***
I have always tried to see each of my children as their own person and not to compare them to James or to what he might have become – that’s a truly unfair burden on any child – but in those early days I felt James everywhere. There have actually been a few instances where I genuinely thought James had come back to reassure me he was okay. One particular day stands out for me and I still think about it now.
Michael was playing with my niece and, as he was occupied, I took the opportunity to go upstairs and clean the bathroom. I was still wearing my nightie and doing the glamorous job of cleaning round the sink, so I had my back to the door, when I suddenly felt a hard tugging on the bottom of my nightdress. Michael was at the age where he could climb the stairs himself, so I turned around and said, ‘What is it, lad?’ but there was nobody there. I wasn’t near anything else that could have caught the material. There was no explanation for that feeling of someone pulling really hard on my nightie, like they wanted my attention. I went downstairs and Michael and my niece were playing exactly where I had left them, neither one of them had come upstairs. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but I became convinced it was James, just letting me know he was there. Moments like that were both helpful and heartbreaking.
To this day it is often the small milestones or memories that still have the ability to floor me, but one that hit me particularly hard at the time was watching Michael turn three years old. I think we all felt it, though the family were too scared to say anything in case it upset me. We had a small party at the house with his little cousins and a few friends and I did my best, but I was on the verge of tears all day.
So much had changed – no James, no Ralph, there was nothing left from before 12th February 1993. It was like my old life didn’t exist. James should have been bossing his little brother around, helping him open his presents and joining in the games – instead all that we had was his portrait smiling down from above the fireplace, frozen in time and destined never to grow up.
Chapter 19
Picking up the Fight
It was around this time that Ralph started to try and take an interest in his access visits. I am not sure what spurred him on to be in touch but all of a sudden he was insisting that one of his family picked Michael up, often taking him to his mum’s. Things weren’t good between us, I suppose there was still a lot of resentment on my part about his affair and, quite simply, we were both still grieving for James. What had once united us didn’t anymore – we both had had a devastating experience that we couldn’t bring ourselves to share and he felt like a stranger to me.
This was all made doubly hard by the fact that Michael was going through a bit of a clingy stage and he would cry hysterically when he was collected. It broke my heart to see him go, knowing that he was upset – he would hold his hands out for me and I couldn’t do anything about it. I hated every minute he was away, but I also wanted him to know that he was loved by both of his parents and so I knew his time with Ralph was important. I found the best way of coping was to go out as soon as Michael left the house. I would do a food shop and then buy something to keep me busy – I ended up with loads of new dresses that I didn’t ever wear! I counted down the hours he was away and felt such relief when he was delivered safely back home.
The trouble was that the inconsistency started to creep in quite quickly and it was confusing for Michael. He went from kicking and screaming when he was picked up to sitting on the stairs with his coat and shoes on, resigned to going but then sad when Ralph didn’t show up. It got harder as he got older and became more aware that his father wasn’t keeping his promises. Sometimes I would tell him to ring a friend and invite them round for tea, sometimes my methods were a bit more extreme, much to Stuart’s dismay!
One Easter when Ralph didn’t arrive, I turned to Michael and said, ‘Do you know what this house doesn’t have? A pet. As it is Easter, shall we get a rabbit?’ Stuart’s face was a picture! So off we all went to pick a rabbit – we fell in love with a gorgeous white cloud of a bunny with black patches of fur and big blue eyes. Michael called her Jesse after a character in Toy Story and his face lit up the minute he saw her, which made up for everything else. The rabbit became a happy fixture – she used to wander in and out of the house and Stuart was roped into building her a two-storey hutch!
I worried that Michael would think that what felt like Ralph not wanting to see him was his fault and I didn’t want that guilt and anxiety for my son. I asked Michael about it all recently and he said, ‘I was supposed to see Ralph every Saturday and, when he did show up, he would collect me at midday and take me down to my nan’s. I would stay until about 5pm before someone would drop me home. But he didn’t always arrive and I would just be sat there on the stairs, wondering what I’d done. There was never any explanation about why he didn’t show up and I didn’t ever ask – I was too young I suppose. But as I got older it got more hurtful and, one of the last times he left me waiting, I turned to you and said, “I’ve had enough, there’s no point, I don’t want to do this anymore.” You have always been by my side and on my side. Despite how things ended up between you and Ralph, you never once got in the way of our relationship. You always said, “If you want to see him, you go and see him and if you don’t it’s up to you.” But in the end, never knowing if he would want to see me got too much and so I decided to stop the visits.’
***
Despite being worried about Michael, during that summer of 1996 I also had to pick up the fight for James again. Even though Michael Howard had successfully raised the minimum sentence Venables and Thompson were serving from 10 to 15 years, it seemed their lawyers weren’t letting go. They had applied to the High Court, contesting Michael Howard’s decision and it was the start of a long battle. I remembered what Sean said to me at the start of my campaign, when I told him that I would leave no stone unturned in the fight for justice, ‘Be prepared, it is going to be a long road.’ I don’t think either of us had any idea just how long and bumpy it would be.
