I didn’t realise it. Not for ages. I went to the doctor with sickness, and he diagnosed flu. ‘It’s going around,’ he said. But then, I started vomiting, and the only time that happens is when I’m pregnant. I went back to the doctor, and, confirming the pregnancy, he looked at me, and shook his head, unsmiling. Knowing what I had been going through the previous year he said, ‘If you don’t want this baby there are other options.’
What was he saying? That I wanted to get rid of it? I was horrified. ‘No, no, this is my baby, it’s been given to me for a reason.’ I didn’t say it to him, but I fervently believe that a baby is a gift from God, and I’m so grateful to Him for allowing me to become pregnant so easily.
Yes, James was out of the picture, but that made little difference to my mindset. I liked the idea of both my children having the same father. That felt right. When the pregnancy started to show, James got back in touch, and said, ‘Sharon, it’s my child. Can I come back?’
Did I want him back? Well, I still loved him, and I really wanted to believe him when he swore how much he had changed. If he had, life would be so good. I wanted us all to be together, but felt, that as a compromise, maybe I should live in my house, he in his. That way, I thought, our relationship had a chance.
‘I’ll give you one more chance to be a father,’ I said. ‘But don’t think you’re getting back to live with me.’
He didn’t like that. He wanted all or nothing. But I knew that to him, ‘all’, meant me tied to the house with the children, and him living a single man’s life, visiting when it suited. And there was no way I would agree to that. I no longer trusted him – and besides, there were times I was actually scared of him, so why would I want him in my house?
He was with me when Natasha made her way into the world, on 29th May 1997, but there wasn’t the same excitement around her birth. In James’s eyes, a second child, and a daughter was never going to be as special. Not to him; not to his family.
James wanted contact with the children – and Joyce helped in this; we arranged for him to see them at her house. The problem was, that he wasn’t prepared to give me maintenance for the children’s care. He believed that, as I had made the decision to bring the children up alone, none of the financial responsibility lay with him.
When Natasha was a one year old, I claimed benefit as a one parent family, and the social security benefits office asked if James was contributing. I explained that I’d rather manage without his input, but they continued to investigate. He wasn’t prepared to hand over money, and, when they discovered that he had cash in hand from working for a builder, he left the country and moved to Jersey.
That was the last I heard of him for the next five years. I kept in touch with Joyce, because I value family and felt this was important. We visited her every month, but with the tacit agreement that James was never mentioned.
And he wasn’t. Until he moved back to Northern Ireland, and asked me, through Joyce, if he could see Matthew and Natasha. I dreaded seeing him again, but Joyce said he had changed. And when I set eyes on him, he did seem to have matured. He had a new girlfriend, Tina, who had two children from a previous relationship. Seeing how calm and comfortable they were together, I relaxed. Surely now everything could be different? Tina seemed nice, and I trusted her, so, after a few months – when things were progressing well, I was happy for the children to have contact with their father. The arrangement made me happy, because Matthew needed his father. But over the months, when Matthew was visiting his father, my lovely innocent boy was gradually changing.
One day, I was doing the washing up, when I felt a thump on my back. Matthew was standing there. He said, ‘Mummy, you’re a whore.’
‘What did you say?’
‘You’re a whore.’
‘Do you know what that means?’
He shook his head. ‘No. But Daddy told me. He says so.’
That was unsettling, but it wasn’t the worst of it. There were times, after that, that Matthew would come home crying, and then he started wetting the bed. He wouldn’t say what was wrong. It was weird. Because when I asked him what he had done with James, he seemed enthusiastic.
‘Boxing!’ he’d say. ‘It was ace!’
I didn’t like the idea of that, but I remembered James telling me that his dad had taught him to box, to toughen him up. I let it go.
When Matthew came home with bruises on his chest, and a Chinese burn on his head, I’d had enough. When I asked Matthew what had happened, he said his dad had been wrestling him.
