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       The Miseducation of Adele Adkins

      Adele’s ambitions tended not to last long. Her mother was used to her wanting to be all sorts of things as she grew up. She had as many passing fancies as any other girl. At various stages, she wanted to be a weathergirl, a ballet dancer, a fashion writer and a saxophone player. Her mum would try to find a local class that might help, only to discover, as many parents do, that the following week it was all forgotten. Adele appreciated the support and encouragement: ‘She has always said, “Do what you want, and, if you’re happy, I’m happy.”’ She was certainly more content in an urban environment where she could make friends easily.

      Adele may have wanted to be a Spice Girl, but she was never one to announce loudly in class that she was going to be a star. Her musical taste was evolving, however. Simon came home one day with a present for her – a video of the movie Flubber, starring Robin Williams. It was great fun, but after watching it a couple of times, the invention of a magic gel began to lose its appeal. At the same time, he had brought Penny a copy of the ground-breaking album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the first solo album from the acclaimed singer of The Fugees. Penny played it constantly and soon Adele found herself singing along with the help of the lyrics sheet: ‘I remember having the sleeve notes and reading every lyric and not understanding half of them and just thinking, “When am I going to be that passionate about something to write a record about it?”, even though at that age I didn’t know that I was going to make a record when I was older.’

      Her mum heard her singing Lauryn’s break-up song ‘Ex-Factor’ one day and asked her daughter if she understood what it was about. Adele had to admit that she didn’t have a clue. She did, however, understand the anguish in certain love songs: ‘I always loved the ones about horrible relationships. Those were the ones you could relate to and that always made you cry.’ Ironically, the song expressed painful sentiments that she would come to appreciate all too well in her future relationships, especially when Lauryn exclaims that ‘no one’s hurt me more than you and no one ever will’.

      Adele was growing up fast in her inner-city surroundings. She and Penny had moved with Simon to a bigger flat in Tierney Road, close to the South Circular Road in Streatham Hill. They went less often to South Wales. Marc Evans explained, ‘She didn’t like to come to the house in Penarth so much after Dad died.’ She still kept in close touch with her beloved nana – and would continue to do so – but her memories were still very painful. She had seen less of her father during the previous couple of years, largely because he had a new family and a young son to support.

      In any case, Marc was struggling to deal with his own series of traumatic events. Shortly after his father passed, his best friend Nigel died suddenly, aged twenty-nine. His relationship with Siobhan came to an abrupt end, so he left the home in Llantwit Major and, by his own admission, drowned his sorrows in far too much alcohol. He could offer no support or care to his daughter.

      He took over the family business for a while, before taking a job fitting pipes on cruise ships. He grabbed the chance to see the world at a painful time in his life. He sent his children postcards from around the globe – South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA and the Mediterranean. It sounded glamorous that their dad was sailing down the Indian Ocean, especially when they heard his tales of pirates roaming the high seas. He always made sure he brought them back souvenirs from his trips away.

      Back in South London, Adele was mixing with a much cooler group of friends. Until the age of eleven, she was influenced by what was in the charts – a top-ten girl listening to Britney, Backstreet Boys and Take That, as well as her favourite girl group. But as senior school approached, it became trendier to embrace R&B and Adele discovered new sounds in Penny’s collection – black artists with big soulful voices. As well as Lauryn Hill, she liked Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, Faith Hill and, most of all, Beyoncé. During break time, she and her friends would have sing-offs, belting out ‘Survivor’ and ‘Say My Name’ at the top of their voices. She admitted, ‘I used to try and sound like Beyoncé and I would sing her Destiny’s Child songs all the time. Running with an R&B crowd was the easiest way to fit in and be considered hip.’ In the comfort of her own bedroom in Tierney Road, though, when there were no friends to impress, she would still have a sneaky listen to ‘Wannabe’.

      There was a chance of a last hurrah for Adele Adkins, heart surgeon, when she began Year 7 at the Chestnut Grove School in Balham, a mile and a half away. She was enthusiastic about biology lessons, anxious to gather as much knowledge as she could for her chosen career. But she was surrounded by apathy and negativity and soon preferred to hang out with her girlfriends or simply play truant. ‘I gave up on it. My heart wasn’t in it,’ she remembered with unintentional humour.

      Chestnut Grove is now one of the best and most in-demand academies in the area, but then it was much rougher. It was a ‘crap comprehensive’, according to Adele. It progressed rapidly under the leadership of head Margaret Peacock, who oversaw it becoming the country’s first visual arts college and achieving ‘Outstanding’ status in a 2008 Ofsted Report. You would have thought its emphasis on the arts would have been perfect for Adele, but she has stated in no uncertain terms that she hated it: ‘There were no aspirations and no encouragement there for anything other than getting to the end and getting pregnant.’

      Such disenchantment is not what her deputy headmaster, Dominic Bergin, remembered about her: ‘She was just a very nice girl. I first met her in Year 8 and she was a real lively girl. She was friendly and she was bubbly. She was always a big personality. My wife Claudette used to teach her English and said she was kind, hard-working, motivated and academically able.’

      Mr Bergin does, however, remember Adele as being a bit grungy. ‘She used to wear big canvas late-Nineties grunge trousers,’ like many girls at the time. That may have been her fashion of choice, but she also wore brand new Nike trainers and a baseball cap.

      Chestnut Grove, undeniably, didn’t spot Adele’s potential. Mr Bergin concedes they would have done more to nurture her if they had. One of her complaints was that she wanted to sing and perform at school, but wasn’t encouraged to do so. Instead, she was told that she couldn’t become part of the choir without taking clarinet lessons. She recalled, ‘They gave me a really hard time.’ This doesn’t sound like the whole story, because Adele was showing signs of being musically proficient, more than just vocally. Learning the clarinet would actually serve her well in the future.

      She was becoming more of a ‘street’ girl. Despite her natural

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