Sean says, ‘It felt like whatever you and Ralph did went wrong. The Home Secretary was perceived to have been influenced by public opinion when resetting the tariff, and so the lawyers looking after Thompson and Venables argued that his decision was nakedly political. Its legitimacy was challenged because his function was supposed to be judicial, not someone making a decision intended to satisfy public opinion.’
Edward Fitzgerald QC, acting for both Venables and Thompson, argued that instead of listening to the emotional public, Michael Howard should have concentrated on the behavioural and psychiatric reports that were available at the time. Mr Fitzgerald argued that the two boys who’d killed my baby had made real progress since beginning their sentences. Part of the case put forward was that the surrounding publicity meant that the boys had been made unfair examples. It was argued that the public fury and hysterical press coverage, focusing singularly on their young ages when the offence was committed, wiped out the so-called great progress they had made while in their young offender institutions. Mr Fitzgerald also stated that the petition signatures collected by the family, alongside the coupons supplied by a national newspaper, should have no bearing on the sentence. He went as far as to argue that Michael Howard becoming involved was unlawful.
The purpose of the first hearing was to seek a judicial review of the situation but primarily what Mr Fitzgerald wanted was to overturn Michael Howard’s increased 15-year tariff. I was distraught. We had fought so hard for what I saw as a small increase – I still believed that anything less than life was a travesty. For me, they had to go to adult prison in order to receive proper punishment for what they had done. I felt like 15 years had been a small bone to throw us and now they even wanted that back. So began the chess game, except that it wasn’t a game to me – it was a marker of what the system thought my precious son’s life was worth. I felt buoyed up by the fact that Mr Howard seemed poised to fight the application and keep the increased sentence, but I was also awa
re that his authority was being challenged. At the heart of the issue was the question of whether the Home Secretary should even have the power to fix a minimum sentence. After the first hearing at the High Court, a full judicial review was put into motion and we had to sit tight and wait for the outcome.
As ever, Sean was there to guide me through everything – Ralph had his own legal representation and we were doing things separately since the divorce. I also started working with Chris Johnson, an ex-editor at Mercury Press agency. He has been by my side throughout everything and now works with us at the charity we went on to set up in James’ name. He helped me to navigate the press and generally manage all the overwhelming interest that just kept coming the longer the sentence fight went on.
The big difference for me was that this time I had Stuart by my side – right from the start he campaigned as if James was his own flesh and blood. Having him standing next to me was the greatest thing and made a horrible situation a bit more bearable. But I was also very aware that he could be about to see a different side of me – he hadn’t witnessed me in the very depth of despair when it came to James. I warned him that things could get tricky, but he didn’t even blink.
In July, the brand new Lord Chief Justice ruled against the Home Office: the 15-year tariff set by Michael Howard had been wrongly influenced by public petitions and opinion. In my opinion, Lord Wolff, who had recently been appointed, wanted to make his own mark on the criminal justice system and it didn’t get much bigger than this.
Sean agrees, ‘Once the House of Lords ruled that the tariff was no longer to be set by the Home Secretary, it meant that all rulings of this nature were now made by the judiciary. The petition backfired spectacularly. As a lawyer I fully understand why the legal teams acting for Venables and Thompson went down this route but it is upsetting that the first beneficiaries of it were James’ killers. It also meant that a new tariff had to be set.’
It seemed that in attempting to get Venables and Thompson a longer sentence we had also inadvertently changed the law in favour of James’ killers.
The very little faith I had in the system evaporated completely at that moment. Nothing could be worse than my son being murdered, but the way the law seemed to side with his murderers was incredibly hard to bear and brought all those old feelings of powerlessness and anger right to the surface. It was as if the fact that Thompson and Venables were ten years old when they had murdered James wiped out the fact that they had ended my son’s life. Their well-being mattered more than the crime they had committed, it mattered more than my son lying in the ground when he should have been starting school. This feeling only intensified over the next few months when the press began reporting details of what, apparently, day-to-day life was like for Thompson and Venables inside their institutions.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard what the newspapers were reporting: they were living lives of luxury, a hundred times better than the ones they had before they murdered my son. Tucked away in their secure units they had their own bedrooms and bathrooms, TVs, consoles, games and every toy imaginable. We were also told they had the pick of designer clothes and the latest trainers. Of course, no one ever confirmed this was the case, but Chris Johnson and I agreed that the stories had to be coming from some source with inside access to the truth. Given the way that their sentencing was being handled, it was definitely possible that they were indeed being rewarded for murdering my son.
The blows kept coming and none bigger than finding out an American lawyer, Tom Loflin, was pushing himself onto the scene in the most unhelpful way. He was a huge supporter of both Thompson and Venables and expressed disgust that two eleven-year-old boys had been tried and convicted in an adult court of law. He started stirring up all kinds of trouble, writing to everyone involved, including the judge who had overseen the case. But, most crucially, he started corresponding with the lawyers looking after Thompson and Venables, encouraging them to continue the fight against their original sentences. His argument was that their human rights had been breached – he called their detention ‘barbarism’ and ‘a monstrous injustice’ – something that made my blood boil. Who did this stranger think he was, involving himself in something he knew nothing about – he hadn’t buried his two-year-old child. As far as I was concerned, he was just another person jumping on the bandwagon and taking advantage of my son.
