Coming Clean - Living with OCD. Hayley Leitch
not allowed to.’ She replied. ‘Besides, it’s so sad that if I did tell you, you’d cry and everyone would know it was me who’d told you.’
‘But I won’t.’ I vowed, crossing my heart with my fingers. ‘I won’t cry, promise.’
‘Promise?’
I nodded my head just to keep her happy. My cousin dramatically checked over each shoulder and then behind her to make sure no one else was listening.
‘Nanny Rose got burnt!’ She said her eyes wide with horror.
‘Burnt!’ I gasped.
My hand automatically shot straight up to my mouth to try and stop my shocked cries from escaping. She was lying, she had to be. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes, I willed them to go away but it was useless because soon they came thick and fast, until they spilled out and down my cheeks.
‘Shush!’ she hissed, putting her finger to her mouth. ‘You can’t cry, you promised!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said wiping away my tears with the back on my sleeve. ‘Anyway, I don’t care. Not really.’
It was a lie because crying was all I wanted to do. I wanted to scream and shout. I wanted to wail and howl because my beautiful Nanny Rose had gone and now, life would never be the same. My cousin was so annoyed that she stormed out of the room and that’s when I really broke down. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. In the end, Auntie Sue passed by the doorway and caught me sobbing in the corner.
‘It’s Nanny Rose,’ I wept, ‘I know she’s gone, forever.’
Auntie Sue tried her best to console me.
‘It’s true Hayley,’ she said taking my hand, ‘but she’s with the angels now. They’ll look after her.’
Later that night, I looked out of my bedroom window and up towards the blackened sky trying to picture Nanny Rose. It made me feel a little better to think of her with the angels but try as I might, I couldn’t imagine anyone else looking after her because that was her job. It was selfish but I didn’t want her up in heaven where I couldn’t see her, I wanted her back down on earth with me. Overnight, my idyllic childhood had been ripped to pieces because, after that day, nothing was ever the same again. Granddad Bert still cooked Sunday dinner for us all but it was as though everyone had lost their appetite. Without Nanny Rose, I couldn’t even stomach it anymore. I was only five years old, but her passing left a huge gaping hole in my life and it frightened me. The thought that someone as strong as my Nana could be there one minute and gone the next was so utterly terrifying.
It wasn’t until many years later that I learned she’d lost her life to breast cancer. The pain I feel today is still as raw as it was back then. Up until that point, losing Nanny Rose had been the biggest thing to happen to me and her death had a profound and lasting effect because I loved her so much. Her death made me doubt everything because if something could take her away, then surely no one was safe? It triggered a deep-rooted fear which made me question everything. When I was alone I’d sit there and worry about everything and everyone. I didn’t realise it then but my life would never be the same again.
DAD’S FISHPOND WAS big, around ten feet long and built in the shape of a figure of eight. In the narrowest part it measured four feet across – far too wide for a small child like me to step or jump over – and it was full of Koi carp. There were different coloured fish, from silver and orange through to the deepest blue-black. If I looked hard enough I’d catch a glimpse of their scales as they glinted against the light. Although I was happy to look from a safe distance I didn’t want to get too close because I was frightened of them. I didn’t like the way the big ones swished quickly through the water. I hated the slime of the pond and the way the carp would quickly change direction. I didn’t like the speed of them, the unpredictability, but most of all, I didn’t like their huge, dead-looking glassy eyes and open mouths which surfaced every time they popped up for air. In short, Dad’s fish terrified me.
‘Why are you so frightened of them Hales?’ he asked one afternoon as I skirted warily around the edge of the pond.
Dad was shaking in pellet feed. The round, hard shapes landed on top of the water before slowly bobbing and sinking down into the murky depths below. The thought of all those hungry fish made my stomach turn. To me, my father’s Koi carp looked as dangerous and frightening as sharks in the sea.
‘I’m frightened they’ll bite my toes off,’ I confided.
Dad stifled a giggle but he didn’t quite laugh because he knew it’d upset me. This was a real fear.
‘But they’re just fish Hales. They won’t hurt you.’
I didn’t believe him. Instead, I suffered nightmares where Dad’s Koi carp would eat my toes. I was so frightened that my dreams would jolt me awake in the middle of the night. The fishpond held every fear I had. But my fears also made me a little curious and, every time I was in the garden, I’d dare myself to edge a little closer to see if I could see the ‘sharks’. But I never got too close in case one jumped out of the water and bit me on the nose!
At the time, we lived in a five bedroom semi-detached house in Balham, London. There was me, Lauren, Zara, Mum and Dad and Nanny Linda, Mum’s mother, who lived with us. After Nanny Rose’s death, I often found myself watching Nanny Linda because I was worried she’d get sick and die. Thankfully, she was as fit as a fiddle. Nanny Linda had lived with us for as long as I could remember. Her husband, Granddad Guy, had passed away when I was just a baby so I didn’t remember him. Instead, Nanny Linda told me stories from the past which I used to fill in the blanks. She told me how one day Granddad Guy had fallen down right in front of her. He suffered from something called emphysema – a horrible word that stuck inside my head. It was an illness which meant he couldn’t breathe properly.
‘He just fell on the floor,’ Nanny Linda recalled, her eyes watering with tears.
I was sitting on the edge of her bed, hanging onto her every word.
‘What did you do?’ I gasped.
‘I was so scared Hayley, that I sort of froze to the spot. It was your Uncle Duncan who got down and gave him mouth to mouth. He tried to get him breathing again…’ Her voice trailed off to a whisper as she tried to compose herself.
I pictured my uncle breathing into Granddad’s mouth, trying to bring him back to life for my lovely nana.
‘But it was no good,’ she said wandering over towards her bedroom window. ‘He died right there and then.’
Nanny Linda said Granddad Guy had been the love of her life. She loved him so much that she never, ever wanted to be parted from him. That’s why she kept his ashes in a tub inside a special cupboard in her bedroom.
‘It’s so we can be buried together,’ she explained.
When Granddad died, my parents insisted Nanny Linda come to live with us. In many ways, she became my second mother. She helped look after me and my two sisters when Mum and Dad were at work. I often wondered why Nanny Linda never remarried but she insisted it was because no one could ever take Granddad’s place. It was as if by remarrying, she’d somehow be unfaithful to him. For Nanny Linda, marriage was for life.
Our back garden was large with a cubed-shaped blue play slide. Dad’s fishpond sat to the side in pride of place. In many ways it was his jewel in the crown and he’d spend hours cleaning it out, checking on his dozens of fish. Lauren and I would fall about laughing every