The Locket

This was written a few years ago now, for my year 11 English coursework. I really hope that nobody actually reads this, apart from Ali, but if you are reading this.... I am sorry if it is atrocious. At the time, I was really chuffed with it, but then I would be - I wrote it! xD Anywho Ali, if you do read this, don't laugh toooooo much :D haha xx

The Locket

I could not believe my eyes when I saw it… and read what was inside of it. I flipped it over in my hands, feeling the smooth, cold surface under my fingers, the heat from them warming it up.
I sat down hard on the floorboards, wondering why the floor felt like rough stone under me. When I looked around me, a dusty old attic lay there, and I, uncomfortable in its vastness, must have seemed like a tiny little ant in a giant, open space, with seemingly no end to it.
Surely, this wasn’t how it was to end?
No matter how I looked at it, I knew that, while life would never be as it was, it would simply have to go on. At the moment, I saw that as impossible, but I suppose everything does at the beginning.
While I sat on the rough, hard floor, I thought back. Right back, to when I was a little girl of only eight.

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“Mum!” I bellowed through the kitchen window, clutching my arm in pain. “Mum!”
“Quiet Kristi!” Mum yelled back at me.
My eyes welled up with tears, and in a moment, I was wailing, with grey pearl drops pouring down my chubby cheeks. A wasp had stung me, and, having never been stung by a wasp before, I had a vivid thought of my arm swelling up, going green, and then having to have it cut off. Yes, I had a vivid imagination for an eight year old.
While I stood outside the kitchen window waiting for my mother to come with bandages and water, the clouds began to envelope the clear, watery blue sky. It seemed to almost reflect my mood, particularly when the first raindrops of the season began to fall onto my head. Still, I stood there, waiting for Mum, instead of doing the sensible thing, which would be to go inside and ask her to bandage me up to stop my arm being chopped off.
Then I heard a scream. A small scream at first. I stopped wailing, wiped my eyes dry, and listened. Another scream. This time louder. Coming from the house. My eyes widened in fear, and I thought of Mum. Yes, it sounded like Mum’s voice. One last, ear-piercing scream filled my ears, and then there was silence. A cold, deadly silence that filled the air. That last scream was to haunt me day after day after day, for the next ten years.
I ran inside, cold with fear.
I threw open the kitchen door, and I saw two things almost as soon as I walked through the doorway. I was not exactly sure which of the two things I saw first, but they were both to stay with me for as long as the scream would. I just didn’t know it then.
The first thing I saw was a green box on the table. I recognised it as the first aid box. Mum had always kept it in the pantry where she could get it easily. I realised then that Mum had seen what had happened with the wasp outside, and was coming with the first aid kit. Good old Mum, I thought. I knew she would come if I cried, because she always did.
The second thing I saw made me freeze. I could not move a muscle, not even if I had tried to.
My mother was sprawled out across the kitchen floor, still and unmoving. There was no blood, no sign that she had cut herself or anything. She was just lying there, still as a rock, as if she was sleeping. However, I knew that she wasn’t because I had heard her screams.
“Mum?” I whispered, leaning against the kitchen table to hold myself upright.
There was no reply.
“Mum!” I cried desperately.
No reply.
I stood where I was for so long, that my arms and legs began to get numb. No tears came to my eyes. No cry for help broke through my lips. I regret to say that I did not move, even to try to help her. I just couldn’t.

It must have been half past four in the afternoon before I ventured to sit down. That’s when I began to realise that my mother’s chest was steadily rising and falling. I leapt to her side and shook her arm with my hands. The pain in my arm now forgotten, I shook Mum with all my strength.
For all my efforts, I received no reaction. Not a flutter of the eyelids; no reassuring pat on my arm. Only her steady breathing. I knew almost nothing about medical situations, even though Mum was a nurse in the hospital near to us. It suddenly occurred to me that there could be a number to the hospital somewhere in the phone book.
No! I thought, nine, nine, nine! That’s the number Mum always told me to dial if I got into trouble. Medically I mean. I would try that.
I didn’t get to the phone before I heard the doorbell buzz. I held my breath, and slowly walked down to the door.
“Who’s there?” my eight-year-old self called nervously. Mum had also taught me never to answer the door to strangers.