That was it. I stopped contact. And it wasn’t just the wrestling. Matthew’s behaviour had become increasingly erratic. He’d come home crying, and would scratch his face and bang his head, repeatedly against the wall. When I tried to contain him, and to find out what was wrong, he turned on me. He kicked out and hit me. One time he came at me with a belt. It was both bizarre and horrifying.
Furious that he wasn’t allowed to see his children, James took me to court - to the Ballymena Family Court. When the judge asked him how Matthew had got his bruises, he said, ‘Well you know the way you hold a child down, and you put a trainer on his head, and twist it like this?’
The court descended into silence. ‘I’m sorry?’ said the judge. ‘Could you say that to me again.’
James did, and the case was thrown out of court. The judge said there was no way James would be allowed to see Matthew and Natasha. James appealed on a legal point. In fact, there were two points for appeal; one where he again challenged contact, and the other concerning their names.
I had reverted to my maiden name, and had been using it, also, for the children. James didn’t like this and wanted them known as Thompson. He employed a barrister through Legal Aid, but since I was working, I was ineligible, and, unwilling to fork out more money, having recently paid for my divorce, decided to represent myself, with the support of my sister, Maria.
Asked when the children’s birthdays were, on the stand, James didn’t know. Then James’s barrister questioned whether, Natasha was his daughter.
‘She is,’ I said, ‘but if James doesn’t think she is, I will be happy for her to be taken off the proceedings.’
She immediately moved on to other matters. We discussed the toy gun James had bought Matthew for Christmas. He knew that I didn’t like what guns represented.
‘I think it was a hidden message to me,’ I said, explaining how James had used his fingers as a gun as he role-played shooting me.
Asked, again, about the Chinese burn, he changed his story, but then he lost his temper, and said, ‘If my wife can come up to the stand, I’ll show the court a Chinese burn.’
Summing up, the Judge stated that as parents, James and I clearly had different standards. ‘I suggest Mr Thompson should do a parenting course with the NSPCC,’ he said.
The course was arranged, but James consistently failed to turn up.
As for the name issue, James eventually withdrew his application, and I had the children’s names legally changed to Truesdale.
They talk of the innocence of children; of how precious childhood is, but Matthew lost his innocence so early. I hoped that he didn’t remember the broken door – or the time a brick came flying through the kitchen window, causing glass to shower round the room, and cut the toddler’s feet. And though he had a scar from that, which was exacerbated when James stamped on him, I imagine he was too young for the specifics to stay with him, but spending unsupervised time? That was a different story.
Matthew’s behaviour became so untruly, it ruined our Christmas in 2001. In March, I asked for help. My mother offered to look after her grandson. When she was also unable to control him, she carted him off to the GP and he went to CAMHS- an organisation I would come to know only too well.
Worried, I stopped all contact, and like magic, the trouble ceased. I breathed a big sigh of relief.
3
The Trouble Begins
I’ve always had an instinctive desire to keep my childre
n safe; and I was aware that James wasn’t the only source of potential trouble. Conflict in Northern Ireland was officially over – the Good Friday agreement was signed when Matthew was just three years old – but there were still dissident groups around, and I was determined to shelter my children.
When they were young, Matthew and Natasha didn’t even realise that there were religious differences. They had friends from all walks of life, and that is the way I liked it. On 12th July, when, every year, the Orangemen’s march causes civil unrest, Matthew saw all the Union Jacks and smiled in excitement.
‘Look Mum,’ he said, pointing through the car window. ‘Look at all the flags. Is it the circus? Can we go?’
‘Please!’ said Natasha, craning her neck to look out of the window.
I talked my way out of that one, and sighed relief, but then, the children focused on all the bonfires. They begged to be allowed to join the fun.
Matthew left the playschool where his grandmother, Joyce, worked when he was four years old and ready to move to Primary School. We chose the one my brother had attended because he had been happy there, and Matthew settled down well. He liked school.
