Single Mother on the Verge

by Maria Roberts

  But I’m not listening to Rhodri: seeing Jack cry has filled me with panic. We still live in the same house as we did all those years ago. I still sleep in the same bedroom where I was attacked. I wouldn’t move house after what Damien did that night because we had already given up one home to move into a refuge. I didn’t want to feel like a victim all my life, I wanted to feel strong, so we stayed put. Ever since, I’ve been plagued with nightmares. Now that Rhodri has moved in I feel safer, but I still live in fear that Damien will turn up.

  ‘I need you to pack us a bag,’ I interrupt. ‘Damien may come round. I don’t want us to stay here tonight.’

  ‘I’ll call my mother, tell her that we’ll be driving over to Liverpool. We can stay there for the night. Talk about all this in the morning.’

  I crouch down to them and slowly uncoil my boy from Rhodri. We encourage Jack to walk to the living room, but he won’t stand, won’t talk. I carry him awkwardly and lay him on the sofa, where he curls up into the cushions. I sit by him, stroking his hair humming a melody, like I did when he was a baby and he shrilled through the night. His cries echo through the house. I’d never known he was so full of sorrow.

  3

  Jack cannot understand why a whole week has passed and no arrangements have been made for him to meet his father. Seeing Damien again after all those years wasn’t good enough for him: he wants to spend time with him and talk to him on the telephone. That’s why today I’m standing on the path leading to the safe-house for women. Jack and I lived here when I was in my second year at university. A year before the night Damien strangled me. A simple argument had turned into weeks of turmoil. It seems naïve now, but I didn’t know back then that I was experiencing domestic violence. It was only after a number of police visits, when a woman handed me a leaflet with a helpline number, that the gravity of our situation struck me. That was when I packed our bags and abandoned our lovely terraced house on a quiet family road because of Damien’s constant threats.

  He had never harmed Jack and I believed he never would, but the workers at the refuge told me that my life and Jack’s were at risk. I was only twenty-two and suddenly I was being told how not to be murdered. I was terrified.

  We shared our living space with other women escaping violent partners. Mothers stood in the kitchen drinking tea and swapping distressing stories. Some afternoons we sat in the playroom making crafts with the kids. I cried choked tears, like Jack’s are now, and he became a difficult, demanding toddler. He must have been a very confused little boy.

  I want us never to go through that again. I must do the right thing because if I don’t, and things turn bad, Social Services might take Jack away.

  When we lived at the refuge there was a large whiteboard in the office listing the names of women using the service. Each day a member of staff mapped out which refuges had beds, and how many women needed them. There were never enough to go around. I learned that nineteen-year-old girls were hit by their husbands or boyfriends, and women of eighty too. Domestic violence, said the workers, happens regardless of age.

  Looking at the safe-house now I feel sad that its inhabitants are shielded from the outside world. Heavy blinds block out each window, and a high wall protects the back garden. When we lived there, the garden reminded me of the lonely castle grounds in Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant. It should have rung with the sound of children’s laughter.

  I look up to the room where Jack and I stayed. I’d lie on the bed frightened that Damien would discover where we were. It was about this time of year when we moved here and it seemed perpetually dark. The workers warned me never to return to Damien: they said it was only a matter of time before he tried to kill me. He displayed all the traits of a dangerous man. They feared not just for my safety but for their own and the other women’s, so two days before Christmas we were moved to another refuge. I lost my friends, my family, my job, my home. When my self-esteem lay flat on the floor, I returned to Damien because I was lonely. He left messages on my phone saying he loved me, he wanted to be a good father, and he promised he would change. A year later, just days after he’d tried to strangle me, I landed back on this refuge’s doorstep, desperate for advice.

  What a stupid, stupid girl.

  Looking up into the CCTV camera guarding the entrance I take a deep breath, press the buzzer, and wait. A young woman with dark hair opens the door. She looks distant and afraid. I imagine she saw my face on the CCTV screen and assumed I wasn’t a threat. To open the door or not? I remember that dilemma. For a moment I’m not looking at her, I’m looking at me. Not me now but as I used to be.

