So this is where it began....

It should probably be announced that much has changed for me over the last few months…. But first it might be an idea to refer you to a blog entry that was written last summer (2008) when everything first happened….


ADULTERY IS A MOTHERUCKER
So the past three days have been major fun. There I was on Tuesday night, all cuddled up with the Mr Leahy, in bed, chillaxing and watching the garish Big Brother. When my phone rings.

Now, my phone has been a major problem for Mr Leahy (the boyfriend), namely because it is always frigging ringing. No matter what time of the night, my phone will go off, and it is usually some daft bastard of a friend who thinks it is a life or death situation to call me at 1am when they don't quite know how to work their iTunes (no names Daniella). So these days, when me and Mr Leahy are chilling in bed it tends to be kept on silent in the front room. The problem with that is I have a super sense of hearing when it comes to detecting the sound of my phone vibrating its silly little arse off on the side in the front room. That and the fact that my walls aren't even paper thin, they are tracing paper thin, means that when it went off on Tuesday night at half past ten, I heard it. And being the nosey fucker I am (it might just be some gossip that absolutely positively cannot wait until the morning) I went to get it.

Seeing that it was my mother that was ringing was a bit of a surprise.
We DO NOT get on, and to be honest, the only reason I ever really speak to her now I'm older is for the sake of the other kids she has. Combine this with the fact that it was nearly eleven at night and I knew I had to answer it as it must be an emergency. Down the other end of the line was a hysterical woman telling me that she knows that we don't get along but the kids really want to speak to me as Stuart (my stepdad) has been having an affair and she has just kicked him out.

Now my mother is well known for blowing things completely out of proportion, so my first thought was that Stuart had bought a friend a drink in a pub and my mum had found out and read into it that he had been participating in undercover orgies with the Billiards Association in the Eagle pub down the road. So I asked her to put my thirteen year old brother on the phone to try and get the sensible version of the story (because that's the way these things work, take the MOTHER off the phone and put the CHILD on the phone to get the truth). But the Boy (as he is nicknamed) was so choked up and crying that he couldn't even formulate a sentence. Being that the child is my favourite (how wrong, bla bla bla) my mother knows that this is a sure fire way to get me to act, so fifteen minutes later I was pulling up outside the house with the Mr Leahy in tow.

The Boy ran at me, and hugged me and resolutely refused to let go for the rest of the evening, while I tried to make sense of exactly what had happened. The house was full to bursting, my maternal grandmother was standing on the doorstep smoking the life out of a pack of cigarettes (I swear she has the ability to inhale a cigarette whole) cursing to high heaven that all men are bastards and think with their dicks (classy). My mum's old boss Michael, who has become a family friend and now lives across the road was sitting in the front room, deftly defending himself from the fifteen month old who was taking shots at him with a golf club.
Paige, the fifteen year old was red faced, and holding a phone with the vice-like grip of a child with a bag of sweeties. And Tom, the devil spawn child was asking what his 'dickhead dad had fucking done wrong now'. Needless to say Mr Leahy looked like he had been caught in the headlights, and sped off home as soon as I could drag my mum away from the car she was standing next to earbashing him in. It was going to be a long night.

After much time, and much talking (particularly over one another, the women in my family are good at that) it transpired that this all began because my sister had dropped her mobile phone down the toilet. She is so flipping clumsy it is unbelievable, this wasn't the first time and it won't be the last time either. So as a result my stepdad had lent her his handset. Which my sister had found an amount of unsavoury text messages on, which were not from my mother's number. This apparently occurred last week, but she did not know what to do with this news, and so didn't tell anyone.

After much deliberation, she decided to tell the Boy at the beginning of this week, and by Tuesday, the pair had decided that my mother needed to know. So they gave her a sheet of paper with the name and number of the girl on it, which my mother confronted my stepfather with.

My stepfather works for a carpet laying company which has offices in both London and Wales, and as a result he is often required to also work in Wales on a frequent basis. Upon being confronted with this paper, he began to admit that he had been having an affair for the best part of a year, that this Charlotte lives in Wales and that he loves her, want to be with her, and wants a divorce. Needless to say, my mother threw him out on the spot. That is when my good number was called into use. Grrr.

