Tess and me

Out of wedlock. Fallen woman. Unmarried mother. Living in sin. Love child. All words and phrases that went out of fashion since the government legitimised illegitimacy in the early 1970s by giving council flats to the de-stigmatised 'single mother'.

It was my misfortune to be an unmarried mother in the late Sixties, with all the social slating that was attached. My baby's father cruelly abandoned me, like Alec d'Urberville abandoned Tess. Whilst pregnant, I took a job with the Government Social Survey department and was told by Personnel that I must wear a wedding ring and pretend to have a husband so as not to shock my fellow workers. Imagine telling a young woman to do that today! I bought a cheap ring from Woolworths that turned my finger green. I didn't fool my colleagues one bit. How they probed and sniped, wondering if this 'husband abroad' was really in gaol, or if he existed at all. The beady eyes withered my soul. My boss took me out one night and, as I had proved myself of easy virtue, tried to rape me.

With my poor, innocent baby girl in a foster home I tried to find a flat - "No, I'm not having any babies here" - sound of door slamming in my face. This was, after all, the era when it was legal to put the words, 'No Blacks, No Irish' beneath the To Let sign. They may as well have put, 'No Unmarried Mothers', too. I tried to find a job ("You say you haven't worked for the last few months because you were having a baby? How do I know you weren't in gaol?"). My father: "You marry the next decent man that asks you and don't let this disgrace befall our family name again." I was in effect in a gaol of society's making yet my only sin was to get pregnant by a man I loved, who promised to marry me then ran off with another, bustier, more beautiful woman.

This is why I so empathise with Thomas Hardy's Tess and shed bucketloads of tears at the way society treated her. It really didn't change much in the next 100 years. My baby was adopted, hers died. She was 'damaged goods'; so was I. A kind boyfriend offered to marry me and bring up my daughter but I couldn't marry him as I didn't love him and it wouldn't be fair on him.

At least I didn't have to work in the fields like Tess of the D'Urbervilles. A wonderful gay man who I met at a party saw through all the social mores nonsense and gave me a job in advertising that set me on the career path I am still following today, almost 40 years on. He opened all the doors society had slammed in my face, as he, too, knew what it was to be stigmatised.

When Tess murdered the man who had caused her downfall, it brought back something terrible in my own past - the day when, like Tess, I decided I would murder my baby's father. Like her, the balance of my mind was definitely disturbed. Fortunately, unlike her, I didn't go through with it. Why? Well, I'm saving the details for the memoir I've just started, called Murder In My Blood. You see, I wasn't the only member of my family who had murderous thoughts. An ancestor of mine actually ... No, you'll have to read the book. I'm thinking of uploading each chapter onto a website as I write it. Watch this space.