by Ralph Bulger
The trip itself did not go to plan, though. We both tried our best to make the most of it, and when we arrived in Australia we attempted to put a positive spin on things. We were to stay in Jim and Moira’s house, where they would look after us and try to help us through our difficulties. They couldn’t have been more welcoming, but even they could see from the outset that things between Denise and me were not good.
They organized simple trips for us, like a day out to go and see the world’s biggest rocking horse, and we would have meals out and go for drinks. Denise went shopping with Moira and some of her friends. They deliberately didn’t lay on anything too strenuous in case we didn’t feel up to it.
Jim and Moira could see the problems between us, and in the end I felt very sorry for them. Denise and I tried our best to be civil to each other, but every time we had an argument it kept leading back to James, and Jim and Moira were stuck in the middle. They tried to help us work it through, but the damage was so deep-rooted it felt as if the marriage was imploding and nothing was going to stop it.
We spent a total of six weeks in Australia, living a fairly normal life out there, but any hopes that we would be able to mend our marriage seemed to be flying out the window, and we were both wishing we were back home with Michael. It felt as if we were trying to put a small sticky plaster over a huge gaping wound, hoping it would solve the problem, but it was not to be. The rows intensified and the trip became something of a nightmare.
By the time we touched down at Heathrow Airport in the late autumn, I knew in my heart that our marriage was over, although we hadn’t talked about splitting up and there was no huge scene or fight. But I had made my mind up that I was not going home with Denise. I didn’t leave Denise for Eileen — I left for me. I really thought that I would lose my mind if I stayed.
When we got back to Liverpool, Denise and I went into the house and I told her I had to leave. I began to pack some things and later the same day I went to stay with Jimmy and Karen. It was a horrible day and I felt very bad that I was hurting Denise, but looking back I wonder if she wasn’t partly relieved. The situation had probably become unbearable for her too.
I cannot say hand on heart that it was definitely James’s murder that destroyed what we once had. Who knows what would have become of Denise and me had he not been taken from us. But I believed then, and still do, that the horrific events of the previous year had played a major part in driving a wedge between us. We did try to support each other, but it wasn’t enough. We had spent weeks on end holed up in our flat or at Denise’s mother’s, stunned into silence and unable to cope with the enormity of what had happened. Every time we looked at each other, it was like tearing open that wound all over again. Denise was a living reminder of what I had lost. I imagine she felt the same when she saw me. I think if we had stayed together any longer we would have ended up destroying each other.
I couldn’t make myself return to being the man I was before our son was killed, and so I knew I had to go. People might judge me for leaving Denise after what had happened and I have been criticized in the past. Perhaps I was taking flight from our grief, just as I had done when I used to drive for miles on end in a bid to get away from the nightmares in my head.
The biggest wrench for me was leaving Michael. I had lost two children and now it felt like I was losing a third. I knew he was safe and well looked-after by Denise, and I knew how much he meant to her, and so I had no choice but to move out and make sure I got to see my son as regularly and as often as possible.
I have questioned myself time and time again about my actions, but I know I never set out to hurt anyone, least of all Denise, who had already suffered so greatly. Neither of us are bad people. But what we endured was beyond what most people suffer in a lifetime, and instead of growing stronger together, the marriage shattered into pieces. Denise bore me three amazing children and I will always be grateful to her for that. Grateful that I had the chance to meet James, even if his stay on this earth was so short. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to make the marriage work because the last thing I wanted to do was inflict greater hurt on my wife. Perhaps if my head wasn’t so messed up things would have got better with time, but I didn’t know how to fix myself. I left Denise because I had to sort my own head out, and I knew I had to do it now, or else I really feared I might have ended up topping myself.
Karen and Jimmy, as ever, gave me the most incredible support at a time when I had nowhere else to go, and I will never forget what they did for me. It was a difficult period of adjustment. It felt like a very lonely place to be. I tried my best to get on with life but I had little motivation. I seemed to go round in circles and it was hard to see the point in anything. I guess it is called depression by the doctors, but all I know is that I was deeply unhappy and struggling to cope. Beer and my family, and Eileen, kept me going through the darkest days when I saw very little hope for the future.
I settled in at Jimmy’s and tried to get some structure in my life. My mum, Helen, was a great help too, and I would spend quite a lot of time back at home with her to give Jimmy and Karen a break from me. Denise and I worked out a system where I looked after Michael at the weekends. Other than that we had very little contact. These were my favourite days of the whole week and the time when I felt most complete. I would either pick him up or Denise would drop him down to my mum’s. I was used to caring for the kids and so I was more than capable of feeding Michael, winding him and changing his nappies. It was just a comfort to have him with me, even though as a small baby he still didn’t do a lot, but I knew those days would come.