He started visiting Venables in particular, which culminated in him getting friendly with both sets of lawyers and preparing a case to take to Strasbourg and the European Court of Human Rights. This felt like the biggest body blow of all and I vowed that I would fight it with every breath in my body. How had we got here? We started the fight in order to have the sentence raised and now there was some random American lawyer arguing my son’s murderers should never have been detained in the first place. It was madness and the rage I felt was indescribable.
Just as I prepared to roll up my sleeves and fight for my second-born, I realised I was pregnant. We were absolutely thrilled but I realised that, yet again, I would spend a pregnancy fighting the system and trying to make sure Venables and Thompson got what they deserved. In the end it didn’t matter – I miscarried the baby before my 12-week scan. I was devastated and remember thinking that now I had lost a baby in every possible way.
Chapter 20
New Beginnings
As ever, I was split between parenting in the ‘now’ and making sure that I carried on fighting for James. Just as all this business with Loflin blew up and I lost the baby, I also had to contend with Michael’s first day at school, which was a terrifying milestone for me.
I fully admit that I was really overprotective of him as a small boy – on the rare occasion that we did go out into a public place, I took no chances. He was on harnesses, a wrist strap and he had to hold my hand – the poor kid was tied up in multiple leads and going nowhere! I only took him to the park or playground with other members of the family so there were lots of eyes on him and I found open spaces awful with my boys when they were young, I was just terrified. Even when Michael was in the buggy, he would have the bottom straps around his lap and a harness on the top half clipped into the belt strap. My eyes weren’t off him for a second and if they were, someone from the family would be watching and standing with him.
So sending my baby off to school was awful – I had to keep telling myself, It’s Michael and not James, it will be fine. As I’d refused to put him into nursery, his first day at school was just that and I worried it would be a shock for Michael. People often ask me what that first day was like for me but it should be more a question of how it was for Stuart! When Michael first started it was only for half a day – from 9am until 12:30pm – but even though it was a short day I was dreading dropping him off. I knew that walking away and leaving him there would be too much for me, so Stuart came with me. He recalls, ‘It was fine on the way there and we talked through what was going to happen. We went into the classroom and, after a few minutes, the teacher said, “Come on parents, off you go now. Say goodbye to your child and they will see you later.” All I could do was look at you, you were in such a state, but I also fully expected Michael to kick off when he saw us leaving. I was so nervous as we said goodbye, but it was hilarious because Michael just looked at us both and ran off – he didn’t even look back! It was like he was saying: “I am freeeeeee!”’
Michael absolutely loved school – he probably couldn’t wait to get away from me! How did I cope? Let’s just say that the house had never been so spotless that first year – I cleaned from 9am to 3pm non-stop as I needed something to take my mind off the fact I couldn’t see or speak to him and didn’t know what he was doing from one minute to the next.
But the anxiety crept back in and I couldn’t go the whole day without seeing Michael, I worried too much, so we arranged with the school that Stuart would bring him home for lunch. Michael would put his order in before he went to school and it would be ready as soon as Stuart brought him through the door. It m
ight have been beans on toast or a bowl of hot pasta and we would all eat lunch together. This was genuinely the only way I could cope with those first few years without him by my side, I was consumed with fear that something would happen to him and I wouldn’t be there to protect or help him when he needed me – just like with James. Michael seemed fine with the arrangement, and he says now, ‘For the first couple of years in primary school I went home for my lunch, which didn’t seem weird to me because it was just what we’d always done. I don’t remember anything in particular standing out – no one ever spoke to me about you or James and I was well protected by my teachers. I think it helped that my school name was Fergus, even though I hadn’t officially changed it at that point. You and Dad explained that you were registering me under that name so that I could keep a low profile. I had loads of cousins around the school too, so there were lots of eyes to watch me!’
Michael was definitely ready for school, he thrived and eventually the head teacher suggested that he stay and eat lunch with his friends. That was a big step for me, but I knew it was about doing what was best for Michael and I didn’t want him to stand out. It also helped that one of my sisters had just become a dinner lady at the school and she could keep an eye on him for me. Once he stopped coming home, we had a special arrangement that I would send a hot lunch into school for him and he would stay there and eat it. So my sister, Rita, would arrive at the house on her way to start work, before the lunch hour began, to collect whatever I had made and she would take it to Michael. It often meant that Michael was tucking into a steaming bowl of chicken and bacon pasta, and the rest of the classmates were having school dinners! I am not sure how popular I was with the dinner ladies, but it helped make me feel a bit better knowing I was still looking after him.
I Let Him Go: The heartbreaking book from the mother of James Bulger Page 17