Dear Sam, just two days before my life was blown apart by a text message, I heard your dad telling someone how great I was with you. He sat across the table from me in a pub, and said how much effort I’d put into making you happy and comfortable in our new home. I pretended that I wasn’t listening, but inside I was beaming because it was nice to get some recognition for the effort I’d put in. But it had never felt like an effort.
I met you when you were three years old – you are nearly eight now. You were a lovely boy at three; you still are. I remember the first time I saw an animated version of you, your dad sent a video of you saying, “My daddy says he loves you.” I didn’t know which was sweeter, your dad’s intention or your cute voice saying it.
Your dad and I had a little girl a year later. It was a joy to see her propped up in her red chair while you spooned yoghurt into her mouth. There was an instant bond. She picked you out from the crowd as her brother; there was an undeniable link by DNA.
Finally, your dad found us a home of our own. I told you that you had the biggest bedroom, not thinking that you’d go racing up to the second floor and bag ours. We took you back down to the first floor and showed you the room we’d picked for you, complete with a little area where you could make a den. As the estate agent showed us round, I watched out of the window as you ran around the back garden with your sister. You loved the place. And the office in the back garden that you and your dad named “the man cave” made it even more appealing.
My approach to the role of stepmum was to remain in the shadows until such time as you came to me – and you did. It was usually when I was cooking in the kitchen that you’d hang around and have a chat, and I loved it.
You stayed with us each week, Monday to Wednesday, and I loved our life even more when you were here. You made it happier. It came as a surprise to me to realise just how much I loved having you around.
When I met your dad, the first thing he did was tell me about you. I said great and I meant it. I always knew you were part of the package that came with your dad, but I didn’t know just how much I’d come to love you myself.
I found myself defending you to the hilt when another family came to stay and they brought their son who said mean things to you. You held back tears and I felt such anger I could have thrown them out there and then, but he was just a kid with autism, so I told him in no uncertain terms that no one was mean to you in my house. I watched you sit that bit taller in your seat at the dinner table as a result.
On Halloween, I threw a party for you and we made invitations to send to each of your friends. I covered the house in fake cobwebs. When your mum had another party a few days later, I took round what decorations we had left. It was the first time I’d properly spoken to her and I thought it would make you happy to see that we got on. You seemed much more relaxed after that and a few nights later you called your dad upstairs when you were in bed and asked if you could see us at the weekend too – not just him, all of us; you wanted us to go bowling together. You told him: “I didn’t feel that comfortable when you first moved in here, but now I feel extremely comfortable.”
He came downstairs with tears in his eyes and my heart pinched when he told me.
Basically, I loved you for the time that you were, in some part, mine and although I knew I’d never have a place as special as your mum’s – and I never tried to – I was trying to carve out a little place just for us.
Then that fateful day came along. Just two days after we’d sat in that pub and I’d heard your dad commending the effort I made to make you happy, I saw a text message on his phone that blew our family apart.
When I confronted him with it, I was furious, not just for breaking my heart, but for ruining the little blended family that we had. As a result, the trust had gone and with it our life together, your bedroom in our home, and everything you’d got used to and learned to love. After all, he’d already split from your mum before you were two. Didn’t you – more than anyone else – deserve some security? The words that I threw at him that morning were on your behalf as much as mine. You didn’t deserve it, you deserved stability just as your sister did, not another move out of this house.
For you and your sister, I would have forgiven him if I could, but I couldn’t undo what he’d done, not even for you.
I tried having him in the house for a few weeks, just to keep things the same during your visits, but I hadn’t counted on how upsetting it would be for me to see you and not be a part of your life any more. I couldn’t come downstairs and make breakfast for you all any more before school because I didn’t trust myself not to break down at the loss of you. I was heartbroken, not just for your dad, not just for our family unit, but because your dad’s mistake meant that I lost you.
I knew that you’d be OK. I know that as long as your mum and dad are happy, you will be too. Your parents are – and should be – the most important thing to you. I know also that once your dad has a new place, you and your sister will go there and you will be happy, and I want you to be. But there is that selfish part of me that thinks, what about me?
Blended families are all too common these days, but when they break down, does anyone consider the loss of those children from the stepmother’s life? Does anyone think how sad I am to have kissed you goodnight, to have disguised courgetti in your spaghetti, to have attempted to sound cool when we discussed Match Attax, and then lose all that in an instant?
In a split second, any rights I had to love you were taken away.
Stepmothers have historically been given a bad rap, thanks mostly to those blasted fairytales. But what we actually do is put effort into loving a child that isn’t our own. We learn to love them and in your case it wasn’t hard at all. But suddenly, I won’t see you any more. So where does that leave us?
It breaks my heart to think that you might assume I’ve just walked away from you without a care, but I’m not close to your mum and I’m too angry with your dad for ruining what I thought we had. I miss you and I can’t tell you because you’re not even eight, and you wouldn’t understand what’s happened – and I wouldn’t want you to. You probably just think I’m mean for kicking out your dad, if you think of me at all.
So all I can do is write these words and, who knows, maybe one day when you’re both grown up, your sister can show them to you – but by then all the lovely things we did will be a distant memory. This is the price we pay for meeting a man who has children. It’s not having to take you on, it’s what we lose when you leave.
All names have been changed
