What's Love Got to Do with It?

by Jenny Molloy

  The judge disagreed. ‘You have been deceptive and manipulative,’ she said, gesturing to a stack of papers – reports about me and my kids. ‘You’re pretending to work with social services when, in fact, you have no interest in doing so.’ I lost the thread after this; what was the point of listening, they’d already made up their minds?

  Afterwards, Gareth came to talk to me in the corridor. ‘You do understand that this is going to the next level, don’t you?’

  Taken aback, I asked, ‘What’s the next level?’

  ‘Your case has been referred to Crown Court, to a bigger, more serious court, where a judge is going to make huge decisions about your life.’

  I shrugged. I just didn’t get it and I infuriated everyone with my distance, my lack of emotion.

  So I went to Crown Court, with my step-mum, and this time there was a stern old male judge in a large, high-ceilinged courtroom with lots of people. The judge talked and talked and I kind of zoned out for a bit until: ‘I can come to no other conclusion. The court rules in favour of the children to be removed from the mother’s care.’

  I looked at my step-mum. ‘DO WHAT?’ I screamed at the judge, my rantings all being noted by the recorder. When I’d stopped the judge looked me in the eye.

  ‘I understand that you’re upset but I must continue with my findings so they are recorded for the court.’

  I screamed at him again and again, until nothing was coming out of my mouth, just sobs and gasps. Gareth held me on one side, my step-mum on the other. I looked at Gareth. Right then, if I could, if I’d had the breath in me, I would have killed him.

  So history was repeating itself. Mum had lost three kids to the care system. But it had been out of Mum’s hands. This was down to me. The social worker came around to see me on the Tuesday and said I’d have the kids until Friday. That was the day they would no longer be mine. ‘You have until then to prepare them,’ she said. ‘To say goodbye.’ Did these people actually think this was supposed to make it easier for me? The feeling at this time was unreal, like I was watching it from another world.

  I told them on Thursday. ‘Tomorrow you’re going on an adventure with a friend of mine.’

  This was something new and exciting and they were delighted. We packed their bags and in the morning they were hopping up and down, waiting for my friend to come and take them on an adventure.

  ‘Is this your friend, Mum?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s her.’

  I had booster seats for them and sat them in the back of the car, helped them with seat belts, put the bags into the boot and waved them off, smiling to the last. The moment I stepped back into my house, a shell without my children, I wanted to smash the place up, burn it down; then I wanted to smash myself up. But my energy, what little there was of it, vanished and I fell to my knees and stretched out in the hallway. At some point I went upstairs and lay across the girls’ beds and the next thing I knew a week had gone by. At some point I took an overdose. I didn’t even know what it was I took, just every pill I could find. I woke up after being out for I don’t know how long. My head, fuzzy, was banging, and my pillow had become stuck to my face with thick drool. ‘I can’t even kill myself,’ I thought. ‘Can’t even do that right. And now I’ve got the mother of all headaches and I’ve taken all the pills in the house.’

  I went to the kitchen and ate a packet of biscuits, one after the other. Gareth had told me on the day of the court case: ‘We can turn this around. You’re articulate. You’re not stupid. Right now you can’t see the wood for the trees.’

  I didn’t think I could. My girls had been removed. People, my family, were all going to judge me. They would think I’d done terrible things to the children I loved, really loved with all my heart. If I had them now, I thought, I would take better care of them; I’d show them all. But then reality sunk in. That wasn’t going to happen. As long as I was taking drugs, my chances would be non-existent.

  As my headache started to fade, I looked in my pocket for the speed. It was there, as it always was. The doorbell went. It was Mary. She at least knew not to ask me how I was doing or tell me I looked like shit. And now, I just couldn’t be bothered to hide my drug use. I opened the wrap, wet my finger and dabbed it into the white crystals.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Amphetamine. You know, speed.’

  Mary looked like the mother of all pennies had dropped. ‘But you’re such an articulate young lady – we never even guessed. How long?’

  I shrugged. ‘Since I don’t know when.’

  ANGELIKA

  Angelika was a young care leaver who had read Hackney Child and I had become her mentor. We bonded automatically, before understanding why. I think now that we could each see something of ourselves in the other and, as Angelika told her story, I saw parallels, particularly emotional parallels that came through love lost as a child and the subsequent search for love that followed – with all the danger that entails.

  I was born in a small town in Poland. Our family life was good, until Mum and Dad really started to argue when I was nine years old. They tried to keep it from me, but children are sensitive and I can still feel the bad atmosphere that filled the house. I had a sister, Davina, who was four years younger than me, and a brother, Stanislaw (we called him Stan or Stanny), who was seven years younger than me. Dad was tall, dark-haired, handsome and tough. He’d been in the army and worked as a security guard. Mum was a chef, a really great cook and was small, blonde and extremely pretty. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

  Mum and Dad divorced when I was ten. Dad was working but money was tight and he decided to go to England where he could earn a lot more and send it home to us.

  ‘Well get rich and fat,’ he joked, tickling me, ‘and I’ll build you your very own fairy palace.’

  But when Dad went away, we didn’t hear from him. I was really upset about that.

