A Family Secret Page 17

  ‘What is it?’ Louise asked gently.

  Wordlessly, I thrust the letter I had written into her hands. Her face blanched as she read it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Maureen,’ she said. ‘I can understand why you buried this, I really can.’

  I hung my head.

  ‘When Mum was abusing me, I took myself out of the room,’ I said quietly. ‘I used to float away on my own cloud. I think these memories were buried deeper than the others. As a child, I couldn’t bear to be there to witness it, so I used to escape.

  ‘Sometimes I’d read a book across the other side of the room. Other times I’d fly right down the stairs, away from it all.’

  Louise explained it was a form of disassociation. It was my way of surviving. A couple of days later I made another statement to the police, in the same little room overlooking the school playground. I watched the children playing outside and thought to myself that their mums would soon be arriving to take them home. Mothers looked after their children. They loved them and stood by them, even when, sometimes, their fathers did not. But not mine. Certainly not mine. The fact that she was a mother – my mother – made it all the more shocking.

  ‘You can do this,’ Christopher whispered. ‘Tell them everything.’

  It took me two hours, sitting in that tiny room, to purge myself of those dark memories.

  ‘I remember her long fingernails, scratching inside me,’ I whispered. ‘I remember her getting aroused when John Wood raped me.’

  I wished so much that it could have been anyone except my mother. After the interview was finished, the officers told me they had already suspected my mother was involved. They had simply been waiting to see if I would confide in them.

  ‘After we’d interviewed John Wood for the first time, your mother was waiting at the door with a face like thunder,’ they told me. ‘She knew full well what it was all about. She knew what was coming.’

  My mother was arrested the following day but, as I had expected, she denied everything. She had told the police I was a lunatic who was in need of psychiatric help. The file was sent to the CPS, to wait alongside the others, until Christopher’s exhumation could take place. Everything rested on him. There had been times, over the years, when I had tried to kid myself that she was sorry, that in some way she wanted to make amends. When my children were small, I had lied to myself that she wanted redemption, through them. I had thought she was remorseful. But this was her chance to tell the truth, it was her chance to apologise. Instead, she threw it back in my face.

  Once the paperwork came through, early in July 2009, there was a series of environmental tests on the ground around the grave, testing the soil and the air quality. The legal situation was complex and we had to be sure there was no contamination. Midway through the month, my own DNA was taken at home by Marie. Then I was told the exhumation would take place on 28 July.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Marie warned me. ‘The DNA samples from Christopher may not be viable. They may not be conclusive. It’s twenty-five years since his death. This is a long shot and we may end up with nothing.’

  I nodded. I understood. But after my experience at his grave, I felt somehow that this was going to go well. I knew there would be no problems, not from Christopher, at any rate. He would not let me down. I had depended on my son once before, for happiness. I knew I could rely on him again. I was called to a meeting to discuss the practicalities of the exhumation and, at last, it suddenly seemed dizzyingly real.

  ‘I want to be there, please, when my son is exhumed,’ I said.

  The woman from the Home Office, who was overseeing the process, shook her head in alarm.

  ‘It’s not normal for a parent to be there at an exhumation,’ she replied.

  ‘This whole thing isn’t normal,’ I snapped. ‘I have to be there, and that’s that.’

  He was my baby, my son, and he couldn’t go through it on his own. I had to be there for him. It was the very least I could do. Louise offered to come with me for support, and I gladly agreed. I was racked with anxiety and I needed all the help I could get. The night before the exhumation I didn’t sleep at all. Plagued once again by last-minute doubts and misgivings, I wept into my pillow and begged Christopher for forgiveness.

  It was already sunny at 5.45 a.m. the next morning, when Louise arrived to collect me. I was ready, pacing the living room, my nerves stretched and taut. I didn’t say a word on the journey there, and neither did she; it felt respectful to travel in silence. And then, as we pulled up, I saw the glare of floodlights and the white tent around my baby son’s resting place. We had been given strict Home Office instructions that we were not allowed inside the cemetery. But there was no way I could stay away. He was mine, my boy.

  We had been instructed to park across the road, so that we didn’t draw attention to the cemetery. But I had a good view from out of the car window and I watched, appalled yet transfixed, through a gap in the cemetery railings, as the digging began. Forensic officers in white space suits waited, like Martian pallbearers, for my Christopher, my baby, to surface. And then, there he was; his tiny coffin looked almost like a toy from where I was standing.

  ‘Mummy is sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Christopher.’

  As his coffin was lifted into a plain grey van, I remembered the innocence in his wide blue eyes, I smelled the newness of his skin, I felt his tiny, delicate fingers curling around my thumb. And I was overwhelmed with a tsunami of loss and despair. My poor bruised heart ached and wept to see him again. Off went the van, carrying my precious cargo. Carrying my hopes, my heartbreak, and the distant promise of peace.

  Christopher had saved me once, and now, twenty-five years on, I was asking him to save me again. My guardian angel was risen from the dead, bringing with him my chance of justice.

  The tears streamed down my face as Louise and I got back into her car. As the van carrying Christopher’s body passed along the road, the driver slowed and nodded to us.

