Under the influence
by
Julia Fisher


Foreword

When I first heard about Angie Taylor I found it hard to believe that
one person could have been through so much and survived.  For most
people, one trauma in life is one too many.  Angie has endured cruelty,
abuse and addiction at a level far beyond the experience of most people
and has survived to tell her story a story that is remarkable because
her life has been transformed.

When Angie first walked into the Premier studios in 1996, looking at
her size (she's very small!) I marvelled that she was even considering
walking from John O'Groats to Land's End.  But this was to be no
ordinary walk and I agreed that we would dedicate a weekly Angie Taylor
update' programme to bring news of her progress to our listeners.  To
be honest, I didn't think she would have the stamina to make it.  But I
underestimated her spirit.  Her success mirrors her steely
determination, a determination that has been forged on the anvil of
suffering, humiliation and loneliness.  Hers is a truly remarkable
story and deserves to be widely read and told.

Peter Kerridge Managing Director Premier Christian Radio

Acknowledgements

It would be true to say, and therefore not flattery, that this book
would not have been completed without the help of my family and some
very good friends.

My husband Norman has quietly encouraged me from the start of this
project, and sacrificed many hours of my company as a result!

My sons Stuart and Neil have also shown great support, and special
thanks to Neil for proofreading the manuscript whilst still recovering
from typhoid.  (Well, it did help to pass an afternoon!)

Jack and Joan Hywel-Davies introduced me to Angie in the first place
strange how one thing leads to another!

Glare Hordiensko and I have worked together on many a varied project,
and it was to Glare that I delivered the tapes for transcription.
Glare, here's the complete story!

Finally, Angie: thank you for letting me into your life.

You are a courageous lady.

Introduction

If Angie Taylor had written this book herself I doubt if you would have
believed it.  It would be understandable to think she was guilty of
gross exaggeration: how could a person endure so much and survive?  So
I've researched and written it for her and you can be sure that
everything printed between these covers is true.  I know of few people
who have experienced so much hostility and live4 to tell their story.

I first met Angie a couple of years ago when I interviewed her for a
radio programme.  She was about to embark on a walk from John O'Groats
to Land's End in support of mily life.  All very commendable, but Angie
is no upper-class do-gooder or right-wing political campaigner. Her
motivation comes from her past.  She has paid the high price of being
an innocent child caught in the web of an unhappy famly.  She fell out
of that into drug abuse and alcoholism.  Prison then awaited her and a
mental hospital became the safest place she knew.  The loss of her
children, prostitution, rape her story has it all.

It became clear that Angie's story couldn't be contained in a radio
interview!  So the idea for a book was born.

Under the influence

For Angie, co-operating with me to write this book has been an
excruciatingly painful experience.  We sat for hours with a tape
recorder as I probed and questioned, slowly extracting the sordid
details of her life.  This time there was no anaesthetic: Angie stopped
drinking some years ago.  I watched as she wept uncontrollably.  There
were times when I thought it would be better to stop and forget the
whole idea.  It just seemed too painful to unearth so many memories.
But it was Angie who insisted that we persist, because she wants the
world to know how her life was changed.

I compared Angie's account of her life with the notes her social
workers wrote over the years.  As the true story unfolded, the pain of
losing her two remaining children because of her drug and alcohol
addiction was worsened by the shame she felt on reading over the facts
of her case.

That there's a story to tell at all is due entirely to the fact that
Angie's life today isn't what it used to be.  Today she's sober and in
her right mind.  More than that, she's using her experience to help
thousands of people who thought they were useless and for whom life
held no hope.

Angie understands what it's like to live without love from another
human being.  She understands what it's like to be homeless, hungry,
longing for a drink, missing your children.  She understands what it's
like to wake up after a failed suicide attempt.  Her story reaches to
the heart of human misery and deprivation.  Yet it has the answer
too!

For Angie has found the answer or rather the answer found her.

Julia Fisher

ONE

Childhood nightmares

I woke suddenly.  Unfortunately I was sober.  Panic hit me as I
realized I was lying naked on a bed in a strange room.  It had happened
again.  I could hear men's voices whispering.  I tried to hear what
they were saying, but I couldn't understand their language.  They were
sitting close behind me in the small, dingy room.  I turned and must
have startled them.  One leapt across and punched me in the head, and I
reeled back onto the bed.  He stood over me, his arm poised ready to
punch me again.

I froze, petrified.  His eyes darted between me and his friends.  What
was he going to do?  Was he going to kill me?

I hated being sober: reality was too hard.  I couldn't remember what
had happened that night.  The evening had begun as usual.  I was going
from pub to pub drinking as much as I could scrounge.  And now here I
was in a dirty, shabby little room with four Arab men I'd never seen
before.  I was so frightened that I wet the bed.

They had raped me and now they were dressing themselves; I'd woken up
too soon.  I was sorry I'd woken at all.  I wanted to die.  The shame I
felt was overwhelming.

Why was I living like this?

Now the men were agitated.  Was this the first time they had been with
a prostitute?  They were young and inexperienced.  Instinctively I lay
still.  Why didn't they just go and leave me alone?  They were in a
hurry now.  One of them walked out and a few minutes later the others
followed.  I heard the door close behind them.  Finding my clothes, I
struggled into them and left the room.  Once outside, I recognized
where I was.  I'd been taken to a flat above a restaurant in Redhill,
Surrey.  As I stood alone on the pavement, I felt my head throbbing and
my body was bruised and sore.  They had treated me roughly.

I must have been so drunk that night.  But now, painfully sober, I had
only one thought in my mind.  I did what I always did to mask the
shame: I went in search of another drink.  I drank and drank as quickly
as I could to pass out again.

The shame drove me to drink; it was the only way I knew to bury the
pain.  I was imprisoned in a never-ending cycle of hopelessness.  This
became the pattern of my life and gradually each day became more
degrading than the day before.

Today, telling my story is the hardest thing I've ever had to do,
because I'm facing what I was like and I feel so ashamed of what I did.
But today I'm not running off to get drunk.  I've found someone who has
helped me to recover.  I often wonder, though, just where my life went
so badly wrong.

I was born in 1951, in a village called Woodhatch on the outskirts of
Reigate in Surrey, and I was named Angela after the local pub, The
Angel.  I'm glad I wasn't born next door to The Parson's Pig or The
Slug and Lettuce.

Who knows what I would have been called then!

I suppose we would have been considered a poor family.  My father was a
farm hand, while my mother stayed at home and eventually had five
children.  I'm the oldest in the family, with two brothers and two
sisters.  My mother appeared a nervous person in those days, seldom
venturing outside the house.  But this was a thin disguise for her
violent temper that would often erupt at the slightest provocation.  In
contrast, it was quite obvious to all who met him that my father was an
aggressive, angry man.

My mother came to England from Ireland when she was just 16 years old.
Her ftther was an alcoholic and she occasionally told me of the
beatings and abuse that he had inflicted on his children.  There must
have been a lot of pain in that family, but she didn't talk about it
much.

My father had a violent past too.  Before he met my mother he had
served a four-year sentence in a military prison for attempted murder.
Apparently there had been a row in a pub and my father had produced a
gun.  He didn't actually shoot the fellow, but pistol-whipped him about
the head until he was nearly dead all because he was a German.  So he
was in prison during the war.

I sometimes wonder if he did it because he didn't want to join the
army.  I just don't know the truth.  He never talked about it.

I remember, when I was very young, that my dad could lose his temper in
a second.  This became a convenient form of discipline, because my
mother used our fear of him to control us children.  If we were naughty
she would threaten us: You wait until your father comes in!"  We were
put in a room where we stayed huddled together until he came home.
Then, sometimes several hours later, he would punish us.  We were
really frightened of him.

My dad's rages and violent behaviour cost him his job many a time.
Before I was 11 years old we had moved house 22 times.  Typically my
father would have a row with someone, there would be a fight, he would
get the Under the influence sack, and the f~mily would be thrown out of
the tied cottage.  I remember that at one place, we were there for just
one night.  We didn't even get unpacked.  Everything was piled on the
pram and the next day we were walking up the road not knowing where we
were going to sleep that night.

The same thing happened on another occasion and a lady took us into her
house because it was pouring with rain.  That's the kind of life we
had.  It was very unstable and very transient.  There was never much
money and it was hard for my mother.  I seldom saw her smile or her
eyes light up; she always seemed worried and preoccupied, with
unpredictable moods.

Virtually everything I know I've taught myself.  In the early days, I
only went to school occasionally.  We moved around so much that we were
never in one place long enough to settle, let alone find a school to go
to.  This meant I never had the opportunity to make friends of my own
age: I never met anybody!  For years afterwards I found it difficult to
be sociable and talk to people in a relaxed way.  I suppose I lacked
confidence.

As I got older, school wasn't considered necessary anyway, which wasn't
really a hardship because I didn't know what I was missing.  I thought
it was quite normal to stay at home and help with the younger children.
After all, I was the eldest and I felt my mother needed me.

I did my best to help, but it wasn't easy.  I used to try to anticipate
her moods and compensate for her anything to try and please her.  But
the truth is, I could never please her.  I can't remember my mum ever
hugging me or showing me any warmth or kindness.  The first time I saw
her do that was when Adrian, my brother, was born.

There was never any love for the girls, but the boys were different.  I
would keep working, but it was never enough.

She didn't enjoy going out and every journey was an ordeal for her, so
she rarely left the house.  She was constantly pregnant, always looked
ill and was permanently tired.

She was a Catholic and persuaded my father to convert to Catholicism
when I was about five years old.  That meant they didn't use any
reliable method of birth control, so after the fifth baby was born they
didn't sleep together again.  This led to more pain' more bitterness
and more frustration in the family.  Everything was just very sad.

We lived a very isolated existence.  I didn't know any other families
because we lived such a rural life and went so quickly from place to
place.  I didn't really have anything to compare our life with we had
no radio or television, and I didn't read books or newspapers.  So as
far as I was concerned, I wasn't missing anything.  It seemed normal to
me.  It was just life.  I didn't realize we were a different or
dysfunctional family.  I just assumed everyone was the same.

We had our daily routine and everyone had their tasks to do.  It was my
responsibility to have my dad's slippers ready by the fire in the
evening.  Another of my jobs was to empty out his pockets and roll up
the tobacco dust to make him more fags.  I did that while he had his
dinner.

Looking back, I realize now how much I wanted my mum and dad to love
me.  They were harsh, but I really did love them and wanted to please
them.  I wanted them to be happy.  I wanted the whole family to be
peaceful, so I tried to be a step ahead of trouble in order to avoid it
happening.

When I was about six years old, not that long after my father had
become a Catholic, he was taken seriously ill.

At that time we were living on a farm at Turners Hill, just outside
Crawley in Sussex.  The area is more built up today, but it was very
rural then.  When we lived there, the land belonged to Lady Wainwright!
One evening my father drove his tractor up to the house.  I heard him
coming and ran out to meet him.  As he jumped down he screamed, and I
watched him fall to the ground.  He looked over towards me and I could
see blood pouring out of his mouth.  He looked so frightened and I was
certainly terrified as I ran over to him.  My mother heard the
commotion and came rushing out to see what had happened.  Between us we
managed to get him into the house.  An ambulance came and took him
away.  I just managed to kiss his toes that was all I could see poking
out of the blanket on the stretcher.  They took him to Smalifields
Hospital, where he stayed for months.  He had two duodenal ulcers and
both had burst.

Life became difficult for us then because we lived in a tied cottage.
With my father unable to work, before long the farm manager wanted us
out of our home.  We soon found out that he was planning to evict us.
Our doctor and the local Catholic priest beard about our dilemma and in
a desperate, last-minute attempt to help us, one of them wrote to the
Duke of Edinburgh on our behalf.  The day before we were due to be
evicted, our doctor and the priest barricaded themselves in the house
with us.

The same day a letter arrived from the Duke of Edinburgh's office
saying he had written to the local council in support of our case.
Shortly after that a man from the housing department arrived to give us
the keys to a council house.  So we were moved to Crawley, to a proper
house, a real house and it had a boo!  It had everything!  No longer
did we have to use a bucket at the Childhood nightmares bottom of the
garden.  But I was terrified of this flush loo at first, as I'd never
seen one before.

Eventually my father came home from hospital, but it soon became
obvious that he was too weak to return to work as a farm labourer.  He
took a job in a factory as a store man instead.  I was soon aware that
something was different about him; his personality had changed.  He
became subdued.  Whether it was because he'd been seriously ill or
because of his new job I don't know, but it was as though a light had
gone out inside him.  He never enjoyed his job at the factory in the
same way that he had enjoyed working on the land, but he went there
every day for the rest of his life.

This change in our circumstances meant that I was able to go to school
for the first time, at least for a while.  I started to attend Our Lady
Queen of Heavens in Langley Green, Crawley, quite regularly, and was
looking &rward to moving on to the secondary school when my mother
decided she needed me at home again to help her.  I felt bitterly
disappointed.  Having tasted the opportunity of education, home life
seemed even more monotonous.

Despite our improved housing and my dad's generally subdued behaviour,
we still lived in a climate of tension, with the threat of violence
never far away.  My mother's parents came over from Ireland on one
occasion and lived with us for a few weeks.  It was a nightmare.  My
grandfather was hot tempered and he and my father used to fight.  One
day my grandfather got drunk and before we knew it, the two men had
started hitting each other.  My dad knocked some of my grandfather's
teeth out.  I was so frightened that I grabbed my little sister and
brother and ran out of the house with them.  The whole thing happened
so suddenly, I had no time to get properly dressed.  All I could think
of was getting those children to safety.  Only as I ran up the road did
I realize I had no knickers on!  Shortly after that my grandparents
returned to Ireland.  They never came to stay again.

Looking back, I can see that living in this unpredictable environment
turned me into an anxious child.  I always felt it was my
responsibility to try and keep the peace.  The slightest thing could
spark off a row, so I would anticipate trouble and attempt to
manipulate the situation to prevent anything bad happening.  I would
try and bribe my sister Pam, for instance: I'll give you my doll, but
you must be good tonight."  She'd take the doll, but she'd still be
naughty, so my efforts didn't always work.  My constant fear was that
my mum and dad would start rowing.  When they started, anything could
happen.  Things would get smashed.

I remember once, following a particularly violent argument, my mxIm
went outside.  There was a pile of bricks in the garden and she
proceeded to break every window in the house.  The noise of shattering
glass seemed to go on for ages.  There would be a brief pause while she
stooped to pick up another brick.  Then would come another
ear-splitting crash.  There was glass everywhere.  I was screaming at
her to stop.  But she was cursing and shouting and took no notice of
me.  Then she started breaking next-door's windows.  It was awful.

In stark contrast, every Sunday without fail we would walk six miles to
our local Catholic church.  I loved going.

I loved hearing about Jesus.  I learnt about him through the Stations
of the Cross.  I heard that he'd died for me.

I didn't understand then how much he loved me.  I didn't understand
what real love was: I had no experience of being loved.  I loved' my
mum and dad, but they were hardly good role models.

There were two people I really admired at that time, though.  I took
every opportunity I could to get away from the house and visit the
convent nearby.  Sister Mary lived there.  She was elderly and gentle
and I really loved her.  Some of the nuns were spiteful, but she was
sweet.  I wanted to be a nun because of her.  I used to visit her and
she would talk to me.  I felt she genuinely had time for me.

But one day my mother bought some grapes and I ate some of them without
asking her first.  She caught me and dragged me to the convent, where
she told Sister Mary that I was a ~f***ing thief'.  I was so ashamed. I
couldn't go back there any more.

The other person I adored was my grandmother, my dad's mum.  She and my
grandfather lived and worked on a farm near Rcigate.  Sometimes we
would be sent away for a week to stay there.  To me it was heaven on
earth.

All those fields were mine and I could walk in them as I pleased and
feel safe.  I didn't have to do anything when I was there.

My Nan was wonderftul.  She was really slovenly, though.

She kept budgerigars and they were all called Peter, every one of them!
She kept them in cages right above the kitchen table and their mess
went over everything she was cooking.  She always had a cigarette in
her mouth, but the ash never seemed to drop off.  This used to be a
source of amazement to me.  How could the ash stay there like that?

She would talk away, and it would still be there!

Once a week Nan made some really thick gravy and we used to have a
slice' with our dinner.  It was put in the larder to keep cool because
there was no electricity in that house.  They used gas lamps, and a
bucket toilet that hardly ever got emptied.  The place was dirty.  But
with Nan I could just be a child.  I didn't have to do any jobs or feel
responsible.  I could get up in the morning and she'd just say, Off you
go.  I'll see you later, love."  She was my friend.

The person who I felt loved me most at this time was my little sister
Pam.  But she was so naughty.  Time and time again I pleaded with her
to be good for her own sake, but she didn't seem to be afraid of my
mum.  Instead she would challenge her.  One day she said to my mother,
If you don't leave me alone I'm going to jump out of the bedroom
window."  My mother was furious with her and went for her with a strap.
But Pam was too quick for her.  I tried to jump in front of Pam to stop
her, but she escaped and jumped out of the window, leaving her knickers
hanging on the latch.

I loved her because she was so spirited and brave.  But she just
wouldn't conform.  My mother despaired of her and complained to our
doctor that she was naughty and out of control.  She wasn't really I
think she was just bewildered and felt trapped in our unhappy family
life.

One day, the doctor was called to the house because Pam had gone
berserk and locked herself in our bedroom (shared by three of us).  She
had pushed some heavy furniture in front of the door and it took ages
to coax her out.

By the end of it Pam was a screaming wreck.  The doctor gave her some
medicine to calm her down and help her sleep.  By the time she was 11
she was on Valium, which she took every day for years.  Pam finally
stopped taking Valium just a few years ago, at the age of45.  She now
goes out and has a full-time job.  In fact, you can't keep her in:

it's wonderful!

The reason Pam became so upset was because my father's personality and
behaviour towards us began to change dramatically.  It started after he
converted to Catholicism.

At first the change was gradual, only becoming more noticeable on his
discharge from hospital, when he came back to live with us in the
council house in Grawley.

Childhood nightmares

Maybe it was due to the fact he had been so ill and nearly died, but he
seemed to undergo some sort of nervous breakdown.  Then he became what
I can only describe as a religious maniac.  He would go to work in the
factory during the day, then come home and put us through a programme
of religious exercises.  He made us read the Catechism and say our
prayers every night.  He became obsessive about it, domineering and
threatening.

At around this time a visit from my Unde PJ (Peter James), my mum's
brother, suddenly made matters much worse.  He had spent the previous
evening with some friends and they had held a seance.  Unde PJ
enthusiastically told my parents how exciting it was.  He'd talked to
this person and that person, and he wanted to demonstrate to them how
it worked.  So he promptly tore up some paper and fetched a tumbler
from the kitchen.

I may have been young I must have been about seven years old but I
remember this happening very clearly.

Colin and Janice had not yet been born, but I was there with Pam and
Adrian, who was only a tiny baby.  I watched quietly as the adults sat
huddled around the small table, their fingers barely touching the
glass.  I saw it moving across the table, but then we were sent off to
bed.

The next night we were woken and called downstairs in the early hours
of the morning.  It was the beginning of a nightmare.  Dad put the
glass on the table.  Pam and I were made to stand next to him in our
night dresses  He told us something important had happened and we were
now to call him St.  John.  The Bible had been changed and Jesus was no
longer going to fight the devil at the end of history.  He my dad was
going to instead.  He'd been told that he would win the battle, but
only if he had the support of his family.  We were then made to put our
hands on the glass, and as it moved around the letters on the table it
spelt out the message, I am Jesus."  Jesus' then told us that we were
to do everything our father told us to do.

So one year after we had moved into the house in Crawley, our lives
took another strange twist and we embarked on a period that was to last
until I was a teenager.

My parents held a seance every day, sometimes more than once a day. Pam
and I were so scared, but we dared not disobey.  We didn't know if dad
was really St.  John or not.  I told myself he could be.  I didn't see
why not, because other people were saints and they had been made saints
after being just normal people like my dad.

One night my dad produced a gold ring and said that this was to
disperse the devil.  He would walk around the house and tell us there
was evil about us, circling the ring over our heads.  I was frightened,
but Pam was absolutely terrified.  The toilet was outside (it may have
been a modern flush loo, but it was still outside!) and it was a scary
experience going out there in the dark.  Pam and I were so frightened
of going into the garden after dark that we used to keep two of my
dad's tobacco tins in our bedroom to use in case we needed to go to the
toilet during the night.  We were genuinely afraid that the devil might
get us.

Time went on, and things got progressively worse.

We were called down one night to take part in another seance.  It had
been my birthday and my mum had bought me a second-hand pram which she
had painted herself

Jesus' told me, through the glass on the table, that I had to give that
pram away it had to be sold.  I had no choice in the matter.  I
couldn't say a word I was too afraid.

Dad's behaviour became more and more bizarre.  One day he put a cloth
over every mirror in the house and we had a lot of mirrors.  He told
Pam and me that we would go blind and something really evil would
happen to him and mum if we ever looked in those mirrors.  I was so
frightened.  What if it was true?

As for my mother, she wholeheartedly supported my father in what he was
doing.  She knelt down and did everything he said.  These events
happened in a very short space of time.  Within a couple of months we
were overtaken by a complete change in the family structure.  My
parents reversed roles.  My mother changed from being in control to
being submissive.  Her husband had become a saint!  Through the glass
she was talking to people from the past and was convinced it was true.
And I think that for the very first time in his whole life my father
was in control.  He had found a way of making us all do what he wanted
us to do.

two

I just want my dad back'

It took just one night.  A few people playing what they thought was an
innocent party game led to years of terror.  As time passed, my
father's behaviour grew more and more strange and unpredictable.  He
began to write hymns to himself, describing how he was St.  John and it
would no longer be Jesus fighting the devil in the last days, but him.
He would save Jesus and destroy Satan!

He had two LP records of Harry Secombe singing hymns.  The one he
played most often was Onward Christian Soldiers'.  As soon as Pam and I
heard the sound of that music we froze with fear.  We knew what was
about to happen.  Dad would start to duck and dive and throw himself
all over the room as though he was in a boxing ring.  Whilst he was
doing this, my mother would kneel on the floor with her head bowed. I'm
sure she believed it was all real.

Before long this kind of thing was happening almost every day, even
though my dad had recently undergone major abdominal surgery~ for his
ulcers.  Pam and I were terrified that he would harm himself or us.  He
would fling himself about as though he was being hit, shouting that he
was fighting the devil, although we couldn't see

I just want my dad back 15

anything.  In the end, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he would fall
to the floor.  Then my mother would get up from her kneeling position,
go into the kitchen and fetch a bowl of water and some soap.  Pam and I
had to wash his face and his feet and dry him with our hair.  If we
refused we were beaten.

Sometimes he would say, God has put a mark on me today," and he would
tell us what it was.  Then he would ask us, What do you see?"  And we
would have to repeat what he'd just told us.  There's a cross on your
back, dad," or whatever it was for that day.  We learned to listen, to
what we had to repeat very carefully.  We dare not get a word wrong for
fear of another beating.

As time progressed he did away with the glass and the letters on the
table.  No longer were we called only in the middle of the night.
Instead, at any time of the day or night we would be ordered into his
presence'.  We would watch as he put his hands in front of his face and
said, I'm being called."  This was our' signal to kneel down at his
feet.  Then Jesus', or St.  John', or the devil', or the Angel Gabriel'
would talk through him to us.  He would identi1~ who was speaking
through him and we would listen as he passed on orders that we had to
obey.

At this time he ran a youth club for boys, and I remember a voice'
telling my mother that she was to go and buy some pool tables on hire
purchase fur the club.

We had no money of our own we couldn't possibly afford such expensive
items.  On another occasion I was told to sell my dolls and give my dad
the money.  Pam was ordered to do things as well.  We had no option
because it was Jesus', or whoever, who had commanded us.  Dad had total
control over us because we all believed in God and so we were
frightened not to believe what the voices' Under the influence said. On
another occasion he told us he was going to become the first English
Pope!

I didn't understand then how evil all this was: it was too subtle.  I
was scared, but my main concern was for Pam, who was just 9 or 10 at
the time, a couple of years younger than me.  My brother Adrian was
still very young at this time and so wasn't really involved.  But Pam
cried so much and I spent most of my time comforting and protecting
her.  She was very afraid.

Other people started to notice my dad's erratic tendencies.  He was
frequently warned by his employer at the factory about his behaviour
being so weird.  He was once threatened with dismissal because he was
caught in the loo writing hymns to him seW

This way of life continued until I was 13.  As the years passed,
however, I started to realize that my dad's behaviour was really a mask
and I began to ask questions to myself.  By this time I was enrolled in
secondary school, St.  Wilfred's at Tilgate in Grawley, although I was
very rarely there.  I would have loved to have gone to school
regularly.  For a time I wanted to be a forensic scientist, and even
now I sometimes think if only I could have gone, I would have passed
exams and been successful.  I don't think I'm stupid.  I know I'm not
educated and what I've learnt I've taught myself, but if I could learn
that much just by watching and listening, then I believe I would have
done well at school.

Anyway, there was a priest at St.  Wilfred's and on a Monday morning we
were allowed to go and see him if there was something we particularly
wanted to discuss.

To reach his study meant climbing a back stairway (it was an old house
with lots of corridors and flights of stairs).

His door was always closed and after knocking we had to dad back wait
for his reply before turning the handle and entering the room.

During the two or three years I attended that school, I must have
climbed those stairs about four times.  I desperately wanted to knock
on the door, but each time I turned round and tiptoed back down again.
Iwantcdto tell the priest what was going on at home.  I wanted to tell
him about how frightened Pam was.  I thought he might be able to help
me.  I would think about it for days, planning exactly what I was going
to say, but each time I just didn't have the courage.  Maybe I thought
he wouldn't believe me.

I think I was becoming quite a mixed-up girl.  I would say I loved
Jesus, but I was also a good thief.  There was never much money at home
and I started to long for one or two treats, not just for myself but
for my brother and sister too.  My mum had a large Royal pram with a
hood at each end and it had a false bottom which you could lift out and
hide things in.  So I used to wheel Adrian into Crawley, with Pam
walking beside me, and take them into Woolworth's, where I'd steal
packets of biscuits and sweets and hide them in the pram.

Then I'd push them up the road to the Catholic church and hurry in to
say confession.  Pam would patiently stand outside, watching Adrian in
the pram while they waited for me.  When I came out she would say, Can
we eat them now?"  I thought that was all right!  I remember the priest
said to me after one of my confessions, You must say four Hail Marys
and four Our Fathers."  I thought that was rather harsh, so I went and
picked some pears from a nearby garden to make it worthwhile!

I loved taking the children out and giving them surprises.  I wanted
them to have something tasty and -I think I wanted something special
for myself too.  They

seldom had any treats at home and Pam was constantly crying.  I wanted
to see them smile.  I may have been frightened, at home, but when I was
out with the children I assumed an air of confidence which in turn gave
me the courage to steal.  I was scared in case I was caught, but I
never allowed that to show on the outside.  I felt I was doing them a
favour, and provided I con&ssed to the priest, I told myself it was
acceptable.

To people who didn't know me I probably appeared to be a very quiet,
serious child.  People of my own age would probably have found me
boring.  But I had such a lot of responsibility.  Each week my mother
would give me some money it was never enough and with that I would have
to pay the electricity bill and shop for food.

She didn't want to go out herself, so the responsibility fell on my
shoulders.  Everything was very serious in my life.

There wasn't room for much frivolity.

Although I hadn't had the courage to knock on the priest's door and
talk to him about my father, I became more convinced as each day passed
that something was seriously wrong at home.  I was daring to believe
that his behaviour was a farce.  He'd started doing even more bizarre
things than ever.  He made us all sit in the kitchen, several times a
day, and watch him while he made a cup of tea with his eyes shut to
demonstrate that he was a saint and all-knowing.

I became so suspicious that one day I swapped the tea and the sugar
caddies over.  It was the beginning of my release from his influence
and control.  I swapped them over and he made a mistake.  He put sugar
in the teapot and tea in the cups.  I was released; I suddenly knew
that it was all not true.  But in that instant my dad knew his power
had been broken too.  The tension suddenly rose

I just want my dad back' 19

between us.  A silent crisis had been reached in that moment.  Here was
my opportunity.

At that point I knew I had to go and talk to a priest.  So I stole some
money out of the housekeeping fund and caught a train to Horsham. There
I went to see a priest who knew our family, Father William.  He had
bear the parish priest at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Church at Langley
Green in Crawley, then was made a canon and moved to Horsham. I didn't
know him that well, but he was the person I felt drawn to go and see. 
I felt I could trust him.

I just knew it was up to me to do something.  My sister Pam was getting
more and more scared.  She was on tranquxilizers by this time and never
went out.  She was so afraid that when dad was throwing himself about
she used to sit in the corner and wet herself and shake.  Going to
Horsham was a huge risk for me, but my resolve to be free from those
years of misery and abuse outweighed any fear I was feeling.

I told the priest everything.  He sat quietly and let me finish.  I
didn't understand his reply: he told me I would have to say confession.
I was really upset.  That wasn't the answer I was expecting to hear.
I'd risked everything to come and see him and now he was telling me it
was all my fault!  I shouted at him, You're not fit to be a priest
because my dad is really ill and my whole family is suffering, and I've
come to you for help!"

Patiently he explained that I'd been a part of what had happened, I'd
been involved, albeit reluctantly.  Therefore I had to say confession
because I needed to be free.  But at that stage and with the way my
mind was at the time, I felt as though he was blaming me.  My mind was
racing in circles of confusion.  I thought I'd done the right thing in
going to see him.  I believed he was the only one who could help. Where
had it all gone wrong?  Who could end this nightmare?

Father William must have seen the desperate state I was in, because he
came home with me that evening and spoke to my mother and father.  I
was terribly frightened.

What would happen next?  He persuaded my father to give him all the
books and records of hymns, and the gold ring.  He took all the covers
off the mirrors.  Then he went from room to room and sprinlded the
entire house with holy water.  He performed an exorcism.  Then he said
goodbye and left.

My father just sat there with his head in his hands, and he told my
mother that if she wanted to end the marriage she had good grounds for
doing so.  Father William had also told her that before he left.  Dad
didn't say much after that, he just sat there.

I can't remember much about that evening.  I was just so exhausted with
the emotional turmoil of the day.  Pam and I made ourselves scarce and
went off to our bedroom.

But later that evening I was called downstairs.  I thought that was it
we did get a lot of beatings and this was bound to be worse than any
I'd had before.  I was really scared and Pam was upstairs being sick
because she thought I was going to get killed.

My mum had recently given birth to her fourth child, Janice, and was
feeling quite unwell.  She called me into the sitting room and I'll
never forget what she said to me:

Well, you've got what you wanted.  Now does he go or does he stay?"  I
was only 13, and I was being asked to decide.  I looked into her eyes,
but she gave nothing away.

Her face was expressionless, neither angry or sad.  I couldn't tell
what she was thinking.

I looked across at my dad and I remember my reply very clearly.  "I
just want my dad back," I said.  I don't want I just want my dad back
21

you to go, I just want you back."  He cried and held me, and I just
felt so sad.

He didn't go, he stayed.  What went was his control and his influence.
St.  John was never mentioned again.  That madness went as quickly as
it came.  It was quite uncauny after so many years of strain and fear,
an uneasy caliia settled over the house.  Dad, though, was immediately
plunged into hopelessness and despair.  He was banished from my
mother's bed and he slept on the sofa in the sitting room from that day
on.  He went out to work in the morning, came home in the evening and
would pretend to be asleep in his chair before going to bed on the
sofa.

The roles had reversed once again and my mother now became the dominant
person in the family.  But instead of it being the end of the nightmare
and a relief fur us all, it was just the start of another catalogue of
horrendous events.

tHREE

A craving for tenderness

The part I had played in breaking my father's hold over us left me with
mixed feelings.  On the one hand this success~ encouraged me to flex my
muscles of independence a little bit more, as I realized how the entire
family had been controlled and manipulated by my dad's strange
behaviour.  But on the other hand I wavered, I felt unsure.

