Authors: D. G Torrens
Just a couple of days before Christmas I was called into the staff
room and told to sit down. Paul, my key worker, asked whether, if possible, I would li
ke to spend Christmas day with M
other and Jake. Wow, the feeling I had when he uttered those words was one tha
t I had not felt for some time.
I had tears in my eyes and
so many
emotions built up inside
me
within seconds of him uttering Jake
’
s name. I was not expecting that at all
, and
I was trying to take in the question that had been put before me
.
“
W
ould Jake really be there?” I asked him
.
A
nd he assured me that Jake would indeed be there.
Of co
urse I jumped at the chance. It
had been nearly tw
o years since I had seen Jake
. It was reiterated to me that the visit would be just the one day and I had to retur
n to Bryn Tyn that same night. T
ruth be told, I did not care if it was only one hour, as long as I was going to see Jake again.
O
n Christmas morning I was up at 7
:00 a.m.
dressed and ready to go! My key worker Paul was to drive me home tha
t morning in the signature blue-and-
white Bryn Tyn van. The journey would take approximately
an hour and fifteen minutes. I couldn’t
remember the last time I had felt this level of happiness. Paul told me that it had been decided following my overdose that going home for the day and seeing Jake would be good for me. I could not agree more. I could not believe I was going to see Jake aga
in.
I wondered
if
he was coping,
and what was his children’s home like.
H
ad he made
friends? Were they bullying him?
I had so many questions buzzing around inside my head I thought it might explode
right
there and then!
On arrival at M
other’s house, I was both nervous and excited as I didn’t know what sort of reception I was going to receive. However
,
as it turned out my mother greeted me well and we all went inside. I immediately looked around for Jake
.
“
Mom where’s Jake?” I asked.
“Jake could not be here today
,
Amelia
,
”
s
he replied.
My whole insi
des felt like they were sinking.
I was devastated
.
“
But why?” I begged.
“It was decided at the last minute it would be in both your interests.” There were those
words again
in our interest
.
I was tired of hearing those words over the years, and what did
they know about our interest?
Paul sat down and
M
other rallied
a
round like the perfect mother, making tea
, then out of the blue she
i
nvited Paul to stay for dinner. I
t would be just the three of us.
I thought this
was
a bit strange but went along with it
anyway
. The day
wasn’t as
b
ad as I had thought it might be.
W
e had a
traditional Christmas dinner, M
other had a few presents under the tree for me,
and
there w
ere
also some presents under the tree for Jake too. My mother
made an effort that day.
She was pleasant and jovial.
Paul and my mother got on extremely well and I noticed a spark between them
, which made me feel uncomfortable
.
I asked M
other about Kieran,
and
she told me they were separated now and
that
she had not seen him for a few weeks. She was making another one of her fresh starts. The day passed by smoothly without a bad word said between us, partly due to the fact
that
my mo
ther was preoccupied with Paul.
I was not in the least bit happy at this turn of events. I just hoped they were being friendly what with it being Christmas day. I buried myself in a book for most of the afternoon.
When it was time to go I said goodbye to my
mother and climbed into the van.
Paul stood for a while talking to my mother
,
then followed me into the van. On the way back he was very chatty, asking me questions about my mother. It was clear to me she had charmed him. Following that day
,
a brief affair developed between my mother and Paul, which was not good news
,
as he had been good to me since my arrival at Bryn Tyn and was not someone who deserved to be drawn into
my mother’s
world. As usual, the
ir
time together was
not to be everlasting and when M
other did not get h
er way, it turned rather nasty and
once again I was used as a weapon in her quest to get him into trouble.
Following the end of their brief affair, which Paul had ended due to wanting to save his marriage, my mother decided she did not want him to be my key worker anymore
. S
o
she
embarked on a cruel mission set to almost ruin his caree
r. She made a complaint to the H
ead of Bryn Tyn Hall insisting that he be removed as my key worker due to inappropriate statements apparently made by Paul to my mother, insinuating that he had an interest in me other than that
of a key worker
.
She could not just walk away a
nd accept that it was all over;
she had to make my life harder and more difficult in the process. Paul was due to go off on long-term leave anyway for a heart bypass in the near future, so they said that was why I was assigned
a new key worker going forward. I was devastated because
I really liked Paul and he had been my key worker for nearly two years.
I was assigned a female key worker
. Paul was off work a long time—nearly six months—
and on his return he was very different with me. This brief affair between my mother and
Paul
did not make things a
ny easier for me in care at all;
the other members of staff were aware of this too
,
and they had all stuck by Paul
.
T
hankfully
,
my
mother
’
s claims were not taken seriously but nevertheless had affected my friendship with Paul. Why did her mis
takes have to affect me so much?
This was always the case. Why
did she always use me as a battering ram for everything?
This was something I had come to expect when things did not work out for her.
I was quiet for a long while and spent a lot o
f time in my room writing poetry. I found solace in writing;
I could put all my feelings down in
a way that made sense to me.
