Escape From Evil (27 page)

I didn’t know when Daniel should eat and sleep, whether he should lie on his front or his back. I didn’t know if he was too hot or too cold. It was all trial and error. I looked to Peter for guidance, but he was only interested in one thing, as I found out on the first night when I curled up next to the sleeping baby in our bed.

‘No way, Cathy, this isn’t how it works. The baby sleeps in the cot. We sleep here.’

‘But I’ll have to feed him in an hour. I don’t want to be getting up all night.’

I shouldn’t have disagreed.

‘I don’t want the fucking thing in here!’

He’s just tired, like me,
I thought and immediately blocked the outburst from my mind.

As a result, exhaustion kicked in. I thought I’d been tired lugging my groceries up the hill during the last weeks of pregnancy, but this was a new level of torture. No wonder interrogators use sleep deprivation. By the end of our first month, I would have admitted to anything. I just wanted to rest.

But I couldn’t, not with Peter. If Daniel wasn’t being held, fed or played with, then he had to be in his cot. That was when I should have had forty winks. As soon as I had my hands free, though, I was still expected to clean and cook. Before Daniel had been born, Peter would spend long chunks of the day at home, so I knew his work at the doss-house wasn’t that taxing. But the second we had a baby to look after, I didn’t see him except at meal times. God knows where he went or what he did. I was too tired to even think about it.

The only saving grace was that he didn’t bother me sexually. It had been a crushing blow to my confidence when he rejected me night after night while I was pregnant. I was big, four stone heavier than I had been – I’d put on fifty per cent of my weight again. Despite my ambivalent feelings towards him, I still had physical needs, needs which he refused to meet. I think pregnancy even heightens your sex drive, but he refused to touch me. I thought it would be different when the baby was born, but thank God it wasn’t. The second my head hit the pillow, there was only one thought in my mind: sleep.

In my waking hours, though, another thought began to plague my zombie-like state. Grandpa and Peter might have shared similar views on childcare, but with my grandparents that was part of a package: Granny raised the kids, Grandpa brought home the bacon. That’s where the similarities with Peter ended. Not only was he not lifting a finger around the house, he didn’t seem to work much either. There was certainly no money coming in that I could see.

I didn’t like it. As a fourteen-year-old I’d held down three jobs and sold cigarettes on the side. I was used to having money because that was what bought you independence. It might have been okay for Peter to drift along, maybe even for me to go along with him for a while. But I was a mother now. It wasn’t good enough.

What could I do though? I was so tired and any sort of proper job was out of the question until Daniel was much older. Then, one day, I picked up the local
Argus
paper again and began to look for cars to trade.

It was a lot harder doing it with a newborn strapped to my front, but the money was good for fairly straightforward work. I did it for about three months and I would have done it for longer. But my self-preservation gene, dormant for so long, had well and truly kicked in and I had a plan.

Peter announced one day that we had to leave the cottage.

‘Why?’

‘The hotel wants it.’

He still called it a ‘hotel’, even though I knew the truth.

‘But what about your job?’

‘What job?’ he said. ‘I haven’t worked there for ages.’

Talk about a bombshell. If he wasn’t working there, then where the hell did he go during the day? Where was his money coming from? It was always questions with that man, but I was too focused on my own project to dwell on it. If anything, it just made me more determined to proceed.

Peter had tried to take my car-sales money off me to ‘look after’, as he put it, like he’d always done. This time I said no. I needed it to pay rent. On a tea shop.

I don’t know where the idea had come from. Desperation drives you in odd directions. I needed an income, I needed a new roof over our heads and I needed something I could do with a young baby in tow. This is what my brain came up with.

