grandfather and great-uncle, and she’d grown up leading the sort of life my father had been so determined to create for himself. However, her parents were sternly religious and firmly believed that children should learn to stand on their own two feet, which is why my mother had already been working when she met my father. I think she had little, if any, of her own money left by the time I was born; although she did still own a house near the coast, which we’d go to sometimes in the school holidays.
Years after it had happened, my mother told me about something my father had done one night when we were staying at that house. My parents left me and my brother with a babysitter and went out to a dinner-dance. It was an event that was linked in some way to my father’s business and he was fussing and shouting even before they left the house. Despite being bullied and constantly told to hurry up, my mother always looked beautiful when she was dressed up to go out in the evening, and I used to love the light, flowery smell of perfume that lingered in my bedroom for a while after she’d come in to say goodnight.
It was winter and snowing again, and on the way back from the dinner my father was driving slowly through the deserted, snow-covered lanes when he got angry about something and started to shout at my mother. Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes and told her to get out of the car. She was wearing high-heeled shoes made of embroidered satin, a full-length ball gown and a short fur jacket that was designed more for decorative than for practical purposes of providing warmth and protection from the elements.
‘Please, Harry,’ she begged. ‘We’re at least three miles from home. I’ll freeze to death, and I can’t walk in these shoes.’
‘Well, take them off then,’ my father bellowed, leaning across her to open the passenger door and pushing her out on to the snow at the side of the road.
It took my mother more than two hours to trudge, barefoot, along the pitch-black lanes, and she arrived back at the house with her skin red and numbed by the cold. The car was parked in the driveway, the babysitter had gone and my brother and I were asleep in our beds. But, although she searched for him, she could find no sign of my father.
With her teeth chattering and a million tiny needles piercing every inch of her skin, my mother stripped off her soaking wet clothes and wrapped herself in a towel. She knew that she should try to thaw her frozen limbs and raise her body temperature in a warm bath, but she was so miserable and exhausted she couldn’t even lift her arms to put on her nightdress. So she just crawled under the bedclothes, and fell instantly asleep.
Just a couple of minutes later, she woke with a start at the sound of the heavy mahogany door of her wardrobe crashing against the wall. Her eyes flew open, but the room was as black as the night and all she could make out was the dark figure of a man leaping out of the wardrobe with a blood-curdling cry. She was so startled and frightened she couldn’t breathe, and for a moment she thought she was having a heart attack. She lashed out with her arms and shouted as the man threw himself on top of her, and she continued to struggle with all her might as he pinned her down on the bed, ripped the towel from her shaking body and raped her. And that’s when she realised it was my father.
When I saw my mother the next morning, I knew immediately that something really bad had happened. The fact that I lived in constant, unremitting fear of what might be about to occur had made me always alert and watchful, and I could tell as soon as I walked into the kitchen that she was very upset. And, as my mother’s distress was only ever due to the things my father did, I knew that he must be in a rage about something and therefore that we were all in danger of feeling the heat of his anger.
Usually, by the time I woke up and went into the kitchen to have my breakfast, my mother was already dressed and carefully made up, her hair shining like the polished shell of a chestnut under the electric light. On that morning, though, she was edging slowly around the room in her dressing-gown and slippers. Her face was pale and her hair uncombed, and when I spoke to her she answered in a flat, dispirited tone and didn’t look at me.
I suppose I can understand why my mother fell for my father when they met: he was charismatic and could be affectionate when he wanted to be, and it was easy to imagine him sweeping her off her feet. What does seem extraordinary, though, is the fact that she still loved him – which she did. I don’t know if he’d ever loved her or whether, for him, it had been a marriage of convenience – her family and background affording him the veneer of respectability that was so important to him, as well as the possibility that she might provide him with access to considerable financial resources. In reality, however, I doubt whether he was capable of feeling genuine love for another person. What he was good at was gauging exactly the right moment to be nice to her again so that she was always striving to please him and to win his affection and approval. It was what I did too, as both a child and an adult, and even though there were countless occasions when my father frightened and bullied me, I still just wanted him to like me.
Chapter Five
Before Sam was born, I did wonder if all those unhappy memories of my childhood had anything to do with the mild depression I’d begun to feel, and with the ‘baby-blues’ that developed almost immediately after I took him home from the hospital. I continued to go through the motions of feeding and looking after him, and most of the time I managed to hide – from myself as well as from everyone else – how depressed I was becoming. But when I went back to work, when Sam was 11 weeks old, I began to feel as though I was drowning. I didn’t realise I was ill; all I knew was that I was constantly anxious and afraid, and that I’d become incapable of making even the simplest of decisions.
The house Tom and I had bought when I was pregnant needed a lot doing to it. We knew from the outset that it was going to be a struggle to pay the mortgage – which we could barely afford even on both our incomes – and that I’d have to go back to work as soon as possible after our baby was born. But it seemed worth it to have our own place. We were happy there and when I was pregnant, despite all the fears and worries I had, I’d sometimes stand in the doorway of the room that we were painting and refurbishing as a nursery and allow myself to imagine my baby lying there, safe and warm, in the little wooden cot Tom and I had bought and brought home together so proudly.
For almost as long as I could remember, I’d felt as though I was acting the part of someone leading a normal life – getting a job, falling in love, buying a house and having a baby. Suddenly, though, the role I was playing had expanded beyond anything I had any experience of or could even understand. I was pretending to be someone who was calm and capable, whereas in reality I knew that I was useless and worthless – just as my father had always told me I was – and that I was not at all the sort of person who could look after a baby. There were so many terrible things that could happen to Sam. Many of them were real enough to any first-time mother, but some of them were things I couldn’t actually put a name to; and it seemed that I was the only person who stood between Sam and all those countless, awful, unidentifiable dangers.
I spent every waking moment of every single day in a state of panic. Just the thought of Sam’s defenceless little body lying in his cot was enough to make my heart race and the palms of my hands become clammy with sweat. The depression I’d already been suffering from was made worse by the fact that I knew I was supposed to be happy now that I was a mother. And I did love Sam, passionately. But, as well as being afraid for him, I was also, for some reason, afraid of him.
To begin with, no one seemed to notice there was anything wrong. Gradually, though, I could feel myself becoming more detached from Sam and from everything and everyone else in my life. It was as though I was on the outside looking in. I fed him and changed his nappies, but as soon as Tom came home from work I’d almost thrust Sam into his arms. And as soon as I knew that Tom had taken over the responsibility of looking after him, I could finally allow myself to relax a little as I concentrated on what I really wanted to be doing – cleaning the house.
I’d become obsessed by cleaning,