  I watch the girl walk back to the kitchen, then a serious-looking woman strides out from the office. ‘You do not open the door to anyone,’ she says harshly to the girl, ‘unless you know who it is.’ Then she turns to me. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I used to live here.’

  ‘I don’t remember you. When was that?’

  I tell her the name of the worker who looked after me. I explain about Jack wanting to see Damien and about my fear of Social Services. ‘I don’t want my son to be taken away from me.’ I hesitate. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I stand in the corridor and gaze around me, shocked by how bleak and unhappy the house feels.

  ‘It must have been very hard for you to come back here,’ she says softly. ‘It must have been terrible for you to have been carrying that worry with you for all these years.’

  ‘Horrible,’ I say, and before I can stop myself I begin to cry.

  ‘If Damien wants to see a solicitor, in order to gain access through the courts,’ she explains, ‘maybe he can see Jack.’

  ‘Good day?’ asks Rhodri, kicking off his muddy boots in the kitchen. His trousers are dirty and wet up to the knees. He has spent the day at the allotment and smells of freshly dug soil. ‘Hey, what’s happened?’ He drops his rucksack to the floor, then sits down at the kitchen table with me. ‘You’re shivering,’ he says, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me towards him. He hands me his cotton handkerchief and smiles reassuringly. I move closer to him until my knees are wedged comfortably between his.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I tell Rhodri.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I went to the refuge today to speak to a worker. I don’t ever want to end up back there.’

  ‘He’ll be upset.’

  ‘I don’t want to take the risk. I can’t let Jack see Damien,’ I tell Rhodri. ‘Not now, and probably not for a long time.’

  4

  Today the plan is for us to spend hours digging at the allotment to distract Jack. Last night I told him that I will not allow him to see Damien until he is at least fifteen and able to get out of tricky situations by calling a cab or catching a bus. Now Jack sees me as the enemy standing between him and his dad. In the meantime, I have issued my own safety measure: Damien needs to stay out of trouble for twelve consecutive months before I will even consider contact. If he can do that, I may relent.

  I open the front door to our house to water the plants before we leave for the allotment. Jack is in the back garden, trying to chase the rabbits back into their hutch. As I step outside my neighbour, Josie, shakes her head at me wearily. She is standing beneath her porch unspooling string that has been tied across a bush to her doorknob, through the knocker, over the letterbox and back. ‘That Scarlet’s a little madam,’ she says. ‘It was the milk last week. Someone needs to take her in hand.’

  ‘What about the milk?’ I ask. I’m trying to figure out what’s happened to my hanging basket. All the flowers are standing to attention rather than falling over the edge in a colourful cascade. I think Rhodri has put geraniums in it and I’m sure you’re not supposed to put them in hanging baskets. ‘What happened with the milk?’ I ask again.

  Rhodri is in the kitchen spreading peanut butter on oatcakes – I wish he wouldn’t do that: it gives him dreadful wind. I need to talk to him about the aesthetic of the hanging basket. It’s all wrong. Now he’s chopping a banana, arrangin
g the slices on rye bread and eating spoonfuls of tahini. You have to watch vegans: if they don’t combine food thoughtfully they’ll blow you into outer space.

  ‘Last Sunday,’ Josie is saying, ‘I caught her hiding the milk, and when I went over to tell her mother, the boyfriend insulted me.’

  This is typical of the council estate where we live. Tiny wars over things like milk, bins and pizza deliveries. It’s like living among school bullies.

  ‘That’s dreadful, Josie,’ I say.

  ‘If they needed milk, they could have just asked.’

  Josie would help anybody if they asked but nobody does around here: they just take. I’ve lost count of the times Jack and I’ve returned from the shops or the park to find the local kids whizzing up and down the street on his trucks, or his bike, or kicking his ball at the window of another house. And the mothers just stood there, daring me to challenge them. Of course I didn’t because they scare me. I had a high fence installed instead.

  ‘It’s not Scarlet’s fault,’ I say. ‘She’s always good for me. You need to be friends with her, and then she’s great.’

  I pause to wave at Albert across the communal garden. He waves back, shakes his walking-stick at me, then begins to unravel string from his front door. Elsie, who lives next door to him, steps out from her door and shouts, ‘She’s a little devil, that one, and you can’t tell her mother anything because you’ll end up with a skateboard through your window.’