I found premises in Portslade comprising a little restaurant space with a flat at the back. It was perfect for what I wanted and, on a peppercorn rent, it was affordable. I found a shop fitters from which to buy the counters, tables and chairs and took myself down to Southampton for the actual stock. I figured that if you want to sell tea, don’t go to a middleman – get it at source. There was a wholesaler at the docks who took everything as soon as it came in off the ships, so I strolled around sourcing pots of exotic-sounding herbal teas, Earl Grey, and everything else I needed. This was years before fruit teas became trendy and there was a strong chance it wouldn’t work. People might just turn their noses up at anything that wasn’t PG Tips. But I was sure I’d identified a gap in the market and I wanted to exploit it. I even bought extra tins of tea leaves and teapots and cups, so customers could actually buy the tea I was serving them and the crockery it came in.

When The Olde Tea Shoppe, as I called it, was finally ready to open, I was happy. I’d thought of everything. Almost.

I just needed Peter to look after Daniel while I made it all happen – and he refused. He had no job, nothing to do, no plans and no real disability. But he absolutely dismissed out of hand any notion that he should be involved in caring for his own son.

Fine,
I thought.
I don’t need you. I don’t need a man in my life.
The less he wanted to do with Daniel’s life, the better. That meant no interference in my decisions and more time for me. It was fighting talk and I meant every word. I was eighteen years old and I really didn’t need a bloke in my life, especially that one.

But Daniel did.

Again, the haunting parallels with my own life loomed large. However much I barely tolerated or disliked or even hated Peter at times, those feelings paled into insignificance next to my determination to keep my son’s family together at any cost. I may not have loved Peter, but I did love being in a mature relationship and I was hellbent on making it work, whatever the cost to me. My son was not going to grow up without a father, as I had done. That was the priority. That was what I had to ensure never happened. And that, ultimately, would be our downfall.

If I’d thought I’d been exhausted before, opening my tea shop taught me the true meaning of the word.

My alarm was set for six in the morning, but most days I was still up from one of Daniel’s night-time feeds. Then I would wash the cot blankets and sheets and his nappies – still no washing machine, all by hand – and have it out on the line by half six. Then I would make breakfast for me and Daniel, then it was time to clean the flat – that chore didn’t disappear just because I was working and Peter was at home – and finally I was able to think about work. Before I could open the shop I needed sup plies, so, with Daniel strapped to my front, I would walk down to the local supermarket to buy gateaux and other treats I could slice up and sell. Then, at nine o’clock, I was finally ready to open.

Luckily, business was good from the start. People complimented me on my Chinese rice-pattern crockery and the lovely atmosphere I’d created while having a slice of cake with tea served in a pot and made from tea leaves not bags. And, of course, most of them couldn’t help but admire the sleeping baby strapped to my chest. Even when Daniel wasn’t sleeping, when he was hungry or restless and noisy, I had no choice other than keep him there. It killed me, knowing his dad was so close and yet so unwilling to lift a finger for his boy.

It didn’t take Peter long to find an excuse not to help. The flat had a cellar, which he said he would use as a workshop. He was going to convert part of it to house a Scalextric track for Daniel, he claimed. At one point he even suggested installing a little kitchen, so I could prepare food for the café there rather than use our flat’s kitchen, which, the first Health & Safety inspector informed me, was illegal. But I didn’t care what he did down there. He could have been masturbating to pictures of the Queen for all I knew. I was just happy knowing where he was – and that he was out of my way.

I cried myself to sleep some nights through sheer tiredness. But I’d got into a nice rhythm. I was with my son all day, I was making money and I was doing it all by myself. I was independent and I was in control.

Then, out of the blue, Peter said we had to move out, we had to give up the flat, the business and the profit. And why? To put our names down on the council house list. It was unbelievable. I honestly thought he’d gone mad.

‘Look, we’ve got a baby – we’ll get a nice council house, no problem,’ he said.

‘But we’ve got a nice place now.’

‘This is a shithole. We’ve got a kid. They’ll give us a fucking palace.’

‘But why do we have to give up the tea shop?’

‘Because you’re earning too much. Council won’t give us a penny if you’re earning. You’ve got to stop it now.’

