That morning, the moment I was alone behind my own front door I swallowed the tablets in greedy mouthfuls, washing them down with swigs of cheap wine. Then I sat down and waited for them to take effect, relieved to have finally made the decision to give up the struggle and to go on to somewhere peaceful. I was in a confused and emotional state already and once the tablets started working their way into my system reality became even more blurred, the world around me drifting into a sort of comfortable haze, a bit like a waking dream. The pain was fading just as I had hoped and life began to float away from me.
I could hear the phone ringing but I couldn’t make any logical decision as to whether to answer it or not. In the end my hand just picked it up, like a robot, wanting to stop it from making such an irritating noise, and I put it to my ear. The deep voice on the other end was unfamiliar and I had to struggle to take in the words, forcing my brain to try to make sense of them and my mouth to respond in the way that the caller might expect. It sounded like a kind voice, someone who was trying to make a connection with me. It was probably only a few seconds but it seemed like an age before I realised it was a man called Rodney I had met a few days before, who had asked for my number. There must have been something comfortable and reassuring about him that had struck a chord because I had given him the number without hesitating, which I would never normally do with a stranger.
Who knows why he chose that moment to make a call? Maybe there was some higher force directing his actions, someone or something that wanted to stop me from doing what I was doing, or maybe it was just a lucky break.
I forced my brain to focus on what he was saying. It sounded as though he was asking me out. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him I couldn’t accept the invitation because I would be dead in a few hours’ time. I don’t know if the words that were coming out of my mouth were even making sense by that stage as I strained to make normal conversation.
The call from Rodney gave me a cause to hope, a tiny straw to cling to. It sounded to my desperate ears as if he was my knight in shining armour. When you are as near to the edge of the precipice as I was, the smallest thing can tip you either way. Just hearing from another human being, knowing that someone out there thought it was worth picking up a phone to call me, that this man was actually wanting to get to know me, made things feel different. By the time I finished the conversation and hung up, my life no longer seemed to be the same terrible black hole of despair it had been just a few minutes earlier. I had even managed to make a date to meet him, but meanwhile the drugs I had put into my system were well into the process of closing my life down.
Now that things weren’t as painful and bleak as they had seemed before his call I no longer wanted to die but my head felt so heavy I wanted more than anything else to lie down and go to sleep. This stranger on the phone had thrown me a lifeline and I grabbed it, battling to stay awake, knowing that once I gave in to sleep that would be the end, that by the time anyone found me I would be long dead. I had to keep going, but the drugs had penetrated deep into my blood by then, relentlessly doing their work of shutting everything down. I had just enough brain cells functioning to know that I couldn’t do this on my own, I had to get help.
I didn’t have the strength left for more than one phone call by then. Not able to think of anyone else to turn to as I struggled to stay awake, I forced myself to concentrate for a few more seconds and dialled my mum’s number. If my brain had been functioning logically I would have tried to think of someone else. This was the woman who had disappeared for most of my childhood and although we were back in contact again, there was no maternal bond between us. But in those moments, as my life was slipping away, I wanted my mum to be the one who was there for me. No way would I ever have wanted to rely on her for support or advice if I had had a choice–but I didn’t. She was my only chance.
As soon as she answered I somehow managed to make her understand what I had done despite the fact that I could hardly get the words out. She made it clear to me that she was pissed off to have me messing up her day but a few minutes after hanging up the phone and lying back on the verge of surrendering to sleep, I heard the distant wail of an ambulance siren responding to her call. I was drifting in and out of consciousness by the time it arrived at my door and fell silent, replaced by the sounds of running feet and banging doors. At that moment I gave in to the tablets, knowing I was no longer alone as I slipped into unconsciousness, only vaguely aware of feeling myself being lifted onto a stretcher.
In hospital, after I had my stomach pumped, a psychiatrist came to talk to me, and then within a day they were releasing me back to my old life and all the problems that came with it. I was terrified that now they would take Brendan into care but to my surprise, Doris gave such a glowing report on my mothering skills that they didn’t even mention it. They said they weren’t surprised I felt suicidal after everything I had been through in my life and that they would look around for more ways to support me.
I’d been given another chance. Now it was up to me to try and make it work.
Chapter Three A Ready-Made Family
When Rodney first spotted me from the window of his van as I pushed Brendan’s pram along the pavement, there was no way either of us could tell anything about the other. He must have seen an eighteen-year-old girl that he fancied and guessed from the fact that I was pushing a baby around that I was a mum, but he wouldn’t have been able to even begin to imagine what the first eighteen years of my life had been like and that beneath the aggressive, cheeky exterior that I showed to the world there lurked a damaged little girl who lacked all self-esteem and any hope for being able to build herself a better future.
Likewise, I just saw a bloke in a van who had asked for my telephone number. I’d seen enough men through the windows of cars since I was twelve to know that they were seldom planning anything pleasant. He didn’t look like anything special. I couldn’t tell then if he was a knight in shining armour sent to save me from my past, or yet another useless man who was only after one thing and would either let me down or treat me badly. To be honest I wouldn’t have given it that much consideration at the time, my thoughts being dominated by my own inner demons and my worries about how I was going to feed and look after my baby.
Rodney was a short, stockily built man, and not bad looking. You wouldn’t say he was exactly handsome but he had a way about him that was attractive to people. My previous experiences of men hadn’t only been with callous abusers like my father and the many punters and kerb-crawlers that he steered me towards over the years. There had been kind men too, like Brian, but in the end even the good ones turned out to be a bit hopeless at managing their lives, and were completely unable to offer me any of the guidance or support I needed as I stumbled to find a way to give my child a decent start in life. These men were as lost as I was, more so in most cases. Nearly everyone I knew had been led into using drink or drugs unwisely as they searched for ways to escape from the grim reality of their lives and themselves. Their addictions usually hastened the collapse of everything else in their lives, blighting their relationships, draining them of money and often making them unemployable. There was no way of telling if this man who had shouted out to me from his van was going to be any different or whether he would just add another level of pain to my life.
After I got out of hospital following the overdose I met Rodney for our first date in a pub in Norwich. He told me he came from a big gypsy family, who were all very close-knit, and that he came as part of a complete package, with a ready-made family of three children. There was Shiralee (more commonly known as ‘Fred’), who was eight, Roddo, five, and Billy, who was two. To complete the family unit Fred also had a Jack Russell terrier called Midge, who had been with her since she was a baby and seldom if ever left her side. I told him about Brendan and about the fact that I had no contact with his father any more. We’d been chatting like this for a while when who should walk in but my Dad, now released from jail.
I introduced them and they got on like a house on fire, Rodney doing his best to make a good impression with the father of the girl he was