Free I Remember, Daddy by Katie Matthews

right. So either you let Tom take you back, or I’ll call the police and you can go back with them.’
    I hated her for a while, but she was right. I was very ill, and the truth was that if I couldn’t cope in hospital, where the doctors and nurses were trying to help me, then I’d never be able to cope in the ‘normal world’ outside.
    After a while, I was put on lithium, a powerful drug that’s used to treat psychosis; and as the medication began to have an effect, I was moved to the hospital’s mother and baby ward, where Sam was allowed to stay with me. For weeks, I don’t think I’d been consciously aware of anything other than my own fears and memories. So it felt good to be able to hold Sam and to think that perhaps, one day, I’d lead a normal life and be a proper mother to him.
    At first, Sam stayed with me just for the occasional night, then for a weekend and then, for the last few weeks before I went home, he was with me all the time. I understood that everyone had to be absolutely certain I’d be able to manage and look after him on my own, and I went through the motions and did all the things I was supposed to do, although I didn’t really believe I’d ever be able to look after anyone or anything – including myself.
    There were still some days when I relapsed into a world where nothing made sense except fear. And, on one of them, when Tom came to visit, he found me wandering in the hospital car park, half-naked, murmuring to myself and holding Sam tightly in my arms. I don’t remember how I’d got out of the locked ward, but I can still recall Tom’s obvious anxiety and the tears I could see in his eyes, and how miserable and guilty I felt at the thought that I’d made him sad.
    Gradually, though, I began to get better and, after I’d been in hospital for six months, I was allowed to go home. In reality, however, ‘better’ is a relative term, because I still needed a lot of support – from Tom, his family and social services – and I wasn’t well enough to go back to work.
    On Christmas Day, about three months after I’d come out of hospital, Tom suggested we should accept my father’s invitation to ‘pop in’ and have a drink with him and his girlfriend, Gillian. We’d had our house for just over a year by that time, but we were struggling financially and couldn’t pay the mortgage, and Tom was carrying all the stress and worry of it alone. So it seemed remarkable to me that, despite my illness and everything else he’d had to deal with over the last few months, he wanted to see my father so that he could ask his permission to marry me.
    I desperately didn’t want to see my father. Tom knew that he’d been physically violent towards me when I was a child, but, as I hadn’t talked to anyone except my psychiatrist about the things I was remembering, it was difficult to think of a reason that might explain why I was so reluctant to visit him on that occasion. So we went to his house in the afternoon.
    By the time we arrived, my father was in the jovial stage of drunkenness. It was the first time he’d seen his grandson and as he held Sam out at arm’s length and said something jokily critical about him, I looked at his face and felt suddenly ill.
    ‘I have to get out of here,’ I whispered to Tom. ‘I’m going to be sick. I’m sorry but I need to leave – right now.’
    ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ Tom asked me. ‘You look terrible.’
    I could see the nervous anxiety in his eyes and I knew he was afraid that I was breaking down again.
    ‘Please, let’s just go,’ I said, pushing Sam’s things into a bag and then reaching out to snatch my son from my father’s arms.
    ‘What? Leaving so soon?’ My father’s tone was mocking. ‘But you’ve only just got here. Oh well, why don’t you take some champagne for your mother? There are some steaks in the kitchen, too. Perhaps she’d like some of those.’
    He waved his arm in a magnanimous, lord-of-the-manor