“Kristen, darling?” called a familiar voice. “Is that you? It’s Mrs Benwick. Is your mother there?”
I threw open the door in relief. Mrs Benwick was a widow from across the road. She was quite old, with a face that rather reminded me of the ugly vultures in the Disney film, The Jungle Book. She had an attitude to match; always scavenging (some would call it being a nosy old bag) for gossip along the street. I had never really thought much of her before - Mum and Mrs Benwick hadn’t exactly seen eye to eye in many subjects. Yet my relief in seeing her stood on the doorstep was absolute. I nearly hugged the woman.
“Mrs Benwick! Mrs Benwick!” I flustered. “Come in! It’s Mum. She’s…she’s…”
“Now, hold on Kristen, dear. Slow down. Is your mother alright?”
I could see the Vulture’s nose twitching in delight. Another story to twist, for the whole of Unioned Road to hear. Great. Yet she seemed like my only hope at the time - and she was.
Without a word, I led her into the kitchen, and pointed to Mum, who, to my dismay, was in the exact same position I had left her in. My neighbour dumped her horrible snakeskin handbag on a chair, and dropped to her knees by Mum’s side.
“Moira,” she said calmly. “Moira, can you hear me?”
I suddenly felt ashamed while I watched Mrs Benwick talk to my mother. I felt ashamed that I had stood in the kitchen simply watching her for half an hour, without even attempting to wake her. I could not cry however hard I tried to. I tried screwing up my eyes to make myself cry, but I could not; it was if I was completely dried out of tears, from my crying fit earlier on in the day. It seemed important to me that I did cry. It was almost as if I was trying to wash my shame out of me, along with the growing fear I had.
All I remember next is Mrs Benwick checking her breathing, and moving her into what I now know to be the recovery position. Then she picked up the phone from the hallway, and dialled for an ambulance.
I was taken away from my home on Unioned Road that very night. Another neighbour, Tina, tried to ask them to let me stay with her, but they would not let her. I saw Tina’s worried face, but all I was told was that because Tina was not a relative, they could not let her look after me, despite her having two children of her own. That wasn’t quite the last I had seen of Tina, or my house, but I never again saw them how I remembered them.
My memory of the people who took me away is poor - all I know is that there were two women, and a man. I could not cry. I was scared. My mum was in hospital, and I wanted her so badly, it hurt. I wanted to be in my warm, cosy bed, with Mum tucking me up in my bed covers. I wanted to rewind, start the day again, and change what had happened. Yes, I was scared.
I have no recollection of where the people took me after we left the house. All I remember next is standing beside a hospital bed, staring down at the familiar face of my mum. She was so familiar, and strangely peaceful, yet so distant at the same time. This scared me slightly. Not for the first time in my life, I felt lonely. The difference was that last time, I had Mum. This time, I felt truly alone.
I guess that was when I grew up; standing beside my mother in the hospital. Not physically. Physically, I was the same short, chubby eight-year-old girl, with baby blue eyes and pigtailed hair that I had been for the past six years. Yet mentally, and emotionally, I grew up. Somehow, I felt like it was my duty, as if I had no choice. Now it was I who had to look after Mum, and not the other way around.
A kind nurse came to see me while I sat beside Mum. She asked me if I was okay, and gave me a piece of chocolate cake to try to make me feel better. I realised that I was hungry, and had not eaten since lunchtime … when Mum had made me tuna pasta. I felt a lump rise in my throat as I looked at the chocolate cake in front of me.
“Would you like cream with it?” the nurse asked me as she watched me.
“No, thank you.” I replied, gingerly taking a bite of the cake.
Before I knew it, I was eating it. Technically, I was wolfing it down my gullet. I guess I really hadn’t realised how hungry I was until I began to eat. I guess shock must disguise things like hunger.
“What’s your name honey?” the nurse asked kindly.
“Kristen.” I said. “Kristen Eva Watt.”
“And how old are you, Kristen?”
“Eight.”
It had only just occurred to me that I had not yet asked about Mum. I didn’t know anything about her condition, other than what I could see; which didn’t look good to me. She had tubes and wires curling around her suddenly frail looking body, like snakes, and she had a mask over her face so that I could only just see her facial features.
“What’s you name?” I asked the nurse. She smiled at me.
