by Kate Bradley
But it didn’t.
The nights were just so dark. The evenings were horrendous, bringing huge moths or maybugs and crane flies that flew drunkenly into the house and left us breathless with the feeling of being hunted. Dark shapes moved across the lawn at night; I clutched myself as I whispered: ‘Only badgers,’ but undulating bodies in the dark made me skittish.
Now, standing here on this lawn, white security lights casting indigo shadows across a blued garden, the screaming feels like an echo of what might be happening to Jack right this minute. Even though I don’t believe it, I still think it whilst I wait for this door to open.
I shift from one foot to the other – it feels too difficult waiting. I want to yell: Hurry up! Help me! Now! I have come all this way; it has been hard. My boy needs saving.
The door opens a fraction.
I swallow against the dry of my throat. The door seems to be opening too slowly. What’s the problem?
It suddenly doesn’t feel right. The door is still opening . . . but so slowly . . . and I still can’t see who is opening it.
It’s not just my impatience that makes this seem wrong, too slow. There’s something else. The sense that this isn’t a straightforward someone-answering-the-bell-and-coming-to-the-door is overpowering. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake – perhaps this is not where I should’ve come.
I take a step back.
The door opens and the figure begins to emerge. They are brightly lit from behind, so a silhouette, but as they become a little clearer, my voice catches and dies in my throat.
Along with any hope of help.
thirty-two:
– before –
I came home from dropping Jack off at school one morning, hung up my jacket, kicked off my shoes and walked through into my kitchen and saw him. Sitting there. At my table.
Emotion slammed into me. Jack’s dad was back. I’d known the day would come but the knowing and then having him there, drinking my tea in my favourite mug, did not make me feel any better.
The time passing had meant he was both Nick-like and yet not: older, his hair was a little longer, but most notably – he had obviously been weightlifting. He’d never looked stronger. The way he eyed me when I walked into my own flat, he’d never looked more dangerous. His shoulders seemed broader than I remembered and his blue eyes looked sharper, more alert, as if being away from me and Jack suited him, had helped him find a focus that had eluded him before he left.
The shock was terrible. I hadn’t seen him in so long and yet here he was, lounging at my kitchen table. I’d never achieved blanking him entirely from Jack’s life, but this time the silence was so long, I’d hoped.
‘What’s the chance of you making me some breakfast, Lisa?’ he asked, giving me the impossible grin and a hard stare at the same time. ‘I’m starving.’ He drank from his mug: ‘And I’d love a refill.’
‘What are you doing here? This is my flat. How did you get in?’
He got up and started rummaging through the cupboards. He found a sliced loaf and popped two slices down before answering. ‘If you won’t do it . . .’ he said, whilst I watched him with a sense of disbelief, my heart banging in my chest.
He waited until it popped up, the sound of the toast making me jump. He saw my sudden movement and laughed. ‘Jumpy! Surprised to see me?’
‘You don’t live here.’
He moved me away from the fridge and retrieved the margarine. He pulled off the lid and said: ‘You shouldn’t eat this rubbish. You know they put colourants in it, don’t you? Margarine is actually grey.’ He then took a knife, scraped out a wodge and spread it thickly on his toast. ‘I hope you don’t give this crap to Jack.’
‘The corner shop was out of butter.’ I put the lid back on the tub.
‘Have I just missed the school run?’
I don’t even breathe.
‘Ah, yes.’ He takes a hungry bite and chews it watching me. ‘I expect Mrs Turnbill, at St Joseph’s, is taking the register just as we speak.’ He checked his watch. ‘What am I talking about! His first lesson will be nearly over.’
My bladder froze. How long had he been watching Jack? How long had he been watching me? I shut the fridge door that he’d left open and saw a letter for a school trip and the colourful certificates won by Jack at school: ‘Top Speller!’, ‘Kindness Award of the Week! and ‘Perfect Pupil Politeness!’ all pinned under magnets to the door. Had he broken into my flat before? I tried to think if there had been any signs of it – moved things – but my brain felt like glue.
