A Family Secret Read online

  Outside, at the grave, it poured down. I had read about pathetic fallacy in my novels, where the weather follows the mood of the characters, and today it felt as though the angels themselves were weeping.

  I was soaked to the skin, I had a thin, useless coat on, but I hardly noticed. My teeth were chattering already from the shock, and the cold simply could not touch me. People lined the path, all the way from the church to the grave. He had been loved by so many, but that was a tiny comfort. For as his coffin was lifted into the ground I wanted to throw myself in too.

  Mum had invited mourners back to the house afterwards, and I hung around in the kitchen, staring at my shoes, feeling like a spare part. My whole family seemed to have forgotten that I was Christopher’s mother. Or perhaps that was just what they wanted me to think. Some people were kind and did their best to comfort me.

  ‘He was a lovely boy,’ said Betty, our neighbour. ‘I am so sorry, my love.’

  Others looked uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. And one man said to me: ‘You are only young. At least this means you can get on with your life, without this shame.’

  I gulped. It was as though he thought Christopher’s death was a welcome event, a convenient get-out clause for me. I couldn’t believe he could be so crass. Horrified, I ran to my room and wept into my pillow.

  I heard Mum’s footsteps thundering along the landing after me, and as she burst into my bedroom she began hitting me, over and over. Cowering on the bed, I didn’t even try to defend myself. I didn’t ask her to stop. I no longer cared. A world without Christopher was not a world I wanted to be in.

  ‘Look at me!’ Mum ordered in a voice that was no more than a low hiss. ‘I want the truth. Who is the father? Which one?’

  In that earth-shattering moment I had confirmation that she knew. She knew all about the abuse from Jock. Had she been in on it all from the start? It felt like yet another twist of the knife in my wounded soul.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, her voice quiet and controlled. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled.

  She sat on me and hit me again and again, pinning my arms down with her knees. And then, from the corner of my eye, I saw my bedroom door open and close again quickly. It happened so fast, I had no idea who was on the other side, but it was enough to stop the punches. Mum gave me one last look of sheer disgust and left the room. People use the term ‘hell on earth’ flippantly, but for me it was right there, in that house.

  That night, I talked to Christopher through the lonely hours until dawn.

  ‘Mummy will be with you again soon, my angel,’ I promised. ‘I’m still thinking of you, every second of every day.’

  And in the days that followed I visited his grave every day. I would sit there for hours on end, staring at the huge mound of earth that covered my baby son. I talked constantly to him, hoping against hope that he might talk back. Each night, when it grew dark, someone would come from home to take me back. I went compliantly, like a zombie, yet knowing I would escape again the minute I got the chance.

  I hated being in the house, more than ever. I could see Christopher’s pram, trundling and squeaking along the street. I could hear the sweet, snuffly little noises he made as he slept. And I could smell his fresh baby skin close to mine. In every room in the house there were small reminders. And they choked me and comforted me, all at once. I longed to see him. I was desperate to feel him. Yet I was haunted by his ghost, too. I would dream that he was crying, and that I was searching the house for him over and over, trying to find the source of the noise.

  ‘I’m coming, Christopher, I’m coming,’ I called.

  But the crying grew louder and more insistent and I worried that he was in pain, that he needed me urgently. And then I would wake with a jolt in my empty, lonely bedroom, and realise with cruel and ruthless repetition that he was gone. I was grieving for him, over and over again, and it exhausted me, physically and mentally.

  Desperate for peace, I stayed out of the house for longer and longer periods. Once, I ran away and walked round and round the graveyard until the early hours of the morning. I had no intention of going back home, but then I missed Christopher, and the smell of him, and the small indentation his tiny head had made on the mattress in his Moses basket. I longed to be close to where he had once been. When I finally made my way back home, and silently let myself in through the back door, nobody had even missed me. There didn’t seem to be anyone who had noticed how destitute and hopeless I felt. Without Christopher, it was as if nothing I had seemed to matter. It was as though a part of me had physically died with him and I was now existing, in a half-life, hovering behind death’s curtain, waiting to pass to the other side.

  Chapter 8

  I thought the abuse was over. There had been nothing following the confirmation of my pregnancy, over six months earlier. It was the one small chink of light in a dark world, although it did little to lift my spirits. But just a few weeks after Christopher’s funeral I found myself alone in the house with John Wood.

  I was in my bedroom talking silently to Christopher, with my eyes shut tight and my cheeks wet with tears. When the door opened and John Wood stood towering in the frame, I felt no immediate sense of foreboding. After all this time, I was not expecting anything bad. But in the next second he lunged at me, his eyes blazing, as he shoved me, hard, against the headboard. There was no build-up. No warning. He raped me there and then, more violently and more forcefully than I could ever remember before.

