With Rodney it was completely the opposite and I liked that protectiveness to start with. I felt pleased that he loved me enough to be jealous of other men, instead of being happy to sell me to anyone with the price of a few drinks in their pocket, as Dad had been. Despite my low self-esteem I had always been good at putting on a brave face to the outside world and was always happy to chat to other people. Although I was pleased that Rodney was protecting me, I began to get confused when he was angry with me for talking to other men in normal social situations like pubs or shops. If I even put on a bit of lipstick when we went out together he would immediately accuse me of having an affair and would turn it into a big argument.
‘I saw the way you were looking at him,’ he would shout once he got me back home. ‘You were leading him on, flirting with him.’
‘I was just talking to him,’ I would protest, completely unable to understand what was going wrong between us and why he didn’t trust me.
As time went by it started to make me mad because I had never given him the slightest reason to think that I would ever be unfaithful to him. I hated people who messed around like that because I had seen how unhappy Mum and Dad had made each other. Although it was intimidating sometimes, his possessiveness did in a way make me feel secure, but this self-confidence that I was beginning to build was badly shaken one day when I discovered that Rodney had slept with the babysitter, Tina.
Tina and I were friends and used to take turns babysitting for one another. I first felt uneasy about her relationship with Rodney one evening when we went round to collect Brendan, and Rodney commented on some semi-naked photos of her that were stuck on her fridge door. They had quite an intimate giggle about them and a few days later Rodney picked a fight with me and stormed out, saying he was going to stay at his caravan.
Walking past Tina’s house a bit later I spotted his truck outside, which was odd because I’d talked to her earlier and she’d told me she was going out for the evening.
I let myself into the house as I normally would when I was picking up Brendan, and there were Rodney and the children sitting round the table having a meal. The kids were all in a state of undress, having had a bath, so it was obvious they were planning on staying over. Rodney and Tina made no secret of the fact that they were having a fling and I felt doubly betrayed, by my man and by my friend.
This was exactly the sort of pain that I had been hoping Rodney would protect me from and it brought back a million memories of my time with Dad, reminding me of all the reasons why I hated the way he and his friends behaved so casually about sex. We had an incredible row and from then on I kept Brendan with me nearly all the time rather than hiring another babysitter and putting temptation in Rodney’s way. There was never any question that I would take him back–I needed him too much–but once someone has betrayed you, however, you can never feel quite the same about them again. Trust in a relationship, I believe, has to be an absolute; you either have it or you don’t; there are no degrees in between.
In my heart I knew he had been unfaithful to me at other times too and I realised that since I didn’t have the courage to leave him I’d have to put up with it and try to ignore it. He didn’t even seem terribly concerned about hiding it from me after that. Perhaps he felt it was his right as a man. It certainly wasn’t a subject he was prepared to discuss with me. All the confidence that had been building inside me, when I thought I had found a knight in shining armour to protect me, was draining away, leaving me feeling vulnerable and worthless all over again.
Despite whatever he might be up to himself when the opportunity arose, Rodney wanted to have me somewhere where he could keep an eye on me every hour of every day, and he would become more and more possessive if he thought I was even passing the time of day with any other men. Although I was still mistaking his behaviour for a kind of love it was making life difficult, making me feel stifled and restricted, as though I had no more freedom than I’d had when I was in Dad’s power.
One day I had been out shopping for hours and when I came back I discovered that my period had started and I’d forgotten to buy any tampons. Rodney was home by then, outside in the garden with a couple of mates.
‘I’m just nipping up the shop,’ I told him as I headed back to the car, not wanting to go into any more detail in front of the other men.
‘No, you’re not,’ he replied. ‘You’ve been out all day.’
‘You can’t tell me I can’t go up the shop,’ I said. ‘I need to go.’
‘You’re seeing somebody,’ he shouted. ‘You’re not going out again. What could you need when you’ve already been out shopping all day?’
‘I need some fucking Tampax,’ I screamed at the top of my voice, no longer caring about being discreet, wanting to embarrass him in front of his mates to make him realise he was being stupid.
But he still wasn’t having it and told one of his mates to go down the shop and buy them for me, which made the whole thing even more embarrassing for all of us.
‘Get back in that house!’ he ordered me.
There were days when I didn’t feel like going to work with Rodney, just wanting to stay at home and look after Brendan rather than sitting around in the cab of the van in some unknown part of town, but he was always adamant.
‘You’re not staying here on your own,’ he said. ‘What are you planning to do anyway?’
‘I could take Brendan out in the pushchair for a walk,’ I said, fed up with being bossed about all the time, needing some space away from Rodney and his mates. ‘It’ll be nice for him to get some fresh air.’
‘No, you’re bloody not! I’m taking the pushchair with me,’ Rodney said, snatching it up before I could get to it. ‘So if you don’t come with me you’ll be staying in all day.’
That made me cross. I might have liked Rodney’s possessiveness at the beginning, but this was stupid and felt more like bullying than love, more the way I remembered Dad behaving, bringing a thousand ugly memories to the surface. I started to shout back at him, genuinely angry, not for a moment expecting what was to come next. Rodney was used to total obedience from all of us. He was only willing to put up with my back-chat for so long before his temper snapped. I pushed it too far this time and suddenly he punched me in the face with all his strength in order to put a definite end to the conversation. I didn’t see the blow coming and for a moment I was too shocked to even register the pain as I hurtled backwards off my feet.
In that split second everything changed and I became a victim once more. Everything good that he had done for me was shattered with that one blow. There was nowhere I could be safe, not even my home, and no one I could feel safe with. I lay there feeling betrayed and destroyed, cowering in case he tried to hit me again, too shocked to respond in any way.
Leaving me lying there he stormed out of the flat to work, carrying the pushchair with him, no doubt feeling that he had succeeded in making his point.
I don’t know why I was so shocked because I had yet to meet a man who didn’t end up wanting to hit me, but I remember feeling suddenly trapped and scared as I lay there waiting for the pain to subside and trying to clear my thoughts. All the things that had become good about my life were due to Rodney being there, but this punch immediately made them worthless. The moment I knew that he was capable of hitting me so violently, using all his strength, I should have walked away from the relationship, but if I did that I would have lost the whole family that I had just found. I would have taken Brendan with me, but I wouldn’t have had any claim on Fred, Roddo and Billy. I would have been deserting them just as surely as Mum had deserted us.
There was also a part of me that believed I deserved to be hit. All my life Dad had been telling me how worthless and unlovable I was and how he would be the only one who would ever love me and a large part of me believed him. The way I had been treated by the dozens of clients I had serviced for him on the streets of Norwich had reinforced everything he ever told me about myself.