  ‘Please take good care of my boy,’ I breathed. ‘He’s so precious to me.’

  We followed the van part way along the A34 and I was comforted to see that they drove slowly and with respect. The van turned off to go to the city morgue, and we continued our sombre journey along the dual carriageway. Louise drove me home and hugged me before I got out of the car. We had barely spoken all day. I wanted to thank her for being there for me, but I couldn’t form the words. I couldn’t think past what I had just seen. I had been so close to my son; closer than I had ever dreamed possible. And yet he was unreachable.

  I walked into the house and went up to my bedroom. In that moment I was consumed with a hatred for my parents, and Jock, for putting Christopher through this. It could have been avoided, and he could have been left to rest, if just one of them had told the truth. They were cowards, with no thought for anybody but themselves, not even the baby they had all professed to love so much. I hated myself, too, for agreeing to the exhumation. What mother would allow her baby to suffer like this? I slumped on my bed, wondering what was happening to my baby son; my baby with the wide blue eyes and the soft fair hair.

  A few days later, Marie gave me a plaque from Christopher’s coffin, for me to keep. It simply said his name, but it meant the world to me. I had no keepsakes, no photos of my little boy, so this was more precious than gold. Marie told me he had been buried eight feet deep, instead of the usual six feet. At the time of his burial, I remembered, there had been a raft of strikes and walkouts, including a grave-diggers’ strike. This explained possibly why he had been buried deeper than was standard. It was a quirk – but it had turned out to be crucial. The soil around Stoke-on-Trent was famous for its clay, hence the pottery factories that had once dominated the city’s economy, and my baby son had been buried along the clay line, meaning that his tiny body was perfectly preserved. The chances of a viable result were very high.

  ‘S
ee,’ said a little voice. ‘I told you it would be fine, Mum. I told you!’

  DNA had been taken from four areas and both his little femurs, along with two bones from his arms that had been removed. I wanted the information – I demanded it from the police. And yet I recoiled from it too. It was awful to envisage. I imagined a sharp knife cutting into my baby boy, ripping out his limbs, and I clamped my hand over my mouth in horror. My eyes swam with angry tears. All of this was their fault. John Wood. Jock. My mother. They would rather see my baby dug up and cut up than own up to their own evil. This betrayal, to me, felt like another form of abuse. Another show of control.

  ‘Don’t let them get to you,’ Christopher reminded me. ‘Don’t let them break you.’

  In August the results came through. I was on tenterhooks all day, waiting for the phone to ring. When it did, I jumped out of my skin.

  ‘It’s a perfect match,’ Marie told me. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  There was a 1.5 million-to-one chance that Jock was not Christopher’s father. He was a baby from familial, related parents. I had, of course, known that all along. This was simply confirmation that I was not the liar and the lunatic my family claimed I was. Whilst I was hugely relieved that it hadn’t all been for nothing, there was no celebration. No sense of joy or achievement. I could not even bring myself to smile. It seemed deeply inappropriate. This was a stomach-turning, soul-destroying situation. But now I knew that Christopher was helping me, it gave me the strength to see it through. He had done his bit and I would do mine. Together, we were a team. I felt like I had someone on my side, and it was nice.

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ he said gently. ‘Always.’

  I remembered how, after Christopher’s death, my parents had argued heatedly about the final resting place for his remains. Mum had insisted on burial. John Wood had wanted a cremation. I, of course, had no say at all in the matter. I was not even consulted. But I remembered the rows.

  ‘It’s a church burial and that’s final!’ my mother had shouted.

  ‘A cremation would be so much simpler,’ he had argued.

  At the time I hadn’t realised the significance. But it occurred to me now that perhaps John Wood had wanted to hide the truth, to destroy the evidence, once and for all? Maybe he had worried that one day Christopher’s body could be used to convict them. It was more likely that he had simply favoured the cheaper option, which was cremation. But Mum had got her way in the end, as she always did, and had him buried. That decision had proved to be her downfall. One way or another, the truth was going to catch her and crucify her.

  My priority now was to make sure that Christopher was reburied with dignity and love. And this time, unlike at his first funeral, I would organise it all myself.

  ‘It’s not government procedure,’ said the official from the Home Office, when I told her of my intentions. ‘Bereavement Management usually take care of this.’

  But I shook my head.

  ‘I’m his mother, and I will do it all,’ I said firmly.

  ‘But parents are not usually present at the reburial,’ she explained. ‘Just as at the exhumation.’

  But I wouldn’t hear a word of it. I realised I was creating a headache for the Home Office and all their red tape, but I didn’t care. As a teenager, I had been pushed around and bullied for my son’s first funeral. And there was no way I would let it happen again. I wanted to make amends, as much as I could. I owed him that much, at least. I had to lay his ghost to rest with the respect he deserved.

  ‘Please leave it to me,’ I begged her. ‘It’s something I have to do.’

  I went to the funeral directors of my choice and picked out a tiny coffin. I chose the flowers and the prayers. I had never been allowed to make a single decision for my son, in life or in death. I had never even chosen a pair of bootees for him, yet here I was choosing a coffin. I paid every penny myself, too. The Home Office had of course offered to pick up the bill, but I flatly refused. It was so important for me, and for Christopher, that I did this for him.