“Poppy.”
“What’s wrong with my mum?” I asked, not wanting to cry.
“Oh, darling!” cried Poppy, and put her arm around me. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear this?”
I nodded, staring at my mother’s face.
“Kristen, think of it as if your mum is in a very deep sleep, and can’t wake up yet,” she said gently.
Mum was in a coma. Nobody knew what had happened to her that day, but when I found her, she was unconscious. She was still unconscious when Mrs Benwick came. Yet, somehow, she had slipped into a coma. I was told by an elderly doctor that she may wake up tomorrow, or in a week, or maybe a year; they didn’t know. Then he told me, in as gentle a voice as he possibly could, that she might never come out of it. Finally, I cried. I cried so much, I was sure that the great oceans of the world had dried up with my tears.

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I spent the next two nights in the hospital, and slept in a hospital bed next to my Mum’s. I woke up each of those mornings, looked at her, and felt my heart almost stop with fear.
My father had never wanted to know me, and my mother’s parents had died some years back. Her brother and his family lived in America, along with my cousins. The only relative I had left was my mother’s aunt, who was a bit forgetful with her old age. It was decided that I could not live with her. So instead, the social services set me up with a temporary foster family, until my mum woke up. I was frightened, but not really for myself. I could take whatever was coming. I was frightened for Mum. What would happen if she woke up to find me with another family? What she did not wake up for another year, had lost a whole year of her life, and mine, and did not recognise me? No, I had no doubt that Mum would come back to me…she had to. In my books, she had no choice.
To be fair, my foster family were lovely. There was Ada Menlow, my foster mother, and Todd Menlow, my foster father. There were also Jack and Holly. For the first time ever, I had siblings, and a dad. Jack was twelve, so quite a bit older than I was, while Holly was seven. She was quite a quirky kid, and I got along with her great. When my toys, and my other things were bought to me, I liked playing hairdressers with Holly, while she liked playing ponies with me. Jack was the pompous teenager you would imagine him to be, but he was also very protective of Holly. This protectiveness soon passed to me, and I realised I liked Jack.
Ada and Todd lived on a remote farm, quite far out of town. I found it difficult to get used to it at first, but Ada said the country air was good for your heart. That made me think of Mum. Ada was so kind and supportive about Mum, but I couldn’t get close to her. To me, getting close to Ada would be disloyal to Mum, and being disloyal to Mum was not an option in my booklet. I felt no shame in liking Jack, Holly and Todd, because I had never had a dad, and had never had brothers or sisters either. I felt mean to Ada, but I did like her. She seemed to understand anyway.
However understanding I knew Ada was, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the recurring nightmare that I kept having. I had it for the next ten years. I relived my mum’s piercing screams, and saw her lying on the kitchen floor. I woke up every night seeing Mum’s frightened face behind my eyelids - the frightened face that my imagination had fabricated.
They drove me to visit Mum in the hospital every other day. I came to know the hospital staff pretty well in the first month, and they began to expect my visits. I particularly came to know Poppy, and a trainee called Amy. I did not want to get to know Mum’s doctor, Dr Morris, so I did not really talk to him while he was there. Poppy and Amy were both really nice and helpful. It upset me when I walked into Mum’s hospital room with Ada or Todd, to see Mum lying in the bed in the same position she always was, with tubes and pipes emerging from her. Yet every morning I woke up with fresh hope inside of me. Hope that Mum would wake up, and life would go back to how it was before.
When September arrived, Ada said I would have to go school, but I didn’t know how I could. My friends would want to know what I had done over the holidays, and I couldn’t face the thought of telling them that, for the past three weeks, I had been visiting my mum in hospital, while she slept on. They would be sympathetic, but wouldn’t understand, which is what I told Ada.
She arranged for me to go to a different primary school in the area. It was further away than my old school, but Todd said he wouldn’t mind driving me to the bus, as it was the school Holly went to anyway, while Jack got on the same bus to go to the high school. This made me realise how much older Jack seemed. This year he would be thirteen, and to me, that seemed a long time ahead of me.
