by June Thomson
His behaviour was badly upsetting Paul. He was old enough now to realise that all of a sudden his father was not there. Several times a day he would ask, ‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘He’ll be here soon,’ I told him, trying to keep the concern from my voice.
I was distraught. Only Katie knew Ash had staged a disappearing act. She was the only one with whom I could share my fears.
‘He’s up to something,’ Katie would say to me. ‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Ash had been gone for nearly two weeks now. I was frantic. I believed something awful had happened. He didn’t answer his phone or respond to my messages. I called hospitals, fearing he had been injured. After a week without news, I went to his mother’s house. Ash was not there and neither was his mother. Neighbours told me she and Ash had left, carrying suitcases. I did not know whether he was gone for good.
‘Phone him again,’ Katie said.
I dialled. Voicemail.
How could Ash just disappear without saying a word? I was used to him calling me every hour of day, checking up on where I was, what I had been doing. And now this silence.
It would be another week before I heard anything and, when the phone rang, it was not Ash but my mother.
‘Ashley is looking for you,’ she said. ‘Where have you been all day? He has been trying to get you on the phone. He is worried sick.’
I almost choked. I had not been over the doorstep. I somehow managed to speak.
‘Everything is fine, Ma. Don’t worry. I’ll call him.’
I was seething. Ash had used Ma as a buffer. I dialled his mobile. There was no reply. I left a message. He called back within minutes. Instead of being shame-faced, he was annoyed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘What’s wrong?!’ I said. ‘Where have you been for two weeks? I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.’
There was silence.
‘Mum and I went to see my sister. What’s wrong with you?’
I slammed down the phone. Later that evening he walked into the flat as if nothing had happened. When I remonstrated with him he shrugged, looking as if I were making an unnecessary fuss.
‘It’s not as if we’re married any more,’ he said, turning his back on me.
Paul was pathetically pleased to see his daddy.
‘Daddy missed his special boy,’ Ash said loudly to him. ‘Daddy should have taken his special boy away with him.’
Ash hoisted Paul into the air and looked at me.
He was no longer smiling.
Chapter 16
Why Didn’t We Walk Away?
‘By being cut off from everything they know, abused women are robbed of the strength to break away.’
Ian Stephen
June: People always want to know why we stayed, why we put up with it.
Long after my children were taken, long after my life was devastated, I was in the company of a woman who knew my story. As we spoke, I knew that she wanted to ask the question. Everyone who meets mothers like me and Giselle wants to ask the same question.
‘How could you stay?’
It is a question that’s rarely asked; few people have the nerve. This woman screwed up the courage. She delivered the question in the same tone of voice she would have used to ask an alcoholic how he could sacrifice his family for a drink; how a drug addict could die a little every day for a ‘fix’. How could they? How could we? When you live without light, when you suffer abuse for so long, you become overwhelmed. It is like having a chronic illness with no hope of a cure. You endure the dull pain every day, punctuated by episodes of agony.
I did try to escape.
I went back because I had to. There are so many obstacles put in the way of battered women. During one of the times I tried to break free I asked a social worker if she could assist me in rearranging Michelle’s care package and help me to access the benefits that would enable us to make a fresh start.
‘Why bother?’ she asked. ‘You’re only going to go back. You’ve gone back before.’
So you see, I was defeated before I’d even begun. And then there was the guilt every abused woman wrestles with – uprooting the children, taking them away from their school, their friends, even their toys. That is why so many of us stay. Sometimes breaking free is just too hard.
You make the best of it, rather than fleeing like refugees with the clothes you’re standing in. And one of the biggest problems I faced was that my children loved their father. They did not see a cruel madman. They saw ‘Dad’. It was only when Shaun got older that he witnessed things no child should see.
When they were small, I was loath to keep him from them, no matter how cruel he was to me. I knew what it was like to live in a home where one parent was absent – and I didn’t want that for my children. Rab, being Rab, would use my sense of fair play as a weapon to maintain his control over me.
On one of the occasions when I fled, Rab turned up at the house I’d rented. He did not rant or rave, or demand that I return. He was perfectly reasonable.
‘Look,’ he said, standing at the front door, ‘Mum and Dad are missing the kids. Why don’t we all go to Ayrshire for the day to see them?’
I stood aside, allowing him to enter. He threw himself on my borrowed settee. I was dumbfounded, not prepared for this amenable Rab.
‘Why don’t you and the kids get ready?’ he said.
I was about to shout up to the children when Rab added, ‘When we get there, don’t let on that we’ve been fighting. I don’t want Mum upset.’
I was confused. My confusion continued throughout the journey. Why wasn’t Rab dragging me back by the hair? I would soon learn why.
When we arrived at his parents’ farm, we were welcomed by the family. The kids ran off to play. By now I had been totally lulled into a false sense of security.
‘Come out to the car,’ he said, ‘I’ve something I want to show you.’
He walked out into the drive, opened the car door, sat down in the driver’s seat and shouted out, ‘Get in. I don’t want the kids to hear.’
I did. I heard the ‘thunk’ of the central locking. Now the shouting and bawling will begin, I thought.