I do remember one untoward incident. There was a boy, Dillon, who bullied Matthew. He could cope with the name calling; he ignored it, but when Dillon invited the whole class to his birthday party – except for Matthew, that really hurt him. I was appalled. How can children be so cruel, and how can their parents allow it? I spoke to the school, but there was little support.
Meanwhile, my life was going well. I met a lovely man, Mark, at a local night club, and when Matthew was nine, our daughter, Annie Jean was born. Although we both love her to bits, the relationship between us didn’t work out long term, and we split, but we’ve remained good friends and have happily co-parented her ever since.
Matthew was bright. But when, at eleven, he moved on to Cambridge House Grammar School, his problems really started. Reaching home each day, he seemed subdued. He denied that there was anything wrong, and I hoped it was just my imagination. But when, in the summer, we went shopping for a new uniform, my suspicions were confirmed. Trying on his new shoes – big size two - he grinned at me. I tousled his hair, but he pulled away.
‘I’m bigger now.’
‘You are.’
He looked up, and flashed me his irresistible, slightly lopsided grin. ‘Sure, I’ll not get bullied.’
That remark threw me. But I didn’t say anything right away. I waited until we got home to question him. ‘Matthew, were you bullied last year?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘They call me chinky,’ he said, close to tears.
‘That’s tough,’ I said.
‘And they throw my schoolbag around. And take things.’ His head down, he was muttering, making it difficult for me to catch his words.
Pulling him towards, me, I hugged him, cross with myself for not picking up the signs earlier. Because, now I thought about it, the signs had been there. It all made sense. Sense of the times Matthew had ‘lost’ his Nike trainers and needed money for another pair. Or the time he couldn’t find his whole PE Kit. I’d been so angry with him for that and had asked him if he thought I was made of money.
‘Why didn’t you tell me,’ I asked, feeling ashamed.
He shrugged.
‘Promise me, Matthew, you won’t keep anything from me again. If you don’t tell me these things, I can’t help you.’
He said he would be more open, but as it turned out, I couldn’t help him anyway. I tried, but my input didn’t help Matthew at all. In fact, it had the opposite effect.
Natasha was still at Antrim Primary School at the time, but she and Matthew hatched a plot to get my views on smoking. Natasha opened the discussion. Arriving in from school one day, she said, ‘What would you do if one of your children was smoking?’
Realising at once that she meant Matthew, and that he was smoking, I kept calm, and explained that smoking is not good for you. I told them all about lung cancer and related illnesses, but knowing that teenagers think they’re immortal, I was alarmed, and went into the school to voice my suspicions. My concerns were brushed aside.
‘There are no children smoking here,’ I was told. ‘We have a no smoking policy.’
‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘Then how come, when I drive past the school, I see children smoking on the football pitch?’
It was the worst thing I could have done. The school took action against the smokers, and policed the grounds regularly, and, somehow, Matthew’s involvement in that became known. The bullying increased, and it didn’t only come from the pupils. Matthew was picked on by the teachers too. If the whole class performed a misdemeanour – say everyone was using their mobile phone in class, Matthew would be the one in trouble.
One day I was hauled into school, to see the principal. She handed me a penknife – a souvenir Matthew had brought back from our holidays to use when he went fishing.
‘Matthew brought this into school, and threatened another pupil,’ she said.
That didn’t sound like Matthew. And when I asked him about it, he said he had simply been showing the knife to one of the girls. Anyway, I mentioned to the principal that Matthew was being bullied, and, referring to the bullying policy, she denied it. The school never admitted, officially, that there was a problem. But one day in October, when I was in the school, a teacher stopped me in the corridor and said, ‘It’s awful what Matthew is experiencing from those boys, but don’t worry. The troublemakers are leaving in February.’
I asked what she was talking about. And she mentioned two boys, sons of paramilitaries, who were causing havoc in the school. My fears confirmed, I now felt able to talk to Matthew about it. He was happy to talk. We’ve always had a good relationship, and I asked him why he’d not felt able to confide in me before. He explained that to do so would make him a tout – and that would have got him into more trouble. But now that the teacher was the tout, he was free to talk. Nothing changed though. And I realised that the principal was afraid to confront the bullies because of their paramilitary connections.
