What I Did

by Kate Bradley

  Just in case.

  I look back at the gas ring. Whether I like it or not, if I don’t want to face him with my hands tied behind my back, then it’s suddenly become idea number one again.

  thirteen:

  – now –

  I look at the gas hob. The reality of burning whatever is tying my wrists from me without properly being able to see, makes me feel ill. But he’s a killer, a killer of many, and I don’t have a choice. I purposefully remember the stretchers carrying the dead and the blue lights flashing in the dark and remind myself that there’s nothing he won’t do, no risk he won’t take, to get his way.

  Just as he’s bold, I need to be bolder.

  I turn back to the gas ring, I will not fail now. I will only face him with my hands freed. Perhaps I can keep it as an element of surprise. I need anything that will work in my favour.

  Backwards, with fumbling, fattened fingers I turn on the ring closest to me and then click the ignition. Tisht, tisht, tisht. It flames sapphire. I am not afraid of anything except for Jack’s safety.

  I hear the shusshh of the gas.

  Over my shoulder, I can see it perfectly, but when I raise my hands up to the flame, my shoulder blades rise up and block my view. I won’t be able to get an accurate aim.

  I count: ‘One, two –’ and even though I can’t see what I am doing, before I can say three, I push my wrists back into the flames.

  fourteen:

  – before –

  I left Send prison with Jack. As we walked through the gates, I stopped to put Jack into his buggy but as I turned to my beautiful son, I paused. He kicked a stone and I thought: how long can I keep doing the same thing?

  Then: am I really being the best parent I can be for Jack?

  My childhood memory of my mother dropping her knife and then, just now, seeing her watching me go, made me realise that despite what she’d done, she had never stopped watching out for me. The fact she’d been better than my perception made me want to be better for Jack. Things had to change – and it was going to start now. ‘Darling, I think you’re a big enough boy not to need your pushchair anymore. What do you think?’

  He looked up at me with big, pretty eyes, considering my question.

  ‘Could you walk like me? I wouldn’t want to push you into school next year. Maybe some of the other kids might think it’s a bit babyish.’

  His forehead wrinkled with the consideration, then he nodded: ‘I can walk.’

  Dropping a kiss on his head, I took his hand, pushed the redundant buggy with my other. My boy was growing up. It was a stark thought: things changed without me doing anything. Nothing would stay the same.

  The walk made him grumpy, but we stuck with it. By the time I got back to the car, I felt on the verge of something significant. Tired, Jack had started grumbling before I’d even started the car, but I put on an audio children’s story and he settled down to listen, letting me settle down to make decisions. Even as we crossed Ockham Common, the narrator’s voice spoke of The Faraway Tree, and my heart spoke of freedom. Sometimes driving had the same effect on me as walking – it helped me think properly – and I was determined to use the headspace to make a plan before I arrived home.

  On the M25, the lorries thundered past; the driving towards the coast loosened my mind and it felt almost hypnotic. As cars overtook, as I overtook others, I went through possible option after possible option and what became clear was, all choices led to needing money.

  And I had none.

  Nick controlled our money; I’ve always been uninterested in anything practical and mundane like paying bills, but that lack of control and lack of any personal income meant that I couldn’t siphon any money from our account without him knowing. With that inability to access cold hard cash, I accepted that, as I turned off for the M23, I would have to return to work.

  Once I’d made the decision to find a nursery for Jack and to sign on with a nursing agency, I actually felt exhilarated. The idea of having my own income felt empowering. It would give me control.

  I still had my own bank account. I’d opened it years before I met Nick; it was currently empty. I would fill it with my own wages. I would give the nursing agency the details of that account, and then I would transfer the bulk of the cash into the joint account. Nick wouldn’t know how much I left in my account and nor would he be able to complain, as it was exactly the arrangement he himself used.

