Mummy, Make It Stop (21 page)

When Daniel came home, I told him the news. He looked shocked. ‘I hadn’t thought about us having kids yet,’ he said. The trouble was neither of us had thought about it - or about contraception. It hadn’t even occurred to us.

Daniel said he would go with whatever decision I made. I told him I was having the baby - there was no way I’d consider getting rid of it. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll go for it then.’

When we went round to his parents for lunch that Sunday, we told them they were going to be grandparents. They were kind to us, and said they were happy, but we could see they were worried and unsure. Not surprising, given that Daniel and I had only been living together for a few weeks and I was underage.

Mum hadn’t been in contact with me since she threw me out. I knew she sometimes heard how I was doing through Tanya, but we hadn’t spoken. That hurt - I had hoped she would come and see me, and when she didn’t I realised she must be happy without me. But I wanted to tell her I was pregnant, so I plucked up the courage to ring.

‘Mum, its Louise,’ I said. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

‘Right, OK,’ she replied. She sounded uninterested.

‘Are you pleased?’ I asked her.

‘I’m not bothered,’ she said. That really hurt. I decided not to contact her again.

I went round to see Dad and Sandra to tell them. Dad looked worried. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, love?’ he said. ‘You’re so young.’

‘It’ll be fine, Dad,’ I said. ‘I want this baby.’

A scan, a few weeks later, told us it was a girl. We were so excited. Knowing the sex somehow made it real. Daniel grinned at me. ‘What shall we call her?’ We went through all the names we knew. In the end we settled on Emily. We both thought it sounded beautiful.

I sailed through the pregnancy, feeling fit and well and fascinated by my growing bump. When I was five months pregnant, I turned sixteen. We had no money, so Daniel just gave me a card. I didn’t mind. We had never celebrated birthdays when I was younger, because no-one cared. Now at least I knew it was because we had no money.

By the time my due date arrived we had decorated our second bedroom and filled it with everything the baby would need. Our families and friends all gave us baby presents, so we had enough nappies and tiny outfits for the first year.

I waddled around for a week after the due date, before going to hospital for a check-up. ‘You’ve gone long enough,’ the doctor said. ‘We’ll induce the baby in two days’ time.’ It was 1995 and we were in the middle of a long, hot summer. I was tired of feeling over-heated and heavy, so I was relieved that a date had been set.

I went home again and Dad came to see me. He popped over about once a week. He usually stayed for a cup of tea, chatted for a bit and then left. But this time he said, ‘Come on, let’s go and see Sandra and Nan.’ We drove over to his house, where Nan was visiting, and we all got very excited talking about the birth. Then suddenly I felt a sharp pain, followed a little while later by another. I ignored it - I’d had pains before and they hadn’t meant anything. And these weren’t bad ones. But they carried on, and by the time Dad had taken me home, I was pretty sure this was it.

It was the middle of the night when I nudged Daniel awake and said I thought I’d better go to hospital. The trouble was we had no phone. He got dressed and walked to the phone box up the road to call for a taxi, while I got ready.

When we arrived at the maternity unit, they checked me over and said I was nowhere near ready to give birth and could go home again. But I said no, I preferred to wait in the hospital, rather than get a taxi home and then another one back again.

So I waited - and Daniel waited with me. All through the next day. Dad and Sandra came to see me, and so did Rose. She said I looked like a little girl, sitting in my hospital bed, screwing up my face every time a pain came.

My own little girl finally made an appearance in the middle of the next night. At one in the morning, on the day they had planned to induce me, Emily arrived. Small, red-faced and perfect. Daniel and I were both crying as we took turns to cuddle her. He was so happy that he rang his parents and woke them up to say, ‘We’ve had the baby and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

Daniel went home, but, unable to sleep, he soon came back again. The next day Rose arrived, along with Daniel’s grandma and Joanne. They all cooed and fussed over Emily, taking turns to hold her, and I felt so proud.