  There was spit flying from his lips, sticking in my hair, and his breath, sour and angry, made me heave. I could feel my arms bruising under his grip. It was as though he was trying to cause me as much pain and fear as he could. I felt like I had been brutally attacked by a complete stranger. This rape, somehow, was different. It was over quickly, but I knew the scars would last a lifetime. He slammed out of the room, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and smoothing down his pointy little beard. He didn’t say a single word. He didn’t even bother threatening me to keep quiet. He probably knew by now that there was no need. I was petrified – literally. It was as though I had been turned to stone and I could not move for the rest of the day. I could not even cry. And it came to me, in the hours afterwards, that this rape had been a punishment. This was his form of retribution. He hated me because Christopher was dead. Like my mother, he blamed me. It was like I had been steamrollered; I felt flattened and hollow. I was completely finished, not only as a mother, but as a human being also. In the days after the rape I struggled even to speak. And underneath my grief bubbled an intense fury. I kicked back against life and all the shit it had thrown at me. I had always enjoyed going to church, I was a committed Christian, but now I turned vehemently against God and religion.

  ‘What kind of God takes away a baby?’ I asked angrily. ‘How can it be fair?’

  John Wood made his own home brew, which was stored in the outhouse, a little room next to the kitchen. There were bottles and bottles of the stuff, and I knew he and my mother, who both drank heavily, wouldn’t miss a few. I began drinking during the night, when the rest of the house was asleep. By the time morning came I was often quite drunk, yet chillingly sober at the same time. I didn’t care if I was caught drinking. I didn’t care about anything. What on earth could they do to me that was worse than what I had already endured? I wanted so much to be with Christopher, and if dying was what it took, I was prepared for it. I knew my family wouldn’t miss me, that was for sure.

  Social services came to see me, probably because I was spending so long at the cemetery, and also because I was running away more and more frequently. The social workers had been in and out of our lives since we had come out of care as small children, and now they seemed to take a particular interest in me.

  ‘You’re proving quite a handful these days,’ said one social worker.

  Again, I longed for her to ask me the questi
on. The right question. Again, she did not. Instead she decided, after discussion with my parents, that I should be placed in a children’s home, for just one week, to be assessed.

  ‘Fine,’ I said numbly.

  As she drove me to the children’s home, she mentioned something about it being good for my parents to have a break too. She was so outrageously far off the mark that I actually laughed. How little she knew.

  The children’s home was trialling a new technique in behaviour management called ‘Pin Down’, which involved isolating children and denying them basic privileges. It was like walking into a prison. I wasn’t even allowed to leave my room to use the toilet. I had to knock on my door for hours on end to ask permission, and on one occasion the staff left me until I wet myself. It was degrading and humiliating. I couldn’t for the life of me see how that was going to help any child to behave well. Years later, the technique was banned and slammed as a controversial experiment. For me, it made little impact, because my thoughts were dominated, constantly, by my grief for my son. And locking me up, or letting me out, made very little difference.

  When I returned home, I eventually went back to school full-time, but I no longer had any focus for my studies. The girls in my class would waffle on endlessly about makeup and new clothes and their latest teenage crushes. They were everyday teenage dilemmas.

  ‘Did you get a new dress for Saturday? We’re all going out, Maureen, you should come too. Slap a bit of makeup on and enjoy yourself.’

  Listlessly, I shook my head. I felt insulted by the trivia. I was angry, deep down, that the world was carrying on as normal. My friends were discussing shades of lipstick whilst I worried about my baby son, decaying under a mound of soil, all alone and crying for his mummy.

  And so I became more isolated and alienated than ever before. Grief stretched out before me and formed a chasm between me and my peers. There was no way back for me as a teenager. No way back for my youth. Instead, I sat on my own, with my sadness. I still worked hard in class and did my best in lessons, especially in English Literature and Home Economics – reading and cooking were often what got me through the day – but my mind was elsewhere so much of the time.

  One day another pupil came to me and smirked, ‘You’re pregnant again, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I am not,’ I retorted.

  But I heard the rumours again and again.

  ‘They reckon you’re having another baby because you’re such a slut,’ confided one of my friends.

  A fury rose within me. I felt that by trashing my character they were also attacking Christopher’s memory. I asked around and was dismayed to discover that my closest friend was the source of the lie.

  ‘How could you?’ I seethed.

  Blinded by rage and convinced somehow that I was defending my son’s reputation, I grabbed her hair and threw her to the floor.

  ‘Take it back, you liar!’ I yelled.

  I knew I was taking my hurt out on her. She didn’t deserve quite such a vicious punishment. When I was frogmarched to see the deputy head, I admitted everything. She took me home, and I was suddenly panic-stricken, thinking Mum would explode when she heard, and hit me twice as hard as I’d hit the girl. Instead Mum stood at the doorway, pursed her lips, and said: ‘Well, the girl must have deserved it.’

  And that was that. There was no consequence, not even a telling off. School suspended me for a week, and I counted myself lucky. I couldn’t fathom Mum’s behaviour. She would normally never pass up the opportunity to chastise me. She was consistently inconsistent and unpredictable, which made her all the harder to live with.

  Though I no longer had any enthusiasm for school, it was at least a chance to escape the house – and avoid the possibility of finding myself alone with John Wood. Since that brutal attack following Christopher’s death, I had tried to make sure we were never in the same room together. I could not bear even to breathe the same air as him. But it was inevitable, with my older siblings leaving home, and Mum working in the evenings, that I would sometimes be in the house on my own with him. I tried to slip out of the house myself, but if I was caught he would always bring me back. And occasionally, I was sure, he would skip work or lie about his shift pattern so that he could take me by surprise and ambush me in my bedroom.

