Читать книгу The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life - Cole Moreton, Cole Moreton - Страница 8
Two Martin
ОглавлениеThree hundred miles to the south, another teenage boy was playing football in the park. A friendly lad with a wide, gap-toothed smile and a mop of brown hair, Martin Burton was just having a kick-about with his mates in the warmth of a late summer evening in Grantham, Lincolnshire. He wore a West Ham United shirt, partly to wind up his big brother who supported Forest, but Martin was too much of a gentle soul to be properly sporty. He had a fuzz of hair on his top lip and was rapidly growing out of his puppy fat into the hefty build of a centre-back, having just turned sixteen. Emotionally, he was still young for his age though. Martin was a bit of a softie on the quiet, in a nice way. His bed was covered in soft toys he called ‘cuddlies’, brought home by his father Nigel from many trips away with the Royal Air Force.
‘From the day he was born he was always noisy, he was always in your face,’ says his mother Sue, a quiet and reserved English costs lawyer who was in her early forties. ‘He was a “Boy” with a capital B; but he was also a very caring and loving child and a really good friend. Martin was very popular and always helping people. His headmaster said he had a lot to say but he was never in any real trouble, and if the teacher needed any help then his hand was the first to go up.’ Martin told great stories, but something misfired when he tried to write things down. ‘They tested him for dyslexia, because he wasn’t just lazy. He did have a struggle with schooling, but they never could find any reason for that.’
His ambition was to be a nurse and everyone agreed he would be great but his GCSE results a week or so earlier had not been good enough. ‘Martin wasn’t an academic, he was just a boy who loved life. He was too busy having fun to concentrate on what he should have been doing, I’m afraid. His attitude to school was, “I’ve turned up every day for 12 years, what more do they want?”’ So Martin was going to engineering college instead. ‘He was better with his hands. I’m very good with my hands,’ says Nigel Burton, who was a senior aircraft technician in the RAF.
For now, though, Martin could enjoy the sweltering days of late August with his friends. He was fit and happy, says his mum. ‘There was absolutely no sign whatsoever that anything was about to go wrong.’