  By the time I’d arrived in Brighton, I felt amazing. I realised that my mother had given me a plan – she’d told me what I needed to do, and after circling around different options, I’d realised she was right. But like all good decisions, I needed to decide it for myself. I felt intoxicated and saw so clearly how I’d allowed myself to be trapped.

  Keen to act, as soon as I was back home I parked Jack in front of the TV and made phone calls to both nurseries and the biggest nursing agency in the area.

  When Nick came in from the golf course, he smacked me on the backside, produced a doggy treat for Winston and gave Jack a packet of sweets. It was clear then that he’d been drinking heavily at the clubhouse, because he’d banned Jack from having any sweets, saying that they were bad for kids.

  I ushered him to sit at the kitchen table.

  ‘I’ve got to get changed,’ he complained.

  ‘In a minute, I just want to say something first.’ I didn’t like him drinking too much, so I put a cup of tea in front of him. ‘I’ve got news!’ I announced.

  His mood darkened as he eyed me over the top of his mug. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant,’ he said, his tone plunging from joyous to dangerous in a single second.

  I blinked, stung. It’d been a long time since we’d talked about trying for another baby, but Nick had always been the keen one, trying to persuade reluctant me. I wasn’t aware that he no longer wanted another child and it told me then how much our relationship had slipped over the last year. I’d thought it, but to hear it back from him felt disorientating.

  ‘No, actually. I’ve got a job interview at a nursing agency. I’m going to see them on Friday at ten o’clock, when your mum has Jack, and then I’m viewing three nurseries that afternoon.’

  He was so surprised, he slopped his tea. ‘You’re going back to work?’

  ‘I’ve decided it’s time.’

  He looked so surprised, it was almost comic. ‘When? How? Why?’

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. ‘Jack’s three now and I thought I should use my training before it gets so old they don’t let me,’ I said, parroting my mother. I smiled at the thought – she really had done her job without even trying to. ‘In fact, before I start back, I’m going to do a short refresher course to bring me up to date.’

  ‘Well . . . that’s just fantastic!’ Then his eyes narrowed a little with suspicion. ‘And that’s it? Don’t think I’m not overjoyed, it’s just I’ve pointed that out to you in the past and you’ve always said you didn’t care.’

  ‘It’s for Jack too,’ I said. I watched him drunkenly lift his mug. No wonder he hadn’t wanted the car – he’d got tanked at the golf club. ‘Obviously, Jack will be starting school soon. I still think it was great for him to spend his early years with me, but I can see it’s just as important to prepare him for the next stage.’ I smiled, as if the answer was obvious: ‘So I am!’

  ‘Well . . . good.’ The booze was addling his thinking, but he was catching up. ‘I agree. It’ll be good for him. Mum will be pleased too – she told me she wants a break.’

  ‘Oh! Do you think she could carry on for a bit longer? I don’t want to sound mercenary but we’ll have to start paying out for four days’ childcare and although I won’t be working full-time, we need the childcare so I can say yes if I get offered work. Paying for five days might tip the balance of making it financially viable.’ I took his hand. ‘Honey, if she could keep going, just while we get him over this transition period, that’d be perfect.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her.’ He looked d
own and rubbed Winston’s velvet muzzle. ‘But what about Winston?’

  I looked at our lovely dog and realised I’ve been so focused on Jack and the logistics of getting back into work, I’d overlooked him. ‘Maybe Irene?’ I put the kettle on and offered more tea to buy thinking time; Nick could never drink enough of the stuff. ‘Really, it wouldn’t be that often. The course is full-time, but when I’m working, there’ll be days during the week I won’t be and you’re often off during the week, so I suppose we’re only talking a couple of days a week.’

  ‘She loves Winston!’ He got up from the kitchen table and actually hugged me – for a moment I stood in his arms, and then I reached up and hugged him back. I shut my eyes and exhaled. It felt so long since he’d done that, it felt strange, mechanical, almost like we were acting.

  ‘I’m so pleased, Lisa! This is amazing.’ The kettle rose to a boil and switched itself off. The relief of a way forward was immense.

