I decided to make a list tonight of all the reasons I will never get back together with Tom. I went through my diaries, listing everything out, and as I read through everything, more and more memories came back to the surface – things I had never written about but were obviously hurtful enough for them to come to mind as the words started flowing.

• On our second date, he got angry with the bar staff for wanting to take our bar stools. It was late; it was bar regulations, but he got so pissed off, and I felt really uncomfortable about the way he spoke to the staff.
• We’d been together a couple of weeks; we did one of those silly quizzes in a magazine. One of the questions was, Are there many things you would change about your partner? He answered yes.
• He told me I spent too much money on my children’s birthday and Christmas presents and that I did it to ease my guilt. We’d been together 3 months the first time he said it.
• The first time he met my children, he rang up afterwards and told me to change the way I deal with Josh. He said that I shouldn’t play-fight with him anymore.
• When I met his family, he told me not to tell them that Josh has a different dad to the girls. When I asked why, he said they might think badly of me and would talk about me when we’d gone.
• He shouted at Rosie, telling her to ‘get out of the fucking car’ when she was four and didn’t get out quick enough for his liking.
• When Josh had a bike accident, he got annoyed when I dashed to be with him. He later begrudgingly came to the hospital but made it clear that he wasn’t happy about his evening being disturbed.
• He started to refuse to have sex with me as soon as we moved in together. The first time I tried, on our second night in the house, he pushed me away – literally – and commented about me only being interested in one thing.
• He needed to drink every night of the week, at least 4-5 cans plus a couple of glasses of wine, but wouldn’t admit he had a problem.  
• Annie had really bad colic and would cry from 5 pm until 2 am night after night for weeks. I would have to hold her constantly, couldn’t do anything with the other children and would be exhausted. I still had to get up at 6.30 am the next morning to get the older children ready for school, and I still had to get up between 2 am and 6.30 am to feed her when she needed it. One night I was crying with exhaustion. He told me to stop being so dramatic and walked out, coming back hours later, drunk.
• Whereas he used to go to the pub at 7 pm, once Annie was born he started going at 5 pm.
• He said he hated coming home every day from work as I was so miserable and he hated being in the house with Josh.
• He shouted at me for biting my nails, said I only did it to annoy him.
• If he spoke about Josh, he would call him bollocky, never Josh. Sometimes in the car, he would rant and rave about Josh, calling him a fucking bastard and a cunt, then would say he felt much better for getting it out, and at least it meant he wouldn’t say it to Josh. He expected me not to get upset over him being so vile about my son.
• He would make ‘jokes’ about me being a slut, not because I’d slept around, but because I’d had Josh at 17.
• If he bathed Annie or washed her hair, he always made a massive deal out of it, making sure everyone knew what he’d done.
• He would tell me all the time that when the girls were teens, they wouldn’t want to know me, that we would argue all the time, and that they’d only have a good relationship with him because he’s not their dad, so they wouldn’t have an angst with him.
• He constantly criticised Greg within earshot of the girls even when I asked him not to.
• He was rude and unwelcoming to my Mum and stepdad and would often go out if they came to visit.
• He sucked up to my Dad, but then would get pissed off if Dad didn’t give him the attention he wanted.
• He criticised my brothers-in-law for the way they were with my sisters. He said they were both under the thumb and he had no respect for them at all. He said they were thick cunts for being with my sisters.
• He called my nieces and nephews stupid and said one of my nephews was thick like his parents.
• When we’d been together about 9 months, I was meeting up with my friend Clare, and he didn’t want me to go. He said I didn’t know her well enough and should cancel our weekend together.
• He started an argument in the garden with Josh, and pushed him over.
• When we went to his cousin’s wedding before Annie was born, he went off to play golf with his family for seven hours, leaving me in the hotel room alone. I hadn’t even been invited, and he hadn’t introduced me to the family before he went. When I said he could have told me that was going to happen so I had some warning, he said he had, but he hadn’t.
