by Lily O'Brien
I found the travelling very difficult and my belly hurt, but I had to go and I was so close to my due date that everyone on the train and ferry couldn’t help themselves and they just had to stare at me. I was only sixteen years old, barely five foot three tall, and my belly was almost as round as I was tall. When we arrived in Ireland, we still had a long way to travel to get to our dad’s house and the only transport that we could afford was the coach. And every time it went over a bump in the road, I thought I was going to have the baby, but I wrapped my arms around my belly and I never let go until we arrived at daddy’s house.
As we left the coach, we walked towards the house and I still recognised it and daddy was standing by the old wooden gate, waiting for us; and by the look on his face, I knew that he was happy to see us. But it was now very late in the evening and I was feeling sick and tired from all the travelling, so I went straight upstairs to bed and I fell straight to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I got up and, without any breakfast, I went straight out to look for Tim. The village was small, so it wasn’t long before the word got around that I was looking for him and soon Tim came and found me. I told him that I was only staying in Ireland for two days, then I had to go back to London to have my baby, and I told him that I wanted him to come back with me. He looked at me and then he looked at my belly, and once he realised the condition I was in, he agreed and he said that he would come back to London with me and we both walked off towards my dad’s house.
However, when we got back to the house, Tracy was in a raging temper and she said that all dad wanted from her was money for drink; and he said that if we did not have any money for him, then we should leave him alone and go back to London. I was not the slightest bit interested in what was going on and I just stayed out of everyone’s way for the rest of the day.
The next morning, I left the house and I paid for an extra ferry ticket, so that Tim could travel back with me, and off we went back to London, leaving our dad to his daily routine of drinking himself stupid all the time. Tracy couldn’t wait to get back to London as she was missing Fred a lot; and all the way back, she kept begging me not to have the baby on the ferry, and then she did the same on the train and I said ok. However, I was in pain and I was suffering. I was having very bad pains in my belly and I really thought I was going to have the baby before I got back to London. But for everyone’s sake, I just kept smiling and eventually we made it all the way back without any major problems; and once home, I settled down and I felt much better.
The next morning, Tracy rang our mother and she told her to get on the phone to the council and to get me a place to live, as I was about to have a baby; and within half an hour, mum rang back. She said that she told the council about me and they gave her an address of a hotel that I could go and stay in for now. She could have done that for me weeks ago, but she just could not be bothered.
I was so happy and Tim and I went off with the address to look for the hotel; and within an hour, I was in my own room. For the first time in my life, I had my own real place to live in. The council had sent me to a hotel in Kilburn that was an old Victorian house and it had a sign outside the house that said, ‘Hotel, cheap rooms to rent’; but inside it was rotten and infested with cockroaches. And my room was right at the top of the house in the attic, but I loved it; they even gave me breakfast for nothing, if I got up early enough that is. Tim was feeling much happier now because he didn’t have to sleep at my mum’s house; but after a few days of being together in the hotel, he began to hit me again. And even though I was ready to give birth, it did not seem to make any difference to him, and that made me feel very sad.
A week later, I had my baby and I had a long and difficult labour, and after twelve hours of screaming, I was ready to give up. I was so exhausted from being left to do all the work of giving birth by myself, that I couldn’t give birth on my own and I ended up with a room full of doctors and nurses all rushing around and panicking. They had left it almost too late and now both the baby’s life and my life were in danger, and they had to use forceps to get the baby out of me as fast as possible. And the doctors had to cut part of my body open with scissors to get the baby out of me before it was too late.
I was exhausted, I had given up and I was not able to push anymore. I had only just turned seventeen three weeks earlier and now I felt like the doctors had destroyed me. Once the doctors got the baby out of me, they began to relax, and I was so happy when they handed me my baby. I looked at my baby and I could see that it was a boy; and for the first time in my life, I felt completely happy with myself. I now had Tim with me and my own baby boy, and a place to live. What more could I want? I now knew that nobody could come near me and ever touch me again, and I knew that I could stay away from my family if I had to, as I now had my own family to look after me.
And a week later, I was strong enough to leave hospital and I went home. At first, everything was fine, my baby was beautiful and healthy, Tim was taking care of me and he got a job on a building site; but then, one night, my brother Simon came to the hotel. He told me that he didn’t want to stay with Kevin anymore, and he asked me if he could stay with Tim and me in my hotel room, and I said yes. He was my baby brother and I would have done anything for him; and a few hours later, he moved in with Tim and me.
But then, a couple of weeks later, Tim’s younger brother turned up at the hotel. He had come over to London from Ireland and he had no place to stay, so he had come to us. But Tim told him to go away and to go find somewhere else to stay, but I shouted at Tim that he was wrong to send his own brother away and I told his brother to come in, and that he could stay with us for as long as he wanted. So now there were four of us, all aged between fifteen and seventeen, plus a baby, all living in the one hotel room and I loved it because there was always something going on.
