Page 54 of The Making of Jonty Bloom
“She thought making your favourite pudding would be enough for you to cope with being told your brother and your ex were marrying? I don’t like her very much. Sorry.”
“Nor do I at the moment. She has a blind spot as far as my brother’s concerned. Griff has a mild form of cerebral palsy and she’s always been protective. So was I. When did you lose touch with your parents?”
“Depends which parent you mean. My mother when I was eight. My father when I was fifteen.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long and sad story. Sure you want to know?”
“Yes. If you want to tell me.”
“You told me yours, so…” Jonty sighed. “We relocated to Northumberland from Surrey because of my dad’s job. I don’t think my mum wanted to move. I didn’t. I had friends at school and moving somewhere new meant I had to start all over again. But dad always got what he wanted by one means or another. If persuasion didn’t work, a thump did.”
Shit!“He hit your mother?”
Jonty nodded. “He didn’t hit me until she left. Then I became his punch bag.”
“Your mother left you with him? Why?”
Jonty kicked at the sand as he walked. “She’d tried to run away with me and my sister a couple of times. Packed a suitcase. Packed my stuff and my sister’s stuff. Somehow, he always found out. I think he had cameras in the house. She was scared of him. He drank too much.
“Anyway, we moved up here and for a while, things were better. He wasn’t crazy jealous and constantly asking her where she was going, who she was seeing, but… It didn’t last. One night, she put me and Denny in the car and told me to stay there. While my mother went into the house to get the bags, my dad came home. I was frightened he’d do something really bad to my mum, so I took Denny out of her seat and carried her back into the house so I could protect my mother.”
Devan swallowed hard. He almost wished he’d not asked the question.
“Dad had hit her. Her face was bleeding. He said he’d let her go, but only with one of us. If she chose, he wouldn’t follow her. I think he thought she’d refuse, that she wouldn’t leave one of her kids.”
Jonty stopped walking and stared out to sea. “And I thought…she won’t choose. She’ll wait until she can run with both of us. But she didn’t. She picked Denny. She was crying, but she picked Denny. I was eight. Denny was two. I…sort of understood, as much as a little kid can. She couldn’t trust my father to take care of my sister. Denny was still in nappies, didn’t sleep through the night and a real little madam. I was a good boy who did as he was told. She thought I’d be okay, I guess. She hugged me and whispered in my ear that she’d come back for me. I believed her. I really believed her. But she never came back.”
“Jesus, Jonty.” Devan was horrified.
“When my dad finally accepted that she’d gone for good, he destroyed everything of hers and of Denny’s that she’d left. Books, toys, clothes. Photos. I hid under the bed in my room and I could hear him yelling as he went round the house. When he finally went quiet, I went down and found him passed out on the couch. He’d thrown up on the carpet. I cleaned up his vomit, made a sandwich, and went back to bed. I still believed she’d come back because she’d promised.
“For years after she’d left, I used to imagine she’d turn up at parents’ evening, or she’d be there when I ran on school sports’ day, or she’d come to listen to me sing a solo in the end of year shows. I tried my best, just in case.
“I convinced myself that she was dead, that my father had killed her, but then he showed me the divorce papers and told me she was going to get married. She had a new life. One without me. But I still hoped she’d remember what she’d said to me. It’s part of the reason I’ve never left Alnwick. The thought that she’d come back, even after all these years.”
Oh God.“Have you looked for her?”
Jonty nodded. “When I was older and knew how. My friend Tay showed me what to do. I never found a trace. She’ll have changed her name. I kept mine even though I hated my father, because I thought that way, she’d find me.”
“What was your father like when she’d gone?”
“Angry. Bitter. Spiteful. Still drinking too much. Nothing I could describe as sad. But as far as I know, he kept his word and let her go. He hardly mentioned her, though he resented me, blamed me for not being lovable enough to get her to stay.”
Devan took hold of his hand. “That’s a terrible thing to lay on a kid.”
“I believed him. No one loved me and no one ever would, even though I didn’t understand why. It was enough to know that she’d left me.
“I kept my head down, did what I was told, ate what I was given, kept out of his way. I worked hard to ensure there was no reason for him to be mad with me. I went to bed early. I was a good boy. A model prisoner. He said he was the one in prison, trapped by a child-guard.” He gave a short laugh. “He didn’t need a reason to hurt me. Bad day at work, he came home, drank, and took it out on me. Someone cut him up in the car, I bore the brunt of his anger. Though he was mostly careful not to hit me anywhere that showed, and he only did it every month or so.”
“No one noticed?”
“No. Well, they might have done. Friends did sometimes. Tay did, but I made him promise to keep quiet. I always lied if asked, because bad as my dad was, I didn’t want to lose him too. No grandparents. No aunts and uncles. He was all I had. I knew my life was shit, but we were family. He was my dad. I was supposed to love him. He fed me, clothed me. If he hit me, he made me feel it was my fault.”
“It was never your fault.”
“I know that now. Then one day, he got…carried away. My thirteenth birthday. He’d started to talk to me about girls and sex and stuff, and how I needed to use protection, because the worst thing that could happen was that I got a girl pregnant, and I blurted that I liked boys. It was one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever done. Maybe the most idiotic. I mean, I knew what his reaction would be. I shouldn’t have said anything. The one thing I needed to keep secret and never say, though I think he knew anyway. He was waiting for me to confess it.”
