I Did Tell, I Did (30 page)

It was a wonderful moment, a moment when I knew that life was good. That God was listening after all.

I
hadn’t seen or heard from my mother since the letter episode, which was fine by me. Or so I thought. But one Christmas I sent her a card. I don’t know why I did that or what I thought would happen. I hadn’t expected a reply but when an envelope arrived with her writing on it, I was excited. I thought she had sent me a card in return. I hoped that she wanted contact with me. Why did I still keep hoping?

I tore the envelope open excitedly and there it was—the card I had sent to her, returned. Returned with a note saying that she had no daughter called Cassie. She had all the family that was hers, all the family she wanted, in her life.

She hadn’t changed. I threw the card in the bin.

Some of the old issues kept coming back because I kept inviting them. I decided to let go of any hopes about her and get on with the rest of my life.

I only saw Mum one more time, in the summer of 2003. Tom rang to let me know she was seriously ill in hospital and,
although Daniel cautioned me against it, I decided to visit her to say my goodbyes. When I walked in I peered round the ward, looking for her. Where was this huge influence on my life? Where was this formidable woman who had hated me so much?

A nurse came over and pointed to a bed where a frail, greyhaired woman was lying. It was her. The woman who couldn’t love me, the woman who hadn’t believed me or helped me, the woman who was my mother.

She saw Daniel and me walking towards her bed. At first I don’t think she realised who I was, then, as recognition dawned, she looked behind me and saw my husband. She had an audience, someone to play-act to.

‘Oh Cassie,’ she cried, ‘my darling Cassie, I’ve been so ill, so unhappy.’

She reached for me, stretching her arms up as I bent down to her bed. Still acting after all these years!

‘How are you?’ I asked in a neutral voice. ‘Are you feeling any better?’

‘I am now, dear,’ she said using her small poor-me voice. ‘I am now you’re here.’ She looked over at Daniel. ‘Thank you for bringing her,’ she said.

‘It’s OK, I’d do anything for my girl,’ replied the man who loved me, the man who supported me in everything I did.

‘She’s only half yours,’ retorted this woman in her sick bed. ‘The other half will always be mine.’

It sounded cruel and possessive, not a motherly kind of sentiment, but one of ownership that I didn’t like the sound of.

We stayed and talked with her for a while but all she could do was moan about everything: her treatment in the hospital, my other siblings, how seldom people visited her. It was all a game to make people feel sorry for her. She had always played games with me and she was still playing games now.

‘Promise me you’ll come to my funeral,’ she asked before we left, and so I agreed that I would.

A few weeks later I got a phone call from Tom’s wife to say that Mum had died that morning. My reaction surprised me. I screamed and collapsed on the floor sobbing, great awful sobs that wracked my body. Why was I crying? She’d never loved me, I knew she hadn’t. What did it matter?

But I wasn’t crying for her. I wasn’t crying for losing a mum. How could I cry for something I’d never had? No, I was crying for me. For the lost opportunities, for lost maybes, but most of all for lost hope. Hope that one day she would explain her inactions; explain why she had treated me the way she had. That one day she would say she was sorry and that she loved me. But now, this day would never happen. Now hope had died forever. I felt bereft, yes, but not for her. My tears were for the child I had been and for myself.

I kept my promise to Mum and went to her funeral. There were only eight of us there—a family saying goodbye to whatever the being in the coffin had meant to us. I didn’t want to say anything except goodbye—goodbye to the woman who had been my mother and goodbye to my past.

When we got home that evening, I felt somehow free. Free from the past, free to move on to the next part of my life. A
huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. And now that hope had gone, I felt acceptance. Acceptance that she had never loved or wanted me. Acceptance that she had never protected me, that she wasn’t sorry. Acceptance that I would never know in full the reasons for her hatred of me.

I could go back to being happy. No, I wasn’t loved as a child. But I know I am loved now, and ultimately that is all that matters.

S
pecial thanks to Gill Paul, my patient and sensitive editor, for helping me through the hardest parts and understanding my need to be honest.

To Carole Tonkinson of HarperCollins for seeing the book’s potential on first draft. And thanks to Kate Latham, also of HarperCollins, for her kindness and understanding. Thank you also to Andrew Lownie, my literary agent.

I would like to say thank you to Peter for his belief in me and his zany sense of humour in our numerous e-mails. But most of all I want to say thank you to my wonderful husband and friend, for his love, endurance and endless support not only for now but for the past twenty-two years. A special thank you to my daughters for their love and support, especially my youngest daughter and best friend, for her love, patience and endless reminders that I am Me and Me is good.

The last thank you is for my half-brother who, when told of my book, encouraged me by saying, ‘Go for it, love.’ So I have taken his advice and gone for it!

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