But he was calm.
‘Why don’t we just die together?’ he said.
I froze.
‘Then we’ll be together for ever. And don’t worry about the kids. My family will look after them.’
There was no way out.
Rab’s left hand was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. I could still see the children playing, running carefree in the sunshine. They were shouting but I did not hear the words.
‘It’s the perfect solution,’ Rab went on.
I forced myself to look at him. He was smiling. His right hand was down by his side, out of sight. Did he have a gun? A knife? I sucked in a deep breath and chose my words carefully. My life depended on it.
‘Rab, nothing’s that bad, c’mon now. We’ll start again,’ I said.
‘But you left me, you left me,’ he answered.
His tone was one of incredulity. When I looked into Rab’s eyes, I was truly afraid that I would not survive the day. I stared, horribly fascinated by the half-smile on his lips. At length he broke the silence.
‘Okay then, let’s just go home and we’ll forget all about this, eh?’
And we did.
So you see, when someone blithely tells me that I should have just walked away, I tell them, ‘I did try to walk away. Your world is black and white; mine was painted in shades of grey.’
I existed among shadows.
Giselle: I’m asked the same question. My answer is always the same – I was so afraid.
My choice was simple.
Live this half-life or risk losing my son, the person I loved most in the world. It was a low-grade fear that gnawed at me from the day Ash snatched Paul from his pram and left me standing in the street. That gut-wrenching hour
I had spent pacing the floor, waiting for Ash to return, was seared in my mind. My fear had been intensified by his disappearing act to Oxford. The memories of both incidents could bring me out in a cold sweat. They proved to me how easy it would be for Ash to vanish with my son.
There was no doubt Ash doted on Paul – and therein lay the basis of my fear. He didn’t merely love his son. He had that sense of proprietorship. No one was good enough for his ‘perfect boy’. The Paul-sharing between our two families was only part of it. Ash obsessed over where Paul and I were, each and every minute of the day.
I would be in shops and my mobile would ring. ‘Where are you? What are you doing? When are you going home?’ he would want to know. If I had, for example, a doctor’s appointment or had to dash round the supermarket, my family was always on hand to help out. If Ash discovered I was on my own he would harangue me for leaving Paul in the care of my mother or Katie for a few hours.
‘You are his mother,’ Ash would say. ‘You should be looking after him.’
It was a ludicrous thing to say. Paul was hardly ever out of my sight. I revelled in my son’s company. I hadn’t even sent him to nursery because I didn’t want to miss one second of watching him grow up. I was forced to tell the silliest of lies to placate Ash. Ma and I still visited the shopping mall at Parkhead Forge. We had been doing so for years. It was a ritual that hadn’t stopped when Paul came along. Ma loved her days out, and having her lunch of scrambled egg and toast. She would cut up her food and share it with Paul. I delighted in their relationship. They loved each other so much. When the phone rang and it was Ash demanding to know what I was doing – and whom I was with – I would fib, saying that Paul and I were on our own. It was either that, or risk fuelling his jealousy and possessiveness.
It was all incredibly wearing.
When Ash visited Paul he would put our son on his knee and spend hours with him. Ash had eyes and ears for no one else. Before the snatch incident, I had seen it only as the closeness of a father to his son. After it, this apparently innocent tableau scared me.
‘Who do you love most, Paul – Mummy or Daddy?’ Ash would ask.
How many times did I hear that and see the look of confusion sweeping across my son’s face?
‘I love Mummy and Daddy,’ he would say.
Ash would look at me.
‘But you must love one of us best.’
‘Ash! Enough! He’s only little!’ I’d tell him.
This unfairness stressed Paul. He began chewing his fingernails, a nervous tic that occurred only when his father visited. Paul was too young to understand, too young to do anything but adore his dad.
Ash had also begun to teach him a few words of Punjabi. I encouraged it. It was an important part of his heritage and I was pleased that at least one of us would be able to communicate properly with his other granny. But I would overhear snatches of conversation that set alarm bells ringing.
‘I’ll take you to see Granny’s big, fine house. Just you and me.’
Ash had never mentioned going as a family to his homeland. My instincts screamed that any trip he was planning to take to India would not include me.
I was also becoming concerned that Ash was ‘disappearing’ more often. He would be posted missing for days and, when I asked him where he had been, all he would say was that he had been to London ‘on business’.
Katie joked that perhaps he had a hidden life and another ‘family’. I laughed it off, but when I was my own it occurred to me how very little I truly knew about Ash and his life before I met him. What if he did have another family? It might be in sprawling London or, even worse, in India. What if Ash disappeared with Paul – and his grandmother? How would I ever get my child back? How would I even know where he was?
So I decided I would wear a smile. I would play the ‘wife’. I would do whatever it took. I would make any and every sacrifice. It wasn’t as if my life was intolerable. Unlike June, I was not tortured or abused. Ash was a benign captor. I was as happy as I could be, given the circumstances.
I would put up with his jealousies or find ways round them. I would go for days out, take the trips to the seaside, to the funfair. I took great pains to ensure that Ash knew he could see his son any time he chose, day or night. I resolved never to do anything that Ash could perceive as a threat to his relationship with Paul. I had no choice.
