Immediately Gem is
engaging, breathlessly sparkly and making good eye contact which is strange for
me as most if not all people talk via the windscreen. You’re happy! I say with
a big smile, ‘No’ she replies and sighs. ‘I’m trying to get my daughter back,
she is four next month and they won’t let me see her’ My first surprise is that
she was old enough to even have children, she being so small, I would have
guessed her age at 14ish maybe a bit older. She is 23. ‘It’s my ex-boyfriend
he hurt her while I was at work’ I took her to the doctors, not knowing… Her
face is wet. ’I will get her back. He hurt her. He hurt her… I have stopped the
cab for a while now, just listening.
Do I have a judgement? Do
I dare? I believed her, a combination of harsh association with a vicious child
man/boyfriend that stubbed cigarettes out on a child. He disappeared, left her
with the burden of loss. Her family has left her with that burden too. She does
not have boyfriends anymore and is at college. Her incredible fortitude and positive
outlook looked unshakable, not a victim, not a ‘poor me.’
That was eight years
ago.
Very recently, I saw
her. A small young woman with another small young woman both exactly the same
size coming out of Boots in St Leonards, was it her daughter that was with her?
It was. How sure am I? I know how mums
are with their children. She was simply being a mum and my face was wet that’s how
I know.