As for me, I loved her with all of my heart from the moment I saw her. Something deep inside me felt complete, and I was certain that I would never be alone again, with this little soul to look after.

Chapter Sixteen

My baby was eight weeks old before Mum came to see her. She turned up out of the blue, just as I was wheeling Emily out of the house in her pram. I had an appointment to view a council house we were hoping to move to. We were struggling to make ends meet in the privately rented house and the council rent would be lower, which would give us a bit more spare cash.

I was shocked to see Mum. My heart was pounding and I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid she had come to have a go at me. In the end I stuttered that I had to go out. She wasn’t happy and she flounced off in a huff. I was hurt and disappointed. I wanted to show Emily off to her, but Mum barely stopped to look at her and she certainly hadn’t brought a present. I was so disappointed. She’d finally made it to see her granddaughter and she’d taken offence because I had to go out. That was Mum - she had to come first, or there was trouble.

The council house was awful. It was a maisonette on the worst estate in the area. Half the houses had their windows boarded up because they’d been smashed by the local gangs and the front door was up a flight of concrete steps, with no lift. I looked at the housing officer who’d come with me and burst into tears.

They offered us a two-bedroom terraced house next. It was much nicer, so we said yes. We moved in when Emily was three months old, and Daniel’s mum did most of the decorating for us. We made it really pretty.

A couple of months later, Mum showed up again. This time she had brought what she called ‘her’ new car - it was Alan’s new car, actually, a white Rover. I admired it and we had a cup of tea together. Mum held Emily, and by the time she left, we’d called a kind of truce. But I didn’t plan to see much of her.

Daniel and I settled down to family life. He worked hard and we lived very simply, barely ever going out, just staying at home and looking after Emily, happy to have our home and to be together.

Daniel’s sister, Joanne, often came to stay with us at weekends. She was quiet and hard-working - she’d stayed on at school and did three paper rounds. When she was with us she would take Emily out in her pram to the local park, so that I could get a few chores done. She often spent her hard-earned money on little presents and treats for Emily, and I grew very fond of her.

We’d often go shopping together, and Emily and I even went to Butlins for a few days with her and Rose. Daniel couldn’t get off work and Doug didn’t want to come, so we had a girls-only break and I really enjoyed it.

Tanya was still with Pete, and six months after Emily was born, they had a son, Callum. They moved into a council house two streets away from us, so we were able to see a lot of one another and look after the babies together. But while Daniel and I had a very peaceful relationship and never rowed, Tanya and Pete’s was turbulent and violent. They fought a lot. After one huge row, Tanya had stabbed Pete in the arm. The police had been called and he’d been taken to hospital, where he’d needed an operation on the tendon. Tanya wasn’t prosecuted and the rows went on. On many occasions Pete punched holes in doors and Tanya threw cups and plates around.

They both took drugs, which fuelled their violent tempers, and they carried on right through Tanya’s pregnancy. Thankfully, Tanya’s drug-taking didn’t seem to have harmed the baby. But when Callum was only a few months old, Pete got caught burgling a house. He was sent to prison for two years, which left Tanya alone with the baby. Lonely and broke, she started hanging around with a girl called Cheryl, a prostitute who was hooked on cocaine. She had a little boy, and Tanya babysat him while Cheryl was working. Soon Tanya had dumped Pete and was going out with Cheryl’s brother, Gary. He was twenty-three and good-looking, with his dark hair tied back in a ponytail. But he was unemployed and spent most of his time taking drugs.

I worried about Tanya hanging around with Cheryl and Gary, and tried to warn her that they were trouble, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She was so impressed by the money Cheryl made and all the things she could afford - though most of her earnings went on drugs, as far as I could see. I hoped Tanya would break free of them, but she thought she’d found the perfect best friend and boyfriend, and nothing was going to change her mind. She knew I didn’t really like them, and she began avoiding me. I felt really sad - Tanya and I had always been close, we had shared so much, and I really loved her.

