They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

45 Jersey, Channel Islands, 2011

My beautiful golden-haired boy, who is three and is going to be so handsome, is my best friend on this little, beautiful rock, just nine miles by five in size. He’s the one constant and reliable thing in my messed-up life. Sometimes I wonder who is looking after who because without him I would be nothing. He’s what I live for now and the reason I am not already dead from the drugs I’m now dependent on.

It’s ironic. I was once a gambling addict and managed to get that out of my system, and now I’m a drug addict. How did it get to be like this? I used to manage my anxiety with tranquillizers like Valium. But that was under control to some extent, or maybe it wasn’t. So much has changed. So much can’t be retracted. So much I wish I’d done differently — or never done at all.

He has a German name, my son. Bruno. My insistence. I had wanted to put down roots after leaving England, and those roots, I felt, from my maternal side, were German. Nicos was fine with that. He was fine with pretty much everything, because he had me trapped. Coercive control I think they call it.

The person who helped me escape from my perceived hell was now the person who had me trapped in a worse hell. He did it oh so subtly and over time. He knew my weaknesses and he played on them. First the Valium, which to be fair I’d wanted and needed, he had obtained for me to my delight and relief. But then somewhere along the line it changed. Heroin. Me, Sandy Grace, hooked on heroin. How did that happen? Here I was, shaking and begging for the next hit. And there he was, the man in control of it all — in control of when my next hit came. I am under the spell of the man I thought was my saviour, the man I was in love with, and there is no way out that I can see.

I try to think back to how it happened and when I do, my memory gets all hazy. Nicos had friends here who threw wild parties in their massive houses, with weed and lines of coke galore, and in those early days on this island I went along to them happily, loving meeting all these characters who seemed genuinely to like him — and me. Nicos knew all the best and fun places to go, restaurants that were hidden treasures, like Green Island, and bars, like the speakeasy the Blind Pig. And I loved the coke. One day — I can’t remember exactly when, but I must have already been off my face on something — Nicos convinced me to start trying heroin. He said it was only addictive if you let it be. And stupid me, who trusted him then, who loved him crazily then, believed him.

This is my life now. I can’t remember when I last did any real exercise, and I can’t give Bruno the love and attention he needs even though I so desperately want to. I let him get away with everything because I just don’t have the energy to fight it, or I’m too out of it. My screwed-up brain tells me it’s wrong. I know I’m creating difficulties down the line — spoiling him, I guess. I never knew it could be this hard to be a mother. Even a rubbish mother like me.

And, if things could be any worse, I still do not know who his father is.

I had thought back then, in those final weeks before I left Roy, that I would find everything I wanted in my new life — not that I knew what exactly I did want. And four years on, I still don’t. All I know at this moment is that I don’t want the life I’m now living. It feels at times that I’m a parasite inhabiting someone else’s life, not mine. Or is it a cuckoo that does that? I often feel I’m being mocked or punished for turning my back on what I had, for failing to realize when it was good.

Sure, on the surface, my life appears pretty glam now.

We live in a cool penthouse apartment, with curved windows overlooking a beautiful bay, St Aubin, to the west of Jersey’s only town, St Helier. Nicos has a very flash powerboat that we had some fun times on, in those early days, visiting all the neighbouring islands like Sark, Alderney, Herm and of course Guernsey — where he did a lot of business — as well as pounding the waves over to Saint-Malo and Carteret in France. And sometimes on a fine summer’s day we would take a picnic and a bottle of rosé and just cruise around a section of Jersey’s stunning, craggy coastline, dropping anchor in an empty bay and swimming in the sea, which was often crystal clear but always a little bracing.

I learned that Nicos had chosen Jersey as his base long before I met him. Demand is constant and the profit margins are huge, mainly because the street value of drugs here in the Channel Islands is four times higher than on the British mainland. And there are no organized drug gangs vying for their share of the market. He owns a string of nail salons here and in Guernsey, as well as on the mainland — all cash businesses that are, so he had told me repeatedly, perfect for money laundering.

I went along with all his shit because I had no choice in the spiral I’d got into. But I’m not so far gone that I can’t scheme and plan.

