Belle has begun a dance class on a Thursday evening, and she’s got a really nice group of girlfriends who she brings home most evenings to spend time with in her room. Both the boys seem happy, and Art’s teacher Miss Gilmore is now doing one-to-one work with him twice a week, which she believes is massively helping him settle in better at school.
What Jamie and I know we need to sort is Ruby and Will. The situation is still shit; they’re living with us, which is great, but haven’t seen their mum since her outburst, which is only making things weirder for them.
Jamie has promised to organise a meeting with the school in the next week so we can see how they’re getting on and whether what’s happening with Laura is having any impact on them at all.
I can’t help feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better but I have to remember the life Jamie has given my babies – and his children are just as precious to me. It’s our duty to ensure that they grow into well-adjusted adults who don’t have to recover from their childhoods. The five of them need us to be totally dedicated to giving them all the love they need, and when we need a bit of back-up, we’ll have the dog to help.
Friday
I finished slightly earlier today as the café was dead and I wanted to pop to the pet shop and grab some bits for the new addition. That was hell. I’d have rather sold a kidney than go through the stress of figuring out what to buy the puppy in terms of food, teething toys, leads, collars, beds and bowls. Jeeeez, I think planning for a newborn baby would have been less stressful. I also decided on the way to call Mark (because I clearly love creating shitloads of stress for myself).
I thought I could try to see what he wants to do about seeing the kids now that it’s been over a month since we’ve been here and he has made no attempt to contact them. It’s the beginning of May, they have a week’s half term soon and I did think he may want to come and spend some time with them. He answered the phone and as much as I wanted to bite my handset in anger when I first heard him answer with the word ‘Yes?’ in his irritated, arrogant tone, I stayed calm and asked him if he was planning on contacting his children any time soon. I then received a barrage of abuse.
The entire call turned into a shitshow about nothing else but the money from the sale of the house. He was obviously still furious about having to give me more than he’d planned. He made no mention of the kids or how they were getting on with their new lives down here, and all he did was shout about me being a money-grabbing bitch.
I kept trying to interrupt, to explain that this money was for his children, to buy them a home and one day they would eventually inherit it – but I couldn’t get a word in. He ended the call after screaming, ‘You are an evil slut and I fucking hate you for what you’ve done to me!’
Every single part of my body trembled with a rage that left me feeling freezing cold. I was overcome with a physical shake and if someone had been standing next to me, they would have easily seen it. Everything in me wanted to call him back and remind him what an absolute bastard he was. I wanted to tell him how he had destroyed his children’s worlds with his actions, but then I remembered my mantra – ‘Bite your tongue, Jo’ – and so I did. I bit my tongue and decided that would be the last time I would contact him; I was done. From now on, I would solely focus on my children. Instead of calling him back and attempting to scream the truth, I composed an email to my solicitor, with my fingers still shaking, my heart pumping and my left leg still trembling with adrenaline, asking her what we could do to speed up the sale of the house.
I cut the pet shop visit short and called Jen, who was at home. I started to tell her about Mark, and how shit I felt, and she invited me over. When I arrived, she poured us both a glass of Prosecco even though it wasn’t even 2pm! But we sat in her garden and put the world to rights for an hour before the school run. Just that sixty minutes of sipping a small glass of fizz, nibbling on olives and laughing until my sides hurt did me the world of good. Having friends that are ‘just there’, I’ve decided, is the most amazing feeling in the world.
On a happier note, the kids think Jamie and I are the best parents ever. He came home early and we collected the dog tonight after school. The kids repeatedly asked what we were doing and where we were going, and when we walked into the breeder’s house, they still didn’t get it even when they saw a dog bed full of puppies! When I told them we had bought one, they began screaming and jumping up and down. We picked up our chunky twelve-week-old boy and as we were driving home in our trusty ‘big family’ people carrier, picking names, I looked in the mirror at Belle’s reaction and saw that she was crying and she had her head buried into our new dog and it made my heart hurt for the love I knew she had to give it.
We decided on the name Stanley. Stanley the Golden Lab. Who not only got car sick on the way home but also took a shit, which smelt like death in his new blanket. Brilliant.
Sunday
Whose idea was it to buy a fucking dog?
I genuinely haven’t had more than three hours’ sleep. All night. I searched everywhere and spoke to the vet about how best to settle him. I repeatedly see ‘DO NOT let the puppy sleep in your bed as it will not ever be able to self-settle’. DO NOT go into him when he whimpers and set your alarm every 2–3 hours so he can go to the toilet. The best way is to put him in a crate with something that smells of his mum, a hot water bottle for warmth like he got off mum, a blanket over the crate so it’s like a den. We brought home a T-shirt that the breeder gave us that smells of mum and popped him in his crate, we snuggled a hot water bottle under his blanket. He whimpered the minute I shut the kitchen door at 11pm … within half an hour that whimper turned into a howl that sounds like it’s being tortured. I re-googled, reading that this would last ‘a few nights’ until they got used to it but of course I had the puppy mum guilt that he was frightened, lonely, panicking and scared and by 4am when I was going down to let him out for his third toilet break Jamie woke and asked if I thought we should call the breeder and check whether this was ‘normal’. He then went on to tell me he doesn’t ever remember his dogs crying like this when he was a kid, but as I found out this morning our kids won’t remember him crying because none of them heard a sound and they all had a blissful night’s sleep. Anyway I threw the towel in at 5am and carried him up to bed with me. As Jamie started whispering how I was ‘making a rod for my own back’ and ‘creating a monster’ Stanley fell into a deep sleep and as I snuggled into him and sniffed his little warm paws that smelt of biscuits and saw how much he just wanted to be loved I decided this, for now, was an OK mistake to make – and we all get a better night’s sleep.
