by Tom Marcus
Then GREEN TOWN and CONGA CAT were in front of my car, from nowhere, as the deafening roar of a motorbike filled my ears. FUCK.
The car lurched forward and back violently as my foot slipped off the clutch, stalling the engine. My neck snapped and the two targets disappeared from view. I stamped on the brakes. What the hell was that?
When my lungs convulsed in an attempt to get air into me, I realized I’d been holding my breath. The gasp forced me to relax my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.
Emma’s bike was leaving the garages, the engine roar fading away.
Thankfully no one had witnessed whatever it was that had just happened to me. Starting the engine again, I had to back the car up slightly to make the corner.
How long could I keep hiding from the fact that something was seriously wrong?
15
LUCY’S STORY
Watching your husband fall apart is never easy. It’s made worse when he can’t talk to you about his work and won’t even admit there’s a problem. And you can’t confide in anyone else, at least not without making up a cover story and then having to remember all your lies.
One incident sticks in my mind as being the first time I saw the physical evidence something was really wrong. We had all gone to the park and it was a normal day, nice and warm, just us in the moment. My son was messing around on the grass pulling up as many dandelions as he could and I was making sure he didn’t eat any!
I turned to Tom as I laughed at the way our son was stuffing everything into his mouth. Tom’s eyes were fixed to a spot on the ground in front of him. His breathing was shallow but rapid, he was holding his chest with one hand. I knew this was an extreme panic attack of sorts.
‘Look at me, it’s OK. Slow your breathing down, look at me.’
Holding his gaze, I slowly managed to bring him back down and get his breathing under control, while keeping an eye on my son and his determined plan to eat pickings from the grass.
All Tom would say afterwards was that he was fine now, it was nothing and it wouldn’t happen again. The fear that there was something seriously wrong was starting to eat away at me.
But we carried on; I desperately tried to make sure our family was held together and most of the time it was working.
I remember the first time I set eyes on Tom on an airstrip in Northern Ireland when we were both in the military. He was standing in a protective and alert manner, waiting to escort us back to base, and there was something about him that immediately drew me.
He never got bogged down in slagging someone off, or moaning about a situation. He would just get on with what needed to be done.
It was a total whirlwind romance from our meeting each other to getting a brief bit of time off to get married. It could have gone so wrong, really, doing everything so quickly, but when you know, you know. Why waste time?
Nothing is perfect, and things change, kids come along, so every marriage needs to be worked on as we all grow older and responsibility takes hold.
Tom only started to change when he joined MI5. Being a surveillance officer was his natural calling but very early on I could see the difference in him. He would struggle to hold a full-length conversation without becoming distracted by something else. His head just wasn’t in the moment with me. It was with his team.
He would go away for a week and barely text or call, and when he did he was distant. Before this, he would always text me and now I had to send him ten messages just to get one back. He came home at the weekend and would barely look at me or our son. If I tried to hold his hand it would be like holding a doorknob, if I cuddled him it was like cuddling a piece of wood, if I asked him what was wrong we would get into an argument and he would give me some bullshit excuses. Eventually he told me he just felt different. I spent days crying, waiting for calls or a text when he was away, convinced he was seeing someone else. Why else would he be so cold towards me? For weeks in between trips away I tried everything, from the soft approach to the full-on What the fuck is the matter?! I finally had enough and was ready to leave with our son when he rang me out of nowhere and told me he was sorry for what he had put me through and he loved me more than ever. From that day he was back to himself where our son and I were concerned; he came home and we were fine and never spoke of it again.
I’m not the perfect wife. I wasn’t then, I’m certainly not now. I hate cooking, I hate endlessly cleaning up after the kids (we have two now). Some days I barely have a chance to make myself a drink, never mind tidy the house. I wanted our days to be spent in the sea, towelling the kids down after body boarding, getting warm in our hoodies with scruffy hair.
Back then sometimes I just wished the world would disappear and leave us to it. Even though Tom and I were good again I could see that something was not right with him. I was starting to hate what was happening to Tom; he was losing his energy, his love for life. I knew his job was important, not just to him but for everyone else. But was his job worth his personality? The person I married? Our family?
Tom has never told me what to do, I’d tell him to do one if he did! He doesn’t want me to stay at home, nor have a career to replace what I did in the military. Tom has always said he wants me to do whatever makes me happy, which is great, I love that about him.
I started to notice the first signs of PTSD (although I didn’t know it was that) when he drifted off to sleep in the living room while I was watching TV. It was nice being in the same room together, but it didn’t last long. Out of nowhere he jumped up, threw the cushions off the sofa and tried to bury himself down the back of it like a cat that had just heard a firework for the first time. It frightened the life out of me and I froze. I had to wait until he stopped thrashing about before I could try to bring him round. His eyes were wild and glazed over, he was looking at me but clearly not seeing me. But as quickly as it had come it went, and his eyes returned to normal.
‘What did I do?’ he said. When I told him, he just looked blank.