And dream.

God, how many times have I thought back to my life with Roy? Never in all the years I was with him had I been afraid of what mood he would be in when he walked in through the front door, regardless of whether he had been drinking — which was rare — or after something at work hadn’t gone his way — which was a lot of the time. He was always calm and gentle and caring.

I’m scared every time Nicos comes home.

He constantly uses the power he has over me. He never lets me forget that all he needs to do is make just one phone call to blow everything for me. To taunt me, during our worst rows, he holds his phone up to my face and shows me Roy’s private mobile number programmed into his speed-dial. And he taps it with an immaculately manicured nail.

One perk of being here, I have to admit, is that I do genuinely love this island that I now call home. I made some really nice friends soon after we’d first arrived, but my drug addiction has taken its toll on my reliability. To the point where I’ve lost all interest in everything but my new best friend. Heroin.

Horse, Nicos calls it.

And the worst thing of all is that much of the time I really don’t care about anything else.

There isn’t any feeling in the world like those immediate minutes after a hit. I feel so powerful, so profoundly happy, so on top of the world. Everything seems possible and everything looks so rich, so intense, so vibrant.

When I piss him off, which is often, because he tries to mess with my head all the time and I’m not so far gone I can’t fight back, he simply withholds my next fix.

Those magical first few months after we’d arrived in Jersey were like an extended honeymoon. We were deeply in love, so I thought. Nicos was travelling constantly and he’d take me everywhere, telling me a day without me wasn’t worth living. We went back and forth to Valencia, which I fell in love with, to Colombia, Manila, Bangkok and Taiwan. It was an amazing life of private jets or first-class flights, limousines, huge suites in five-star hotels. Bruno stayed behind in Jersey with a nanny, because Nicos did not want him around. He didn’t want to have to share me with anyone, and I was so besotted with him I went along with it.

Part of his negative attitude to Bruno was, he claimed, I’d never told him at the start that I was pregnant — and OK, I guess he was right, I had kept it quiet. All part of the strained mental state I was in. I wasn’t even sure, back then, that I’d be able to bring a child into this world. I was hugely stressed by everything and doubted that I would go full term.

When I finally did tell him that I was pregnant, on his first visit to the Scientologists’ HQ, he told me he was happy, and it would be our baby, our child, and he would always love and take care of it. That was just bullshit. Love Bruno? More than three years on and he doesn’t even like him.

To be fair, he paid the fees at an expensive private nursery school for him, and spoiled him rotten, buying him — in my opinion — far too much pointless designer clothing and ridiculously expensive toys. And Bruno, sensing he was onto a winner here with Nicos, was good as gold with him, a charmer from birth.

I think back often to that first year or so in Jersey, which really was so great. In addition to Nicos’s colourful friends, I’d met several mothers at the nursery school, and we all got on brilliantly. I did think at first I might become good friends with two of the mums I met there, one called Alex who had a son Bruno’s age, and another, Beth, who had a daughter a few months younger. I had coffee mornings at the Royal Yacht, and the occasional lunch with them at a very elegant restaurant called Quayside and we always had a good laugh. But Alex’s husband was a prosecutor — not someone I figured Nicos would be too happy to meet, and Beth’s was a teacher — who I met briefly and decided Nicos would have zero in common with.

But I spiralled more and more into a chaotic state as the heroin took increasing hold of me. And my new friends — part of the new life I had been building, began to move away, dropping me one by one — so subtly I barely noticed it was happening. My calls stopped being returned, my Facebook messages were getting fewer and fewer likes. Also, and I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but I realize it now, looking back, Nicos must have been systematically deleting text and voicemail messages from my phone when I was out of it.

So we live a pretty insular life now. One thing that amuses Nicos is that a senior police officer lives directly beneath us. On some evenings, Nicos could have flicked cigar ash onto his head. ‘He’d die, wouldn’t he?’ Nicos would say, with a big grin. ‘He’d just fucking die if he knew who this guy living above him really was!’

Sometimes I’m tempted to go down one floor and knock on the police officer’s door and tell him and end this hell.

One day soon I think I will.