Other than that, we’ve had a great weekend, all of us, together.
Jen and the kids came over this afternoon. She rocked up with big bags of sweets and crisps for the kids and a bottle of Prosecco for us. It was quite windy, but the sun was still out, so the kids played in the garden and we sat in the conservatory. We managed to finish the bottle of Prosecco and talk the afternoon away again.
After she left, I sat there for an hour after watching Jamie and the kids play while the spag Bol stewed in the slow cooker and I thought back to how I’d got to this point in my life …
It’s funny how you just ‘think’ you’re happy. You believe you are, you get married, have kids and you just plod along, thinking this is the way everyone else feels – you have no concerns or worries until one day the whole thing crashes around you and your marriage falls apart.
When I think back to that day with Mark, I still get a moment where I physically feel those feelings, that chest-crushing anxiety, and the bile rises in my throat. When people tell you about something and use the term ‘my head spins’ and you’re never sure what they mean, until you feel it – because your head actually does spin, out of control like when you were a kid and your friends push you on a roundabout and they won’t stop, or when you’ve had too much to drink and you’re trying to go to sleep – it’s that exact feeling, where everything
is spinning and you have no control over how to make it stop.
During a marriage you believe is happy, you watch a programme where you see someone say they’re ‘heartbroken’ and you feel sorry for them, you think you understand how that might feel, but you don’t – not until it happens to you – only then do you really understand. Because your heart actually feels broken. Like it’s been hit with a bat or shot at with a gun. It is a physical ache that hurts, a genuine pain, that doesn’t go away with paracetamol or a bandage …
And for a while you don’t ever think those feelings will fade and you don’t think you will ever be happy again, not like you were with that person who’s now caused you such devastation.
Only you do heal, you do get better, and some days you don’t even see that’s what is happening. You just wake one morning and realise you feel better than the day before, or you cook your ex-husband’s favourite dinner and only realise when you bite into the last mouthful, and all the things that once felt like they were killing you slowly start to disappear and normality resumes.
You find your smile returning when you see your kids laughing together – and that’s not because ‘he’ is missing from the family unit; it’s because you realise how lucky YOU are … and then you eventually go on to meet someone who treats you so much better. They make you see that you actually weren’t happy like you thought you once were – you were coasting, plodding, because you didn’t know any better. And now they’re here, to show you actual happiness, and it blows your mind at what you thought happiness was, once upon a time.
And although you still get pangs of those horrid feelings you once felt, just for a second or two, when you think back to ‘that time’ it makes you grateful. It makes you realise what you have right now is even more special, that this is actual happiness – this is really what it feels like.
I imagine most people live their lives believing they have it all, thinking they’re truly happy, maybe with their first love – probably looking at step-families like mine and feeling thankful they’re not us. They watch our kids on the beach trying to fathom out who belongs to who and when they hear Jamie or I being shouted at by one of the kids by our Christian names they nod to themselves, a nod to confirm they were right, that they’re not ‘all ours together’, but actually I’ve come to realise that I’m the lucky one because I’ve been given a second chance, and although two of the children I now help raise didn’t grow inside of me or call me Mum, it doesn’t matter, because I’ve found out what true happiness is and that makes me work so much harder on getting it right now, for Jamie, our babies, and for me, together.
CHAPTER TEN
The Truth About Laura
Monday
Jamie arranged to work from home today so he could take Will and Ruby to school this morning. And Ruby lost it again. He couldn’t prise her off him and when the teaching assistants arrived and attempted to do a two-person restraint, she ended up getting herself in such a state she was sick. The times I had left her it had made my heart hurt but this was him, watching his baby girl, and I could just feel his pain when he relayed what had happened back to me. Was it worse today because they were going back to their other home after school tonight? Of course we didn’t want them to but we knew we needed to be reasonable and Laura had called Jamie on Saturday to apologise for how she’s been, saying she has stuff going on and her mental health hasn’t been the greatest. I was shopping when she called him so I didn’t hear the conversation, I asked him if he had spoken to her about her dad telling us they’re practically raising the kids, he hadn’t. I was annoyed, but I have to remember this is all new to him, he hates conflict and ultimately he just wants everyone to get on and for her to be OK for Will and Ruby so I think he’s just hoping for the best.