After several months, in early 1995, Eileen and I decided to move in together. It was quite a normal relationship in contrast to the shared traumas that Denise and I had been through. It felt like a new beginning for me, even though I knew I would always have to carry the weight of losing James. I found that I was able to sit still more and take stock. When I was troubled, Eileen always dragged me back from the brink. She had a natural ability to sit and listen when I needed to talk. I warned her many times that I was a lot to take on, but she was determined to try to help me, and she cared deeply for me, as I did for her. Slim and pretty with long dark hair, she seemed like a free spirit and I always felt immediately relaxed in her company.
Our new home was still in Kirkby and so I was still very close to my family and Michael. Unsurprisingly, our life together was very simple, but that suited the pair of us. We liked spending time together and I began to feel a little less tense and wound up. Despite it all, we found the time to laugh together too. This was hard for me at first, because I felt a huge guilt for any small happiness that came my way, but I began to realize that it was OK to let go of some of the misery, some of the time. It was a small step in the right direction.
Eileen was also very supportive of me with Michael. It was far from ideal that I didn’t get to see him more, but at least I was able to spend time with him at the weekends. As he began to grow, I would play with him in the back garden at Mum’s and he brought me a lot of joy. It wasn’t a chore for me to spend time with my son; I cherished every last minute. He was very bubbly and funny, just like James, although I don’t think he was quite as boisterous. That would have been a hard act to match for any toddler! He was as spoilt as any of the kids in the family and I loved him with all my heart. His life seemed so precious because of what had happened to James, and not a day went by when I didn’t count myself lucky to have my son. There was little I could do about the circumstances. Neither Denise nor I could have predicted the way our lives would turn out, and when I thought back to the carefree days when James was a toddler, it was hard to see how we had managed to come through the nightmare. Michael was a strong driving force for both his mum and dad to keep going.
I can’t say that life changed much from day to day, but I just tried to get on the best I could. I was happy with Eileen and we made a happy home together. By February we discovered that she was pregnant, and although it was sudden and
unexpected, it was not unwelcome news. She was still only a young woman herself but, as I have already mentioned, she was wise beyond her years and she relished the chance to become a mum. I just felt blessed to have the chance to be a dad again. I think this was a big turning point in my personal life. With another baby on the way, I had to make some changes. It wasn’t going to be easy but I was at least going to try.
It was also the time of year to face dreaded anniversaries again. It was two years since James had been murdered, and a month later, in March, it would have been his fifth birthday. That was a massive hurdle to get over. I couldn’t help but try to picture him as he would look on this special birthday. In my head I could see him having grown, but I thought he would still be quite short and stocky. I thought his hair might be a little darker but still fair, and some of the chubby baby fat would have gone from his face. But I knew his bright blue eyes would still be shining and that big grin would have remained unchanged. The one thing that escaped me was his voice. I couldn’t imagine what he would sound like.
He would be in school by now, and pictures flashed through my mind of a happy little boy in his school uniform, racing out the door as quickly as possible every morning to join his new mates in the playground. James embraced life so fully that I have no doubt he would have been popular at school. I am sure he would have had loads of friends he would have looked out for, and they would have been up to all sorts of fun and games together. I reckon he would have been footie-mad and knocking a ball about with his mates from an early age. They were all such sad reminders of what his killers had robbed us of.
As Eileen’s pregnancy progressed, stories began to filter out in the media about Thompson and Venables. I was trying my hardest to move forward, but every time a newspaper wrote about their rehabilitation in detention, it dragged me backwards again. It was as if I was never going to be allowed to escape from the onslaught of information about James’s killers. Time doesn’t heal; I know that for certain. I’m not even sure you learn how to deal with the pain better, but you have to try to change the way you do things and look at the world. At this point, I still felt James’s death like a permanent knife in my back. I was still tortured by the knowledge that my little boy must have wanted me to be there for him on the day he died and I had failed him.
It had already been widely reported that the boys were serving their punishments in two separate juvenile detention homes under the care of the local authorities. Under the terms of the gagging order, it was never revealed where they were being held, although unpoliced reports on the Internet revealed their locations, which made a bit of a mockery of the injunction. There were obviously lulls in the press reporting, but from time to time another new exclusive’ would rear its head and that would prompt my thoughts to become obsessed with James and his killers once more.
Then some very strange events happened that I have never been able to explain. As a family, we were all very paranoid by now and worried about speaking to anyone we didn’t know or trust. I returned home one afternoon to my house. My garage door had always opened very easily and so I had left a bin against the inside of the door to prevent anyone gaining access. The garage and the house were linked by a door, which led into my kitchen. When I went inside, I could see that the bin had been moved and I was sure someone had been in the house. The mop in the kitchen was not where it was always kept and letters had been displaced from the side of a cupboard. Something was not right, but nothing had been stolen.
A neighbour came to see me and said that two strangers had been at the house earlier that day. He said they appeared to have a key to the property, checked the lock for a while and then let themselves in. It was all very odd. I knew of no one who would have had a key, other than family, to gain access. Some time after this incident, another neighbour saw Jimmy and pressed a piece of paper into his hand.
‘I didn’t give this to you,’ he said.
The note read: ‘The Men In Black have been watching you. Men in black suits have been seen entering Ralphs house.’