I had become accustomed to the unpredictability of his behaviour, and
there was security in the familiar, however unpleasant it could be. Now
that the situation had changed, I grappled with the uncertainty of what
was going to happen next.  The spell had been broken, but now there was
a void which had to be filled.  I felt uneasy and anxious about what
might happen.

The change had been so sudden.  One day my dad was St.  John; the next
day he was a broken man, his control finished, his power gone.  One
minute I felt responsible and guilty for having upset the status quo.
The next minute I was proud of myself for having the courage to go and
see that priest, bring him to the house, defy my parents and challenge
their control.  I felt pleased with myself for being brave enough to go
through with it.  It had been a huge step for me to take, to steal from
the housekeeping money, catch a train to Horsham, go and see a priest I
hardly knew and talk to him about what was going on in my family.

But it had destroyed my dad.  He was a shadwof his former self He was
pathetic uo~ we ntt at my mother's mercy I Mt.  ~ He cried so much; it
was very sad.  I was torn submission and rebellion.  I was silently
screaming for help but I didn't know where to turn, who would listen,
who could help.

The situation in our family had changed, but it wasn t any better.  I
argued the case out with myself, the debate going round and round in my
head.  My emotions were on a roller coaster.  Deep down in my heart I
knew I'd done the right thing.  I told myself I'd done it for the
children's sake.  Everything I'd done, I'd done for them.  It was the
consequences of what I'd done that I was unsure about.  A sort of power
vacuum had developed between my parents.  I could sense it and' I was
watching and waiting, anticipating what might happen next.  I felt
nervous all the time, and even more protective of mj~ sister Pam.

Outwardly things stayed the same.  I continued to make the meals and do
all the shopping.  My mum was ill a lot of the time, and now she had
been shown that her husband was not a saint after all, she was having
to come to terms with that reality too.  He was clearly going through a
mental breakdown, and the role that she had become accustomed to him
playing, had encouraged and come to enjoy, had suddenly been taken
away.  The effect of this loss on my mum showed itself in some strange
ways.

On one occasion, when she was heavily pregnant with Cohn, her fifth
baby, and quite ill, she dragged the kitchen table into the back garden
and put it next t~ the Under the influence hedge which divided our
garden from our neighbour's.

On top of the table she placed a kitchen chair, then climbed up onto
the chair and started cutting the hedge.

Inevitably our neighbour was soon out asking her why she was cutting
the hedge in her condition.  Didn't she have a husband who should be
doing that for her?  What was he thinking of, sitting back doing
nothing, watching her do all the work when she was so unwell and had so
many children to look after?

I suppose that was her way of getting the sympathy she so desperately
craved, but I found her method of publicly punishing my dad
humiliating.

Despite my nervousness and misgivings, I was slowly but surely becoming
more independent.  I had shown myself that the control my parents had
exercised over me was false and I was determined to continue my fight
for freedom.  Aged 14,1 was starting to change.  I found life at home
increasingly restrictive and my parents' demands intolerable and often
demeaning.

Physically I was no longer a girl, I was becoming a young woman capable
of attracting men and holding their attention.  All my life I'd been
used and abused and I was fed up with it.  I wanted to be treated with
a bit of respect and kindness.  Tenderness was something I'd never
experienced, but I guess that's what I was longing for.

I was going out with a boy but I didn't like him in fact I hated him
because my dad had chosen him for me.  I was expected to go along and
help my dad with his youth club for young boys, and this boyfriend'
came from there.  It may sound horrible now, but I still think the same
way about that boy.  He was boss-eyed and had a pigeon chest and he
kept trying to touch me.  I didn't want anything to do with him.

He must have grown tired of me because he came into the youth dub one
night and complained about me, to my father, in front of all the other
boys.  She won't let me touch her!"  he yelled.  I didn't know what to
do.  But my father did.  In front of all of those teenagers, my dad
knocked me from one end of the hail to the other.  He just hit me and
hit me and hit me, and then he said, (Jet out there
andf~**ingkisshim!~

Inside I fumed with anger.  How dare he humiliate me like this?  Was I
that worthless to him?  Why didn't he love me and treat me properly?
Why wasn't he proud of me?  I was his eldest daughter.  Didn't he
realize I had feelings?

In the depths of my being I was crying, craving fur some of the
tenderness I'd never known.

You would never have guessed my real feelings from the expression on my
face.  I knew from bitter experience how to maintain a passive
exterior; I'd learnt how to survive the hard way.  When abuse is your
constant companion there are things you learn in order to erase the
inevitable damage.  You learn how to minimize the attack, and facial
expressions are a powerful deterrent.  I knew, better than any animal,
that a submissive expression signals the end of the contest for the
time being at any rate.

At around this time, my mother was in Crawley Hospital having just
given birth to Colin, and I was at home looking after the kids.  I had
just started my periods and was feeling unwell, preoccupied and tired.
I went to the hospital to visit her and see the new baby.  She'd told
me to bring in some baby clothes for Colin to wear as she was due to
bring him home the next day.

Whether it was because it was so warm in the hospital I don't know, but
as I walked into the ward my head started Under the influence to swim
and I felt giddy.  I could see my mother and I fixed my gaze on her and
tried to keep walking towards her, but suddenly everything went blurred
and I passed out.  I used to faint a lot as a child I think I was
anaemic.

As I came round, a nurse was by my side talking to me and gently
stroking my face.  She lifted me up and helped me over to my mother's
bed.  I felt sick, my legs were shaking and I just wanted to sink down
into a chair.  But in front of everyone my mum hit me.  All she could
say was,

So you want all the f***ing attention do you, do you now?  Well have
this, cop this!"  She just went mad because everyone had turned to look
at me instead of her.  At that moment I hated her.

I understand now that it wasn't her fault.  She wasn't living a life,
she was living an existence, destroying everybody she should have loved
just so she could get a few minutes of sympathy.  I'm not describing
someone who was merely selfish here.  I'm trying to show you my mum as
the insecure, deeply unhappy person that she was.

She'd had a rotten upbringing.  She'd never been properly loved or
appreciated.  Her father was an alcoholic who had abused his children.
He'd abused her until she felt compelled to run away.  And now she had
five children of her own and she couldn't cope.  Yet her loyalty to her
husband was unquestionable.

She worked so hard, she wore herself out.  In so many ways I did admire
her.  In between severe bouts of agoraphobia, she had several small
jobs to make ends meet.  She worked in a kitchen and one day cut
herself very badly.

She was carving some meat when the knife slipped, giving her a severe
cut between her thumb and forefinger.  She didn't have time to go to
the hospital to have it properly cared for.  Instead she bandaged it up
herself, and finished her work in time to be home for her own family.
It was a deep wound and should have been stitched.  It became infected
and she developed tetanus.

She was really very ill.  I can remember visiting her in hospital and
for a while we were left wondering whether or not she would survive.
But she pulled through and before long returned to her jobs.  Thanks t~
mymum~ we were never in debt, Although~ztioney w~s always

was fastidious about making-sure the bills were paid on time, and I
admired her for that.

But this latest incident at the maternity hospital reinforced my desire
for escape.  I started to plan how I could get away from the house and
find my own way in the world.  I was just a young teenager, but I felt
grown up and quite capable of looking after myself.  I was no longer
the little girl who had tried so hard to please and keep the peace.  I
felt spurned, taken for granted and unwanted.  I started to rebel
openly.

At about the same time I decided there was no~ God.

How could there be?  If there was a God, he would have heard my prayers
by now and come and rescued me.  My whole life had been controlled by
my parents.

I'd never been allowed to go out by myself and make my own friends.
Even my boyfriend had been chosen for me and I hated him too.  When we
walked up the road I would spit at him and bark orders.  Walk behind
me!"  I'd say.  I really loathed him and didn't want him near me.

I was starting to behave like a caged animal looking for the merest
chance of escape.  I wanted to run away and never see any of them
again.

When I was 161 took a job at Mallory Batteries at Manor Royal, an
industrial estate in Crawley.  I had a friend there called Christine.
We often used to talk about what we'd like to do, how we'd like to find
some work that took us away from our home area.

We started to make some enquiries and before long we were offered a job
working for the Spina Bifida Association.  It involved travelling all
over the country selling the equivalent of a lottery ticket to raise
money for the charity.  The idea was that we would spend a certain
amount of time in each town and the Association would provide us with
accommodation.  At 16 this felt like the chance of a lifetime!

But when I went home and told my parents what Christine and I were
proposing to do, they were livid and beat me up.  How dare I think
about leaving?  My dad held me down while my mum hit me and pulled out
great chunks of my hair.  My nose was bleeding and my face was cut.

That night I left home.  I'd been offered a position that gave me a
passport to freedom.  I had to accept it.  So I went to stay with
Christine and her parents for a couple of nights, then we left for
Brighton, settled ourselves in a flat and started to work at our new
job.

A few days later, two policemen called at our flat.

Apparently my mother had reported me missing to the police, with the
suggestion that I might be living on immoral earnings'.  I was taken to
the police station in Brighton and questioned to prove that I wasn't
living by prostitution.

We were left alone for a while after that, and for a few months life
settled down.  Christine and I were enjoying our work and being very
successful.  Then a telegram arrived from my mother to say my sister
Janice was dying.

Apparently she was pining for me and was refusing to eat.

I was missing my brothers and sisters anyway, so to hear that Janice
was ill filled me with remorse.  She clearly needed me.  I left my job
and flat in Brighton and returned home.

I tried to pick up more or less where I'd left off with the kids, but
of course I'd changed I was used to my independence now.  It wasn't
long before I felt as though I'd been tricked into going home.  Janice
wasn't all that il land soon recovered.  I wanted to leave again, but
of course by then I'd lost my job in Brighton.

I felt resentful and started to lead a promiscuous life, with several
boyfriends at the same time.  I went out whenever I wanted to and I
slept with them all.  They only had to show a little kindness or say
they liked me and I'd fill in love.  If they put their arms round me I
didn't want them to let go.  I'd do anything to please them.

I thought I knew what I wanted.  I wanted my own children and I wanted
to be away from that house.  I wanted to be free.  But at the same time
I felt very responsible for my brothers and sisters.  What was I to
do?

I started to drink not excessively, but I enjoyed going to pubs and
parties.  I was mixing with people who were having fun; they were
friendly and they accepted me;

they even liked me!  It was as though I'd moved into a different world,
a world of colour.  I was so used to a grey existence and now I'd found
something exciting and vibrant.  I became even more rebellious at home
and my parents couldn't control me.  I came and went as I pleased.

Having lived such an isolated existence, I didn't have a lot of
confidence.  I didn't have any history or experience on which to base
my life, because I hadn't been in the outside world very much.  I was
afraid to say too much about myself to any of my new friends for fear
of sounding boring.  Who, I thought, wanted to hear about my family?

I didn't want to talk about them.  I must have appeared quite pensive
and reserved.

I listened and I watched what other people were doing, and soon I
started to be attracted to a group of people who clearly had their own
strong group identity.  I wanted to have some kind of identity too, to
belong somewhere I was welcome.

One day I glanced out of the window from the office at Boots, the
chemists, where I was working.  I looked down into Queens Square in
Grawley.  A group of hippies were there, sitting on their Afghan rugs.
They had long hair and were smoking joints and playing music.  I
thought: I'm going to become a hippie.  I was immediately attracted to
them, I remember it so clearly.

They looked relaxed and peaceful, and I wanted to be like that too.

I quickly worked out that I could easily transform myself to look like
them.  Clothes had become very important to me because I hadn't had
many when I was young.

I was a Mod, and very fashion conscious.  But at that moment I decided
I was going to change all that.  I took my time, wanting to get it
right.  I was planning my next escape and this time I wasn't going to
get caught and have to come back home again.

So I bought some long skirts and gradually turned myself into a hippie.
I found out which pubs the hippies went to and started going along just
to be with them.

At first I stayed on the edge of the group, watching, listening,
learning, wanting desperately to please them so that I could be
identified as one of them.  I wanted to belong.  I knew the closer I
could get to them, the more their lifestyle would rub off onto me and I
could be absorbed into the group.

I was about 17 by then.  I thought my own family didn't want me.  I
told myself they wouldn't miss me.  All I wanted was to join another
family, a group of people who A craving for tenderness would like me
and accept me and call me one of them.

Gradually I got to know one or two of the group.

My plans were temporarily held up when I was involved in a serious -car
accident.  I hadn't been wearing a seatbelt.  My face was very badly
cut and I was extremely shaken.  It took me several months to recover,
but during this time I changed my job to another chemist, and never
gave up on my plan to turn myself into a hippie~

I would have escaped' sooner, but my mother was ill again.  She had a
nervous breakdown and was suffering from agoraphobia.  She would wait
outside the shop where I was working, with the youngest children
sitting in the pram.  When I left in the evening she would rush up to
me and run off, leaving me to take the kids home and give them their
tea.  I went along with it, but this time I wasn't going to get caught
for ever.  I had a goal.  I was determined to break free and join the
hippies.

A year passed since the start of my plan.  My trans formation was
complete.  I had changed myself into looking like a hippie; my face had
recovered sufficiently from the injuries of the car crash, and I was
ready to make my next move.  I didn't have to wait long.

One night I went into a pub and saw a young man standing by the bar.  I
watched him for a long time before saying to my friend, I'm going to
marry him."  He was everything I wanted and he had long hair!  He would
provide me with the way into the hippie people.

My patience was rewarded: I was married by the time I was 18.

4,-..

fOUR

Shattered dreams

The minute I saw him I knew he was the man I was going to marry.  I sat
down at a table in the corner of the pub where I could watch him from a
safe distance.  The place was full of people, hippies mainly, moving
between groups, talking together, content in each other's company. They
all appeared friendly, warm and relaxed.

My friend went to the bar to order our drinks.  Alone, I sat and stared
at this man, watching his every gesture.  He looked so gentle, so at
ease with himself.

I made up my mind.  It was time to let him know I was watching him.  I
wanted him to leave the group he was with and come over to where I was
sitting and talk to me.

I didn't have the confidence to go and join the crowd he was mixing
with there were too many people and I didn't know any of them.  I had
transformed myself into a hippie; I was wearing all the right clothes.
I just needed to find a way into the group and be accepted by them,
become one of them.

Up to that moment I was a hippie in isolation what a contradiction! But
I believed I had found the man who was going to come to me and, walking
beside me, take me over the bridge, out of my lonely, grey existence
into his world of colour, peace and happiness.  Nothing else
mattered.

I felt a surge of excitement twinged with a sense of danger.  Was this
really what I wanted?  Were these people as peaceful as they looked? WI
joined them, would I be happy, happier than I'd ever been in my life? 
Would they give me the love and sense of belonging I yearned for?  I
still had time to change my mind.  I could walk out of that pub and
forget the whole idea.  I argued the case in my mind and finally
convinced myself I had nothing to lose.  I had made up my mind: he was
the man I was going to marry.

It wasn't long before he noticed I was staring at him.

My plan was beginning to work.  He moved away from the people he was
with and started to walk casually towards me.  Our eyes met.  I knew
that if I looked away he would turn round and walk off, pretend he was
going to talk to somebody else.  He knew enough people in the pub to
talk to almost anyone.

I fixed my gaze.  I was committed.  By now he knew I wanted to meet him
and I succeeded in drawing him across the room to the table where I was
sitting.  We talked, and within three months Dick Boorer had asked me
to marry him.  He was a roadie with a group called The Mysterious
Babies, who later changed their name to Train.  They played heavy-metal
music, rock and blues.  Meeting Dick changed my life.  Suddenly I was
part of a group of longhaired singers!  They did quite well.  They made
a couple of records and you could even hear them on the radio.

They did a concert tour around the country.  I had never had such
excitement.  I went to their parties and festivals.  I went with them
when they played at the Lyceum.  I was with' the band, I was one of the
in' people.  I had arrived!

tinft~e arrived.  We were married in y ~ni26January1969.IwasjUst ~ 19..
The band came to the wedding.  My mom and dad were there with my
brothers and sisters.

Dick's Lather came; his mother had died a few years previously.
Unfortunately, Dick arrived at the registry office covered in blood.  A
stone had gone through the windscreen of the car he was travelling in
and hit him in the face!

I remember going to bed on my wedding night believing I was never going
to be frightened or lonely again.  We lived with Dick's father for a
short time before moving into a one-bedroom flat in Brixton.  We both
had work and, although there was never a lot of money, for a time I
thought life was great.  Everything was going fine.

We had our own place.  I was free and enjoying this really unusual lift
style  I didn't wear shoes for two years because I was a real hippie, a
hardened hippie!

The Mysterious Babies didn't last.  The band split up not long after we
were married.  Dick found another job as a salesman based in
Cambridgeshire.  By now I was expecting our second baby (I had a
miscarriage and lost our first child shortly after we were married) and
we decided to have a bungalow built in March, in Cambridgeshire.  While
Dick was working in Cambridgeshire during the week I didn't want to
stay in Brixton on my own, so I decided to move back home with my
mother.  I stayed there for several months, although it was a move I
was later to regret.

My son Chaywas born on 7 March 1971.1 felt I had to go out to work so
that Chay could be properly provided for, and so my mother took an
increasingly influential role in looking after him for me during the
day.

Dick was unhappy living away from me and eventually lost his job in
Cambridgeshire.  He returned to London, fbund a job in a factory
working as a lathe turner, and we moved into a house in Choumert Road
in Peckham.  Dick had kept in touch with his hippie friends and it
wasn't long before our house became the place to visit and spend hour
after hour smoking dope.  I hated the stuff because it made me very
paranoid and unable to talk.

Dick was very lovable and gentle, but he was just drifting from one
joint, one trip to the next.  Any money he had he spent on dope or
music.  I couldn't complain:

I'd opted to be in on that scene.  That was exactly what I'd chosen and
that was exactly what I got.  I began to see the reality of the
lifestyle I'd married into: I had to share Dick with countless other
people.  I began to feel as though I wasn't married to him alone rather
I was married to the group he mixed with.

Dick and I had five children altogether.  I had a late miscarriage and
then Chay was born.  Then I had another late miscarriage, virtually a
still birth because it happened towards the end of the pregnancy I fell
pregnant again with Bonita when we were living in Peckham.

I suppose our relationship started to fall apart not long after we were
married certainly by the time Chay was born.  Once we had Bonita as
well, Dick just couldn't handle the responsibility.  Soon I discovered
he was being unfaithful to me.  He'd been to bed with a couple of my
friends and eventually he did leave me for someone else.

I went into hospital when Bonita was born on.19 May 1973, but Dick
didn't come to see me.  The first time he saw his daughter was when he
came to take us home.  He arrived at the hospital with his friends.  I
climbed into the van and we drove home.  They all came in and smoked a
joint while I just carried on as if noting had happened.

They seemed oblivious to the fact that I'd just had a baby they weren't
even interested.  I started to feel alone and frightened.  That was the
beginning of my agoraphobia.

One day sometime after that I was at home alone with the children.
Bonita was still a little baby, Chay was just a toddler, and I was
pregnant again.  All of a sudden I had what I now know was a panic
attack, a terrible keling of being rooted to the spot.  I thought I was
going to drop dead.

I couldn't breathe, my tongue was dry, my heart was racing.  I ran out
of the house and then ran back in.  I just didn't know what to do.  I
spent the next few days in bed because I was too scared to get up.
Eventually I went to the doctor and he referred me to the Royal
Maudsley a psychiairic hoipital.  All they did was to prescribe me
tranquiflizers and discharge me.

We moved back to live with Dick's father for a while because I wanted
to get out of Peckham.  We were in arrears paying the rent, the house
was in a rough area and I didn't feel sa& living there.  The property
was crawling with mice we could hear them.  I had the house looking
clean and tidy on the surface, but when we lifted some floorboards and
discovered a thick layer of mice skeletons (the result of a previous
gassing), I could stand it no longer.  It was an awful sight.

I was permanently scared and reasoned that if we moved away it might do
us all good.  Dick resented my mother visiting so often and being so
involved with the children, which in turn provoked a lot of friction
between us.  I thought she was coming to help me and argued with Dick
about it, which I suppose made him el rejected.

I felt increasingly uncertain.  Nothing was going according to plan.
What had happened to all my fine dreams of security and happiness?  All
my hopes were crumbling around my ears.  I didn't know what was going
to happen next.  I felt I'd got myself into a mess and I didn't know
what to do or who to turn to.  And I didn't want the baby I was
expecting.  Secretly I did everything I could to get rid of him.  I
climbed vigorously up and down stairs.  I lifted heavy things.  I knew
that if I had another baby I wouldn't be able to cope.

Em was born while we were living with my father-rnlaw.  He had Down's
syndrome and only lived a very short time.  I held him for a few
minutes and he cried just before he died.  Then the midwi& took him
from me and put him in a stainless-steel bowl while she went to call
for a doctor.

Alone for a &w minutes, I couldn't take my eyes off him.  From where I
was lying all I could see were his legs hanging over the side of the
dish and his black hair.  Dick didn't come and see me.  He never met
his son.

I didn't come to terms with the guilt I felt about Em until years
later.  I just bottled it all up.  Nobody else seemed to care.  I never
admitted I hadn't wanted him, either.  I went back to my
father-in-law's house and carried on as usual because I thought it was
the casual, cool thing to do.  Instead of grieving like I really should
have done, I just didn't talk about it with anybody

Meanwhile, Dick and his father had been aggravating each other.  They
were such difkrent personalities.  Dick's father was a military man and
found his son's casual amtude to life extremely irritating.  He thought
Dick was a layabout.  Sometimes he got so angry he would come up the
stairs to our bedroom and kick Dick in the back as he lay in bed
because he felt he should be up and working, supporting his family.

The matter soon resolved itself, because in 1974, within a few days of
Em being born, Dick left me.  He told me I was a mess and unattractive,
and he resented me spending the money I earned on the children.  While
I'd been in hospital having Erin, he'd been having an afflir with
another woman called Sandra, who had a little boy and attractive
underwear, Dick said.  So he was leaving me and going to live with
them.

The day Dick came to collect his belongings, he brought Sandra and her
son with him.  They sat in the car waiting for Dick while he came in to
pack his bags.  Chay idolized his dad and wanted to go with him.
Unmoved by his own son's pleadings, Dick just shut the door behind him
and left.  Chay stood on a chair and looked out of the dining room
window, sobbing inconsolably because his daddy had gone away with
another little boy.  He cried and I cried, and I suppose I wasn't much
use to my son either.  The agoraphobia had got so bad by that stage
that I couldn't even leave the house to take the children out it)r a
walk.

So I was left alone in the house with my father-in-law.

I knew I wouldn't be able to stay there indefinitely.  Dick's father
couldn't understand what was the matter with me.

Surely I could just pull myself together'?  He often went out in the
evenings to meet his friends and I'd find myself alone in the house
after the children had gone to bed.

That's when I started to drink.  It began with just one glass of
sherry.  Then two or three.  I found it just took the edge off the
anxiety I was feeling.  I was trying to come to terms with the
agoraphobia, but instead it was getting worse and worse.

I had to go to court for a legal separation because I wanted custody of
the children.  At least this was easy.

Dick wrote a letter to the court saying he didn't ever want to see them
again (he didn't want the financial responsibility), so he wouldn't be
contesting the case.  However, the court ordered that I had to kave his
father's house, y because Dick had a right to bring his new girlfriend
and diild home.  After all, it was his family home.

With nowhere else to go, the children and I spent the months that
followed living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.  We had to clear
our room every morning after breakfast and carry all our belongings
around with us until we could go back in the evening.  It was a
nomadic, insecure existence.  I spent most of my time sitting in the
council offices trying to get something better for us.

I started having a glass of sherry in the morning.  I thought I'd found
a friend and I believed it was easing the agoraphobia, but I hadn't
found a friend at all: it was controlling me.  It wasn't long before I
was drinking a bottle of sherry a day.  I used to keep some in a
medicine bottle in my pocket.  I'd hold it all the time I was out, and
if a panic attack happened I'd tell myself it was all right because I
had the sherry there and that would help me get home.

The drink had started to take over my life.  It actually happened
alarmingly quickly.  I was on a downward spiral heading for doom and I
didn't have any friends of my own to turn to for help.  The only people
I knew were Dick's friends because I had joined his crowd, and now they
were with him.  My mind often turned to thoughts of Erin.  His death
seemed to haunt me, but I still didn't talk about it to anybody.  The
drinking got worse.  With my mind in such turmoil, I tried to care for
my two children as best I could.

After living for some months in the bed-and-breakfast accommodation, I
gratefully accepted a job with a man in Redhill to work as his
housekeeper and child ruinder.

His wife had left him with a yowling soui.  He needed some help with
the cleaning, and in return he let sue and the children share a room in
his house~ The ~itusti~i quickly turned sour.  He was a strange man,
and it wasn t long before he was putting pressure on me to sleep with
him.  I wouldn't give him what he wanted, so he made life difficult fur
me and at times I found his behaviour threatening.

It was a struggle to keep going, and the agoraphobia just seemed to get
worse and worse.  After another visit to the council offices, when I
pleaded with them to find me somewhere safe to live, we were placed in
a guesthouse fur homeless families in Horley.  We stayed there for a
short time before being given our own flat in Timperley Gardens,
Bndhill.

Ar last, I thought, here-was an opportunity to settle down and enjoy
some peace and normality with Chay and Bonita.  But I was about to meet
somebody who would change the course of my life again.  I met him
walking into Redhill one morning.  I didn't know the area all that well
and was trying to find a shop, so I asked a couple of men fur
directions.  One of them was particularly helpful and friendly.  He
offered to walk to the shop with me, and that's how I met Bob.  We
continued to see each other and befure long I realized I'd fallen in
love with him.  He was quite different to any other man I'd known.

fIVE

The drugs trap

Twelve months had passed since Dick had left me alone with the
children.  It had been far from easy.  Living in bed and-breakfast
accommodation and moving from place to place had taken its toll on me.
I don't know how much longer I could have survived living like that,
coping with agoraphobia as well.

I was drinking quite heavily by the end of the year.

It was the only way I could cope with each day.  But the moment I met
Bob I stopped drinking.  I didn't need it.  I put down one crutch and
picked up another  I put down the drink and picked up Bob.

It wasn't long before he came to live with us and for a while I was
ecstatically happy.  I began to r~J~ and feel better.  The fear that
had gripped me in a vice started to subside.  Bob was kind and loving
towards Chay and Bonita; they had a dad again and we quickly became a
close family unit.

SometimelaterBobtoldmetherewas needed to know: he was a registered
heroin addict Bt*be assured me that he hadn't taken any heroin since
meeting me.  That proved it fur me we were just right f~r each other!
I'd stopped drinking and he'd stopped takingberoin.

I believed him until he started to disappear fur long periods of time.
Slowly and reluctantly I came face to fl ice with the awful realization
that I had probably made another disastrous mistake and Bob's heroin
addiction was stronger than his love fur me.  I began to feel uneasy
and agitated again.  I'd pace around the flat waiting fur him to come
home, then I'd quiz him, asking him where he'd been.

We started to drift apart; the mutual trust that had initially bonded
us together had been broken.  I must have appeared anxious and he
didn't like it.  He liked me the way I was in the early days, relaxed
and easy going.  He didn't like me being suspicious of him either.  A
judge was later #o.desc~the him as dangerous and evil', but at that
time auy IbellEigs of misgiving.  I had towards him he quickly
persuaded flue were unfuimded.  We stayed together.

I-was completely under Bob's influence, so when one day he o&red me
some of his physeptone linctus (a heroin substitute in a syrup), I took
it.  Try this and you'll feel mellow' he said.  It made me feel so good
I felt relaxed and able to cope with everything.  I didn't feel afraid
or anxious.  It didn't matter then if he went away fur a few hours.  So
I started taking physeptone linctus every day.  But soon it wasn't
enough, and I begged Bob to give me some of his heroin.

At first he was reluctant.  I'd like to think it was because he didn't
want to see me addicted like he was, but in truth I think it was
because he didn't want to share his prescription with me.  I've learnt
that drug addicts are notoriously selfish.  His own habit was growing
and he was having to steal to buy enough fur himself.  But one day,
when we were out together in London with the children, I asked him
again to give me some heroin.  Whether it was because he felt sorry for
me, or whether it was because I'd worn him into the ground, he
agreed.

So we found a quiet but dismal place, on the flat roof of a derelict
office block.  Bonita was in her pram asleep, and Chay amused himself
while we sat on a stone step between some tall chimney stacks.  Bob
injected the heroin into my arm.  It was over in seconds.  I'd had my
first fix.  The next day he gave me some more.  It was November 1975
and I'd become a heroin addict.

At first I didn't feel any benefit.  But after a couple of days I
started to notice how different I frIt.  I was on a cloud, floating
from one thing to the next.  I was untroubled; my mind was calm.  I
didn't feel worried and weighed down with anxiety.  It was such a
relief.  I didn't feel afraid anymore.  I'd found what I was looking
for and had a measure of peace at last.

Once it was dear to Bob that I wanted a daily fix of heroin, he had to
work out a way of getting it for me.  He couldn't afford to share his
heroin with me because by then he needed more for himself than his
daily prescription allowed.  A few days later he took me to Reece House
in East Croydon, a clinic for drug addicts.

In those days it was extremely easy to get drugs on prescription.  He
made some marks on my arms to make it look as though I'd been injecting
myself for some time, and that was all they looked at.  I wasn't even
given a blood test.  People who were dealers used to go there and
obtain prescriptions some of them weren't even addicts.

Bobtoldmewhattosay,anditwasaseasyas that.  They gave me a prescription
f9r far more heroin than I needed at that time.  Bob was pleased.  His
plan had wQrked: now he had enough to feed his habit aswellasniint,
the~a time at least.

I was in a quandary.  On the one hand it wucka~relief not to feel
afraid, but on the other, at the back of my mind

I was uneasy, though I wouldn't really admit it to myself.  I thought I
was coping, but of course I wasn't.  My social worker's notes reveal
the true story.  My immediate concern is for her children," one part of
her report read.

She is a very loving and caring mother, but her addiction has led her
into financial difficulties."

All through the winter of 1975/76 I remained at home with the children.
The electricity was disconnected because I couldn't afford to pay the
account.  Chay was becoming disturbed and frequently wet his bed at
night.  I Ibund him difficult to handle and he was reluctant to go to
nursery school.

I proved the saying love is blind', because throughout this downward
spiral into drug abuse, I remained in love with Bob.  If ever I doubted
him, he reassured me.  He was a step ahead of me the whole time,
anticipating what was going to happen next, controlling, manipulating.
The doctor at the clinic gave me a prescription for four tablets of
diamorphine heroin a day straight off.  Every day I used to pick up my
syringes, files of water and swabs from the chemist in Redhill.  I
would drop Chay off at nursery school and then go and get my fix.

I carried on like this for some time.  I thought no one would even have
guessed I was taking drugs.  As my heroin addiction grew, I still
thought that I was in control.  All I really cared about was not being
afraid, although I wasn't voicing that then.  Soon, what I was being
given on prescription wasn't enough.  I had to find a way of obtaining
more.

Bob's habit had continued to grow as well and he started robbing
chemists' shops again something I'd fbund out he used to do before I
met him.  So my life acquired another bad element.  I started stealing
too.  I thought nothing of going out in the middle of the night and
putting a brick through a jeweller's window, grabbing a tray of gold
rings and running off into the dark before the police could catch me.

The next day I'd go to Hatton Garden on the train and sell the gold
before going to Piccadilly with my prescription.  There I'd mingle with
other drug addicts and dealers, and buy or swap something to mix with
the heroin to make a cocktail.  Sometimes Bob and I would go together
and we'd buy some speed or cocaine to make the heroin go further.

