What's Love Got to Do with It?

by Jenny Molloy

  So, I cursed God and really let loose.

  TINA

  Tina is a good friend of mine, someone I can go to when I need to open up, when my own memories threaten to overwhelm me. When I asked Tina if she was prepared to share her own story for this book, I really wasn’t sure that she’d agree. I knew her story but had never heard her tell it all in one go before, from beginning to end. As we talked, the tea growing cold, Tina told me that today was the anniversary of her mother’s death and it was good for her to talk, to keep her mother’s memory alive. I was reminded – as I so often have to be – that I was not the only one haunted by tragedy. Life moves on but sometimes it moves on before we’re ready.

  Mum was my rock. No two ways about it. She was hard but fair, always. Hardest when needs be and loveliest when needs be; she disciplined me and wiped away my tears. She taught me right from wrong and was my best friend. She ran her own business, selling office fixtures and fittings, and this had toughened her physically (from constantly moving stock) and mentally (having to survive in a male-dominated world, she always said you have to be twice as good at your job as the best man was at his). She was in her fifties and fitter than many people half her age, me included, although I had the excuse that I was eight months pregnant with my second daughter, Emily, so was hardly in a position to exercise. Sophie, my other daughter, was just coming up to six. It was the end of the summer holidays and she was just about to go back to school in a few days. I needed to get her some shoes for school and told Mum I was off to get them. Sophie didn’t want to come with me, it was a lovely, sunny September day, and the hours were precious before she had to buckle down to the hard work of school. Mum was inside, hoovering, singing ‘I Want to Break Free’, which cracked us both up.

  I tried Sophie one more time. ‘Sure you don’t want to come, sweetheart?’

  ‘No, Mum, I’ll stay here with Gran.’

  I gave Sophie a kiss and waved to her friend Briony. ‘Be good girls.’

  I’d made it as far as the bus stop when I realised I’d forgotten my purse on Mum’s kitchen table, so I turned around, waved at the kids playing and went inside. Something was wrong. The hoover was off and just lying in the lounge, the snake-like neck coiled on the floor any old way. That wasn’t like Mum. Plus, it was so quiet; I couldn’t hear any movement.

  ‘Mum?’

  A voice barely audible came from the stair landing. ‘Up here.’

  She was so pale, it was like looking at the living dead, her eyes were open but her face was so gaunt. ‘I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Lie down, Mum,’ I told her and helped her to the bed. ‘Your skin’s so cold; let me get you a hot water bottle, OK?’

  She nodded and lay on the bed, breathing heavily. ‘So glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you’d get back in time.’

  ‘Just rest, Mum,’ I said, finding the hot water bottle in the bottom drawer of the chest. ‘Ill get you this and then we’d better call the doctor.’

  I was downstairs filling the kettle when I heard the softest of moans and ran back up. ‘Mum, are you all right?’ I knew the moment I saw her that she was dead.

  I went into labour two days after I buried my mother. I was a single mum without a mum of my own. I had a six-year-old girl and a brand new baby daughter. My rock was gone and I was adrift on an unfamiliar and terrifying sea. Two days after giving birth, I was home and paralysed. I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt like nothing mattered but I knew that if I didn’t do something this baby wasn’t going to get brought up. So I called someone and bought some speed. It wasn’t hard to find. I wasn’t a drug user but I knew what speed was supposed to do – it was a pick-me-up, a get-up-and-go drug. I lived in a small town and it was easy enough to find a friend of a friend who put me in touch with the right person.

  It gave me enough of an energy boost to get me out of bed and take care of the kids. When the kids weren’t in the house, I just sat there like a dummy, smoking, doing nothing, even when the speed was racing in my veins. The only thing I liked to do was work in the garden, weeding like a maniac because that was something that Mum liked to do, although I nearly had a breakdown when one of the plants died. Mum would never have let that happen.

