LITMIR.BIZ

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After a marriage that lasted five years, she and David split up when they realised they were too young to hold on to the commitment. Anyway, that is what I was told. The boys kept the name Lewis.

      Before long, my mother met David Baxter and soon after marrying him she gave birth to my brother Hayden. I was born next. The four-year marriage was destined for disaster. By this time I was nearly two years old. Even at this early age I was already broken-home material, fit for the likes of Jerry Springer’s or Trisha’s show.

      Mum’s split from David Baxter was an acrimonious affair that resulted in the family home being taken from us because of financial problems. After this, David Baxter went abroad with a woman.

      If that wasn’t bad enough, the aftermath of this break-up would follow me around for a few years, as you will see later. During Mum’s estrangement from my father, she developed a relationship with a man called Wayne Edwards, and eventually I would accept him as my dad.

      My mum’s relationship with Wayne, a butcher in Humberston, started when she went into his shop and they got talking, and then, I suppose, it went from there.

      At first, Wayne would visit my mum from time to time… he wooed her. He stayed over a few nights and then he would go back to his flat above the shop. After a while, my mum left the house in Northcoates, near Humberston, and moved in with Wayne, bringing me and my three brothers with her.

      Once we were all in his flat, Wayne happily looked after his business and we accepted him as our stepfather. After four years, the relationship between him and Mum produced their first child, Joshua, and later their second son, Hadleigh, was born. These two were given the surname Edwards, as I was, because my mother used the name Edwards, although my birth certificate records my surname as Baxter. I remember I was lying down in the front room with my brother Hayden when Mum asked me, ‘Would you like your name changed so that you have got the babies’ last name as well?’

      Mum asked my two eldest brothers, Ben and Adam Lewis, the same question, but they didn’t want to because they were still in contact with their biological father on a friendly basis. He seemed to be a nice dad. All I know about her relationship with her first husband, David Lewis, obviously came from details she told me.

      To this very day, Mum has stayed with Wayne. So I think the relationship she has got now with my stepdad is a strong one, a stronger one than those others. It has survived the test of time.

      I would say that Mum is the one who wears the trousers in our household. That may well be what has made the relationship last. Wayne, not being a domineering man, is someone my mother can live with, which I mean in a good way. He has lost his temper with me on a few occasions – that’s between him and me – but he has been good for my mum.

      My first school was Cloverfields Primary and then I moved up to Humberston Comprehensive, which I thought was a lovely school until what happened to me when I was 11.

      Just about everyone remembers their first day at school, as either one of happiness or one of sadness or fear. Mine, I’ll never forget. I was moving up from day nursery to school. You were allowed to bring a teddy bear, because we had a teddy bears’ picnic, and this girl had a toy thing in the shape of a ruler. One whack on your wrist and this thing would wrap itself around it.

      We were playing Ring-a-Ring of Roses and this girl – her name was Emma Holmes – kept cracking this toy on her arm and the teacher, Mrs Braithwaite, said, ‘Take that off your arm.’ Eventually, the teacher took it off Emma and put it on her teddy bear.

      We were going round in a circle and I pulled this toy off the teddy bear and started whacking it against my arm. I was playing with it for about ten minutes, but I didn’t really get told off for it. Then Emma started crying and pointing at me, ‘She’s got my whip thing, she’s got my whip thing.’

      After that, I remember, I got a good telling-off for taking this wraparound toy when the other girl had already been told she couldn’t have it. Try explaining that to a five-year-old. So my first day at school is etched on my memory, and it wasn’t a good one.

      That morning I’d tried to claw and scream my way out of going to school. They said I screamed and screamed and screamed and didn’t want to go. But, thankfully, I wasn’t an introverted child, and my mum said that, as soon as I got inside the school and saw all the kids with their teddy bears and all that stuff, I was fine.

      But Mum told me later that she went home crying because I’d screamed that much and was holding on to her neck. After that, she got my stepdad to take me to school in case I started crying again. Before long, though, I was all right and I progressed well at school. I am a great reader and at school they did an achievement task at the end of the year where you were assessed to find the best reader and the best writer. I was nominated the best reader for two years running.

      When I think back to when I was really young, I recollect the bad things in life. I don’t know if that is how I mark time – by putting dates to these sporadic events – but that is how history is remembered too: for all the bad things, wars, invasions, plagues, death. I mean, most people will be familiar with the dates of wars, but not with dates when great discoveries were made. Some know 1066 as being the year of the Battle of Hastings, but who can recall when Louis Pasteur discovered penicillin? As much as the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain are sacred to some, my past is even more sacred to me. We all recall historical dates connected with some dire act of misery. I’m no different in my personal memories.

      One particularly strong memory I have is of the time my brother Hayden was playing with the coal fire. I was very young. That was when we lived in Northcoates with our biological father. I remember him sitting in his chair in the corner and my mum in the kitchen doing the dinner.

      Hayden had this roll of sticky tape that he was rolling out and putting on the fire unsupervised. Without warning, he draped a flaming trail of fire on my wrist. As quick as a flash, I darted through the house towards the kitchen. I was a screaming, flaming Chucky doll with this roll of burning sticky tape stuck to my arm.

      I can remember the strange, new, intense sensation of being burned by the blazing plastic. When I got to the kitchen, my mum plucked me up from the floor, put me on the sink and doused cold water on the burning flesh of my wrist. Not a fond memory.

      This was no accident; call it a stupid prank, but I don’t know many people who have suffered from the same sort of joke. The effect it had on me remains with me to this day. My brother’s act was deliberate and has scarred my mind to the point where, although I didn’t fall into the fire itself, I am very concerned for children going near an open fire.

      Putting that negative and painful memory to one side, I do actually have, from time to time, one or two good flashbacks to the past. It’s not all gloom and doom. I remember waking up in the morning and finding a dog on the end of my bed and then going downstairs, where there were even more presents to greet my searching eyes.

      I remember the first time I saw Father Christmas, as he walked into the room trailing a black bin liner behind him. But there was something distinctly odd about him: he was wearing the full Father Christmas outfit, but with pointy, high-heeled shoes. Ladies’ shoes! Mind you, at that age I still believed he was really Father Christmas. In fact, I didn’t pick up on the high heels at first. I think it was Hayden who said, ‘Look at Father Christmas’s shoes,’ and then my mum pointed it out and shrieked with laughter as she said, ‘Yes, he has got funny shoes on.’ I remember that, and that Christmas was the time I got a play kitchen.

      Would you believe, it was only about a year ago that I learned the true identity of Father Christmas – well, the identity of this particular Father Christmas. It was my maternal grandmother, Joan. I found out from my auntie, my mum’s sister, when I tricked her into telling me.

      Although I considered myself to be a clever girl in the academic sense, I wasn’t clever enough to question Father Christmas’s high-heeled shoes. I was still pretty naïve and innocent in the ways of the world.

      I always wanted to learn things. I was even keen to learn how to make

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