Something unpredictable

An earthquake at the kitchen table.

Me in my early twenties.

CONTENT WARNING: This article mentions sexual abuse.

I found out something so profoundly shocking yesterday that I can’t concentrate on the present for more than a few minutes.

It doesn’t change my own present, not really. It doesn’t belong to me. But it blows a giant, smoking hole in my past and the things that I thought of as certain.

A message arrived from an old friend: someone had died.

I hadn’t seen him for years but he was a significant boyfriend, one of those hinge people who changes the course of things, sending you down an unexplored road.

I was young when I met him (see picture). We were together for four years and had started to talk about marriage. He bought me a ring but we didn’t put it on that finger.

The news of his death was unexpected. I was sad for his family, sad for all the things he was still hoping to do, that he wouldn’t see his children grow up.

Then I Googled him to see what there was about it online, because I’m never not curious about that kind of thing.

I was drinking a glass of water at the kitchen table after a night out with my husband, tapping the name into the search bar with my thumb.

This ex didn’t have much of a footprint, no social media. If I’d ever looked him up since we parted, I couldn’t find anything.

I’d heard from friends that he’d gone north and was teaching, settled with a family. The friends heard from him occasionally, up until a few years ago.

So, I looked. And then I dropped my phone.

The first result was a picture of his pale face, staring out from a white background, burst capillaries spreading from nose to cheeks, hair a bit wild, a small crest in the bottom right hand corner of the picture.

I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes at all. There was nothing there. The strangest picture of him I’ve seen.

Then the first words of the headline. “Teacher, John Doe* jailed for 10 years for sexually...”

And that’s where the phone slipped from my hand.

We sat there, my husband and I, him wearing the same expression as me, his palm on the table as though he was trying to catch me with one hand.

My hand was over my mouth. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

Eventually, I picked up the phone and read. It was a local paper story from a few years ago.

It said he’d been teaching in a primary school when the offences took place. Two girls, five or six at the time, were now young adults. One had revealed the truth in a letter to her mother.

Quotes from the young women said he’d stolen their childhoods, that they still suffered mental health problems. That he’d ruined their lives.

A jury believed them and he was sent to prison, to a place that rehabilitates sex offenders if they can admit to what they’ve done.

A tweet I found said he’d protested his innocence to the end, but I’m not sure where that information came from. There are organisations and pressure groups who support those insisting they’ve been wrongly accused and one of those seemed to know about his case.

Maybe he was innocent, I immediately reasoned, still not taking it in. Maybe you’d just lie and say you’d done it to avoid going to a regular prison. They kill paedophiles in there don’t they?

Finding out someone from your past has died is always altering, even if just to redraw the map of where you’ve come from.

But this isn’t on any map.

I lived with him when he was training to be a teacher. It was hard graft, long hours, lesson plans, working with children who had very bad home circumstances. He was dedicated, earnest, principled.

Our relationship faltered and I left. He was a few years older and ready to start a family, move out of London. I’d only just arrived.

I couldn’t believe anyone would want to leave the most exciting place on earth.

So, I trawled the streets with a copy of Loot, found a lovely flatshare off the south side of Clapham Common and packed my things.

He hired a van and helped me move. It was kind of him. He cried on the doorstep when we said goodbye. You would have described it as amicable if it had been you.

I heard shortly afterwards that he was back with his ex. He moved away, they got married, had kids.

Obviously, in the great re-writing of memory that happens after a shock, everything becomes sinister.

He was obsessed with becoming a father. More than any person I’ve ever met. He had to have children or he didn’t see the point of being here.

When he was a teenager, he told me he’d diagnosed himself with a condition which meant certain infertility. He said he’d walked around for hours, thinking of ways to kill himself.

At the start of my twenties, I wasn’t ready for motherhood and Radio 2 in the mornings while I did the packed lunches. Not even thinking about it.  

Back then, I was convinced I didn’t want children at all. In a brilliant bit of 20-something logic, I kept that to myself for fear he’d break up with me.

Looking back, I spent most of that relationship in fear that he would go. I’ve never been a jealous girlfriend but I was with him, wildly jealous. We’d see a play and I’d spend the night torturing myself over whether he fancied the actress in it.

See what I mean? Childish. I think I only really grew up when I moved into that flat in Clapham and started to define life on my own terms.

It was fun and mad and I made mistakes and had terrible flings with wild men. Sometimes, I probably put myself in danger, late at night, drunk, not thinking about tomorrow. But I learned a lot about myself.

I only ever remembered that relationship with my ex as solid and safe and perhaps even a bit dull.

I remember telling him, the few times we did talk after the break-up, that I was meeting so many interesting, funny people now I lived in London and worked in television.

Writers, comedians, show-offs. It obviously implied that he wasn’t any of those things and that I found him comparatively boring. He seemed hurt. After all, he’d acted in school productions, liked watching comedy, played the guitar.

After I read that article at the kitchen table, a song he’d written for me went round and round in my head for days like something from a horror film.

I’m still nowhere near to working out what to make of it.

Was he a monster all along? I suppose he must have been.

How could that much horror be contained in such an ordinary vessel?

But what did I expect? A hooded cloak and a thin moustache. A dirty mac. Burning red coals for eyes.

I wish I had something definitive about the banality of evil or even the hindsight to declare I’d seen something like this coming.

But I didn’t. I’ve got nothing but disbelief.

I’ve exchanged messages with one or two mutual friends from back then. We’re all in a similar place.

“I guess we’re not going to his funeral then,” said one.

“Um, no,” I replied.

*Obviously not his real name