The Darkness Isn’t Forever

K’s story

In her own words

I knew something was wrong before I knew what it was.

He was distant, on his phone all the time, using it as a distraction. He started waking up at two in the morning and just not going back to sleep. I didn’t realise how little he was sleeping, he just said it was broken sleep, but it wasn’t, he wasn’t sleeping at all. But you get that feeling, don’t you. When someone you love keeps telling you everything’s fine, your brain wants to believe them, but your gut’s saying something else. Looking back, it’s always your gut that’s right. Regardless of what you want to believe, or what you’re being told, if it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.

I didn’t find out what he’d done until after he’d been sentenced. It’s an unusual case in that way. He’d downplayed it, said he had a work thing, wrote down train times for me to come and collect him later and then I couldn’t get hold of him. It was a Friday, about five o’clock and it just kept cutting off, nothing. My next-door neighbour came and sat with me while I tried and tried. In the end I filed a missing person’s report with the police. Half past ten that night, I got a phone call to say he’d been detained. Nobody told me where, or why, what he’d originally told me wasn’t enough to put him in prison. It wasn’t until the next day, when the postman brought two official letters, one for him and one for me, that the severity of it actually came to light. A guard had tried to ring me apparently, but they’d misdialled the number, so I never got the call.

He went to prison the same day the children broke up for the Easter holidays. That gave me two weeks at home with them to figure out some kind of new normal, before anyone had to know anything.

M was eight then. Her brother was four, he turned five about three and a half weeks after her dad went in. That first night, he’d been poorly and hadn’t gone to school, and M asked if Daddy was home yet. I told her no, he’s staying over somewhere, it’s a work thing. I felt so guilty lying to her. But I had to get my own head straight first, find the duty solicitor, get things in place, before I could tell them properly. There was no point in the three of us panicking together when I could do it gently, over a few days.

It was the Tuesday I told them. I’d been to my mum’s that morning, she’d bought us some food shopping because there was none, no money for anything. I came back and they were watching TV, so I sat on the floor with them and just said, I know where Daddy is. I said when somebody’s done something wrong, they get punished for it that’s the right way, and we’ve always brought you up to know that if you do something wrong, there are consequences. I said Dad’s gone away for a bit and asked where they thought he’d gone. I think M said prison, or jail, something like that. I said that’s right, but it’s nothing to fear, he’s being punished for something he did, same as if you or your brother did something wrong.

I’d already looked up what the prison looked like, because I knew that when you think of prison you picture what you’ve seen in cartoons or horror films, bars, rats, all of it dark. I showed them the place, the facilities, and said look, Dad’s safe here. He’s got a bed. That was the main thing to me, just them knowing he was safe, that this was his punishment, not some awful place.

Her brother doesn’t remember any of it now. I think that’s just what a child’s mind does, it blocks it out to protect itself. M remembers more. She wrote her dad one letter, she was really angry, she doesn’t remember what she actually wrote, just that it was very repetitive. He wrote to me first, and he didn’t seem very remorseful in that first letter. It was only after I sent about ten pages back, with hers added in, that I think he really understood the enormity of it. Because even though he did the crime and went away for four months, we suffered more than he did. He had no responsibility in there. Shelter, food, three meals a day, no bills to worry about. He could relax and it felt very unfair.

He was sentenced to eight months but only served four. Partway through, he had the option to come home early with a tag. I said no. Someone from the prison rang to set it up and I said straight away, he stays in there. To me, coming home after two months would have felt like such a slap in the face to the people he’d hurt. I needed him to have that space, to sit with what he’d done and reflect on it, not just walk back into normal life. He was really shocked, he thought he could just come home, but I wasn’t having him disrupt what I’d built for the children. They didn’t need to see him with a tag on, you serve your time.

What he did went round the whole local community, and a lot of people just stopped talking to us. 

Taking the children back to school after the Easter holidays, walking through the field into the yard where people just kept their distance, that first couple of weeks was horrific. But I had to do it. I wasn’t going to let them miss school over this, they didn’t miss a single day the whole time he was inside.

The school were different. The head teacher came round one evening in the holidays, sat and talked to the children, then talked to me. Somebody anonymously paid for both of them to go to after school clubs, which gave me a bit of a break, enough that I could go and study to keep myself occupied.

I think I just wanted more people to listen to mine and the children’s side of it, instead of automatically assuming we knew, or had something to do with it. We didn’t, and there was proof of that. I just wanted people to reach out, not be afraid of us. We were still the same people. We still needed support, someone to hold our hands and say it’s going to be alright. Nobody said that to me, I didn’t have that.

The whole time, so many people knew what he’d done. I didn’t. I found that out afterwards, and it’s just amazing how something can stay that covered up.

Looking back, what I think I needed most was other families going through the same thing. It sounds horrible to say, but it would have helped so much to know other families with children in a similar position, not that I’d wish it on anyone, but so the children had that common ground, someone their own age who understood without having to explain it and another adult for me to actually talk to.

There’s so much support for prisoners while they’re inside, and for helping them reintegrate afterwards. There’s nothing for the people left behind, and we’re the ones who end up carrying most of it. It feels like nobody cares. The sentence gets passed and that’s it, nobody thinks about who’s left at home. If I could change one thing, it would be something as simple as someone asking, at the point of sentencing, whether there’s anybody at home who’ll need support while he’s away.

Nine years on, if someone was going through this now, I’d tell them it feels like your world has stopped, like it’s ended, and you can’t see how it starts again. Everyone wants to tell you there’s hope and honestly, when you’re in the depths of it, that means nothing, it’s just words. You don’t feel it until you’re starting to come out the other side.

So don’t look too far ahead, it’ll seem too frightening. Just take it hour by hour, day by day. Find the small things, a cup of tea, a walk, half past three when school pickup comes round and the days nearly done. Don’t sit in silence on your own, have a radio on, speak to someone you trust who’s got your back. Let other people’s opinions go past you, what happens between you and the person who’s in prison is yours, nobody else’s business, whatever anyone else thinks they know.

If they come home, the work is theirs to do, and it must go to the children first, not to you.

He had to prove himself to the children before anything else and he did. He served his four months, put right what he did wrong and slowly, in their own time on their terms, he earned his way back into their trust.