LITMIR.BIZ

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parents who should be able to get a feeding and sleeping routine established for you. She can come back home as soon as you’re feeling better.’

      I was flooded with anxieties. What would Allen say? Would he think I had failed as a mother? Is that how everyone would see me? But I couldn’t think of an alternative, so I agreed.

      My doctor diagnosed me as having severe post-natal depression, and said he thought it had started after Liam’s birth and got worse after Zoe’s. I was relieved to have a cast-iron excuse for my behaviour, but still desperately ashamed that I had been unable to cope.

      The foster family were very kind people. They lived nearby so I could go round and visit Zoe whenever I wanted. She stayed there for five or six weeks, and after she came back to live with me again they continued to look after her one day a week to give me a break. I genuinely don’t know how I could have got through that period without their help.

      Still, it was several months before I could scrape myself back up off the floor and manage to feed both babies, get them in the car and go down to the local shops for some groceries. It was hard even to get out of my dressing gown some mornings. I worried that people would be watching me the whole time for signs that I was cracking up, and that they would be keeping an eye on the kids to look for bruises or signs of malnutrition. I’d lost confidence in my ability to care for myself, never mind these two alien little beings. I felt anxious whenever I had to go out of the house and started having panic attacks over the least little things, but gradually, with lots of help from my doctor and health visitor and those wonderful foster parents, I got back on track again.

      Allen came back to work on shore when Zoe was a year old, but he was based in Bath from Monday to Friday and we only saw him at weekends. With that job he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer, and in 1987 we moved to a nicer house in a place called Emsworth, between Chichester and Portsmouth. Once the kids were at nursery school I went to work part-time in a nursing home on Hayling Island, and I really enjoyed it there. You can make a big difference to someone’s final years by finding the time to stop and chat with them, doing their hair and such like, and it was a fulfilling job for me. It helped to make me feel like a capable person again, so was very good for my battered confidence.

      When Allen announced in 1990 that he’d volunteered for the Gulf War, we didn’t discuss the possibility of him being killed or injured but I suppose it was in the back of our minds. I resigned from my job and during the last weeks before he left we spent a lot of quality time together with the kids. They’d just got bikes so we taught them how to ride them. We had day trips to London and a holiday in Center Parcs and we had loads of fun, but always with the shadow of the war hanging over us. I’d switch off the TV or radio if the news came on to avoid hearing about any casualties or helicopter crashes or the speculation that was rife at the time that Saddam Hussein might use poison gas against our troops.

      Some of my favourite family memories come from that period when it was just the four of us enjoying time together. Allen hadn’t come from a particularly close family, but I always thought it was important to get down on the floor and play with the kids, to take them on outings, and for us all to have special family Christmases and celebrations together. I liked creating a close-knit unit, with our own family jokes and traditions and games. I’ve got lots of pictures in my head of us all smiling and messing about in those last weeks before he set sail, and they’re very precious.

      Allen set off in April, but in early July I was invited to go and join him for a holiday in Singapore and Penang. I was reluctant at first because I’d never left the children for any length of time before, but my sister Marion offered to have them and finally I said I would go. I wrapped a little gift for them to open each day that I was away and I phoned them as well, but it was hard for me to leave a five-year-old and a six-year-old. They were still so young. In retrospect, however, I’m so glad I did have that last, very special time in the sun with Allen, just the two of us. The memories are bitter-sweet but I’m so happy I have them to treasure.

      We’d talked about the future before, but I remember we had more discussions about our plans while we were in Malaysia. Basically we decided that I would continue to move around following Allen’s postings until the children were at secondary school, at which point I would stay in one place with them so their education didn’t suffer. A lot of naval kids went to boarding school but I wasn’t in favour of that; I wanted to keep them at home with me till they were at least eighteen. Allen would serve his contractual twenty-two years with the Navy; then we would decide where we wanted to live and buy our dream home there. We’d only be in our forties and we could start a whole new life doing whatever we wanted.

      It’s ironic, I suppose. I think it was John Lennon who said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ I knew Allen was going into a war zone but the Navy weren’t supposed to be directly involved in the fighting because it had been a ground and air war, driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and now the main action was over and they were just on peacekeeping duty. It never occurred to me that Allen might be injured because of that. Anyway, he was too good at his job. I suppose I couldn’t even contemplate him being hurt because I needed him so much. He was the stable one, and I was still prone to bouts of anxiety and depression that he helped to pull me out of. That was the dynamic of our relationship at the time.

      And then the news of his accident filtered through and everything changed overnight.

       CHAPTER FIVE Allen

      It was a huge shock the first time Sandra took me home for the weekend after the accident. I’d overheard them saying that she was a nurse but I was still anxious she wouldn’t know how to look after me properly. Shouldn’t there be a doctor there as well? What if I needed help with things like undressing myself? Would this woman do it? Was she really my wife?

      Then, in the car, she mentioned that we had children, and that was most peculiar. I didn’t feel like a person who had children. I had no memory of them, no idea of their names or what ages they were.

      When we got back to the house, I didn’t remember any of it, but there were photos of Sandra, the children and me all over the walls so I knew I was in the right place. When would my memory come back?

      Then the door opened and two children burst in shouting and squealing. I couldn’t bear the noise they made. I didn’t feel as though I was their father. There was no bond there, no memories of when they were babies; they were strangers, and the two of them seemed to make the noise of twenty children. It drilled into my ears and echoed round my head.

      ‘Go away!’ I waved my hand, and Sandra came rushing out, concerned. ‘Go away!’ I gesticulated at her as well. My speech was thick and slurred but I could tell they understood me.

      I had a horrible itchy rash that was spreading up my body and itching constantly and I fretted about that most of the weekend. Could it be a strange tropical disease? Had I contracted something in one of the hospitals they’d put me in? Was it an allergic reaction to the medication I was on? Or was it a symptom of some serious new development in my condition?

      I hated being helped to get dressed, all my food being served for me, and the fact that there was very little I could do. I’d flown all over the world fixing battleships at the drop of a hat, and now I couldn’t make a cup of coffee for myself because my hands kept twitching and it would have spilled everywhere.

      I found that I couldn’t remember words. I could bark out an order – such as ‘Coffee!’ – but when I noticed a cake on the countertop and wanted a piece, I couldn’t remember the word for it to ask for some. Sometimes I’d try and I’d confuse Sandra by coming out with the wrong word – ‘kite’ or ‘door’ perhaps. Or I’d just point and growl. I certainly couldn’t speak in sentences, or remember any of the niceties such as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

      Sandra was incredibly patient that weekend. She tried to jog my memory by showing me photos from a holiday we’d had in Singapore and Malaysia. I recognized myself in the pictures and I could tell that we looked happy

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