Читать книгу The Evil Within: Murdered by her stepbrother – the crime that shocked a nation. The heartbreaking story of Becky Watts by her father - Darren Galsworthy, Darren Galsworthy - Страница 7

MONDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2015

Appeal over missing schoolgirl: Concern is mounting over the disappearance of Bristol schoolgirl Becky Watts. The 16-year-old was last seen by her stepmother, Anjie Galsworthy, four days ago after she returned to her home at Crown Hill, St George’s, following a night at a friend’s house. Mrs Galsworthy says she saw Becky at around 11.15 a.m. on Thursday and chatted with her before heading out. Becky’s family and friends are growing increasingly worried as her disappearance is out of character. Her boyfriend Luke had been expecting to see her that day, but she didn’t respond to his texts. Becky’s mobile phone and laptop are missing too, but it appears she took no cash, clothes, makeup or anything else that might suggest she was going away for any length of time. Today, her father, Darren Galsworthy, and grandmother, Pat Watts, made a heartfelt public appeal for her return. Mr Galsworthy said: ‘Becky, we just want you to come home. You’re in no trouble at all – we just want to make sure you are OK. If you can, please give us a call or a text to let us know you are safe. We all love you and want you back home with us.’ Police are working with the family. They’ve released a photo and description of the missing girl and a social media campaign is under way, with the hashtag #FindBecky.

The first time I peered down at my baby daughter Becky, my heart melted. She was a proper bundle of joy and cute as a button. As she gazed up at me from her cot, blinking rapidly to try to take in her new surroundings, I couldn’t help but fall for her. At 6 pounds 12 ounces she was tiny, but I soon discovered that she had a good set of lungs for a newborn and could silence a whole room with her cries.

I adored Becky from that first moment, even though my feelings were tinged with uncertainty because I wasn’t sure if she was really my child. Her mother and I had been in an on–off relationship that was veering towards ‘off’ at the time she was conceived. But as Becky grew up, she became more and more like her old man – so much so that it startled both of us at times. Her big hazel eyes were the same as mine, and as she got older she developed a lot of my mannerisms. The only difference between us was the fact that she was far better looking! I called her ‘my beautiful Bex’ because, to me, Becky really was beautiful – inside and out.

I was born and bred in Bristol and have lived here all my life. Some parts of the city aren’t pretty, as I well know because I’ve made my home in some of the roughest bits, but in Bristol I have a strong sense of belonging. Bristol folk are some of the kindest, most genuine and supportive people you will ever meet, and I am proud of the city’s brilliant community spirit. I simply can’t imagine living anywhere else.

I was the first child in my family, born on New Year’s Eve 1963, when the Beatles were at number one with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. I waited until 11 p.m. to make an appearance, so my parents, John and Sue Galsworthy, were staring down at my scrunched-up face as the clock struck midnight and everyone else across the country was welcoming in the New Year.

The next day, they brought me back from Southmead Hospital to their two-bedroom terraced house in Easton, Bristol. At that time Easton was one of the most deprived areas in the South West and it was multicultural, which was quite rare in those days. My family were among the only white people on our estate. Life in the 1960s in Bristol was quite tough for working-class people like us, and we had to struggle to make ends meet. My dad worked long hours as a machinist for a nuclear and defence engineering company, and my mum worked in a leather factory then later became an auxiliary nurse at an old people’s home.

My little brother Lee was born on 15 August 1966, when I was two and a half. We shared a room and at first I quite enjoyed having a younger brother, but as he grew older he became a bit gobby, always getting himself into trouble with the other kids on our estate. Because I was the older one, I had to jump in to protect him, and I eventually got a reputation for enjoying a fight – all thanks to Lee!

The 1970s was the decade of strikes, which led to power cuts and huge piles of rat-infested rubbish on the streets because the bin men weren’t collecting it any more. The economy was prone to inflation – it seemed as if every single time you went to the shops, prices had gone up. This led to workers demanding higher wages, which the government didn’t want to pay, and as a result the unions started to call for all-out strikes. Three-day working weeks were introduced as businesses were only allowed to use electricity for three consecutive days each week, while there were regular power cuts for home users. This meant that the inside of our house was as freezing cold as the outside during the winter months – we had ice on the inside of the windows. I was taught to bake bread at school because the bakers were on strike, like everyone else, and I got in the habit of nicking coal whenever I spotted it just so we could light the fire at night to keep warm. Huddled together by candlelight in the evenings, Lee and I thought it was great fun – but, of course, we were young and didn’t have any responsibilities. I imagine it was quite different for our parents, who had two kids to feed and keep warm.

My dad was the head of our household and extremely strict, as many fathers were back then. It wasn’t uncommon to receive a beating with his belt if we were naughty. Sometimes if my brother was bad I’d be punished too, and vice versa, which didn’t seem fair. Teachers were also allowed to beat pupils in those days. We were often hit with a bat, like a wooden paddle, in primary school, and when we got to secondary school a cane was used. I was quite an emotional kid, and it didn’t take much to make me cry. When the teacher asked me if I wanted a telling off or the bat, I always chose the bat because I was used to getting beatings at home and knew I could take them. Strange as it may sound, to me words hurt more.

