My life was a mess, I was a mess – how would I ever be able to bring up a baby? But all the time there was another thought formulating in the back of my mind: a baby could be an escape.
Mum was non-judgemental and supportive.
‘I will support you whatever you decide,’ she said. ‘It won’t be easy but I will be here for you.’
It took me a long time to actually realise it was happening but when the shock subsided over the following days I knew increasingly that a termination was not an option. I wanted a baby and the more I considered having one, the more excited I got. I thought it would change everything.
‘That’s it, now you can get on with your life,’ I told myself.
It was a way out.
I told Chris I was pregnant a week after it was confirmed; I called him and asked to meet him. I was honest and told him I thought he was probably the father but there was a chance he wasn’t. Then he told me he would be there for me. He planned to stick around but he knew in his heart of hearts that we wouldn’t be playing happy families, and so did I – he had left all his other children. But for the time being he was happy in his cosy delusion and told me he would support me. He began to get obsessive about what I was eating and drinking; protective, like he was my dad rather than my boyfriend. I became less and less interested in him. As the pregnancy progressed, I became hormonal and, frankly, I was horrible to him.
I got big quickly. I was so skinny it was painful and now I had a huge bump. I suffered with morning sickness but it seemed to go on all day. But that did not seem to matter. I hoped that the baby would allow me to get on with my life. It was my way out. I stayed away from the gang. I stopped drinking but I was still smoking.
I loved going out and Mum helped buy stuff for the new arrival. The family were told and supported us both. It was decided that I would move out of my room and into the loft room, which was bigger. Mum and I decorated it in Winnie the Pooh wallpaper and stickers when I was four months pregnant. We went to Toy R Us and bought teddies. We also bought a cot, a Moses basket and tiny clothes.
Mum came to the scans with me and together we sobbed when we saw my baby’s tiny heartbeat on the screen. I was 14 weeks when I had the first scan and my baby was perfectly formed. Mum burst into tears.
‘Oh my God, it’s a baby!’ I shouted. At that point it finally hit me that it was real, there was a little person growing inside me. I was given copies of the scan and was so proud I carried them around with me. At the second scan I found out I was having a boy, which I had sensed from day one. I lay on the bed and the sonographer ran the sensor over my protruding belly. I could see him clearly on the screen, but at first he wouldn’t uncross his legs.
‘Have a drink of water,’ she advised. I drank a pint and poked my bump and on the screen I could see him move. He was clearly a boy.
‘He’s certainly not shy!’ laughed the woman.
In between the scans there were doctor’s appointments, where I could hear his heartbeat. It was reassuring for Mum and me – she was always so worried about what was going on so when we heard his little heartbeat it was comforting. Each beat was filled with the hope that life would change for the better.
It was a lovely time for both of us. Mum had never had children of her own and in a way I think she lived that magical time through me. We bonded deeply and had agreed before the scan that, if it was a boy, she could choose a name and, if it was a girl, I would name her.
I hardly ever saw Mohammed during my pregnancy. He knew early on and he wasn’t interested: I was of no commercial value to him when pregnant and also I did not want drugs. I didn’t crave them and being pregnant gave me the strength to stay away. He did get in contact regularly, however – he wanted to keep an eye on me to make sure I wasn’t talking to anyone and to keep a hold over me.
He called and texted and told me to meet him. I made excuses. Usually I told him that I had a hospital appointment. I wasn’t sold when I was pregnant; without the drugs and alcohol I was less easy to control and I think that made Mohammed nervous.
When I was seven months pregnant he texted and ordered me to meet him. I did as he asked.
‘How are you?’ he asked slyly. We were in Riverside Court and I had refused his offer of a drink.
‘You look fucking massive,’ he laughed. ‘You know it’s my baby.’
I wasn’t sure if he seriously believed I was pregnant with his baby or not and scoffed.
‘You have to have sex to make a baby.’
Mohammed reached into a pocket and produced a cigarette. Although I had given up drinking and drugs, I was having trouble stopping smoking and I took it from him – I was nervous being in his company, the cigarette would help calm my anxiety. He lit it and I took a drag. Immediately I realised something wasn’t right. The smell of burned plastic hit my nostrils. I coughed out the smoke before it could sit on my lungs.
‘You’re sick!’
Disgusted, I flicked the cigarette at him: he had spiked it with crack.
He thought it was hilarious and doubled over, laughing.
Chapter eighteen
NOAH
Lauren Long was finally killed off in February 2008 when I legally became Lara McDonnell. It had been a long, hard road and part of her would remain, causing problems and upsetting what should have been a time for fresh starts.
That was the only way I could understand why I was drawn to the gang life. I was two people – I didn’t understand that I had been the object of a methodical process of coercion and compulsion. Lauren was the part of me who was drawn to the gang, like a moth to the flame. She couldn’t resist the lure, and she wasn’t strong enough to break free; she was ruled by fear. In changing my name I had driven a symbolic stake through her heart.