  ‘What’s amazing, Mummy?’

  I opened my eyes to see my beautiful Jack standing in the doorway. His large eyes looked pensive – perhaps seeing me and Nick in a hug was so unusual, it actually made him nervous.

  I let go of Nick but I didn’t tell Jack about my plans for nursery – not yet.

  Distracting Jack with a biscuit, it felt sensible to wait until Friday and all the dotted lines were metaphorically signed. Just in case.

  fifteen:

  – before –

  Within a month, I’d put the early stages of my plan into action and had started work.

  Initially, my plan worked ridiculously well. I’d completed my nursing knowledge course and had started with the agency, working anywhere between one and five days during the week. I couldn’t work weekends because Nick often worked then and the nursery was closed. Even if Nick was off at the weekend, he didn’t like me working – ironically, he complained about missing out on ‘family time’ which I read as: I don’t want to look after Jack on my own.

  Irene still had Jack on a Friday and filled in when needed with Winston. Nursery was booked Monday to Thursday, which meant that if I didn’t have any work, I had lots of time on my hands. I didn’t earn much but I took solace in my savings rising steadily each month. Looking at my bank statement gave me a feeling of security that I’d lost since I’d given up work to have Jack. Looking at my increasing funds kept me on track when things were difficult.

  In a way, work itself kept me on anchored, too. Surprisingly, I actually found it enjoyable being back on the wards. In small moments, I puzzled why I’d pushed against it so long. I put on my uniform and it was like putting on a better version of myself. I liked Nurse Lisa more than I liked Wife Lisa or Mummy Lisa. The variety that agency work brought also gave me lots of benefits, with the added advantage that at my regular gigs, I got to know the staff well, sometimes even going on nights out with them, which helped plug the gap of losing Issy, Nadia and Nessa. I still hadn’t ruled out getting back in touch with them; after all, they had just been trying to be kind. But the idea of it appealed more than actually putting it into practice, so it just never seemed to happen.

  It also helped us out with family life – us all being out of the house more, and away from each other, simply made us more peaceful.

  Even better, I also started therapy.

  I went on my own every Wednesday night, telling Nick I’d joined a book group. If he noticed that I never seemed to be reading any books, he didn’t say. If Nick worked late, I organised a babysitter. The fact that I had money to pay for that and the therapy meant everything to me. Although Jack struggled to settle into nursery – perhaps not surprising given he’d had me to himself full-time and then was in daycare full-time – I determinedly dug in. He needed me to be stronger and money gave us a future with options.

  When I went to the therapist the first time, I’d simply introduced myself, told her about my family and then pulled up my shirt to show her my stomach. When she’d seen, I stood up, unbuttoned my jeans and let them fall, so she could see my thighs, too. To reveal my injuries myself felt amazingly powerful – it was as if I was holding my head up and saying: Look at what’s happening to me. For the first time, I was calling the abuse out. Going to work had empowered me – now the process had started, it felt as if I could only grow stronger.

  ‘Your husband hits you,’ the therapist said.

  I’d wanted to answer her in a strong voice but, sitting in the darkened plant-filled room, with its womb-like quality, I cried the release I needed instead.

  The therapist didn’t say anything, instead she passed me a box of tissues. It felt like I cried for an hour straight. At the end, I stood up, thanked her and left. Because of the crying, I thought I’d be too embarrassed to go back again, but by the following week, I found I was looking forward to it.

  The next week, I only cried for forty minutes, which felt like an improvement. After I had been going for two months, I stopped crying and instead spent the time processing what was happening to me.

  The therapy kept me on track and, although it slowed my savings, I continued to put money steadily away, and before I knew it, Jack had started school.

  Of course, therapy was good for more than talking about my family; it was also needed to talk about my most secret secret – the one that no one knew.

  That my addiction problems had started again.

  sixteen:

  – before –

  Codeine. Codeine. Codeine. How I loved thee from the start.

