LESLEY PEARSE, 58, a bestselling author, lives alone in Somerset. She has been married three times and is the mother of Lucy, 33, Samantha, 25, and Joanne, 22.
When I was three, a neighbour spotted my five-year-old brother and me in the snow without coats. Michael told her that Mummy had been asleep for a long time. She had been dead for several days with septicaemia after a miscarriage while Dad, a Royal Marine, was away. He had a series of housekeepers but Michael, a gifted child, was difficult and no one stayed.
Dad was a template for the man you would want to marry. Reluctantly, he put us into orphanages miles apart. The first night I wet myself in fright and a man rubbed my nose in it. We had to sleep with our hands crossed over our chests in case we died in the night. All the children would sing: “Mummy, Daddy, take me home.” I was the only one with a parent but I never resented Dad. When I was six, a lady in a blue coat arrived and said she was my new mother. Hilda was an army nurse in her forties who met Dad through a marriage bureau. Her definition of love was giving a child vitamins, warm clothes and a panto at Christmas. But there was no cuddling and I never felt loved by her.
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The rot set in four years on when we moved to a cold, dark house in London. She whacked me with a cane if she was in a bad mood. The school called the NSPCC but I lied. Dad spent a lot of time in his shed making models and I didn’t want to make him sad by telling him about the beatings. I was so starved of affection that as soon as a man gave me a cuddle, I thought it was real love forever. At 18 I became pregnant by the first man I slept with, a commercial traveller. He took me to his hotel and I did not have the gumption to say no. My father held my newborn, Warren, and cried, saying: “He is my first grandchild and I can’t acknowledge him,” as illegitimacy was a terrible stigma then. Everyone warned me how difficult it would be. When Warren was five months, I pushed him in his pram to an adoption agency. I did it out of pure, unselfish love for him. I had him for six more weeks, then went home empty-handed.
Then I did what I always did. I went out and met a man. David, a barman, was loving and kind and we married on my twentieth birthday. We lost a baby, with a rare malformation, at six months’ gestation and I lost all interest in our marriage. I treated him appallingly but there were no recriminations from him after I left. I was only 21 but had metamorphosed into a different, more confident, person. Still, I continued to pick weak and unsuitable men. I met John Pritchard, a trumpeter, in a club. He once broke into my bedsit and filled the room with daffodils. He was adorable but self-centred and had a breakdown due to career disappointments. When our daughter, Lucy, flinched at his presence, I left him.
I met my third husband, lorry driver Nigel Pearse, when I was hitch-hiking. I fancied him madly, he came from a good family and was a wonderful father but never showed me any emotion. To him, cuddles meant sex. When my gift-shop business floundered, I kept it from him and the strain caused me to have a breakdown and run away to a B&B for two weeks. All this emotion came pouring out of him, but after 18 years it was too late. We are friends now and love spending time with our grandson, Brandon.
When my daughter Samantha gave birth to him, also unmarried and 19, it eased the loss of Warren a bit but part of me is still missing. I intended to look for him last year before I entered the worst period of my life. Sammy rang to say that her sister Jo had hurt my other daughter Lucy’s violent boyfriend, Jason. He was dead. She stabbed him in defence of Lucy. I had once gone round to confront him and he had set his rottweiler on me. Jo’s lawyer bravely kept the murder charge and she was unanimously acquitted six months later. As a mother you (feel that you) can always fix everything, but I was powerless. I was full of guilt, feeling I should have done something, but we learnt about the power of love.
My last relationship was with a gold-digging fireman, which ended four years ago. I would like a man in my life now but not in my house. Real love is not like the romances I write about. We mix up sex and love. Love is to do with family and friends and wiping each other’s kids’ snotty noses.
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Interview by Moira Petty
Remember Me by Lesley Pearse, £16.99, is published by Michael Joseph