The decision that saved my daughter and destroyed my relationship with my son

We lost so much that day.

The day Lance came to the house.

The day my fifteen-year-old daughter fought back against a desperate, angry man.

When she told me about the relationship, I was horrified. Not because Lance was her teacher. I could see that my teenage girl was old for her years, in physical and emotional terms. I knew that she found boys her own age immature, silly, and unreliable.

What I couldn’t understand was why she didn’t tell me the truth, and why she let it go so far.

I was a single mum, I worked in a shop, and money was tight. But as a trio, me, Tony, my eldest, and Suzannah were a team. We talked about everything, shared everything. I was mum and dad, and I had instilled in my two children respect, honesty and openness.

At least I thought I had. They knew that I would be on their side, no matter what. I had their backs, and they knew it.

Yet, my fifteen-year-old daughter chose to have a secret relationship with her English teacher and even fall pregnant.

And I didn’t have a clue.

Christ, she was even on the pill.

I’d taken her to the doctor myself.

My not-so-sweet Suzannah had been so forthcoming with details about a boyfriend, older than her, just eighteen. I knew his name, where he lived, where he went to college and what he was studying; she even told me when they first had sex, and shared all those messy teenage feelings she had about him.

Her lies were concrete, fleshed out, and told with absolute conviction.

Wow!

I honestly thought that I was rocking this whole parenting thing, you know, friends with my daughter, part of her inner circle, one of her tribe. I knew that she was having sex underage, but I also knew that she was going to do that whether I knew about it or not.

I did not see Lance coming.

So, the day she came home from her extra English class in tears and showed me the message on her belly, I went into shock. I told her that I’d support her, that it was her teacher in the wrong, that it was her body.

Inside, I was seething. I wanted to kick the crap out of this man. How dare he do this to my little girl, before she had even got her damn GCSE’s.

When he turned up on our doorstep minutes later, sweating, wide-eyed, panic oozing out of every pore, it was like a Tsunami hitting.

His words came out fast, too fast, and I only caught some of them: baby, abortion, ruin, fired. It was all about him. His life. His job. His reputation.

I decided, in that moment, that I would put Suzannah first and I’d make him pay.

Only, my daughter got there first, with Tony’s cricket bat.

That was when I had to make the choice that took everything from us.

That was the day I lost my son.

Tony saw what we did. He’d come out of his room, headphones on, and trotted down the stairs oblivious, while I was comforting Suzannah and trying to work out what I was going to do next.

Tony clocked the body. He stared at the blood. Eyeballed me. Then he turned around and shut himself back in his room.

I never told Suzannah that he saw us.

I hoped that they would be able to stay friends and put it behind them.

Tony never really came back out of his bedroom. Not for us anyway. Not for me. He aced college, travelled during his summer break, and then disappeared off to university.

We would have lunch when I visited him, but he never came back to the house after he left. He couldn’t face it, I guess, the memory of that day. The secret we were all keeping.

The life my little girl took.

The body we buried.

There was another choice I could have made, I know that. If I had told the police, then what? All three of us would have become outcasts. We would have had to move, start again; the shadow of Lance Bang would have followed us wherever we went.

Maybe it did anyway.

I only hope that Mason has a good life. I won’t be here to see it, but I hope Suzannah will find a good man to be his father, that she’ll be a better mother than me.

I know she loves him.

And I know from experience that love isn’t enough.