I liked Holly’s school. It was bigger than my old school, with around three hundred pupils instead of just a hundred and fifty. It was scary, and it overwhelmed me a bit, but I liked the people in my class. I made friends quickly, and it was such a relief not to have to explain to anyone about Mum. I became close to a loose group of boys and girls in my year. There was Carly, Emily, Pippa, Ellie, Matt, Ben, and Philip. It was simply that boys seemed like aliens to me. Not anymore though.
I missed my Mum less and less with each passing day, but I always felt a pang of guilt whenever I went to see her, which was now only on weekends while school was on. How could I be living life as normal, and having fun, while my own mum was lying in hospital? Even though I did not understand what it was like for her, I found myself imagining what it would be like. Could she hear me? I told her everything that went on, just in case she could hear me, so that when she woke up, she would know what had been going on. It would almost be as if she hadn’t missed anything at all.
Poppy told me that some coma patients could hear everything, and that their brains were still active in that area. This confused me then, because if her brain was active, why wasn’t she awake? Poppy said that only part of her brain had shut down, and that she needed a life support to keep her alive. I cried at that, and found myself aching for Mum to be with me. I wanted her so much. I wanted her to talk to me, and cook pasta for me, and plait my hair for school. I found myself missing all the little things she had done for me, and I made myself promise not to take anything for granted when she returned to me.
Time went on, and I grew older. It depressed me to think that Mum could not see me. Weeks turned to months, which soon turned to years. I got to fourteen, and still, I kept up the hope that Mum would come back to me. I was still friends with Carly, Emily, Pippa, Ellie, Matt, Curls and Phil; in fact, since they learnt about Mum, we had all grown closer. Living with Ada and Todd had turned into life, not just routine, and seeing Mum in hospital was almost normal. At the age of twelve, Poppy was promoted, so I didn’t see her quite so much anymore, and Amy was promoted too, which meant I saw her even more than I used to. Everything around me was changing, and I was growing up; it was the realisation that Mum couldn’t watch me grow up that hurt the most.
A year seemed such a long time, but by the time I had done my G.C.S.E’s, I was now a part of Ada and Todd’s family. I was sixteen, Jack was nearly twenty, and Holly was fifteen. We were no longer children, but my mother still slept, oblivious. I began to wonder if ever she would wake up and come to me.
As her brain was still active, she grew older, though unconsciously. I watched as her face aged, but it overwhelmed me to think that she didn’t even know it. I also felt ashamed every time I saw her; ashamed of myself for carrying on my life as normal as possible. I felt upset every time I saw her, and sometimes I would cry while I watched her sleeping.

Everything changed when I became eighteen. Everything became more complicated, and I did not know how I could handle it to begin with. I was in the middle of my second year as an A-level pupil at my high school. On my eighteenth birthday, I got a visit from a lawyer I had never met before, and it was while I was having a big celebration with all my friends at Ada and Todd’s, along with Jack and Holly.
The lawyer was tall, with tidy, dark hair and dark eyes, with a moustache. He wore an immaculate black suit, and instantly, I could see that I was not going to like him. I had a vivid thought that he was going to be just like all the other lawyers in the country. Not that I had ever met a lawyer before.
He told me that now I was eighteen, everything that Mum owned, now belonged to me. The celebrations paused abruptly, and everyone listened. I gasped. Why now, in front of everyone? Why now, on the evening of my eighteenth birthday? Ada saw my face, and led me into the kitchen, telling all my friends to get back to dancing and having fun. She yelled at the lawyer to come with us. He followed, his moustache twitching as he did so.
“Why have you come here? Today of all days?” snarled Ada. The lawyer looked a bit startled at her tone of voice.
“Mrs Menlow, I appreciate that this may be hard for you to hear, but I am afraid that it has nothing to do with you. It is Miss Watt’s business, and not yours,” he said.
“I have housed this girl for ten years, and you’re telling me that you ruining her eighteenth birthday has nothing to do with me?” Ada bellowed, in a rather menacing voice that I had only heard her use twice.
“I am saying that her mother is…”
“What about Mum?” I asked quietly.
“Only that she is unlikely to ever come out-”
“Don’t you dare say that!” It was my turn to shout now. “Don’t you dare! You don’t know my mum! She’s strong. She’s a fighter.”
“Miss Watt, I am not here to tell you that your mother isn’t going to wake up. I am here only to tell you that, until she wakes up, everything of hers, is now yours. As well, if you like.”
