Me and Mrs Jones……….

My father was having an affair, with a woman who lived not far from us in Ockendon Essex. I hated her and to some extent still do, she has always been there at the worst times in my life, and she has never been remorseful for her part in the pain of my life and was to a great extent complicit with it. My mother was struggling to make ends meet, if my father was giving her any money to help I am not aware of it, we certainly didn’t live well on what my mother earned. Somehow my father convinced or bullied, he was quite the bully so I am sure it was with bullying that he forced my mother into giving us to him, to live with him and “her”. I have very strong and fairly mixed memories of this but I intend to recount my version, so I will.

I recall having a bag of my clothes with me and 2 of my sisters and we arrived at “her” house, it was small and smelled different to my own and I didn’t want to be there, but I remember it being an adventure, from my perspective it was, we packed up and were going to live in a strange place with different rules and different things and I wanted to go but felt pulled away from my mother, but I went, I even think I was excited about the change.

My father was different he didn’t shout he seemed softer there was no violence and “her” children seemed to like him!

I don’t recall how long we stayed there but I know one of my sisters didn’t want to be there and made it known, she cried all the time and repeated I want my mum, I want to go home. My other 2 sisters and I were not pleased to be there but were I think happy to be anywhere that wasn’t at the house with my mother, I don’t know why? All I do know is as soon as we were there we were back at home with mother, this however didn’t last long!