‘Fuck me, what were you trying to get away from then?’ I kind of laughed in a nervous way. He didn’t remember.
I love my husband, I would do anything for him. But I had no idea how to help him get through this. He wouldn’t talk to me; we had normal conversations, but asking him anything about work was like getting blood from a stone. It was starting to affect family life now too.
No one on my side of the family knew anything about what Tom did for a day job. I always referred to the Security Service as ‘the office’. It never raised any questions if someone overheard it. It meant I had to lie to my family and to my friends – and always will do.
I remember one night we’d managed to get to bed reasonably early after having a bit of grown-up time together. I went up first, leaving Tom to run around quietly downstairs, as he likes to have everything ready for the morning. Drifting off that night I can just about remember Tom getting into bed, being as quiet as possible.
Falling asleep with him next to me was nice.
BANG! Out of the darkness a pain shot into my eye. It was pitch black. Tom grabbed my hand; he was sweating and trembling.
‘I’m sorry, Lucy, I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
Tom had punched me in the middle of a nightmare. The shock of hitting something must have woken him up as much as it did me.
‘It’s fine,’ I said, as Tom tried to examine my eye. ‘Get off me and fetch me some ice.’
I know he didn’t mean to do it but I was so annoyed, mostly because I knew I’d never get back to sleep and I was already exhausted. By the time he came back up with an ice block wrapped in a tea towel I had calmed down a little. In the light from the bedside lamp I could see a worried look on Tom’s face.
‘Give that here, ya div,’ I said, smiling.
I knew being mad at him was pointless and would only make him more stressed and twitchy when he slept, so we talked until we relaxed and fell back to sleep. In the morning I discovered a lovely black eye had started to develop.
How the hell was I gonna explain this one?
Living with a spy wasn’t a normal life. The school runs were never run of the mill, eight minutes is all it would take as traffic was never a problem. Tom was expert at getting through it, and I would sink down in the car as he would pull moves that would earn him a well-deserved beep from other drivers! We would have to take a different route to school every day, go all the way around roundabouts before taking the exit or taking four lefts to check for anyone following. When we eventually arrived at school we took our son into his class and waited in the yard until everyone had gone. We were definitely thought of as weird and over-cautious parents but we didn’t care. Once the playground was empty we had to check the doors to his classroom were closed and that the entrances and exits to school were locked. Outside school we would check for anyone suspicious hanging around and any cars that looked out of place. Once what had become a ritual was complete we could leave to carry on the rest of our unconventional day.
Living with an ex-spy isn’t a normal life either.
16
STARTING AGAIN
I don’t know why this particular nightmare was the final straw, the moment I knew I had to seek help. Perhaps it was the fear in Lucy’s eyes when I woke up huddled in the corner of the bedroom, dripping with sweat, my knuckles grazed, and no fucking idea what had just happened. I’d been feeling guilty for years about putting my job before my family, and finally I knew it had to stop.
I called MI5’s Welfare Department and admitted I was having problems. The same day I was assessed by a psychiatrist and taken off the team. I never saw them again. Life as I knew it was over.
Eventually I was diagnosed with PTSD and was told that the flashbacks and the nightmares were my brain’s attempt to make sense of events. I was hyper-vigilant, noticing everything – the very skills I needed in surveillance were undermining me now, as I never switched off. As a result my brain was struggling to process what I was seeing every day.
I had the very best help I could get from the Security Service, for which I’ll always be grateful. I only started to come across problems in the treatment part of my recovery when I came up against NHS professionals. I love our NHS, from the porters right the way through to the doctors and nurses. The problem wasn’t them being unprofessional. The issue I had was being able to trust the person I was talking to, given that they also had my home address on their system. I didn’t trust anyone so I couldn’t open up and talk about what was happening to me. At that point I didn’t have any idea how to make sure I got back on track. I couldn’t properly identify what was going wrong until I started the psychotherapy, and that couldn’t start until a professional could listen to me vocalizing what was going on.
With the help of the Security Service, I found the right people I could talk to and start back on the path to recovery.
It had been a while since I’d had paid work, a normal job. The treatment phase of my PTSD was intense and while I believe you are and always will be susceptible to some sort of relapse at some point, I got to the point where I could start thinking about earning some money again. Providing for my family. Being a proper dad and husband – in my own head, what I’d always wanted to be, but felt I was missing the mark.
Borrowing a laptop from Lucy’s brother, I started to write my CV, feeling fairly confident that if I could get the basic layout right, it would be enough to get me in the door of any big company. From there I could start building a new career. Being in MI5 and the military for a decade had given me some incredible personality traits and motivation, something I was sure would land me a job paying at the same level as the Service; just under £30,000 a year, before overtime.
It wasn’t long before I hit a major hurdle. What was I going to put down on paper as my previous job? Joining the army is fine, looks great. Being posted as an engineer to Germany, brilliant. Then what? I couldn’t write that I was in Special Operations then MI5 as a Surveillance Operator. Fuck. We are under a lifetime restriction from telling people who we really are and what we did. The only way round the problem was to put the whole time block under the banner title of ‘delivery driver’.