  On the day of his reburial, that August, it poured down – just as it had for the first funeral. If I closed my eyes and listened to the rain hammering on the windows, I could almost imagine I was back there, in my parents’ house, waiting for the hearse, waiting for my own bleeding heart to stop beating. I could hear John Wood and Jock squabbling over who would carry his coffin. And I could feel my mother’s fist as she pummelled my head in the bedroom:

  ‘Who is the father? Which one is it?’

  It was like losing my baby all over again, and the grief brought me to my knees. I hadn’t slept at all the night before his funeral. And through the darkness I fancied I could hear the soft, twittery sounds he made when he was asleep.

  At 9 a.m. I went to collect the blue balloons I had ordered. Next, I picked up his flowers; white roses, because white is the symbol of innocence and purity. And despite his beginnings, my Christopher was pure and unblemished. Mick arrived at 10 a.m., to look after our younger children; I thought they were too little to attend the reburial. Soon after, Mary and Louise knocked on my door, along with the pastor. And together with Ben and Naomi, we left for the cemetery. It looked very different to the last time I’d been there; today, in the grey rain, it looked so ordinary. There was only the small mound of earth, at his graveside, as a reminder. The pastor began with a few words of prayer and then I read a poem I had written myself, which I would later have tattooed onto my leg as a permanent memorial.

  What can I say about you today, it’s so hard to find the right words to say.

  You have given me so much yet left me so long ago.

  You showed me what love was when you were with me,

  What sorrow was when you left me.

  Yet today you have achieved so much more than I would ever have dreamt of,

  You have shown after all these years that you still count in this world,

  You have proved that I was right in these steps that I have taken,

  You have shown me that trusting in the truth will always pay in the end.

  Christopher, my darling, you were born from something very wrong,

  Yet you will remain so innocent and pure forever more.

  Thank you form the bottom of my heart.

  Thank you for helping to give me my life back.

  Thank you for just being you.

  Thank you for helping me to get through this.

  Christopher, my angel, so fair and sweet.

  Now my darling may you finally rest in peace.

  Sleep tight little man and know you are never far from my thoughts.

  Mary gave a reading, too. And then, in the rain, we each threw a white rose onto Christopher’s coffin and released a balloon for him. At home, at the same time, my younger children were releasing balloons too. It was a simple ceremony, but it was sincere and heartfelt and exactly as I had wanted it. Everyone who mattered was there, or was at home and thinking of him. I didn’t cry at all, because this was about celebrating and honouring the most remarkable of little boys. He had lived for less than a month, but he had achieved so much. He had taught me how to love in life and how to go forward after his death. I knew, fiercely, as I stood at his grave, that I owed it to him and his memory to see the case through, regardless of the outcome.

  ‘I will do my best,’ I promised him. ‘I’ll make you proud. I won’t give up.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he whispered, his voice pattering in the rain. ‘I know you can do it.’

  By the time I got home, after the ceremony, I was ready for the biggest fight of my life.

  The weeks after Christopher’s reburial were hard. My sleep was still infested by nightmares and flashbacks, and I was suffering with severe exhaustion and crippling stress. There were days when I really felt I could no longer go on. Despite everyone around me reminding me I was not at fault, I blamed myself for
putting my children through such worry and distress. My children, as always, were a wonderful safety net, together with Mary, Louise and Marie. And, of course, Christopher hovered at my shoulder, whispering support in my ear, pulling me back from the brink, time and time again.

  ‘I am with you, always,’ he told me.

  I felt his presence so strongly. Sometimes I fancied he hovered above me, like a ghostly butterfly. Other times he was perched on my shoulder, like a small, wise owl. Always, he gave me strength. At the end of September I made my victim impact statement. It was emotionally draining and I decided to have a nap before the children came home from school. When I woke I had a string of missed calls from Louise and from Marie, and text messages urging me to get in touch. I called Marie, my heart thumping, knowing there was a big announcement waiting.

  ‘The CPS have made a decision,’ she said.

  I felt sure the news was bad. I was convinced my family would walk away from the charges, and I would be left to cope with an almighty fallout. Nobody had ever listened to me my whole life. So why would they start now?

  ‘They are pressing charges against all three,’ Marie said.

  It took a moment for the words to sink in. This was not what I had expected, not at all.

  ‘Wow,’ I gasped. ‘I’m flabbergasted.’

  Again, I felt no sense of victory, no joy. But I did feel a quiet sense of satisfaction, and momentum. I was finally making waves. My voice was finally being heard. John Wood was charged with multiple rapes. My mother, with aiding and abetting rape. Jock was charged with rape, incest and indecent assault. To know that they would face reckoning and accountability for what they had done was colossal. It felt terribly sad, in a way, but above all it felt like the right thing to do. The police ordered John Wood to hand over the deeds to Christopher’s grave, but he did so only after his solicitor advised him to. Marie brought the deeds for me and as I stared at Christopher’s name, in black and white, I felt again that I was drowning, struggling to stay afloat in a sea of uncertainty.