  Scarlet, the love, has booby-trapped half the street. Unfortunately it’s the retired half with poor eyesight and walking difficulties.

  ‘The youngest one,’ another neighbour calls, ‘fell over the other week.’ She’s referring to Scarlet’s sister, Anna. She’s just a toddler and is frequently seen trotting about in the car park, her bottom, in a nappy, sticking into the air as she bends down to pick up stones to throw at passers-by. ‘And she just bounced back. Those children are made of rubber. If something happens to those girls,’ she adds, ‘they’ll say the neighbours did nothing. It’ll be all over the papers,’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But it wouldn’t be true.’ Something terrible could happen to those children and then we’ll all be sorry.

  Scarlet’s my favourite little girl on the planet. She also happens to be the naughtiest little girl on the estate, or perhaps even in Jackson. I’ll have to commission a survey to find out. She’s nine, feckless and bossy. She and Jack used to spend hours barking like dogs – I’m glad they’ve grown out of that. Scarlet has had such a difficult time. I think of the years she lived next door to us and I heard her screaming in the night…

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ I tell Josie. I always say this. Many mothers on these streets won’t allow their children to play with Scarlet and wonder why I let her into our house to play with Jack, who adores her. ‘I wouldn’t have her in my house,’ they say. ‘Nowhere near my children.’ Sometimes they say worse. But you shouldn’t write a child off at nine or, in Anna’s case, two, just because her mother put us through hell with noisy parties.

  Josie heads indoors and I go to the kitchen in search of a cup of tea. Rhodri has made one already. It’s sitting on the counter waiting for me. It doesn’t look like tea.‘Pwuh! What’s that?’

  ‘Organic Fairtrade rooibos tea, with rice milk,’ says Rhodri. ‘You’ll get used to it. What was Josie saying?’

  ‘Scarlet’s making mischief again.’ I give the tea another go, and by the third sip it’s not so bad.

  ‘A good day for the allotment,’ says Rhodri. ‘Why don’t we invite Scarlet? She’ll keep Jack company.’

  ‘Great idea. I’ll send him over to ask her.’

  I packed a lunchbox for Jack and Scarlet, and a football, and they took their bikes to speed ahead of us along the paths that lead into and around the allotments. I told them they can climb trees and explore the plots close by, but Jack is hiding behind the compost heap, beneath the elder tree, sulking. He said he wanted to dig deep holes, which was fine, but now we need to fill them in to make seedbeds. Scarlet has been a great help all morning so I’ve been praising her, and now Jack is jealous.

  ‘I want to go home,’ he moans.

  ‘We need to plant the garlic and onions!’ I say enthusiastically, as though he’s a very lucky boy to be toiling on an allotment.

  Scarlet tears the weeds from the soil and chucks them into a big bucket over by Rhodri.

  ‘Do you like digging?’ I ask Scarlet.

  ‘I love it,’ she shouts.

  Jack mooches over. ‘I want a spade,’ he says.

  ‘Can you dig up some weeds?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says, cramming his mouth with banana. ‘I want to dig holes.’ Bored, he heads towards the brambles and begins to build a den out of fallen branches.

  When he’s out of earshot, Scarlet purses her lips and casts her eyes to the ground. ‘Mum’s back with him, in’t she?’ she says quietly, kicking the soil. ‘So we can’t live with her.’

  I pat her head gently. I want to hug her, but you can’t just hug other people’s children nowadays, even if they need affection. What a stupid world. Scarlet doesn’t cry when she tells me she can’t go back to live with her mother, Tanya. She doesn’t even cry when she tells me that Tanya is pregnant again. Scarlet is such a little trooper she deserves a trophy.

  ‘You’ll still see your mum,’ I say brightly. ‘And she’ll get things sorted. You’ll be living at your nana’s. You can play at our house whenever you want…’ I try to think of something cheerful ‘… and soon you’ll have a new baby brother or sister.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sighs Scarlet, completely unimpressed.

  ‘Let’s see if we can pull this one out.’ I point to an enormous weed with a stalk as thick as my arm. We yelp and shout as we yank it from the ground.

