What's Love Got to Do with It?

by Jenny Molloy

  From that moment, I started using every day, as if I’d never been off it. Life was exactly the same as before. I stayed up all night. People, other junkies, started to come in and out of the house – people I didn’t know but barely noticed. I tried to keep it away from Michael but how could I? I thought I was doing a good job – I was feeding and changing him as always. Everything, as far as I could see, was OK.

  But the more I used, the less I saw, the more the fragile world I’d built started to crumble, descending into the chaos that always comes with drug abuse. I injected amphetamine until one day Robbie said he had nothing but heroin and so I took that – but only after Michael was asleep. That was as far as my reasoning went – I thought I was managing my drug use around my parenting but I was really managing my parenting around my drug use. I knew I’d proven myself to be a good mum when I wasn’t using and I thought I could continue to be a good mum when I was using; that it was still me here, behind the drugs – nothing, least of all drugs, was going to stop me from loving my little boy.

  At the same time, it didn’t cross my mind to ask for help. Although I knew that I was doing something terribly wrong, asking for help or telling anyone official would have meant losing the flat and probably Michael. All I knew was that I had to hide it from the social workers – and my dad. I wouldn’t answer the door when he came around, not unless I was alone with Michael and I’d been able to clean the flat of drug materials.

  I thought I’d fooled social services, mainly because they never made an unannounced visit. Perhaps they didn’t feel the need, because I’d done so well since the mother and baby placement, but I was nervous nonetheless when I was due to go back to court. Michael was under a child protection order and social services told me they were going to bring it down to something less, reduce the amount of supervision.

  One of our regular visitors, a junkie called Simone, had lost her kids to social services and I asked her whether she thought there was a chance I’d lose Michael.

  ‘Not a chance,’ she said. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve done everything right and they don’t know anything.’

  I asked Robbie if he would come with me.

  ‘Nah, babe,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to worry about and I got to see a guy about some metal, make us some money, you know?’ He smiled. ‘Go on, you’ll be fine, right?’

  I’d arranged for a friend, someone who wasn’t using, to sit with Michael while I went to court. Now I was really scared. Nineteen years old, full of the paranoia that extended drug use brings, that strange disconnect from spending so much time absent, mentally and physically, from the real world – and nothing was more real than a courtroom, full of educated people with real jobs.

  Still, I told myself, just nod along to everything they say and I’ll be out in no time. The funny thing was, I’d never had a drug test from the day Michael was born and they still thought Robbie wasn’t using because, even though the social workers came to the house when he was high (with dilated pupils and, in every other way, looking like the typical junkie) they never challenged him. I really didn’t pay attention to what was going on until the judge said I had to sign a document that said I wouldn’t contest the Section 20 order.

  Section 20(1) of the Children Act (1989) allows social services to take a child into its care when the child has been lost or abandoned, or there is no one taking parental responsibility for him, or that the person who has been taking care of him has been prevented in any way, for any length of time, from providing him with suitable accommodation or care.

  Stunned, powerless, I was driven back to my house by the social worker. An empty car seat was in her back seat. Michael reached out for me when I arrived to pick him up and cried as I put him in the car seat, arms outstretched. And that was it. The social worker had hardly a word for me, not that I heard what she said. And then she drove off with Michael. I was left alone, in the middle of the street. The idea that I might never see him again started to sink in. I didn’t move for a long time after the car disappeared from view, until I heard a soft beep behind me; it was a car trying to get past.

  Robbie wasn’t home. No doubt he was doing the business to fulfil our demands for drugs, the demands that had caused me to lose Michael. I waited for him. He didn’t ask what had happened, so I told him and he went ballistic. ‘If you hadn’t signed that document then they wouldn’t have taken him!’

  This is true. I later found out that Section 20 should only be used in good faith and that, if I’d objected, they wouldn’t have taken Michael there and then. I got angry with social services but failed to see that this was absolutely the right thing to have done. I wonder now sometimes whether, deep down, some part of me knew this and conspired with the drug-addicted part of my brain to sign the document.

  But at the time I was angry – angry with social services for tricking me (as I saw it), angry with Robbie for not being there and preventing them from taking Michael, and angry with myself for failing my son.

  My solution was to launch into my drug addiction with new vigour – which increased my dependency on Robbie. My little house filled with more and more drug users until it became a drop-in centre of sorts for junkies, and was known throughout the town.

  I was allowed to see Michael, now in the care of a foster family, every day, and I dragged myself down in between hits to be with him. His first birthday came and went, then Christmas.

  I struggled to stay in the system. I showed up for a hair strand test with freshly bleached hair. The social worker who was there took one look at me and said: ‘OK, no more hair bleaching from now on.’ She made me sign a contract to that effect. The test was negative. I told her I wasn’t using but she knew. I just wouldn’t ever admit it.

  I went to London for a psychiatric evaluation where a man gently quizzed me about my family, whether anyone in my family had a history of mental illness, about my upbringing, relationships with my parents and how I got on at school and, finally, about being a mother and about what was happening to me now.