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My birthday celebrations were stopped after the lawyer left, and I lay in bed until late, thinking what he had told me. The house on Unioned Road was mine, though I thought it had been sold long ago. Everything that belonged to Mum now, legally belonged to me. I didn’t see how this was, since she was still alive, even if she had been in a hospital bed for ten years. Then it registered in me - my mum had been in a coma for ten years. When I was eight, I had been convinced that she would be all right, and after a year passed, it did not phase me. I believed in her so much. Even when I became a big, bad teenager, I loved Mum just as much, and knew she would come back to me. Now, after ten years, I had as much rights as she did. I owned everything that she did. It now dawned on me that maybe Mum wasn’t going to come back. It now struck me that my mother, the woman who had spent the last decade in a hospital bed, might never come out of her coma. I cried myself to sleep that night.
The following day, Ada and Todd drove me to the hospital (by then I had a provisional driving licence, but had not yet passed my test.), and I took the lift up to Mum’s room. Amy was in there placing some flowers in a jar, and smiled when I walked in. I looked at Mum’s face, and suddenly felt tears sting in my eyes.
“How are you Kristi?” Amy asked me.
I sat down heavily in the chair beside Mum’s bed, and stared at her face, willing her to wake up, as I usually did.
“A lawyer came to see me.” I told Amy.
She stopped what she was doing, and sat on the chair opposite me.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He said that everything Mum owns belongs to me. He was going to say that Mum is never going to wake up, I know it, but she is, isn’t she?”
I looked at Amy’s face, the smile now gone from it. She looked uncomfortable, and shifted her weight in the chair without looking at me.
“Amy, she is going to come out of it, isn’t she?” I asked harshly.
“Kristen…” she began. She looked up at me. “You know there is a chance that she may not wake up. You know that. She is only alive because of the life support, and if she doesn’t wake up on her on, then she never will.”
She said it gently, and quietly, but her words stung me so badly, I got up, and ran out of the room, outraged by what everyone was saying about my mum.

I made the decision to go to the house. I had to. After another lawyer came to see me, and gave me the keys to number four, Unioned Road, I tried to throw the keys away and forget about them, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I had a nagging feeling inside of me that told me I could not.
As well as being upset by the inheritance issue, I was filled with anger. I tried to bottle it up inside of me, but couldn’t. When the keys to the house were handed over to me, I let out a scream of frustration. Why was Mum doing this to me? Why couldn’t she wake up, and have the keys to our house herself? Why was I being put through this? Was it some kind of test or something? A test of my faith in my mother?
Then my anger turned to shame. I could not blame my mum for any of this. It was not her fault that she was in a coma. None of it was her fault. I briefly thought that if she had her way, I would simply have a spare key to the house, and not the actual key with no spare copies of it. It gave me a feeling of responsibility that I had rarely known before. In the Menlow household, we all had a copy of the key to the house. Now, I owned the only copy of the key to the house that I spent my early childhood in. Though I had grown to love living with my foster family, I never once forgot about the house Mum and I had lived in together.
Therefore, I took the bus, and went back to my past.
Unioned Road looked the same as I remembered it, but the house definitely did not. It was like a dark shadow on a bright, sunny morning; it darkened the street with its history. I felt sick to look at it, but at the same time, intrigued. I haven’t been here for ten years, I thought. Ten long years.
The garden was overgrown with weeds, and Mum’s beautiful flowers and vegetables had long since died. I walked up the path, gingerly unlocked the front door… and went in.
The electricity had obviously been stopped, since the lights wouldn’t switch on. The whole house was dusty, and looked as if a rat could crawl out from under the skirting boards at any minute. However, I was surprised to see that it was in relatively good condition, but then, it had only been empty for a decade, not centuries. Yet it still brought a lump to my throat, and I walked through the house as quietly as I could, though I don’t know why.
Everything looked as it had done, except that it was coated in dust. The furniture was still there, but all the valuable things such as the television had been sold. I guessed that the money from this must have gone towards paying for my education, or something like that. Still as I could, I stood in the doorway of the living room for a moment, trying to get my head around the facts. It was still my house, but it didn’t seem like the house I remembered. I found it dark in the house without electricity, so I automatically went to the furthest drawer on the left of the kitchen. Sure enough, I found a torch in it, and I felt the tears slide down my face. Surprisingly, it was still in full working order.