  I’d split up with the girls’ father, Liam, not long after I’d fallen pregnant with Emily. He was a drinker and had turned violent a couple of times. He hadn’t wanted kids and although he now said he wanted to be a good father, he wasn’t much of one, although it was nice to let him play with the girls so I could stare blankly into space for a while, the TV on but not watching it. When he then made a move on me one night, I let the blankness stay and it was the night of all nights, a night when I could conceive and conceive I did. That guy was fertile. He just had to wave at women and they fell pregnant. When I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was that I didn’t want the baby. My second thought was how bad a person I was to think such a thing. After that, I took some speed and let the baby be an ‘it’. I put ‘it’ to one side of my mind, shoved ‘it’ under a corner like dirty socks under a pile of dirty laundry, as if ‘it’ wasn’t there. I took speed all the way through my pregnancy and the months shot by, it was as if my pregnancy lasted nine days, not nine months. Months spent sitting on the sofa in between feeding and sorting out the girls.

  I’d taken drugs during the day in the run-up to giving birth, but not while I was in the hospital. Liam had the girls for the duration and I trusted his mum to take care of them for a couple of days. I just wanted to make sure I got out of there as fast as possible; before they found out I was an addict. I pretended everything was all OK, when it clearly wasn’t. After I’d given birth, there was no rush of love at all, which made me feel awful, like I didn’t deserve to be a mum. It wasn’t until the following day that her squeals broke my glassy stare out of the window across a car park. She hadn’t been feeding properly and so the nurses were putting a feeding tube in her nose; I could see her inside a room with glass windows and as she squealed I cried out, ‘That’s my baby!’ The mother instinct had kicked in. She was my little angel – Angie.

  Liam moved in with me after I got out of the hospital but he was drinking a lot. I didn’t feel like I could tell him off; after all, I was using six grammes of speed a day – a lethal dose to a non-user – and so I was hiding things as bad as he was. No one knew about my addiction – I kept it from everybody. I always carried the speed on me and never, ever used if there was a chance someone could see me.

  Liam couldn’t cope with me and the kids. He was a child himself. All I wanted to talk about was my wonderful mum and Liam started to snap more and more often, beating me until the police were called. After the fifth time they made Liam move out for twenty-four hours to calm down and then, when I was alone with the police, they asked me if I wanted to press charges. They were lovely, really, up until this point. Perhaps they’d waited until things were bad enough before pressing me to do something about it but I said I didn’t.

  ‘Don’t you want to change things?’ the young male officer asked me. ‘For your kids?’ I just looked down at my feet and waited for them to leave. ‘You have a duty of care to your children and you’re failing them with that man around the house,’ the officer continued. ‘That means you come under our duty of care. Do you understand?’ They told me a social worker would come by in a few days.

  My kids were clean and well fed. But I was using fourteen grammes on my very worst day. I was doing what I needed to do for the kids but nothing more. The house had become messy and the kids had adapted – it had become normal to them to reuse dirty clothes because I hadn’t done the washing. Sophie turned into a mum to Emily and Angie as I watched from inside my speed bubble, thinking that this shouldn’t be happening. Every night of every day I’d think tomorrow will be the day I’ll do something – and eight hours later I’d still be sitting in my dressing gown, licking my finger and swabbing up the last grains of speed from the little paper wrap, which is what I was doing when the do
orbell rang and I found a smiling stranger on my doorstep who introduced herself as Mary, my social worker.

  My mum and dad had children with different partners before they had me, both of them girls. When they had me, my eldest sister, Madge, was three and she was Dad’s; Steph, aged two, was Mum’s. Dad was a gambler, the sort that would bet the last 50p we had put aside for the electricity meter. Mum, being a strong-minded woman, told Dad to leave. She would raise us three kids without him. Then he was free to waste his life on gambling.

  I was three when social services turned up at Granddad’s house. By the time Mum arrived, all Granddad could say through the tears was, ‘They’ve gone.’

  Dad had told social services that Mum was always going out at night, seeing other men, leaving the kids alone, and for some unknown reason they had taken him at his word.