  They were stupid questions, in a sense. I’d messed up, I’d lost my son because of it and I hated the situation and myself, but all I knew was drug abuse and addiction and I was totally dependent on Robbie for drugs. But, of course, I never admitted to drug use. To say so, I felt, would be the worst thing I could do.

  Despite this, social services were doing all they could to get me on a path to having Michael at home again. I managed to pull myself together whenever I saw and spoke to social services, and I was allowed unsupervised visits with Michael at the foster family’s home. On these days, I would only use a little bit, so I wouldn’t look or behave like I was high. The worst thing would have been to slip into a heroin nod while looking after Michael. That would have been the end of everything.

  Michael and I played beautifully. He was small for his age but had caught up a great deal and was normal in every way. He made me laugh and for those precious two hours I was with him, my world of horror faded, and my desire for drugs faded.

  I was loved and gave love back.

  He was an independent little fellow, fearless and determined to explore, and he loved to try and stand with me in front, kneeling, holding his hands as he bounced then fell on his bottom laughing before holding his arms up, asking for the same again; this was a great new game. He was curious, too, always pointing and making a noise as if to ask, ‘What’s that?’ He loved a little wind-up box that played ‘Row Your Boat’ in a twinkly tune, as pictures rolled past on a little display. He once plucked off my sunglasses, as if to see me better, and then tried to put them on – he looked hilarious, of course, and so cute but, before I knew it, my time was up. He cried every time I had to leave but I knew it wouldn’t last long if I didn’t drag out the goodbye, so it was a quick hug, a peck on the cheek and I was out the door, into the darkness of my world that closed in on me during the bus ride home.

  Social services’ main concern was Robbie, who didn’t bother checking in at the contact centre as
they’d asked. He was considered high risk. If I’d been on my own then I’m sure things would have moved a lot faster but, as ever, I could not exist without Robbie. Robbie provided me with what I needed to live.

  At home, the house decomposed around me. Robbie had a huge motorbike that he parked in the lounge. It was so heavy, it caused the floor to bend. He dismantled it and never got around to putting it back together again. Oil and petrol was left on the floor, tools and engine parts were strewn around the room, making it impossible to sit anywhere.

  I no longer bothered to get out of bed. More and more people came and went every day. A couple of people even overdosed and ambulances were called when we couldn’t get them into someone’s car or a taxi. I just watched TV, blank-faced, not even seeing much of what I was ‘watching’, waiting for Robbie to turn up with the drugs. I’d look for comfort in his eyes. As long as they sparkled, I thought, then we would be OK, he would keep getting me drugs.

  Eight people were sleeping in Michael’s room. Someone broke the sink, then someone else fell on the toilet and cracked it. People started peeing in the bath and no one ever cleaned it. It was too hard even to keep myself clean. With fifteen people staying in the house, and all their fellow junkies and dealers visiting, the kitchen became unusable, the sink became blocked and then stank so badly I felt queasy every time I went near it, which wasn’t often. I can remember a guy called Gary, with a shaven head and a little rat’s tail hanging from the back, saying loudly that this place was a tip and he couldn’t live here any more. If even the junkies were starting to find it too much, well that goes to show just how bad it was.

  But I took more and more drugs to make sure I was numb to it all – the filth, the pain, the misery. And still Robbie kept bringing the drugs. I told myself I loved him; this disgusting old man was the only person who understood what I was going through. Then Robbie asked if we could go to see Michael together. I agreed and we stopped off on the way to shoot up some speed. It was weird being there with Robbie; he didn’t actually seem that interested in his son after the initial hello. I didn’t expect him to, never had really; I had always seen Michael as mine only. It seems amazing now but no one seemed to spot the fact that we were high during these visits.

  There came a point, I’m not sure how or when, when there were other court dates, dates that passed me by. I was dragging myself out of the squalor to see Michael but that was all I could do. I was just existing at that level, and I was not showing social services that I was going to change my life to get Michael back. It is best for the child to try and move things on as quickly as possible so their life can settle in stability – after giving the parent as much time as possible to change.

  I’m sure social workers hate their job sometimes, perhaps never more so than when they have to tell a mother that she isn’t going to be able to keep her child any more.

  Imagine being told your children are going to be taken away from you forever (or at least until they’re adults when they might, if you’re lucky, decide to look you up, if you’re still alive). If you don’t have children then imagine your brother or sister being taken away to live with another family. And then, imagine losing your mother, as a child. There can’t be many things worse to have to experience. And then, to know that this happened because your mum chose something else over you – or that something else was more important to her that forced you to be apart.

  When I was told, I was high and the news only enhanced my stupor and my desire to have more heroin and amphetamine. I wanted my little boy, to be playing with him on the foster family’s living room floor forever. But I couldn’t live without Robbie and the drugs he provided me with.

  I was offered the chance to meet his adoptive parents. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was like rubbing salt in the wound, as far as I was concerned. I hated social workers by now. When the final week I could have contact with Michael came, I couldn’t do it. I just didn’t go. It was too hard, impossible to go in, to play and leave again – a peck on the cheek and then out of his life. It was just fractionally less unbearable to escape the dread of that final hug, to know that it had already passed.

