child gazing with awe as he got a friend to drive him in a Jaguar to pick up his dole money, or he would ostentatiously light a cigar with a ten-pound note after a win on the horses. Rodney had the same lack of interest in convention or authority, but without my father’s tendency to show off and boast about it. It was just the way he was. I would never know what car I would be driving from one week to the next. I could come home of an evening and find he’d sold the car I’d been planning to go shopping in.
‘So?’ he’d say when I complained, unable to see what the problem was. ‘Take the truck.’
I actually enjoyed that side of his character, the unpredictability and the spontaneity. Once he’d bought a truck or a car he would immediately be stripping it down and changing the engine over, which was a skill he had taught himself over the years of dealing with scrap vehicles in places like his dad’s yard. I guess he must have been tinkering with engines since he was tiny and understood instinctively how they worked. I once had to phone him from a petrol station where I’d stopped for fuel because I couldn’t remember whether the van I was driving had a petrol or a diesel engine now.
Like his dad he was always working, always thinking, always doing deals, always looking for an angle. It was nice to have a man like that looking after me, having never been able to rely on my idle father for anything, never even knowing if there would be food on the table at the end of a day.
Money went out as easily through Rodney’s hands as it came in, which sometimes made me nervous. And he was never one for paying the bills that I thought were important, like our rent or the poll tax. If I challenged him he would shrug and claim it was the ‘traveller’ in him, firmly keeping his wallet in his pocket and leaving me to find the money somewhere else if I was so keen to pay it. He might have thousands of pounds on him some days but if I asked him for some rent he would always say no. I didn’t like that. Ever since having Brendan I had always wanted everything straight and above board, all my bills paid. After my childhood I didn’t ever want to be dealing with bailiffs or debt collectors or social workers again if I could help it. I wanted things to be secure and legal. Since Brendan was born, I had this deep-seated fear of social services saying I was an unfit mother and coming to take him away from me and I didn’t want to give them any excuses to do so.
Even with all this new family life buzzing around me Brendan was still the centre of my life and I was determined not to do anything to risk losing him or to mess up his chances in life. If I ever did get into debt it would worry me incredibly until I had managed to pay it off. I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to think that I had failed in my attempt to be independent and to be a good mother. I had done enough failing in my life.
Most of all I wanted to prove to Dad that I could manage without him. Ever since I was a small child he had told me how useless I was and how I would never be able to manage without him. That had been how he had managed to force me to keep silent when he was abusing me himself, and how he could get me to go out to sell myself on the streets over and over again despite the fact that I hated it and was terrified every time. I never wanted to give him any chance to say that I had messed up my life once I’d left him so it made me nervous whenever Rodney took risks with my home and security. The worst thing would be to have to go back to Dad and ask for shelter, mainly because I didn’t want to have him anywhere near Brendan. I had to keep Brendan safe and protected at all costs, which meant I had to do everything possible to keep a roof over my head.
Rodney might not have liked wasting his money on annoyances like rent and poll tax, but when it came to spending on life’s pleasures he was never mean–far from it. After so many years of scrimping and scraping and having to sell my body or steal just to survive, it was like having a ten-ton weight lifted from my shoulders. For the first time in my life I was able to walk around a supermarket and just put whatever I wanted into the trolley, knowing that Rodney would happily pay the bill when we got to the till. For so many years I had felt like an outsider in this world, like some Victorian street urchin with my nose pressed up against a shop window, watching other people leading lives of what seemed to me to be unimaginable luxury but which was in fact just normal. Suddenly I could behave like all these normal people. It was a heady experience. I’d always been more used to buying one or two items at a time down the corner shop, existing from one makeshift meal to the next, always wondering if I had enough change in my pocket to manage till the next day. When you have been brought up in a house where there was never any money and where you only went into supermarkets in order to nick drink for your father, it felt like a dream come true; a shopping experience amongst the packed supermarket aisles that would be a chore for most people was like a day out in a theme park for me.
In one jump I had gone straight from being a suicidal teenage single mum, struggling to survive from day to day, to being a full-time stepmother and wife from the first day that Rodney moved into my life. In many ways, when I was busy and distracted, it felt like it was the most natural thing in the world, as if none of the pain and anger and resentment in my past had ever existed. Whenever Rodney was in charge there was always too much going on for me to have time for introspection and self-doubt, too much work to be done, too many people talking at once, too many surprises. There was no time to think about Dad or to remember the terrible times he had put me through, the memories that still haunted my nightmares. I thought that was a good thing. I thought that with Rodney’s help I really was going to be able to put everything behind me and be happy. There were moments when I actually felt like I might be a worthwhile person after all.
One of the first things I had learned about the new man in my life was that he was from a big gypsy family. I guess I had a fair number of preconceived ideas about gypsies, probably most of them emanating from Dad, although God knows no one in our family was in any position to look down on anyone else. I had always been told they were dirty and dishonest and aggressive and so I have to admit I felt nervous at the prospect of meeting Rodney’s extended family. I guess I never expected people to like me or love me because that had always been my experience. My own mother had left me, my father spent his whole time telling me how worthless and unlovable I was and his mother, my grandmother, never made any secret of how much she disliked having me around. I had no reason to think that Rodney’s parents would be any more welcoming but I needn’t have worried. They were great, accepting Brendan and me without a moment’s hesitation.
As soon as Rodney and I became a couple, Brendan and I were considered part of their family. They never asked me any questions about where I came from or who my family were; they were totally accepting and non-judgemental. It felt as though I could start my life again with a clean slate. I didn’t need to worry that they were talking about me behind my back or feeling sorry for me or disapproving of me because they were never like that. They weren’t interested in anything that I might have done or that might have been done to me in the past, only in how I was now, just living in the present, dealing with the day-to-day business of making a living and looking after the baby. It was a wonderful feeling to be with people who weren’t trying to bully or manipulate or humiliate me, who didn’t want anything from me.
Rodney’s parents lived in a caravan, which they had parked on a patch of land they owned out in the countryside, about eight miles outside Norwich. When Rodney first took me out there I was gob-smacked by how beautiful the location was. The caravan was immaculate, cleaner than any home I had ever been into, and full of bone china cups and sparkling cut-glass vases. In fact, it hardly looked lived in at all, more like a show home to be admired rather than actually used. The family spent most of their time in a shed that they had built on the site and which they had hooked up to a generator for electricity and heat. They used the shed as their office, their kitchen and a family meeting place. There were always a group of men sitting around talking about business and drinking tea, often with children running around at their feet.
I was amazed by how hygienic everything was as I watched Rodney’s mum and the other women use different bowls for everything; the one designated for washing dishes was never used for anything else. I guess it comes from living on the road and not always having the luxury of permanent running water.
I had a look round Rodney’s own caravan, which was parked on the site, but we never lived there, as my flat was a lot more comfortable. When I was feeling insecure (as I often was) I wondered whether my flat was as much of an attraction