He took a huge bite of toast and chewed it, watching me with narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve seen him in the playground. I don’t think he likes it.’
There was so much danger in this, I wasn’t just suddenly lost in the ocean, but there was a tidal wave coming straight for me too. Despite it, I wanted to ask: Why do you think he doesn’t like it? And: Does he look scared? And: Does he have any friends? Is he lonely . . . like me?
Suddenly I was so lonely.
Not the loneliness that most of us get on a Saturday night when all our friends are out, the wine is gone and there’s nothing on TV. But that suffocating, black, damp mould that sits in your chest and spreads like an infection; that disables the rational mind and makes you want to reach for the paracetamol. That damp cold that can lie across your lungs and heart like a heavy secret that stays there even when you’re standing in a busy room at a drinks party. That lies behind a rictus grin reminding you that there’s no one who loves you or understands you.
I never used to feel like that. It’s only since I lost him.
But now he was back, leaning against the counter, pushing the last of the toast into his mouth and switching the kettle on again as easy as if he lived here, and I’d ignored the feeling since I saw him, but I couldn’t lie any more: I was so pleased to see him. Because between us was only ever a love story. A bitter, broken tragic story, but there was always a love that no one ever understood. Not even me.
Suddenly the separateness between me and him was so enormous, so overwhelming, I just wanted to drop to my knees and beg him to come back. As scared as I was of him, I wanted to tell him that I loved him. That I missed him. That I was sorry for all the things I’d done, that I got wrong, that drove him away. I wanted us to be a family again: him, me and Jack.
I gripped the edge of the Formica but instead I wanted to jam my hand in my mouth so I didn’t ask him to walk with me on the school pick-up. I wanted him back despite what he’d done to me, what he’d done to Jack.
But it was too late, I knew that. To think it, yes. To say it, no. So instead I managed to say: ‘I don’t like you being in my flat.’ And I sounded cold when I said it, as if I meant it.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you didn’t ask. Because you don’t live here.’ It was all I could manage. I could have said that to anyone and perhaps the reasonableness of this disarmed him because he only nodded as if he agreed with me.
He finished a slice of toast. ‘To be fair, I only broke in because I didn’t think you’d let me in.’
‘Because?’
He shrugged. ‘Because it’s been such a long time? Because I didn’t think you’d want me being around Jack?’
‘I don’t. It’s better . . . now it’s just me and him.’
‘I want to see him.’
I felt my throat close up. This is what I dreaded. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s my son. Because I want to be a good dad.’
‘No.’ The abruptness of my answer was born of the certainty of my feelings. I would not allow it.
He watched me carefully. ‘You don’t have a choice, Lisa. He’s my son and I want him with me.’ When I didn’t say anything, he threw a bomb into my life. ‘I want full custody. Drug addicts shouldn’t be allowed to raise children, should they?’
I looked at his raised eyebrow and knew that he’d started a war. ‘Get out of my flat.’
He stared at me a brief moment. Then – surprising
me – he calmly put down his toast, picked up his coat, and walked out of the door I now held open.
He did not look back.
thirty-three:
– before –
A week after his sudden toast-eating visit to my flat, I received a message saying he’d set himself up in a flat round the corner from mine and told me that he wanted regular access to Jack. Fuck that, I thought. Shortly followed by: Fuck you.
After a sleepless night, the following morning I went straight to a solicitor. I sat in the waiting room rehearsing over and over again what I would say.
From the start, everything about the solicitor’s office was disappointing. I wasn’t sure what I’d been imagining, but it wasn’t what I got. The floor was a dull green lino and the chairs were constructed from metal and foam. The solicitor was a woman about my age and she wore an ugly blouse. She insisted on taking lots of details I didn’t want to talk about before listening to what was important.
‘He’s not a fit father,’ I said and I told her why.
She wrote everything down but she didn’t seem surprised or concerned. All the writing and no action made my chest ache.
Then she said: ‘We need to take action today.’
