Getting help

Peace breaks out

One of the worst weeks of our family life last week, but this weekend saw a breakthrough of sorts, and yesterday, Sunday, was the first peaceful day we have had as a family for many years. Phew… It’s a Buddhist way of life we’re leading – having to take each day as it comes. We never know quite how the day is going to play out, so staying in the present moment is all you can do. Mostly I don’t remember to do this, and race ahead in my thoughts – and lose myself. I got a surprise this week, and last week too, when Jack, and then my husband, reminded me, individually, that living in the present moment was the only way we were all going to get through. I’ve talked about ‘living in the moment’ for so long, and now if I forget I get reminded by the very people I’ve been trying to convince. Wonderful.

I’m late in putting this on the web-site, many apologies. So much has happened over the last week, and I hardly know where to start. I’ve also been sitting on a jury for the past three months, on a money-laundering case, which shows no sign of finishing, so time is short.

Last weekend I thought I was going to have a stroke I was so angry with William. I just couldn’t see how this living arrangement was going to work. Sick of having to lock everything valuable, including keys to the house, inside the safe in our bedroom and then having to lock the bedroom door too, resentment was building fast. If I could have seen that he had any sense of wanting to make things right again with us, that would help. But he seemed not to care, and obviously didn’t want to be here. On Sunday afternoon, I felt at my most crazy, by Sunday night as worse began to unfold I looked back at the afternoon and wished I was back there again!

William had been out on the Saturday night, returning on Sunday afternoon looking ill and pale. He was obviously stoned. His eyes were dead-looking, with large dilated pupils, and dark shadows beneath. Will had asked to borrow Guy’s phone on Saturday (he has lost his own phone), but had failed to return it. Guy asked him, when he returned, why he’d taken his phone out of the house without permission from him, and why he couldn’t have sent a text to say he would be out all night, to let us know. William shouted abuse at his father, and then shut himself in his room. I followed him up there later having an urge to wash all his clothes, most of which were dirty.

Taking jeans off a chair, emptying pockets of tissues and other rubbish, I found in there a silver handbag mirror which I recognised as belonging to Guy’s mother. We had given it to her as a gift not long ago. I asked William what it was doing in his pocket. I remembered that he had been wearing those trousers when he returned from his grandmother’s to live with us the week before.

‘It’s mine’ he said, looking at the mirror. ‘Let’s have a look, oh yeah I’ll have that.’

‘No, you won’t’ I said, ‘It belongs to Grandma.’

‘No, it doesn’t’

There was also a small bag in his jeans which had obviously once contained jewellery, earrings presumably. ‘Oh, that’s a Gucci fake, worth nothing’ was William’s response. Later, after William had gone out I opened his school-bag and found stolen property in there, a mobile phone and a man’s watch. Hardly believing what I was seeing, I checked the phone, and left a message for the person who owned it, telling them to contact me. My husband then telephoned his mother and asked her to check if she was missing a silver mirror; she was. He told her about the other goods we had found, and she expressed her disbelief and then her obvious concerns.

Challenging William about the things we had found, he said that they weren’t stolen and friends had given him both the phone and the watch. He said he could explain everything if we gave him a day to do so. I spoke to the owner of the phone the next day, who said that the phone had been ‘lifted’ from the table where he was having lunch in Pizza Express on the South Bank on 21 December. This was the day I had invited William and his grandmother to have lunch with us, to celebrate Alex’s thirteenth birthday. Jack and I had taken Alex and two school-friends up to London to meet Will and Grandma. We had all been there when the theft had taken place! I began to really fear for William’s mental health now. Thinking about it later, I became convinced that William was having a break-down, something I knew was a possibility as long as he continued to smoke weed, because he had begun so young.

The question remained – what to do now? Guy confronted William with what we had found out about the stolen phone the next evening, when he returned home at around midnight. He quickly lost his temper as Will began denying stealing anything.

‘You brought stolen goods into our house – get out! You’re a thief! How dare you bring stolen goods in here? You’re no longer my son, and I want you out of here!’ he yelled.

Alex was in bed, and began crying saying that he didn’t want any more shouting. I went up and got into bed with him, holding him tight. I could hear Jack going into Will’s room, telling him he needed to get help, that he was a drug addict and couldn’t he just get a grip of himself and admit it. Will was shouting saying he had nowhere to go, so Guy decided to call 999, asking for the police, to tell them about the theft. They didn’t come, but an officer rang the next morning at around eight thirty to say they would be there within the hour. I wanted to ring the court to say I would not be coming in for Jury Service that day, but Guy told me to go, and he stayed to wait for the police. They came mid-morning and Guy gave them what he had found, saying that he wanted to get the goods out of our house. William was lucky not to have been arrested. So far we have heard nothing more from the police.

When I got back from jury service that day, Jack told me that Grandma had rung looking for me. We later found out that William had rung her that morning, telling her that he was going on a holiday after his AS exams and could she give him £300. In spite of being told by us the night before that we had found her silver mirror in Will’s pockets, she promptly, with no reference to either Guy or myself, went down to the bank and transferred £250 into William’s account. When Guy rang her after receiving Jack’s message that she had phoned, I heard him asking what on earth she was thinking of by giving Will money only twelve hours after she had heard that he had stolen not only her property, but also that we had found stolen goods in Will’s bedroom. He told her that he found what she had done to be a betrayal of him – that we were trying to get Will to modify his behaviour in the house and that giving him a large amount of cash would just go on drugs and not be helpful to our tack of trying to get him back on the rails. I’ve never heard Guy so angry. He feels that his family have taken William’s part too readily, believing what Will says despite what we might say.

We have made it a condition of William remaining here that he get help. We have paid over ten thousand pounds on rehab therapy over the past year, and so the treatment he gets is going to have to be on the NHS. He and I went to see the GP this week, and I have found a place where he can get free help – a Community Drug Project in Forest Hill. But we have been this route before with a Drugs Project in Lewisham two years ago. I alluded to this in one of my earlier diary pieces. After finally getting William to turn up to an appointment with the drugs counsellor, he then told her that he had virtually given up smoking weed. She then told me that I had no problem and that my son was doing really well and needed no help. Once we had left the building, William then turned to me and shouted abuse at me in the street, saying I was the one who needed help and that a professional had deemed him to be perfectly fine. He then went on a bender; we didn’t see him for over a week.

William is now saying that drugs are ruining his life, and that he will seek help and go along to the drugs counselling. His first appointment is on Saturday. His behaviour is much better at home. He has talked and cried, and said how sorry he was – for the first time sounding genuine. Maybe this is the ‘rock-bottom’ that people have told me he may need to reach before he comes ‘up’ again. I don’t know. What I do know is that we had a peaceful day here yesterday, with us all here together as a family. We took a walk through Greenwich Park down to the river, and I can’t remember the last time we did that. Present moment stuff, where you just rest in the peace and hope………………..no, I mustn’t hope about tomorrow, no attachment to any outcome, all we can do is just enjoy the day, taking one day at a time.