Authors: Cathy Wilson
That was such a confusing discovery that I almost forgot my jewellery box. Dashing back into the bedroom, I found it at the bottom of the wardrobe. I didn’t have much jewellery myself. In fact, the only three things in that box worth anything were all pieces that had belonged to my mother: a silver ring with a jade stone; a gold ring with a square-cut amethyst which Mum had given to Granny and she had passed on to me when Mum had died; and a marijuana-leaf brooch in silver (there was another clue about Mum that I’d missed at the time). Of them all, the gold ring was the most important because that was the one that linked Mum, Granny and me. But that was the one that was missing.
I could have stood there crying, but that wasn’t my way. I picked up the jewellery box and a couple of bits for Daniel and thought,
There’s nothing to be saved from here.
Then I walked back down the fire escape, already thinking,
I’ll just start all over again.
Again.
A lot of things happened after that. The fire brigade told me that they suspected the fire had been started deliberately, which was incredibly chilling to hear. Who would do something like that?
For a second, I entertained the idea that Peter might have been behind it. But that was ridiculous. He’d been in the flat with me. In fact, he had been more terrified than I had. But the idea wouldn’t go away.
What if he’d lit the fire so he could play the hero with his big fire door?
Again, too implausible.
But
– my mind was working feverishly now –
what if he’d planned to impress us by smashing the window and lifting us all to safety?
When I thought about it, the shock on his face when that bloody window hadn’t broken told its own story.
Surely, though, not even he . . .
To this day, I don’t know, but I still suspect.
I discovered later that the flat window had been made of polycarbonate, not glass – totally illegal in a rented accommodation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to pursue a legal claim, so I will always feel the landlord got away with that one.
I didn’t really mind though. The only thing I cared about saving, as ever, was Daniel and he’d come through it without a scratch. He hadn’t even woken up until he was out in the cold air.
The poor boy had already been through so much before his second birthday. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I really had to think about giving him some stability. I’d had my recovery period and my identity and confidence, hidden for so long, were back. I decided it was time to get a job.
Daniel needs friends. Nursery will be good for him.
Maybe he’d even win a photo on the beach with the mayor, like I’d done all those years ago.
I laughed at the memory. Then, serious face in place, began to devise a plan.
EIGHTEEN
Home after the fire was another flat, but even as I signed the lease, I knew I wouldn’t be there long. I’d got a commission-based job in an estate agent’s in New Road and, if I played my cards right, the potential earnings were pretty good. Actually, for someone with no experience, they were amazing. But, I figured, I’d bought and sold used cars in a previous life and I’d haggled for the best tea and coffee prices at wholesalers. This was a job I could do, and do well.
The company paid me for every customer I found, every appointment I made, every viewing that came in and, obviously, for every sale. It was a boom time for property because the government was offering people fifteen grand to leave their council flats, so there was no shortage of customers coming through the door with their deposits in their hands. At £50 a time for each meeting, I was soon pulling in an average of £500– £600 a week – not bad for a twenty-one-year-old.
As soon as I had some money, there was only one place I wanted to spend it. I was determined Daniel should have everything I never had, so I enrolled him in a lovely private nursery in Purbrook. It cost £110 a week, but I liked its ethical attitudes and the fact that it had wonderful outdoor space. I knew he’d be happy there.
I was happy now as well because after such a long time getting over the ordeal of being with Peter, I had found a new partner. He was an engineer called Steve, about my age, and, for a while, I thought we had a future. Steve was exactly what I needed at the time – mainly because he couldn’t have been more different from Peter. Whereas my husband was like a wound coil, ready to unravel without warning, Steve was so laid-back he was almost horizontal. I couldn’t have wished for a more easy-going guy.
This wouldn’t have counted for anything, however, if he hadn’t also been great with Daniel. Only when I was sure my son was comfortable with Steve could we take the next step and move in together. At first I was nervous. After my previous experience, the idea of sharing a home with a man again took a little getting used to. But soon we were all living in a large four-bedroom house in Fareham and I couldn’t have been happier. Between my job, my son and my partner, my life was close to being complete. But there was, of course, still another male in my life.
Peter had also been busy, this time once again on the council exchange programme. He’d managed to swap the Bathgate place for a three-bed in Margate, Kent, although I wondered why the council were still giving him all that space. I realized my name was probably still on all the forms, so he was claiming he was still a family. In reality, though, he finally accepted we weren’t and were never going to be once I told him about Steve. I’m sure that privately he was furious, but from that day he stopped nagging me to go back to him.
I would even go so far as to say that he had mellowed. To be fair, I hadn’t seen anything of his temper since we’d come down from Bathgate. The only recent blot on his copybook had been the fire episode, but, as the months went by, the more ludicrous my idea that he could have been responsible for it sounded. No one was that mad.
Margate was only a couple of hours from us, so at weekends Peter picked up where he’d left off before the abduction and began to spend whole days with Daniel and me. More often than not, he would arrive with some piece of junk he’d found and say, ‘I saw this and thought of you.’ I never had the heart to tell him I just threw everything away the second he left. For the sake of Daniel and my overriding desire for him to have two parents, I forced myself to search out the positive in as many of Peter’s actions as possible. If I’m honest, I was happy with the results. I certainly had no fear that Peter would try to harm his son or run away with him again. That chapter was behind us. So when Peter offered to have Daniel at his place for a sleepover, I agreed.
I don’t think I was much company for Steve that night. We were meant to be having a rare evening out and I just sat staring at my dinner, punishing myself with thoughts of Peter abducting Daniel again. It was only when it occurred to me that the all-ports alert was probably still in place that I began to relax. The next morning, though, I was in Margate to collect Daniel an hour early. Everything was fine. I’d worried for nothing.