Just like the drink, it was a growing dependency.  After a time I had
taken so much speed and heroin that my teeth started to crumble.  I
could no longer bite anything hard.  I bit on something one day and my
front teeth went to powder.  I'd become a physical wreck.  By then I'd
also lost a lot of weight and only weighed five stone.  My sole
motivation was getting my next fix.

I saw some dreadful things at this time.  On one occasion, after a day
of drug dealing, we were travelling home on the train from London with
one of our best friends.  As we sat together in the carriage, our
friend injected himself with some Chinese heroin that we'd bought in
Piccadilly that day.  It was our turn next, but he took the first fix.
I saw him swell up and choke before my very tycs.  He died because
somebody had cut' the heroin with yeast to double their profits.  What
he thought was pure heroin was in fact 50 per cent yeast.

You'd have thought seeing things like this would put me off But they
didn't.  It's insane when I ttiiuk about it now.  I was losing my
children step-by-~4,: but it didn't stop me.  I was missing them
growing up~ but it didn't stop me.  I loved them, but I was on a
dowixwtrd collision course.  I was out of control, but I just c9uldn~t
stop.  And still I thought that I was in control.  I believed

I was still coping with the children, still caring for them properly.
We went out and did a lot of things together, but this came to an
abrupt halt when my life finally hit the crash barriers.

Bob and I regularly robbed chemists.  We worked well as a team.  I
remember one night one of many we took a garden spade and went to the
back of a chemist.  Bob prized open the back door of the shop with the
spade and we stole the DDA (dangerous drugs) cabinet.  We knew how not
to get caught, so we buried the cabinet in some ground nearby and went
back for it at a later date, when we could be sure the police weren't
suspecting us for the robbery.  Then we took the drugs home and sorted
them out.  Some we'd use ourselves, other stuff we'd sell.

I'd changed from the child who cared about other people into son~ cone
who didn't care about anything.  I'd wait in the public ladies' Ions
for someone old to lock themselves in the cubicle next to mine.  I'd
see their handbag on the floor and, quick as a flash, I'd grab it and
run off- just to get a fix.

We'd managed to avoid being caught by the police so fir, but I knew
we'd be found out sooner or later.  By this time I was too frightened
to go and open the door if somebody rang the doorbell.  I made people
shout their name through the letter box before I let them in so that I
could be sure who they were.

As 1976 drew on I became more and more frightened no drugs could mask
that feeling of continual, dragging _ fear.  By September I was
seriously thinking about committing suicide.  I had plenty of drugs in
the flat and knew I could take an overdose at any time to escape from
the hell around me.  I'd lost all control of the children.  Then one
evening the chip pan ignited and set fire to the kitchen.  The
neighbours telephoned the police and I was taken, unconscious, to
Redhill General Hospital under Section 29 of the 1959 Mental Health
Act.

They kept me in intensive care for one and a half days beibre I
discharged myself against medical advice.  Bob came to visit me and
took me home.  I thought he loved me, but in reality he needed my
prescription for more heroin.

Meanwhile, the children had been placed in Bnbinsfield Children's Home
in Caterham for a couple of days before being taken to my parents'
house in Carshalton.  Somehow, though, I summoned up the energy to
fetch them home again.  Bythis time Chaywas even more disturbed and was
wetting himself during the day as well as the night.  The Educational
Welfire Officer made an appointment for him to go to the Redhill Child
Guidance Centre.

By October that year the situation had deteriorated still further and
Bob attracted the attention of the Police Drug Unit based in Guildford.
I noticed they had started to tail him and warned him, but it was too
late.  The police came and raided my flat.  Bob and I were arrested,
then bailed pending further charges.  We'd always agreed that if Bob
got caught I'd say the stuff was mine.  I'd never been in trouble with
the police before and I had two kids, so, we reasoned, they were bound
to treat me leniently.

When the police searched the flat they found whole bags full of
tablets.  I had drugs in my washing machine  I had a bottle of cocaine
at the back of my cooker.  Other drugs were stuffed into my daughter's
dolls.  It took three officers three days to count all the pills.  When
they took me into the charge room and I looked at all the begs fill of
coloured tablets, I thought I was looking at someone else's work, so
detached from the problem did I feel.  I really didn't think anything
would happen to me because this was my first offence.  How wrong I
was.

Under the influence

The court case was arranged for Monday 24 January 1977 at the new
Kingston Crown Court.  The court heard how 24-year-old Bob had peddled
more than half his heroin prescription to fellow addicts, who would
wait for him outside a chemist.  Apparently he received 21 tablets of
heroin a week and made a profit of about 30 a week from the ones he
sold.  The case was adjourned while Judge John Ellison ordered an
investigation to find out how Bob was being prescribed a double heroin
dose.

When the case came back to court in March, Judge Ellison said, This is
an unusually complicated case.  The couple have been dabbling with
dangerous drugs, they've been supporting each other in evil.  She
married at 18 and now has two children.  It is too dreadful to
contemplate those children being brought up in an atmosphere of drugs.
Boorer [my married namel has shown a determination to throw off drugs
and I don't think she would be in this position today if [Bob] hadn't
been around.  I view [Bobi as a thoroughly dangerous man."

I pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining a drugs prescription and to
unlawful possession of 90 tablets of Ritalin, a controlled drug.  Bob
was jailed for three years and I was given a two-year suspended
sentence with an order that I should receive medical treatment as an
in-patient for at least one year.

I agreed to enter Cane Hill Hospital, in Coulsden, Surrey, for
treatment regarding my drug problem.  In early June, however, I
discharged myself and ran away.

The police were informed and I was taken back.  But I ran away again
the next day and hid in my flat.  When I look back on this period of my
life now, it's a blur of memories, a living nightmare.  I went to find
my children, but I was incapable of caring for them-properly.  I was
also drinking heavily.

A neighbour reported that she'd seen Chay and Bonita ndcing bacon from
the dustbin and eating it.  She was ~. prepared to substantiate her
statements and as a result the ~ Probation Oflicer was informed.  The
neighbour came up with some more stories and the social workers
organized a case conference' for the second week in July.  However, by
the middle of June the children had already been taken into care again.
It was decided that they should be looked after by my parents.

The social worker's report from that time is awful to read now:

The flat was in an extremely dirty and disorderly state.

The hall was swimming in water, as was the bedroom and the bathroom.
The cause related to the bath tap having been left on and the bath
containing dirty clothing.  The water had dripped through to the floor
below.  The kitchen was dirty and the sink was full of dirty crockery
and utensils, and the door to the fridge was hanging off.  In the main
bedroom the water was covering the floor and there was dirty clothing
all around.  The windows and curtains were tightly closed and wider the
bed there was thick dust.  Found in the dust was a fireman's axe and
two large knives.  The most disturbing finds were in relation to two
dirty syringes and a tourniquet found in the bedroom and the living
room.  A fire seemed to have been started in the lounge from old
newspapers and rubbish.

I swore at and fought with the policemen who came to take my children
away, and was charged with assault and of being under the influence of
drink and drugs.

I appeared in court again on 15 August 1977 and was placed on probation
for two years, with the additional condition that I reside at Cane Hill
Hospital for 12 months.  So I was taken once again to the Cane Hill
Drug Unit.

It was always the intention of those whose care I was in that I should
be rehabilitated and encouraged to look after my children again.  The
social workers thought it would be a good idea if they found me another
flat away from the scene of the drug taking.  By November that year my
few belongings had been moved to a flat in Sutton and arrangements had
been put in place for me to see my children regularly.

But drink was my constant enemy.  Every time I was allowed out of Cane
Hill for a few hours I'd get drunk.

On a couple of occasions I was involved with the police and appeared in
court on drinking charges and fined.

Every time this~ happened I was returned to Cane Hill, and every time I
ran away.  I had dearly broken my two year suspended sentence, so I was
taken back to court and remanded in custody.  It was 7 February 1978,
and I was admitted to Holloway prison.

I was taken down the stairs at the back of the courtroom, put in a van
and taken straight to Holloway.  I'd already started having fits
because, with no drugs available, I'd gone into withdrawal during the
day.  I had one fit in the courtroom, so I was taken straight to the
hospital wing of the prison.  They put me in a cell with just a
mattress on the floor.  They told me the next morning that I'd had 22
fits during the night.  I don't remember any of it.  It's a total
blank.

sIX

Horror in Holloway

Holloway prison was a great shock to me.  Nothing could have prepared
me for it.  I suppose I never really expected to be sent there.  Bob
had told me I'd be treated leniently by the judge, and I was still
clutching at the plans we'd made.  After all, I told myself, Bob had
controlled my life for the past few years I'd given up taking
responsibility for my actions long ago.  It had been easier to do what
he said and go along with his schemes.  I had trusted him and allowed
myself to be completely under his influence.

The drugs and alcohol had obviously dulled my powers of reasoning.  Far
from providing me with the peace of mind and sense of well-being which
had been promised at first, they had ruined my lift.  Now Id lost
everything and everyone I cared about.  The starkness of my new
situation hit me.  I'd been living in unreality, but now the truth had
caught up with me and I felt abandoned and very frightened.  I was
completely alone, having to take sole responsibility and pay a high
price for my criminal activities.

Being sent to Holloway was like stepping into a living nightmare.  Was
it really me experiencing these things?

How could this be?  Where had things gone so wrong?

Those first nights in prison were terrifying.  My body cried Under the
influence out for more heroin, but there was none.  I suffered alone
and as the withdrawal process took its own painful time to pass, in its
wake came the full realization of what had happened to my life.

I'd been heading for trouble for years.  The road I'd been travelling
along had led directly to this.  I should have realized sooner.  I'd
already lost many of my friends they had died because of the drugs they
had been taking.  I was still alive, but was as good as dead.

I'd made so many mistakes, hadn't even understood that people were
trying to help me.  I'd been put on probation for two years in August
1977.  The first year was meant to be spent at Cane Hill, where the
doctor responsible for me would either transfer me to another hospital
if necessary or discharge me when I was considered well enough to
leave.  The second year I was supposed to be on probation' under the
care and supervision of a Probation Officer in the community.

After the court hearing I'd been taken straight to Cane Hill, but I'd
walked out immediately and gone to the pub for a drink.  Maybe it was
that drink that finally sent me on the road to Holloway.  Certainly I'd
been warned by the hospital staff and my social worker not to leave the
hospital and on no account to enter a pub and buy a drink.  They told
me what the consequences would be.

They took me back to Cane Hill.  I ran away again.  I brokt my
promises, but they were true to their word.  I'd been warned and now
here I was, locked away in unfiuniliar surroundings.  I couldn't
believe this had happened to me.

On top of the general shock, I was suffering withdrawal symptoms from
the heroin, so I was kept in the hospital wing of the prison the whole
time.  The cells were quite modern, but as I lay on the mattress and
looked at the windows I thought how intimidating they k~oked.

They were only a few inches wide and very tall.  I could hardly see out
of them and they served as a constant reminder that I was behind bars.
I was locked in with no means of escape, and at that point I had no
idea how long I would be held there.

For a first-timer like me it was simply a case of survival and learning
how to cope.  As my mind slowly cleared I discovered that the women who
had been in Holloway for some time had developed some ingenious ways of
communicating.  Most of the inmates wore long man cardigans which they
used to lower from window to window with notes in the pockets.  Drugs
were readily available for those who wanted them.  Heroin injected into
fresh oranges and brought in by relatives and friends provided those
inside with a steady supply.

I met a girl in Holloway called Maria, and her experience was much the
same as mine.  She too had been very much in love with her boyfriend
and had been manipulated as a result.  Another girl, Lynne, was a very
high class prostitute.  She had devised a crafty way of earning a lot
of money.  She was very tall, very thin and very beautiful, and she
just rolled men for their money.  Every night she'd take her clients to
a five-star hotel and while they were getting undressed she'd run off
with their wallets.  She had lived a life that was really dangerous.

I met another girl called Rocky and she :~*5 there because she'd tried
to kill her stepmother.  She ~and~r close friend had stabbed this
woman. It was an epyleptic attack and afterwards, believing her to be
dead, they rolled her up in a carpet, put her in the boot oetheire~r
and drove her to a remote spot before rolling her b.4 down a hill.  But
she wasn't dead she survived and &~~ky was arrested and charged with
attempted murder.  ever heard Rocky say about her was, It would have
been worth it if she'd died."  I don't know what had happened to Rocky,
but she was a sweet person.

As I came to my senses I couldn't stop thinking about Chay and Bonita.
I was heartbroken at being separated from them and I didn't see them at
all while I was in prison.  I knew I hadn't been coping with life, but
I loved them very much.  I thought I'd provided for them.  I'd tried my
hardest to make sure they hadn't wanted for anything and had been well
fed.  But now I didn't know how they were and I missed them more than I
can say~ I no longer had a regular supply of heroin to mask the pain
and the loss.  Before long the awful reality of my desperate situation
hit me really hard, and the toughest thing was being forcibly separated
from my children.

I witnessed something in Holloway which showed me what can happen when
someone misses their children so badly.  One of the inmates was called
Margaret and she had five children.  She'd been charged with
shoplifting she'd been stealing to feed her kids.  She needed help: I
don't think she should have been sent to prison.  She wasn't a danger
to anybody!  She was a very homely woman, rather frumpish, and she
lived for her children.

She couldn't stop talking about them.

She became very depressed and withdrawn in prison and one day she took
aplastic knife from the canteen.

She snapped the knife in two and in one move it happened so quickly she
sawed straight through her windpipe and cut her jugular vein.  We
watched, horrified, as the blood gushed out of her like a fountain and
splattered onto the floor.

She'd chosen to die rather than be separated from her children.  It was
awful and shocked us all.  As I witnessed her suicide attempt and felt
her despair, I knew that I r Horror in Holloway 55 dc~erved my
punishment but she didn't.  I'd done some thing wrong.  All she'd done
was steal some food to feed her children.

I can't begin to describe adequately the depths of emotion I witnessed
in Holloway prison.  Many of the women I met were lesbians.  I heard
them talking in the canteen or during the night, plotting their next
crime so they could come back to prison to be with their lover.  It was
heartbreaking.

I missed my children immensely, but I came to realize that sanity lies
in thinking ahead and not thinking back~ Maybe it was the stark horror
of Margaret's attempted suicide that jolted my mind into action, but I
quickly became determined to get well.  I had no drugs or alcohol in
Holloway and the whole of my time there was spent in the hospital wing
of the prison.

It was not a place that encouraged positive thought.

There was nothing to do.  We had no occupational therapy.

We had one hour a day when we could watch television.

Most of the time we were just locked in our cells.  I smoked and learnt
how to cut matchsticks to make six out of one.

It was a wonderful education!  I didn't receive any treatment and I
wasn't seen by a psychiatrist.  The only outside person I saw was my
solicitor from time to time, because he was working really hard to
secure my release.  I wrote to my children, but I didn't get any
replies.

The only positive aspect about being in Holloway was that it gave me
some respite from ma man who had been causing me considerable harm.  He
was a fellow patient I'd met while I was being treated at Cane Hill.  I
first met him about Ibur months before I was sent to Holloway.  Paul
was an ex-drug addict.  I was introduced to him at a group therapy
session I attended at a hospital in Penge.  The consultant responsible
for my treatment in Cane Hill thought it would help in my recovery to
attend this group, and so he arranged for me to be taken there each
week.

At first I liked Paul.  He was friendly.  His marriage had failed and
we seemed to have quite a lot in common.  One lunchtime he invited me
out for a drink.  Although we knew this was strictly against the rules,
we managed to slip out without being seen and he took me to his flat.
It was there that he beat me up.

That was the first of many assaults.  I can't understand now why I put
up with his cruelty, but strangely enough it didn't put me off to begin
with.  Sometime later, after he'd subjected me to another severe
beating, I saw my mother and she was so shocked at my injuries that she
took me to the local hospital.  Paul had stabbed me that time.

The doctor at the hospital inftrmed the police and I was asked if I'd
be prepared to bring charges against Paul.

I wasn't.  He'd beaten me very badly, but he was also very kind to me
at other times.  Apparently I reminded him of his mother he said we
looked alike.  I didn't know the background story about~ Paul and his
mother then, although I found out later.  Besides, Paul held me in his
influence because he'd told me he believed I should have my children
back.  At first I trusted him enough to think that he'd help me achieve
this.

I was also influenced by the fict that Paul had been introduced to me
by my consultant from Cane Hill.  He'd suggested that Paul would be a
good friend and counsellor for me, somebody I could talk to who would
understand and empathize with my situation.  So I thought it was worth
putting up with the odd beating: if he was going to help me get my
children back I couldn't afford to lose him.

But after he'd stabbed me, and might have killed me, any feelings I had
for him quickly turned to terror.  His behaviour had become obsessive.
I started to feel like a hunted animal.  I feared he'd come looking for
me and I never wanted to see him again.  It made me very frightened of
spending any time in my own flat, even though the hospital staff were
trying to rehabilitate me.  The thought that Paul knew where to find me
was enough to scare me into thinking that I never wanted to leave the
safety of a locked ward or prison again.  In that respect Holloway was
a haven.  But it wasn't long before he found me again.

Three weeks after being admitted to prison, my solicitor arranged for
me to be transferred back to Cane Hill Hospital.  I was taken under
police escort and this time I was placed in a locked ward.

sEVEN

No way out

I was shut in Browning Ward at Cane Hill, a locked ward f~r convicted
prisoners.  There I was to undergo a five months' rehabilitation in the
hope that I would then be able to resume a normal life with my
children.  I suppose they were doing their best, but little did I
realize then that it would be lbur and a half years before I left
hospital.

During this time I lost what little dignity I had left.

My solicitor had ibught to get my sentence changed because he didn't
consider it was right fix me to be in prison.  He felt I needed
psychiatric care and there wasn't any such help available in Holloway
then.  I wish now he'd left me in prison, because going back to Cane
Hill was one of the worst things that happened to me.

At the time I was fairly positive because I thought I'd soon see my
children again.  I did.  The day after I arrived from Holloway my
mother walked in with Chay and Bonita, holding their hands.  I was so
pleased to see them.

But as I got up to go over to them she looked at me and said, I've just
come to tell you that today I've legally fostered them and you're never
going to see them again."

I could see that Chay wanted to run to me but he was really scared.  We
stood looking at each other for a few seconds I was rooted to the spot.
Then my mother spat at me before turning round and walking out, still
holding onto the children's hands.  That prompted my first suicide
attempt.  I found a razor blade and cut my wrists open. I slit them as
deeply as - I could I desperately wanted to die.  In that moment, I
felt the utter loneliness of despair.  Far from taking a step towards
recovering my children, every day seemed to pull them further away from
me.  I felt as though I was being torn into little pieces, and nobody
cared.

I wasn't able to help myself The people I trusted had let me down.
There was nobody I could turn to.  Nobody was on my side.  Now even my
own mother thought I was despicable and treated me with contempt.  I
was labelled as a drug ~addict, alcoholic and criminal in the hospital.
I knew I couldn't exist without the drink.  I was locked in a cage with
no means of escape.  All I wanted was to hold my children, to beg them
to give me another chance.

I wanted to prove I could be a good mother again.

I'd been a good mother for the first few years.  In 1975, before I'd
become a drug addict, one of my social workers had described me as a
very loving and caring mother'.

But now, just three years later, it felt as though everything I
treasured had been snatched from me and it had all happened so quickly.
Now I was unloved, un trusted with everything to prove to people who
didn't believe in me.  I could see no way of escape, and my future
looked bleak.

My time in Browning Ward was a deeply unsettling experience.  I was
locked up with some extremely violent patients.  Sometimes they were
violent towards me and sometimes they were loving.  It was a
schizophrenic existence and fear was my constant companion.  How could
I possibly recover my own balance in such an atmosphere?

I was encouraged to go out fur a weekend every now and then to stay
with my mother and the rest of the family The idea was that I should go
and see my children and rebuild my relationship with them in an
unthreatening environment.  But the moment I left the hospital I'd get
drunk and when I arrived at my mother's house she wouldn't let me-talk
to the children.  She wouldn't even let me near them.  She certainly
wouldn't let me eat with them.

I soon realized that she'd told the family many terrible things about
me, stories that I knew weren't true.  So now even my own brothers and
sisters turned against me and nobody would talk to me, let alone listen
to me.  Visits like this did nothing to help my confidence and the
emotional pressure just made me crumble inside.  After a weekend like
this I'd return to: the hospital and never want to go out again.  It
was easier to be locked up.  I didn't want to leave the prison that had
become the safest place I knew.

I was also afraid to go back to my own flat in case Paul found me.  I
lived in terror of ever seeing him again.  Each attack on me had been
worse than the one before.  I reasoned that it was only a matter of
time before he killed me altogether.

Despite this, those looking after me at Cane Hill were still keen to
encourage me to spend a few hours each week away from the hospital.
They found me a small flat at Mill Green where I was encouraged to
spend my weekends.

They were trying to ease me out, to build up my confidence and help me
stand on my own two feet again, so that eventually I could be reunited
with my children and look after them myself.  I knew they were trying
to help me, but there seemed to be so many obsta des in the way.

I persevered in spite of the difficulties and my acute sense of fear.
One weekend I was alone in the- flat.  At about half past two in the
morning I was woken by the of somebody kicking the front door.  I saw a
man's 4 come through a hole in the door.  The safety chain ~ on, but he
ripped it off It was Paul.

To this day I don't know how he found out my where~ outs  I was only
there for the weekend, trying to see my t*.ildren and show that I could
manage to live by myself ~ Paul raped me, then he stabbed me 27 times
through ~the chest and breast with a long stiletto knife before leaving
me for dead.  During the last two of those stabbings just didn't move.
I survived by pretending I was dead.

I remember very little of what happened after that.  A neighbour raised
the alarm, and when the police arrived dhey ibund Paul sitting on the
floor in the hallway covered in blood.  I was rushed to hospital,
drifting in and out of consciousness.  Eighteen of my wounds had to be
stitched.

After this traumatic experience I was moved to Netherne Hospital, where
I came under the care of Dr.  Raymond, a consultant psychiatrist.  I
was still drinking heavily and had been warned that if I continued with
this lifestyle I'd be dead before long.  I didn't care.  I wanted to
die.  I had nothing left to live for.

~ Netherne was a large hospital for the mentally ill, close to Cane
Hill.  I was put into Hartswood Villa, where we were encouraged to
work.  We were offered menial jobs, ~ either packing plastic spoons
into bags or sewing sanitary I. towels, for which we were paid about
4.00 a week.

During the week we worked from nine in the morning until four in the
afternoon, with an hour off for lunch.

Every day we were given tablets.  I suppose they were intended to keep
us sedated, but the side effects were unpleasant and my weight almost
doubled to 12 stone.

The combination of being depressed and knowing I looked ugly and fat
did nothing for my selfesteem.

I developed what I called the Netherne Shufile'.  I can always tell
someone who has been in a hospital like Netheme or who has been on
these tablets because they walk differently!

I had a dear friend in Netheme called Barry he was just such a gentle
chap.  There was no romantic attachment, he was just a good,
dependable, reliable friend who made no emotional demands on me.  He
suffered from schizophrenia and his mother owned the shop at the bottom
of the drive.

Barry threw himself off a bridge and fell under the London-to-Brighton
train.  The tablets we were all given had afkcted him badly, perhaps,
and he'd been depressed because be hadn't got enough money to buy 10
fags.  I walked down the drive to the bridge the next morning and as I
looked at the railway line I saw that part of his tartan jacket was
still hanging there.

It wasn't uncommon for that sort of thing to happen, or for people to
take an overdose, just because they didn't have enough money to buy
their fags.  Cigarettes were a valuable commodity in Netherne.  Women
had sex with men just to get a fag.  All everyone thought of was
getting hold of the next fag.  We even emptied the rubbish out of the
dustbins to find the dog-ends.

Barry just didn't have enough money to buy cigarettes that day. Looking
back, I wouldn't describe the mundane work we did as occupational
therapy.  The patients didn't get much out of it rather it lined the
pockets of the local firms.  Being mental' doesn't mean things cost you
less money.

I later read a newspaper report about his death:

A young man's body may have been hit by two trains before it was
discovered on the line at Netherne,

~oley.  Barry John Webster's body was strewn over a.

distance of 200 yards before a train driver saw there had been an
accident and raised the alarm.  Dr.  Peter Pullar, pathologist from
Guy's Hospital, said Mr.  Webster, aged 26, died from multiple injuries
after the fall on September 10, 1978.  There was no trace of alcohol in
the blood.  Train driver, Mr.  Ray Emm, said he saw a body lying on the
line near the Ford Bridge.

The body was lying on the line when I came along," he said.  Rrigate
Coroner's Court heard that Mr.  Webster had been receiving treatment at
Netheme Hospital since November 1976.  A report from a Netherne doctor,
not named by the court, said Mr.  Webster had given him no cause for
concern.  He did a certain amount of work very well.  There was no sign
of distress or anything to cause concern.  Before the jury returned an
open verdict on the cause of Mr.  Webster's death, the coroner,
Lieutenant Colonel George McEwan, said the man suffered from
schizophrema.

(Surrey Mirrer, 27 October 1978)

What a cold report, I thought.  They didn't understand in the slightest
what it was like in Netherne.  And Pd lost a friend.

I continued to go to work every day, without Barry.

One of the doctors discovered I could use a typewriter, so he gave me a
thesis to type.  He told me I did it well.  The word went round, and
before long another doctor asked me to type a thesis for him.  In
return they gave me boxes of chocolates or money, which I saved until I
had enough to buy Chay and Bonita some Christmas presents.

I improved sufficiently for them to allow me home it~r a weekend and it
was arranged that I would visit Chay and

Bonita at my mother's house.  The day arrived.  I was taken there in a
taxi, along with all the parcels I'd been getting ready fir weeks.  I'd
spent many hours wrapping them careijilly, making them look as
attractive and susprising as I could.

I was really looking krward to seeing the children ~ when my mother
opened the door she screamed at me and scratched her fice, then yelled
that I'd hurt her.  Slamming the door in my 1~ce, she ran through the
hallway, grabbed my two children and held them up to a window.

She seemed to be laughing at me.  I stood outside looking at my
children's faces, the tears stinging in my eyes.  She wouldn't let me
in.  I walked all the way back to Netherne from Carshalton.  I left the
presents lying in the front garden and later learnt that they'd been
burnt.

For a while I was numb, but it wasn't long before I reacted and went
berserk.  I screamed and cried.  I'd wanted to see Chay and Bonita so
badly I'd wanted to hold them and hug them, to tell them I loved them
and wanted us to live together again.  Instead I ended up with a needle
in my backside.

When I woke up from the sedation I fbund I was in John Ward, a locked
ward in Netherne, and that's where I stayed for a &wweeks.  I think at
this stage I almost completely lost my will to live.  I started
treating myself badly

I learnt things in Netherne in the same way that you learn things in
prison: by watching other people.  When I first went into Netherne I
was horrified at some of the things I witnessed.  It had happened to a
lesser extent in Cane Hill, but the people were older there and that
seemed to make a difference.  Sex had been high on the agenda at Cane
Hill, but in Netherne people hurt themselves.  Every day, maybe three
or four times a day,

someone would put their fist through a window and slam their wrist down
on the jagged glass.  People would run to pick up the pieces of glass
and hide them.  Then, when they were ready, they'd use the jagged
fragments of glass to cut themselves in the privacy of their own
cubicle.

I don't know why I started doing it.  Perhaps I thought people would
feel sorry for me; perhaps I thought my mum would care more if I hurt
myself I don't know, but in the end it became an obsession with me. The
only time I felt clean was after I'd cut myself.  I think this is where
I ended up becoming a very, very sick person.  I hated myself and cut
myself regularly.  I don't mean just a little bit I laid myself open to
the bone.  I'd just saw away at my flesh with a piece of glass. The
only time lever felt that I'd punished myself properly for what I'd
done to my children was when I bled.

I can't adequately describe the despair of being in hospital, separated
from Chay and Bonita, loving them but not being able to prove it.  It
seemed to me then that each time I started to recover and get close to
my kids again, something went wrong and I was thrown back into a deep,
dark hole.

It's strange now to think that even when my mind was dulled by drink
and drugs I still believed that the only way I could pay for the wrong
I'd done was to shed my own blood.  I really hated myself and did all I
could to destroy my body.  But it wasn't just myself that I hated.

I started to have fantasies about my mother and often dreamt that I was
like Ruth Ellis.  In my dreams I'd walk up to my mum's front door and
knock.  When she opened it I'd shoot her straight between the eyes.
Then I'd sit down and tell myself that now the whole world was safe.

I also wondered what would have happened if Chay and Bonita had been
taken into a children's home to be cared for.  Would it have made any
difference?  But however hard I thought, I couldn't linda solution.
After all, I was the one who'd been was obviously the guilty party.  I
felt trapped and doomed to spend the rest of my life in a mental
hospital.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I don't hate my mother.  I can
see now that she's had just as sad a life as me.  She was a victim of
her circumstances it was a case of history repeating itself.  What
would it take to break the cord of tragedy that had threaded itself
down through the generations of our i~mily?  Who could help us?  As
hard as I ihought.  I couldn't understand why things had gone so badly
wrong.

I had nobody who would listen to me.  The only person who came to visit
me occasionally was my mother herself.

Sometimes, despite what she'd said, she did bring Chay and Bonita with
her.  But I felt it was always awkward and after she'd gone I felt sad
and empty and wished she'd stayed away.  Seeing Chay and Bonita just
emphasized the hopelessness of my situation.  It was so tantalizing,
but after a short time they were always taken away again.  The reality
of my loss was too hard to bear.

So I just existed from day to day.  I had no confidence in myself and
agoraphobia was my constant unwelcome companion.  The only way I could
keep sane was to prevent myself from thinking too deeply.  I was
prescribed strong tranquillizers.  Drugs were my only friend.

eIGHT

So close to hope

After his vicious attack on me, Paul Herrick was charged with attempted
murder and sentenced to five years in prison.  I was safe at last, at
least for a time.  But the memory of that night haunted me for months
afterwards.

The wounds healed, but the scars remained scars that were etched deep
into my memory.  The man my doctor had thought could help and encourage
me, the man he'd persuaded me to be on friendly terms with, was the man
who eventually raped and stabbed me and left me for dead.  After that
attack, it was six months before I felt confident enough to leave
Netherne for a weekend and stay in my flat by myself.

I I suppose I must have been in shock for a long time.  As sat and
relived the nightmare of that attack and looked at the scars on my
body, I was reminded that someone I'd thought was a friend had almost
killed me.  At the time I didn't know why he'd attacked me.  He'd
called me Josephine during the assault.  I later discovered his
mother's name had been Josephine and she'd been murdered when he was a
boy stabbed to death in her kitchen with a carving knife.  Apparently,
the theory was that Paul had killed her, although it had never been
proved.

~- ~ finder the influence

The nursing staff at Netherne encouraged me to begin the rehabilitation
process all over again, but I was really frightened and had no
confidence in my ability to cope.

What would happen the next time I was alone in the outside world?  I
felt a complete wreck and had no sense of self-esteem.  And I concluded
that the assault didn't look good on my record all it had done was to
provide more ammunition for my mother.

My relationship with Paul had driven a further wedge between my mother
and me.  I felt she was more convinced than ever that I was totally
irresponsible and quite incapable of ever looking after my children
again.  In her eyes I was clearly unable to choose suitable' friends.

This only served to make my depression worse.  Persuading her to trust
me again, enough to agree to me having my children back, seemed an
impossibility.  I drank to dull my pain and despair.  So far, I told
myself, everybody I'd trusted to help me had let me down.

I came to the negative conclusion that my mother must think I was
always going to invite men like that to my flat.

In her opinion, therefore, the children would continually be in danger
when they visited me.  Maybe she thought I mixed with disreputable
people because all I cared about was having sex.  I felt I was in an
impossible situation; it was a constant nightmare with no hope of
escape or change.  I didn't know what to do.  I was in a living hell.

Nobody would believe me.