I loved writing so much
, and this was
my way of escaping. O
ne thing I had promised myself was that I would never be like my mother. I would
never turn out like her and decided then that when I
was in charge of my own destiny
I
would make something of my life. I would
not become a statistic. These thoughts started to lift me out of myself slowly
,
and
I spent a lot of time reading and writing poems in my journal
as a way to escape my miserable existence
.
Once again
,
I started working
hard to earn something called “t
rust” an initiative set up by the staff for the best behaved and most helpful children. This would mean more pocket money and more privileges
going forward
. I desperately wanted to be moved to th
e Ainsley unit within Bryn Tyn.
I would then have my own room and would no longer have to share a dormitory with lots of others
. I would finally have the privacy I had begun to crave so much
.
Eventually I earned the “t
rus
t” award and was very delighted.
T
his meant I was able to walk outside of the grounds unattended to the shop in Llay village once a week if
I wanted to.
I was
also moved to the Ainsley unit
and given my own room. Earning the “t
rust” also meant on Saturdays, when we were take
n into Wrexham Town in the blue-and-
white van to spend our pocket money, which we had earned from doing chores, I was able to w
a
nder around the shops with a friend without a member of staff
for an hour or two
.
Mary and
Sue thought this was fantastic. F
or a couple of hours a week we felt like any normal teenager shopping around town. We would buy things
to make our rooms look pretty such as posters or plaques. We liked to buy makeup
from the chemist or pop into the local café and have a cup of tea.
I was thirteen going on fourteen
, and I was very
interested in all things girly, clothes, makeup
, and I had developed a liking for shoes! I used to observe what all the other teenagers my age were wearing on a Saturday and longed to be able to dress like t
hem
and look like them. We had very few clothes in care that were kept in a small locker room, a
nd they had to last a very long time.
W
e were bought one pair of shoes per year and had a very small clothing allowance for the necessities. Thankfully, I had a few more than the others due to the hand-
me-
downs given to me by Yvonne, but there was nothing like picking your own clothes from a shop rail.
Theft was rife in care,
and i
f you had anything w
orth stealing it would be taken. N
one of us had too many belongings really. This was something we were all used to and all had in common. Once or twice a year a hairdresser was hired to come onto the premises and cut all our hair,
and
we were allowed to choose our own haircut. Mine was always a classic bob; I liked my bob
,
not to mention it was very easy to manage.
Some of the wilder children would have punk hairstyles and use their pocket money to buy crazy colo
u
red hair dye
,
like bright pink or orange! Many of the children smoked too and this
was also allowed once you hit fourteen years of age. At
this age
,
you were officially allowed to smoke
,
but you had to buy your own cigarettes out of the pocket money you earned
from your chores
each week.
I had a regular job cleaning the large games hall every night after it was closed for the day a
t
8
:00 p.m.
I would have to sweep the floor, take out the rubbish
, and make sure it was tidy,
oh
,
and ensure the
S
pace
I
nvader machines were turned off! I did this from Monday to Friday a
nd earned £5.00 per week;
that was a huge amount of money to me and I could do an awful lot with it too.
For a while things were calm
.
I was more settled and more accepting of my fate. One day seemingly
merged into the next
.
Then before I knew it my fourteenth
birthday was upon me, another year
,
another tick, just two more yea
rs to go then I was out of here. But
to where
? It remained
a mystery. This was a thought I often had during the time I was a ward of the state
.
I knew I had to remain in
their care until the age of sixteen.
M
y mother was not allowed to have any of her chi
ldren home before the ages of eighteen,
when they were adults
,
and then it would
be up to us what we wanted to be there
. This was not an issue with me
,
as I knew I would never go home
;
I could not imagine a worse fate. I had dreams of going to night school
,
passing all my exams, and having a career
.
I never wanted to be poor again
. I wanted to travel the world, and
one particular place at the top of my list was the Valley of the Kings.
I did not want my adult life to be steeped in poverty
or misery
.
S
ecuring my own home was at the top of my l
ist.
I
t became so important
,
as I wanted a place that I could call home, a place that was all mine
and
no one else’s. I wanted to make something of myself; I wanted to see the world outside of the gr
ey
walls I was living in. I
wanted to fly on a huge plane
and see the
world from high up in the sky.
I had so many dreams
,
and my heart would skip a beat just thinking about them. I just had two more years to go,
and
what would happen then
was
anyone’s guess.
Yet again
,
m
y birthday slipped by unnoticed.
I did no
t receive a card from my mother.
M
y Social Worker had advised me that she was back with Kieran and he
r life was full of arguments,
fights
,
and injunctions yet again. Christmas was a week away
,
and I was to spend the
whole of Christmas at Bryn Tyn.
T
his year I was not to
o bothered as
I had made a lot of good friends who were also in the same boat. The Bryn Tyn staff did their best to make Christmas day a bit more
special for the few of us who
remained behind.
The cook
had produced a great feast for lunch,
and
we were all given a present
. W
e spent the afternoon
watching videos of our choice;
all in all it could have been a lot worse.
Life in Ainsley unit
was easier and more independent.
W
e
were given more of a free rein;
even relationships between the teenagers were not di
scouraged, and there were a few.
T
hey used to take off down the field together for some private time and anything else they could get away with.