I was prepared to live in the house of cards Ash had built around me.
Chapter 17
These Special Gifts
‘Women trapped in relationships such as these keep going … they need to remember the man they first met.’
Ian Stephen
June: As the years rolled by, I stopped trying to escape – then the miracle happened.
I had, amazingly, entered a period of relative calm. Rab realised I had capitulated, that I had resigned myself to incarceration behind the invisible bars he had erected around me. He knew there would be no more escape bids. My powerlessness appeared to have defused some of his anger. He still terrified me and the beatings continued, but they were less frequent and less violent.
He was my captor and, like all gaolers, he demanded a strict regime. My days were filled with trying to fulfil the demands of his ‘lists’. They were designed to be so time consuming that I would not be left with enough energy to hatch any further escape plans. His lists became something of a refuge for me. If I carried out his instructions – to the letter – I was less likely to be beaten. The lists were delivered in the form of barked orders: ‘Do this! Get that! Bring this!’
His demands were precise and specific. What time tea had to be on the table; which clothes were to be ironed; which tables to be polished; which cupboards to be cleaned. He even used to dispatch me to scrap yards to locate spare parts for the car. Juggling the lists with my duties as the mother of three growing children meant I had to rise at 5.30 a.m. If it was Rab’s intention to tire me out and never leave me with a moment to myself, his plan succeeded. I was a slave. I would fall into bed exhausted, but even then my duties might not be over. If Rab decided he fancied a portion of chips, I was summoned downstairs with a shout and sent to the ‘chippie’.
My comfort was the children. What leisure time I had was devoted to them. I took their Sunday-school class, watched plays, attended recitals, sat in the front row for prize-giving and cheered on sports days. I cannot remember Rab being with me. I also found the time to mentor disabled children from Michelle’s school. I loved doing it. I was privileged to meet so many special children and their families.
The move from Ayrshire to Fife seemed such a long time ago now and my children were getting bigger by the day. Michelle was 18 – a young woman. Ross was a bright teenager who learned quickly and my Shaun was by now a tall, solemn young man who had often cast himself in the role of my champion. When Rab’s temper broke, it was Shaun who came to my defence. Poor Shaun took many a beating. Ross and Michelle were insulated, he by being the ‘baby’ and she by her disabilities. It was Shaun who felt his father’s wrath most keenly and he would do so until 2000, when he decided to join the army.
Losing him left a gaping hole in my life but I could not stand in his way. He deserved to be free, to have his own life. I was proud of him. Later, when he was posted to Iraq, he did not let on for fear of alarming me. But he always kept in touch, phoning when his father was out of the house. He would speak to me, then to Michelle and Ross.
With Shaun gone, I lived one day at a time, throwing myself into the lives of my other children. I could envisage no other way of life. This would be the way it would always be. Or so I thought.
And then, at the age of 41, I discovered I was pregnant.
Giselle: I had given up on miracles. I never believed I’d be a mother again until blind chance intervened.
‘What do you want for your birthday?’ I asked Paul.
He was almost four now. Where had the time gone? He had grown so. So polite and well mannered, he always seemed older than his years. The
so-called ‘terrible twos and threes’ had passed him by. He was a delightful child, described by all who knew him as the ‘little gentleman’.
‘A little baby,’ he replied in his soft and serious voice.
It was as if my son could read my mind. The thought had been forming in my mind for some time. I did want a brother or sister for him, but it was a forlorn hope now that I was no longer officially married. My ‘relationship’ with Ash was continuing on the same path, almost as if there had been no change, but I could not conceive of Ash agreeing to have another child.
‘A baaa-by?’ I said. ‘What would you like? A boy or a girl?’
Paul shrugged.
‘A baby, Mummy … to play with.’
The sex of the baby obviously wasn’t a concern to him. My son looked at me with his shy eyes and I saw a trace of loneliness in them. There was no lack of love in his life but it was the adult love of a devoted mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – and the father who deserted him each evening. Paul needed someone else to love. I did, too, if truth be told.
‘We’ll have to ask Daddy, then,’ I told him.
Ash had, in the past, spoken of having another child – when he became the world’s greatest defence lawyer, businessman, or whichever current daydream consumed him. I certainly did not want to conceive another child unless he wanted it.
It would, however, become a moot point. Ash took responsibility for contraceptive precautions, ostensibly because I had been so ill after having Paul. I suspect, though, that it had more to do with control than with my welfare. Little did I know the matter was about to be taken out of my hands. Soon after my birthday conversation with Paul, my mother was rushed into hospital. She had suffered from respiratory problems for years and they had now become acute.
The family took it in turns to ensure she always had someone by her bed. I had returned home from one such visit and I had barely laid down my bag when Ash appeared. He had been drinking, heavily it seemed. I was annoyed. I ushered him into the living room as I did not want Paul to see his father drunk. I asked Ash where he had been. He was his usual evasive self, mumbling something about a course he had been on – no doubt his latest path to success and riches. I pushed him down on the couch and put Paul to bed.