Hope flourished – I finally thought I was getting somewhere. ‘Good!’ I said, wanting to kiss her hand in gratitude.
‘First you need to read this guidance.’ She passed me a copy of something I didn’t want to read. ‘Then we need to fill out a specific court form. You need to be prepared that you’re going to have to attend mediation with the father because . . .’
As she talked through the process, I nodded along, but inside my hope began to wither. It became clear that it would take ages, during which Jack would spend unsupervised time with his father where anything – anything – could happen. I thought of Winston. I thought about my bruises and injuries he’d given me. She showed me the forms I would need to fill out and explained about his rights, and I just felt sick. To challenge him, she wanted crime numbers, complaints to the police and witnesses – I had nothing. Within just ten minutes, all my hope had died.
I excused myself to the toilet and didn’t go back.
Now I understood I couldn’t fight for Jack through a long court battle; nor could I sit around and trust other people to do what was right for him. Jack needed something quicker than that, but I didn’t know what.
After the solicitor, I’d trudged the streets, lost. I didn’t see the spring flowers, only the dark, restless clouds slipping across the sky. Eventually my mind turned to the school pick-up. I changed direction and thought I’d allowed enough time, but I must’ve been lost in my thoughts, because when I got there I realised I was a little late. And not just a little late for the teacher, but a little late to do anything about the horror I witnessed.
I saw it all as I made my way across the busy school playground, filled with mums and dads waiting, some already leaving with their children, a melee of dogs tied to the fence, scooters and bikes.
With his back to me and hood up, I didn’t see him at first.
Jack did.
I saw the teacher lead the class out onto the playground. I saw Jack in his yellow spring rain jacket. I saw his face – not looking at me – suddenly yell as he punched the air. I watched his happiness in slow motion and could only wonder how he could remember his father so instantly when he hadn’t seen him for over a year. His huge smile was like the sun coming out, full beam, summer bright, and he shouted: ‘Daddeeeeeee!’ and without waiting for permission, he broke rank and ran towards his father. Like a scene from a movie, he flung aside his school bag. His father then picked Jack up and swung him high and around. Everyone turned to look. They hadn’t seen each other in months and months and it looked like the joyful reunion it was.
Jack’s teacher, Mrs Turnbill, looked at me, unsure. She’d never met Jack’s father and was only permitted to discharge Jack to me and sought my permission now with a raised eyebrow. I found myself nodding yes. What could I say? They had every legal right to see each other. Besides, I could hardly make a fuss in front of everyone.
Instead, I was forced to pick up the abandoned bag from the ground and then lag behind them on the way home from school, instantly demoted to second-best. Jack held his dad’s hand and bounced and hopped the whole way back to what was obviously the new flat. Not once did Jack turn to look at me. Instead I had to endure seeing his upturned, enraptured face, the whole way. Reaching the flats, I trailed up the stairs in the super-smart block of flats I’d watched being built only last year, but with a creeping dread that I would have to do this journey again and again. Jack’s giggles and laughter bounced off the stairwell walls, almost mocking me to hear his joy amplified and multiplied.
At the top, they opened a door and Jack stepped into his hall and his dad turned and blocked my way.
His dad: my son, my Jack.
Two Jacks; father and son.
Me, already at 44 a grandmother to a six-year-old.
Jack turned back to see me. ‘Granny?’ he asked me, ‘You don’t mind if I stay with my daddy for the weekend?’
I could see the hope in his eyes, could see how much he wanted to be with his dad after all this time. How could I, as just his granny, not simply say yes? The solicitor had given me no hope of anything else.
So, I nodded, terror cold fingers around my heart. Side by side, I could see how different my two Jacks were – one sensitive and concerned, the other – just dangerous. Like the contrast is their ages, I felt the sharp contrast in raising them both. Never before had I wanted Nick’s calm, kind reassurance more. Then, standing there, looking at our son now grown, I ached for my ex-husband’s gentle touch.
