What I Did

by Kate Bradley

  I don’t know, I wanted to scream. You tell me!

  And it wasn’t just the judgement of staff I feared, but the parents. When he first started in reception, there were lots of making-friends activities – meetings up in the park, picnics, play dates where the mums would drink coffee and their little ones would have fun. Except it was never fun with Jack. He seemed to take delight in refusing the simplest of requests. He would be obstinate, aggressive and downright rude. One particular play date, he’d requested fish fingers, only to then refuse to eat them, and the fish fingers had ended up being smeared on the poor woman’s wall. It was all so humiliating. When they stopped inviting him, it was actually a relief.

  It was that relief that made me give up Issy, Nadia and Nessa so easily. His difficulties were starting to become apparent, even at two. It was in their children’s company that I started to realise something was wrong. Sure, their children had tantrums, but his lasted longer. He was also noticeably rougher than their children, and was more likely to cause disputes, break toys and be defiant. And bite! How he loved that from the start.

  It was no coincidence that Irene started to have her grandson for me on the day the NCT always met up. I don’t think they missed him. They probably thought he was difficult because Nick was abusing me, but Nick never raised a hand to me. Looking back, my only regret is that I should’ve just told Issy the truth, that time in the café twenty years ago. It would’ve been a relief perhaps to share it with someone other than Nick.

  Now, if my son had been little now, it would’ve been very different for me – for all of us. Now there’s the internet – I could’ve Googled to my heart’s content and perhaps used that to help me with the GP. But I doubt I would’ve had to – there’s labels now, diagnoses that everyone is much more familiar with. There’s proper processes for schools – it would’ve all been easier. I could’ve accessed help groups and chat rooms, like Mumsnet, to give me advice, support. There would’ve been prescriptions as a last resort. Twenty years ago, the world was a different place.

  I did my best. I tried to create support. I once took him to the doctor and explained about his behaviour problems, but the doctor looked at me with a puzzled expression and offered to prescribe me antidepressants. I wanted to yell at the stupid, confused doctor: It’s not me! This is not because of me! I am like this because – and only because – of him!

  I remember how, after I’d taken our son to the doctor, Nick tried again the following year. He took him to a different GP, but came back silent yet clearly angry. He didn’t tell me what that doctor had said, but neither of us ever tried taking him again.

  After getting nowhere with the doctors, when I went back to work my plan A was always to earn money to access private counselling for my boy. Nick and I agreed on most things, including being both staunch supporters of the NHS. Obviously as a nurse and police officer, we believed in strong state provision; we were against private schools and private healthcare and Nick felt that by going down the private route, we were somehow traitors to our own kind. But I was desperate. With my own money, I secretly paid for therapy for Jack, but he only went a few times before refusing.

  When it was clear there was going to be no change soon, then my plan A moved to my plan B – therapy for me, to help me cope with him. And after he hurt me so badly over the broken Peter Rabbit, before Nick finally calmed his own anger enough to intervene, I thought that one day he might kill me, so I packed my go-bag. It was for an emergency if I needed to get away from him. I never thought I would choose to leave the son I loved so much, but I could see a situation in which I might need to. But I also couldn’t desert Nick – not when we’d been so united.

  Then he’d killed the dog on the day I’d received the school letter. I knew then just how dangerous it was getting, but I didn’t know how to keep my son with me and keep us safe as a family.

  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was what happened two days after that.

  Then it was that I had no choice but to use my go-bag, just not in the way I had envisaged because I’d had to take Jack with me.

  I think of that now, how my son was then, and what he might be like now. But I can’t stare at this door, lost in the past, any longer. Instead, I have to accept – for now – that Jack will be with his dad this weekend.

  thirty-five:

  – before –

  I took one last, reluctant look at the smart grey door to my son’s flat and headed home.

  As I walked, I passed sycamore trees; their autumn leaves reminded me of a different walk home, in a different time some twenty years before, in a different town. I thought then of Issy and the crew. I thought of my son then, when he was small and how we had walked through that park in Brighton and had thrown his collected leaves into the air with delight. Although bittersweet, it was a rare, easy, uncomplicated memory.

  Because his birth was so bad, Nick and I had never had another child, so when Jack stopped calling me Mum, it was as if I stopped being one. He alone had the power to make me Mum and he alone denied me the power of being one. With a mother then still in prison, I felt almost motherless and childless, too.

  I felt like I’d lost part of my identity.

  Even after he’d had his own baby, he wouldn’t acknowledge my rightful role and call me Granny. I remained just ‘Lisa’. Even when he wanted my childcare, it would be: ‘Here, Lisa –’ he’d say, passing me his baby when Jack was small – ‘look after Jack for me, will you?’ And then he’d walk out of the door and sometimes not come back for days.

  But now he managed it. Now he wanted to cut me out from his son’s life, now he managed to call me ‘Mum’ and ‘Granny’ – just to make a point. I already knew little Jack wasn’t my son, but he felt like he was, because I was the one who had looked after him after his mum died and my son left.

  But now Jack was back.

