Chapter 6. My 30’s (part 1)

The Baby I Let Go and the Man Who Wouldn’t

(My 30s – Part 1)

When I left Cardiff, I had nothing but a suitcase and a heart full of fear. I walked into a refuge with my children, nowhere else to go. Going back to my mother’s wasn’t an option. I wasn’t about to let history repeat itself. I wasn’t going to let her violence touch my babies.

By some stroke of luck—or maybe fate—the council found us a house. It was just streets from where I grew up. Familiar pavements. Familiar ghosts. My dad always used to say I’d fall in sh*t and come out smelling of roses. I never really knew what he meant—until then. Because despite everything, I’d somehow landed back on my feet. Just about.

Ten years later, I was home. But it didn’t feel like home.

I didn’t want my kids growing up in Cardiff, but I also didn’t want to rip them away from their father. We settled into a new rhythm. My girls started at my old school. Some of my teachers were still there—time hadn’t moved for them. For me, everything had changed.

There were nights I sat up after the kids had gone to bed, staring into the quiet. That empty silence can be loud when you’ve been through too much. I missed feeling wanted. I missed feeling seen. So I joined a dating site.

That’s when SH appeared. Local. Polished. He seemed stable. Spoke like someone who had it together. He owned his own house, dressed well, said the right things. I didn’t fall in love—I just wanted a break from the loneliness. Looking back, he wasn’t a man I wanted. He was a moment I tried to fill.

Weeks in, I knew I’d made a mistake. He started to show cracks—possessiveness, weird silences, too many questions. My gut whispered what I already knew: get out. So I ended it.

But the ending didn’t stick.

That’s when the madness began. Every morning, I’d find three carnations placed neatly on my windscreen. I’d come home to notes through the letterbox. Cards. Flowers in the post. At first, I was unsettled. Then it turned suffocating. I felt watched—even in my own home. The romance had rotted.

Still, I gave in a few times. I didn’t want drama. I didn’t want trouble. Maybe some part of me wanted to believe someone cared enough to fight for me. But this wasn’t love. It was control wrapped in roses.

The final straw came when I found messages on SH’s phone. Another woman, begging him to come back. The dates he claimed he was out fishing? He was with her. My gut had been screaming the whole time. I just hadn’t listened loud enough.

I ended it. Again. Properly this time.

Or so I thought.

A few weeks later, my youngest daughter came running in, white-faced and shaking. SH was in the garden. Watching the house. Watching me. My blood turned to ice.

My first husband, R, was in the house visiting the kids. I looked to him—but he locked himself and the children in the bedroom. I was alone. Again.

I stepped outside, heart pounding, and confronted SH. He raged. Stamped on a ring he had once given me—like it meant nothing. Then, in one terrifying moment, he shoved me down the stairs.

Why? Because R was in my living room, being a father to his children. That’s all it took for SH to lose it.

The police were called.

But the part that cut deeper than the bruises? R didn’t protect me. He stood behind a locked door while I faced a man who’d been stalking and threatening me. That’s when it truly hit me—no one is coming to save you. You can only count on yourself.

I was exhausted. Scared. Angry. And then—two weeks later—my stomach turned.

I was pregnant.

The test in my hand felt like a cruel joke. A miracle and a curse all at once. I had tried for years with R to have another child. And now—here I was—pregnant by a man who had lied, cheated, stalked me, and thrown me down the stairs.

I told SH by text. He went into overdrive. Promises. Baby names. Mothercare. Pushchairs. He even got my mother to babysit so he could take me to a venue to book a wedding. It was absurd. A desperate man trying to trap me in a fantasy I never wanted.

I wanted the baby. But not like this. Not with him. Not in fear.

And so, I made the hardest decision of my life.

I went to a private clinic in London. I still remember the coldness of that place—the quiet sobbing of strangers, the blur of everything. I held my grief close and walked out with a scar no one could see.

Not long after, the house sold. I booked a Christmas escape to Lanzarote for me and the kids. I needed sun. I needed space. I needed to get away from the smell of stale wine and my mother’s bitterness, from the garden, from the stairs, from the silence.

And there, in that heat and stillness, I met J.

My second husband.

Reflection

Looking back, that time carved something deep in me—a hollow I had to learn to fill with my own light. I learned that love isn’t about who says the right things. It’s about who stands beside you when everything goes wrong.

R and I tried again after it all. Maybe it was the comfort of what used to be. Maybe we thought we owed it to the years. But the truth is, some things break beyond repair. Love doesn’t always survive history. Sometimes it quietly dies in the silence after the shouting ends. And trying again just reminds you why it ended the first time.

Still—I came out of it.

I left behind the man who wouldn’t let go. And I let go of the baby I longed for, because I had to choose peace over pain.

Lanzarote was the beginning of something new. And J? He was the calm after the chaos. But even then, I still had so much to learn about love.

And about myself.