I heard that my mother had even written letters to Bob to tell him that
I was seeing somebody else.  Before this I had been taken to see Bob in
prison.  My mother came to see me one day and said, If you write and
tell Bob that you're seeing someone else, I'll let you see the
children."

Naively, I wrote the letter.  I never got to see the children, though,
and now I'd lost Bob as well.  I never saw him

~gain.  I realized that yet again I'd allowed myself to be manipulated
and misunderstood; even my own mother was against me.

In my mind she became my biggest enemy.  I felt more threatened by her
than by the men who'd abused me.  At kast they'd been caught and their
crimes against me had been recognized.  But it seemed that I was the
only person who realized that my mother wasn't actually working for me.
Yes, she was looking after my children, but only I knew how furious she
was with me for what I'd done all those years ago in bringing the
priest to the house and breaking the influence my father had over the
family.  I'd thattered her belief~ and existence then, and now I was
poi ling her life all over again.

Today, from where I stand now, I understand that really she's a product
of her own pain.  But then, it seemed as though all her bitterness was
being directed at me and I was paying the cost of her own
difficulties.

Because of her scheming, I never saw Bob again and after Paul's attack
I felt I never wanted to leave the hospital anyway.  If they could have
brought Chay and Bonita to live with me I would have liked that, but I
wanted to stay at Netherne because my fellow inmates had become my
family.  I felt safer with the lunatics than I did with the sane
people.  I was gripped by agoraphobia, which was masked to an extent by
the drugs and drink, but the moment I was sober the fears would all
come flooding back.  So gradually I started to feel safe in Netherne.
Situated as ~it was at the end of a mile-long drive, I felt cushioned
from the outside world.  I suppose [ d become institutionalized.

Meanwhile, the hospital doctors were gently trying to ease me out once
again, to build up my confidence and EO stand on my own two feet.  They
told me they still wanted me to be reunited with my children and able
to look after them, and slowly I started to believe them.

As the months passed, I began to improve.  Progress was agonizingly
slow, however, because I so disliked spending weekends in my flat, full
of memories of the attack.  I felt nervous every time I went there,
especially when I was on my own.

I discussed this with my social worker, and I'd improved so much by
October 1978 that a case conference was held at which they decided that
I could be discharged.  They agreed that it would be sensible to find
me somewhere else to live, so the Sutton Housing Department offered me
alternative accommodation in the Garshalton area.  They provided me
with a semidetached house with three bedrooms, a bathroom and a large
garden.  It was in a quiet residential neighbourhood and I felt really
enthusiastic about its potential, although the house needed a
considerable amount of redecoration and modernization.

It was agreed that I should be allowed to have the two children home
for trial periods, provided there was adequate supervision.  They
obviously considered that I'd made good progress!  And I suppose I had.
Having been almost killed earlier in the year, I'd fought my way back
to health and strength.  The only reason I'd bothered to do so was in
the hope that I could be reunited with Chay and Bonita.  Things were
starting to look up.  At last I felt I had a chance, and I focused all
my energies on getting better.

I spent considerable amounts of time at the house making improvements,
creating a homely atmosphere that I thought Chay and Bonita would like.
I replaced the carpets, decorated the rooms and scrounged some pieces
of furniture.  My social worker was pleased with my

progress and considered it was time the children started to come and
stay with me for weekends.

- I was no longer taking drugs and tried hard to co~perate with my
social worker.  I was often impatient with him, though!  I sometimes
felt things were happening ~o slowly.  However, we spent the Christmas
of 1978 ~gether and at the end of January I asked if the children ~ould
come and live with me permanently.  Everything ~emed to be going well,
so it was agreed that they could ~tturn for the half-term holiday in
February and then again for the entire Easter holiday.

~. I don't know what went wrong.  I had one drink to help get over the
anxiety I was feeling on a particular day.  I ~ink it was due to the
agoraphobia.  The only way I could stay calm was by having a drink. I'd
been unable to control the children that day.  They'd been naughty and
daubed paint around the house and made it look very ~ntidy, which upset
me dreadfully.  One drink led to another, and before long I was denied
my children again.

They were taken to Butlins for a holiday with my parents and I was
taken back into hospital for a month.

~ Back at Netherne, I thought about how close I'd come to making a
success of looking after Chay and Bonita ~gain.  I realized after
talking to my social worker that I probably had a fetish about not
allowing the house to get dirty or untidy in case the children were
taken away again.

I told myself that I wouldn't lose control in that way again; by the
time they returned from their holiday I'd be able to cope and we could
be together again.  I started to look forward to their return.

It was a huge blow to be told I couldn't have them back as I'd hoped.
They were to return to live with my parents.  during the week while I
attended the Day Hospital in the Chiltern Wing of Sutton Hospital.  I'd
come so close to getting it right.  Was I now about to lose it all
again?

I don't remember much about the next few months.  I wasn't allowed to
see the children on my own and access was only permitted through visits
to my parents' house.  I made no secret of the fact that I wanted to
die.  Once again, drugs and drink became my solace.

I didn't really like Dr.  Raymond, the consultant psychiatrist from
Netherne, until the day in September 1979 when I made another serious
attempt to take my life.

Alone in the house, I took 80 paracetamol tablets washed down by three
pints of milk.  Then I cut my wrists open with a razor until I had no
power left in my hands.  This time surely I would die.

I'm not sure what happened then.  I soon slipped into unconsciousness,
but I was found the next day and taken to hospital.  By that time so
many hours had elapsed that the hospital warned my mother that my liver
and kidneys were seriously damaged.  It was quite possible that I might
die.

I was taken to the operating theatre where my wrists were stitched back
together again.  I had my arms in plaster for three and a half months
after that.  I woke up in intensive care with complete kidney and liver
failure.  As I opened my eyes and slowly focused on my surroundings,
the first person I saw was Dr.  Raymond.  I'd always thought he was so
hard, but he said to me then, Oh Angie, why?"  He was holding my hand
and I could see he'd been crying.

By that simple act he helped me more than he knew, because it showed me
he cared.  Apparently he'd been sitting there for avery long time
before I woke up.  Up to that point I didn't think anyone cared about
me.  In ct, I thought they'd be better off without me.  That must have
been due to a hardness within me.  I hadn't seen this side of Dr.
Raymond before.  To me he'd just been the enemy.  But now something was
different in the way he related to me.

This change had taken place because, when the doctors thought I was
going to die, they'd called my mother to the hospital.  Dr.  Raymond
was there when she arrived.

He'd watched her walk in and take a look at me (I was bright yellow
with jaundice) before quickly walking out again.  I think it would have
suited her if I'd died.

Dr.  Raymond sat and talked with me for a long time and I felt that at
last he understood my situation.  Now I had a friend who would help me
and whom I could trust.

That experience was a real turning point for me.  It was the first
time, I thought, that anyone had believed me.  He talked to me and we
went back over my case history.

Slowly I started to feel a little bit better as I began to believe I
had something to hang on to.

Dr.  Raymond said to me that I needed to go back to Netherne for at
least six months because I was so traumatized, I wouldn't survive
outside.  He told me, If you leave here now, you'll go and get drunk,
because underneath nothing has changed to alter all those fears.  We
need to sort through all that's happened with your past."

So the arrangements were made.  I didn't resist because I believed that
Dr.  Raymond was on my side now He'd understood my frustration, my
struggle.  He'd witnessed me almost winning my children back.  He'd
registered my mother's outrage at my behaviour and her impatience at
the effect I was having on her life.

Sutton Council agreed to take back the house in Courtney Crescent,
Carshalton, and in exchange provided me with a one- bed roomed flat in
Sutton.  It was explained to me that my children would not be returning
to me in the foreseeable future.  That was a bitter pill to swallow.

nINE

Roller coaster ride

For the next six months I was denied access to Chay and Bonita.  They
went to live once again with my parents in Carshalton.  I kit as though
the relationship with my mother had reached an all-time low.
Instinctively I knew she didn't trust me and probably never wanted to
see me again.  I suppose I was an inconvenience to her.  I certainly
believed she was disappointed I hadn't died; if I had she would have
had one less problem to deal with.

From my weak, pathetic perspective she was the impenetrable barrier
preventing me from ever getting my children back.  If it hadn't been
for the fact that Dr.  Raymond understood my feelings of anxiety and
despair towards my mother, I would have made another suicide attempt.
All my Ilk it had been her word against mine, and up to this point she
had always been the winner.

Each time I had come tantalizingly close to getting better, the loss of
being repeatedly separated from the two people I loved had overwhelmed
me.  Could I cope with yet another disappointment?  For days I wondered
if it was worth the effort of trying to pick myself up and start all
over again.  Each time it was harder.  The fear of another 1~ilure,
coupled with my own self-doubt as to whether I

really had it in me to succeed and be strong enough to stop drinking,
made the situation seem hopeless.  Yet something had changed.  This
time I had a thread of hope.  After all those years of being
disbelieved, I felt that I now had somebody who had listened properly
to my story Dr. Raymond was the only person I trusted.  Nothing was
going to be easy, though.  Dr.  Raymond suggested I get involved with
some group therapy. But I couldn't be bothered talking to a group; it
seemed pointless.  I wasn't prepared to play games.  To me group
therapy sessions were just excuses for sitting around and telling
jokes.  What use was that to me? Besides, after my experience with
Paul, I was too wary to trust anybody I didn't know.

Also, years of punishment had taken their toll on my psyche.  I'd come
to believe that I was the one who was guilty and wrong.  I hated myself
because of the way I'd let my children down.  I loved them, but I'd
hurt them so ~much.  I couldn't think of one reason why I should like
myself, so I'd chosen to hate myself instead.  And in making that
choice I'd almost killed myself by cutting my legs, my arms and my
body; I'd sliced it to pieces.

I thought about these things as I recovered from my suicide attempt,
sitting helplessly with my arms in plaster.

The long battle ibught itself slowly out in my mind.  I had to decide
if the glimmer of hope I thought I'd seen was genuine.  If it was, I
then had to learn to change my pattern of thinking completely.  I had
six months to do it in, before my case was reviewed again.

Dr.  Raymond arranged for me to spend weekends in a house close to
where my children were living, in Carshalton Beeches, rather than
spending all the time at ~my little flat.  I wasn't sure how my family
would react if they heard I was living nearby.  I feared they wouldn't
be pleased and my fears were soon justified.

I was alone when it happened.  My brothers came and trashed my house.
They urinated on the beds; they broke all the toys I'd collected; they
wrecked the whole house.  I didn't tell anybody about what they'd done
because of Chay and Bonita.  I didn't want anything to happen to them.
Added to that, they were still my brothers: I'd brought them up and I
didn't want to get them into trouble.  After all, I decided, nobody
would have believed me it was my word against theirs.

For the rest of that weekend I got drunk.  And this started to become
the pattern again: every time I was let out of hospital I drank.  I
wasn't thinking very clearly; I felt so afraid and alone.  I'd chosen
once again to isolate myself and manage the whole problem on my own.  I
didn't believe I had anything to gain by confiding in anyone.  I was
still taking a lot of prescribed drugs, but I was drinking as well now.
I was drinking to summon up the courage to-go back to that house,
which, of course, was totally counterproductive to what the staff at
Netherne were trying to do for me.

I should have realized-my behaviour would soon be noticed.  I got so
drunk one weekend that I fell asleep too close to the electric fire.  I
was wearing lycra leggings.

They caught fire and I nearly lost my leg, it was so badly burned.  It
wasn't long before I lost that house and it too was handed back to the
council.

Once again, another opportunity had been quickly lost and I was back
full time in Netherne Hospital.  Dr.  Raymond's plan had been for my
mother, in time, to bring the children over to the house to stay with
me, initially for a few hours, so that we could get to know each other
again.

But left unsupervised, this scheme simply hadn't worked.

I was permanently tenifled, bur I found that hard to admit.  I also
found it difficult to tell the staff at Netherne what my brothers had
done.  How could they be expected to understand and help if I only gave
them part of the story?  I saw Dr.  Raymond very little after this, as
I felt I'd let him down.  So once again, I didn't have anybody to turn
to whom I trusted.  I became even more introverted.

~Ididn't talk very much to anybody.  I lived in fear of going home and
started drinking as soon as I left the hospital ~grounds.  And then I
started drinking in the hospital.

Everything went crazy in my head.  I wasn't behaving like the kind of
person who really should be given a chance to have some time with her
children.  I didn't deserve it, I thought in despair.  I didn't deserve
to have them with me because I wasn't capable at that point of looking
after them.  By this time Chay was 11, and Bonita 9 years old.  I lost
all hope and just kept wishing they'd left me in Holloway.  It seemed
as though I was doomed to go round and round in these circles, looping
from hope to despair and back again, each time just missing the goal.

Then something happened that did make a big difference to my life.
Although I was very hurt at the time, and the immediate aftermath was
appalling, I've since wondered if it wasn't something God allowed to
happen.  I can now see that I would never have got out of Netherne
otherwise.  I kept making mistakes and getting hauled back.

A couple of times I was even taken to Sutton Hospital because I was in
such a state.  By now I had again been denied all access to my children
because of my behaviour.

I was arrested on more than one occasion for being drunk and disorderly
in the street.

One night I was taken back to Netherne having been fbund wandering
around Sutton.  As I climbed blearily into bed I felt a piece of paper
under my pillow.  Curious, I unfolded it.  Slowly I realized that it
was a love letter to me from one of the charge nurses.  He'd just
started working at the hospital.  At this time I was still recovering
from the serious burn on my leg.  It was taking a long time to heal and
this man had been put in charge of taking care of me and changing the
dressing regularly.

I read the letter, and that was it.  I didn't need drink any more I was
in love.  You see, that's what I was like then.  I was all right as
long as I had a crutch.  The letter invited me to meet him at the
bottom of the stairs the next evening.  I am going to take you out of
here my princess," the letter read.

So, the next night, at one o'clock in the morning, I crept out of bed
and along the corridors to the back door.

He had a car and we drove up to London, where he treated me to a meal.
Then he took me back to the hospital again and I crept into my bed in
the early hours of the morning.

This became a regular pattern.  I stopped drinking and started to take
care of myself again.  And everybody noticed.  She's in love, you
know!"  they all said.  I did feel different, I felt so different.  I
started to lose weight.  I also started to spit pills out because I
didn't want them.  I started to regain some pride in my appearance.

We had to keep our liaison a secret or he would have been sacked.  He
used to drive me to Covent Garden and take me out for a meal, and then
sneak me into the hospital through the back way.  It was really
exciting!  Here I was, going out with a tall hunk of a man (he was six
foot ~ix I'm only five foot one!) who cared only about me.  He was
playing a dangerous game and putting his job on the line for me.  I
believed he loved me.  It quickly developed into a sexual relationship
and he became everything I felt I needed.  Just like the drink, he
could calm me.  I liked him so much, I didn't mind if he only wanted me
for sex, so long as I thought he loved me too.

After a few weeks I frightened the life out of him.  He came to pick me
up one evening and I'd packed my bags.

I put them in the car and said, Please take me to my flat."

That night I left Netherne for good I just walked out.

He couldn't really stop me because he wasn't meant to be seeing me in
the first place.  He couldn't risk making a scene because other people
would have heard and the night staff were nearby in the office.

He stayed with me that night in my flat in Sutton.  I was ecstatic.  I
thought he was the man of my dreams.

He didn't beat me.  He didn't give me drugs.  I wasn't drinking.  He
appeared to care for me and love me too.

The next morning he went off to work, while I stayed at home and
prepared an evening meal for him.  I made the flat and myself look as
romantic as I could!  But when he came back that evening I was in for a
nasty surprise.

I knew the moment he walked through the door that something was wrong.
He seemed agitated and went straight to the point.  He told me I'd
misunderstood his intentions and announced that he was engaged to be
married.  Of course I hadn't known this.  I was devastated.

He'd given me a reason to live again and now he was about to walk out
of my life, leaving me nowhere, with no support.

Alone again, I started to drink.  Nobody came looking for me.
Alcoholics have a saying, Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink."
There's a different mind-set with an alcoholic.  We make friends with
people and then cause them to hurt us.  We make them angry with us just
so that we can say, There, even they've let me down," and that gives us
the excuse we're looking for to go and pour another drink

Therefore, because nobody from Netherne came to look for me, and I'd
thought they were my family, for 80 Under the infiuern~e months I used
that as a reason to drink.  I suppose they weren't really worried about
me because I hadn't been held there under section I was there
voluntarily I'd been off-section for about two years by then.  I'd
stayed there because I just couldn't imagine being anywhere else, and
yet I didn't want to be there at all.  It sounds so pathetic, but it
was the safest place I knew on the face of the earth.  Well, I wasn't
there now.  I'd walked out.  And there was no one else to care for
me.

The flat I was in then was a small studio flat.  It was tucked away on
a floor of its own with its own small landing, so it was quite a spooky
place.  It was in a big block of flats in Sutton called Killick House.
I had two heavy swing doors to go through and it was scary because I
never knew who would be hanging about in the corridors and landings,
especially at night.  The entrance area was badly lit and the
streetlights cast eerie shadows which often played nicks on my fertile
imagination, further confused by drink.

Once I'd summoned the courage to stagger upstairs, it was with relief
that I shut my front door behind me.  I'd fall into a fitful sleep,
only to be woken by nightmares.

The neighbours would often report me to the police because they could
hear me screaming in the middle of the night.  I had no peace.  Even in
sleep I was tormented by memories and fears.

I was so often drunk.  I had a little bit of social security money
which I used to buy drink and when I didn't have any drink I stayed in
bed.  It was during this period that my drinking habit really took
off.

Unbeknown to me, during this time my father had died suddenly.  I
wasn't told and the funeral went ahead without me being there.  It was
some time beibre I heard about his death, even though my mother and
brothers

~uew where I was.  Still nobody came to see me and still I ~ denied
access to my children.

There was one good thing about living in Killick ~~~J.ouse, though: I
was very close to my sister Pam.  By now was married with two children,
Daniel and Jamie.  I ~eedto go to her home and she'd give me news about
I~0iay and Bonita.  But she was too frightened to tell my ~mother we
were seeing each other, and couldn't really ~help me in any way.  I'd
caused my mother so much ~ouble that by this time I believed she really
hated me.

~7Vd become such a nuisance and embarrassment to her, ~snd I was told
that just the mention of my name made her ~*ngry What would she do if
she knew Pam was in contact ~with me?

Pam was having a difficult time herself.  She'd just given birth to
twins who had died, and she came home from hospital to find her husband
had been accused of having ~an affair.  Pam had a nervous breakdown
when she heard this and was taken first to the Chiltern Wing, the
ps~chiatric ward at Sutton Hospital where I'd spent many a month, and
then to Netheme Hospital.  Meanwhile, her two children, Daniel and
Jamie, were taken to live with my mother.

So now my mother had control of Chay and Bonita and Daniel and Jamie. I
may have been drinking heavily, but all of a sudden I realized I had to
pull myself together to help Pam and stop this situation.  I went to
see her in hospital and brought her home to my flat.  I knew where Tom
would be: in the betting shop!  I went and found him too and brought
him to the flat.

I said to them, Just stay here until you've sorted it out.

Go and get your kids, you bloody fools can't you see, can't you see
what's happening?  Pam, you're going to end up in Netherne like me. You
can't do this.  I've lost my kids, but you don't have to lose yours." 
And they listened!

I let them stay in my flat and because I had nowhere else to go I slept
rough that night.

It worked.  Pam and Tom sorted out their differences.

They went and fetched Jamie and Daniel and took them home.

The thought of Pam going through what I'd been through sent shock waves
of panic through me.  It seemed to me that history was about to repeat
itself all over again.

I couldn't sit back and watch that happen.  I may have been drinking,
but I did know by then that my circumstances weren't all my own fault.
It wasn't until I became a Christian, however, that I started to
understand this more fully and could look at my mother with pity.  What
had happened to our family was no coincidence.  In part it was due to
things that had happened long ago, habits and wrong patterns of
behaviour that had been passed down the family lines to our own
generation.

So Pam and Tom got their children back.  I had managed to sober up for
a while when Pam needed me.  It showed at least that when I was needed
or loved I could put the bottle down.  After that I had periods of
really trying to get myself together.  I was told later on that's what
saved my life.  But alone again, I couldn't keep it up for long.  What
was the point?  The curtains of despair drew themselves around me and I
was shrouded in a tent of darkness and despair.  Then the drinking just
got worse and worse and worse.

tEN

Rock bottom

One of the few things I could be certain of in my uncerlain world was
that by now the relationship with my mother had reached an all-time
low.  I sensed that she didn t want to see me at all.  It must have
been difficult for her especially now that my father had died.  She
moved to a smaller house in Carshalton which, although it was ~ no
further away from me geographically, psychologically might as well have
been on another planet.  I could no longer imagine Chay and Bonita in
surroundings familiar to me.  I didn't know what their bedrooms looked
like.  I couldn't picture them in the kitchen or the garden.  I
certainly couldn't visit them.

For the next two years, 1982 to 1984, I existed in an alcoholic haze.
As before I was often in trouble with the police for being drunk and
disorderly on the streets.  I was badly beaten up and admitted to St.
Heier Hospital on more than one occasion.  It must have appeared that I
was doing little to help myself.

I had a new social worker during this period.  I met her when I was a
day patient at Sutton Hospital.  I used to go there and make candles
and weave baskets I don't quite know why!  She seemed to take a genuine
interest in my Under the influence case and came to see me regularly. I
thought she was stunningly beautiful and we became good friends.  She
was very young and, I suppose, inexperienced, but she was no fool.

She repeatedly took presents from me to my children, and my mother
ripped them up in front of her, apparently saying that Chay and Bonita
wanted nothing to do with me.  Once my mother gave her a bag of ashes
to bring back to me with the message, Tell her that's the remains of
the other presents and if she wants to send any more say we could do
with a fire."  I thought that was a very bold move on my mother's part.
By behaving like that she was starting to reveal her true self to the
authorities.

During these two years I did have good times when my drinking habit was
under control.  This usually coincided with meeting some man who'd
offer to take me out.

Inevitably sex was involved it was the only form of payment I could
afford.  However, it seemed a valuable currency and one I became used
to dealing in.  As before, the moment anybody expressed any interest in
me, the drinking would stop straight away.  It was my usual habit, my
usual way.  But it generally wasn't long before I fell flat on my face
again and the collapse would always occur after some incident connected
with my mother.

I had a job working Ibr the Sue Ryder Foundation and after a while I
was made the manager of a charity shop in Sutton.  From where I was
coming from this was a huge achievement.  I felt very encouraged and
proud of my position.  I had responsibility!  It made me feel good
inside.  I was doing something worthwhile again and I could feel some
of my confidence coming back.

My social worker had encouraged me to take the job.

She seemed to believe in me and that helped too.  She told me she had a
wardrobe full of lovely clothes and she sorted some out for me so that
I had something decent to wear to work.  I felt she really cared
because she did things me that were beyond the call of duty.  I thought
a lot of her.  She continued to take letters to the children and she
told them that I loved them.  That was brave of her, because she knew
my mother hated me.  I think she realkzed that the reason for my
struggle had a lot to do with my relationship, or lack of it, with my
mother.

One day I was working in the shop when my mother arrived with my
children (she always seemed to find out what I was doing and where I
was).  It was the day before Mother's Day.  Chay and Bonita waited
outside while she came into the shop.  I was standing by the till and I
watched as she approached.  She proceeded to empty the contents of her
shopping bag onto the counter.  I thought you would like to see what
they've bought you for Mother's Day," she said.  Then she put the
package back in her bag, left the shop, took Chay and Bonita by the
hand and walked up the road with them.

I used to dread Mother's Day.  I had good reason.

The year before that incident my mother had phoned the social workers
to suggest that it would be a good idea if I saw my children again.  It
must have appeared as though she was really trying to co-operate and be
a peacemaker.

She brought the children to my flat, and I had gone to a lot of trouble
and prepared a party for them.  Chay, Bonita and I played bob the apple
in the bath.  We got soaked and we giggled and laughed together.  It
was lovely.

After the tea party (I've still got the pictures my children drew that
day) my mother went home and phoned the police.  She told them that I'd
tried to drown Chay.  About two hours after she'd left, two policemen
called at my flat and I was taken to the police station and questioned.
Every time I got near, every time I got sober, every time I seemed to
be making progress, something happened or was made to happen to stop me
in my tracks.

The police rang my social worker and she came and talked to them.  They
were ready to charge me because I couldn't prove I didn't harm Chay.
After all, I was the one with the bad track record.  However, she
sorted it out for me and no charges were pressed.  I was very fortunate
that I had that social worker, because I don't know what would have
happened without her help.

After that I didn't see my mother for many months.  I used to see my
children, although they didn't know I was nearby.  Their schools had
been informed that if I showed up I would hurt them.  So I couldn't
meet them from school, or even be seen anywhere near the school
grounds.

I was very cautious because I was so frightened of doing anything that
might hamper my chances of seeing them and having them with me again.
But I did go and see them.

I'd stand out of sight beyond the playground and watch them walking
home.  Sometimes I'd see them arriving at school.  Sometimes I used to
watch them at the shops.

It broke my heart that I couldn't even tell them I was there.  I didn't
know what they were thinking; they may have been afraid of me and I
didn't want to frighten them.

I also knew that it would cause a lot of trouble if I approached them.
I asked my social worker if they could be moved into a children's home.
At least then I'd be able to visit them legitimately.

However, I was told that for that to happen they'd have to be taken to
court and made to stand in a wimess box to answer questions.  So I had
to make a decision.

What was best for them?  I made what I thought was the best choice and
decided it would be too harrowing for them.  They should stay where
they were.  Maybe I chose the wrong way; I'll never know.

Time went on.  I had my ups and downs, but each time I kIl I got up
again and tried to go straight.  I was desperately unhappy and I was
still cutting myself during bouts Qfdespair.  But at least I was
earning a little bit of money.  I ~ even had a telephone!  I'd never
had one before.

One afternoon in 1985 I had a call from my social ~. worker to tell me
that someone from the social services office my mother's social worker,
would be phoning me shortly.  She told me I had nothing to be afraid of
and I was not to worry.  So I put the phone down and it rang again more
or less straight away.  The man on the line told me that he was
speaking on behalf of my mother.  She'd been to see the social services
to discuss Chay and Bonita's future happiness.  He told me that she'd
decided it wasn't fair that I wasn't seeing my children.

As I listened, I could hardy believe what I was hearing.

My heart soared.  He told me my mother now felt it was time that
everything was put right.  The children themselves wanted to see me. It
was arranged that I would meet them at the social worker's office in
Garshalton.

I put the phone down, stunned.  I would see Chay and Bonita in three
weeks' time.  Three weeks!  I hardly dared believe it!  It had been
months and months since we'd spent time together.  I went into a frenzy
of excitement.

How can I begin to describe what those three weeks were like?  How
should I wear my hair?  What should I wear?  I was changing into this
and changing into that; running round to Pam and asking her opinion. By
the time those three weeks were over I was a nervous wreck, strung up
with excitement.  Was this the breakthrough I'd been hoping for?

It was arranged that I would see them at 3.30 in the afternoon.  It was
a beautiful summer day in early June.  ~[ arrived early, feeling happy
but terrified.  I was shown into a room, a small room, where five
social workers were sitting with my children.  I was invited to sit
down with Chay and Bonita in front of me.  All that morning I'd been
rehearsing what I was going to say and when it came to it I couldn't
utter a word.  I think I just told them how beautiful they looked.  I
was crying with joy.

Then they each handed me a letter.  As I opened the letters I saw they
were both exactly the same.  I slowly started to read, and I thought my
eyes were playing tricks.  I kept glancing up at the children's &ces.
They were looking at me intently.  There was something wrong.  There
had to be a mistake.  Was this some kind of cruel joke?  I couldn't
believe what I was reading: We hate you, we never want to see you
again.  Don't you ever upset our nanny again and here is your Christmas
present back."  Then they handed me the Christmas presents back, still
wrapped.

I couldn't stem the flood of tears.  I was inconsolable.  I walked
straight out of the building and into the lake.  The social workers ran
after me, trying to say how sorry they were.  They told me they'd had
no idea what was in the letters.  They hadn't known this was going to
happen.  I'm sure that was so, but I knew why it had happened: I was
getting too well.  My mother didn't want that.

I've since learnt that Chay and Bonita were made to copy those letters.
Even at the time I knew they didn't mean what the letters said.  I
could see it in their eyes.  The letters were the same, word for word.
The only dilThrence was in the name at the bottom.  This happenea in
June.  I was devastated by the discovery that they still hadn't
unwrapped the Christmas presents I'd sent them six months before.

I went on the biggest drinking hinge of my lift and took another
overdose.  Once I was out of hospital I started cutting myself again. I
don't remember much

~bout that time.  It's all lost in a fog of alcohol.  I lost my ~~at. I
lost my job.  I just drank and drank and drank I was Vacked up by any
man who cared to have me.  As long as he bought me a drink, I didn't
care.

~- I started sleeping rough on the streets of Sutton.  There was
nowhere else to go.  I went from bad to worse.  I was ~ eating out of
dustbins and if I did get any money my mind xmmediately told me it was
beer money.  I never spent any money on food or clothes.

I lost contact with my social worker.  She didn't know where I was.  I
didn't want to be found.  I hated myself so much and was so full of
guilt because of my children.  It wasn't that I didn't care about them.
I did, desperately, but after a blow like that I couldn't hold my life
together any longer.  I was worn out, and bereft of hope.  I just
wanted to die.  All I possessed were the clothes I stood up in.  I wore
a pair of flip-flops on my feet.  I didn't care what happened to me and
found myself in some temble situations.

One morning, as I told you at the beginning of the book, I woke up in a
room with five Arab men.  I didn't know who they were or where I was I
didn't even remember being taken there.  I realized those men had made
me very drunk and then taken full acfrmma5c of me to amuse and satisfy
themselves.  As I lay there, I saw them staring at me.  But they'd had
all they wanted and were already preparing to leave.  For all I could
do abes*it~r they could have killed me.  But I walked out of that room
alive.

Another time I woke up to find my f~ce had bcs,hs4y scratched.  As I
came round I discovered I'd rolled  down a railway embankment.  I might
have fallen from the~roed.

Or did I jump out of a car?  Or was I pushed our mid left to roll down
the embankment in the dark?  I don~t know what happened.  Everything
was just a blur.  I didn't know how I got the bruises or marks I had. I
could have landed on the railway tracks themselves without knowing a
thing about it.  I put my life in danger every day, but someone must
have been looking after me.

I was filthy and smelly; people shunned me in the street.  I didn't
have any clean clothes to change into.

I didn't wash and I was soaked in my own urine.  You just lose control
when you're really drunk; you wet yourself and mess yourself.  I didn't
care until it got to the stage when no man would buy me a drink in
exchange for sex.

Then I really was on my own; and I felt completely alone, shut off from
everybody.  I was sleeping in doorways most nights.  Sometimes I went
up to where my old flat was because I still had a key to the cupboard
by one of the swing doors outside it.  Like an animal I could crawl
into the cupboard where at least it was warm.

That Christmas of 1985,1 was filtering through some rubbish bags,
trying to keep a step ahead of the dustbin men, and I found half a
turkey and six chocolate yoghurts!  I thought that was wonderful.  To
me this was a feast and I ate the lot.

I was quite used to eating food from dustbins.  I searched in them
every day.  On this particular day, because I didn't have any money at
all to buy drink, I was suffering withdrawal symptoms.  And the
withdrawal symptoms from drink can be quite horrendous.

You shake, you sweat, you can't keep your legs still, you have panic
attacks and you can go into fits, which I did a couple of times.  You
feel extra-sensitive and find everything more frightening than it
really needs to be even a pin dropping seems like a huge noise.  You go
into the DT's (delirium tremens), a form of delirium which brings
terrifying delusions.  Your body chemistry is all mixed up because of
the destruction wreaked by the ~alcohol, and you just feel so ill.

