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“It was as if a door in the ceiling opened and there was this old man staring down at us. His face sort of crumpled and he had tears in his eyes,” said Anne. “I’d never seen a grown-up cry before!” Her voice was full of wonderment as she told me this over and over again down the years.

I don’t suppose the meter man ever forgot that day either, when opening the door to the cellar on a routine visit, he found two frightened little girls, dressed in nothing but their underwear, staring up at him.

*****

Anne was a 17-year-old girl when I first met her in 1967 in Whitchurch hospital soon after I started to work there. She had been admitted from the casualty department of the CRI, out of hours, after an overdose of medication. I was ‘on call’ that evening, so it fell to me to assess her briefly and admit her to whichever ward was ‘on take’ that week. She was not under the consultant I was working for, so I thought no more of it at the time, nor expected to see her again—but Anne had other ideas about that and apparently picked me to be her psychiatrist in a unique connection!

Since we were a smallish group of trainee psychiatrists we often chatted about such cases, and I learnt from my colleague that Anne had settled in well, recovered fairly quickly and was discharged back into the community. This had been something of a pattern, not a particularly unusual one either. The overdoses, repeated at irregular intervals, were not necessarily regarded as serious. They were more ‘cries for help’ from a very young woman who had grown up almost entirely through the ‘in care’ system and was just out of a children’s home, knowing she would have to move on into adult life, whether ready for it or not. All the social care ceased after a child left school—and in those days there was no planned after-support.

Believe me, it is never right to ignore or belittle such attempts. They are an indication that something is very wrong for that person. Surely even a ‘cry for help’ always needs to be heard by someone?

Anne always asked for me, refusing to talk to anybody else, on the future occasions, several months apart, when she turned up as a referral from the local casualty department. A mixed blessing as I wasn’t always on call, but I always came anyway. I lived in the grounds and I had a soft spot for her from the first, which only increased as I learnt her history.

So many of the people we saw, of any age, had been through terrible childhood experiences and not surprisingly were often unable to cope with the anxiety, depression and relationship problems caused by abuse in their early years. Abuse often occurring in the children’s homes of those times and under the noses of social workers.

Anne’s life had been as bad as it gets but what I found different was her determination to bounce back. I began to see a pattern. Each time she came in, after a short time in the ward—which must have seemed like ‘home’ to an institutionalised child—she would go out and find some sort of job and a place to live. She would then keep herself going until the next disaster. Even though she had in a sense ‘chosen’ me, at first she had no internal mechanism whereby she could ask for help verbally, but fairly soon I was able to help her at least cut out the overdoses and accept outpatient appointments, phasing out the overdose routine, though it remained a risk for a long time. Even then, her ability to take initiatives, such as getting a job and finding accommodation for herself, was impressive, as it is often missing in ‘cared for’ children.

When I went to work in the academic unit, I made sure she was admitted under the professor for longer periods so that I could work with her intensively. I can say that I made most of my early mistakes in long-term psychotherapy with Anne! I certainly learnt a great deal and Anne herself became gradually able to take over her own life, so that later on, after I moved into child psychiatry in another county, I was able to befriend her at a personal level, with the knowledge and agreement of her GP.

Whenever we talked about her story, even years later, she always started by coming back to that one defining moment when she was nine years old and was rescued. Somehow, that memory, plus her repeating it over and over to me, became to her like a spell or mantra that kept her going.

“This big trapdoor at the top opened, and light poured in,” she would say. The words varied slightly, but the facts were always the same. “This old man was staring down at us. His face all wrinkled up. He was crying!”

Indeed, it was—quite literally—the moment that a light came into her life and she was lifted up, out of a prison of despair and into warmth, light and hope. She had been placed into care at an early age. Her memories of her childhood were blurred and mostly unhappy—children’s homes, random staff and peer group cruelties, and always abuse in its many forms. She had a brief relief of foster care, along with a younger girl, Susan. This rapidly turned to horror as those foster parents became abusive and repeatedly flitted across county borders to stay out of the reach of nosy social workers for several years.

This moment she remembered so vividly she thinks that she was nine years old and—as happened daily—she and the younger girl were shut in the cellar of the house while Mr and Mrs Spencer went out to work. They would be there for hours, in dim light, wearing only their underwear so as not to ‘spoil’ their clothes, frozen in every sense. This was more frightening even than the beatings and sexual abuse she got from Mr Spencer.

She recalls that they were quickly taken out and looked after by concerned policewomen and other adults, warmed, fed and protected—it felt safe. The two girls were removed from the Spencer’s care immediately, of course, and she doesn’t know what happened to them. She had to face them in court and in her memory, she doesn’t think they were sent to prison. Which, if true, is perhaps the most shocking thing of all.

However, she never saw them again, nor the other foster child. She had one very good foster mother for two years, proper school attendance and was partially able to heal, on the surface at least, in spite of the random children’s homes and other accommodation until she turned 16, when she was on her own. So that is her early story. At 16 she learnt about her mother, who was Welsh, and an older sister, but sadly just too late to see her mother who had died shortly before. In fact, she met her relatives for the first time at the funeral.

So what happened next? I remember that a little later we met again. She thought she had found love, but eventually found herself deserted. So she asked me to be with her when her time came. By then she was doing well, thank goodness, living in a care home for expectant mothers. I was duly summoned to the hospital one early morning for the excitement of seeing the birth of a boy—to welcome lovely Rhys, a year or so younger than my own son, Rupert. It was such an honour to be his godmother as well.

The years moved on. Anne had two more boys and did whatever work she could, but her health could never quite recover from the deprivations and abuses of her childhood and—not surprisingly—things were at times extremely difficult for all the family. As a mother, however, she has certainly brought up three delightful boys and been a loving grandmother to their children.

Anne had spent some Christmas Days with my family earlier on, having no-one to go to. Just like my mother before me, I had a habit of inviting all sorts of people to join us occasionally for Sunday lunch, and always for Christmas Day—junior colleagues from abroad and on their own, single friends with no nearby family, a few of my ex-patients similarly placed. And just as my father had, my dear husband Ken accepted it and even brought a few to my attention.

The growing Rahman boys were a great addition to these occasional Christmas and Sunday lunches. And they still remember and we talk fondly about these times. Indeed, Gareth even devised and performed a wonderful rap on it with his steel band! I think it relevant here to mention something about the richness of this family’s genetic heritage—so typical of a seaport town like Cardiff and well accepted here. Anne’s mother was Welsh and her father, who was not in her life, was from Bangladesh. The boys’ father is from the Caribbean.

So, what happened to them all? How about a discreet peep?

  • Rhys, my first godson, was very good at sport at school and had hopes of a professional career. A bad injury to his knee in his teens spoiled that hope and also his hope of becoming a fireman. In spite of these disappointments he has a successful life, running his own taxi, and with a delightful wife, children, and now even a grandchild. I loved the jerk chicken post-Christmas lunch they made for me last year!
  • Austen served his country in the armed forces and fought in Serbia. He is an excellent mechanic.
  • Gareth developed musically from an early age. He even founded his own steel band, then studied music in Cardiff’s College of Music and Drama, gaining a First-Class Honours Degree. He married a beautiful young woman from South Korea and the two of them went to join her family out there. They ended up working for seven years teaching, before coming back to Wales to live and work here, with a little boy of their own.

I couldn’t be more proud of all of them, and of my friend, their mother (and grandmother) Anne Rahman.