Once a month, sometimes less, sometimes more. I google her.
Mostly to check she’s still alive and not had some glamours funeral I knew nothing about, as has happened with other family members that have been, gone and are dead and buried before I happen to stumble upon the fact.
She is. Alive.
Although that’s an interesting concept within my heart and mind, because to her, I’ve been dead a long time, and to me, she’s been equally as dormant in emotion and existence and yet, this morning. I had a little google, just to check.
Why today?
I sat an exam, I passed it, more than passed it, I smashed it and I had that ebb of joy and pride that seeps in on occasion. A quiet smile to myself that I’ve done good and whenever I feel that feeling, it comes hand in hand with the irrational but unstoppable thought “she’d be proud of me,”
Let’s face it, that’s never been the case, pride doesn’t feature in our relationship and it never has. I think being proud of me reached it’s peak when she vicariously celebrated my incarceration with others who have come to see me as nothing more than… this?
We occasionally bump into eachother in the city where I live, and it’s a perturbing frequency and always so poorly timed – leaving magistrates court with my own solicitor for example and neglecting to realise, that my mother, too leaves the magistrates like clockwork in her endeavours to tear people apart – matrimonial in her case; not criminal, in mine. How far the apple fell from the tree.
I think of the most recent interactions; she’s pissed, with posh friends in prada coats, mulberry handbags swinging, after one too many gin and tonics they dare to call a working lunch, that’s rolled into a working dinner and a drink too many. Staggering with less grace than a stag she’s shot on a Sunday morning; and into me, my wife, and my mother in law.
I can’t explain the hate radiating from her. It’s something only a few have seen up close. Sadly, my wife being one of them. But it explains a lot. When I cry and explain the pain of loss, of emptiness, of anger and all that comes with the separation, disintegration and decimation of my family ties; it’s Sarah who picks up the pieces but more often than not, can only listen, because she’s not lived it with me, or seen it first hand. And then she does. And her firery eyes blaze as she steps into protective mode.
The drunk mother, masquerading as more, with words of venom and looks of loathing, pokes and points the finger of judgement I’m so accustomed to, the jab and jibe no longer hurt, they’re expected.
Poke.
Words were had, mine were “how are you?” in a childish voice I’m sure. Hers were wicked and met with Sarah fronting up like she’s the one who’s been inside.
Needless to say, the two women who love me most, held a hand each and took me to the nearest bar for a stiff drink.
It’s like being haunted by a ghost, living your life in oblvious wonder and then the rattling of chains like Jacob fucking marley himself is about to grace you with his presence. That’s what grief of loss in this way feels like. Haunted.
I find myself wondering – was it real?
Did I imagine it?
I’ve lived in the land of delusion more often than not over the past 36 years and as such, it takes therapy and fine tooth combing to evaluate the truth and the lies, the fantasy and the faux.
When you’re a child of abandonment and abuse, you create your own little world, it’s safety, it’s sensible, it’s selfish and it’s all for you. When you’re a child of abandonment who’s adopted into something that’s purporting to be those things in real life, you leave yourself vulnerable.
My parents never understood what it was to have a child living in perpetual fear of abandonment, a child that would jump through any hoop, no matter how high, hit the bar set higher than most, because what would happen if you were found out? What would happen if you really just were, the street rat from London who got passed around the police force daddy and co like a party gift?
I did an interview recently, you will get hear it this weekend actually. Something I was unsure about, as I’ve been the person who puts themselves on the pedestal and in the limelight and 1) it was never for a good reason 2) it was indicative of all the motivations listed above and 3) when you do that, you put a target on your back if you’ve lived the way I have lived
HOWEVER, it was the right space, the right place, the right people and I felt I needed to put my voice to the narrative that has been so grossly misrepresented otherwise in the public domain. I’m not sure if I did, the whole experience was more cathartic and therapeutic than it was directive and directed. Perhaps that’s honesty in that. Be that as it may, the radio piece begins in an interesting way “You’re a very smiley person Fran,”
And it’s something that we talk about at length – I am. And I go on to explain why. A smile is a mask for many of us. It’s also an invitation. Of kindness, of care, of empathy. At least I like to think so, hope so.
Mine means and has meant many things to many different people. My mother would say “I’ll wipe that smile off your face,” and my father would proceed to as she was rarely a smacker, a slapper, a chin grabber, a poker, but never a smacker. Small joys in that I think as I write this.
She wasn’t innately cruel by violence, neither of them would say that, never admit to that. My father would say only I could drive him to such things and deny any existence of a raised hand. Whether it be a bare bottomed smack in a restaurant in Portugal or a split lip in Manchester renaissance hotel, the outcomes the same : who believes the girl who cried wolf anyway?
It was an interesting thing to speak so freely with the BBC; which wasn’t particularly BBC, it was Prison Radio, much more of my core values and the women involved were genuinely interested in my story, my life, my past, present and future, which is unlike any press or public showboating of past lives and past times. Which is perhaps why I did speak to freely; these were women who work in prisons with the biggest, baddest criminals, and whilst my convictions and criminality may feel small comparatively, it doesn’t feel small to me and it certainly doesn’t feel small to my victims.