  My Jack who was so, so different to his Jack. Mine was bold and adventurous, whereas his was nervous and scared of the shadows. Mine loved reading, but his didn’t. Mine was action-focused whereas his loved studying the stars. Mine would never sleep but his would nap too readily. Mine was violent and killed his own dog, whereas his was gentle and loved animals. Mine was expelled whereas his was a perfect pupil. The list went on. If they hadn’t shared the same physical features, I would’ve doubted they were even related.

  But looking after my grandson had boosted me because it’d shown me that I could get it right.

  Or, rather, that I had, because now it seemed, it was all over for me. Again.

  I arrived home. In the kitchen were the ingredients I had laid out for our highly anticipated cooking session: a bushy basil plant, a pale gold bulb of garlic, pine nuts, and in the fridge, alongside our home-made tagliatelle, a chunk of parmesan. Jack had talked about nothing else this morning getting ready for school. Tonight was to be the culmination of our cooking project: home-made pasta with home-made pesto. We made the pasta yesterday, passing it through my KitchenAid. It was messy, our faces were smudged with flour, the dough under our nails, but at the end, we stood back and high-fived each other at the sight of our thin pasta over the pasta tree, the strands draping like willows.

  Feeling bereft, I started to put the ingredients away. I touched a green, shiny basil leaf, its peppery smell pungent. I put the plant on the windowsill, ready for another time.

  If there was going to be another time.

  Then the fear that I might never get Jack back overwhelmed me, and I collapsed onto a dining chair.

  Later, much later, I sat up. The back of my hand was reddened and wet where I’d rested my head as I cried. The room was now dark and I realised I was cold.

  I sat thinking about getting a jumper, but felt too nervous to go into my bedroom. I always kept a small supply of codeine in there, tucked in a box on the top shelf of my wardrobe. To collect a jumper meant being too close: the thought of the codeine glowed like a beacon in the dark. Even though I’d been clean for years, I kept a sta
sh to prove it. It was my: Fuck you, codeine, I could take you if I wanted but I don’t want to.

  But now I did.

  That cold compulsion, that deep and dark desire, replaced the sunshine that Jack shone into my life.

  And I found that I wanted to very much.

  thirty-six:

  – before –

  That Friday night, I resisted the codeine by getting up from the kitchen table and pouring myself a glass of water which I carried into Jack’s bedroom and set on his bedside table. I then took off my jeans and bra, and wearing just my T-shirt and pants and socks, got into his bed. When I found Bunny on his pillow, I started to weep again as it still smelt of Jack. I didn’t trust my son: I didn’t know if Jack would be well cared for or even if he would come home. But as overwhelmingly stressful as that was, I was determined not to give up my sobriety. Jack needed me to stay clean.

  It was Jack being born that’d finally helped me get clean in the first place and after six years I held onto my sobriety tightly.

  But before that were many years of codeine abuse. Really I would’ve liked to have given up after Nick and I broke up, but it was too traumatic.

  Living alone with Jack and trying to be independent was also a trauma on its own. But after that miserable trip to see my mother in Send prison when I told her my marriage was over, I decided to take control. If not of the codeine, then of every other area of my life. Within the same week as visiting my mother, I bought a car and started applying for jobs. I’d loved agency work, but now I was a single parent, I needed more structure.

  Nick emailed after a few days. First of all he begged me to return. It didn’t take long for that to stop, however, and then I got news that he was moving to Gloucestershire following a big promotion. He visited every few months, staying with Irene, and sent housekeeping money and my share of the proceeds of our flat. I was satisfied with the arrangement, now he was at a distance.

  Nick was helpful and supportive too in other ways, and sometimes, in the first year or so following our separation, we would talk on the phone like we had before our relationship had turned sour.

  I found a great job as a nurse working nights in a nursing home called Sunningdale. It was a beautiful Victorian building, with twenty-four residents. Then I found the perfect childminder – a single parent with a child at Jack’s new school. I would take Jack to her house two days a week at 7 p.m., in his PJs. He would sleep over and I would collect him in the morning, dress him for school and drop him off, before I returned home to sleep. I’d be up and ready to pick him up from school at home time.

  Lillie was perfect for Jack: a bit of a hippy, she didn’t mind his tantrums, even thought them a form of self-expression, and because his friend was there, he soon packed in any bad behaviour and settled into the routine.

  Two shifts of night duty, with a bit of agency, meant I was earning a full-time wage. I’d never worked in private nursing before, and although I missed the NHS, I was earning enough money to buy a little house with a garden.

  I stopped stealing codeine from the agency shifts when the internet developed – I simply bought what I need from there. Although it wasn’t without difficulties, it was emancipating and I was finally able to let the agency work go.

  I stayed at Sunningdale and, as Jack became older and more independent, I was able to take on more responsibility and was promoted, which meant moving away from night work.

  Two other major events happened that helped. When Jack was ten, I inherited quite a lot of money from my aunt which gave me financial security. The second, only three months later, was my mum’s release from Send prison. She had been inside since 1983 when I was eight until I was thirty, a total of twenty-two years. Her sentence was high in the first place: her lawyer told me that the fact that she was female and killed her husband meant she had a heavier sentence than if she’d been a man killing his wife. And then, as respected and liked as she was by the prison officers, she still had a tendency to get ‘involved’ with the other women’s lives and parole had passed her by time after time.