~. But worse than all that is what is going on in your head:

t~iv shame.  Oh, the shame when you're sobering up!  It's worse than
anything else.  You just want to get drunk am so that you don't have to
think about how ashamed ~you are.  It's a vicious circle.  In this
state I'd drink ~miything.  I didn't care.  Anything I could get.  It
was litera case of beggars can't be choosers.

I remember the first time I really looked at myself then.

J was covered in flea bites.  I had lice on my body and in ~my hair. My
fingernails and toenails hadn't been cut for 4~1onths and they were
black and cracked.  My hair was so matted that I had to cut off- all of
it because I couldn't get a comb through it and it was so full of nits.
I had sores all over my body.  I was painfully thin.  I had so many
cuts, ~bruises and abrasions, and I didn't know where they came from.

was obviously undernourished.  So much alcohol~ destroys the vitamins
in the body.  As I was not eating ~properly I became very ill, caused
not just by abuse and ~ueglect, but also by the constant infections
from eating soiled food.  My whole body was so abused and wrecked that
there wasn't one bit of it that I was proud of.  I'd also been cutting
myself and these wounds had become Wecred because I hadn't been looking
after them.

Over Christmas 1985, when I was sleeping rough, the ~eather was
particularly cold and I didn't have a coat.

~slept in what I stood up in along with lots of newspapers.

~was cold, but I don't think I noticed it that much at the ~me.  I was
dead in my head and in my heart.  I'd given up.

~i had nothing left to live for.  I just wanted to die, but omehow I
kept waking up.  This was the lowest point in my life.

After Christmas, I still had no money to buy a drink.  I was walking
the streets one day and as I shuffled past the Salvation Army hall in
Sutton, I saw that there was a jumble sale going on.  I hadn't had a
drink for a couple of days and my hands were shaking.  But I thought
how good it would be if I could just get a cup of tea if I could hold
it and keep it in the cup.  The worst thing about the DT's is that by
the time you get the cup to your mouth it's empty because you're
shaking so much.  (And you can guarantee that if you go into a
detoxification unit they always give you peas, and a fork to eat them
with ... it's a standing joke among alcoholics!)

I loved jumble sales; I still do.  I'm teased now because I still carry
a black bag around with me to collect things in!  I can really
understand those homeless people who push trolleys around with them.
Those few pieces of personal belongings really become important.  All I
had in my black bin liner then were a few bits and pieces and a few
photographs of my children.

Drawn by that jumble sale and the possibility of tea, I stopped.  It
was snowing and I was cold and tired, so I went into the Salvation Army
hail.  Little did I realize it then, but within an hour my life was to
change fur ever.

eLEVEN

My friend

I sat at a table by myself with a cup of tea.  I didn't want anyone to
come and talk to me.  They wouldn't have done anyway, I thought I smelt
so awful.  There were a few other dossers there, men mainly.  I
recognized them, as our paths often crossed, but I had no reason to
communicate with them.  We had nothing to offer each other except
shared experiences.

I don't remember buying it I had no money, after all but on the way out
I somehow acquired a book..  Outside I sat down on a bench clutching my
black bin.  Liner; I never let it out of my sight.  It was still
snowing.  Having been in a warm room for a time, the bi~ttrI~ ~cokl
wind stung my face and hands.  Then I looked 4s~wwand realized I was
holding this book.  As I looked at it more closely, I saw that it was a
little Catholic miss air a ~ook~of Common Prayer.  - ~ My hands were
very cold and the snow was them wet, so I turned with my back to the
wind uoWtud protect the thin paper pages.  I was fumbling, trying sb
open the book.  I don't think anybody had read the story for years, and
the pages were difficult to prise apart.  I wasn't thinking about
anything in particular, apart front:

vague curiosity about this little book.  I was very cold.  I was sober;
I hadn't had any money for days to buy drink.  I also knew I had a lung
infection and this was making me feel very unwell.

Every movement was an effort, I had so little energy.

When I eventually managed to open the book, a piece of paper fluttered
to the ground and fell face down into the snow.  For a moment I lost
sight of it against the white background of the freshly fallen snow.
Painstakingly I bent down and gently searched with my hands until I
felt it, limp and already wet.  I picked it up and turned it over.

To my surprise I found myself looking into a black-and white picture of
the face of Jesus.

It was at that moment my whole life changed.  It sounds so ridiculous
after all that I've told you and after all the fitiled attempts with
people who'd tried to help me in the past.  But as I sat on that seat
my life changed, just like that.

Oh, I knew Jesus, I remembered his picture from my childhood.  I'd
loved Jesus when I was little.  After all, I'd been brought up a
Catholic and went to a church where I'd looked at pictures of him every
Sunday.  I'd seen statues of him in the convent.  I knew what he looked
like!

But this picture was different.  As I gazed at his face he seemed to be
speaking to me.

The picture showed his face and a little bit of the top part of him.
His eyes were looking down.  His face was long and thin and there was a
very big crown of thorns on his head, with blood running down his face.
And as I looked at his face I felt so broken.  It was as though I was
being drawn into the picture, not just looking at it from a distance
like an observer in an art gallery.  Something was going on inside
me.

As I looked at his face I thought Jesus looked in a worse state than
me.  I felt there was an empathy between us.  I think I felt compassion
for him, which was a strange ~motion for me to feel towards anybody
else at thatjtime.

A lot of people, of course, would say I had the DT's it was all a
delusion.  Well, if that was so they were the best DT's I ever had
because they saved my life!  But I know different.  It wasn't a
delusion.

Aslwas looking at the picture somebody spoke to me but nobody was near
me, although I looked round to eec.  I didn't know anything then about
the gifts of the holy Spirit or that God could talk to you.  I
remembered him as a fearsome God.  I remembered that I used to love
Jesus but became very angry with him over my father's bizarre behaviour
and the things he did to us.

But I did hear a voice, as I sat there in the snow.  And the voice said
to me, If you drink again you will make him cry."  I don't really know
why or how, but I knew then that it was God talking to me.  As I looked
at that picture I understood that I could make him cry.  I'd never
thought before that he would bother to cry over me.

I stared at the picture and knew it was true.  It was his pain.  It was
the look on his face.  It was the sheer sadness of his expression.  I
actually turned round then because I thought somebody was sitting next
to sue there was nobody there.  I'm sure that some people will think
after reading my story so far that I was imagining * baliucinating
even.  But I knew it was God's vcjstx~.  Vve~cvee forgotten it.  -~

I've since learnt that Jesus has the knack g( the one part he knows no
other person can Heineken advert, he touches the parts no othee reach.
He knew that drink was my vulnerable4iO~VA~ knew that there wasn't one
other person who cried for me that day.  He knew that no one else 0~ ~
about me.  And he was telling me that he loved ~

much that if I picked up another drink it would break his heart.  That
really meant so much to me.  And I know it was God speaking to me
because that experience, that meeting with God, changed my life.

Then something else wonderful happened.  It's important to remember
here that for a long time I hadn't been physically or emotionally close
to anybody.  From June 1985 until now, early 1986, I'd lived alone on
the streets of Sutton.  I'd become a filthy drunk nobody wished to
associate with.  I was an embarrassment to my family and if my children
could have seen me then they would certainly have been ashamed and
frightened of me.

As I sat on that bench, I had a clear sensation of somebody coming and
sitting down next to me, and I distinctly heard the word friend'.  In
that moment the King of Kings and Lord of Lords had come down from his
throne in heaven and sat down next to this old, dirty, smelly tart
sitting on a park bench.  That hadn't put him off.  As I thought about
it and gazed at the picture still in my hand, I saw that he'd left his
throne, left everything that was up there all the riches, the angels,
the people singing to him, everything that he'd attained, to come and
sit next to me.  And I was just a whore.  I'd never felt so loved in
all mylifr.  I suddenly felt a surge of emotion rush through me like an
electric charge.  This in itself was a strange, unfamiliar sensation.
For months, my emotions had been numbed, I hadn't felt anything.  But
somebody, something, had reached out to me and found me even though I'd
sunk so low.

As a child, I used to imagine Jesus with a white beard and a friendly
face, with long arms that went on for ever.

That day it was as though Jesus reached down into the depths and found
me, then put his arms round and round My friend and round me.  He just
coiled himself around me until I was in a cocoon.  And then he gently
pulled me out of that hole.  It was as though the rest of the world
couldn't see me any more I was invisible to them.  I was just his, he
mademehis,hehidmeinhim,andlknewlwashidden.

I didn't know then the words in the Bible, You are hidden with Christ
in God," (Colossians 3:3) but that was my experience.

I don't know how long I sat there because I didn't have a watch.  I
think it was quite a longtime, probably a couple of hours.  As I sat
staring at this picture with all these thoughts going on inside my
mind, something else occurred to me.  For the first time in I don't
know how long, I suddenly realized I didn't feel lonely any more.

But what was even better, I no longer felt afraid.

Until then there had never been a time in my life when I'd been free
from fear and sober.  I drank because I was afraid.  I didn't stand up
to anyone because I was afraid.  I hated myself because I was afraid. I
couldn't look after my children because I was afraid.  Fear had wrecked
my life.

Fear had been a part of me for as long as I could remember.  Maybe it
had been a part of me since before I was born, brought to me in the
womb through the family lines, because everyone in my family was
afraid.

But now I wasn't afraid.  I felt as though I could take on the world. I
firmly believed that what I'd found wasn't going to leave me; it wasn't
going to play~a dirty trick on me.

The feeling was so intense that I didn't dare come out of it for a
moment.  I didn't want it to go away.  As I concentrated on Jesus' face
I knew that I would die fur that man.  I knew there was nothing I
wouldn't do for him, and without question he was real, without question
he had come into my life.  I knew I was going to dedicate the rest of
my life to him.  I knew it all in that moment.

But I can't tell you how I came to know so much in that short time.

After a while I actually started talking to the picture.  By now anyone
passing by would have thought, what a dirty old drunk!  I didn't care
what they thought, I was so happy.  I'd just fallen in love.  Exactly
as I'd done before when I fell in love, I could put down the bottle
straight away.  I'd always needed a crutch, whether it was a person, a
tablet, an injection or a drink.  I hadn't been able to stand on my own
even after that first panic attack just after Bonita was born all those
years ago.  So now I knew I didn't need the drink any more I didn't
need anything because I'd found someone I knew wasn't going to leave
me.  Yes, I'd fallen in love looking at that picture, but this time it
was a marriage made in heaven.  This time things were going to work out
differently.

Then I felt something move beside me, and it was as though the person
next to me actually came and moved to be inside me.  And I felt loved,
I just felt so loved, from the inside out!  All this had happened as
the result of me looking at the picture.  God had intervened in my
life.

He'd come to find me when I hadn't even asked him.  I think he saved my
life just in time, because I was very ill, and my body surely couldn't
have taken much more punishment.

I suppose I was surprised that this had happened tome, but I didn't
question it.  I didn't say to Jesus, How do I know you're real?"  I
just didn't want to let him go!  I didn't want to break it.  I didn't
want the feeling to disappear.  Not that there was any magic or
fairytale drama attached to this.  It wasn't like a Barbara Gartland
story.  A tall dark stranger riding a white horse didn't suddenly
gallop up to me, whisk me up into his arms, take me to his castle,
bathe me in a bubble bath, dry me in fluffy towels, give me fresh
clothes to wear and tell me I was really a princess after all!

No.  It all happened very quietly.  But just as a seed germinates in
the soil out of sight and in secret, so I believed something was reborn
inside me that day.

Eventually I got up from that bench and walked off I was still dressed
in filthy old clothes and I still smelt as I had done before.  I still
carried my little friends, the lice.

Nothing outwardly spectacular had happened.  As I shuffled up the road
nobody said to me, God has just told me to give you a hot meal and a
room for the night."  Nothing like that happened at all.  I just walked
off up the road with my picture in my pocket.  But it seemed as if
someone was holding my hand.  I could feel it.

I didn't know where I was going, but I kept hold of his hand and I
wasn't afraid.  That night I slept rough as usual, but I had my picture
in my pocket and I had my friend by my side.  I knew he was there and
nothing could have shaken me from that certainty.  After all, he wasn't
just next to me, he was in me.  And still I wasn't afraid.

Something had changed in my thinking.  I was no longer the same person
who had gone into that Salvation Army jumble sale wanting to die.  I
had found that picture, and my lift had been changed as never before.
For the first time ever I knew for sure that God existed,.  that Jesus
loved me and that he'd come to live with me.

tWELVE

Steps towards new life

Over the next couple of days the change in my thinking started to
affect me outwardly.  I was stirred by this newfound feeling of peace
and confidence.  I'd never felt like this before.  It had to be from
God.  There was no other way I could have got rid of the fear I'd
experienced for so long, especially without drink or drugs!

I decided to go to the social security office.  I surprised myself
because I was able to talk quite calmly and coherently and explain my
needs.  The next thing I knew, I was walking out of there with some
money in my pocket so that I could buy some basic necessities, and the
one bedroom flat I had previously rented in Sutton was vacant so I was
able to move back in immediately.  I was thrilled.

The next thing I did was visit the job centre, looking for work.  Then
I went to the careers office and enquired about training opportunities
so that I could learn how to use word processors and computers.

I was amazed at myselfl I could never have behaved like this before,
nor talked so confidently to anyone without first having a drink.  I
would have been too scared.  But I found I now had an overwhelming
desire to get my life in order.  What amazed me even more was that I
made the right decisions about who to go and see especially when I
consider what state my mind had been in only a short time before.

Alcoholism inflicts such a lot of damage on the body as well as the
mind, and I'd been an alcoholic for a long time.  They tell you in the
Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that if you're lucky you die and if
you're unlucky you live, and the last stage of alcoholism is
Korsakoff's Syndrome.  (Sergei Korsakoff was a Russian
neuropsychiatrist.) When you've reached the stage of having Korsakoff's
your thinking has become really muddled.

When you try to read the newspaper, for example, you read the first
word and by the time you get to the second you've forgotten the first.
But you know you've forgotten it.  It's a living hell.

I wasn't quite at the stage of having Korsakoff's Syndrome, but
obviously my thinking power and my decision-making abilities had been
impaired.  Added to that, I hadn't planned or thought about doing
anything by myself- or even for myself- for such a long time.  But all
of a sudden I was making the right decisions and I was knocking on the
right doors.

I can only describe it this way: I had a living relationship with
Jesus.  I'd found a friend and I was asking his opinion.  I didn't know
how to pray properly', but all day I was saying things like, Well, what
shall we do now, Lord?"  And I'd feel the reply in my heart: I think
it's best we go down to the job centre."  I'd know where to go because
he told me!

When I went along to the social services office and spoke to the social
workers, they were obviously impressed by my improvement and change in
attitude.  I was delighted to have my old flat back.  It gave me a
sense of picking up where I'd left off, rather like seeing an old
friend again after a long absence.  After all this time, I had a room
of my own once again.

I was really starting to get myself sorted out.  Things I needed kept
falling into my lap, which only served to encourage me all the more!
People started to give me things.  I joined an evening class to learn
how to use a word processor.  At the college I met a young woman and,
although I was friendly towards her, I was careftul not to tell her too
much about my history.  But one day she turned round and said, Could
you do with a bed and some curtains?"

It was a constant source of amazement and encouragement to find I was
continually meeting all the right people Somehow I was in the right
places at the right times I know now that God was guiding me.  I
understand it all now, but then it was just one surprise after
another.

To save money I went along to one of the hand-out places where they
give you a few clothes.  This meant that with the grant from the social
services, I was able to buy a few other essentials and pay for my word
processing course.

I also registered at the local health centre.  The doctor put me on a
course of vitamin injections, but other than that there was very little
he needed to do for me.  My body was healing itself.  I told him a
little about my history, because at that stage he didn't have my
medical records.

But when I went back for the next appointment he did have my notes on
his desk, a thick bundle!

Oh no," I thought, he's not going to want to know me now."  But he was
so nice; he was really kind to me.  I'll never forget him saying to me,
I can't believe from reading your medical records and looking at you
that you're the same person."  He asked me what had made me suddenly
pull myself together.  I told him my story, and he laughed!

He gave me some antibiotics for the cuts that were still healing, and
the vitamin injections helped me to feel better too.  It should really
have taken me a long time to recover from the battering that I'd had.
Not only had I been sleeping rough, I'd also sustained quite a few
injuries and both my eyes were black.  Much of the time I hadn't known
what had happened to me so I couldn't tell the doctor he had to draw
his own conclusions.

After just two weeks on the word processing course, armed with my
new-found confidence, I walked into a secretarial agency and said, I
can use a word processor.

Can I have a job please?"  I'd only had two lessons!  The lady in the
agency took me seriously, so I must have started to look quite
convincing.

While I'd been sleeping rough on the streets for the past seven months
I'd become used to people looking at me in disgust.  In fact, because
of the shame I felt, I'd long since stopped looking people in the eye.
But now all that had changed.  As I gradually began to lift my eyes
again, I found people were taking notice of me and even asking my
opinion.  I must have appeared normal' to them.  I was no longer
treated as a non-person.  I thought about this a lot, and decided it
had to be something in my spirit; it had to be what shone out of my
eyes that convinced people I was trustworthy.  People were now talking
to me as if they wanted to know what I had to say.

The receptionist in the agency handed me an application form and I
nearly died.  I read it slowly, my eyes moving down the page from one
question to the next, and as my eyes moved downwards so did my spirits.
I realized I had nothing to offer but several years' experience' in
Nethenie Hospital!  For references I only had magistrates doctors,
policemen, psychiatrists and social workers.  I didn't know how to fill
the form in.

As I stood there clutching the form I prayed, and heard my friend's
voice.  He just said, Temp."  So that is what I did.  I gave the form
back and said, I think I would like to temp for a little while."  By
the end of the week the agency had found me a temporary position at a
place called Distillers.  It's funny, isn't it, that I, an alcoholic,
should be offered a job working at a place with a name like that!

I'd made some friends at the evening class, including a girl called
Ayl~her.  But I was very jealous about the time I speak with my Lord..
I didn't really want anybody else to get in the way of my friendship
with him.  I was really ba~yiuthi~rdadonship.  I talked to him from the
minute I ~got up in the morning to the minute I went to bed.  It ~
jmndiluted time With Jesus and my love for him ~W~idgrew.

At first I didn't join a church.  I did go along once to the Sutton
Christian Fellowship.  Strangely enough, it was a spiritualist who took
me.  She invited me round to her house for a cup of tea one day.  When
I arrived she said, I see a man standing next to you with a red train."
Oh no!"

I thought... Then she said to me, I'm going along to this new place
tonight, and they have prayer for healing."

I think she thought it was going to be a spiritualist meeting!  So that
is how we both ended up at the Sutton Christian Fellowship.

I sat at the back in a corner and I loved it.  Especially the singing
I'd never heard anything like it.  It was so beautiful.  I felt quite
at home and relaxed in that church.  Then the most surprising thing
happened.  The preacher came down off the stage and walked towards the
back of the church to where I was sitting.  He came straight over to me
and, taking me by the hand, led me up to the front.

For the first time since I'd known Jesus, my heart started to race and
I was really nervous.  Then the preacher put his hand on my head and
told me that the Lord was bringing me out from the corner and he was
going to cause me to shine among the nations.  He said these and other
words over me that I can't remember anymore, and then he prayed fur me.
After that he walked back up onto the platform and I walked back to my
seat and cried.

I never did go back to that church, but I think God used my
spiritualist friend to take me there that night, because it really
encouraged me.  It showed me that I hadn't just been imagining that
Jesus was with me.  If the preacher saw it too, then it must be true!

At this time I still didn't have a Bible.  All I had was the Catholic
missal I'd picked up at the Salvation Army jumble sale.  I read it from
cover to cover and the words in it came alive to me.  On one page I
found a hymn about a wandering sheep.  The sheep wandered so fur from
home that it lost its way and lay exhausted, cut, bruised and bleeding.
The animal was on the verge of ~dying when Jesus found that sheep and
bathed her and washed all the blood away.  Then he gently lifted her
onto his shoulders and took her back to be with the rest of the
flock.

Every time I read that hymn I broke down and cried, because that was
also my story.  Jesus had come looking for me when I was lost, and now
he was nursing me and caring for my wounds.  As I read that hymn again
and again.  I knew that was what he was also doing in my heart.

All the people, all the hurt, all the distress, all the sexual abuse,
all the degradation, all the pain surrounding my relationship with my
mother, the rapes, and the loss of the children he was taking all of it
and he was mending me.

And not only was he mending me, he was doing it so skilfully, restoring
me to be the person he created.

In just a short while my life had changed dramatically.

Once again I fbund the energy that gave me the determination to begin
the fight to get my children back.  I never thought I'd feel that way
again.  I'd.had so many disappointments.  But as the days went by, I
became confident that this time Jesus would help me.

My job as a temp at Distillers went well, and before long they offered
me a permanent job.  Then, after just two months, they promoted me!  I
was earning a lot of money by my standards.  I bought myself some smart
clothes and got to work improving my little flat.

If anyone else had seen it they would have laughed.  I bought some
shiny satin, peach-coloured material for the curtains and hung some
ivory-coloured net curtains with big bows at the window.  Round my bed
I draped swathes of white material to create what I can now only
describe as a giant meringue!

Every week after I'd been paid, I either bought myself something to
wear or something for the flat.  I didn't spend any money on drink and
so this was my reward.  I was building a home for my children.  I was
trying to create a place that would impress them.  But, of course,
after being out of touch for so many years I didn't really have much
idea about current design trends!  That didn't matter.  It gave me
something to occupy my spare time, as well as giving me hope that each
passing day was a day nearer a reunion with Chay and Bonita.

There were lots of times when I was tempted to drink, and occasionally
that still happens to me today.  What usually triggered me then was
seeing my mother with my children.  This happened often because we
lived so close to each other.  If she saw me she would never speak and
that was always very hurtful, especially as she could see I was smart
and clean and looking after myself again.

Then the temptation to have a drink would come.  It ~ was as though a
glass of wine was passed under my nose and I could smell it.  But as
soon as the temptation entered my mind all I had to say was Lord', and
it was gone.  I learnt to do this gradually, but as I got better at it
I could see the temptation heading for me and I would say Lord' before
it got a hold on me.  I was growing!

For the next two and a half years I carried the picture of Jesus
everywhere I went.  At times life was a real struggle.

There were some nights when I was very lonely, not lonely for a man but
longing to hold my children.  And the more sober I became the more
urgent I felt about getting them back.  I desperately wanted to see
them and I really wanted them to see that I was getting well.  But I
couldn't work out in my mind how this would happen.  I still felt that
all the odds were stacked against me.

But I wasn't ready to give in.  I continued to walk with the picture in
my pocket and every day I only had to look at it if I felt insecure or
if I wanted a drink.  I looked at that face and I couldn't make him
cry, I just couldn't.

I started going to jumble sales on a Saturday and because I didn't earn
that much money I'd allow myself just 10 to spend on clothes.  Then I'd
take them home and wash and iron them, and if necessary mend them or
sew the odd button on.  The next day I'd put them in an old push chair
that I'd bought, and take them to a local car boot sale where I'd set
up a stall and sell them.  I was regularly making a weekly profit of
between 70 and 80.  Not a bad return on 10!  I saved every penny of
this money, so that when I had Chay and Bonita back I could afford to
rent a house big enough for the three of us.

This particular car boot sale was held at the back of the local pub.
Before long I got to know the other stall

holders.  They were a ftiendiy group of people, and I was soon accepted
and doing quite well.  My sister Pam and her husband knew I was there
because they lived just over the road.  I often called in on them on
the way home.

One Sunday I had a shock.  The door opened and I saw my mother coming
into the area where the stalls were.

She came and stood right in front of me, looking at the clothes I had
for sale.  Bonita was with her.

Bonita was 13 years old then, and I thought she looked lovely.  I
didn't know what to do.  I was so stunned.  I hadn't been that close to
my daughter for years.  If I'd put out my hand I could have touched
her.  My mind was racing.  What should I do?  Would I frighten her if I
said

Hello'?

My mother stayed in front of me, pretending to look at the clothes.  It
was torture.  I couldn't stay silent.  Eventually I said, Hello,
Bonita."

Immediately my mother grabbed my daughter and pushed her at me,
screaming at the top of her voice,

There's your fW * *ing mother who f* * ing doesn't love you, who's
never f* * *ing fed you!"  She grabbed Bonita by the arm and threw her
at me again and again, yelling at her, If you f* * *ing want her you f*
* *ing have her!"

Bonita was hysterical and I said, Bonita, Bomta, don't cry.  I won't
hurt you, I love you.  I won't hurt you."  But she was absolutely
terrified of me.

My mother grabbed her by the arm and shouted out to everybody, She's a
whore and she's my daughter, but I'm telling you now I don't have a
daughter!"  Then she walked out and left me standing there, with
everybody looking at me in stunned silence.

I grabbed hold of my picture.  I pulled it out of my pocket, held it in
both hands and just looked at it.  I was terribly upset.  Then the door
opened again and in ran Steps towards new life

Tom, my brother-in-law, with his friend.  Within seconds they had
carried me out with my clothes and pram.  They put me in a van and
drove me round to Pam's house.

There they calmed me down and took care of me until I'd got over the
immediate shock and distress.

This sort of thing happened quite regularly for the next couple of
years.  Each time I was terribly shaken, but not once did I reach for
the bottle.  Instead I reached for the picture of Jesus, and he never
ever let me down.  What did seem to be happening, however, was that my
mother had started to show her real self up in front of people who knew
her.  Until then all they'd heard about was this terrible daughter
who'd beaten her up, hit her and knifed her, and who wanted to kill her
own children.  But all of a sudden people were starting to see that I
wasn't like that.

God taught me to use these situations to learn how to trust him.  Every
time I pulled that picture out of my pocket and asked God to help me,
he turned up and he helped in fact, he was there all the time.  I began
to have such a confidence in him that he became my confidence.

After that I didn't feel afraid, nor could I be made to feel afraid by
the sudden shock of these incidents.

I became even more determined to get my children back.  It was as
though I had tunnel vision and they were at the end of the tunnel.  God
encouraged me not to look to the left or the right, but to keep going,
heading for my goal.

tHIRTEEN

Opening doors

~~4ay atiwi*k somebody tapped me on the shoulder ~~i8tltt0SRtCC51
eating my lunch.  Don't I know ~ me..1 must admit, this was the After
all, I'd been a prostitute, and had spent months on the streets, drunk.
What if this was someone I'd insulted when I was drunk, or what if
they'd seen me do something shameflul that I couldn't remember?  It was
my biggest worry of all, and here was someone asking me this question
at work!

My immediate thoughts were, I've blown it, I'll have to leave this
place and start all over again."  But then another thought ran through
my head: No, don't be silly, Jesus is here."  I calmed down.  But who
was she?  Don't I know you?"  she'd asked me.

I said, No, no, I don't think you do!"  I didn't recognize this person
at all.

But I'ni your cousin, Susan," she said to me.

Who?"  I was baffled.

Susan," she said, Susan Braithwaite, don't you remember me?"  We hadn't
seen each other for 22 years and yet she recognized me!  She belonged
to my father's side of the fimilly.  Twenty-two years before there had
been a major row between our two families and they had never met or
spoken since, but now here was my cousin Susan and she remembered me.

I don't know how she recognized me, especially when you consider the
life I'd led.  I was overwhelmed with happiness as we hugged each
other.  Briefly she told me about her life.  She had her own sad story
to tell.  One of her children had just died.  She had another little
girl, but her marriage had recently broken up.  She told me all about
her family and what had happened to them over the years.  She suggested
that we meet that evening after work, and she would take me to her home
in Redhill to meet her family.

For the rest of the day I was in a whirl.  I couldn't get over what was
happening in my life.  I seemed to be going from one surprise to the
next.  Susan had phoned her mother to tell her about our meeting, and
when we arrived at the house I was given a very warm welcome and
introduced to relatives I scarcely knew about!  It was extraordinary
that after a break of 22 years, that night I met 22 cousins, aunts and
uncles!

I hadn't been a welcome part of a frimily for years.  All of a sudden I
was being accepted into a f~mily that I'd long forgotten about and
certainly never expected to see again.

And what's more they were interested and pleased to see me.  They all
wanted to hear what had happened to me and sat quietly as I recounted
my story, occasionally interrupting to say how sorry they were.  If
we'd known," they said, you could have stayed here, we would have
looked after your children, we would have helped you."  They'd had no
idea what had been going on in the other half of the family and were
shocked and upset to hear of the troubles.

I got home to my flat very late that night, tired but elated.  What was
going on?  After a few hours of fitful Under the influence sleep (I was
too excited to sleep deeply) I went to work the next day as usual.
Susan was there and we both felt overwhelmed by our meeting the day
before.  My relatives phoned me regularly after that and I often
visited my aunt and uncle.

One evening, I'd just returned home after visiting them, when the voice
I knew said to me, Put the keys through the door and walk out now." The
voice was the same one which had said to me on the bench, If you drink
again you will make him cry."  But what was he asking me to do now?  I
wasn't sure I understood.

I looked at the meringue' over my bed and said, But the children are
only up the road here.  I can't go away because I'm near them here, and
what if they come and look for me?"

I was puzzled, but I phoned my sister and said, Pam, I think I've got
to go."  I explained what I thought I had to do.  She pleaded with me
not to leave, but the feeling inside me was so strong.  I said goodbye
to her, put the phone down, and walked out of my flat.

I took a train to Redhill and went to my aunt and unde's house once
more.  I told them that I'd walked out of my flat and didn't intend
going back.  They were very supportive and understanding and drove me
back to collect a few clothes.  After that I slept on their sofa for
six weeks.  I found a new job, a well-paid secretarial post with
Foxbury Vauxhall in Redhill.  I never went back to my flat after that.
I didn't even miss it.  I believed I'd done the right thing, even
though I didn't know what the future held.

I'd only been with my aunt for a couple of days when she said to me,
Angie, it's time you were born again."  She told me how she and my
uncle and various other relatives had become Christians.  a short while
before.  I had no Opening doors idea!  The only one who wasn't born
again' was my cousin Susan.

My aunt invited me to go along with them to their church.  I went and
met the pastor the man who is now my husband.  I was introduced to him
but he didn't shake my hand, which I thought was strange at the time.
He told me much later that as he reached out his hand to shake mine, he
withdrew it quickly because he caught a glimpse of all the pain inside
me and he knew that he would frighten me.  I don't know whether he
would have frightened me or not, but I was immediately impressed by
this man.

I soon felt at home among the people at the church.

They made me very welcome and I enjoyed going to the services on Sunday
as well as meetings during the week for prayer and Bible study.

I settled into the area very quickly and before long I was invited to
share a house with another girl who worked at Foxbury.  So I moved out
of my aunt and uncle's house and started to settle down again.

I loved the church Fellowship.  And I learnt to pray in a group.  This
was a new experience for me.  For a while it felt strange sharing my
friend Jesus with other people; but as I heard their stories I realized
I wasn't the only person he'd helped recently.  They were keen to tell
other people about their faith, so I learnt to do the same and it
wasn't long before I was walking up to people in the street, complete
strangers, and saying, Can I pray for you?"  It was wonderful.  I'd say
to people I met, You look so unhappy, let me pray for you," and they
did' I was bursting to tell my story and share with other people what
Jesus had done for me.

I was also hungry to learn more about God, and it was at this time that
I bought my first Bible.  I bought myself a Under the influence copy of
the New International Version and a couple of marker pens.  Every spare
moment I had I spent with Jesus, praying and reading my Bible.  I still
enjoyed his company more than anybody else's and the more I got to know
him, the better and stronger I felt.

Things were going well for me.  But I was concerned at being so far
away from my Chay and Bonita.  Not that Redhill is so far from Sutton,
but it was the furthest I'd ever been from them.  Gradually, though, I
was beginning to trust that God had everything in hand.  I trusted him
implicitly and I could see that good things were happening in my life.
After all, he'd moved me to Redhill, and I could see that there must be
a reason for it, so I started to relax and wait.