Or my family.
The Barkers that is, not the Barker-Mills and Mills encompassed.
I am a product of lived experience, I preach that, I do. And its true.
I am everything from the moment of abandonment and abuse, child court case records of horror, ward of court titles, foster care, foster parents, the good, the bad and the ugly, the adoption, the fragmentation of what it was to be a child wanted but unloved, woe is me.
My parents will tell you, as my father did on my wedding day – I had everything I ever wanted. I did. But it’s not what I wanted. Everything I wanted was a mummy and a daddy and my brother to be my best friend forever, and for us to appreciate the whole, the broken bits, the trauma, and fix it. Fix me. I suppose this lead to deep rooted resentment and that much is true, I’ve hated them, never wanted to, it’s an unnatural emotion to have, direct and envelope the ones you want to hold closest, but it’s corrosive and inevitable when you find yourself more broken than you were upon arrival into a family unit.
It is a toxicity I’ve lived with all my life, why me, why won’t you see me, fix me, want me, love me. Childish in its origins and met with disdain across the board from my parents who are perplexed that monetary projections of love are not enough.
Recently I’ve begun full time study of an undergraduate degree in Criminology, because I have wanted to understand myself more, the women I was incarcerated with more, the who, why, what how and when to see how we can bring about real change to the justice system. To understand the functionality, fragility of the systems and society we live in.
It’s been a journey! And it’s only semester one, but sometimes I find myself listening to lectuerers talk of criminal behaviours, motivations, ideations, triggers, traumas and I think – was I ever going to turn out any different given the life I have lead? Of course, there were choices, better decisions to be had, made and changed, we all have “what ifs” but my what ifs are the difference between life and death, addiction and recovery, fraud and deception or failure, and it’s all wrapped up on the bow of “I don’t feel I had a choice,” which is quickly followed by – we all have choices. That’s why I went to prison. I broke the law. I made that choice.
So how do you tell a judge, it’s not fair, this is who I am.
Because even being who you are has been decided unfit for society, unsafe, unsanctioned and you’re best placed out of it. For the greater good. It’s a familiar feeling.
When you don’t fit, you’re cast out.
Echoing my abandonment issues I know; but cast out, cut out from my family, left me feeling much the same : fuck you, fuck this. Set the world on fire, because it’s not fair.
Let’s look at it in black and white.
Born by chance, mother wanted an abortion, violent father could have spelled the end of the pregnancy on loop.
Born into destitution and biological parents who chose addictions and solicitations, violence and abuse over love, safety, sanitation, food and innocence.
Often starved, stinking of piss, but cleaned off for a pass around the old men, otherwise alone, with my baby brother, also soaking in his own stench, unfed, unclean and unloved.
So I scrounged and scavenged scraps and salvation for us both. And then, saved by the system. With a broken down door and police men who were there to save and not deprave me. Trust broken from day one.
First there was Aggie, the demon foster carer. Not much better than the desolate abandonment of a London pub.
Then there were angels. But it didn’t last.
Plucked from bliss and into middle class suburbia with barren Barbie and Ken.
Faux heaven, shining lights and flashy things. Dazzled by brilliance. And an uncanny similarity of looks and brains. She hates that. She always has.
“Gosh **********, doesn’t your daughter look like you,” – a roll of the eyes usually. But alas, we do. Blonde with blazing hazel eyes, green with brown rings, the three of us. Me, him and you.
It looked great, there’s no doubt about that.
Private school education, 5 holidays a year, an allowance that ka-chinged into the bank account every month like a paycheque, more designer gear than Selfridges, glamorous friends with high placed jobs and houses and villas and more.
And me?
Intelligent perhaps too much for you.
Arrogant, created by the things you taught me.
A liar, like for like.
A faker – “fake it till you make it,” you told me once before a big interview.
Disappointment, at the grades that weren’t 100, at the size that wasn’t 0, at the face that wasn’t painted, in the sexuality that wasn’t hetero, in the trauma that wasn’t hidden, the baggage that was heavy, the nightmares that were talked about, the questions you didn’t want asking, the rape that didn’t happen, the degree that wasn’t enough, the job that didn’t last, the daughter who became a whore, it’s all full circle.
And like you told me, I’m better in the gutter where you found me.
So I googled her this morning.
She’s alive.
Happy.
A mother, a grandmother.
Still working full time, even thought she said she would retire after we’d been to uni.
Working at 72, that says a lot.
She’s still lifestyles of the rich and famous, literally. And waxes lyrical about her family values in press, public and work; and people who meet me now and I mention in passing often look confused, as they “didn’t know she had a daughter” and we have uncomfortable moments of silence.
I’m still here. Succeeding in my own way. And it’s less tangled in my pangs of a life that once was and instead wrapped up in my own sense of self worth, pride, purpose, happiness and core values. Something prison taught me ironically.
I’m hoping someone does tell me if she dies and I’m not sure if that really matters now, because nothing changes for either us when that happens, but I still want to know.