  Dad had decided that if he couldn’t have us kids then no one could. This had nothing to do with his love for us; it was just pure bitter selfishness of a warped gambling mind – all or nothing. He should have known by then that double or quits was always a losing proposition.

  We didn’t see Mum for a long time. It was hard for her to visit because she had to go to three different addresses. We had been split up and were in different foster homes. Mum was tough, but tears crept out of her eyes every time she saw us. She’d tried, oh she’d tried so hard to get us back, she said. I believed her. Madge did not. She hated Mum and blamed her for us ending up in care.

  Dad got Madge out of care within a couple of years. Madge only realised that Dad had lied and that Mum had loved her when we met by chance, on the school bus. She was fifteen years old.

  I’d always believed Mum and Mum had managed to get me back when I was five.

  By the time Madge and I had realised who we were, she was desperate to see Mum.

  ‘I need to sit down,’ was all Mum said when I told her. When she had her breath again, she asked me what Madge was like.

  ‘She’s lovely, Mum, and she really wants to see you.’

  Madge came around two days later, fell in Mum’s arms and sobbed and sobbed. They fell in love all over again.

  Mum was so happy, so happy. She cried but told me these were tears of joy, not of sadness.

  ‘I hate Dad for what he did to us,’ Madge said.

  ‘Let’s put that behind us now, OK?’ Mum said. ‘I just want to be part of your life again.’

  Steph was very different. Madge just wanted to be loved but Steph was bitter, was really hurting and still blamed Mum. And she was jealous that I’d been with Mum longer. She was really hurt and confused. Dad had remarried and Steph and Madge were both living with him.

  We were all angry kids. Dad had had the audacity to do something like this, but wasn’t man enough to admit his mistakes. But once Madge knew, I think he had no choice but to come and see Mum. Madge told me what she’d told Dad: ‘Mum’s a lovely lady; I really hate you for what you’ve done. You destroyed Mum.’

  I was just home from school, setting my homework up when there was a knock at the door. I peered out of my window.

  ‘Mum, there’s a strange man at the door.’ I watched as he walked around to the back door that opened into the kitchen where Mum was. He knocked. Mum opened it and froze.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to say sorry.’

  ‘You despicable, lying bastard. A sledgehammer to my head would have been nicer. But take my kids? How very fucking dare you?’

  I thought Mum was going to kill him; I’d never heard her talk with such anger in her voice. Dad couldn’t look Mum in the eye.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Guilt got the better of you?’

  I’d stayed in the hallway listening but, not wanting to be seen, I retreated quietly upstairs to my bedroom. Then I heard their voices getting louder and got worried, so I went back downstairs.

  The way Mum spoke was like nothing I’d ever heard, it was so final and from the heart.

  ‘I’m going to tell you exactly what I think of you.’

  I think there was something wrong with Dad; I could tell it wasn’t sinking in. When he was about to go, he saw me and took a £10 note out of his pocket.

  ‘There you are, kiddo, buy yourself something nice.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said, turned and walked away.

  I hugged Mum for a long time after that. Then she sat at the kitchen table, dinner half-prepared and forgotten. She lit a cigarette. Her hand trembled as she smoked. To see someone so tough – my rock – looking so scared and hurt, was frightening for me. We stayed together, talking and hugging into the night. That bastard had ruined a happy family and, I am sure, had truly broken Mum’s heart and shortened her life. She left this earth earlier than she would have done if it weren’t for him.

  All I could think when I saw the social worker on my doorstep was, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ But by the time we were talking, tea in hand, I thought Mary was all right. It was more like a friendly chat than a Visit with a capital ‘V.

  ‘What help can I offer you?’ she said.

  ‘Look, I’m fine. It’s been difficult, but I’m getting on top of things again. The kids are happy. We’re OK.’

