'He'd sliced us open with an ICE PICK!'
Sunday 28th June 2009
I had hedges to trim, and grass to cut. So why was I crouched behind my settee, with the doors and windows locked? Even my daughter, Emily, 6, was looking at me like I'd lost the plot. 'It's that man again,' I whispered. 'His blue Astra is outside.' 'You're obsessed,' my husband, Robert, 34, said. He was right. But could you blame me?
It'd started three years earlier, in June 2005. I'd been driving home from seeing my parents, Frances, 54, and Andrew Gordon, 56, and the man in the car behind had waved at me to pull over. 'I want to thank you,' he'd said, handing me a gold and cream parcel and an envelope. 'What for?' I'd frowned. He'd just driven off. When I got home, I'd called my mum and she'd come over. I'd peeled back the paper and pulled out a duvet in a flowery cover, wrapped around a picture of the Virgin Mary. Weird. Weirder was the poem about an invisible child and a letter thanking me for helping when he was attacked by a gang. What on earth…? 'Do you know him?' Mum asked. He'd seemed familiar… 'Joseph Carty,' I'd said. 'We met 10 years ago at The Churchill, our local. I've not seen him in years.' When Robert got home, he'd tried to calm me down. 'Ignore it,' he'd said. 'He's got a screw loose.'
But that wasn't the end of it. A year later, he'd followed me home, then forced another letter at me, and two months after that, he'd blocked me and Robert in at a car park and shouted abuse at us. The police told him to leave me alone, but then he'd blocked my drive and when I'd turned around, he forced me off the road. This time he was charged with harassment, and given an 18-month supervision order and an injunction. Did it make any difference? Did it hell.
Nearly two years on, I'd often see Joseph, 38, drive round our cul-de-sac in his Astra. Could you blame me for hiding behind the settee? I tried to get on with life and, the next week, on Saturday 12 July 2008, we took Emily shopping. After we'd been to Tesco, we ate lunch on a bench outside. I'd just bitten into my sandwich when I saw a blue car in the multi-storey car park less than 10 feet away. My stomach lurched as I saw Joseph sitting behind the wheel. 'Come on,' Robert said. 'Let's start walking.' We walked towards the main road, but suddenly, there was a revving noise and Joseph's car lurched towards us. 'Watch out!' Robert yelled, as the car mounted the pavement, forcing us against the wall.
Joseph leapt out of the car, grabbing something from the passenger seat.It had a wooden handle, and a six-inch blade… An ice pick. 'Run!' Robert shouted. Clutching Emily's hand, we ran across busy Beaumont Street, horns blaring as we ducked around swerving cars. Then, I heard footsteps. 'You evil b***h!' Joseph screamed, raising the pick. Something hit my right shoulder, but I didn't feel pain, just hot liquid oozing down. I kept running and it was only when I touched my back I realised I was bleeding. He'd sliced me open with the ice pick. 'Mummy!' Emily screamed. 'Look out.' As I ducked, Robert threw himself on Joseph, wrestling the pick from him and throwing it towards me. I picked it up and ran but Joseph lunged at me, twisting my arm behind my back so I dropped it.
This is it, I thought. He's going to kill me. Instead, he pounced on Robert, slamming the blade into his right cheek. 'Come on,' I screamed to Emily, yanking at the door of a car that had stopped. 'Let us in,' I begged the driver. 'We were attacked.' Lurching onto the back seat, I shut the door and we sat, shaking, as the woman's Rottweiler gave us a puzzled look. Through the window I saw Joseph smash the pick into Robert's head. 'I can't bear it!' I shrieked. 'We can't leave Daddy with him,' Emily sobbed. But what could I do? Get out and risk him attacking us?
Just then a woman knocked on the window. 'You have to get out of here,' she cried. The woman behind the wheel put her foot down and we sped back to Tesco's car park. Sat in the car, I couldn't stop thinking about Robert, fighting Joseph off alone. 'We've got to go back for Daddy,' Emily cried. The poor thing was shaking nearly as much as me, but we went back. Robert was propped up against the wall, blood trickling down his face. A first-aider from Co-op held a cloth to his head. 'Oh God,' I gasped. 'I'm so sorry I left you.' 'Help. Can't. Breathe,' he panted. 'An ambulance and police are on their way,' the first-aider said. Cars stopped in the middle of the road and swarms of people gathered round. I called Robert's mum, Margaret Bailey, to collect Emily. As Robert was put on a stretcher, I noticed a blue Astra drive past. 'That's him,' I gasped to a policeman.
We were rushed to Lincoln County Hospital. I had an X-ray and the three-inch gash in my shoulder was stitched up. 'You're lucky to be alive,' the doctor said. 'The ice pick fractured your shoulder blade. It narrowly missed cutting off Robert's tongue. We've glued up his wounds but we'll keep him overnight.' The next day, Robert seemed to be on the mend, but four days on, a scan showed a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. 'We need to operate immediately,' the doctor said, as Robert was taken to a specialist unit at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield. When he came round from his three-hour op, his face was bandaged and he was covered in wires. 'He's had a lucky escape,' the doctor said. 'If he'd been shorter, the ice pick would have gone in deeper and hit a main artery.'
He'd lost the use of his arm and had major brain surgery, but doctors hoped he'd regain movement and that his brain would rewire itself. I went back and forward to the hospital, until six days later, Robert was discharged. His speech was slurred, and he found it painful to eat. And he wasn't the only one who'd been affected. Emily woke up every night screaming, and my shoulder was agony.
So in December, Robert and I went to Lincolnshire Crown Court as Carty pled guilty to wounding with intent, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and breaching a restraining order. As I sat an arm's length away from him, I was stunned to hear he had told police I was a witch who had a 'malign influence' over his life, and claimed a head injury from a gang attack in 2004 had caused paranoid delusions. When his sentence was adjourned for psychiatric assessment, do you know what he did? Got up and blew me a kiss. Sicko.
We couldn't face going back to court, but he was jailed indefinitely with a minimum of five years. After three years of hell, we could start living again. Robert's now finished his physio and, with Carty behind bars, I don't need to hide any more.