The Boy was inconsolable for the rest of the evening. He refused to leave my side and he slept with me, crying throughout his sleep. My sister, who is often a screaming banshee because she breaks a nail, was horribly quiet and calm. Tom just kept reiterating the fact that his dad had been a knobhead, but didn't really know why, and the baby acquired a new found obsession with my tongue piercing, often giving me a wet wipe and demonstrating how to rub my tongue to get that dirt off it...

Nobody in the house seemed to be doing the sensible thing and trying to get the kids settled. My mother was leaving a barrage of the most horrible voicemails on the phone of this girl, as she had already scared her into switching it off by ringing her and calling her a scrubber and all manner of things. My nan was more interested in trying to convince me to take the day off work, rally the troops around and drive down to Wales for a 'little day trip' with promises of paying for petrol and throwing in sandwiches too. Ghetto gran.

Instead of screaming and shouting, I decided to take the sensible route and try and speak to this girl to get the story on what exactly is going on and what is planned to go on.

It wasn't until the next day that she actually turned her phone back on, and I had already left her a message explaining to her who I was and why I wanted to talk to her. On Wednesday morning, I managed to speak to her, and she tried to convince me that I had the wrong number. When I explained to her that I knew that I hadn't got the wrong number because I had seen the text messages, she promptly hung up.

Here I am, thinking that I am trying to speak to a grown woman about this, and she's putting the phone down. Why is it that I have to be more mature than so many frigging people (including every bloody adult involved in this situation at present). An hour later I get to speak to her again, where I tell her not to put the phone down, and I am simply trying to have an adult conversation with her, which convinces her to talk to me. Well it would do. Using the word adult always perks up the ears of somebody who's only 20 YEARS OLD.

Yes that's right. My stepdad has been having it off with a bird who is even younger than his oldest (albeit step) daughter.

So lovely Charlotte. Lovely young Charlotte. Lovely young, just out of nappies Charlotte. Charlotte is 20. She works in a pub. She lives in Colwyn Bay in Wales. She met Stuart when a mutual friend who also works for the same company as him introduced them. She had been seeing my stepdad for months. She has no kids and still lives at home with her mum. Her dad is not at all happy with the situation, but her mother has said that she will support her if it makes her happy. She did not know that Stuart had a wife and kids, but he had told her that he had a girlfriend. It was only last week that he admitted that he had four children with this woman and showed her pictures. The plan was for her to move to London and live with Stuart and she couldn't help how she felt about him.

How do you explain to a 20 year old girl that she is about to walk into the fiery pit of Hell? How can you explain to her that the wife of the man she 'loves' is a cross between a Rottweiler and a pitbull mastiff when she gets going? How do you tell her that the wifes mother has a mouth more filthy than a coal miner's armpit? How do you let her in on the fact that my family is so wretched that I could only cope with it for 12 years before I left, and I was a daughter, not the harlot who had stolen my mother's man?

I tried in the best way possible to fill this girl in on what her life would most probably be like, if she decides that she is going to go ahead with these foolish plans. Moving to London, with no friends here or family to support her. Having these children come to stay in a place she has to call home, for them to utterly abuse her as I know they will do. How will she feel when a girl who is only five years younger than her comes to stay at her house, does what she likes and calls her a cunt if she even attempts to speak to her. Because that is what Paige will do. Have a thirteen year old boy try and kick her in the fanny every time she walks past her? Because that is what Harrison will do. Be called a whore and a Welsh tart? Because that is what Tom will do.

How do you get a child, because that is what she is, to understand that she is not just in a position to ruin these kids lives, but also her own?

Maybe I should just step back, not get involved, because stressful doesn't even come close to this situation. I am having to become a mother (again) to four kids while theirs sits in a corner crying and wilting.

I think I need a break. Drive on down to somewhere nice, picturesque and quite, maybe oh I don't know Colwyn Bay. I've heard good things. Me, my luggage and a pickaxe...


Allow that to be the backdrop for the oncoming….

So as hinted at in that entry, I had a feeling that I would be called upon a lot by my mother for support and generally the taking over of certain elements of her life… namely the other children. Yet I don’t think I was prepared for what was to come…