I avoided standing in the place where I had found my mum ten years ago. I looked at the space on the floor, and heard her screams fill my ears. I saw myself clearly, an eight-year-old girl standing helplessly by the kitchen table. I clamped my hands to my ears, clutching the torch, and ran out of the room.
I found myself climbing the stairs, and walked along the hallway towards my old room. I shone the torch beam around it. Just the same as it had been; soft, pink walls with the flowers that Mum had painted on. My lovely bed was still there, as well as my chest of drawers. Apart from that, it was empty, because everything belonging to me had been brought to me when I went to live with Ada and Todd. I sat down on my bed, and fingered the covers. This was my past. The part of my past that haunted me.
I went into to Mum’s room, which looked exactly the same as I remembered it, because nothing had been removed from it. The clothes that Mum had worn the day before the ‘accident’ were still laid out on the floor, and her pyjamas were in a heap on top of the double bed in the centre of the room. I hovered in the doorway for a moment, before pulling the door shut. It felt too private to search. It was Mum’s room, not mine.
I had a sudden desire to search the attic. Mum had never let me go up to the attic, in case I fell down the ladder or something, but now it felt like I had to. So I did. I pulled down the trap door, and let down the ladder. Then, with the torch in my hand, I climbed up into the attic.
It was so dusty, it made me sneeze, and it was so vast, I felt like a mouse in a huge palace. I felt rather like an ant might in the immense attic. I was shocked to see that there were just three boxes up there. There was nothing else except a couple of mousetraps, and old, dusty paintings leaning against the walls. Carefully, picking my way across the floorboards, I made my way to the boxes.
Sitting down cross-legged on the hard, wooden floor, I opened the flaps on the first box. In it was an old photo album, and when I opened it, I read the words;
‘Kristen Eva Watt, my beautiful daughter.”
It was Mum’s writing, elegant and italic, and I felt myself smile as I flipped through the album. There were baby pictures of me, and some with her and me in the picture. There were a few of me being held by various neighbours, and some of me and the cat we used to have, Lily. The one thing I noticed about all the photos is that everyone looked so happy, including me. Even the cat looked happy and content. At the very end of the album was a picture of Mum and me sat on the sofa downstairs. I recognised myself to be three years old. Mum looked so young in it, nothing like she did when I saw her in hospital. I felt tears of joy cloud my eyes, and felt astonished at how quickly my sadness had turned to joy.
In the next box, were some old paintings by people I had never heard of, so I skipped that box, and did not examine it too closely. However, in the third box housed something that made my blood run cold, if that can actually happen.
There were two things in it. One was a beautiful wooden jewellery box, with wonderfully carved leaves and vines on it. I wondered briefly why it was stored in a box in the attic, when I spotted the other thing. It was gold locket. I took it out of the box, and looked at it, the coldness of it stinging the palm of my hand. It was quite heavy for a locket, and it had the shape of a heart carved into it. It was so pretty, I was afraid to open it, but my curiosity got the better of me. I opened it.
Inside it was a piece of paper. It was all folded and creased, and wedged in so tightly, I had trouble getting it out. When I did, I saw a picture of Mum, stood with me. I could remember when the picture was taken too - it was on a day out we had at the Alton Towers theme park when I was seven. I had enjoyed it immensely, though I had not wanted to go on any of the huge rides, I was too young anyhow. After we came back from the theme park, Mum had Tina take a picture of us. It was a lovely picture, but I had forgotten about it until I saw it in the locket. It choked me with happiness at having found it again.
Taking the piece of paper, I now noticed my name written on it in Mum’s elegant handwriting. Confused, I unfolded it, and read it. What I read turned my world around, and sometimes, I wish I had never found it. Other times, I am glad I found it.

‘My Kristen,
I shudder to imagine what has happened to me if you are reading this letter. I have put this into a form that only an eighteen year old can read, and I am glad that my seven-year-old daughter cannot. Kristi, you are only reading this if you have inherited my belongings, which hopefully will not be for a long time yet!
I have written you this letter in the hope that you will understand why this terrible thing has happened to me (not that I know what it is.), because I know it will. As you know, your father and I divorced only a few weeks before you were born. He made it clear to me at the time that he wanted nothing to do with you, but it did not bother me; I love you enough for the both of us.