I’d love to pretend that conversation never took place, but it did. Most embarrassing of all is how seriously I took him. I think that was partly because I hadn’t seen him this animated about anything for ages. Suddenly there was a spirit to him and a flicker of life behind the eyes. As his partner, as the mother of his child, that really spoke to me. I can’t really explain it, but on some sort of primeval level I found myself being motivated by his desire. My man had a plan and – as stupid as it was – that moved me. I hadn’t felt this impressed by him since those nights in the Hungry Years, when he’d seemed to have the whole world in his hands. Maybe I had low expectations, but I found myself seeing him once again in a more positive light.

The more Peter dressed it up as this big, fantastic idyll, the more I came round to it. But he was clever. He’d wait until I was virtually dead on my feet, desperate for a nap or to take my shoes off for five minutes. Then he’d start the whispering, the off-hand remarks, the little glimpses of how our future could be.

‘In a council place, you’d be able to sleep.’ That sounded good. ‘You’d have time to play with Daniel.’ That was even better. But it was when he suggested ‘You’d be able to be a proper mother’ that I really sat up.

Wasn’t I being a ‘proper’ mother working every hour God sent to provide a safe home and food for my son? Wasn’t I a proper mother for not letting him out of my sight for a second of the day? For Christ’s sake, for most of it we were tied to each other. Was Peter telling me that wasn’t the behaviour of a proper mother?

It’s only looking back now that I see he was playing me like a violin. There was nothing wrong with my mothering. And it certainly wasn’t his place to criticize. But a new mother is a fragile beast, easily knocked off balance by the slightest suggestion that she could do more. All new mums take everything personally. And so, stupidly, I agreed to his scheme. I put my business up for sale, sold it as a going concern for £10,000 and walked away. I was eighteen years old, a new mother and I’d made and sold a successful business in the space of nine months. That felt really good.

But I’d also just given away my hard-fought independence. The moment we left Portslade, Peter was back in control.

As soon as I clapped eyes on our new home in Windlesham Gardens, I knew it was a mistake. I’d been promised a palace. What I got instead was a studio flat.

‘This can’t be right,’ I said.

Peter went straight on the defensive. ‘We’re at the bottom of the pile, what did you expect?’

‘But it’s not big enough! Where’s Daniel going to sleep?’

He pointed to the wall furthest from the small kitchen area. ‘We’ll put the cot over there. What’s the problem?’

He couldn’t see it. Or wouldn’t. We’d given up a lovely little place for a cramped shoe box of a flat. It was smaller than some of the dives I’d stayed in with my mum. Really horrible and not at all the dream family home I’d been sold.

He’s done it again.
When would I ever stop falling for his lies?

It was too late now. As much as I hated myself for being so gullible, all those bridge lessons with Granny had taught me to play the hand you’ve been dealt. But even so, I honestly couldn’t understand what Peter had been thinking. It was as if he didn’t see Daniel at all. Or me for that matter. He wanted a council flat and he got one. He probably hadn’t even filled the form in properly, to say we were a family. That’s how low down in his priorities we were. He didn’t seem to mind that we had to share a bathroom with people from eight other bedsits. I’ve still got a photo of Daniel in our kitchen sink. That’s where he had to have his night-time bath. He seems happy enough in the picture, but I felt so guilty. It’s not the lifestyle I would have chosen for my son.

Given the choice, there were a lot of things I would have done differently for my son. In an ideal world, for example, he would have had grandparents who doted on him. I couldn’t even give him that. Daniel was nine months old when my father and his partner came to see him.

It was just going to be a flying visit. Dad and his girlfriend worked abroad for half the year. They were getting the ferry from Portsmouth and had decided that Brighton was a convenient stop.

I’d seen my father a handful of times since that first awkward meeting in 1984. I couldn’t say we’d really made progress. We’d never discussed Mum. I couldn’t honestly see the point in continuing the relationship, but, once again, I put Daniel’s needs first. Some parents make better grandparents. Maybe my dad would be one of those. I owed it to my son to find out.