The first time, I came home early and saw what couldn’t be unseen - then arguing in the lane, he’s sat in the pushchair…
I grab my sunshine boy, two years old, and put him in his carseat. Two weeks before this, in his childhood innocence, asking aloud why his mother was being shouted at. Driving, driving. Can’t go home. I end up at my grandmother’s house drinking sugary tea and crying my heart out.
The second day, I go to work, a new class of new mamas preparing for birth. I come back to my mother’s to find him ill with shock, he’s thrown up all over himself. “My twowsers…” upset he’s wet his pyjamas with vomit. How to be a mother when your heart is breaking. It breaks twice, you see. Once for you and once for them. When all he’s ever known is home. Sleeping with your baby boy in your childhood bed. Barrage of messages to your phone, began sweet and now turn scary.
Pale and wan, now with energy to just focus on this little one. It was always you two anyway. Packing up the house in two hour slots, you cannot leave him longer. On my back as we go up in the lift to file the papers. Hiding under the desk as we try to find a home. We stay local, the park and softplay, but it’s embarrassing. They all see me and they know.
Then – too soon, too soon, you know it’s too soon, but he’s so convincing. So charming, so perfect. Fast forward 18 months and you’ve locked yourself in the bathroom having a panic attack in the shower. You are not even afforded privacy as he breaks the lock, the last of your boundaries decimated. You want to stay, to find a place.
The baby. The last time the baby will sleep with both her parents. How to be a mother when your heart is breaking. It breaks twice, you see. Once for you and once for them. She only made it to eight weeks of age unbroken. And now I am scared. I pack frantically.
We go early from school and drive, we hide. They gave him lego to build and I was hungry and the baby wailed. I’m coming home where are you where are you where are you please don’t leave me I love you this isn’t about you you’ve brought this shame on yourself when can I see my daughter you are keeping me from my daughter--- then silence.
I make pasta, go shopping. Feel angry, then not. Feel tired, feel hot. The first few days my heart beats a paranoid tattoo when we go out, my voice desperate and shrill, to keep my babies close to me. Feeling the weight of a thousand eyes searching for me.
