I'm supposed to feel better for this, but I don't. And I don't want to dwell in self-pity either. My mum doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. She came to see us on a week's holiday that was always going to be hard. There was her, her husband (don't say the word 'Stepdad'), my brother, my 17 year old niece and her friend. They were staying at an awkward time, Tues to Tues so the only gite I could find for them had them sharing a bedroom (divided into two by one of those dividery thingies) and my brother stayed with us. They had no car and we live in a remote place so every day, I packed the kids into the van and I took them to see the sites.
I noticed on the very day that they arrived that her husband (M for simplicity) was touching my niece the way only a boyfriend should, putting his hand up her back and rubbing it, touching her thigh and occasionally slapping her bottom. He's always been a bit slimey, he'll make a beeline for attractive young women on their own at parties, he makes inappropriate comments etc. I've never got on with him because he was a complete a utter bastard to me when I was a child and then a teenager, and he still likes to have his dig every now and then, acknowledging everyone but me, making sarcastic comments to me,etc. Anyway I asked her if she was ok with this and she said no, in her words; "I thought I was just being paranoid.... it's not what grandads do is it?" She also told me that he had taken her and her friend to one side and asked if they were planning to go topless on the beach. She said they were too uncomfortable to wear their bikini's on the beach now.
So I kept my eye on him and saw him touching her friend's bottom whilst pretending to get a bit of fluff off her skirt, looking at their boobs, stroking her thigh whilst tickling her. I phoned my sister to ask for advice and learn that my brother, the father of my niece, had his concerns about them all holidaying together because of this very thing. I was advised to speak to mum about it directly and ask her to tell him to take it easy. This I did on one of their last days so as not to create bad feeling. I did it as diplomatically as I could but she said that now I had turned it into a problem, it was just the way he was and she wished she could get away from us all sometimes.
Anyway they all went back and that was that. Two days later I get a phone call from my mum, she is crying so much I thought someone had died, as my younger brother had been in hospital before the holiday I was really frightened something had happened to him. But she managed to say to me inbetween hysterical sobbing "God forgive you for what you have done", she said again about wishing she could get away from us all and then she slammed the phone down. I call my brother who told me that my niece had told him what had gone on and he had spoken to mum about it too. She'd reacted much in the same way as she did with me when I first told her, but nothing more than that, so he was quite surprised when I mentioned the phone call. Since then I have heard that she is speaking to everyone, and he has apologised. But she has told people that God should still forgive me for what I have done, and I haven't heard from her since.
Part of me thought, goody, that's her out of my life. She is such a drama queen, she tries to tear the family apart and I suppose she is part of the reason I escaped to France. But another part is crying inside that she could do this to me when I only tried to do what I thought was best. Once again she has put M before us. She betrayed me throughout my childhood and now she is betraying me again.
There, now I have wrote it all down I hope I feel better! I'll get a beer. Thanks for listening.