I was surrounded by people who loved me for who I was.  I had a good
job and I was being paid quite well.  My goal was still to secure the
children.  Everything I did was motivated with the thought that when I
find them, when I see them, I'm going to be sober and well.  I became
obsessed with getting stronger and stronger.~ I kept telling myself I
had to do better in fact I almost caused myself never to sleep.  Maybe
I was setting myself impossible targets, but this time I was determined
I wasn't going to blow it again.  I'd come so close so many times
before.

This time things had to have a better ending.

I felt I had to prove that I'd changed for good.  If my mother should
ever see me I had to be exactly the opposite of what she'd seen before.
I had to get as high as I could and be as well as I could, live in the
best house I could and never have a dish not washed up or the floor not
cleaned.  I think I overdid things here, because I did make myself
quite ill with too much effort!  But in going all out to get my
children back, I was instinctively building my de fences against
attack.

It took me a while to realize that I didn't have to do that any more,
because now I had Jesus they had to get through him be fire they got to
me.  Old habits die hard, and I was having to learn that now I had
Jesus to help me, he would be the one who would do the fighting for me.
I didn't have to depend on my own wits any more.  All I had to do was
give him my problems and pain, and my desire to see my children again,
and let him sort it out.  How often we strive to make things happen
when all we need to do is ask God to help us, and then wait and watch
for him to act.

-One night in August 1987, not long after I'd joined the Fellowship,
Pastor David came to see me.  We talked and he asked me to tell him my
story.  After listening for a long time he gently said, God is the God
of loneliness, God is a God of love and God is a God of reconciliation.
Do you l~elieve this?"

All I know is, he'll cry if I drink again," I replied.

So David took me through the Bible and showed me verses to reassure me
that the things he said were not his own ordeals and empty hopes, but
rather God's promises to his children.  Then he prayed with me.  He
said, Let's pray now for God to give you your children back."  I almost
didn't want to pray this, just in case it didn't happen, because then
I'd have to blame God for not ~keeping his promises.  It seemed too
direct, too black and white.  But we did pray, and then David left.

After he'd gone, I thought about his words and they ~rang true to me. I
Ibund myself wanting to believe them.  I went upstairs, opened my Bible
and started to read: Knock and the door will be opened to you' (Matthew
7:7).

~ Today I describe myself quite often as a Jack Russell Christian': I
grab a verse and shake it to death and I don't

let go.  My jaws are locked around it and I just hang onto it until
I've got everything out of it.  Well, as I read this verse it leapt off
the page at me.

I'd gone to bed at about eleven o'clock and knew I had to leave for
work at seven in the morning, but I knelt by my bed and prayed right
through the night until it was time to go to work.  And I prayed with
my arm up in the air, banging for hours on a door I couldn't see.  I
didn't just pray the words, I did what they said.

As I knocked on that door I soon understood why I'd never directly
asked God for the children back before.  It was because I was so
ashamed.  Then, before I knew it, I was weeping and confessing
everything to God and telling him all about the children.  I remember
saying to him, I'm so sorry for what I've done to them."  I begged him
to forgive me for all the wrong things I'd done and I promised him that
if he gave me Chay and Bonita back I'd teach them all about him.

I confessed everything that night, and drew up my agreements with God
before having a shower and leaving for work.  Fortunately I was able to
come home early because we worked a flexitime system.  I was exhausted
after praying and crying all night.

As I opened the front door of our house at about half past four that
afternoon, I could hear the phone ringing.

I picked it up and it was Pam.  Angie," she said to me, you'd better
sit down."

I thought one of the kids had been hurt.  What's happened?  Tell me,
what's happened?"  I cried.

Are you sitting down?"  she said.

Yes."

Angie," she said, Chayis here."  It was scarcely 10 hours since I'd
finished praying!  He wants to see you," Pam told me.  Can you come
round to our house quickly?"

fOURTEEN

Chay and David

Pam had kept in touch with Chay and Bonita for me over the years and
she'd given me news about them during the time I was unable to see
them.  It had been difficult for her.  She couldn't tell them she'd
seen me, as this would have caused even more upset within the family.

Sometimes, though, she'd given them presents from me but pretended they
were from her.  To this day I don't know how she managed to keep our
meetings a secret from the rest of the family; but she did and I'll
always be grateful to her for her loyalty, love and support.

But Chay realized somehow that Pam knew where I was.  That night he'd
gone to my sister's house and pleaded with her to phone me.  By this
time he was 16 years old, legally free to decide fur himself who he
wanted to live with, and he wanted to speak to me now!

I could tell from Pam's voice that there was a sense of urgency.  I had
to get round there as fast as I could.  Who would take me?  I was so
tired from spending the previous night praying, but now a surge of
adrenalin rushed through me and I sprang into action.  I rang for a
taxi and paced impatiently up and down until it came.  I felt
overwhelmed about Chay, but there was no time to

stop and think, to take in the moment I had to get moving!

The taxi arrived and I jumped in before it had properly ground to a
halt.  All the way to Pam's house I prayed out loud!  That poor taxi
driver I'm surprised he didn't take me straight to Netherne Hospital.
Please God, put the right words in my mouth," I prayed.  Please God,
don't let my brothers find him before I get there.  Oh God, please
don't let him leave.  Oh God, please don't let my mum find him.  Oh
God, please."

It was dangerous for Chay to have done this and it was brave of Pam to
let him stay with her and then ring me.

After all these years, was this the moment I'd been living for?  Surely
nothing would go wrong now?  He wants to see me ... I had to keep
reminding myself.  Hurry, hurry!"

I urged the driver.

At last we arrived at Pam's.  I ran up the stairs, burst through the
door, and there was Chay.

When I'd last held him he'd been a little boy.  Nowhere he was, 16
years old and six foot three inches tall.  It hadn't occurred to me
that he would be so big!  I was dumbstruck and couldn't speak to him.
Chay got up from the sofa, walked over to me and threw his arms round
me.

Oh mum," he said, it must have been so hard for you."

He'd been through hell for years, yet in an instant he forgave me.

We clung to each other for several minutes.  It was a dream come true
for me.  I cuddled him and held him and stroked his face; I couldn't
let go of him!  And he kept telling me he loved me.

But we had to think quickly.  Chay had run away from my mother's house
and he didn't want to go back.  He'd come to find me, he said, and now
he was never going to leave me again.  But he was so frightened of my
brothers coming to find him: He even carried a knife in his pocket, and
a spoon which he'd sharpened on one side like a razor.  He'd learnt how
to fight and look after himself.

(Within three months he'd thrown these weapons out and carried a Bible
instead.  I kept my promise to God.)

Where were we to go that night?  I rang Pastor David and told him what
had happened.  After all, it was his prayer that had been answered! I'm
in trouble here," I told him.  I can't take Chay back to my place
because I only have one room."  David told me to bring him over to
their house.  By the time we got there, another friend had heard about
Chay coming to find me and she was waiting at David's house to take us
to her own home in Reigate, where Chay could have a room of his own.

Much later that night, after talking and talking, we decided we just
had to snatch a few hours sleep.  It had been an exhausting 24 hours. I
fbund I couldn't sleep, however.  I crept into Chay's room and sat by
his bed for the rest of the night listening to him breathe.  I was so
scared that if I went away he'd stop.  I did that night after night.
Every time he went out of the house I was on my knees, praying.  Oh
God, please don't let my brothers find him let him be all right."  He
was the most prayed-for kid!

Chay had recently left school and found himself a casual job.  He never
went back to my mother's house.  We lay on the floor ibr hours in the
evenings reading the Bible together.  Before long Chay became a
Christian and my pastor baptized him.

We rang the social services and the social worker who was originally
involved in arranging for Chay to be looked after by my mother came to
visit us.  He sat on the sofa and listened quietly while we told him
our story.  He told me how sorry he was about everything that had
happened to me and the children during the past 10 years.

Then Chay asked to speak to him alone, so I left the room for a few
minutes.  When they called me back in, I could see Chay had been crying
and the social worker looked concerned and upset.  He just said again
that he was so very, very sorry.  Chay never told me about their
conversation, except to say that he had it in his heart that no child
should be parted from his mum in the way he had been.

I believe that when I came to the Lord it broke the power of the
generational sin in our family, and my children were set free too.  We
had freed ourselves from the trap of years and years of dysfunctional
family life, which had simply been passed down through whole
generations without any means of escape.  And I believe that when Chay
became a Christian he was cut off from the effects of his past and so
was able to look back on his life without any bitterness.

He wanted to tell all the young people he met who were also from
unhappy families: look what's happened to me, I've got my mum back.  He
used to bring people home if they had alcoholic mothers or fathers;
he'd even bring the alcoholics home as well!  He'd walk through the
door and say, I'm just going upstairs to get changed, mum.  Tell him
how to get sober!"  And somebody I'd never met before would walk into
the kitchen.  Chay had such faith in me that I could do the job in the
time it took him to changel He was so proud of me, and he told
everybody about me.

His one sadness was that he'd had to leave Bonita at home with my
mother.  But he'd had no choice.  Bonita was only 14 then.  He knew he
couldn't take her away from her legal guardian at that age unless he
had a place for her to live.  So he had to leave first to find a home
for both of them, otherwise she would simply have been fuund and sent
straight back.  That would have been even worse for her because she
would have been punished by my mother and brothers for running away.
Chay had worked all that out and considered the risks before putting
his plan into action.

For the time being the two of us settled down with my friend Jan in her
house in Reigate.  We went about our various jobs during the day and
met in the evening, often going to the church for prayer meetings or
Bible studies.

Life started to settle down and Chay and I were so happy to be
reunited.  We were just longing for Bonita to join us.

A few months later, however, our happiness was shattered.  Our pastor's
wiTh, Pat, died in a traffic accident leaving live little children.

I loved Pat.  It was Pat who had opened her door to Chay and me that
first evening when it looked as if we had nowhere to go, even though
she already had 22 people living in her house!  She was the kind of
person who would try and do anything for anybody.  Pat was an Irish
lady who could love the most difficult person, who could argue
furiously, and who occasionally became extremely angry.  She was full
of sudden enthusiasms.  If she suddenly fdll in love with pot plants,
the house would be filled with them within a week.  If she went off
them, they were gone in two seconds.  She was a passionate woman.

She was generous, too, but she was generous to the point K that she
wore herself into the ground.  Pat tried to be a good pastor's wiTh,
but people still criticized her.  I can't help ~kcling that if people
had given her more support she would still be alive today.  As it was,
in a fit of exhausted despair and~a flash of anger, a minor incident
led to her death.

~ Her husband, David, had given up his previous job to run the church,
so Pat became the breadwinner and had a

full-time job as a nurse working night duty at a local hospital.  She
was still trying to give out help to others during the day, but I don't
think she had anything left, she was so tired.

On the day of the accident she and David were giving a birthday party
barbecue for Luke, one of their five children.  David was cooking the
food when it was noticed that a beefburger was not quite cooked enough
and Pat took it out of the child's hand.  A row followed and David - I
know what he's like, I've been married to him fur 11 years: he won't
row walked away and got into the car.  As he was reversing out of the
drive, Pat opened the back door and jumped in.  She really wanted him
to have a row with her, but he wouldn't.

They had travelled about two miles down the road when Pat said, If you
don't stop the car I'm going to jump out."  Then she did open the car
door.  David immediately looked in his mirror and saw her lying in the
road.

She died the next day in the Atkinson Morley Hospital.  It was a tragic
accident.

The whole church was called to a meeting the night that Pat died.  I
was there with Chay.  An accusation was made against David and I
suddenly frIt afraid.  At first I didn't understand what was wrong, but
then I realized quite clearly that Jesus wasn't there.  For the first
time since becoming a Christian I felt Jesus wasn't with me.

I went outside and said, Where are you, Lord?"

I am where the children are crying," came the reply.

I didn't go back into that church meeting.  I got straight onto a bus
and went to David's house.  Chay came with me.  We went to see if we
could do anything to help.  We found the house in a mess.  The children
were distraught, and David was just sitting there in shock, drinking a
bottle of claret, oblivious to their needs, unable~

to help them.  All traces of family routine had broken down.  They were
all making themselves something-to eat as and when they were hungry.
David was just numb, and not in condition to look after the children on
his own.

Chay and I were glad that we'd been alerted to their need.

A few days later there was another shock.  Somebody made an anonymous
phone call to the police and accused David of having a sexual
relationship with one of his daughters.  David was arrested and taken
to the police station.  He was put in a cell for the night and his
clothes were taken away from him.  His daughter was also taken from the
house and questioned.  They proved pretty quickly that it was a false
accusation and apologies were made, but an accusation like that always
has to be investigated.  It was enormously distressing fur all
concerned, especially as the family was already struggling to come to
terms with Pat's death.

I started going to David's house every day after I'd ini shed work. 
I'd do the washing and generally help to keep the house clean and tidy.
I carried on like this fur about nine months, by which time the
children would get very ispeet when I left to go back to my own home,
especially ~Katy and Damian, the youngest children.  Some nights I
~dept with them in their bedroom because they were so -distraught.  It
didn't take long befure this caused gossip, but <I didn't care.  I knew
I wasn't doing anything wrong and I just couldn't leave them like that,
I just couldn't.

During this time, I fell more and more in love with the whole family
and so did Chay.  On his way home from work each evening he'd buy a big
bag of penny sweets.

~The shopkeeper must have dreaded the sight of him because it took so
long to count them all out' But he'd come home with his pockets full of
sweets, take charge of the children and watch television with them.  He
loved them and they loved him.  They were like his brothers and sisters
and he spoiled them.

I may have been organizing the household very efficiently, but by now
my emotions were in turmoil.  I'd walk up the road saying, Oh God,
what's going on?"  I knew I was in love with David and I just kept
falling more and more in love with him but I couldn't say anything to
him.  How could I when the whole family was still in pain from Pat's
death?  Chay.  knew he knew straight away.

Mum," he said, you're in love," and that made me feel guilty because
he'd only just got me back.  But I needn't have worried about Chay's
feelings being hurt.  It's all right," he told me, don't worry, I love
him too."

I couldn't tell if David was in love with me.  He was still very
introverted, still sitting there crying a lot.  He'd weep for hours and
hours, or sit slumped, eating a curry and drinking claret, although
he'd never been a drinking man until then.  He had no will to do
anything and he very rarely got dressed.  He hadn't just lost his wife,
he'd also lost his job as pastor of the church: he'd lost his whole
life in one blow and everyone he thought he could trust had deserted
him.  People he'd loved and helped were pointing the finger at him.
Well, I'd experienced that for years and I wasn't going to do that to
him.  I knew what it was like to be on that side of the table.

All this time I kept my job on, but Chay and I moved to a flat in
Horley so we could be nearer to David and the children.  That way we
could stay with them a little longer each night, but it was still
getting to be quite an endless toil of rushing to work and rushing home
to help out and get everything done.  It was far from plain sailing. Of
those five children, one had cerebral palsy, another was profoundly
deaf.  They had all lost their mother.  When I thought of the mess my
life had been in just a short time before, I was amazed at God.  Who
would have thought that I could help anyone?

Sometimes I'd look at Chay and wonder what he was thinking.  Was he
really happy?  We didn't have that much time to ourselves any more, and
we'd been together such a short time.  He came out to the kitchen one
day and we were sitting there on our own when he said to me, Mum, come
on, let me get you out of this.  I'll look after you.

You don't really need this."  I just cried and cried.  Then, as we were
talking, Katy came into the kitchen.  She slipped her hand into Chay's
and he looked at me without saying anything more.  I knew then that he
didn't want to go anywhere else, whatever he might say about taking me
away.  He'd fallen in love with them too.

About nine months after we started helping David and his children, I
was sitting and praying about howl felt and thinking that I'd really
have to start easing myself out of the situation.  David came in and we
sat in the kitchen chatting.  After a while Luke came into the room. He
would have been 10 years old then.  Luke is profoundly deaf and there
are no grey areas when you're deaf, everything is black and white he'd
never hear our small talk and all the innuendoes of everyday chit-chat.
 He always went straight to the point.

So that evening he came into the kitchen, walked straight over to his
father and picked up David's left hand.

David had taken to wearing his wedding ring on his little ~finger and
Luke pulled it off.  He walked over to me and put the ring on my
wedding finger.  Then, turning to his ~father, he said, You know, she
is my mummy now."  And with that he walked out of the room.

I didn't know what to say.  I just sat there flabbergasted  Then David
said, I didn't know how to tell you howl felt!"

Luke came back a little while later and asked, Are you going to get
married now?"

"Yes," said David.  "It was all light from that moment on.  He stopped
drinking claret, stopped eating curries, and started to get himself
back in order.  He had something to live fur again.

It was as though he'd just woken up from a long dream.

As Luke had said in his own very direct way, How long are you going to
sit there?  Can't you see what God is giving you?"  So just as I was
praying and planning to ease my way out of the situation, everything
seemed to fall into place and I stayed where I was!

I'm sometimes asked how, after all I've suffered at the hands of men, I
could trust my emotions enough to fall in love again, let alone
consider getting married.  But I just couldn't help it.  I'd never
known anyone like David before.  He was so different.

I'd never known anybody love God the way David loved him.  I'd never
seen a man be so hurt at the hands of other people.  This man had loved
and trusted people and they had kicked him in the teeth.  That I could
identify with.  We shared a mutual understanding and experience in that
area.  And I'd finally met a man for whom I had immense respect,
especially for the way he conducted himself throughout the time before
we were married.

There was just one problem, however: I'd never divorced my first
husband, Dick, whom I hadn't seen for 16 years.  I struggled with this
question of divorce because I wanted to do everything right biblically.
The process took a long time and we had to wait nearly two years before
we could be married.

Chay was very excited about the wedding.  We were to be married in the
June of 1989 and-he was going to give me away.  In the meantime we all
lived together.  That way it was easier to look after the children.  I
slept in an upstairs loom with Katy and Damian, while Chay slept
downstairs ~with Joey and Luke.  Also in the house were some other
people we were caring for.  It was very busy!

~Dy then Chay had a job working for the East Surrey Hospital.  He was
the warehouse man in charge of uniforms, dressings, and so on in f~ct
everything that had to be supplied to the hospital.  His job was to
make sure the warehouse was kept well stocked and to reorder as items
ran out.

We spent our second Christmas together and Chay went back to work two
days after the Christmas festivities had finished.  There were still
six months to go before the wedding.  I saw him off to work that
morning.  He took a whole Black Forest gateau with him for his lunch
and I'd made him some beef sandwiches.  You're one in a million, mum!"
he said to me as he left.  I'm sure it was only because of the Black
Forest gateau!  I watched him go, thinking how much I loved my son.

I wondered sometimes if he minded sharing me with all the other
children.  But he didn't.  Instead he asked me,

Do you mind sharing me with them?"  He was lovely.  And he loved God so
much.  He lived to evangelize.  He'd been to a couple of John Wimber
conferences where his enthusiasm to share his faith had been set on
fire.

He'd changed so much in the short time we'd been together.  When I
first brought him back to live with me, he had a knife and a sharpened
spoon in his pocket.  He'd been involved with a gang in Mitcham who
were quite ruthless and violent.  He'd had quite a lot to do with
spiritualism too, but within a few weeks he was lying on the floor
reading the Bible with me.  After that he didn't take the knife with
him when he went out he took pockets full of tracts instead.

I went out evangelizing on the streets with him one day before that
Christmas and watched as one chap ran off up the road because he didn't
want to listen to him.  Chay ran up the road after him.  I think the
man thought he was going to be mugged, because Cimywasso tail!  Well,
Chay caught up with that man and pinned him against the wall, and I'll
never forget what he said: You could be dead tomorrow, so you need to
listen to what I'm telling you."

But Chay was dead before that man was.

fIFTEEN

Death blows

We had such a short time together, Chay and I just 18 months.  When we
were together in the evenings we enjoyed each other's company and
chatted for hours.

We were both hungry to know what the other had been through during the
10 years we'd been apart.  We became good friends and very much at ease
with each other.  This was a constant source of amazement to me.  I
kept expecting -Chay to show flashes of anger or disappointment at the
unhappiness I'd caused him and Bonita.  I thought he'd ask me a lot of
painful questions.

Every day at the beginning I waited for him to say,

Why, mum?  Why did you do it?"  But not Chay: he didn't want to hurt me
and add to the guilt that I already felt so acutely.

He told me he'd spent the past 10 years waiting to be 16 years old,
because then he was going to come and find me.  From the moment we were
parted he'd decided that eventually he was going to look after me. We'd
been extremely close when he was very young and it was a bond that
never broke, despite everything that had happened.

Chay had been six when I was taken to Holloway prison, old enough to
remember his early life with me.  But

Bonita was two years younger, and her memories of me must quite
naturally have faded more quickly.

Chay described to me how, when he was alone in bed at night, he
secretly thought about his plans, counting off the years and months
still to go before he reached 16.

He'd dream about coming to look for me.  Maybe that had been his way of
dealing with the pain of separation.

As I listened to him, I remembered howl had pined for my children in
prison.  I thought of my friend Margaret who'd attempted suicide
because she couldn't bear being parted from her children.  listening to
Chay made me realize that he'd gone through his own deep valley of fear
ai~1 llmcetainty, not knowing when or if he was going to u~ 14 my$~er
igain.  What had he told his friends at ~ lw~M~d ~1~hear~bini describe
how he'd hidden those plans and secrets in his heart often moved me to
tears.  And worse than that, I felt the heavy weight of guilt, because
it was me who had caused his pain.  He'd done nothing wrong;

he and Bonita were the unfortunate victims of my ii led relationships,
my agoraphobia, my drug addiction and alcoholism.  If only it had been
a bad dream and I could have woken and found that it wasn't like that
at all!  Whilst I'd been full of feelings of despair and self.  pity
experiencing the frustration of never knowing if I was ever going to be
believed and helped, Chay and Bonita were serving their own sentence.
Talking with Chay then, I had to &ce the stark reality of their
suffering too.

How could he forgive me so willingly?  I didn't deserve his love and
generosity; he had every reason to despise me.  But he didn't, and I
gratefully accepted his love.  It was like a soothing oil being gently
poured into the deep wounds of my heart and mind.  He brought such
peace and reassurance into my life.  I loved him so much I was amazed
that it was possible to love somebody as much as I loved Chay during
those 18 months we were together!

His ambition had always been to provide a place for the three of us to
live together again as a family.  He understood why he had to wait
until he was 16 to make any move.  He told me he'd often been tempted
to run away and take Bonita with him.  But the thought of being caught
and returned to live with my mother and brothers frightened him too
much.  For a child he was very mature in his thinking he instinctively
knew it would only make life much worse for them all.

He didn't tell me much about what actually happened to him during the
years we'd spent apart.  I've found out since.

He wanted us to start a new life together in every respect.  When he
became a Christian his own new life just took off1.  He became a
fearless evangelist.  He met an evangelist at Spring Harvest called
Lindsey Hamon who became a role model for him.  Lindsey had undertaken
several long walks of witness carrying a wooden cross and Chay was
overwhelmed by this man and his faith so overwhelmed that he invited,
or rather cajoled, him to come and have a meal with us.  Poor Lindsey
arrived to be confronted by this huge family of strangers, not quite
knowing why he was there.  But he had a gentle and humorous personality
and we quickly relaxed and enjoyed each other's company.  Little did I
realize then what that first meeting was going to lead to for me.

Chay decided he wanted to do what Lindsey had done:

he wanted to build a cross and walk with it round the whole coast of
Britain.  Over the next few weeks he discussed his ideas with Lindsey,
who was enthusiastic and encouraged him to make his plans and go
ahead.

Chay had applied, and been accepted, to join the Fire Brigade after his
eighteenth birthday.  It had always been his ambition to be a fireman.
In fact, as a child he'd had a rather unhealthy fascination with fire.
He once admitted to me that while he'd been living with my mother, he
sometimes stole personal items belonging to her and burnt them.  He'd
done this on several occasions, usually after she'd said something bad
about me.  I think he felt that joining the Fire Brigade would channel
those tendencies into something positive!

It was arranged that he would resign from his job at the hospital at
the end of the year, spend the next three months walking round the
entire coastline of Great Britain with the wooden cross he'd made, and
then he would join the Fire Brigade in March 1989, just after his
eighteenth birthday.

He wasn't just going to walk with the cross for the sake of it.  He
intended to say to every child he met on the streets: Have you got a
problem at hQme?  Do your parents not love you?  Does your mum drink?
Because if you have, I know a man who can help you."  He'd drawn up his
plans and built his cross, but he died before he could start the
walk.

With just a few days still to go at the hospital before he left, he
went back to work on 28 December, with his Black Forest gateau and beef
sandwiches, and I'd watched him go without a qualm.  At about 11
o'clock in the morning two policemen arrived at the house.  I was
outside tidying up the front garden.

Do you know where Mrs.  Boorer lives?"  they asked me.

I'm Mrs.  Boorer," I said.

Does Chay Boorer live here?"

Yes."

Have you got somebody with you?"  said one policeman.

By this time I was starting to get frightened.  I wanted them to tell
me what was wrong, but I feared they had something awful to tell me.
Where is my son?"  I said to them.  Tell me where my son is."

Then one of them said, He's dead, love."

Dead?"  I said.  No, it's a mistake.  He's gone to work.

Where is he?  What's happened?"

Butthey just repeated, He's dead, love; he's dead, he's dead."

I don't remember any more.  David was upstairs asleep in bed because
he'd taken a job as a night porter to earn a little money and had been
out all night.  I ran up the stairs screaming.  David heard the
commotion and was on the landing by the time I'd reached the top of the
stairs.  He went downstairs and the policemen told him what had
happened.  They asked us to go with them to the hospital to identify
Chay.

By this time some more policemen had arrived and we were taken in a
police car to Grawley Hospital.  We were asked to take a seat in the
waiting area of the casualty department.  I'd given Chay a signet ring
for his seventeenth birthday.  A doctor wearing a green gown came out
to see us and he was holding this ring.  He put it in David's hand.
Then I realized it was true.  As I looked at that ring I knew it had
been taken from Chay's hand and he was dead.

Would you come with me?"  said the doctor.  We walked in a silent
procession down a long corridor.  I remember there were pipes running
along the walls, and I thought it would never end.  Why is it that
morgues always seem to be in the bowels of the earth?

By the time we were halfway down this corridor, my own doctor, who is a
Christian, had caught up with us.

We stopped at a door.  Someone opened it and we were ushered into a
cold, white room.  There in the middle was a table with a body covered
in a shroud.  An orderly pulled back the cover to reveal Chay's face.

Is this your son?"  they asked me.  I looked at him.

There was a policeman guarding him, and it all seemed so unreal.  I
walked over to Chay.

All the way down the corridor I'd been praying, In the name of Jesus,
get up, in the name of Jesus get up."  I'd made up my mind that I was
going to say to Chay, Get up in the name of Jesus and breathe."

But when I stood close to him he looked so white.

I put out my hand and stroked his face.  He felt so cold.

I dim bed up onto the table and lay down beside him.  I couldn't tell
him to come back.  I looked at his face and for the first time in his
life he was in a place where he was at peace.  He was with Jesus.  I
tried to say, Get up in the name of Jesus."  But what came out was,
Thank you for giving him to me, God, and I give him back to you."

I didn't want to say that.  I wanted to tell him to get up, but I
couldn't.  I sat with him for a while.  He still had the clothes on
that I'd bought him for Christmas.  They had emptied all his pockets
and given me his belongings, including a tract he'd been carrying
around with him, I still have it.  It had a picture of a tombstone on
the front and the words, I expected this, but not yet."  Inside it
said, If you need any further information, contact Chay."

He'd been handing these out to people on the streets just that
morning.

They told me how the accident had happened.  Chay had climbed up onto
the platform of a forklift truck driven by a friend, just to say hello.
But as he'd stepped up his foot had knocked his friend's foot and moved
the control that makes the truck go forwards or backwards.  It jumped
violently backwards, and Chay was thrown off and crushed against a
wall.

It was odd, I reflected.  David and I had been joined by death first
the death of his wife, and now the death of my son.  When I was a
little girl I'd lived just a couple of houses away from David, although
I hadn't known it.

And when my marriage to Dick had started to break down, when I was
living in Brixton, David had lived just down the road from me, although
I hadn't known that either.  It wasn't until all those years later that
we met, when we needed each other most.

I felt I had nothing left to live for when Chay died.

I thought I would die too.  At first I couldn't believe it.  God had
given him back to me and everything had been so wonderful.  I
remembered the first few nights after Chay and I had been reunited,
when I sat by his bed and listened to him breathe.  I couldn't believe
then that God had given him back to me.  It took me a long time to
relax and not worry about him every time he went out.

People would say, Trust God, he hasn't given him back just to take him
away again."  But I thought even then that was the most stupid thing
anyone can ever say, because who knows what's going to happen?  I think
we should spend every day giving all the love we can.  Who can tell how
long any of us have left to live?

I didn't have Chay for long, just 18 months, but I showed him as much
love as I could in that short time.  I didn't take one day fur granted
and I'm glad of that now

People have asked me whether the shock of Chay's death caused my faith
in God to waver.  It didn't, not for one minute.  I just fell into God.
I had nothing else.  He was there and I dived in.  I was in a terrible
state for weeks, but

I remember that the first night after Chay died I fell asleep praying
and I woke up the next morning still on my knees.

I didn't understand why this accident had happened, but I knew it
wasn't God's fault.  All I could do was run to the only friend I knew,
the one who had never let me down, and say to him, Please hold me."
He'd held me since he'd first found me and had never put me down.

Even before Chay died, I'd started to realize that there had to be a
reason why God had spared my lift.  There had been so many ~occasions
when I could easily have died or been killed.  I think it started to
occur to me as I was falling in love with David.  I had Chay back and
people were starting to depend on me.

For years I'd let people down.  I'd been drunk.  I'd been stoned.  I'd
always been in a mess.  I'd been unreliable.  But now I got up every
morning to see those five little faces at the breakfast table, some
mornings crying for their mum, other mornings happy and chirpy.  Some
nights I'd tuck them up crying, too, but other nights I'd tuck them up
giggling.  They needed me, and Chay had needed me too.

In the 18 months with Chay I'd regained a great deal of courage and
strength.  He'd helped me, there was no doubt about it.  Through Chay,
God had given me hope.

because I discovered that during the long years we'd been parted, he'd
never forgotten me.  That's forgiveness.

That's the story of the cross.  It all comes down to someone forgiving
you.

After Chay died, David and I weren't sure whether to go ahead with our
wedding, which we'd planned for June.

But Chay had been so excited about this wedding.  I was going to walk
down the aisle on his arm and he was going to give me away.  He'd loved
and respected David so much, and I know he'd loved the kids as well. So
we decided we would go ahead.

In recent months David had been looking unwell and was in considerable
pain.  In fact, that Christmas Chay had given David all his bonus
money, 80, so that he could go to an osteopath and receive some
treatment for the pain in his neck.

After Chay's funeral, and despite the increased pain that David was
experiencing, we started to organize our wedding in a way that included
Chay.  We were married legally' in Reigate registry office one day, and
the next day were married properly' (the day I considered to be our
wedding day) in Horley Church.

The reception was held at home.  I prepared it all myself and we served
the food in Chay's room just to make him as big a part of the
celebration as we possibly could.  We ordered dozens of red roses and
had a picture of Chay enlarged and put in a china frame that we hung
above the wedding cake.

Dozens of friends came to our reception.  Then, after a long but happy
day, David and I drove wearily off to Norfolk to spend our honeymoon in
a cottage some friends had arranged for us to enjoy for two weeks.

David collapsed for the first time on our wedding night.  We'd only
just arrived at.  the cottage.  He was in so much pain.  Somebody who
didn't know I was an alcoholic had left out two bottles of champagne to
greet us.

