The Psychopath: A True Story(51)

To forgive my abuser I had to have empathy for him as an abuse victim himself. I had to have the ability to feel and imagine that he had emotion. I could cognitively and emotionally empathise with him because I had been an abuse victim myself. I had struggled and fought against my own abuse by hurting myself, he had gone another way and hurt others instead.



I had initially met Ross (Robyn’s biological father) in my early twenties when I played bodhran (a traditional Celtic drum) for fun on the live music scene in Edinburgh. I was predominantly a pianist but it was rather difficult to carry a piano around the different pubs we played in socially so I learnt to play the bodhran instead.

Ross was a professional singer and guitarist with the most amazing voice – a talent that captivated audiences wherever he went. He was a damaged soul and a real man’s man, and that all came out in his singing. I think I fell in love with his voice more than anything. We dated for a while and then I found out one day that he was two-timing me with another girl. I dumped him immediately. He tried numerous times to get me back and I just brushed him off. I had to stop seeing my friends and leave the social scene that we shared because it became too difficult and uncomfortable to be near him. Eventually I heard he moved away.

Then in 1997 he returned, a new man. He had cleaned up his act, stopped drinking so much and told me he had stopped taking drugs. (I had known that he smoked weed but hadn’t been aware that he’d been taking a lot of speed and cocaine before he left Edinburgh.)

Gradually, we became friends again and saw a bit of each other.

I’d been dating a ranger with whom I was very much in love, but it just couldn’t work, and when it broke up Ross was there for me. He held me and told me everything would be OK. He never made a pass at me or tried to seduce me. He just behaved like a great friend for over a year. However, he would tell me over and over again that he had cleaned up his act to win me back, that he was in love with me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. His actions that year left me in no doubt that he was genuine and finally I decided tentatively to trust him. Initially I just wanted to take it slow but as soon as we started getting close he started to talk about having a baby. He worked nights as a live musician and I worked days as a business adviser, so we would each have time to look after the baby, he would say.

I said no, but maybe sometime. I was not particularly the motherly type and wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to have kids – certainly not yet. But I was getting on and at thirty-three, I felt I would soon have to make a decision one way or the other.

By this time I was working as a business development adviser for the Scottish Enterprise Network, providing business development advice to help local small companies expand and grow. One of my clients was a fertility expert and I broached the subject with her.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it too much,’ she said. ‘At your age it’s likely to take at least a year to get pregnant anyway.’

So I relaxed a little and when Ross next brought it up I had a moment of weakness. I flippantly said we could let fate decide. It only took that one shot!

So I was pregnant. Almost immediately, Ross seemed to go off me although he was over the moon about the idea of becoming a dad. And he didn’t want to have sex any more, almost like his goal had already been achieved. I seem to remember reading an article about Elvis not wanting to touch his wife when she was pregnant and thought it possible that Ross felt the same way. It was a strange time. Ross was there and still very loving but he was also quite removed. He didn’t want to talk about the future at all.

I knew Ross had had a rough time with his own father and subsequent stepfathers – but that is not my story to tell.

So Ross was damaged, and I understood his conflicting emotions. I had a lot of empathy for him, but it was hard.

I went into labour at 7 a.m. on 14 February 1999. Ross had come home at 3 a.m. and brought me flowers for Valentine’s Day. The joke was that my contractions had started because I had gone into shock at the romantic gesture.

When I felt the contractions start I let Ross sleep a bit. By 8 a.m. they were stronger and only a few minutes apart. I called my lovely mother, who was coming over to take us to the maternity hospital, then I woke Ross who was bemused and a bit annoyed at my choice of timing. He groggily got out of bed and tagged along.

In the words of the midwife, the birth was ‘absolutely textbook’.

As Robyn was placed beside me, still attached, I looked into her dark eyes with total wonder and in that moment understood what real true love was. Here was this tiny creature, confused and fragile, totally dependent on me. The bond was instant.

Ross liked being a dad but he was not prepared for it emotionally at all. He thought life could continue as it had before, just with a new addition. For three months I nursed Robyn and when my maternity leave was up, I went back to work. Initially Ross looked after Robyn during the day but he found it very difficult. He worked playing music in pubs most evenings until midnight but then would hang around having a couple of pints with his mates until three or four in the morning. He would then come home and watch TV for an hour or so. I left for work at 8 a.m. and occasionally found him still up.

I would come home at lunchtime to feed Robyn and a couple of times found Ross asleep on the couch with Robyn bawling in her cot. It became clear that he couldn’t manage and he refused to change his lifestyle.

I tried reasoning with Ross but he was far better at arguments than me. He didn’t care what he said and would be as hurtful as possible – calling me all the names under the sun – because if I was upset then I couldn’t argue the point. I never felt physically threatened by him but he could verbally dominate me easily, screaming abuse for the smallest of things. I was totally convinced that I had to hold my family together and that Robyn needed her father around as much as she needed me.