Peter really seemed to be making an effort. Obviously he was a typical Saturday dad in the way he let Daniel do what he wanted and fed him too much junk food. I lost count of the times I told Peter not to let Daniel watch eighteen-certificate videos, but he never got the point. On the other hand, he really impressed me by building a sandpit in the garden for Daniel to play in. It was out of character, but a nice thing to do. Even so, it was a relief when Peter announced he’d found another exchange closer to ours, a two-bedroom flat in a block in Leigh Park, Havant. I didn’t particularly want Peter on my doorstep, but the closer I was to Daniel at weekends, the better.
It all seemed to be going so well. Then, one by one, the plates stopped spinning as they often do. I felt Steve was unfairly suspicious of me sometimes, and at one point even believed I was having a relationship with his mate Andy. So I packed our things and Daniel and I moved into a brand-new home in Campbell Road. I was too much of a pragmatist to be that upset by it. Living with Peter had taught me that life’s too short to spend it in the wrong relationship. My main priority was ensuring Daniel wasn’t too troubled by another change of scene.
If I’m honest, as an estate agent, I should have recognized that we weren’t just downsizing in terms of space – there was a quality drop as well. But I was in too much of a rush to care. Our new home, 32A, was a basement flat that was dark and oddly configured. It didn’t even have a proper front door. You had to walk around the side of the semi-detached number 32 to get in. At night it was pretty scary, I admit, although by day the garden was really pretty. I even adopted a lovely fluffy cat who’d been run over. Overall, then, I had to be content.
Money’s good at the moment. This is a temporary measure. There are good things round the corner.
Ever the optimist.
This is the point in a story where you would expect disaster to strike. Right on cue, it did.
Everyone at the estate agent’s was doing well; it wasn’t just me. But the owner decided he wanted to do better. Over a period of a couple of months, he altered just about every aspect of our pay structure. The ones on wages were okay. But if you were on commission only, like me, your income tumbled. My take-home pay went from £600 to £400 and then dropped even further, until in the end I was lucky to make £250.
At first I thought it would be okay. I’d put some aside; I’d be all right for a while. But when the money kept going down, I began to be really concerned. Daniel’s weekly fees were £110, rent was that again and then I had to pay for a car and petrol and everything else we needed to live. My measly £250 wasn’t covering it.
I responded to the situation in the only way I knew how. I just worked harder. The problem was, sixty-hour weeks had been my average for months. That’s how I’d made the wages in the first place. Now I found myself doing sixty-five, seventy, eighty, just to keep my head above the water. And it was killing me.
The worst thing was, I was farming out Daniel left, right and centre to squeeze in a few more minutes of profit. When I was with him, I was too knackered to enjoy it. It was always bedtime for one of us.
Tiredness was the least of my worries though. Once I’d covered the essentials, there was virtually nothing left for food or power. One by one, the tea, sugar and coffee ran out, not to be replaced. I was buying a loaf of bread and a few tins of beans on a Saturday and praying they’d see us through the week. Just because we had food, though, it didn’t mean we could cook it. Our gas and electricity ran off meters and my store of fifty pences gradually diminished – the modern meters weren’t fooled by anything as simple as coins made of ice. I’d come home in darkness, put Daniel to bed by candlelight and sit shivering in my own bed, crying at the mess I found myself in. It was barbaric, Victorian. It was just like living with Mum.
That was the point I knew I’d failed my son. After everything I’d done to protect him over the years, all the beatings I’d taken when his safety had been threatened, I’d let him down. I’d sworn on my mother’s grave that I would give him a better start than the one I’d had and all I’d done was match it, error for error, darkness for darkness, baked-bean tin for baked-bean tin.
I felt sick. I hated myself. Worst of all, I was still trapped in the cycle of work, work, work. Daniel still went to nursery and I still put on my business suits and smiled at rich customers, but the second I was alone, the tears were never far away. Nothing was going right. The harder I worked, the worse I felt.
I was almost a broken woman when I swallowed my pride and called on Grandpa one Friday lunchtime. He was surprised to see me, even more surprised when I asked him for a loan. Forcing the words out was the hardest thing I’d done in ages. He would never ask for help and, trust me, if there had been someone else I could have gone to . . . I felt a failure for bothering him. But I
was
a failure.
My nerves probably made me sound a bit glib when I finally spat the words out. Grandpa considered it for a while, then shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, Cathy, I don’t think that will be possible.’
I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t revealed anything like the extent of my problems and I suppose, as I was standing there, hair immaculate, in make-up and an expensive suit, he wouldn’t have guessed. I should have begged, or at least told the truth about how serious it was, but after all the heartache he’d been through bailing Mum out and then worrying about me, I just didn’t have the heart.
Grandpa could never have known, but that was my last throw of the dice. In fact, his rejection just about confirmed my own opinion of myself at that moment. I didn’t deserve to be helped. Everything I touched went wrong. My marriage, my son’s life, my job, my relationship with Steve, my home. I couldn’t get anything right. As I drove back to the office, I was in tears. Over and over I kept asking myself,
What’s the point? What’s the point of you? You’re no good to anyone.
I was twenty-one years old and in the grip of total desperation.
When I picked Daniel up that evening, I took him straight to Peter’s. I forget what line I spun – maybe it was the power-cut excuse Mum used to use – but he said he could have Daniel for the weekend. That was the main thing. I kissed my boy and drove away, but I didn’t go straight home. First I stopped at a local shop and bought 150 paracetamol tablets. Tonight I would make my problems disappear forever.
Any second thoughts I was having about my plan disappeared the moment I turned the key in the lock at Campbell Road and felt the cold, dark air envelop me. That was what my life had come to. Fumbling around in the dark, I poured a pint of water, then went and sat in the lounge. The street lamp outside gave some valuable light, but I didn’t need it for what I was about to do.