However, after a week, Tim gave up his job and he began to spend all of his time with the two boys; they would all go out in the morning and they wouldn’t come back until the very early hours of the next morning and, for most of the time, they left me on my own with the baby. I tried to talk to Tim about what he was doing and I asked him why he was leaving me alone all of the time. I told him that me and the baby should come first before the boys; but instead of him saying, ‘Yes, you’re right’, he told me to shut up and to leave him alone So I had no choice but to put up with him, but then he started to come home drunk, and when we were alone he began to hit me again. I asked him to stop hitting me, but he said that it was entirely my fault that he was back in London, and he said that he didn’t want to be stuck with me and the baby any longer and he hated everything about me.
And for the next couple of months, we argued constantly, and things just got worse between us; he began to hit me even more, it was as if he was taking his anger out on me. Then one night when he came home drunk, he dragged me around the room by my hair and then he punched me into my chest. And as I fell back, he hit me again, then I felt one of my ribs snap from the punch, and I felt the rib move up into a vertical position under my skin. I fell to the ground and Tim stopped hitting me and stood over me. I looked up at him and then got up and we both looked at the rib poking up in my chest. I shouted at him, ‘Look what you’ve done’ and we both just looked at each other in shock; but I had to do something, so I began to move the rib back into place and Tim helped me.
The pain was terrible, but I pushed and eased the rib back into a position that looked normal and then Tim helped me into bed. He gave me some painkillers and he looked after the baby for me while I tried to sleep. The next morning, the pain was just as bad, but I never went to the hospital for fear that they would take my baby away from me. So I just kept taking the painkillers and Tim helped me to bandage my chest up to stop the rib from moving; and after a couple of months, the pain felt a little better, so I removed the bandage. But the rib would still make a cracking noise if I bent over or took a deep breath, and I couldn’t do a thing about it, so I just left it at that
and I tried to forget that it ever happened. And eventually, the rib stopped making a noise and the pain went away.
CHAPTER 11
New Friends
By now I was sick of Tim going out and leaving me all alone with the baby, so I decided to do what he was doing; and one night, I picked my baby up and I went off out. And I went around to my sisters’ houses and, to my disbelief, I found out that Tim had been hanging around with my own family every day, while I was sitting in my hotel room on my own, and he was even spending time with one of my own sisters and nobody said a thing to me. I was gutted, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me from enjoying myself; after I had found out what he was up to, I never confronted Tim again about where he went or what he was doing, as I knew it would only make things worse for me.
But I was not going to sit around and do nothing, so every day I would get up and go out with my baby. At first, I just spent most of the day walking the streets, pushing my baby around with me from one sister’s house to another. Then, after a while, I found myself staying out longer; and after a couple of months, I was in a routine of walking home at one or two in the morning all on my own. And all the time Tim would be hanging around with my brothers and sisters and none of them, including Tim, were bothered if I was around or not. And some nights, Tim would get back to the hotel just after me and I would ask him why he never came home with me, but all he could say to me was ‘Sorry, I was busy.’ I knew what busy meant; it meant he was hanging around with the rest of my family and not me. But if I tried to confront him about what he was doing or I tried to talk to him about what he had done all evening, he would begin to hit me again. So most of the time I said nothing to him, as I didn’t want to get hurt again.
I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to lose Tim and be left all on my own with a baby. So I thought that the best thing I could do was to continue going out to my sister’s and to leave him alone; and after a while, it worked and he stopped hitting me. But I soon became fed up being left on my own again and I began to follow my sisters out to pub; and everywhere they went, I followed, pushing my baby with me. I always fed my baby and I kept him well dressed and wrapped up warm and I never once neglected him; he was a part of me and it didn’t matter if it was day or night, we went everywhere together.
My baby was now six months old and because of him, I was able to make a few new friends with some of the local young girls and nobody ever took any notice of me bringing my baby into the local pubs with me. Most people were happy to see me with my baby and they would all treat me very nice; and the girls would play with my baby, picking him up and feeding him for me. They would change his nappy for me as if he was one of their own, and it made me feel very happy.
Then, after a couple of weeks of me getting to know my new friends, they invited me out for a drink with them to a local pub for a girls’ night out, so I went and I took my baby with me. It wasn’t much, just the same few girls, but it felt great being invited out by them and I felt happy. The girls made me feel like I was one of them, and as the evening went on a few of the girls got a bit drunk and they began to act a bit silly; and then one of them said that she wanted a photo of us all together with the baby, but none of us had a camera. However, one of the girls said that her brother had a camera back at her mum’s flat and she lived right next door to the pub; and because I was the only one not drinking, she said that it would be better if I went to her mum’s and got the camera from the flat. They said that they would all look after my baby for me while I got the camera and she told me the flat number and her brother’s name and off I went to get the camera.
It was only 7 pm, but it was already getting dark and a bit cold outside, so I wrapped myself up and I went off to her mum’s. Thinking nothing of it, I knocked on the door and her dad answered. ‘Is Tony in? I need to get a camera from him’, I said. And he said, ‘Yes, but he is in bed.’ ‘That’s ok. Can I go and get the camera from him, because his sister told me to get it.’ ‘Ok’, he said. Then he told me to come in and go up the stairs to his room.
