I CHOSE MY LOVER OVER MY DAUGHTER
She broke the greatest taboo of motherhood by deserting her little girl. So how did she win her forgiveness?
SITTING down to write this story has been difficult. I don’t mean dif f i cult emotionally; it’s ultimately a story of hope — all about second chances, and the possibility of happy endings.
It’s difficult to write for a rather more practical reason. My home is in chaos because my 17-year- old daughter Isobel (whom practically everyone calls Nell) has moved back in after a five-year absence, and I’ve had to sacrifice my precious study in order to accommodate all her teenage stuff.
That’s mother love for you. And while I’m on the subject, here are a few more things that are difficult. Never having any cash because I am being constantly mugged for ‘loans’. Endlessly having to find inventive hiding places for my Jo Malone cologne, as my daughter loves it, too.
Having to tolerate big wet dogs on the beds, because Nell has gaily chosen to ignore the rule of not letting them upstairs. Oh, and being forced to listen to pop star George Ezra (no, I’d never heard of him either) on loop. But you know what? I reckon I can live with these. I’ve even come to like George Ezra. Because the only sentence so far that really matters is this: ‘My daughter has moved back home.’
To rewind a little: last June, I briefly became a very disliked woman after writing a confession for this paper. The phone rang off the hook with TV and radio producers inviting me to go on air to discuss what I’d
said; I declined, but they went ahead and picked apart my life anyway. So it was that I had the rather surreal experience of sitting in front of the telly, sipping a cup of tea and nibbling on a biscuit, while the bunch of minor celebrities who comprise the Loose Women panel berated me.
WHAT had I done to make them so incensed? Simply this: I’d written about my failings as a mother. About how five years previously, I’d fallen desperately in love with someone I shouldn’t have fallen in love with, had an affair and then divorced my husband, Michael, the father of my three children.
Telling Nell, who was 11, and the only child still living at home, was the hardest part. ‘This is the worst thing any parent can do to their child,’ she told me. ‘Especially when they’re about to start secondary school.’
Her words tore at my heart — but I knew my marriage was beyond saving. Soon afterwards, Nell moved out to live with her father. This was all for entirely logical and pragmatic reasons; I work full-time as editor of a local magazine, while Michael had always been the home-carer, meal-maker and lift-giver. And, for a while, it all worked beautifully. Mike and Nell lived a five-minute walk away, and my new partner Mal and I saw them every day. We all got on improbably well.
But when the lease of their cottage came to an end, and they moved t en minutes away from our village to a suburb, we gradually began to see less of them.
The older Nell got, the busier her life became — if she wasn’t at school, she was working at the stables or out with friends — and I had the kind of job that, if you’re doing it properly, swallows you whole. And so, without meaning to, I allowed things to drift. I did the unforgivable thing: I began to lose regular contact with my daughter. In essence, I chose love over motherhood.
I’d promised Nell this wouldn’t happen — that nothing would ever change between us. But I’m ashamed to say that, slowly and insidiously, I broke that promise. I became consumed with sadness. I knew things had to change, but not how to do it.
While Nell was always enthusiastic about our monthly shopping, theatre and sushi trips — funny that! — spending a whole weekend with me always seemed inconvenient.
‘All my stuff is at Dad’s,’ seemed to be the not unreasonable excuse.
Gradually, from seeing my daughter every day, I went to seeing her once a week. I told myself Nell was busy. I felt that whenever I spent time with her, she was making room for me for my sake, not hers. Slowly, these outings felt increasingly contrived, until we both gave up arranging them at all. I had allowed the daughter I loved to become a virtual stranger — all because I’d fallen in love with another man.
But then, last spring, everything changed again. Michael moved in with his new partner and her two young children, taking an unwilling Nell, now 16, with him. We might all have become great mates. We could have had big, jolly joint family Christmases around the table, pulling crackers with crossed arms, God bless us, every one!
But it didn’t work out like that. Everyone fell out with everyone else.
Sadly, after 25 years of friendship, my affectionate relationship with Michael dwindled into a series of brief, infrequent, awkward meetings, while he and Nell found it impossible to continue their happy, easy-going relationship under the new regime.
Suddenly he couldn’t be available to her 24/7, because of the demands of his new family, which hurt her feelings and made her daily life far more complicated. Traumatic though this was for everyone, fate hadn’t quite finished with me yet. That July, I discovered I had stage-two breast cancer. Turning up for what I thought was a routine scan, I found myself allocated to a cancer nurse and booked in for an immediate mastectomy. It was a huge shock for us all. I’d love to say it led to tearful bedside rapprochements and newly reached levels of understanding, but this being real life and not Hollywood, it didn’t.
My eldest son and his partner were teaching in Asia, my second son was interning in Switzerland, and during ten months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy — while Mal cared for me single-handedly, acting as cook, cleaner and nurse as well as managing his day job — contact with Nell and Mike reached an all-time low.
