see that he had a neck scarf on top of a collarless white shirt and he looked like he should be a member of Duran Duran. He had strawberry blond hair, which flopped over to one side. In one photo, he was kissing Mum’s cheek and she was laughing, and in another they were staring at each other and looked very much in love. I gulped as I took in every tiny detail of his face. His eyes, his nose. Oh my! I put my hand up to touch his nose on the photograph. He also had a freckle right on t
he end of his nose. It was just like mine. Or should I say, mine was just like his? Touching his face on the photograph made me feel like I was reaching out and touching him.
A cough brought me back to my senses and I noticed Mum standing beside me.
‘Is this him?’
‘Yes darling. Your father. This is Theo.’ She rested her hand on my shoulder and I just looked up at her. I couldn’t speak. Nothing would come out. I was thirty-seven years old and this was the very first time that I’d seen my dad. In my head he was becoming ‘Dad’ now, because I’d seen him and his features were familiar to me. I was gobsmacked.
‘Ok darling, I can see that you are totally stunned, so pass me the box back, and I’ll give you things one by one, and explain what they are. That might help. They’re all things that really meant something to me from the time that Theo and I spent together.
‘Theo normally left work after me, but one night we were on the same bus and he sat by me and we chatted like old friends. He asked me if he could take me to watch a film. This is a cinema ticket from our very first date. We went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. How romantic?’ She giggled at the memory. ‘It was such a lovely evening; I didn’t want it to end. We went for a drink in a late night café and they had to throw us out because they were desperate to close but we just didn’t want to part company. We walked around talking until around one a.m. when he walked me home to the flat I lived in above a florist shop.
‘I’ll never forget that first kiss as long as I live.’ As Mum spoke, I could see just how painful it was for her to relive this memory and a tear trickled down her cheek as I held her hand in mine.
She wiped away the tear, and delved back into the box. She laughed as she passed another ticket across to me. ‘Adam and the Ants at the Odeon in Birmingham. It was our next date and the first pop concert I had ever been to. I had never seen anything like it. Girls were screaming and crying and there was one girl at the front who passed out when Adam Ant touched her hand. It was brilliant. The bass vibrated through your body, it was so loud and so fantastic. One of the most exciting moments of my life.’
A menu was the next thing that she passed over. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I was mesmerised by these mementoes that my Mum had kept for over thirty-eight years.
‘This was from the first meal we ever had at Romano Italiano in Birmingham. Not sure why I kept the menu but I just wanted to treasure the memories I suppose. They all meant such a lot to me.’
Taking a sip of her wine, she passed me another keepsake, and I was surprised to see that it was a handwritten note. My breath caught in my throat when I realised that I was looking at my father’s writing. This was such a weird feeling.
My darling Josie, I’m trying to work, but cannot think of anything but you and our kisses. Meet me at the bus stop after work. I just cannot wait to feel you in my arms and your lips upon mine once more. Just four more hours to go. Theo xxx
‘This was a note that was on my desk when I got back from lunch one day. He took a risk putting it there, but I suppose it was in an envelope, so no one could read it. I remember slipping it into my handbag and then when I met him that night he said that being able to see me but not touch me at work was driving him crazy. It was strange because he was so quiet at work, didn’t say boo to a goose, just got on with his job and very rarely came out of his office. But then there was this passionate side to him too. That was the first time in the short few months we’d been together that he told me he loved me. We were sat on the top deck of the bus holding hands and he just blurted it out. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed so soon but then again, it seemed so right, too.’
Mum’s cheeks started to flush as more memories came flooding back to her. ‘We caught the bus back to the shop, and we stumbled through the front door, and well you can probably guess what happened next.’
At this point, I was torn between wanting to know what happened next as it sounded so romantic and wanting to hold my hands over my ears and shout ‘la la la!’ This was my mum after all and there are some things you really don’t need to know about what your mother gets up to in the bedroom department.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to go into detail darling.’
Thank God for that! She was sparing me the intimate details. I was thankful for small mercies.
‘This is a birthday card from the one and only birthday of mine that we spent together.’ She passed over a beautiful card with ‘To The One I Love’ on the front and once again seeing his writing on the inside, declaring his undying love, made my stomach lurch.
A baby scan picture was passed across our knees. ‘I was so happy to know I was having Theo’s baby after the initial shock wore off. I thought he’d feel the same way. The rest you know.’