• He disapproved of the way I spoke. He didn’t like me swearing or saying anything he deemed inappropriate. He said he didn’t want his girlfriend talking that way.
• He said that I was shit with money and I waste it, and that’s why he had to have all the money. He then went and blew 80K over 2 years with nothing to show for it and still had 12K of debt.
• He ended the relationship after a couple of months because he didn’t know if he wanted a woman with kids; then when I said “Ok, that’s fine“, he bombarded me daily with texts.
• He led me to believe that the house was in my name too; later, I found out he’d done it in his name only, meaning I had no rights.
• We talked about what sofa to get and couldn’t agree. We went weeks with no sofa, then I asked if he liked my Dad’s one. He said he did, so I suggested ordering one the same or similar, which he agreed to; he spent the rest of our relationship telling me he’d never got a say in the sofa, that he hated it, and that I always got what I wanted.
• The day we moved in, he barely lifted a finger to help. He did a tiny bit, then spent a few hours trying to connect up the TV and the rest of the time sat on his arse watching the TV while I unloaded the van and unpacked.
• He refused to decorate any rooms unless we came up with a plan;  a drawing of how it had to look and a list of things to do. I refused, so nothing ever got done until I just got on and did it when he was away.
• He spent four months decorating the bathroom and would only do two hours at a time before stopping to go out for lunch every single day.
• When the girls and I did the Race for Life, he and my dad came to cheer us on. Dad walked most of the way around with us, behind the ropes, cheering us on. Tom sat in a cafe eating and came and found us when we were finished.
• After a few months of us being together, he gave me a key to his place. We decided that every Friday night when my children went to their Dad’s, I would go round and we’d spend Fridays at his, and Saturdays at mine. Every other Friday I would arrive, and he’d be out at the pub. He always went at about 9 pm, so I texted him once to tell him I was coming at 8 pm and he went out earlier. We never spent a Friday night together; I would sit in his and wait for him to come home.
• After Annie was born, he phoned his family and friends to tell them the news. I overheard each conversation – it was all about how great, and how funny he had been during the birth and not anything that I had done towards birthing a baby.
• He rarely helped with any housework, but he often complained about the state of the house. When I did do it, he would come home, and then drop his stuff all over the place, so it was a tip again within ten minutes of him being back.
• Once it was 6 pm, he refused to do anything as that was his time to relax, watch TV and have a drink. He did put Annie to bed some nights, but it was always done with ‘I am better at it than you, you’re not firm enough with her.’ He’d take her upstairs screaming, and she’d eventually fall asleep crying. I’d always hear him shouting at her to settle down, and he’d often shout, “Shut the fuck up” at her. If I went upstairs to take over or try and settle Annie, he would shout at me and order me downstairs.
• When my car broke down, he said it wasn’t worth getting it fixed and that we’d get a new one instead. He had my car scrapped and then didn’t look for a new car for four months. I spent that time indoors or limited to local journeys as getting around was almost impossible because I had Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction when I was pregnant.
• He got a month driving ban for speeding, but needed to go somewhere miles away for work and asked me to drive him. He didn’t want to go in my car, but he wanted me to drive his. I didn’t know where I was going as I’d never been there before, and I didn’t know the car, but he spent the whole time getting angry and shouting at me as I wasn’t driving the car well enough or was asking him directions.
• When we’d been together a few months, I sneaked up behind him and put a bag of peas on his neck; he went mental, saying, ‘You stupid fucking prick what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

There are so many more things I could add. I could add that every single photo I have from 2003 to 2010 holds some kind of sad memory because of something he did or said, or a refusal to spend time with us.

If I feel myself faltering at all, I’m sure my list, my diaries, and the photographs will be a constant reminder of how hard life was with him. If neither of them work, then I hope I never forget the night I had to get away from him, and I drove for hours crying the entire time, and planning on how I would end my life to stop the constant pain he was causing.