I started to sleep more soundly than I ever had, and Simon told me many times, ‘I’m here for you. I’ll never let you down.’ I joked to my friends that he was like someone you read about in a girls’ magazine. He was my perfect man in every way, and he became a perfect father to Christopher. I was happier and more settled than I’d ever been.
One dark night in 1990, I woke up screaming from a nightmare. It started out as the same nightmare I’d had the night before, and the night before that. I was a small child sleeping in the single bed in the front room at 4 White’s Villas. It was dark and cold, and someone got into bed with me and put their arms around me, but it didn’t make me feel safe and warm. I felt scared.
On previous nights, that’s where the dream had ended. But this time, when the person hugged me, I saw who it was. It was my father, and I was trembling and shaking. He terrified me, and I sat up in bed, struck with panic.
‘It’s all right,’ Simon whispered. ‘Don’t cry! It’s just a nightmare. You’ll be all right in the morning, you’ll see.’ I lay awake for hours, Simon’s arms wrapped round me, and when dawn broke I sat up in bed feeling nauseous. I felt the blood drain from my face, and my legs went weak. I ran to the toilet and vomited.
The same thing happened without warning many more times over the next year. I knew I wasn’t pregnant, as I’d chosen to be sterilized after Christopher’s birth. But before my period each month, my stomach swelled up, I was moody and irritable and my breasts were sore. After each nightmare I wanted to vomit, and I couldn’t face wearing bright colours. I wanted to dress only in black. It felt like I was in mourning, but I didn’t know who had died.
I was almost thirty-years-old by then, and I was determined I wasn’t going to lose the new life I had. Simon and Christopher meant everything to me. I wasn’t going mad, was I? I went to my doctor and asked for help. ‘I think I have some issues to deal with,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘I think I need to talk to a professional.’ Within weeks, I saw a psychiatrist, who told me almost immediately he had good news. ‘You aren’t mad,’ he said. ‘I think you just have some unresolved problems from your childhood.’ I was referred to Maureen, a community psychiatric nurse, who was to give me therapy to help me solve the issues.
Around the same time, Theresa asked if she could come and stay for a while, and Simon and I readily agreed. She was almost twenty now, and we got on brilliantly. Not only that, but she could help out with Christopher while I went to my therapy sessions. It was perfect.
Maureen didn’t judge, she just listened. I was starting to feel better. Theresa and I went on bike rides, sang Diana Ross songs into our hairbrushes together like teenagers and took Christopher to feed the ducks.
One morning in November 1991, we were standing in my bedroom by an open window. It was a crisp winter’s day, and the view of the open countryside with the dawn mist lifting off the fields was breathtaking. Theresa started talking to me. I didn’t hear her words at first, but as I turned to face her, the beautiful views in my brain suddenly turned to black.
‘Daddy sexually abused me as a child. Mammy told me last time I visited.’ My stomach turned over. ‘How can you be sure?’ I heard myself saying. ‘Do you remember?’ Theresa said she had memories of Daddy doing something to her in bed at night. She remembered crying a lot, and feeling a lot of pain. The memories made her feel suicidal, and she confided she had tried to take her own life several times.
As she spoke, I heard a muffled sort of cry, a cry I’d heard before. My mind started to spin, and I thought I was going to pass out. I sat on the bed to steady myself. ‘Do you really believe you were abused, Theresa?’ I asked.
She nodded, looking embarrassed. I looked at her sad brown eyes and I saw the beautiful little girl I played mammy to all those years ago. ‘I will support you. I will do whatever it takes,’ I told her, though my mind was in turmoil.
Deep down, I knew those nightmares I had about Daddy meant he had touched me too, in a way he shouldn’t have. That’s why I had asked for therapy. It all clicked into place. I knew what it meant, and I knew I had to face it.
I trusted Maureen implicitly, and I told her everything Theresa had said, adding that in my nightmares I was sure it was my father abusing me. It felt like the earth was shifting beneath my feet, and dark doors were opening in my mind. Coping with daily life became a struggle. Without Simon’s support, I would not have got through each day.
I spent much of that year in a pit of depression. Every memory that came back broke my heart. I remembered the neglect, the filth and the poverty. I could feel the headlice and the fleas and the beatings, and I recalled the drunken fights and violent arguments.
My parents were alcoholics, and they abused and neglected me.
I had never acknowledged how dysfunctional they were. As the truth dawned, I became a nervous wreck. I shouted at Simon and snapped at Christopher. I wished I could turn back time and throw all my memories back into that black box, locked away for ever in the back of