  When we tire of digging, I lay my coat on the grass and sit down to hunt for crisps in Rhodri’s pannier, pour orange juice for the kids, and get out some apples. ‘Why don’t you take the bikes and ride around the allotment? Show Scarlet the giant vegetables,’ I say to Jack. There’s a plot by the gate where a man grows huge pumpkins. I watch Scarlet race Jack down the path. That bike is too small for her. She needs a new one. Not for the first time, I wish I could help her more.

  I scan the allotment: the other plots are picture perfect. The couple next to us have a main pathway covered with polyurethane and wood chippings. If you walk to the far end of the plot, there’s a cute pond, with log seats placed randomly around the water and a barbecue.

  ‘Their allotment’s looking beautiful. Look what they’ve done,’ I say to Rhodri. He looms over me, all sweaty and dirty. There’s something about men, spades and soil that is so… ‘Ours is a mess.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t want wood chippings, do you?’ he says, taking a seat next to me. ‘They’re very bad for the environment.’

  I do want wood chippings, I think. I want a pretty allotment with flowers, a blue seaside-type hut, a lawn and a swing in the elder tree. But Rhodri insists we use nothing but reclaimed materials.

  ‘Can’t we use a Rotavator?’ I ask, for the thousandth time. ‘Do we have to dig all sixty-five feet of it by hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This allotment’s been abandoned for five years and the weeds have grown as tall as me. Why can’t we just get a machine to do it?’

  ‘Because it’ll make the weeds worse,’ says Rhodri. He pinches my thigh, then bites into his apple.

  ‘Tanya’s pregnant again,’ I tell him. ‘And Scarlet and Anna are being taken away from her.’

  The girls had been living temporarily with their grandmother, Philomena. It wasn’t supposed to be for long. Last summer Scarlet told me that Tanya had promised her that she’d be home with her for the winter.

  ‘Where are they going to live?’

  ‘At Philomena’s’

  ‘Is Scarlet okay about that?’

  ‘I think so.’ I tell him that Tanya’s back with Cain. Rho dri grimaces. That man is horrible. What h
e has done to Tanya is far worse than anything I’ve experienced. If only Jack knew how the violence has affected Scarlet, he’d understand why I won’t let him see his dad.

  ‘I wish we could foster her,’ I say to Rhodri, ‘but we’d have to take Anna too. And we’ve no room.’ Our home is the size of a Wendy house and Rhodri and I just about manage to feed and clothe the three of us.

  ‘She’ll be with Philomena,’ says Rhodri. ‘She’ll be fine with her, and she can come over and play with Jack.’

  Philomena lives nearby. That’s something.

  It’s dusk when we drop Scarlet off at her grandmother’s. She is covered with mud from head to foot but excited and tired. Minutes later she knocks on our door and proudly holds out a tray of seedlings Philomena has prepared for us. This happens a lot. We take Scarlet out, and Philomena sends over little gifts, which is how we ended up with rabbits.

  ‘Tell your nana thank you very much,’ I say. Scarlet grins, and runs off. I close the door and take the tray of seedlings into the kitchen. Jack is splashing about in the bath singing ‘American Idiot’; the transition from Bob the Builder to Green Day fan has come too soon. Jack always sings when he’s happy. Which means our excursion to the allotment has worked. He has forgotten about Damien, for now at least.

  ‘Let’s have a living-room disco,’ I suggest, when he’s in his pyjamas and snuggled next to me on the sofa. I’m determined to keep him in a good mood. We sit by the record player, which is the best thing Rhodri moved in, except for himself, and sift through his vinyl collection for something appropriate. This quickly proves difficult because most of what Rhodri owns is anarchist punk rock, which rants about the perils of the world and the destruction of the earth. I settle for Pink Floyd, and Jack and I begin what could be described as a fusion of waltz, jive and street dance.

  I can’t keep the entertainment up for ever. At the dinner table an unhappy silence mixes with the beetroot and chickpea soup Rhodri has made. He has chopped and cooked for hours – it looks like a crime scene in the kitchen – but Jack doesn’t want to eat it. No surprise. He hates soup and has never eaten chickpeas. Neither does he understand beetroot, which stains like paint and looks like blood. ‘I’m not a Vulcan like you,’ Jack says to Rhodri.