  My mum quickly found a new boyfriend, Patek. He was tall, blond and full of muscles. He was also vain and violent and I hated him so much. When Mum was at the restaurant, he would drink from a tin until he wobbled when he stood up and then he’d beat up four-year-old Stanny. I mean he didn’t smack, he really hit him with his closed fist. He thought that was how you taught young boys to be men. I was scared for a few days before I decided to tell Mum and she kicked Patek out straight away. Then there was another boyfriend, Gregory, an older man with huge, scarred hands, a shiny, bald head and a big, hard stomach. We all lived together in a little bungalow and every night I wished Dad was with us.

  He’d been gone nearly two years.

  When Gregory lived with us, us kids slept in one large room and Mum and Gregory slept in the lounge. One time I woke up at night to go to the toilet and I heard a lot of people in the lounge, talking and laughing. I peeked in. The room was lit by candles and there were lots of men smoking and drinking. They didn’t notice me as I walked into the foggy room. I could see Mum in bed with the covers all pulled up, so I went over to ask her what was going on. I pulled off the covers and saw another man – not Gregory – lying there with her. I started crying. Stanny and Davina woke up and came into the room. Mum lied, saying I wasn’t feeling well and they should go back to bed. I felt really awful about the lie. I wanted to say so but I knew Mum would be cross if I didn’t, so I just kept quiet.

  When I was twelve years old, playing with Stanny in the garden, Mum came out holding the telephone. ‘It’s Dad,’ she said. ‘He’s coming home.’

  I was so happy he was coming back. I’d missed him so much but was still angry with him for leaving us for so long. I was also angry with Mum for living with all these strange and horrible men.

  Every now and again, since Dad had gone, Mum would give us chocolates and biscuits that came in packets with foreign writing on them. She never said where they came from but I just assumed, like a lot of things she bought, that she got them cheap from someone on the black market. When Dad arrived, the first thing I noticed was
that he’d brought a big suitcase full of presents, including these sweets. Then it clicked. He’d been sending us presents all the time!

  I asked him about it and he said: ‘Didn’t you get my letters?’ He’d been writing to us as well and Mum had hidden the letters. I was so happy. Dad still loved us, he’d missed us and now he wanted us all to go to England. I hated Mum at first for what she’d done but Dad said: ‘You mustn’t blame your mama. It was difficult for her when I left. Things are going to be better now, I promise.’

  And he was right. Mum and Dad got back together and we were a normal family again for almost two years. Dad would go back to London, which I got very anxious about, but this time they were much shorter visits, a month at a time. One day he came back all excited and announced that he and Mum had decided to move to the UK – schools, a house, a job had all been arranged. We were going to live in Barnet near London, in a lovely large house on the edge of a wood, not far from our school. The plan involved sharing the house with another family that Dad knew from Poland. They had two kids aged fifteen and seven.

  It was exciting but confusing being in another country. I couldn’t speak English and it was difficult at school for the first three months, while I desperately tried to work out what the other thirteen-year-olds were talking about. I’m sure they were sometimes saying nasty things about me but, once I could join in, I made some friends.

  I also saw a black person for the first time when Mum and I were walking down the high street. I was so shocked that I couldn’t help myself and asked: ‘Why is he so dirty?’ She was so shocked and angry that she slapped me. Dad was working the nightshift at a steady job and, while we weren’t rich, we had enough. We were living a normal, easy life – a normal, little family.

  After a year, when I was fifteen years old, we moved into a house of our own. Mum and Dad started to argue again. I was playing with Davina in the front garden when Mum suddenly burst out of the house and stomped down the garden path, her large handbag stuffed full and tucked under her arm.

  ‘Mum? Where are you going?’

  ‘To see a friend around the corner. I won’t be long.’ She marched off down the street without looking back. ‘Another row with Dad,’ I thought and forgot about it. But she didn’t come back that night, or the next night, so Dad reported Mum missing to the police. Then he noticed his credit card was gone. One night became three nights and then a week, then two weeks. Dad checked with the bank and found that someone had spent £2,000 on his credit card. Dad spent a lot of time looking for Mum and at first his boss was sympathetic and gave him time off but then, as Dad missed more days and refused to work nights because he didn’t feel comfortable leaving us home alone at night, he was fired. It turned out that the family finances were on a knife-edge and by the time Dad had paid the monthly bills, we were suddenly in debt without even the credit card to turn to. We lived off the cheapest food and Dad had to ask friends for £30 to tide us over until Mum came back and he could find another job. If it hadn’t been for these friends, we would have starved.

  Three weeks later, Mum suddenly reappeared with no explanation and acted like everything was fine. She knew we were worried, that the police were looking for her, but she wouldn’t explain. I was just glad that everything had returned to normal, although I was a bit anxious that it might happen again.

  One month later, I came home from school to find my room had been ransacked. Burglars had taken everything, including – most painfully of all – a white gold necklace my dad had bought for me for my thirteenth birthday, which was worth about £400, along with all my other little pieces of jewellery, which couldn’t have been worth much. I ran to Dad screaming that we’d been robbed.