Desperate for something to help him, I said to David,

Well, I hope you're ready for this, because I'm going to
teachyouhowtodrinknow!"  Itwas alllhadto take him awayfromthepain.
Inhalfanhourhedrankbothbottles of champagne.  I carried him up the
stairs to the bedroom, where he passed out and slept until the next
morning, when I managed to find a doctor.

During the first couple of months after the wedding, David was in
constant pain and regularly collapsed.  He was finally diagnosed as
having cancer.  There was a tumour as big as a grapefruit at the top of
his spine.

sIXTEEN

God's arms are long enough

Early married life was not at all what we were expecting it to be.
David soon became very ill and three months after our wedding he was no
longer even able to walk.  It was to be another two and a half years
before he walked again.  Within the space of nine months we had buried
Chay, got married, and now my husband was paralysed and fighting for
his life.

I think David was more devastated than I was.  The one thing he dreaded
in all the world had now happened to him.  For years he had harboured a
fear of one day being paralysed and having to be dependent on another
human being for everything, with all the loss of personal privacy that
entailed.  I knew he had this horror because he'd shared it with me
from the time we started to become close.

Once the full extent of the tumour was realized, a way had to be found
of eradicating it.  David had a type of cancer that couldn't be
operated on.  So it had to be treated using chemotherapy, and later
with radiotherapy.

It took months.  But that was good news, because when he was first
admitted to hospital he was given only three days to live!

When we were first told the prognosis we felt absolutely desperate.
David had gone into hospital thinking he had a slipped disc.  But an
X-ray showed otherwise.  We were immediately told that the situation
was very serious.  The tumour was inoperable and probably fatal. David,
in particular, felt that death had become a personal enemy which just
wouldn't leave us alone.  In a matter of weeks his blushing bride had
become a potentially grieving widow.

He wanted to tell me the news himself and persuaded a ward sister to
let us use a private room so that we could smoke.  David hadn't smoked
for years, but he didn't think he could get through this without one,
and he didn't think I could either!

After he'd told me I didn't really know what to say.  I asked him if
there was anything he'd like me to do and he said he'd like me to wash
his hair.  So, without more words passing between us, I calmly washed
his hair beftre leaving to catch the bus home.  I'll never forget that
day.

For the past few months we'd been attending a Vineyard church in
south-west London.  John Mumford was our pastor and became a very close
friend.  On the day Ghay was killed, by the time we returned home after
identi1~ring his body in the morgue, John had arrived to be with us.  I
don't know who told him or how he got there so quickly, but we were
glad of his company then.

And he was there again when I received the news that David was probably
going to die.  We met on the old stone steps outside the hospital.
Ang," he said, we've got to stop meeting like this!"  We sat down
together and he said,

I don't know how to pray."

I loved him for saying that he's so honest.  He was just the same when
Chay died.  He didn't come out with a lot of words, he just sat there
and said to me, I don't know what to say to you."  That was real to me,
because that was howl kIt; I could cope with that.  But now here we
were again, and this time it was David.  As we sat together on those
stone steps and prayed, I asked God for a Golden Wedding!

At first David felt sure he was going to die and I think he was
mentally preparu~g himself for that.  He suddenly found he was afraid
of death once it was staring him in the face.  But we were able to talk
and pray about it, and it wasn't long before that fear went.

Then he used to phone me sometimes during the night and beg me to let
him die.  He'd say, You've got to let me go.  For God's sake, give me
permission to die.  I've got to go."

That was the worst part of the illness.  I could handle everything
else.  I'd say, No, I'm not going to let you go."

And he'd reply, Please, I can't take any more."  I didn't want him to
die, but I didn't want him to suffer either and the emotional trauma of
that for both of us was enormous.  I started to feel guilty.  Was I
being selfish?

I tried to persuade myself that he'd be better off dead and I should
let him go in peace.  But I couldn't.  I loved him too much and
wouldn't entertain the idea of being parted from him.  So death was not
an option.  Rather, I found I had the faith to pray for his complete
healing.

Once I'd reached that point and come to the unshakeable conclusion that
such a thing was possible, I found a huge strength returning to my mind
and body.  I was able to get on with life and do all that was required
calmly and confidently.

But I knew it was hard for David.  He was lying helpless at the very
time he wanted to be a support to me.  Despite having recently lost
Chay, I was now trying to be the new mum to David's five children,
while he could do nothing.

He was completely paralysed and I quickly had to learn how to care for
him, including his most basic needs:

manual bowel evacuation, cutting his toe nails, washing his legs, and
cleaning his groin to guard against infection.

It was round-the-clock care and I stopped work to look after him.

I also knew that the children were frightened.  They didn't want to
lose their dad we were agreed on that!

I was functioning totally on the strength that God was giving me each
day.  There was nobody else to help me.

Once again we'd become very isolated as a family.  David's illness
seemed to open up some old wounds and I was once more on the receiving
end of some painful accusations from other Christians.

I remember hearing Fiona Castle being asked on the radio what she'd
found the hardest thing to cope with after Roy's death, and she replied
that it was the anonymous letters she'd received.  I thought then: If I
could meet you now, Fiona, I'd hug you fur saying that.  Not many
people would admit they receive anonymous letters, which by their very
nature are always unkind and meant to wound.  But such letters were one
of the most painful things I had to endure at that time, and I couldn't
share my distress about them with David because he had enough to put up
with already.

I'd dread the postman coming up the drive.  Every day he'd deliver
three or fuur letters, all accusing me of being the whore who'd married
their pastor.  God had already killed my son, they suggested.  When was
I going to learn that David would die too unless I left and moved out
of the neighbourhood?  What made matters worse was that these letters
were often full of Scripture as well as hate, and that I fbund very
hard to take.

Despite all this, our days did start to settle into a routine.  Every
morning, after taking the children to school, I'd catch a bus to the
hospital and give David a bed bath.  The hospital was a number of miles
away and the journey took three hours each way.  I'd just get back to
Horley in time to collect the children from school in the afternoon.

They were always anxious to hear news of David and I had to reassure
them that he'd had a good day and was getting better and would soon be
home.  They clung to me after school.  They were worried about their
dad and I desperately wanted to give them the reassurance they needed. 
It wasn't that long ago that they'd lost their mum, and only a few
months since Chay had died.  They'd adored him too.

Every day I marvelled that God trusted me with these broken children to
look after.  Not only were two of them severely handicapped, but they'd
gone through all the emotions of bereavement twice in quick succession.
Who else but God would have chosen the drunk on the bench to take care
of them?

People will tell you you're no use.  But that's a lie because you are
the very one God will pick.  He will use everything you have learnt in
your pain and degradation.

He will turn you around and treat you like a king or queen and use you
to help other people.  Why?  Because you have suffered, you have
compassion.

There is no such thing as being written off.  I want to say to the
world it ~Ioesn't matter how low you fall, God's arms can reach you.

During this time, rather than crumbling inside like I used to, I was
discovering more and more potential within myself.  I wasn't reaching
for a drink, I wasn't even tempted!  No, I had to get up in the morning
and make sure the children were all right.  They needed me.  David also
depended on me to visit him in hospital and bath him and be with him
for a while.  I knew he lived for my visits.

It was a frenetic lifestyle, travelling to and fro, making sure I was
back to pick the children up on time.  But I was never late, not once.
I felt so encouraged because I could never have coped with this level
of responsibility befure.

Every day I just marvelled that God would even consider using me.  It's
strange to say it, but in the middle of so much that was painful, I
felt so happy!  I don't think the social workers would have picked me
to look after those five children, but God had.

So this was a very special time for me.  I matured in those weeks in
areas where I hadn't developed before.

God treated me gently, though he knew I was damaged.

When I looked at those five children, I thought how awesome my
situation had become.  I'd lost my whole family I'd thrown it all away.
I had no reason for anyone to trust me with five children.  Joey had
cerebral palsy;

Luke was profoundly deaf Suddenly David was out of the picture and I
was on my own with them.  Yet God was saying to me, I trust you."

I couldn't understand this!  I was so frightened that I'd do something
wrong or omit to do something that I drew up a daily job list.  I felt,
after he'd given me this opportunity, that I couldn't let God down.  If
somebody knocked at the door I wanted the place to look exactly right
it had to be perfect, there couldn't be a hair out of place.  So I
scheduled my time to the minute: 7.00 a.m."  get up, do the washing, do
this, do that, dig the garden; 4.00 p.m., cook the dinner, bath the
children, do the washing; and then at 11.00 p.m."  long after they'd
all gone to bed, I'd paint the hall, stairs and banisters!

I didn't feel tired, I was elated!  I must have been living on
adrenaline.  Little by little, I was achieving things I never thought I
could do.  I even set about reorganizing the house.  The kitchen was a
mess and in need of a face lift, so I ripped the existing cupboards
out, bought some wood and started to build some new cupboards.

I was so glad that Jesus was a carpenter, because he sat there in the
kitchen with me and I asked him what to do next.  I talked to him and
said, What do I do now?"  And he told me how to do it!  The ideas just
flowed into my mind.

I designed and measured, sawed and screwed, sanded and painted, and
gradually I put the fitted kitchen together.

I couldn't believe I was doing these things.  God had given me a second
chance, but I had to learn.  And as I learnt and trusted him, I could
feel myself changing.

One day I asked God, Why me?  I've failed at everything.  I was such a
mess.  How can you trust me?"  And he reminded me of an old film about
Thomas Alva Edison, the American who invented the electric light bulb,
starring Spencer Tracey.  Edison wanted to patent his light bulb and he
was working in a basement room with a group of his scientists.  Also in
the room was a little boy, with trousers just below his knees, and he
idolized Edison.  He was watching as Edison tried to get the light bulb
to work.

They had many failures, but finally they got the light to stay in the
light bulb.  Then Edison turned round and he gave this young boy the
light bulb and told him to carry it upstairs and take it to the patent
office.  Maybe because Edison had once been a newsboy on the railway,
he saw himself in this young lad.  The child's face shone: Edison had
spoken to him!  He was so excited.  But as he ran upstairs he tripped
and dropped the light bulb, which broke into a thousand pieces.

As I watched the replay of this film in my mind, I saw the child
sobbing with embarrassment as the scientists had to get back to work
and make another light bulb.

Finally, after several more attempts, they succeeded.

Edison took it in his hands, walked straight over to the boy and told
him to take it upstairs.

All the scientists said, Don't give it to him, he'll drop it."  But
Edison replied, He's the only one here that I know won't drop it."  And
I think God went to all that trouble to give the same message tome. I'd
made so many horrendous blunders in my life, committed so many
mistakes, but when I asked God to come and help me, he not only gave me
a fresh start, he recreated everything I'd failed at and this time he
walked through it with me.  I wasn't going to drop the precious gift
this time around.

Sometimes I was frightened I would fail.  But God has never once let me
down.

By marrying David I had, of course, become a stepmother, and everyone
knows this can lead to difficulties.

When I first started to get involved with the family, Louise, David's
eldest daughter, really resented me.

I suppose it was her way of being loyal to her mother.

I could see what was happening: her mum had just died, she was 18 years
old and felt grown up, she was very beautifril but very insecure at the
same time.

I think it would be friir to say that the relationship between Louise
and her mother had been a little bit distant just before Pat died.  I
think when that happens and someone dies it's natural to build a false
aura about them, where even the warts become beauty spots.

So Louise was hurting and frightened.  Part of her wanted to assume her
mother's responsibilities, but at the same time she wanted to be free
to go out.  She wanted clothes and all the other things that go with
being a girl of 18.  Louise and I had to work at our relationship and
sometimes the tension would mount.  On some occasions she'd stand
outside the house and swear and shout.  Or she'd collect the children
from school before me and then I wouldn't know where they were.

I said to God one day, Look, this is all very well, but I keep holding
out my hand and Louise keeps biting it.

Whatamlgoingtodo?"

Keep holding out your hand," he said to me, and when she eats up to
your shoulder she'll be close enough to kiss."  I thought that was
wonderful advice.

She did keep biting, but in the end she did get close enough to kiss.
She came in one day and just put her arms around me and gave me a kiss
on the cheek.  I'm really sorry," she said.  Today we have a good
relationship and we're very close.  She's my staunchest ally.  She's
always there, no matter what's wrong.  Louise is a diamond, and once
again I proved that God's word never fails.

One day I was at the hospital visiting David.  As usual the journey had
taken me three hours and I didn't have long with him before I had to
leave and get back to meet the children.  While I was there a nurse
approached me to say that one of David's doctors wanted to talk to me.
They were considering allowing David home to carry on his treatment and
they needed to show me how to give him his injections.

No sooner said than done they promptly fetched some needles and
syringes and started showing me, very slowly and deliberately, how to
give a mainline injection.  I could hardly keep a straight face.  There
was I, an ex-drug addict, being shown how to give a mainline injection
as if I'd never even seen a syringe before!

My surprise and amusement didn't end there, because then they asked me
to go to the pharmacy and collect David's prescription.  They were
planning to send him home the next day.  Later that afternoon I
travelled home on the bus with two bags of diamorphine, a box of
needles, a box of syringes and a sharps box' (for the used needles)!  I
sat on the bus thinking, I don't believe this."

If I'd met a policeman who knew my history he would never have believed
my explanation.  But to me, God was saying once again, I trust you."

The hospital wanted to make sure I was completely happy and confident
about giving David his injections and offered to arrange for a nurse to
come to the house for the first few days to help me.  David told them
quite candidly, No, it's all right.  My wife used to be a junkie.

She knows what she's doing!"

Everything I'd done wrong, God was using to put things right.  I've
come to learn that life is empty without suffering.  Suffering brings
out so much beauty and helps so many people in ways you'd never
imagine.  I have a saying: Look how much muck it takes to grow a
beautiful rose."  Without the muck you don't get the blooms and you
certainly don't get the perfume.

sEVENTEEN

Using the years of pain

That incident helped to persuade me that not only was God telling me he
trusted me, but other people were trusting me too.  It took me a long
time to get used to being treated like this.  For so long nobody had
listened to me, let alone had faith in me.  I sometimes wondered how
long it would last before they decided I wasn't reliable again.

Negative thoughts were never far away.  Some days it was difficult
convincing myself that I had changed and that I was able to achieve
everything asked of me each day.

I battled with self-doubt and a low self-esteem.  Many a time I had a
two-way conversation going on in my head:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Oh no you can't.  Remember the time you blew it and bottled out?"

It was a great encouragement to discover that the Bible talks about
renewing our minds', or changing our way of thinking about ourselves.
For me this was a gradual process.  I was learning all the time and it
helped to reinforce my positive thinking when people treated me with
respect.  I'd become so used to being at best ignored and at worst
abused.

After all, many a time I'd been tossed out of a car and left on the
roadside.  Such careless rejection had become away of life.
Instinctively I knew that every time I would be pushed away eventually,
once I'd served my purpose.  The degradation had got worse and worse as
time went on.  Now, when someone suddenly wanted to know my opinion on
something, it took my breath away.  People even opened doors for me
now.  That had never happened before.

When I was alone on the bus travelling to and from the hospital, I
often thought about these differences.  They puzzled me.  I came to the
conclusion that I must have changed outwardly as well as inwardly.  If
complete strangers were treating me with dignity, helping me when I had
heavy shopping bags, saying good morning to me in the hospital, then I
must appear friendly and approachable.  But I was still Angie!

I think the change started as soon as Jesus came to live in me, that
day I went to the Salvation Army jumble sale.

As I pondered on the mystery of it all, I decided that my heart and
emotions had been the first area to be touched.

Then, as my mind cleared, I was able to think logically and start
rebuilding my life again.  When I'd visited my doctor he'd certainly
been surprised that my body was healing itself so quickly after the
battering it had taken.

After that, as I lifted my eyes and started looking at the world around
me, I saw in other people's eyes my own experience being reflected back
at me.  I knew if they were hurting inside, I could see it in their
eyes.

Those years of living off my wits meant that people couldn't easily
fool me!  In order to survive I'd become good at conning people, and
alcoholics and drug addicts are notoriously good at manipulating both
people and situations.  That is how they live and get away with what
they get away with.  But even this aspect of my character has been
wonderfully useful since I've become a Christian.  Quite often I know
what people are going to say before they open their mouths!

Just before David and I were married, it was as though God was telling
me that I was not ever going to be able to settle down to quiet marital
bliss!  He had other plans, and wanted me to use the years of
unhappiness I'd experienced to help other people.  It was then that I
had another surprise, another amazing indication that everything I'd
been through could be turned round to positive use.

Gradually, various doctors in the Horley area who knew my history began
phoning me to ask if I could help them with patients who were
alcoholics.  They told me how these patients were taking hours of their
time and even then they didn't feel they were getting to the root of
the problem and helping them effectively.  One morning I had a call
from a doctor friend to say that one of her patients, an alcoholic, had
been admitted to Netherne Hospital.  She was married with four
children.  Would I visit her and try to find out the real cause of her
drinking?

Before going to the hospital, David and I drove round to the woman's
house to meet her husband.  As we walked through the front door and I
looked at this man, my heart froze.  I instinctively knew that he was
using his wife's alcoholism for his own advantage.  I felt he was
encouraging her to drink by making sure there was always alcohol
available, and then when she was inebriated he was selectively phoning
a few sympathetic people asking ~for their help and advice.

Not realizing his deceitfulness, these people would ~ come and see the
dreadful state his wife was in, and agree ~ with him that she was
incapable of looking after their children and should be hospitalized.
But his motives were entirely selfish he had a lover and he wanted her
to come and live with him, but first he had to get rid of his wife.

I challenged him immediately: Where have you put the drink?"  But
before he could open his mouth I walked straight over to it.  I knew
where he'd hidden the bottles, in a cupboard by the door, but only
because that's where I would have put them.

Armed with the information we'd gained from visiting the husband, we
drove to Netherne Hospital.  This was the first time I'd been back.  As
we drove slowly up the long drive, the memories of that place flooded
back into my mind.  Seldom had I returned to that hospital voluntarily
during my time as a patient!

David parked the car outside the main door and we walked silently in.
My doctor friend had informed the receptionist that we were coming and
we were told that Kate, the patient we'd come to visit, was in review'.
The psychiatrists, social workers and other nursing staff were in a
meeting to discuss her case.  Knowing her GP had requested that we
visit Kate, we were invited to join them.

It was all so familiar.  Their chairs were positioned in a circle
around Kate.  They were talking about her and deciding if she should
stay in hospital or be sent home.

As was usual in these meetings; Kate's opinion was not sought.  She'd
only been admitted to Netherne that day, so this was her initial
review.

I looked at Kate, this woman I'd never met.  I couldn't see her &ce.
She was sitting very still and gazing at the floor, and the long black
hair falling over her shoulders concealed her expression.  She looked
such a mess.

I felt very self-conscious and certain that I was going to be
recognized as a troublesome ex-patient.  It was ironic:

how many times had I been the person sitting in the middle being
judged?  Now here I was, a member of the jury in the very hospital
where I'd been incarcerated for so many years!

But I was to be no mere observer.  Suddenly one of the psychiatrists
turned to me and said, What do you think?

What's your opinion?"  I could hardly believe my ears.  Had they really
asked me for my opinion?

For a moment I struggled in silence.  What should I say?  Had I read
the situation correctly at the house?  Did I know something nobody else
knew, not even Kate?

Could giving my opinion make any difference to her situation?  What if
I was wrong?

But I had nothing to lose.  So I spoke up and told them exactly what I
thought was going on between Kate and her husband.  And they listened!
Soon all eyes were on me.

The puzzlement and concern that I'd read on their faces as they were
discussing Kate's case turned into expressions of understanding as they
began nodding their heads in agreement with my analysis of the
situation.

To my utter surprise and delight we walked out of Netherne later that
afternoon with Kate, and took her back to our home.  My opinion had
been valued to the extent that Kate was entrusted to us until her
family situation could be sorted out.  I was so thankful to God.  Once
again he was showing that he trusted me to help one of his children who
was hurting so badly.

Kate was one of dozens of people that David and I have subsequently
been able to care for and help on the road to recovery.

It wasn't long before I felt (Bod was saying to me, I don't just trust
you with five children, I'm going to trust you with thousands of
suffering people."  All the loss and unhappiness that I'd experienced
could be of use.  I understood how an alcoholic felt, how a battered
wife Under the influence felt, or an abused child, a prisoner, a drug
addict, or a homeless person.  They didn't have to struggle to describe
to me the predicament they were in I knew!

But did I want to help these people?  It would be so painful.  Wouldn't
I rather just put my past life behind me and get on with caring for
David and the children?

Hadn't I been through enough?  The argument in my head continued
unabated for some time.

I thought about Chay and the people he'd brought home for me to talk to
right at the beginning.  I remembered the faith he'd had in me,
believing I could tell an alcoholic how to get straight in the time it
took him to change his clothes!  I thought about the walk he'd been
planning and the reason behind it.  Chay hadn't been intending to put
his past behind him, he'd been planning to use it to help others.

I had a choice to make.  As I discussed it with God, I realized that my
experience was unique and he was giving me the opportunity to use the
years of sadness, to give some meaning to the pain I'd endured.  So,
instead of leaving my past behind and settling down to domestic bliss
with David, I decided I wanted to get up and tell the world about my
friend Jesus.

And that's how the walks started, with David's encouragement.  Chay's
death was a huge loss and in the weeks after he died I found it
difficult to even think of the future.  But it was David who first
reminded me that Chay had planned to walk the coastline of Britain with
the large wooden cross he'd made.  He wisely suggested that if I did a
walk in Chay's place it would be a way of saying thank you' to God for
his life, for giving him back to me and for the time we'd had
together.

Three months after Chay died, therefore, I took up his cross and walked
from London to Brighton.  It was March

1989, and Chay would have celebrated his eighteenth birthday that
month.  Chay's intended message was simple: If you have a mum or dad
who doesn't love you, or who is drinking or neglecting you, I know a
man who can help you."  We'd watched him build the cross.  It was nine
feet six inches tall and six feet six inches wide.

Lindsey Hamon, the man who had originally inspired Chay to walk with
across, heard about my plans.  He knew that David was unwell although
at that stage, several months before our wedding, we weren't aware of
the extent of his illness and offered to walk with me.  I was grateful
for his company.

We set off on a Saturday and agreed to walk through every park we
passed, stop outside every cafe, talk to every group of people we met
talk, in fact, to anyone who'd listen and tell them Chay's story.  I
was also going to tell them that I'd been an alcoholic and Jesus had
saved my life and given me my son back.  I was going to urge people
that if they hadn't seen their children for some time or if there was
something wrong that they needed to put right, they should go home
straight away and sort things out, because tomorrow could be too
late.

The first place we stopped at was a pub in the heart of London.  We
were only five minutes into the walk!  I'd never done anything like
this before and I was very nervous.  As I walked in, all I could see
through the smoke haze was a large crowd of men.  They were grouped
around tables drinking beer and studying the racing papers.  I'd
obviously walked in at a critical time!

For a moment I thought I'd made a terrible mistake and was tempted to
walk straight out again.  But I couldn't; I felt as though I was rooted
to the spot.  So I cleared my throat and shouted, Excuse me!  I'm
walking K from London to Brighton and I'd just like to tell you what
I'm doing."  I started to tell them my story, but as soon as I said the
word alcoholic' the barman came over, took hold of my arm, marched me
out and firmly shut the door behind me.

Standing outside that pub I was heartbroken.  I felt I'd let Jesus
down.  Oh God," I said, I'm so sorry.  I've really blown it."

Straight away I heard the Lord's voice say to me, No you haven't,
Angie, because you've never been thrown Out of a pub sober before!"

That was the best thing he could have said to me.  I felt as if he'd
put his arms round me and given me a big cuddle.  Even though I'd
messed up my speech', he'd still Ibund something to praise me for, and
instead of looking at a defeat I was looking at a win.  To me it was
certainly a victory to go into a pub and not crave a drink.

I turned round and walked straight back into that pub.

Excuse me!"  I shouted again.  I really do have something to say to
you.  You need to listen to me.  I'm going to take one minute of your
life.  Please will you hear me?"

Somebody took my hat off I was wearing Chay's trilby and passed it
round the pub.  Immediately these men were reaching into their pockets
and donating coins and 5 notes.  No please," I said, I'm not collecting
money.  What I want to tell you is free."  But the hat kept going round
and they kept putting money in.

A man who was sitting at a table near where I was standing looked up
from his paper and shouted out, All right then darling', tell us what
you want to say."  Now the punters had asked me what I wanted to say,
so there was nothing the landlord could do to stop me.

Without wasting any more time, I seized my opportunity and promptly
told them Chay's story how he'd grown up without me because of what I'd
done over the years; how he came to find me and forgave me; and about
the love and forgiveness God had shown to me.

As I was talking, the man who'd invited me to speak started to weep.  I
stopped and looked at him.  I haven't seen my children for years," he
said.  He described how his wife had left him because of his drinking
habit.

Then the man next to him started weeping too.  I used to get drunk and
beat my wife," he said.  I don't blame her, but I haven't seen my kids
for ages either."  There were three men around that table and within a
few minutes they were all weeping.  I didn't know what to do next and
started to panic again.  I was shouting in my head, my heart and my
spirit, saying, Oh Lord, I don't know what to do now!"  God just said
to me, You can go now, because I am here."

I knew that what had happened to me that day on the bench, when Jesus
came and found me in my alcoholic, homeless state, had just happened to
those men.  I also knew in my heart that their flimilies were going to
see the benefit.  The healing process had started for them.

At that point I understood clearly what it was that God was leading me
to do for the rest of my life.  Visiting that pub was the start of my
work in prayer walking for the restoration of family life in this
country.  In those three men God had shown me the power of my
testimony.  All I had to do was tell my story he would do the rest.
He'd healed my broken life, even given me another fiunily, and what
he'd done for me he would do for anybody.

My one disappointment was that only one person actually gave their life
to Christ as a result of that first walk.  It seemed an awful lot of
effort just for one person.  But two years later I did a second walk
from London to Brighton.

In all I walked 98 miles and 98 people gave their lives to Christ: the
Lord gave me one a mile!  So the effort I'd put into the first walk was
rewarded on the second.  I also kept meeting people who remembered me
from the first walk, and this time they were keen to approach me to ask
what I was doing.

David had been quite right.  The therapeutic effect of being able to
talk about Chay and see how our story touched the lives of so many
people encouraged me to think about the future once more.  I'd achieved
something worthwhile.  By now I'd told my story to hundreds of people.
Many had wept, not for me, but for themselves and their own broken mi
lies

I'd held the hands of those sleeping rough.  I'd looked into the eyes
of alcoholics.  I'd hugged children whose mothers were in prison.  God
had been absolutely right.  I could understand their suffering.  I told
them all about my friend Jesus and how he could help them too.

With two walks under my belt, the question now was not about whether to
hang up my walking boots, but about what God wanted me to do next.

eIGHTEEN

Walking for God

By 1992 David was feeling much better.  The cancer was in remission,
and we discussed the possibility of me undertaking another walk.  It
was during my second walk from London to Brighton that I was given a
clue about my future.  It surprised me greatly.  I received a message a
prophecy describing another prayer walk!  On the day I was handed this
message I was actually feeling quite discouraged.  I'd been walking for
four days and had hardly talked to anybody.  It was pouring with rain
and I was trudging across the South Downs, struggling to pull the cross
behind me and wondering if I'd made a big mistake.

I was beginning to doubt the value of what I was doing, and was on the
point of calling a halt to the walk and going home when a car drew up
alongside me.  I hadn't heard it approaching.  I was so absorbed in my
thoughts and the only noise I was aware of was the relentless sound of
the howling wind, coupled with the rain lashing against my face.

The driver lowered her window and beckoned to me.  I thought she'd
probably lost her way and wanted directions.  So I was astounded when
she said she had a message for me from two women called Judith and Ann.
I was even more amazed when she told me the message was actually a
prophecy from God saying, It would be the sight of the cross going
through the land that would bring reconciliation and revival to our
nation."

When I heard these words my spirit jumped, as though I'd been given a
gentle kick on the inside.  I didn't know what was about to happen, but
I believed God had just said something very important and very
encouraging to me.

The message delivered, the driver left and I was alone again with my
thoughts.  It was still raining and there weren't many people about.
But I didn't give up.  I kept walking that day and decided to pray
about this strange incident, asking God to tell me what these words
meant and what he wanted me to do.

Thankfully; the next day was fine.  After an early breakfast, I started
walking again.  I hadn't gone far before I started meeting dozens of
people.  I stopped to chat with each group because they were curious to
know why I was walking with a cross.  As a result of telling my story
that day, 98 people came to Christ.  It seemed to me that God had given
me a special present and said, There you are, that's just a small
example of what's going to happen in the future."

Little did I realize it at the time, but a bit later in that walk I was
to encounter somebody who affected my thinking profoundly, and who
taught me an important lesson about how to pray efri~ctively for the
people and families I was meeting.

I was walking along Telscombe Cliffs, between Newhaven and Brighton. On
the cliff path ahead of me I saw a lady walking towards me with a boy
and girl on each side of her, who looked to be in their early teens. 
The three of them had linked arms and seemed to be supporting each
other.  As we came nearer I thought I heard the Lord say, I want you to
go and pray for her because her husband died last night."

Immediately I tried to talk myself out of it.  I can't say that.  What
if I'm wrong?"  I started to panic, but each step was bringing us
closer.  The words kept coming to me:

Her husband died last night.  Go over and tell her I know your husband
died last night and the Lord says he loves you.~

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't have the courage to say those exact
words, but as this lady came nearer to me I did go over to her.  My
heart was in my boots.  Excuse me," I said nervously, can I pray for
you?"

As soon as I'd uttered those words, I knew I hadn't said what I
believed God had wanted me to say.  But the lady turned round and
looked at me and put her hand on mine.  No, dear," she said, you don't
need to pray for me.

You've done more than you know, because my husband died last night and
I came out for a walk begging God to show me he really is there.  Thank
you for showing me he is real.  I saw you coming round the corner with
the cross and I knew my prayer had been answered."

How I wished I'd said the words God had given me!

But he didn't reprimand me; he used that experience to teach me that,
if I was prepared to listen to him, he'd give me just the right words
to say.  Meeting that widow taught me that I didn't need to worry about
doing or saying anything special God would tell me what to say!

I just had to walk when and where God directed me and let him bring the
people across my path that he wanted me to talk to.

After we parted and I carried on walking, I asked myself the question:
had God used something to trigger my thinking regarding that woman, or
had he spoken to me out of the blue?  How did I know her husband had
died?  Then I realized that what I'd seen was similar to the experience
Jesus had when he met the woman at the well.

He understood that because she was there on her own she must have been
ostracized by the other women in the village.  They'd probably gone out
together to fetch their water in the morning when it was cool.  But she
had come on her own in the afternoon.  Therefure it was obvious that
she was being shunned because she was considered to be an immoral
woman.  In the culture of the day such behaviour was punished by
isolating the woman from the social group she would normally have mixed
with.

I reasoned that if Jesus could draw those conclusions by understanding
the social customs of his day, there might be something similar I could
learn about the experience I'd just had.  So I said to the Lord, What
was it that I recognized?"  And then it came to me that it was the
teenage children linking arms with their mother.  They were holding her
close and that's something you don't normally see these days.  You
don't even see children of eight or nine hanging onto their mother's
arms it's not cool, not the sort of thing you want your friends to see
you doing!

Then I thought how sad it was that it was so rare to see such closeness
in a family.  God used that to impress into my heart again, even more
keenly, the desire to prayer walk for the strengthening of family life
in this country, fur marriage to be more widely respected, and for
children who have lost their fathers.  But I had to wait a long time
before I fbund out exactly what the Lord wanted me to do next.