  And then I went to prison. Shoplifting. Possession. More shoplifting. More possession. It wasn’t something that was going to go away and no matter how reluctant the Crown Prosecution Service is to overload the already crowded prison cells, it was only a matter of time. I was sent away for three months and upon my release I was offered the chance to go to drugs rehab. I took the chance but I wasn’t fully committed. I just wanted to kick heroin, as I could see the physical effects it was having on me – and I found the sheer addictive nature of that particular drug exhausting. So I went, kicked heroin and, while I was there, I had a brief affair. We were both kicked out as relationships were against the rules. My new boyfriend ended up back in prison and I started hanging around with the same old crowd, sofa surfing when I was lucky, sleeping on crack house floors when I wasn’t. This was when I ran into Robbie, who was living in a hostel for the homeless. We carried on like nothing had ever changed, same old, same old, except this time Robbie had found a lonely old lady with a big house who had started to take in street people. Her name was Martina and she was on some kind of personal mission to help the homeless. Robbie moved in and took over the house. People came and went as they pleased and, one day, I spotted someone who was obviously straight, sitting in the lounge talking to an addict who had gone into a heroin nod.

  ‘I don’t think he can hear you any more,’ I said.

  The man smiled and introduced himself as Jeff. He was from an outreach charity and he offered me the chance to get clean if I wanted. I was still using and, as usual when with Robbie, I didn’t have to do much to get my fix, so I don’t know why exactly, but I said yes, I would.

  I left with Jeff and he got me into a place at a really nice centre, where Robbie had been sent before me. We continued to see each other all this time. I was still using and wasn’t testing clean. The idea was to try and minimise the harm I was doing through reduction and control.

  Life wasn’t any different, though. I’d wake up, drink a few cans of Tennent’s Super, then move on to some bottles of wine, before heading off to the local M&S to steal meat, sell it to a lady around the corner and go and score heroin. I had another court date for shoplifting and another prison sentence hovering over me.

  I was in the hostel on my third Tennent’s of the morning when a friend of mine said she was going to an NA meeting. She asked me if I’d like to come. It had worked for her, she said. ‘I think you’ll like it.’ So I went.

  Two days later, I stopped using.

  I identified almost immediately with the people at NA. I was amazed at how similar their stories were. I had known nothing else but drug abuse for most of my life and it was only now that I saw how the drug had burned away whatever I had to offer to the world, ‘one line at a time’, as one of the other addicts put it.

  I still saw Robbie, except now I saw him sober. When it was Valentine’s Day, Robbie sent me a big card. Everyone saw it. One of the day centre workers asked me what I was up to and I said I was going to meet Robbie. The worker should have challenged me on that but he didn’t and I went with a six-pack of energy drinks to meet Robbie in the park, who came with a six-pack of high-strength lager.

  I didn’t have much trouble stopping but I still liked to sit around with the same old crowd of addicts. I could identify with them, too. The real world was just too unreal for me. That was a land where social workers and outreach workers, lawyers, judges and police officers worked. It might as well have been another planet. Sometimes, other users, drunk or high, couldn’t inject themselves, so I did it for them.

  I just didn’t have a concept of right or wrong with regard to drug use. It was just part of my everyday life. I wasn’t using but other people were, so I helped them. It never occurred to me the danger I was putting myself in. I found out later that there’d been a case where a man had been jailed for manslaught
er after injecting a friend who had subsequently died.

  I hadn’t slept with Robbie for many months. Our relationship had become platonic, as I had only relied upon him for money and drugs. Without drugs, our relationship, what there was of it, quickly decayed. Once I moved from the hostel into a house share with other former addicts preparing for life in the outside world, I made friends – friends who were clean, nice to talk to, who understood, and with whom I could identify. Suddenly, that was all I was interested in – how to survive and function in the normal world. When I told people about my life and my relationship with Robbie, they made it clear to me where I’d gone wrong and what it was still possible for me to achieve.

  Three years on and I’m still clean. I have a job. I work for an outreach charity helping vulnerable young mothers like myself, women in danger of losing their babies, who are in the middle of assessments they don’t understand, or even recognise for what they are.

  Now, when I see it from the other side, as a professional, I sometimes have to stop myself from jumping back to my own experience with Michael. Michael was so young and it hurt so badly, but I know that the right decision was made. It’s strange to be sitting in staff meetings now and to see how hard everyone is working to help the mother keep her child and how upset people get when they have to include something in their report which will probably convince a judge to order the child be taken into protective care and put up for adoption. These experiences bring back far more memories than I thought they would. It makes me feel very sad – for them and for me. We cry often, but we cry out of love and that, at least, is a good thing.

  I’ve applied to see my social work files. I just want to see it all in black and white – I think I’ll be able to understand now and accept the decision. Seeing the files is an important piece of closure for me. I know I’m not that person who lost her child. I was a good mother during the mother and baby placement and I know I could be a wonderful mother again, if I ever meet the right person and decide to try and have children.