It was only when I started to emerge from my illness that I realised just how tough things had become for Nell. She was about to embark on important school exams, and the last thing she needed at this point in her life was domestic dramas, with endless clashes between her, her dad and his new partner. Knowing how ill I was, she rarely complained to me, so when she rang out of the blue one day to ask if I could come and pick her up immediately, I suggested that she moved home. She’d always insisted in the past that this would be impractical — who would drive her to school, to the stables, to her job at the pub?
But suddenly these obstacles seemed surmountable after all. I could barely believe my luck: I was getting a second chance. Nell, along with about 95 bin bags stuffed with her most precious possessions, was coming home. It wasn’t ideal timing. I was halfway through radiotherapy, and due to return to full-time work after a year’s absence. I also realised that, initially at least, I was only a port in a storm. I al s o knew it wouldn’t be easy — not for Nell, separated for the first time in her life from her beloved dad; not for Mal, who’d never imagined he’d end up living with a teenager; and not for me, at a very low physical ebb and out of practice when it came to being a full-time mum.
If you take a break from the tyranny of c hi l dcare — and I’d t aken a sabbatical of more than five years — you slip back into selfish habits.
YOU skip dinner if you can’t be bothered to cook; you become accustomed to weekend lie-ins; you accept your colleagues’ spontaneous suggestion of after-work drinks without a second thought. You also forget about the sheer physical chaos of family life.
Our house once again disappeared under mountains of teenage clobber and tat. But at least most of the debris is contained in her bedroom.
Nell, too, has had to recalibrate her expectations. For five years, she reigned supreme as Daddy’s little princess. No demand for lifts was ever deemed too outrageous, no cash hand-out too unreasonable. No teenage finger was ever lifted to help in the home — that kid was spoiled rotten.
Now she’s living here, she’s had to pull her weight, which, to be fair, she has done. We’re both incredibly busy, me with work, she with school, preparing for college and her pub job; some days we only meet briefly in the queue for the bathroom, but that’s fine — that’s normal family life.
It’s far too late for me to completely rewrite the rule book, though. Nell’s 18 this year so frankly, if she’s safe, sensible and polite to others, then I’m happy. I’ve given up trying to get her to tidy her room. I just hurl clean washing in the general direction of her bed.
Exam revision? It’s up to her; it’s her future. As I see it, I’ve kind of relinquished my right to lay down the law. In some ways, we’ve had to pick up our relationship more as roomies than
mother and daughter. The happy balance of our new domestic arrangement depends wholly on the mutual tolerance of two very different people, who are only living under the same roof because of me.
So far, Nell’s been considerate enough not to throw any major strops, and Mal’s been kind enough to ignore any minor ones. Meanwhile, Nell sees her dad every day, and their relationship has bounced back to its old self.
My mornings are now chaotic. I’m quite liable to turn up to work in the oddest outfits because in the rush to get Nell to school I’ve thrown on whatever first falls off the hanger. And yes, every time I run a bath at weekends, or optimistically sit down with a cup of coffee and a crossword, the phone rings, summoning me for a lift.
But in a way that I hope doesn’t sound too martyred, I actively embrace it. I’ve fallen short in the past, so every small inconvenience seems to redress the balance just a little bit more.
When she first moved in, we all sat down and talked about where I went wrong. Nell told me I’d made her feel abandoned. Now, we don’t talk very much about what happened.
I think her new maturity, combined with the fact I am doing everything to make our new set-up work, has made her realise that while I handled my marriage break-up very badly, I never meant to hurt her or shut her out. Last summer, Nell told me, rather cuttingly, the only parent she felt she could 100 per cent trust to be there for her was her dad. But I’m pretty sure she doesn’t feel that way any more.
For my part, there are surprising advantages to our new arrangement. I’ve already lost count of the number of times Nell’s fixed an iThingy, or downloaded a programme I couldn’t get to work.
She’s also the only member in the f amily who s hares my l ove of Game Of Thrones and EastEnders.
Less frivolously, the change has been good for her, too. Living with a working mother, rather than a stay-at-home dad, means she’s had to become much more self-reliant. Nell’s grown up a lot over the past few months. But the ultimate 24-carat payoff? Glancing into my daughter’s room every night, and seeing her lounging around, invariably half-hidden by two huge dogs.
I’ve never understood why some mothers grieve over their fading looks as their daughters bloom; I can’t think of anything more rewarding than watching a beautiful, charming little girl turn into a poised young woman.
I don’t even mind that my best sandals and clothes have seeped into her wardrobe by some mysterious form of osmosis. They look better on her anyway.
I carelessly let my daughter go once, but I won’t make that mistake again. I’m so happy and grateful that she’s come home.