Four years after that second London to Brighton walk, the Lord spoke to
me again about my next walk (which came to be known as the Deborah
Walk).  I hadn't forgotten the message passed to me by the driver of
the car that wet day on the South Downs.  I hadn't spoken publicly
about that bizarre rendezvous, or about the words of the prophecy, but
strangely enough, during this time several other people had given me
words of encouragement and verses of Scripture.  I'd put them in a safe
place and they'd helped to keep the idea alive in my heart and mind but
they didn't fully answer my question.  I still didn't know exactly what
it was God wanted me to do.  All I knew was that it was going to be
something big.  I had a feeling it was going to be something that would
sound impossible!

Then it happened.  I was woken up at three o'clock one morning by the
sound of a choir singing Awake awake, oh Deborah', over and over again.
As I lay there listening to this chorus of voices I suddenly knew that
this had something to do with the prophecy, the sight of the cross
going through the land that would bring reconciliation and revival to
our nation'.

I got up and, taking my Bible with me, crept quietly into the sitting
room.  I started to read the Old Testament book of Judges, chapters
four and five.  As I read the story of Deborah, I said to the Lord,
Just tell me what it is you want me to do."

Then I began to understand that what I was reading about applied to our
society today.  The people in the Bible story thought they had
everything they needed and were indifi~rent to God.  But in reality
their plight was very serious.  So God chose a woman, Deborah, a judge
and a prophetess, to rescue the people.  I was staggered to read that
there was a war to fight, and although there were 40,000 men capable of
fighting, they didn't have a sword or shield between them; what
apathy!

God chose Deborah for the task of leading these men into battle, and in
no time at all she had 10,000 soldiers armed and ready for war.  I
think God gave her the gift of inspiration, enough to make the people
get up and do something to help themselves.

It dawned on me then that this was what God wanted me to do too.  I was
to carry the cross throughout the country and God was going to put an
anointing of inspiration upon the cross and upon me.  The sight of the
cross would cause people to get up and do something about their
situation.

I spent the next few hours on the floor sobbing.  This was too big a
task for me to do.  Who was I?  Nobodywould listen to me!

As I wept, God showed me the sorrow he felt fur fttherless children;
the heartbreak he had fur a nation whose young people were growing up
not knowing that he loved them; and the sadness he felt when he saw our
broken families.  I can't put into words the depth and range of
emotions that were going through my heart.

I heard the Lord say, I want you to walk for every broken marriage, for
every child growing up without the love of a father.  I want you to
walk and tell the people your story, and I will begin to answer the
prayers of ages past."

God showed me how sad he felt about our disintegrated society, but I
also understood, from my own experience, that it was in that place of
brokenness and sorrow that God can reach us.  That is the only place
where we call out to him fur help.  I could identi1~r with that.

I remembered the book I'd picked up at the Salvation Army jumble sale.
My mind went back to the bench where I'd sat for hours, gazing at the
picture of Jesus with the crown of thorns on his head.  In my sitting
room that Walking for God night I felt him very close to me again.  My
friend was going to help me; he didn't expect me to do this job on my
own.  I felt excited at that.  My life had taught me that, no matter
what mess I get myself into, if I turn to God he can put things right.
The one thing I knew from my own experience is that there is always
hope.

The Lord showed me many things that night.  As dawn broke I felt him
say to me, It is out of these broken families I will build my church.
Then the homosexual can come into my family and be loved and healed.
The rapist and the sexual pervert can come in and be totally forgiven
and cleansed.  Then the people who have been most hurt will be safe in
the arms of my people, the church."

I saw in my mind's eye that the church should be like a well-built
house, able to withstand strong winds and torrential rain.  When a
traveller walks by on a cold, wet night and glances through the window,
he sees a warm fire and delicious food on the table.  The door is open
and as he stands on the threshold he feels it's somewhere he wants to
be, somewhere safe and welcoming.  So he's drawn in and sits down by
the fire, makes himself at home and begins to enjoy all the benefits
and comforts that the house has to offer.

I wept and wept.  Then the Lord gave me a second vision.  I saw a huge
stone shelf holding millions of little bottles.  It was almost as
though I was watching a film.  As I took a closer look at the bottles,
I noticed that every one had a name label attached.  The bottles were
full of tears the tears of all the people who had wept over our land,
and God had saved them all.

As I watched, a hand appeared and took a bottle from the shelf.  As the
tears in that bottle were poured out, they turned to golden oil.  I
watched as all the bottles were emptied and poured over our land.

Then the Lord said to me, Now go, because it is time fur the harvest to
be released."  He told me to go and talk to other women around the
country and encourage them to pray with me and join me on the next
walk.

How can I?  I thought Who am I to talk to anybody?  I said to God that
night, Why would they listen to me, Lord?

I'm nobody I'm not famous.  They'll think I'm mad."

But God said, Just do it."

Do what?"  I asked.

Go and tell them what I've done for you."  Well, I thought, that wasn't
a problem I could do that.  But I was still worried.  How was I going
to start?  Who would I speak to first

In my nervousness I tried to forget the events of that night.

A few days later, however, the phone rang and I was surprised to be
invited to go and speak at a small church in Norwich.  They'd heard
about the two London to Brighton walks and were interested to hear my
story.  As a result of that meeting I was asked to speak at six other
churches in the city, one of them an Elim Pentecostal church.

When I arrived there I was overwhelmed to find that over 300 women had
come to hear my story.  The word was spreading fast!  Many of them were
Lydia prayer group leaders women's prayer groups that meet across the
country and pray for issues affecting family life, also undertaking
prayer walks themselves.  As I spoke that evening something
supernatural started to happen.  I told them my story and then,
tentatively, I told them what I believed God had said to me through the
story of Deborah.

They sat so quietly while I spoke, you could have heard a pin drop.  I
kept going.  When I'd finished, in case any of them felt they could
identify with what I was saying and would like to join me on the
Deborah Walk, I invited people to come and stand with me at the front
of the church: together we would pray and ask God to help us.  I was
hoping that one or two would respond positively.  I waited uncertainly
for their response.

I didn't wait long.  Three hundred women came forward that evening,
many asking for prayer.  It took a long time to pray with them all. The
range of problems that surfaced that night and the testimonies that
came afterwards were amazing as God touched their lives.  A few days
later I received letters from some of those women, describing how
they'd gone home that night and their marriage had been healed; others
went home to find that husbands who'd previously left them had
returned.

A recording was made of my talk and tapes were sent all over the world
by the women who'd attended the meeting.i needn't have worried about
howl was going to tell thousands of women about the Deborah Walk: God
gave those 300 women the same gift of inspiration that Deborah had.  I
nicknamed it the Deborah anointing'!

They were so enthusiastic and sent tapes everywhere.

I was soon receiving phone calls from Denmark, Bosnia and Holland, and
in all of these countries groups of women promised to pray for the walk
and for the strengthening of family life in Great Britain.  Over 45,000
women promised to pray with me as I walked.  Now I began to see what
God was doing.  One of the most exciting things was seeing the
enthusiasm of these women.

I think God used my story because you can't get much lower than I was,
or much more disgusting than I was, when Jesus found me.  When I'm
asked, What do you think God looks like?"  I reply, I think he's got a
lovely face and a lovely smile and arms that go on for ever.  And it
doesn't matter how deep the hole is that you dig for yourself, because
his long arms are quite capable of reaching in and saying, Come on,
sweetheart, I'm pulling you out.

And when he pulls you out of that hole, he wraps his arms round and
round and round and round you until they bring you up close to his
chest.  By this time there's so much arm wrapped around you that nobody
can see you;

you're totally hidden and wrapped in his arms!"

After that evening in Norwich, things went crazy.  For a time I was
often speaking at five meetings a day.  I just couldn't believe what
God was doing and marvelled at the prayer support network that was
being built.

Many people asked for a tape of my talk, and David and I found
ourselves in our little sitting room copying tapes, stuffing letters in
envelopes and sticking on hundreds of stamps.

We'd planned that the Deborah Walk would start at John O'Groats in the
north and finish at Land's End in the south.  People started to send
money.  There was certainly a lot to pay for.  We needed a support
vehicle to carry enough food, clothes and literature for three months.
We worked out that if God gave us a van, we'd need 1,000 to pay for the
petrol to get it from John O'Groats to Land's End.

Our faith was often tested.  Just before the walk was due to start I
still didn't have the petrol money.  So I prayed and asked God to sort
out this problem.  A couple of days later, a letter arrived from a
gentleman who wrote, You won't remember me..."  He went on to say that
he'd been moved by hearing my story at a church meeting one night and
had gone home to see if God would talk to him as well.  He'd asked how
he could help with the Deborah Walk and God had replied, Send her
1,000.  She's praying for it at the moment."  The cheque was enclosed
with the letter.

Damian, David's son, offered to join me on the walk, and so did Angela
Fairlamb from Guildford.  We planned to start the walk on 1 June
1997.

Two weeks prior to the start, David became very ill again.  The cancer
that had been in remission for six years came back with a vengeance. It
looked as though all our plans would have to be scrapped.  How could I
leave my husband when his life was once more in the balance?

nINETEEN

The Deborah Walk

David ordered me to walk!  He was quite emphatic.  He argued that if we
gave up before we started, we were admitting defeat.  After many days
of deliberation we decided that being obedient to God was the only
criteria.

Experience had taught us that our own reasoning is often flawed because
our understanding is limited.  We can only see what's in front of us.
But God sees the whole picture, so we preferred to trust him and
believe that he would look after us all, especially David.

I still felt torn in half.  I loved David so much that it hurt me to
have to leave him behind.  It felt like a very high price to pay.  Even
at that point I would quite happily have delayed the walk.  It took me
a few days to reach a position where I could accept that if I was doing
what God wanted me to do, he would look after David.

I had only to remember that 45,000 women had promised to pray for the
walk to be reminded of the support God had already given me.  That gave
me great strength.  And even though in my heart I wanted to be at home
caring for David, I'll always be grateful to him for encouraging me to
go ahead.  I couldn't have left him otherwise.

David's illness wasn't the only problem we had.  The support vehicle
that had been promised was not forthcoming.  When the time came to
start the journey up to Scotland so that we could begin the walk, we
still had no van and no driver.  David was to have driven us up to
Scotland, but it was obvious that he couldn't.  Instead we hired a car,
which used up a vast amount of the money we'd allocated for petrol for
the van.

Despite this setback, Damian, Angela and I were unanimous in believing
that God was encouraging us to trust him, to take the first step in
faith.  From that moment, we believed, he would be the fourth member of
the team and would provide everything we needed.  It was blind faith
and very exciting!

We left London as planned on 1 June 1997 and travelled to Thurso in
Scotland, where we stayed the night with John and Marjorie Gunn.  It
was a curious situation to be in: we were planning to start the walk
the next morning and still we had no van and no driver, and the 1,000
we'd allocated for our petrol money had been seriously eroded by the
cost of the hire car.  To the sceptical onlooker we hardly looked like
a group of people who were going to make it to Land's End!

However, the Christian community in Thurso knew we were coming and had
been praying.  That evening John visited a friend of his called George
to ask him if he would be our driver.  George, a fumer soldier and
recovering alcoholic, was prepared to volunteer, but he was concerned
about how his rent would be paid while he was away.  The Christians
promised to pay his rent fur him and look after his flat in his
absence.  So that just left the problem of the van.

Later that night, we had a call to say that friends in a nearby village
who'd heard about our need a few days earlier thought the ex-hippie bus
parked at the bottom of their garden might be suitable.  It was 27
years old, but they'd managed to get it working and road worthy

An hour later we heard it arrive!  The keys were handed to George with
an MOT certificate it had passed the test only that evening!  Driver
and van were duly introduced.

Full of encouragement and amazement at how God had answered our
prayers, we loaded up, ready to leave early the next morning.

As I lay awake that night I wondered what lay ahead of us.  Hundreds of
miles, months of walking.  Would we make it?  Would David live long
enough to see us finish?

We set off on the walk the next day not knowing how we'd be able to
afford the food for the journey, let alone the fuel.  But by the third
day we were actually giving away carrier bags full of food from the
van, we'd been given so much!  And that set the pattern.  God provided
for us throughout the walk.  We were never short of anything for
long.

When we set off from John O'Groats a large crowd of people walked with
us.  Amongst them was an elderly lady in her eighties and she told me
about her husband who had Alzheimer's disease.  She walked 17 miles
with us that first day and as she walked she was praying that God would
heal her husband.  I found it quite heartbreaking to watch her walking
ahead of me carrying the cross on her shoulder, her white hair blowing
in the wind.

Towards the end of that first day a car slowly overtook us.  It was
driven by this lady's son.  He parked the car and started walking
towards her.  Then the passenger door opened and out got her husband.
He walked over to his wife and the two of them embraced.  They walked a
little way together, carrying the cross.  We watched in silence and
wept as we witnessed God answering her prayers.  And we asked God to
forgive us for thinking that he wouldn't bother healing an old man in
his eighties.

Of course, there were days when we were tempted to give up.  Days when
the rain soaked us to the skin and we were numb with cold.  In Scotland
we baffled for mile after mile against the wind until we were
exhausted.  Some days we didn't meet a soul, but trudged for miles
along lonely roads and dual carriage ways and grass verges.

Walking through the Cairngorms we almost got frostbite (by the time we
got as fur south as Bristol we were being scorched by the sun). Lorries
passing us at great speed made it very difficult even to hold the cross
upright.  But every day we spurred each other on.

As you would expect, sometimes tiredness caused tension between us and
the atmosphere in the group on some days was unpleasant.  Then we were
glad of the opportunity to stride out and walk alone for a few miles to
let the anger and frustration we felt cool down.  But every night we
prayed together and tried to make it our aim to settle our differences
before we went to sleep.  It was too exhausting to have bad feeling
between us for long.

As we approached each town we wondered what reaction we'd spark off as
we walked through with the cross.  It wasn't long before people heard
we were on the way.  By then we'd started to attract quite a lot of
media attention.

Walking steadily down through Scotland, we planned to walk through
Possils Park in Glasgow, a notorious, even dangerous, area of the city
well known for its prostitutes, drug dealers and high crime rate.

It was one of the most run-down places I'd ever seen.

The doorways stank of urine; many of the shops were boarded up;
graffiti covered the walls; litter was strewn everywhere; prostitutes
and transvestites were standing in doorways plying their trade; drug
addicts and dealers were openly engaging in broad daylight.

A couple of days before we reached the outskirts of Glasgow I'd spoken
at a church in Stirling and a reporter from a local newspaper had been
there.  After the meeting he'd asked if he could take a photograph of
me with the cross.  I ended up on the front pages of The Daily Record,
looking rather glamorous with the cross on my shoulder and wearing
high-heeled boots because I was dressed for speaking and not for
walking!

This caused quite a lot of amusement between us, but it proved useful,
because as I walked through the centre of Possils Park a few days
afterwards, people recognized me.

The headline in the paper had read, Ex-Prostitute and Drug Addict Walks
for Families' and the story had obviously caught the local people's
imagination.

Men climbed down from some scaffolding to come over and speak to us;
many other people stopped to watch us pass.  We were treated with a lot
of respect.  As we turned the final corner into Possils Park we saw
windows being opened three storeys up.  Some women looked down and
shouted, Ang!  Get there for us, damn'!"  These were prostitutes.

You can do it for yourselfl' I shouted back.  Come on down and we'll
tell you how!"

Colin Cuthbert, then head of Christian Prison Ministries, was walking
with us.  He tapped me on the shoulder and surreptitiously said, Look
over there."  I looked casually in the direction he'd indicated and saw
people who were clearly dealing in drugs.  As we walked slowly deeper
into Possils Park, we became aware that some people were leaving the
dealers and coming over towards us.

We knew we were walking through areas where even the police were wary
to go.  Gangs there are violent.  It was quite likely that we were
surrounded by youths carrying knives and guns.  Many of them were high
on drugs, others were agitated because they needed another fix.

A queue started to form behind us and we stopped and waited as the
people came closer.  I was praying all the time; my heart went out to
these people.  Only a few years earlier my life had been like theirs. I
walked towards them and started to speak, explaining what I was doing
walking with a large wooden cross.  I told them my life story and about
Chay and how we'd been reunited.  I invited them to write their names
on the cross if they wanted God to come and help them.  One by one they
knelt by the cross and wrote their names on it.

We stayed there some time, talking and praying with the people who
crowded round.  The next morning we listened to the news on the radio
and heard that the previous night the police had raided several
addresses in Possils Park, confiscating drugs worth over 7 million and
arresting several dealers.

We were amazed.  It seemed that God was already answering the prayers
of those people who'd come to the cross asking for help the day before.
Akeady God had said, Yes, I've heard your prayers and now this is what
I'll do for you."

As we started walking that morning, we saw an elderly man outside a
shop who looked as though he was waiting for someone.  I crossed over
the road to ask him if he wanted to put his name on the cross.  Hi," I
said, what's your name?"  But he couldn't speak and seemed to be
indicating to me that he'd had a stroke.  He was really trying to talk,
but he just couldn't get the words out.

So I asked him to write his name directly on the cross and offered to
pray for him.  But he indicated that the stroke had affected the right
side of his body and, being right handed, he couldn't write either!

I was starting to run out of ideas and was desperately trying to think
of a way of helping this man to communicate, when he suddenly shouted
out, Robert McCoy!"

Well, now he could speak but the rest of us couldn't!  We just stood
there with our mouths open.  We hadn't even prayed for him.  All we'd
done was go over to him with the cross, and God had healed him there
and then.  I cried.  He cried.  The whole team cried for Robert
McCoy!

We also met Andy that day.  I saw him walking along the road clutching
a carrier bag or what I call a take away  In alcoholic circles that's
another name for the bag in which you carry your drink for the day.  He
was quite smartly dressed, and obviously hadn't got to the stage where
he was neglecting to look after him seW so I presumed he was probably a
top-up' drinker, someone who's always drunk.

As we got closer he looked me straight in the eye and said, I was
expecting you.  I knew you would come."

Did you?"  I replied, slightly unnerved by his penetrating stare.

I knew you would come.  Oh God, I've been expecting you for such a long
time."

I asked him his name and he told me he was called Andy.  I talked to
him about his drinking, which he denied at first.  Then I invited him
to write his name on the cross and he responded positively and seemed
pleased to be asked.  But as he approached the cross he jumped back and
was very afraid.  So I asked him if he'd like us to pray with him
first, then he could try again to write his name on the cross.

We prayed and he tried again.  He stepped forward, but he couldn't come
close enough to the cross.  I reached out my hand, touched his forehead
and said, Come Holy Spirit."  Then I prayed for him again.

All of a sudden he put his arms round my neck and just sank to his
knees.  This was all happening in the middle of the road!  So there we
were, on our knees with the cross balanced over the two of us.  The
team were standing nearby.

Andy started to cry.  Oh, thank you for making me cry, thank you fix
making me cry, oh God, thank you for making me cry," he wept.  We must
have knelt there for about 20 minutes and I held him until he'd stopped
sobbing.  Then he looked up at me and I gave him the pen and he wrote
his name on the cross.

We took him onto the pavement after that and prayed with him again
before we walked on.  Oh, please don't go, please don't go!"  he
pleaded with us.  It broke my heart, but we had to go on.  We couldn't
stay: there were more people like Andy to meet.  We left him sitting on
a bench.

As we turned the corner we bumped into a person called liz, who'd
joined us on the walk the previous day.

She was with a friend, an ex-alcoholic who was now a Christian.  So we
were able to tell them about Andy and they went round the corner
straight away to pick up where we'd left off.  Everything was under
control; God had it all worked out.  I couldn't resist a final look
back at Andy.  As I peered round the corner after Liz and her friend, I
saw that she had her arm around Andy and they were already talking
together.

We stayed with Liz and her husband that night and set off again early
the next morning after a huge breakfrist.  We walked all day and were
just considering where we were going to stop for the night when we
received an urgent message on our mobile phone.  Please could you come
back.  Liz's husband has been taken seriously ill."  He'd been
suffering from ME ibr some time.  We turned the van round at once and
retraced our steps.

We prayed with Liz and her husband that night before leaving again the
next morning.  We didn't hear anything for two or three days, as we
were walking through a remote part of&otland.  Then, out of the
silence, we heard a driver beeping his horn.  A car pulled up just
ahead of us and out got Liz and her husband.  He walked seven miles
with us that day!  Once again our prayers had been answered.

As news travelled ahead of us and people heard we were on the way, we
received many requests from churches to visit their towns or villages.
I think I'd still be walking today if I'd accepted every invitation we
were offered!  These invitations could be very compelling

Please come and pray with us, you have no idea how bad things are in
our neighbourhood."

I quickly had to learn an important lesson: nothing I did would change
those people's circumstances.  Only God moving amongst them could make
the difference.

My responsibility was to keep my own life clean and be obedient to what
God was asking me to do.  I soon realized that flattery is very
beguiling.

We were becoming very tired from walking all day and speaking in
churches at night.  There were always so many people to pray for and it
was not uncommon for us to crawl into our sleeping bags at one or two
in the morning and be up walking by seven.

One night I put the map on the ground and asked God about all these
requests, and he showed me that he would lead me to the people who
really were in darkness.  They, were the voiceless folk and he wanted
us to take his message of love and hope to them.  All we had to
remember was that we were walking with Jesus by our side.

We were to pray for the schools we passed, that the word of God would
be taught properly.  We were to pray for every church we passed, that
it would be respected and effective in its community.  After that we
were to pray carefully about our route and always agree together on the
right way forward.

We were well aware that we were walking through some areas where there
had been a history of abuse, and where terrible things had allegedly
happened in the past places where blood had been shed, and even satanic
rituals carried on year after year, generation after generation.  But
Jesus encouraged us to pray that we would quite simply stay close to
him, so that he could take us to the people he wanted to touch.  That
comforted us it felt so manageable!

We noticed that people's reactions to God changed when they saw we
weren't judging them, but rather loving them and telling them about how
Jesus had helped us.  When we did that, we noticed that people judged
themselves: we didn't have to say a word.

tWENTY

All the difference in the world

We reached Land's End on Wednesday 27 August 1997.

It had taken us 86 days to walk 1,098 miles.

I have memories from the Deborah Walk that will stay with me for the
rest of my life.  I took my black German Shepherd called Shadow on the
walk and, until he became too footsore, he was a valuable member of the
team.  It soon became apparent that he had his own unique role to play.
Only he could communicate with the people we met who wouldn't talk
directly to us, because they'd been so badly hurt by people and only
trusted animals.

One day, while we were walking through a wild, sparsely populated
region in Scotland, we came across a little shop in the middle of a
small hamlet.  We'd walked many miles that day and had met nobody, so
we were looking forward to chatting with the shopkeeper.  Our driver,
George, had arrived in the village ahc~ad of us as usual and was
sitting in the van waiting for us to join him.

The woman who runs that shop really hates God," he told us, but she
loves animals."  He'd spoken to her earlier, when he'd called to buy a
few provisions.  She'd seen our bus, which was somewhat conspicuous as
it had a sign on the side saying The Premier Deborah Walk'

(Premier Radio covered our walk in a series of weekly bulletins) and
another sign saying Jesus loves~ you'.

George had told her the story and the reason behind the walk, but her
initial reaction had been hostile, and she admitted she had no time for
God, even hated him.

Oh does she," I said.  George smiled knowingly at me.

Shall I take Shadow in to meet her?"

Yes," he said.  I've told her all about him."

Shadow is an exuberant dog, very large and extremely friendly.  I kept
him on a short lead and told him to be on his best behaviour as we
slowly walked over to the shop.

As I opened the door I saw the shopkeeper watching me from behind the
counter.

My da ver has told me you like animals, so I thought you'd like to meet
my dog," I said, smiling at her.

She looked at me in silence for a moment, her eyes betraying the
distrust she felt towards me.  Shadow started to wag his tail, perhaps
sensing the tension between us.

Alsatians are intelligent dogs and quick to assess the mood of the
people they're with.  He knew this woman couldn't resist him!  And he
was right.  She looked at Shadow, his big, brown, sensitive eyes stared
straight into hers, and she came out from behind the counter and made a
great fuss of him.

Still stroking Shadow and looking at him rather than me, she said.
Don't talk to me about God.  You didn't see my seven-year-old daughter
when she died.  She died of Leukaemia and she died in agony, and I
don't want to know about a God who kills children like that."  Tears
came to her eyes as she continued, I have my 13 dogs and that's all I
need."

You've got 13 dogs?"  I said, impressed.  She told me they were all
Dobermans, and they were her only family.

She'd obviously experienced deep loss and unhappiness and had retreated
to live alone in this remote part of Scotland.  She went on to tell
Shadow all about her dogs and he listened patiently.

As she told him how much they loved her, and he responded by licking
her face and whining with delight, I was desperately trying to think
what I could say to her that might help.  Then God said to me, Tell her
she's spelt my name backwards 13 times."

I waited for a few more seconds, before quietly saying what God had
told me to.  I'd learned to do that by then, however awkward or odd it
might seem.  As soon as I'd finished saying the words, that lady rested
her head against Shadow's and started to cry uncontrollably.  A few
minutes later, as we talked, she came to understand and accept that God
loved her.

The Deborah Walk didn't take the most direct route from John O'Groats
to Land's End.  We decided to walk through Wales as well.  It was there
that I met a couple called Cathy and Paul, another story which stands
out in my memory among so many others.  I'd been invited to speak one
evening to a large crowd of people in a church in mid-Wales.

During the meeting the Lord gave me a message and told me it was for
two people, a young man on one side of the room and a young woman on
the opposite side.  I explained to the meeting what I believed God
wanted to say to this couple.  And as if that wasn't enough, I pointed
to the two people I believed God had shown me were to receive the
message.

Everybody started to laugh and I asked what was so funny.  The message
had seemed quite serious to me.  The two young people stood up and said
that although they were married, they'd been been living apart for a
while and were considering divorce.  That word from God brought them
back together and that same night- they were reunited with their five
children, who meanwhile had been cared for by their grandmother.

I didn't expect to see Cathy and Paul again, but when I reached Land's
End, at the end of the walk, they were there to meet me.  They'd
travelled all the way from Wales because they wanted us to baptize them
in the sea.  They were so grateful to God for healing their marriage
and they publicly wanted to dedicate the rest of their lives to working
for him.  I thought that was a wonderful ending to the Deborah Walk. 
Their story somehow typified the reason why we'd walked all that way,
and I was very moved.

David was at Land's End to meet me.  I had previously discussed with
him how I wanted the walk to end.  With only a few yards to go before
we crossed the finishing line, David walked towards me.  I felt so
proud of him.  I placed the cross on his shoulder and we walked
together to the end of the road.  David had walked every step of the
way with me in his spirit.  He was as much part of the walk as any of
us, and as my husband and the head of our family I felt it was
significant that he was with me that day and we were seen to be the
team we undoubtedly are.

Other friends had also journeyed to Land's End to meet us.  There was
quite a crowd, many of whom I hadn't seen for nearly three months.  We
all processed down the road towards the sea to baptize Cathy and Paul,
and we saw that there was a festival going on.  Hundreds of New Age
travellers were there, and bikers too in fact the whole cove was packed
with these people.

We got ready to go into the sea for the baptism and it wasn't long
before we noticed that we'd created quite a lot of interest.  Many of
the festival-goers came down onto the beach to watch what was going on.
One young man started to heckle us.  Well," he said scornfully, tell me
why you think there's only one God.  What about all the people on the
other planets?  Don't you think they have gods too?"

He bombarded us with questions for over half an hour.

Some were quite shocking and sordid, and it was obvious that he was
under the influence of drugs and very antiChrist.  But he drew an
audience and each time we answered him he'd come back with a
counter-argument.

Eventually we went down into the sea and baptized Cathy and Paul, but
as soon as we came out of the water this young man resumed his attack.
He started to shout even more loudly at us and a young woman whom he
obviously knew joined in with him in a jeering sort of way.

This young woman had three children with her and was sitting in a car.
She appeared to be very angry, but the Lord said to me that she was
only angry because her boyfriend had spent the money she'd saved fur
the children's tea on alcohol.  So she was angry She was sad.  She felt
let down.

She was just giving vent to her feelings.  What could I do to help her
and show her that God loved her?

We had a little money left in the van from what we'd been given to help
us buy food and petrol for our journey.

God reminded me of this and I ran back to our van to fetch it.  Then I
went over to the young woman and put the money into her hand.  Holding
her hands in mine, I looked into her eyes and said, This is for your
children's tea."  She immediately started to cry and I said, Jesus told
me to give it to you."  With that I walked quietly away.  I don't know
what happened to her afterwards; I didn't even find out her name. Maybe
I'll meet her again one day, maybe I won't, but I know she met Jesus
that day.

Chay had inspired the Deborah Walk, but it was Bonita I had been
praying for as every mile passed.  I ached to be reconciled with my
daughter and it was my prayer that she would be at Land's End to meet
me.  I'd dreamed of seeing her again, of holding her and telling her
how sorry I was for the unhappiness I'd caused her.  I searched for her
face in the crowd.  Surely she would be there.  But it wasn t to be.  I
had to wait a few more months before we could be reunited again.

It's strange how history repeats itself.  One day the phone rang and it
was my sister Pam to say that Bonita was at her house and wanted to
meet me.  Six months after I returned home from the walk, there she
was.  She told me she was planning to get married.  Together we planned
the wedding, and I made her wedding dress and gave her away.  What an
honour after all those years.

I'm often asked what the Deborah Walk achieved.  I suppose the
truthliil answer to that is, I don't fully know."  But what I do know
is that hundreds of marriages were mended.  I have letters from scores
of people telling me their stories.

I'm also often asked to describe the most useful lesson I've learnt in
lift My answer is simple, but I've tested it well and proved it to be
true if the light of the world is living in me, I can make a difference
to every lift Ipass.  When I stand in darkness, or darkness threatens
to surround and engulf me, I just declare that I am a child of God,
living in his light.

I know what darkness is.  I know what despair is like.

But I also know that it only takes one small candle to light a dark
room.  Its flame can be seen from a great distance.

And as I've walked closer to the brightest light I know, the darkness
in my own life has disappeared.  God has made all the difference in the
world to me.

Today, David is still fighting cancer.  I've just been diagnosed as
having rheumatoid arthritis.  My hair has fallen out and I'm in
constant pain.  But nothing can deflect me from my walk with God.  It
will continue, come what may.

I'm already planning my next prayer walk in China.

To Jesus

I don't know what You see in me You who died for humanity why You left
the hundred to look for me why You cared enough to set me free.

For I'm just a worthless whore.

But You cut the chains that bound me and taught me only a slave is
free.

You gave me back my dignity and opened the door to eternity.

For me, a worthless whore.

You are the one who lifted me out of a lift of debauchery.

You clothed me in a robe of sanctity and still You keep forgiving me.

Me, a worthless whore.

So who am I who writes I'm free, saved from a life of heresy, in love
with Him who first loved me?

I'm the worthless whore mentioned here, You see,

and Angie is my name.

Postscript

Angie's husband, David, has the last word... It has been said, although
I don't remember by whom, that a man is rarely a hero to his wife.
Whatever the truth of this, I'm able to say with complete conviction
that my wife is a heroine to me.

I'm not speaking of her long walks carrying a large cross, although
there's much of the heroic about those.

She's had her life threatened by satanists and militant feminists and,
on a walk in Ireland, shared the gospel of peace with armed terrorists.
She's walked on despite huge blisters, a bruised shoulder, cold,
drizzle and hunger.

She's rallied her team with determination when most wanted to pack up
and go home.

But there are other reasons why Angie is a heroine to me.  Probably
only a husband would know about the pain she relives daily in the
telling of her testimony.  She delights in the way God uses her painful
story to reach out to others, but it isn't without cost.  I've lost
count of how often she's said that she doesn't want to go on sharing
her life publicly, that she wants to give it all up and just be my
wife.  But whenever the Master calls, she responds.

That call may take her to a pulpit, a stage or a television studio.
More often she'll find herself face to face with another broken woman
whose past has overtaken her present, and who needs the touch of Jesus,
who suffers with them both.  It is then that Angie has to turn back
once again and reach down into the agony of her own past.

Now that is heroism.