And I felt like that right up until the moment when, as the prison officers got him and began to take him away, he turned and spat out his birthday message to me: ‘You little bastard – I’ll kill you.’ I was in a daze as he was led away: the guilt and the self-blame had evaporated, so you’d think I would feel relief or satisfaction, or as if a great burden had been lifted off me. But I didn’t: I believed Dad when he said he would kill me.
It took three years inside before Dad finally admitted what he’d done to me. And somewhere along the way he also got religion and claimed to be a changed man. It took a long time for my fear of him to subside. Even when Dad found God and understood what he’d done to me I still didn’t feel safe from him. As long as I could remember I’d pleaded with him not to hurt me and he had carried right on and abused me. Even when someone had stopped him they’d punished me by locking me up in Care. So how much faith was I ever going to have in either my father or the system itself?
But for the moment I had to get on with my life. I was 16, out of Care and free, for the foreseeable future, of Dad. It was time to make up for lost years and missed education. I went to college.
Gateshead College had been in existence (in one form or another) since the First World War. In 1955, Prince Philip cut the ribbon on the new, purpose-built campus premises on Durham Road. By the time I arrived it had grown into a busy and exciting place with four major departments and more than 200 staff. I was accepted to study for the National Nursery Examination Board (NNEB) exams. The NNEB diploma is the key to getting a job working with children – and I knew that was what I wanted to do. So every day I got on the bus from near Mum’s flat to spend all day studying at the college.
And I loved it. I loved the subject, the theory, the practical work that went with it: I loved everything about it. But was I happy? Now that’s a whole other question.
I’ve often looked back to that time and asked myself what went wrong. Generally I come up with a one-word answer: Steve. Steve isn’t his real name. Since he was largely the innocent party in what happened I don’t think it’s fair to identify him. I haven’t seen him for more than 15 years – who knows, he might be happily married by now, with a good job, a family and a decent life. I certainly hope so.
Despite my success at college, my personal life was something of a mess. I was 16 and thought I knew everything the world had to throw at me. As a result, I was wild and out of control more nights than I care to remember. I’d grown up too fast and too hard. I’d been used to the attentions of older men – whether welcome or not – and if I felt ill at ease with myself well, that could usually be solved by a few nights out on the town with whoever was interested in buying the drinks.
My poor mum despaired. I’d only just been returned to her after what seemed like a lifetime’s separation – first, through the abuse and then from being in Care. And now here was her precious little girl, the daughter to whom she had been so close, staying out till all hours of the night in the company of God knows who. Did she argue with me? You bet she did. Did I listen? Of course not.
And so it was deeply ironic that it was through Mum that I met Steve.
Steve was older than me – 10 years older, in fact. He was an engineer working in a local small business and I met him through Mum’s boyfriend. I’m not proud to admit that the reason I started seeing him was purely mercenary. He had a car, and to a frustrated, rebellious teenager sharing a small flat with her mum and sister (my brother had left home by this point) he represented hope and something I could otherwise only have dreamed of: freedom.
I didn’t love Steve; that much is certain. And he didn’t love me. We got along well, had a good laugh and, like I say, he had a car. But we didn’t love each other.
And then I discovered I was pregnant.
I didn’t tell Steve, even though I knew he was the father. I may not have loved him but I’d definitely been faithful to him. By then I was 17 years old, coming up to my exams and with the possibility of a normal life ahead of me for the first time since I was a toddler – and I was pregnant. My head was spinning; I was in a complete whirl. Who could I talk to? Where could I go? What should I do?
I plucked up courage from somewhere and talked to Mum. It wasn’t an easy conversation and we were both torn in two. I loved the idea of children and knew I would be good with them – but I was so young and my life had been so messed up. Could I actually cope with becoming a mother?
Now, when I look back at the young girl I was then, facing such an enormous, life-changing decision, it’s sometimes as if I am watching a completely different person. That teenager isn’t me: it’s someone else and I have no control – no responsibility – for the choices she makes. Mum did her best to advise me, but she was as lost in this mess as me. Neither of us knew what to do for the best, so we sort of drifted into a decision. And that decision was to terminate the life growing inside of me.
Mum found a private clinic that would do the operation. A week later she and I drove to Leeds together. I don’t know why she chose Leeds, but that’s where we went. We drove in silence, sitting miserably in Mum’s car as the miles slowly slipped by until we came to the clinic that would give me an abortion. It cost £500: we had to pay upfront. I know the people who ran this place weren’t bad people; I know they weren’t intentionally unkind. But it was an awful, hopeless place, a place where you went when you were desperate; a place that, by the time you left, you’d never be the same again.
I was 16 weeks pregnant and I really didn’t want to get rid of my baby. I wanted to keep it and hold it and love it. Deep down I knew that. But I put on that gown and I walked from the ward to the theatre and lay down on the trolley while they put me to sleep. The nurses told me that when I woke up I would feel like I wanted to wee, but they said that was just a feeling – I wouldn’t be able to wee; I would just feel like I needed to. They were right, of course: it was their job and they knew how it worked. I did feel like I wanted to wee, but I also felt so much more.
I don’t know if I was supposed to ask and I’m pretty certain no one was supposed to tell me, but I know that if I hadn’t had that abortion I would have a daughter. And today she would be 17 – the same age I was when I went to that clinic with my mum.
Mum and I drove back to Gateshead the day after the abortion. We didn’t say a lot on the way home. I knew, without her ever telling me, that she was as devastated as I was. I stayed on at college and I passed my exams. I still went out – though I was generally quieter and less wild when I did. I stopped seeing Steve, though. I asked Mum to tell him about me being pregnant but we decided that instead of saying I’d had an abortion we’d say I’d miscarried. It seemed a kinder way to let him down: why should he go through the torment that washed through me from the moment I woke up till the moment I fell asleep? Either way, though, there was no future for Steve and me.
Once I’d got my NNEB qualification I could look for work as a nursery nurse. It didn’t seem hard to find and soon I was taken in by a primary school just down the road in Gateshead, helping with the four- and five-year-old children who were starting in its reception class.
From the very first day I loved it. I loved the job, the work, the school and – above all – the bairns. I’d just got rid of a child and there I was, surrounded by them. They were so young and so innocent, and so many of them needed so much love and attention that some of the pain that gnawed away inside me began to ease off. It felt good – and it was wonderfully easy – to lose myself in the needs of others. Wiping a nose here, tying a shoelace there; above all, holding their little bodies when they had hurt themselves and were sobbing their hearts