When I finally became Lara legally, it felt like a relief: I was shedding a part of my life I didn’t want anymore. For many years I had been ashamed of who I was. I didn’t want to be associated with Terri and Shane, I didn’t want to be referred to by the name they gave me – I didn’t want to be anything to do with Lauren. I liked Lara, it suited me. There was never any pressure from Mum for me to change, she was happy with whatever I wanted.
The change, before I gave birth, also meant that my son would carry the name of my new family, something I was pleased about. Just to mitigate any problems, I had given Mum a list of names she could choose from and she chose Noah. Throughout the pregnancy he was known as ‘Spuddy’, however.
In a way I saw my son as my salvation: I hoped his arrival would solve everything. Already my pregnancy had had an effect on the gang. They left me alone through most of it and it also had a beneficial impact on my relationship with Mum – we had definitely become closer because of it. We had the best time in years: we were discovering each other, and it was new to us both. Together we went to antenatal classes and sat down and wrote a birth plan – I wanted an iPod with a calming playlist on it and a warm footbath in the room. Mum was wonderful. As a teenage mum-to-be I should have been worried, but Mum had told me she would support me and help me raise the baby. She expected me to stand on my own two feet – to carry on college and get an education after he was born, to get a job and support myself – but she would help me achieve this and I wanted to be a good mother.
Social services, who were still involved with me, were not so confident of my ability to be a good mother, though. They seemed to surface each time there was a drama in my life and midway through my pregnancy they took an interest in me again and held a case conference about me to decide what the best course of action would be. I explained that I was trying my best to stay out of trouble and look after myself, but they didn’t have any faith in me. It was obvious they were concerned for my son’s safety and I was scared they would take him away as soon as he was born.
‘Why don’t you just give me a chance?’ I begged. But they were insistent that I shouldn’t be the main carer and that the role should instead fall to Mum. They explained in no uncertain terms that,
if I didn’t agree to this, they would have to seriously consider their position. I couldn’t bear the thought of my baby being placed in the care system like I had been and so, ultimately, I had no choice but to agree.
For obvious reasons I had no faith in the system and was angry about the intrusion. In my experience case conferences were exercises in buck-passing and finger-pointing. Social services would call for me to be sectioned and pass the buck to the National Health Service. Mental health would say I needed counselling, the police would say that social services were trying to shift the problem somewhere else and everyone would blame each other and miss the true nature of the problem: that as a vulnerable child from a neglectful background I had been targeted, groomed and exploited by a criminal gang.
I didn’t like to be told what to do and I didn’t respect authority, especially when it was so obviously lacking. During that case conference, I was handed a file that listed in black and white the details of my childhood. A long list of miserable experiences, it was the first time I had ever been presented with my own sad biography. I had never thought of myself as particularly unlucky or tragic but reading about incident after incident it did strike me what a difficult time I’d had and I was determined not to give my own child such an awful start in life.
I struggled through the spring and early summer of that year, getting bigger and bigger. It was becoming increasingly difficult to walk and I started to question how I would get to my due date, which was the end of August. When it arrived, the reason became apparent: at a check-up it was discovered my dates had been miscalculated and I was two weeks overdue!
I was scanned at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford to find out what the consequences of this oversight would be and it was discovered Noah was starving in my womb. The amniotic fluid that should have been surrounding and protecting him had gone and his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. It was decided that I needed to be induced the following night. I was terrified: clearly he was not very well.
I was taken to the labour ward, where the procedure to bring on labour was performed. It wasn’t long before I started to feel the first contractions and the pain of them took me by surprise. Each one gripped me and sent spasms through my body. My head started spinning and I vomited. Mum was with me and looked on helplessly.
‘What can I do?’ she asked desperately.
But there was nothing she could do. As the hours passed, the pain grew greater – I had never felt pain like it. I was given gas and air and that made me violently sick as well.
We settled into an unsteady rhythm through the night. At each contraction I would wretch as there was nothing left to bring up and in between Mum would mop my forehead and try to get me to sleep. The birth plan went out the window – calming mood music was the least of my worries. It was a long labour and Mum slept on the floor when I managed to sleep. She was amazing – she wouldn’t leave my side and knowing she was there made it bearable. Mum fussed and made sure everyone was doing their jobs properly – I felt I could get through it, knowing she was in my corner.
Noah was born on 29 August 2008 and he made a dramatic entrance into the world. I tried to get through it without pain relief but was suffering so much that I had an epidural. But I was weak and exhausted at the end and, as the cord was wrapped around Noah’s neck several times, he was becoming distressed. At that stage the best course of action would have been a C-section but he was too far gone in his journey to the outside world. Throughout the final stages of the birth the delivery team tried to keep track of his heartbeat using a monitor in his head – it was like a metal needle. I was terrified and agitated and this was stressing him out. Mum was hugging me and telling me everything was going to be OK. Finally, I had to be cut while he was delivered by Ventouse forceps, which they had trouble attaching. I was losing blood fast and on the verge of passing out when he finally came out. I couldn’t hear him cry and so I panicked.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I cried.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute he made a sickly little yelp. He was a poor little thing – his head looked like it had been scratched with barbed wire, where he had been poked and prodded. Towards the end of my pregnancy it had been estimated that I would have an 8lb baby: he was 5lb 14oz. Mum saw him first; I was close to collapse (I had lost two pints of blood and needed to be stitched up urgently). She held my baby while I was being seen to and eventually he was handed over to me, wrapped in a blanket and peaceful. He looked like the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. All too soon he was taken from me and whisked off to the special care unit because he had been through such a trauma.