Mum looked sad but unburdened at the same time. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry that I’ve never shown you these things before. The last time I looked at them was just after you were born. I was so ecstatic to have my beautiful baby daughter that I loved with all my heart, but so immensely sad to be without Theo. My emotions were all over the place. My hormones, too! I really thought that my parents would have been there for me. I know that I haven’t told you this before, because I was not only hurt, but totally mortified by what they did, but they disowned me the moment I told them I was pregnant. I know they were disappointed in me, understandably, and horrified, as was I, that Theo was married and was not going to be able to make an honest woman of me. They were embarrassed and didn’t want their friends to find out. At the time when I really needed them the most, they weren’t there for me.’ Her voice wobbled.
‘He should have been there with me. To see his beautiful daughter. ‘She banged her hand on her knee and raised her voice. ‘He should have been there for you, for us.’ Then all her anger dissipated as she whispered, ‘He should have been there for us,’ once more. Tears streamed down her cheeks as those feelings of betrayal from the people she thought cared about her, came flooding back to her and the hurt came tumbling back into her life. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
‘This is why I packed everything away in a box and hid it in the loft. I couldn’t bear to look at them and think about how quickly it all went wrong. Obviously I didn’t hide it well enough though, Miss Eagle Eyes.’ She smiled at me through her tears. ‘Can you ever forgive me? I was just trying to protect you.’
‘Mum, there is nothing to forgive you for. You can only ever do what you feel is right at the time. You dedicated your whole life to me and to making it the best it could be. You gave me more love than any other child I know. You worked around the clock, so we could have a nice life. I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated, perfect, wonderful mother.’
Mum ran her thumb down my cheek. ‘My beautiful, kind, sweet girl. You are beautiful inside and out. He has missed out on so much. I’m so proud of you and love you so very much. There was a point in my life where I wished nothing more than that one day, before my time was up, we would meet again, and I could hold my head high and tell him that we never needed him. That we did ok.’
‘We did more than ok Mum, we – well mainly you, did brilliant. But can I ask you one more thing?’
‘Anything darling, anything at all.’
‘What was his surname?’
Mum took in the deepest of breaths and time stood still for what seemed like minutes because she knew that the words she would say next would be life-changing. She breathed out and whispered ‘Theo. Theo Knight.’
Chapter Fourteen
Once she realised that I’d got over the initial shock, Mum said that she was going and that she’d be back the following day after she’d given me some time to think. She kissed my head as she left. ‘Sleep tight darling. I love you.’
* * *
I sat for ages just staring into space, completely bowled over by the fact that I now had a name. I rolled it around my tongue. Theo. Knight. It was a good strong name, and I wondered what a name said about a person. Once I started to
come to my senses, I grabbed my phone from my handbag, and started to look online for my father.
However, Theo Knight was nowhere to be found. I tried to cyber stalk him by looking for him on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But I kept drawing a blank. In hindsight, if he was older than Mum by five years, and Mum was sixty this year, that would make him sixty-four or sixty-five, so maybe that made it less likely that he would be on social media? I thought there was a chance that I might track him down but even before I’d really started I’d hit a dead end. What now?
I thought Beth might have some suggestions when I popped in to see her tomorrow. I could get her on the case while she was resting. It would give her something to do.
My sleep was fitful that night; I was tossing and turning with my mind whirling in all directions but in the middle of the night everything always seemed a million times worse and the harder I tried to go back to sleep, the less able I became. As the sun rose across the orchard, I trudged downstairs in my ’jamas and slippers and made some coffee. I desperately needed a caffeine boost to start the day. As I boiled the kettle, I remembered that Mum was coming over mid morning to go shopping and it gave me the kick up the bum I needed to drag myself out of this daze.
* * *
Around 9 a.m. the post thudded onto the front door mat and made me jump from my daydream. Looking at my watch, I realised it had been a while since I’d moved from my book and it was about time I got myself another drink to liven me up. I was waking up early these days and really enjoying having a coffee and reading to start the day. I flicked the switch to reboil the kettle and picked up the post which had been directed from the apartment, rifling through to see if anything looked interesting. One A4 manila envelope had the Ronington’s franking stamp and I opened it to find some final paperwork from the HR department. My heart thudded as I recognised the sweeping handwriting on one of the other envelopes that was also included. Propping that particular bit of post next to the kettle, with my hands shaking, I made a drink but was definitely really out of sorts because of it. I sat back down on the sofa and tried to ignore it, but it was staring at me, calling me to open it.