Finishing up the CV didn’t take long, but I made it look as smart as possible and emailed it to as many local job agencies and companies as I could find. I was getting close to a hundred emails and applications over twenty-four hours of constant searching and applying. It wasn’t long before I got the first call from a recruitment company. Perfect, I thought.
‘Hi, can I speak to Tom, please?’
‘Yes, speaking . . .’
Good start, pleasant, formal but approachable. This could be it.
‘I’m Anna. You recently sent us your CV, is now a good time to talk?’
‘Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for ringing me back!’
Waving like a mad man to Lucy, who was in the garden, I could barely hold back my excitement as she rushed in.
‘Great, well my role here is to provide suitable long-term employment to people looking for career changes, particularly those who have recently left the military.’
Anna continued to talk about her position and the job I’d initially applied for as team leader within a large logistics company. She thought I was suitable, which made sense given my cover story as a delivery driver and the fact I had gained all my driving licences within the first few years with the engineers in the army. I could pretty much drive anything, so I understood the role of drivers.
The call was going really well and the promises of secure immediate employment gave me a feeling of safety. Soon I’d be able to provide for my family. That dream came crashing down when Anna continued.
‘If I’m honest, Tom, your CV does put you into a job offering straight away but not as a team leader. My clients and all big leading logistics firms all require civilian experience within that role, it’s a very different environment to the military. But, there’s no saying that once you’re in position you can’t then apply for that role. It’s often easier to get the job you really want when you have a job.’
This was exactly what I had been afraid of. I thought I was aiming low by going for a team leader role but to be told that was still too high was hard to hear. Anna continued her attempt at reeling me in.
‘I can get you into work at the beginning of next week, on the warehouse floor, temping. I take it you already have safety boots and that you’re still fit and healthy?’
‘Safety boots. Yeah. Got them.’
I was completely torn. I needed the work, I needed the money. But some part of me thought I should be aiming higher.
Or should I? I was completely confident in my ability as a surveillance operator with MI5, it’s who I am. Was. Up till now I had been 100 per cent sure I could bring some piece of that ability to a new career and into the civilian world. I was starting to realize that was going to be much harder than I first thought.
‘So as you know, Tom, we are an agency. The company will pay us and we then pay you, we handle all your payroll, your terms of employment, absolutely everything. We take the hassle out of it all.’
Anna went on to explain that because I would be on a zero-hours contract and working via the temping agency, I would actually end up with less than minimum wage. Lucy could hear this standing next to me, and must have been able to sense my disappointment. I could see her face, smiling and full of confidence in me, as she took the phone out of my hand and hung up. Anna was saying something about setting me up on her system as the line went dead.
I knew what Lucy was going to say before she opened her mouth.
‘You are starting again,’ she said, smiling. ‘That’s fine, but start something that respects you and your ability.’
Fuck. Lucy saying this reminded me why I wanted to marry her so quickly when we first met in Northern Ireland. She makes me believe there is something more to me. Putting my phone on the side, Lucy carried on:
‘I don’t mind you starting on minimum wage if you have the chance t
o progress. I’m not letting you go to a job which you hate if there is no chance of you running the place.’
The laughter surged out of me, instantly causing Lucy to laugh too.
‘No, but listen. I know you can work up to something great. It will take time but being able to climb a ladder is better for you than being held down by a rock.’
Lucy was right, and seeing it in my mind this way made perfect sense. I wanted to be able to have something to strive for – if I couldn’t put myself on the line to stop terrorists killing people then I would channel that into building a career, whatever that may be.
I went back to the laptop straight away, applying for even more jobs and hearing back from recruitment agencies as well as directly from employers. I eventually got an interview for a local IT solutions company. Some of the more experienced techs in this industry can earn a lot of money and there were a ton of courses I could do alongside work to be able to move up the ladder.
The night before the interview I got my kit ready; shirt, tie, polished shoes. I looked at my smart clothes then glanced around the upstairs of the house, which was missing its internal doors; we’d started to renovate but hadn’t had the money to finish. Time to change this. Put the pain and suffering behind us and be the husband and dad Lucy believed in.
As I was going to sleep, I thought about the possible questions, the job description, how I could twist my experience to make sure it filled the gaps. Surely this interview would be easier than the selection day for MI5! Fuck, I missed the team so badly. I knew they wouldn’t have time to be thinking about me, but at that moment, lying next to Lucy, I would have given anything to be part of the team again, to belong to something that mattered.
Shake it off, Tom. Need to close that door. You’ve worked hard to climb out of this hole. Next step is to actually prove you are something and get on with the next challenge, with real life.
I was awake ten minutes before my alarm went the next morning. It wasn’t long before I had to make a move to get to the interview on time. I wanted to have a look at the area beforehand. I suppose it’s an old habit but if you’re comfortable with the building’s structure on the outside it makes it a lot easier going inside and that’s how I wanted to appear, comfortable and confident rather than nervous.