  With my mother moving only two miles away, it meant that Jack could visit her after school if I was working. He’d often cycle over to have tea with her and they’d play cards together; she remained his champion.

  Jack and I sometimes went ten-pin bowling together; he’d complain that it wasn’t often enough, that I was always working. It’s true, I did work a lot. As a single parent, it was important to me to have financial security; it allowed me to take care of my mum a bit, as well as take care of Jack. I also loved the serenity of Sunningdale; the quiet atmosphere and the sweet nature of the residents made it a very peaceful place to be.

  By the time my son was seventeen, I barely saw him anymore. I always kept his bed made up for him, and kept his favourite foods on my shopping list, but it wouldn’t be unusual not to see him for two or three weeks at a time. He would never tell me where he’d been. It was stressful not knowing, although I was always delighted to see him when he drifted home – but admittedly that would wear off within a few hours. But sometimes we would jog along OK and sometimes he would stay for three or four days.

  Then one day, when he was eighteen, he came home and told me his girlfriend was pregnant. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend. The baby was born, and sure enough as I visited the new family in hospital, he said, ‘Look, Lisa, look at how lovely my baby Jack is.’

  ‘You can’t call him Jack! You’re Jack.’

  He laughed. ‘In the old days, people always called their first-born son after themselves. I’m just being traditional. He’s Jack Junior.’

  Selena, his pale, monosyllabic girlfriend, held the baby out to me to hold and I took his beautiful weight in my arms. ‘Junior,’ I whispered to him.

  ‘No,’ my son corrected, ‘never Junior. His name is Jack.’

  Even as a tiny blanketed baby, he looked out at us all with lovely long lashes. As I whispered to my new grandchild, his name, the first time I said his name, the word felt like dust in my mouth – it felt like going back in time.

  Jack.

  But the feeling passed in a second and I became overwhelmed by the surprise at how joyful it felt to hold the baby to my chest and breathe in his smell. It was like all the stories I’d read about the instant rush of love mothers experienced. Because of my son’s birth, I hadn’t been able to hold him after he was born and the pain and the drugs meant I never had the suddenness of that feeling. But now I was feeling it for real. I whispered Jack for a second time into his tiny, delicate, soft pink ear and I realised how much I loved him. Baby Jack! It was so different from the start – and I was so different with him. The name Jack lost all its connotations and became reborn. Selena encouraged me to have Jack as much as I wanted. The slight, pale, near-silent teenager showed little interest in her baby, and so it felt like I was a mother again.

  So it was me who pushed his pram through the streets. Even that pram was on steroids compared to the old one I’d had my son in – I bought Jack the best, a Bugaboo, amazed at how it could turn on a dime. It felt like motherhood but newer and fresher and easier. No sore boobs, no vaginal stiches or postpartum bleeding. Just this tiny person who was so easy to love.

  And the best bit? He responded to me! There was a point to picking him up when he cried because he would stop. Stop! Maybe not immediately – he was a baby after all – but he could and would be soothed. This was a child I could make a difference to. Gone were the horrendous nights that I’d had with his father. His father, who screamed every night until around the time he started school, which meant broken sleep for years. It was like being reminded that I was normal, that I was OK, that I could be good where I once felt like a failure.

  When Jack was six months old, his mother, Selena, was found dead with a heroin needle still in her arm. The shock was terrible and I vowed then that I wouldn’t be an addict too.

  Jack deserved better.

  So – for him – I became clean. Decision made, I cut do
wn carefully, on a reduction programme I’d designed myself. It was very difficult and I suffered with headaches, cramps, chills and diarrhoea, but for Jack, I did it. Clean for the second time.

  Jack and my son moved in with me, but my son had started flitting in and out again, initially just disappearing for a day, then a night too, until eventually, he’d be gone sometimes for weeks at a time. I never minded – I liked being in charge. Then one day, when Jack was four and just a month shy of starting school, his father told me that he wouldn’t do it anymore and just left for good.

  Nick visited when our son walked out on me and little Jack. We discussed the idea of notifying social services, but decided against it. Nick was impressed with how much I had it under control and was content to leave me to it and return to his life up north; he’d been promoted many times and now lived with his wife and two daughters tucked up in a house near Cheltenham which I assumed was as beautiful as his wife. But as different as our lives were, we were united on protecting our son and keeping his options open with Jack.

  But my ideas of keeping our son’s options open soon changed.

  Jack and I had a beautiful long and wonderful year together. Jack’s stutter began to lessen and he seemed to grow in confidence without his father around. He moved up to Year 1 and thrived. I never could see any sign that my son had been abusing his child, but Jack certainly seemed to be happier without him around.

  Now, as I lay in his bed clutching his bunny, I wondered if Jack was happy now.

  For most of the night, I thought of both the past and the now. Questions puzzled relentlessly in my head: was Jack happy? Was he safe? Did my son have a job now? How was he paying for that smart new flat? Did he really mean to stay? Was this going to happen again? Was this going to be a new routine or was Jack going to be mucked about yet again with his father upping and leaving?