He had to stay there for the first night and I was sent back to the maternity ward on my own. All around me mothers cradled their newborns. Mum wasn’t allowed to stay so I was alone. The midwife took a photo of Noah, printed it out and left it by my bedside.
I was determined to breastfeed him and the nurses told me, if I managed to make my way to the special care ward, I could. As I struggled along the corridor, I was in a great deal of pain.
Noah was lying in a glass cot, nestled in a soft blue blanket. He was asleep. I looked at him for a long time and wondered what kind of a life he would have. The ward was busy and I wanted everyone to go away so there was just me and him.
‘Hello, Noah,’ I whispered. ‘I’m going to be your mummy.’
The word held so much power. What kind of a mummy would I be? He had pulled the feeding tube out of his nose, a nurse replaced it and I gingerly picked him up and held him. I was scared to cuddle him in case I hurt him, he looked so delicate.
I stayed with him for a long time but felt myself drifting off and so I made my way back to my bed for a fitful night’s sleep. Mum came early the next day and, because we’d had such a difficult day previously, the hospital allowed us to have a family room so she could stay the following night. I refused to leave until Noah was released and, anyway, I was in no fit state to be going anywhere. Later that day I was allowed to take him to the room and he slept between Mum and me: we were a little family unit starting life together. Mum and I were going to be his mummy and daddy together. Neither of us had any experience of children so after he was born we had a maternity nurse who came to live in the house. Mum paid her and she was there for four weeks to show us the ropes and taught us how to deal with the night feeds, how to feed and bath him. She arrived two days after he was born. Initially I breastfed.
We were both very protective of him, sometimes overly so: we used to make sure no one touched him with dirty hands or that, if anyone had smoked, they brushed their teeth before they went near him. When we got back from the hospital Mum wouldn’t let anyone in the house for the first few days and whenever we went out in the car with him in the following weeks she only drove at around 20 miles per hour and slowed down further over speed bumps. Anyone who did come round to visit was carefully watched to make sure they held him correctly.
We settled into a routine and over the following months Noah got bigger and stronger. On the surface everything seemed as normal as it could be given the fact that I was a teenage mum but underneath it all I was struggling with my demons. I was still frightened of the gang and, after a couple of months, my fears became a reality.
While pregnant, I had been left alone. Mohammed contacted me every so often, just to check up on me and remind me of my place but very soon after I had Noah the pressure was back on. He called me at home to say congratulations and then in the next breath said, ‘See you in about half an hour.’
As soon as I heard his voice my attitude and behaviour changed; I could feel the fear and anger take over. I felt helpless to resist, which in turn made me hostile towards Mum when she asked where I was going. I felt hostility to Noah, too – my little saviour had changed nothing.
When I went to leave I argued with Mum. She reminded me that I had a responsibility to my child and that I couldn’t just walk off when I fancied it, which made me feel even more trapped.
‘This is all your fault,’ I hissed at him as I stormed out.
I realised I had been stupid to expect anything to change. I was never going to be allowed to leave: I knew far too much, I was trapped.
Mohammed was vile – he knew that I knew I couldn’t escape. I was his property, and always would be. He tried to give me drugs then but I refused; he didn’t push it further because he knew eventually I would crack.
The domestic bliss was shattered and over the following months I became depressed as the calls and texts from Mohammed became as frequent as they always had been. Several months after the birth the men started again, too. If it was possible I felt even more worthless than I had before. Not only was I owned and used by the gang, I was also a failure at motherhood.
Postnatal depression set in. On some days I didn’t want to get out of bed or interact with my baby; I was scared to bond, and I was scared to feed. Emotionally and practically, I pulled away from the situation. I didn’t bother with feeding, changing, playing or cuddling him because I felt like I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to do those tasks properly. I would cry for no reason.
Summoned by the gang more and more, I disappeared regularly. Under immense strain, I didn’t know where to turn. I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to cope and Mum ended up doing the majority of the caring; I resented her for this. I began to feel that Noah was more like a little brother than a son but I tried my best and there were times when I loved being a mum and could almost forget about the other part of my life. Then there would always be a call or a text that shattered the illusion. It pains me to this day but there were times when I resented Noah and I shouted at him. Whenever I did, he would look at me accusingly and then laugh.
Mohammed talked about him in the same way he used to talk about my puppy and Mum – in an underhand, threatening way.
‘Wouldn’t it be terrible if anything happened to your baby?’ he sneered. I knew what the implication was; he didn’t need to spell it out.
Girl for Sale Page 19