  Addiction is a powerful curse. Like all addicts, there comes a time in your life when you realise firstly that you are addicted and secondly, that you have to make a choice. You either keep going on the merry-go-round with all the bright lights and fun that it offers (and if you think it doesn’t offer fun, then you’ve never been addicted), whizzing round and round and round, or you choose to step off.

  One of my darkest secrets was that by the time Jack had started school, I was already on the merry-go-round of drug dependency, hanging on (look-no-hands!) and enjoying the whizzing lights. It was inevitable that those who lived with me knew I was an addict. I accept that they did not get to see the bright lights, only the dulled, vomitus side of me. But still I held on, with white-knuckled determination.

  Addicts are determined – you have to be to deal with the criticism, the shame and the hassle of getting hold of the good shit. And as an agency nurse, who was clever and determined, it was all too possible to get hold of what I needed.

  But as much as I totally accept that being an addict was my fault, the start of my addiction was not.

  After a terrible pregnancy, where I’d nearly been hospitalised twice for dehydration because even a sip of water would make me throw up, the midwife assured me: ‘You’ll have a lovely birth. Very straightforward – it’s always the way if you’ve had a tough pregnancy.’ But it wasn’t the case.

  I woke in the night and Nick drove me to hospital. Within minutes my ankles were up in stirrups. I was given pethidine which made me feel very sick, very spaced out. Everything slowed down, until Jack’s heart rate showed he was in distress, then his birth became very fast. I remember feeling so cheated it wasn’t the promise of the “lovely” birth that had kept me going through the tough times.

  I remember the fluorescent lights, the blinding agony and the panic as a more experienced doctor was paged. A midwife later hinted darkly that I’d mistakenly been given too much pethidine, and I certainly felt like I was tripping, with the strangest and strongest certainty that I was in a horror film, and when the senior doctor all but pushed the younger medic aside and came at me with something held high and glinting in the light, I think I started screaming and screaming.

  When Jack was finally out, he was whisked away from me to check for skull damage before I could even hold him. I was whizzed down to surgery. Afterwards, a nurse felt she could confide to me as a fellow nurse, that mine was the worst birthing injury she’d ever seen. ‘Honey,’ she said, her hand on my shoulder, ‘y
ou were split so badly front to back, that if it had been any worse, you’d been peeing through your ear.’

  I smiled back at her, not caring because by then I had a syringe driver full of morphine. All my fear for my tiny son and my own pain was dulled from a shrill scream to the smallest of whispers, as the morphine washed contentment through my veins.

  With my postpartum complications, my own GP, who’d had a similar birth story herself, felt very at ease prescribing me large doses of codeine. Some check-and-balance failed to happen, and by the time it did and they turned the tap off, I was already long addicted.

  But I did the right thing – I stepped off the roundabout, stuck with the withdrawal and came out the other side. I was glad to be shot of the embarrassment of it all. I’ve always been someone who likes to do the right thing. I have a huge sense of justice and it felt wrong to raise a child and not be clean.

  So that might have been the end of it except for a nasty row about me giving Jack a half-packet of Skittles, which resulted in my finger being dislocated.

  It hurt very badly, but rather than go to the hospital, I popped it back in myself and dosed myself up on paracetamol and ibuprofen. I had been due to work and nearly used the injury as a reason to turn it down, but needed to get away from Nick. He was very much on edge at this point. He was very fragile, and not only had he started drinking too much, but he had also taken up smoking again which had always been a massive bone of contention between us. Even his hair had started to fall out. He had never been a vain man, but I think it reminded him that his life was out of control and he didn’t know how to help himself.

  Looking back, I don’t think either of us was doing very well. We were struggling with the collapse of our marriage and the vision we’d had of family life. Nothing was like we’d thought it would be and the violence was making me scared and him sour. Therapy gave me an outlet to talk, but Nick was a very macho man and he probably didn’t even confide in his friends. I’d made an appointment for us at Relate, but he refused to go, and I didn’t have the energy to push it.