I walked up the stairs and, as I knocked on his bedroom door, I walked straight in; the room was pitch black and I couldn’t see a thing, so I put my hand against the wall, I felt for the light switch and within a second I found it and switched the light on. He was lying on the bed fully dressed and he was almost asleep; I stood in the doorway looking at him and then he lifted his head and looked over at me. And before he could say a word to me, I said, ‘Do you have a camera? Your sister said you have one.’
Then I recognised him, he was the same man who had tried to talk to me back at my sister’s house six or seven months earlier, when I was pregnant and miserable. And I remembered the look that I had given him back then and, within an instant, I felt my face turning red with embarrassment. He looked puzzled, and then he said yes, but he didn’t know where it was; so I said, ‘Not to worry. But if you find it, can you bring it down to the pub, as I am having a drink in there with your sister?’ He said, ‘Yes, ok’ and then I said ok and I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. As I left the flat, I smiled to myself and then I walked back down to the pub, hoping that he would bring the camera down to us.
And within twenty minutes, he was standing at the entrance of the pub looking in. I stood up and waved to him to come in and as he walked towards me I smiled at him; he smiled and sat down next to me. ‘I found the camera’, he said, and we all just laughed. I said thanks, he handed me the camera, and then he said that he had to leave as he had some things to do and then he had to go training; then he got up and left the pub. He seemed nice and now that I had become friends with his sister, I hoped that we would be seeing each other again, and I had an idea that we would. And because I was spending more time hanging around the area, it wasn’t long before we bumped into each other again.
I was walking along the street with my baby in my pushchair when someone on a huge motorcycle beeped their horn as they went past me; and as I looked over, I realised that it was Tony on the bike. I smiled and then I waved at him, and he did a u-turn in the road and stopped his bike next to me; then we said hi to each other. He asked me how I was and, for a moment, I felt like I wanted to tell him everything about my life, but I just said that I was fine and before he left I asked him if he wanted to come to the pub later that evening; and he said yes, then he said goodbye and rode off.
Later that evening, I went to the pub with the girls and I sat there waiting for hours and I thought he wasn’t going to turn up, but I never told the girls that he was coming just in case he let me down. Then a couple of hours before closing time, he walked in and we all spent the rest of the evening talking and having fun together; and once the pub closed, we all said our goodbyes and I walked off home, pushing my baby all the way home on my own. I didn’t mind walking by myself because I was happy, but it was a long way home, about three miles and the evening was cold and dark; but I always walked home on my own, so it didn’t bother me.
The next day, I spent a couple of hours hanging around with Tony’s sister and she told me a few things about him; she said that he spent most of his time working and travelling around Europe on his motorcycle. And when he was home in London, all he ever did was go to the gym and train with weights. Then she said that she would get him to come down to the pub again that evening, and I spent the rest of the day just waiting around for the evening to come.; and this time, he arrived a little earlier and I felt happy that I had someone to talk to.
We spent most of the evening talking to each other about all sorts of things and I completely forgot all about everyone else sitting around me. And as we all left the pub at closing time, Tony asked me why I was always walking home on my own. Then he said that he didn’t think it was very safe for someone as young as me to be walking home on my own, with a baby in a pushchair. I said I was fine and that I had been walking home on my own for a very long time and nothing bad had happened to me yet.
Then Tony asked me about my boyfriend and
why he wasn’t walking me home, and I said that my boyfriend was off doing his own thing. Then I said bye and I began to walk home. ‘Would you like me to walk you home?’ I turned around and Tony asked me again, ‘Would you like me to walk you home?’ ‘No thanks’, I said. ‘I will be fine.’ But before I could get any further along the street, Tony said, ‘Come on, I will get you a cab. You can’t be expected to walk all the way on your own and your baby needs to get home.’ I said, ‘No, I will be fine’, but he had already stuck his hand out and he was stopping a black cab. ‘Come on, I will help you with the pushchair.’ And he opened the door of the cab and helped me push the pushchair into the back of the cab, then we both got in the back and we chatted all the way back to my hotel.
On the way back, I asked him more about himself and then I asked him his age; he said that he was twenty-six years old and that he worked for a film studio, working on generators and film equipment, and it sounded like he was good with his hands. But he didn’t seem to want to tell me too much about himself, and he seemed to be the type of person who kept his affairs private.
When we arrived at the hotel, he helped me out of the cab with the pushchair and within a second he was back in the cab. I said thanks and he said, ‘No problem, you’re very welcome’, then he closed the door, the cab drove off and he was gone. I walked into the hotel and up to my room, and when I opened the door, Tim was sitting on the bed waiting for me. I looked at him and he asked me where I had been all night and I told him that I was at the pub with the girls. He looked at me and then he spent the rest of the evening playing with our baby and I went to bed.