Matthew was seeing a school counsellor, Anne, at the time – someone whose advice he listened to and trusted. And she felt it would be in his best interests to change schools – he was in fourth year at the time. She helped him get a transfer to a school in Antrim. Whilst I was happy with that, it saddened me that the school had not given us support.
Matthew wasn’t the only student that I knew of to suffer taunts. The two boys started to bully his friend Aaron, too. And mainly, it seems, because his mother was from Pakistan. Both boys got threatened and pulled into fights. Bullying wasn’t new to the school; it had been local news that a young boy had completed suicide from bullying, yet the school clearly hadn’t learned from this.
With the transfer, it seemed that Matthew’s troubles were over. He was happy!
At least, he was happy for the first few months at Parkhall. So, when he came home with a black eye, I was shocked. The bullying had started again! I was in despair, but that’s when a kind of miracle happened. His cousin, on his father’s side, Stuart - the son of Gary and Eleanor who came to my wedding - also attended the school. They took Matthew under their wing, and life looked up. They were well liked, and a little feared, and Matthew blossomed.
When he asked if he could get in touch with his dad again, I hesitated, remembering all that had gone on when Matthew was younger. I spoke to my solicitor, and then to a social worker. She said that, in practical terms, Matthew was no longer under my control. ‘It would be easy enough for him to jump onto a bus and go and find his dad,’ she said. ‘And now that he has become friends with his cousins, he could easily have contact with his dad – and you wouldn’t know anything about it.’
She said that if I wanted to keep a good relationship with Matthew, I had to be seen to support his decision, even if I believed this would not be good for him. I still had my doubts, but eventually I agreed. James seemed settled now that he was happy with T
ina. They’d had a baby together. Jay was now six years old. I thought the contact would do Matthew good, and at first, it did. James seemed to love getting to know his teenage son. He offered Matthew a room in the house, and, at Christmas, he showered him with presents.
Matthew proudly showed off his new designer jeans, and after-shave. And if they
were the first presents he had received from his father in five years, well, it was better than nothing.
When Matthew asked if he could move in with his dad, though, I felt hurt. More than that, I was heartbroken. But after all the talks we’d had over the years; all the negotiations over half-term breaks, I felt unable to refuse him. And if the look of triumph on James’s face irked me, and his promises to give Matthew a converted room and a motorbike seemed excessive, I swallowed my objections and hoped for the best. Maybe James was being sincere when he said, ‘Matthew can see you anytime.’ And if he enjoyed adding, ‘I know what it’s like not to have access to your kids,’ I managed not to rise to the bait.
This meant a change of school and a whole new uniform, but I waved him off, first making him promise to visit often. And as it turned out, there wasn’t time for that. I hadn’t lost my son – or not for long. A week after he had moved out, I opened the door to find him on the doorstep looking cowed.
‘Hello, stranger,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
Matthew stomped in, threw his rucksack down, slumped onto the sofa and turned on the TV. ‘Dad’s the worst,’ he said. It turned out that his dad had given him a hiding. ‘And I didn’t do anything wrong,’
I asked him to tell me exactly what had happened.
‘Dad punched me in the face.’
‘Ok,’ I said, swallowing. ‘Can you tell me why?’
‘I asked to come home, because I don’t like Carrickfergus Secondary School.’ He looked at me, shyly. ‘And I told him I missed you, Ma.’
I wasn’t surprised by this development, and was, of course, delighted to have my son home again, but I was aware that Matthew was disappointed that the arrangement hadn’t worked. Clearly, he felt let down. And when he continued to see the cousins that James had introduced him to, meeting up with them in Carrickfergus, I was pleased for him. I knew that, much as he loved his sisters and me, we couldn’t provide the same camaraderie that his, male, cousins could.
Forever Young: A mother's story of life after suicide Page 3