‘I know, dear. I’ll get you some more Calpol in a minute.’
I hesitated at the door. I turned and looked at Lucy.
‘Any dreams?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I can’t remember any.’
October 1989
Shelley
It’s our Stacy’s birthday. Seven years old today. Fancy, five years since she was took, five whole years. Hard to believe I’ve lived through those years, somehow – if you can call it living. I wake up each morning – not that I sleep much – and for just a second or two I wonder if it’s all been a dream, a nightmare. Even after five years.
And then I remember; I realise she’s gone, and it’s like a dark cloud wraps itself around me and works its way inside me. I want to pull the covers over me head and stay there in bed all day, block out the memories. But I can’t. I’ve got me other bairns to think of.
I think about Stacy; what she looks like now, where she is, what she might be doing. Is she somewhere near, or is she far away, is she happy or sad? More than anything, I think about who might be with her. A man, a woman, a whole family? Are they good to her, are they kind? I can’t bear to think they might be cruel, that they might hurt her.
My head starts to hurt and I go all hot and cold thinking about the person what took her. I fill up with such a rage it’s like I’ll explode. I have to press all that anger down inside meself so the kids don’t see it, and get back to thinking of Stacy and her little beautiful face. I think of her smiling, smiling and alive.
It’s never got no easier. Like a huge part of me’s missing; torn from me. An important part, like my heart. I seen a film once, one of them old Westerns. There was a big battle between the white men and the Indians. A Red Indian warrior stuck his knife in a white man; I think he was a General. He stuck his knife in the man’s chest and he tore out his heart and held it up, still beating and dripping blood. That’s how it feels for me. Someone’s torn me heart out. Only it happens over and over, every day. I never knew anyone could feel pain like this.
’Til I lost Stacy I never really knew how important the kids were to me. I’d had Leanne and Dean that young, and never really had a proper mam or dad meself. Nobody to show me what to do, how to look after meself, let alone a kid. I found out the hard way, that’s for sure. I love all my kids, but Stacy – she was the baby, the last one. I got the operation done on me tubes after she was born. There won’t be no more, ever. I miss her something terrible. There’s no words to say how much I miss her.
Our Ryan’s never been the same since Stacy went missing neither. Started off crying and crying; waking in the night, and looking for her, searching for her like a little lost soul, bless him. Then the temper started; yelling at me and his dad, like he blamed us for not looking after our Stacy properly. Well he was right, an’ all. I blame meself. I should’a watched her. The papers called me a slag, a useless mother, a heartless bitch, you name it – for letting a two-year-old play out alone. Well, I thought Ryan was with her, but I know I can’t use that as no excuse.
I cried for Stacy every day – I was worse than Ryan. And for a time I took to the drink, I was that stressed. Anything to blunt my feelings. Gary didn’t seem to have no feelings; his feelings was dead. He said she was gone and that was that; we had to accept it, get used to it. He’d always drank and took the drugs anyway, he didn’t need no excuse. So when he got arrested for dealing – again – I could’a killed him. Just a few months after our Stacy went missing. Then not long after, he got done for breaking and entering – he got two years. Well, course he needed the money for his habit, didn’t he? It’s not like me and the kids saw none of it.
That was the last straw though. The social said we weren’t responsible parents. They were right an’ all. Me eldest two, Dean and Leanne, had got took off us three years before Stacy went missing. They’d been in care all that time. Then the social took the rest of the bairns into care, all of them. So I was on me own. How much worse could life get? The papers made a right meal of it, ’specially the local paper.
Everybody on the estate knew about us. They hated us. People called me names if I went out. Some spat at me. They put dog shit through the letterbox. One night someone threw a brick through the back window. Smashed it into thousands of pieces. I was scared all the time. I was shaking.
I asked the doctor for some pills, to calm me down, like, help me sleep. He shook his head. He patted me hand. I think he reckoned I’d take the lot, top meself, and probably he wasn’t far wrong. He was all right with me though, was Dr Shah. He listened to me troubles. Said he wouldn’t give me no pills, but he could try to help me get me children back. If I really wanted them. It might take time, he said. I’d have to decide to really work at making a proper home for them. With Gary gone it was my chance, he said. It would be hard. What did I want?
Well, of course I said I wanted them back. He said for a start he’d write to the council – ask them to re-house me in a different part of the town, where people didn’t know us. He told me to go back to the social and cooperate with whatever they asked me to do. He even helped me get a part-time job as a cleaner at the hospital. It didn’t pay much, but it was something, a start.
The social worker suggested a counselling course. Counselling! I didn’t even know what the word meant, but I went on it. Then she suggested a “parenting skills” course – anyone could see I needed it – so I went on that an’ all. I even went on an “everyday cooking” course – I reckon they thought we’d lived on chips long enough.
I applied for getting each of the children back, one by one, starting with Ryan – he was that needy. It was dead hard and it took a long, long time, like Dr Shah said, but I managed it in the end. Even when they were back, it wasn’t all plain sailing. Ryan was playing up at school. They said he had behaviour problems. I sat him down and asked him if he wanted to go back in care. He shook his head and looked at his feet.
I told him I didn’t neither; I told him I couldn’t bear to lose him. I’d lost one precious child and I didn’t want to lose another. If he carried on misbehaving, I told him, they’d put him back in care, and that would kill me. He cried, and hugged me, and promised to be a good boy. He really tried, and after a while he started doing all right at school.
The next ones I got back was Dean and Leanne, the eldest two. That wasn’t easy, I can tell you. They’d been in care for that long they hardly knew us. They didn’t trust no one, ’specially not me. They were that angry and disturbed, they nearly took the house apart. It was tough. Time was, I was nearly ready to put them back with the social. But I told them I’d never let them go again, so they might as well put up with me.
Things settled down after a while. They all began going to school regularly. Any sign of bunking off, they had me to answer to. I told them I wasn’t going to let them follow the same road I had, and certainly not their dad. Once they were properly settled, Dean and Leanne turned out to be me rocks, me right little helpers. Then, one by one, the rest came home. We were quite a crowd. Only Stacy missing. Always Stacy missing.
The council give us a house in Moorside. It was a right mess to start with, even though the area seemed posh to me, what with being semi-detacheds, trees along the streets, and little gardens at the back. God knows who was in the house before us. It was filthy, and we had no carpets, no furniture; nothing