Last year Kristi, a man came to see me. You may remember that I told you he was a solicitor. (I suddenly remembered while reading the letter) Darling, he wasn’t a solicitor, as he was your father. I had no wish to see him, but he told me he wasn’t there to see me; he was there to see you. He wanted a part in his daughter’s life, and he would do anything to get to you.
I told him that he had no right to say that. He had abandoned you for six years, and all of a sudden wanted to play a father’s role in your life. I felt that I couldn’t allow it. He threatened me, and the following week, came back, with a knife. He pushed me into the wall, and grabbed my throat. The only reason he didn’t kill me was because he thought you were upstairs. He went away again, with the threat that he would be back.
He came back every month to try and see you, but I wouldn’t let him. Each time, he came close to killing me, but each time didn’t. Then, a few weeks ago, my ex-husband returned with a gun, while you were in school. He shot at the hedge in the garden, and then stormed into the house, ranting and raving. I have never been so scared in all my life. Thankfully, Tina, from next door heard the gunshot, and raced over. She got here at just the right moment, to find me rammed up against the wall with a gun to my head. If she hadn’t turned up, I wouldn’t be here.
I know he will get me in the end. He always had a way of controlling me, but I will not let him get to you Kristi. I am writing this to you out of fear, and guilt, and have to explain to you what has been going on.
Promise me Kristi, if I die, give me a simple funeral for friends and family, and play me my favourite song - you know what it is! Of course, if I do die, you won’t yet have read this letter, but still. Just in case, eh? Also, I do not want to live a life of pain, so if I develop some life threatening disease, please put me out of my misery, and I would have nothing in life, except you.
Also, promise me one important thing. If you do not do anything else, please do this one thing for me. Follow your dreams. I have no doubt that you will be an amazing woman - live your life to the full Kristi!
All my love always,
Mum x x X x x’


I sat in shock, and stared open-mouthed at the letter clutched in my hands.
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Afraid at first, of whether or not I was doing the right thing, I, with Todd and Ada, took the letter that Mum wrote, to a solicitor who showed it to a lawyer. It changed everything, and I knew it. Finally, we all knew how my mum had been put in a coma. It has to be believed that the father I have never known got into the house, and hit Mum. She had screamed, though nobody knows why. She must have fell, and hit the floor, knocking her head badly as she did so. Mum had internal brain damage, which is why her unconsciousness turned into a coma.
Having read the letter, I knew that Mum would not want to live her life on a life support machine. I had to make the hardest decision of my whole life, and I had to do it alone. I had help and support of course, but the decision was up to me, as I was basically one of the only living relatives that my Mum had. I re-read the letter a hundred times to make sense of it, and finally, in tears, I told Dr Morris that Mum should have her wishes granted.
The case was taken to court and, four months following the day I found the letter, it was agreed that Mum’s life could be ended. I felt like a murderer, and as I sat beside Mum in the hospital, I didn’t know whether I could go through with it. She was forty-four years old, and still young. Besides, how do you kill someone you love so dearly?
It took me a month to be able to do it but I knew it had to be done.
I took one last look at her face, and her chest rising steadily, and nodded, more to myself than anyone else. Then, the plugs were pulled. The machine was switched off. Mum simply stopped breathing. I cried and cried, and felt the guilt and remorse wash over me like a tide on the beach. At the same time, I was shocked to realise that I also felt somewhat relieved.
We gave her the funeral she wanted, and I requested her favourite song to be played, Robbie William’s ‘Home before I die’ song. Though the tears simply flowed from me right through the service, I realised I was free.
I felt lighter than I had ever done, despite what I had done to Mum. I felt a sense of relief fill me up, and realised that I was free of the nightmares I had been having since I was that small girl of eight. I had Ada and Todd with me, as well as Jack and Holly, and knew that, though I loved Mum more than I loved anyone else in the world, I could love others too, such as the Menlow’s.
My life changed in a way I had never known it before. I stayed with the Menlow’s, and loved them like they were my own family. They were my family. I found it difficult to start with, realising that I would never see my mum again, and that the hope I had felt through the ten years she was in coma, was gone. All I had now was hope for the future.
I was free at last.