  I’d let the wall go up, and I just told Mary what I thought she wanted to hear. As long as she didn’t know about the speed and all that came with it, she’d go away and I could carry on as normal. All they thought was that I’d let the house and kids get messy through grief, not through grief combined with drug abuse, which was now coming to dominate my life.

  ‘Tina. You’ve been through hell and back. I’d understand if you needed help. No one’s going to punish you for that, you understand? I’m here to help.’

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  Mary left. I made promises. I didn’t keep them. The kids lived their lives while I watched, like a bystander. I loved them, loved them like any mum would, but I was paralysed into inaction by my mum’s death. Something in me had died with her and the speed kept that piece of me that wanted to live down and out.

  Then a court summons arrived in the post. I didn’t know what it was about. And I really didn’t understand when a middle-aged man, Gareth, introduced himself to me outside the court as the appointed guardian for my kids. I was even more confused when I was in the courtroom, my speed still in a wrap in my pocket, when the woman judge started to read out findings from social services. As I listened I knew it was true – the mess, the lack of interaction with my kids who went to school in dirty clothes and exhibited unusual behaviour, crying for no reason, failing to engage with other children. There were so many findings; I wondered how on earth I was going to get out of this.

  Then the judge used the words ‘neglect’ and ‘abuse’.

  ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ I said, loudly, to anyone and everyone. ‘I never hurt my kids. What is she talking about?’

  Of course, it being a courtroom, I had to button it or risk being in contempt and finding myself removed, or worse. I assumed they thought I was beating up the kids.

  The guardian told me he was going to visit. ‘Abuse does not mean you’ve hit your children,’ he said. ‘There are many types of abuse and neglect; some more serious than others in the eyes of the court.’ He handed me a thin file. ‘The judge has told you what you need to do,’ he said, tapping it. ‘You have to meet this criteria. As long as you work with us and be honest with us then well get there.’

  I went to the library and found some books about child abuse and soon understood that my children were living in fear and that the risk of them being harmed by my mismanaged existence was real.

  First thing to do was to clean the house up but my attempt was half-hearted. More like try and hide the mess, at least the worst of it. I still didn’t grasp how serious my situation was. Substance abuse stops you seeing what’s right in front of your eyes. There were a number of different social workers who visited and, on the first occasion after the court appearance, it w
as a tough old boot who came through the door, making me nervous as she paced around the house. She stopped at the kids’ bedroom and whisked back the neatly placed duvet. There was no sheet underneath.

  ‘I was getting around to that. Just going to put them in the wash.’

  They weren’t expecting miracles but the house needed to be adequate at least. As far as cleanliness went, I’d make an effort to clear all the rubbish when I knew social services were about to visit. I did the washing. Sprayed a bit of Febreze, hoovered, skirting the middle. Each time they said they could see I’d made an effort. After they went away, I left it again until the next visit. I didn’t see the drugs so much as an issue as a fact of life. They were at the centre of my universe and everything in my life was gradually being pushed away over time. As far as I was concerned, as long as I took them out of sight and never let dealers into the house, then that was OK. No one ever caught me and I never left the drugs lying around or hidden anywhere. They were always kept on me, in my pocket. No one ever knew.

  My dad’s wife, my step-mum, took her kids to the same school. The teachers mentioned to her that Sophie and Emily were often late and Sophie had come in without any socks on. When the teacher asked Sophie she said, ‘Mummy hasn’t got any clean ones.’

  I was still in touch with Dad. Despite everything, he was my dad and it was a small town, so it was just easier. Dad knew I had problems but was the type to leave me to it. He would say he didn’t like to interfere, but this was just another way of saying he was too lazy to bother to help me. My step-mum, Julie, had her head screwed on, though, and was a real fixer. She’d made Dad kick the gambling and get his life back on track. She offered me help, which I refused, but this time the teachers called social services and I was called back to court, where Mary went from being my friend (of course, she’d never been my friend, she’d simply been doing her job) to my enemy as she outlined the case against me. She did try to defend me, talking about all the efforts I’d made at home.