A few months later a neighbour told me that Tanya had gone on the game. She’d decided she wanted the kind of money Cheryl was earning, so she’d started work in a massage parlour. I was horrified. Could Tanya really have done that?

I went round to see her and asked her myself. She admitted it was true. ‘What’s the problem?’ she said. ‘I’m fine - it’s good money. Gary looks after all the kids now, while Cheryl and I work.’ She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach as far as her eyes. They looked sad and empty.

There wasn’t much I could say. I was frightened for her. She was still only twenty and her life seemed to be on a downward spiral. But when I argued with her, she told me to get lost.

I walked home feeling sad, and very alone. Mum wasn’t interested and now Tanya didn’t want to know me. I decided to put all my efforts into my new family. I wanted to give Emily everything I didn’t have, and bring her up to have a good life.

The only member of the family I still saw from time to time was Jamie. He had moved in with a girlfriend, Sarah, and they were getting on well. But Jamie had got into a fight outside a nightclub and had been beaten up so badly that he had to have three operations. It took him a long time to recover, and he wasn’t able to go back to his job as a warehouseman. I felt really sorry for him, but I was glad he had Sarah; she stood by him and seemed to really love him.

I loved being a mum, and Emily was an easy baby. But, even so, I was shocked when I found out - just after her first birthday - that I was pregnant again. I’d been on the pill since the birth, but I’d forgotten to take it for a couple of days, and that’s all it took.

I turned eighteen when I was seven months pregnant. It didn’t mean a lot to me. I was legally an adult, but I’d felt grown-up for most of my life. Dad gave me a fiver, as he always did for birthdays, and I got a present from Rose and Doug, but Daniel and I had so little money that he couldn’t buy me anything. He earned £180 a week and our rent was £55. The rest went on food, bills, baby things and to his dad for cut-price groceries and the washing machine he’d helped us buy. We couldn’t even afford to smoke most of the time.

Sophie was born in the spring of 1997. My waters broke at two in the morning and the contractions started almost immediately. Daniel called Rose and asked her to come and look after Emily and then called an ambulance. This time I had an epidural and labour was a lot quicker than the first time. But afterwards the placenta wouldn’t come away, so I was given an injection to help it along. The doctors warned me that it would make me sick, and it did. I was so ill that I couldn’t hold Sophie - Daniel held her and cried with happiness, as I threw up all over the place.

Sophie was a big baby - and gorgeous. We were so proud of her. When I brought her home, Rose came to stay for two weeks, knowing that it would be hard for me to manage a toddler and a baby. She did everything she could to help, taking Emily off so that I could look after Sophie. After the two weeks were up, I had to manage on my own - but Rose came once a week, as she always had, and stayed to put the girls to bed.

At eighteen I was mum to two girls, and when Daniel asked me to marry him, shyly producing a ring he had bought, I was thrilled and said yes straight away. I’d gone from having no future to having one that seemed to be all mapped out. Daniel was steady, dependable and hard-working, when so many of the men around where we lived were out of work, or dealing drugs, or walking out on their girlfriends and kids. I felt sure he would never do that to us.

Daniel worked long hours, while I was left at home looking after the girls and, perhaps inevitably, though I hardly dared to admit it to myself, there were times when I felt a bit bored and trapped. I was so grateful for my little family, but it did sometimes feel as though I’d gone from childhood straight to middle-age.

I didn’t have many friends or much money, so there wasn’t a lot to fill my days. So I was glad to have one good friend up the road. Jody was a couple of years older than me, and she’d had a son just before I had Sophie. We got on well and we spent a lot of time hanging out with our kids. She helped to fill the void left by Tanya.

Jody’s boyfriend, Phil, was nice too. Unlike Daniel, he was often around, and one day he casually asked me if I’d like to try some amphetamines. I wasn’t sure what to say - I’d had no idea he had drugs. I looked over at Jody. ‘Go on,’ she laughed. ‘I take them sometimes - it gives you a buzz. Try it when the girls are in bed.’