The teacher had asked if she could speak to Jamie alone when he arrived and she explained that Ruby had not been herself for some time. She had also checked in with pastoral care last Friday and been told that Will seemed to be withdrawing at school more and more. He no longer participated in class discussions, he looked like he was a million miles away all the time and had no interest in his friendship group at lunch and break-times, choosing instead to play keepy-uppys with a football on the field, alone.
Apparently, they had tried to contact Laura but never got a response to the emails sent or voicemails they had left and Jamie asked why he hadn’t been contacted. They then told him that Laura had requested to remove him off the database, which really pissed me off because when I started my kids at their new schools, I was told Mark’s details HAD to be on their systems as he had parental responsibility – even though he was an absent father who was incapable of answering his phone and lived a six-hour drive away.
Jamie was devastated and when he tried to call Laura, her phone rang out so he called her dad instead. Pete sounded done in and although initially he was quite defensive, saying that the kids were fine, and everything was ‘in hand’ now that they were going back to them, once Jamie explained that the school had raised concerns, Pete told him what was really going on.
Even before they had moved in with us, Laura wasn’t seeing the children much, at all. Pete believed she had begun a new relationship, which had taken priority over Will and Ruby. He said both his wife and him, and Laura’s sister had all tried to speak to her, offer to pay privately for her to get help but she refused, either becoming aggressive with them in her response, or absent. Maybe her mental health issues were stopping her from seeing things clearly, but either way, it was evident from just listening to him that he was upset and unsure how to make things better. I thought how confused the kids must be in all this. I could also tell Jamie had no clue how to change things, or make things better for them, but we agreed that we needed some professional help and first thing tomorrow we are going to take steps to put this whole situation straight.
Tuesday
Jamie and I had managed to get an urgent appointment at the solicitors this afternoon.
I wasn’t sure who we were seeing; Jamie had called and made the appointment and they had got us in really quickly.
We were greeted by a tall man, mid-forties, with a golden tan and sandy-coloured hair, which flopped to one side. He was wearing a Hugo Boss navy suit; the leg fit was slim, which made him look taller, and he had pointed, laced-up leather shoes on which were two tones of brown, again expensive. He greeted us with ‘Mr and Mrs Adams, my name is David Metcalfe.’
Lou’s husband.
Mr and Mrs Adams – this is the first time anyone’s ever called us that, I mean we’re not – we aren’t even engaged, let alone married – but neither of us corrected him. ‘Jo Adams.’ It was the first time I practised that name in my head. I quite liked it.
David seemed like a genuinely decent guy and he certainly knew his stuff – how the family court process worked and what we could and couldn’t expect if we decided to proceed. He asked what we wanted from this – did we want the reassurance from professional reports that the children’s needs were being met when they were in Laura’s care? Did we want the court to look into Laura’s medical records, have a psychiatric report done, alcohol and drug tests? Or did we want them to reside with us full-time?
All of the options he mentioned were expensive and took time and if the outcome was that Laura was ultimately deemed a fit mother, it would be a total waste of time as we would continue to get the access we get now and we’d also be tens of thousands of pounds down, maybe more.
My head was blown. I didn’t know what to do but ultimately I knew things weren’t OK, Jamie knew things weren’t OK, the school knew things weren’t OK, Laura’s parents definitely knew things weren’t OK, yet I had no idea what Laura was thinking.
David suggested mediation between Laura and Jamie, which Jamie immediately ruled out. They’d tried this before, right at the beginning of their relationship breakdown, and Laura was incapable of speaking with Jamie and it would just be a waste of time and money.
We went away to think a
bout things and realised we didn’t really know what to do next for the best. What I did know is we both had real concerns about what was going on with the kids when they were in Laura’s care … if they were in her care and not her parents’, because that looked to be more and more what was really going on.
We went for a walk down to the harbour before we collected the kids, we spoke about the meeting with David and I asked Jamie what he wanted to do. He didn’t know. He replied saying, ‘I just want her to get better and be a mum to the kids.’ That is genuinely all he wanted. In the time I had known him, he didn’t argue or fight with anyone, he hated drama or conflict, but more than anything he just wanted his kids to grow up not having to recover from their childhoods.
Despite the situation, the walk we had was lovely, just the two of us strolling about where we now lived, taking it all in, holding hands and telling each other we would be OK.
Wednesday
I ran the café alone today for the first time after Lou texted me to say she couldn’t come in as she was feeling unwell. I was slightly nervous about the responsibility, but also really happy that she trusts me to do it already. It was quite busy today, mostly with regulars and I coped OK. I know more of the mums from school now, too, which has helped. I never walk into the playground with that flustered feeling I got when I lived in Canterbury. The mums here seem far less judgemental, and are friendlier and chatty.
My solicitor also called to tell me there has been an offer on the house for full asking price. She told me the viewers had fallen in love with the decor of the house and the ‘family feel’ of the property because of the way it had been decorated and cared for, perfect for raising their young children, they said, and it made my tummy do a little flip. I remembered back to how I had once thought that too after I had spent so long making it ‘ours’. I thought back to all the work I had done making that house into a home and I just hoped that this time it got the happy family it deserved.
A Different Kind of Happy Page 8