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ he replied. It was true – the rest of the house was fine. Eventually we had to accept that it was Mum. She had taken everything I owned that was saleable. I didn’t understand it. How could my mum have done this to me? Didn’t she love me? Had she never loved me?

  Dad reported her missing again. When Mum came back, two weeks later, she’d even sold her wedding ring. Still she wouldn’t explain. Dad was at a loss but felt he had to take Mum back so he could go to work while she looked after us kids.

  The next time she left, she vanished for three weeks with Dad’s pay packet.

  She came back one night when we were eating cheap boiled pasta with tasteless tomato ketchup. Dad had changed the locks. After she started to kick the door, Dad put down his fork and told us to finish our dinner. We got up and watched from the kitchen doorway as Dad opened the front door. Mum went to step in. Dad stopped her.

  ‘You do not live here any more and we do not need you any more,’ he said. ‘We no longer care about you. Just go away and do whatever you’re doing.’

  He closed the door. Mum wouldn’t go, however, and screamed at Dad through the letterbox. Stanny and Davina were really scared, so Dad called the police. They already knew about our troubles with Mum because of all the times Dad had reported her missing. They arrested Mum and banned her from coming anywhere near our house.

  So much for a better life in England. Stanny, who was now nine years old, and Davina, who was twelve, both struggled at school after Mum left. I did OK, but I didn’t understand what had happened to Mum and couldn’t make my brother and sister feel any better, and neither could Dad.

  Stanny was angry with Dad for not making Mum stay, and his pain and frustration came out at school. He argued with his teachers, was disruptive in class and fell in with the ‘bad kids’, kids like him who came from unstable and unhappy homes.

  Stanny started to steal to impress his new friends – from shops, from school and from other children. I think he really needed the love of a mother. Dad really tried but he was unused to being a stay-at-home parent and he had been left just as confused and upset by Mum’s behaviour as we had.

  Mum vanished for a couple of months and then she got in touch with Dad, asking to come back. Dad resisted but could see his family falling apart in front of him. He’d found part-time work for when we were at school. He needed work to make some money so we could live better, but we also needed our mum’s love, no matter how messed up she was. We needed something she had that Dad couldn’t provide and, whatever it was, it was really important.

  Dad let her into the house for a short visit about five months after the police arrested her. It was getting close to Christmas and I asked Dad if she could come for Christmas dinner, to help me cook as I didn’t know how. He agreed. Polish Christmas dinner is very different from an English one and it involves twelve traditional courses, all of which have to be prepared from scratch, including red borscht, mushroom soup, carp, herrings and dumplings stuffed with cabbage, sauerkraut or mushrooms, as well as cabbage rolls and gingerbread and poppy seed cake for dessert. Dad made enough money that Christmas to get all of these things and more, and so he put food on the table and Mum cooked it. It felt like we were a family again.

  I was so proud of my dad because he kept everything together for us, had worked so hard and was still trying to find a way to get Mum permanently back in our lives. I think he loved her, despite her craziness. But, more than that, he could see how much we needed her.

  The next secret was revealed when Mum couldn’t hide it any more. She was pregnant. And not by our dad.

  I came home from school one day to find a man and a woman from social services waiting to talk to me. They asked me lots of questions about home, school, and my mum and dad, until I got fed up and ran to find Dad: ‘Why all the personal questions? What’s happened?’

  ‘They say I beat up your brother,’ he answered.

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ I shouted, running back to the social worker. ‘Dad never hit Stanny! Dad loves him; he loves us all. He wouldn’t harm any of us. He’s only ever cared for us.’

  After Mum had revealed she was pregnant, Stanny got into more and more trouble at school until he picked on kids much bigger than him and they beat him up. He’d asked me for help
– he always did – and he told the other kids: ‘My sister’s here now and she’s going to fight all of you.’

  I was tired of always having to defend him, to justify him to teachers and other kids, and so this time I said: ‘No, I’m not. You have to fight your own battles. It’s your mess. You made it, you sort it out.’

  When the teacher saw the results of Stanny’s one-sided fight, instead of telling on the other children, he said the bruises had come from Dad. Stanny didn’t come home that night.

  Dad sat up until the next morning. I found him in the kitchen. His skin looked grey and, for the first time, in that weak morning light, I saw my dad as an old man.

  ‘Why would Stanny say something like that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he wants the attention,’ I said. ‘And because he can’t admit he lied, that he was wrong to lie.’

  Social services said that Stanny wouldn’t be coming home for a while and he was placed with foster carers. It didn’t take long, however, before his foster carers were bringing Stanny to the house for a few hours every other day. The first time, they dropped him off, Dad hugged Stanny so hard and for so long I thought he was going to hurt him. Dad didn’t ask Stanny why he’d done what he had. They both knew and understood what had happened and why and what the situation was. Between them, they said and did everything social services needed to hear so that Stanny could come home and live with us again. But the process was really slow. There were assessments, ones that had to be booked months in advance, and surprise visits that could take place at any day and at any time social services cared to choose. We understood the purpose but it was really hard to live through it. Mum was there with us but not really present. She was pregnant with this other man’s child and she seemed to be half-in and half-out of our lives. It took four months but finally Stanny was allowed home. And he almost immediately started getting in trouble again.