  He would walk in, his pale, watery eyes fixed on me through his spectacles, his hand already fiddling with his belt buckle. The anticipation, the dread of what was coming, was chilling. Sometimes my heart would be beating so fast I thought I might drop dead. These days, he didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He knew I had no words. On those occasions, when it was just me and him, he never missed a chance to rape me. Sometimes, if he had a week of late shifts, it might happen every day. By the end of that block of shifts I felt as though I had been chewed up and spat out.

  I was absolutely powerless, helpless. I couldn’t fight back. And I didn’t even think about telling anyone. Why would I be believed? Why would anyone, for one moment, take my side? It had never happened before, so it was not going to happen now. Besides, John Wood was an upstanding member of the community, well-respected and well-liked. He had plenty of friends and contacts. I was a wayward, runaway teenager with a pregnancy and a bereavement behind me. And I had no friends, no family, not even a mother who loved me. Nobody cared about me, so why should I care about myself? I had a sense of complete defeat. Losing Christopher had broken me. It was a turning point, and they could no longer reach me or hurt me. I was beyond all that.

  The following Mother’s Day I awoke with a heavy heart. When I went downstairs into the living room I could immediately sense a charge in the atmosphere. We had always bought gifts for my mother, on John Wood’s orders, and this year was no different. I handed Mum the obligatory card and flowers and mumbled: ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’ To my utter confusion, she handed me a card and a small box of chocolates in return. I looked at her, wondering what on earth was going on.

  ‘Open the card,’ she goaded. ‘Go on, you are a mummy, after all.’

  I turned away, my eyes swimming with tears, but she grabbed my arm sharply and said: ‘Open it!’

  Reading the card, I felt a shiver run through me. She had signed it ‘from Christopher’.

  ‘Happy Mother’s Day,’ Mum cackled, laughing as she watched the tears stream down my face.

  I dropped the card like it was a hot coal and ran back to my bedroom. For any parent losing a child is a horrific experience, and the pain does not ease with time. For me, I had lost a child and I had also lost my place as a mother.

  After Christopher died, nobody mentioned his name. Nobody ever referred to the fact that I was still a mother, still a parent, albeit a bereaved one. That, too, was snatched away from me. I lost my child, and I lost myself, as a parent. And now the only reference to that time was a sick, sad card from my mother. What sort of deviant witch was she? And what was it about me that made her hate me so much? If I could have sunk any lower, I did so that day.

  In 1985, the year after Christopher’s death, my family moved house. I kicked against it because I wanted to stay with my memories. I wanted to breathe in the faint reminders of him. But of course, nobody listened to me. And saying goodbye to the bedroom where he had slept, and the living room where he had died, was agonising.

  When everything was packed, I slipped back into the bedroom, empty now and bare, and whispered a final goodbye.

  ‘I’m not going without you,’ I promised. ‘I won’t forget you.’

  But my words felt as empty as the room. It seemed as though the world was moving on and leaving him behind. Closing the door, that last time, I felt as though the wounds of my grief were being ripped apart all over again.

  The new house served a purpose; there was a bed there to sleep in and of course to be raped in. We might have moved to a new address, but the miasma of evil followed us there. My mother announced my surname would be changed to ‘Wood’
too. Inwardly, I kicked against it, but in reality there was nothing I could do.

  ‘Maureen Wood,’ I repeated dully. ‘That’s the same name as yours.’

  Mum nodded smugly, as though the honour was all mine.

  By now, my interest in school had waned completely, and I began missing lessons. I fell in with the other truants and spent most afternoons in the pub, drinking vodka shots and eating crisps. Around that same time, aged fifteen, I met my first boyfriend, Dave, through a school friend. I had absolutely no interest in sex or in boys, but Dave and I got chatting at her house one night, and he was gentle and protective. And at seven years my senior, he made me feel safe. Truth was, I didn’t fancy him at all, but I did warm to his personality. He was good to me. And he didn’t push me into sex, or any kind of intimacy.

  It took six months before our relationship became physical. The first time we had sex we’d been to the pub; both of us probably hoping, for different reasons, that I would have too much to drink. It was no reflection on him that the act itself was, for me, just another tick in a box, and my overwhelming feeling afterwards was of relief. It was consensual, unlike every other encounter I’d ever had. And that probably should have meant more than it did. But by now I was so broken and so damaged that I was beginning to wonder whether I would ever be able to enjoy sex with anyone or whether it was tainted beyond redemption. Poor Dave had no idea about the abuse I’d suffered, so I must have seemed like a puzzle to him. Perhaps he picked up on the weight of unhappiness that hung inside me, permanently, like a stone. For my part, I think I was looking for a way out. A reason to leave home. I saw everyone around me having relationships and settling down, and I decided I should do the same. When Mum finally met him, she curled her lip and said: ‘He’s far too old for you, Mo-Jo.’