My son smiled at me, alligator. ‘Sorry, Granny, I think it’s best that I spend some time on my own with my son, don’t you?’ Then his smile deepened, gouging deeper into flesh: ‘But don’t come back for him until Sunday morning. I’ve bought Jack new clothes and a toothbrush. Sunday. Thanks, Mum.’
Mum.
Cruel, cruel, cruel. Standing there, as he barred my way to Jack, he knew what he was doing when he called me Mum. He hadn’t called me Mum in so long, not since he was fourteen when, after a row about him tracking mud onto my new, immaculate, cream carpet, he started calling me Lisa instead.
But then my Jack chose to call me that – just so I knew my place. We stood on his doorstep and it was such a rare moment that he looked at me – properly.
‘And give me his school bag. Jack told me on the way home that he does his spelling homework on a Saturday morning.’ He had his hand out for it and I looked down and saw that it was in my hand.
The bag handle was nylon material; rough. I gripped on to it, reluctant to give it up. It was as if it was all I had left. He was even taking our routine of spellings. I imagined them having a lovely breakfast on a Saturday morning, getting the spellings done before heading off to the park or town. That was our routine and now it felt like he wanted everything from me.
I always gave him everything.
It took everything to raise him.
He took it all.
‘I do appreciate you stepping in for my boy. Granny.’
My.
Stepping in. So temporary.
And with that, he took Jack into the dark inside, like a calf swallowed up by dark water; as he shut the door, all I could think of was Winston, the dog he killed by hitting his spine with the broom, and the terror for my grandson, now alone in his care, took on a new, higher pitch, silent, yet shrill.
thirty-four:
– before –
I stood there, staring at the door shut against me. The memory of my son’s voice mocked me. To come back and claim his son from me, I suspected, was all for this moment. To call me Granny, was just to hurt me. To remind me. Because although I loved Jack like he was my son, he was my grandson. Of course my son – my Jack – was all grown up now, and, even though he’d become a father to the sweetest little boy ever – his Jack – he
himself was still as spiteful as he’d ever been.
My Jack of a thousand kicks and punches. His Jack with the stutter and pupil awards.
My son was back and now he had decided to reclaim his abandoned son and play Daddy – and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
He didn’t have to say it, but I heard it like he wanted me to: Jack is mine, not yours.
I remember the day he killed Winston. I shouldn’t have taken to my bed that day; shouldn’t have left my son unsupervised with Winston. I was just so upset. I had received a letter from his school; the contents were so painful that I’d necked 4 mg of diazepam and pulled the duvet over my head. I was so exhausted by being his mother, I just didn’t even want to see him.
The letter was the formal notice of what I already knew. I had been told by his headmaster that they wouldn’t have him back after Easter, that he was being expelled. But until I received the official notification, I’d still dared to hope. The letter killed that hope.
A week before the Easter term break, he (not Jack, it can’t be since beautiful Jack now shares his name and my son refuses to call me Mum, I just won’t muddle the two) – he had assaulted another boy with a pair of scissors, so badly that the child’s earlobe had to be stitched back on. What was worse was that they’d had to persuade my son to give the earlobe back so they could put it on ice.
By then, the school had had enough. I didn’t blame them – the violence, the tantrums, the spitting. Urgh, the humiliation of the spitting! That became quite the thing for him in his first term. He hated that I left him. He would cry and cling and then when I finally tried to escape, he became angry, punching and kicking me. The teacher and her assistant would restrain him and try and calm him down. But if he couldn’t get to me, that was when the spitting started. He used to try so hard, a whole body effort to try to get the spit to hit me, it was like watching an ’80s football hooligan.
The first year of Jack starting school was the hardest because of the judgement. The teaching staff were excellent and I couldn’t fault them. But that first year, I know they blamed me and Nick. I know they must have wondered what went on in our home for our son to be like he was. I made sure that Nick and I spent lots of time working with the staff to try and find a solution for bettering our son’s behaviour. Then, when they knew us well, I could sometimes catch them looking at us, the question in their eyes: Well, if not you, then why . . .?