Out in the open

For a couple of days this week I was on what you could call an emotional roller coaster; I had two conversations, one with Olivier, my youngest son and one with Rob, my husband. We talked about a friend of Rob’s who used to come to stay with his family when all of the children were small. I really got on well with his wife, we married within days of each other and our birthdays are one after the other. Olivier suddenly remembered being in the kitchen with Rob’s friend when he was quite small and the friend saying to Olivier ‘remember that’s our secret’ he spoke in English which made the words even more secret(e)y as far as Olivier was concerned. Olivier doesn’t think that anything happened that shouldn’t have. Two days later Rob and I were talking about the same person and Rob suddenly said that he wondered if this person had ever done anything to the boys. I felt physically sick when he said that because he didn’t know what Olivier had told me. We discussed the probability calmly and decided probably not (I used to be driven round the bend by these visits – nine of us in a small bungalow, so there wasn’t much chance of anyone getting to be on their own ).

Dom came into the kitchen yesterday evening as I was telling Olivier what his father had said.; Silence (psychologists and psychiatrists always do that silence bit). Then she said that she thought probably nothing had happened as Olivier seemed fine to her, then Rob came and joined in, so we talked it through together as a family. We’ve decided to forget about it

Twice recently we’ve had good family moments which I really treasure. Olivier and Dom seem to be getting along fine at the moment. It would be lovely to have Christian with us too, of course. Dom will be moving into her tiny apartment in September and it will be years before we’re all together again.