The note also gave the registration numbers of two cars seen at the house and we made a formal complaint to the police, but they told us that the registration numbers we had filed did not exist.
It all seemed very cloak-and-dagger and bizarre. I didn’t for a moment suspect that it was over-eager journalists trying to get a scoop, because they wouldn’t have had a key or picked a lock in this manner, which really left only one option. Were the security services watching us? Tight security always surrounded Thompson and Venables and I suppose anything was possible, although I didn’t see why that would merit my family being watched. Perhaps they were concerned one of us might attempt to take revenge on the two boys or that we were being fed information they didn’t want us to have. Jimmy had long suspected his phone was tapped and years later, when he began to use a computer, his Internet service was continually disrupted by some unknown, outside force. Jimmy recalls:
In the space of six months, five different computers were disabled. It was incredible. The computers were bought from PC World and at first I thought it was just a faulty machine, but a pattern began to emerge. Every time I looked up something sensitive on the Internet regarding Thompson and Venables, the images on the screen scrambled and became encrypted. After several trips back to PC World, I became known as the PC Assassin because the hard drives on the computers died completely each time I accessed those sites. One of the managers asked me if I had been logging onto any sites that I shouldn’t have access to. I said no. He said that whatever sites I was going on, I should back off because an external force was shutting the hard drives down and killing the computers stone dead. I knew then that this was not a computer error, but a deliberate act to close my Internet access down.
To this day, Jimmy and I have no proof that we have ever been watched by members of the security services, but we have our suspicions that someone was keeping a very close eye on us and our activities. The truth of the matter is, we have never encouraged a mob mentality regarding Thompson and Venables. On the contrary, we have always asked people to back off and not take the law into their own hands.
If the security services were interested in us, I don’t know what they were hoping to achieve. We will never know the truth about who it was, but it certainly felt that we were being watched and treated with suspicion even though we were not the ones who had committed the crime.
Eileen was a brilliant support to me on my down days, because while she was caring, she also remained positive and upbeat, and that had a great influence on my way of thinking. I had a baby on the way and a future to look forward to. Instead of drinking, I tried to put more focus on my training, and that helped too. I was still running but the weight training and gym work also allowed me to let out some aggression. If I went a few rounds on the punchbag, I would think of Thompson and Venables and hit the bag even harder. This tired me out and took away the need for me to constantly drink myself to sleep. The nightmares didn’t stop and neither did the thoughts about what had happened to James, but I had to accept things as they were and make a different life to the one I had always imagined. I knew I was never going to be the person I once was. I was changed for ever and not in a good way. I wouldn’t allow myself to be happy in front of other people. I would put on a fake smile that was hiding the dark and ugly feelings inside of me because I could never show them to anyone. Indoors with Eileen I felt safe. I could share some simple laughs with her because I knew she wasn’t going to judge me. I guess I was scared that if other people saw me laughing they would think I was over James, and that I had moved on and didn’t care about him. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
12
Trying to Have A Family Life
In November 1995, Eileen gave birth to our first daughter, whom I will refer to as Ree. It was a very happy day for both of us even though, as at Michael’s birth, I couldn’t help but think of James. I tried my hardest to shove any negative feelings away and to concentra
te on enjoying the arrival of our little girl, who was beautiful and healthy. Eileen was overjoyed at becoming a mum for the first time, and instinctively I knew she was going to be brilliant at it. I prayed this was going to be a turning point for me and I was determined to be the best dad I could for my new daughter.
The sleepless nights that go along with having a new baby didn’t bother me, for not only was I used to them by now, I didn’t kip well at the best of times, and so I would regularly help out by getting up in the small hours to bottle- feed and comfort Ree when she woke. She was a dote and I adored her. Life was quite busy at home with a new baby on board and I also continued to see Michael at weekends. I had constructed a swing in the back garden for him to play on, and my time spent with him was fantastic. I loved watching him grow, learning to walk and talk and start playing like any normal kid. He was a gentle and loving boy, just like James, and never caused any bother.
Family life was pretty normal apart from the constant stress of trying to deal with my emotions over James, and keep them at bay. I was better at dealing with things, but I would be lying if I said I had got everything under control by the time Ree was born. I hadn’t. Instead, I started to separate the different parts of my life into boxes, and that made it a little easier to cope with. Eileen and Ree were in one box, and when I was at home I tried to act normally and take care of them both. Then there was Michael who was growing up rapidly, and when I was around him I put on a happy face because I didn’t want him to see his dad miserable. As for James, well, I would still go out and get drunk sometimes, and that was when a lot of my feelings would spill out uncontrollably. Eileen was patient and understanding when this happened and she was always there to pick up the pieces.
It was in April of the following year, 1996, that things really started hotting up legally regarding Thompson and Venables and their sentencing. Lawyers acting for the two boys had filed applications on behalf of their clients to the High Court in protest at Michael Howard’s raising of their minimum tariff from ten years to fifteen. It was to prove a lengthy legal battle that would stretch over a year before a final decision was made.