Back then, my head was fogged with pills and drink and pain and confusion. I didn’t know how tortured our lives were, or how wrong the abuse was.
But I was a grown-up woman now, and my mind was clear. I knew how terribly wrong it was. I knew it wasn’t normal; and I knew we didn’t deserve it.
My parents were sick paedophiles, that was the shocking truth.
When Simon got home, I sobbed in his arms, telling him how it was all my fault Martin had died.
I remembered his suicide attempt when he was sixteen. How could I have put him through all this torment?
I blamed myself every single day. I gave up my job because I couldn’t cope. I needed all my strength to survive, and to carry on my fight. I was not going to let Martin die in vain.
The inquest had taken place without my knowledge, and I found out later that my father told the coroner he believed Martin had killed himself because he was a drug addict and alcoholic.
I also discovered that Martin had warned my mother exactly when, where and why he was going to kill himself.
She should have got help for Martin, but she didn’t because then the real reason he was suicidal would have come out.
Instead, she threatened that, if he killed himself, she would not attend his funeral, and she kept her threat and stayed away when he was buried.
I was incensed. Who did she think she was? Did she think she had the right to decide who lived and died, and who knew about the death?
I screamed in rage. This had to stop.
North Yorkshire police were focusing their investigation on the sexual abuse I suffered at home as a child. Ensuring the safety of other children my father had contact with was, of course, their top priority.
But I decided it was time to speed things up. It was twenty-two years since Noleen had died, and I had waited long enough to punish my mother for her crime. I wanted a murder investigation too.
It was very late one night in April 1995 when I finally found the courage to call Dun Laoghaire police station.
Simon and Christopher were sleeping, and the only sound I could hear was my own blood gushing though my brain. It sounded like a waterfall. I took a deep breath and spoke slowly.
‘Do you remember the baby that was found dead in Lee’s Lane in the 1970s?’ I said to the officer on duty. ‘Well, I am the mother of that baby.’
It was a giant step and, just as I’d hoped, things did indeed move quickly after that, at least to begin with.
The police dug out Noleen’s unsolved murder file from 1973.
They took me back to Lee’s Lane to point to the spot where I had left her in the bag, and a few months later my parents were arrested and brought in for questioning.
It was a massive breakthrough, and I was jangling with nerves as I waited at the police station, knowing my parents were under the same roof, finally facing their demons.
The hours dragged by as their questioning went on. I had agreed to confront them if they didn’t confess.
At lunchtime, I asked if I could visit Noleen’s grave.
I’d been given the number of the plot and had burned it into my memory, afraid it might be snatched away again. At last I felt the time was right to pay my respects.
The police took me to Glasnevin cemetery. Even though Noleen was a murder victim, she had been buried in a cardboard box in the communal ‘Little Angels’ plot with nineteen other babies.
While the officers searched for the grave, I was drawn to a bare plot that was nothing more than a mound of rough earth.
‘This is it,’ I said instinctively, and the number confirmed I was right. A feeling of strength washed over me as I stared at the barren ground.
I had found her after all these years.
I crouched down, laid a small bunch of flowers on the earth, and spoke quietly.
‘I have loved and missed you all these years. My arms have ached to hold you. I am sorry I have taken so long. Do you forgive me? I will make it up to you. I will make them pay.’
I cried all the way back to the police station.
Neither of my parents had confessed to a single crime. It was 5 p.m., and the police had until 9 p.m. to charge or release them. I had to confront them and was shown into an interview room.
I recoiled in shock when I saw Mammy sitting at a round table, surrounded by five officers. I hadn’t seen her for nine years, but time rolled back and I felt instantly scared in her presence.
‘Hi, Mammy,’ I said quietly, as a detective pointed to my place across the table.
Her face was hard and cold, and she looked as brazen as if she was sitting at her own kitchen table.
‘Well, you said you would get us,’ she replied.
‘What do you mean?’ an officer interjected.
‘I mean she has always hated me and she is doing this to spite me,’ she spat.
My body was shaking and my emotions were screaming out in confusion.
For a second I wanted to run and throw my arms around her. I wanted her to tell me she loved me and that she was sorry, but when I looked at her again she was giving me a cold, evil stare, one that shot me straight back to my childhood.
She was trying to unhinge me. She was trying to get through to that little girl inside me, the one who was so scared of her that, even when she was holding my murdered baby in her arms, I obeyed her command to get back in the house, and slipped inside the sitting room, just because my mammy told me to.
I’ve often wondered how different my life and so many other lives, would have been had I