My mother wasn’t the most maternal person and never stood up for my brother or me. She worked morning or evening shifts at the leather factory, and we would often come home from school to find her passed out on the sofa after drinking gin during the afternoon. I didn’t realise she was an alcoholic until much later. I didn’t really know what that was then, but I knew it was useless trying to get any sense out of her when she’d been drinking. Since she wasn’t capable of making dinner, I learned to make food for Lee and me from an early age. At first it was just sandwiches I made from the food parcels donated to poor families by people at the local church. Later, I learned to make simple meals like egg and chips or sausage and chips, and I often made dinner for my father too. He was always in a better mood if there was food on the table ready for him when he returned home from work.

Money was incredibly scarce for our family. We didn’t have a fridge – just a wooden cupboard in the back garden where we kept our milk. We were lucky enough to have a black-and-white television, but in those days there were only two channels and it took five minutes to warm up after you switched it on. Lee and I didn’t have any toys but we made our own entertainment, playing in rubbish dumps and skips and hanging out with other kids around the estate. We never received any presents at Christmas from our parents – they didn’t celebrate Christmas at all – but we knew that when we went to visit May, our grandmother on my mum’s side, we would get spoilt.

Nan always had time for her grandkids and would be sure to feed us up because she knew we weren’t getting enough to eat at home. I loved her dearly, and some of my best childhood memories involve her. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she picked us up to take us into town on the bus and she always had a bar of chocolate for us to share. When I was eight, she gave me the best present ever: my first proper bike. It was a bronze-coloured Panther bike, which was second-hand but still the best thing I’d ever seen. For years, Nan was the only source of love and affection Lee and I had, what with Mum’s drinking and Dad’s temper dominating life at home. I don’t want this to sound like a sob story because others had it much tougher than me, but let’s just say it wasn’t the most comfortable, stable start in life.

My parents split up when I was nineteen, and my dad then married Denise in September 1985. Through Denise I instantly gained two stepbrothers – Kevin, who was three, and Ben, who was one. My father and Denise went on to have four children together – Sarah, Sam, Joe and Asa. I bonded with them pretty quickly, and to this day they remain among my closest friends. Dad mellowed with age and became a much gentler man than the one I had grown up with, so that today we have a good relationship. My mum died in 2010, from pneumonia, and sadly we never became close.

I had already left the family home by the time Dad remarried. When I was eighteen I moved out to live with my girlfriend, Angela Holloway, who was a year younger than me. We later got hitched, but the marriage only lasted three years. It was a case of far too much, too young, for both of us.

During the period when I was married, I used to babysit for the kids of some friends of mine, Mark and Verna West. One day, I arrived just as their other babysitter was leaving, and the minute I set eyes on her I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning. She was so gorgeous I could barely speak to introduce myself.

‘I’m Anjie,’ she told me.

‘Darren.’

I felt electricity running all the way through my body, and I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. She kept glancing at me too, while we chatted about everyday things like the kids we were looking after, where we lived, that kind of thing. It was the strangest feeling, but I just knew there was something special about her. It was as if kindness and light shone out of her, and it was the most powerful sensation I had ever felt.

However, I was married to Angela Holloway at the time and, after we got divorced, I heard that Anjie was seeing someone else, then in 1986 I heard she was pregnant. I just assumed it was a case of bad timing and nothing was going to happen between us. I never forgot about her, though.

I was twenty-two when Angela and I broke up. I had a few girlfriends after that but nothing too serious. I was concentrating on my career, and that didn’t really leave me much time for a relationship. At the age of sixteen I had done a youth-training scheme in tyre-fitting and car maintenance, at eighteen I was taken on for an engineering apprenticeship at a company that made precast concrete products, and by my mid-twenties I was working as a sheet metal engineer for a firm called City Engineering. I was very serious about making enough money to have a better standard of living than I’d had when I was growing up. I wanted a decent place to live and enough food to put on the table, and I was prepared to put in the graft to earn them.

When I was twenty-nine, I met a girl called Tanya Watts, who was twenty-two and worked as a carer in an old-folks’ home. She was with some friends in a local pub, and we got chatting, as you do. We seemed to get on well, I bought her a few drinks, and suddenly, almost before I knew it, we were in a relationship. We moved in to a flat in Cadbury Heath soon after meeting and settled into a life of working, going to the pub at the weekend, and taking the occasional holiday. Her mum, Pat, paid for us to go to Pembrokeshire for a week the first year we were together.

We didn’t ever get married because the relationship always had problems, but I was excited when our son Danny was born on 19 February 1995. He came into the world at Southmead Hospital – same as his old man. When I held him for the first time I couldn’t help but laugh because he was covered in fine black hair and looked like a baby chimp! I was thrilled to see that he looked exactly the same as me in my baby photographs. It was a very proud moment. I was overwhelmed that I had a son, and I swore there and then that I would always love and protect him.

Danny and I bonded instantly and I threw myself into being a dad, but I was working such long hours as an engineer that my time with him became sacred. Meanwhile, my relationship with Tanya was deteriorating fast. We began to fight about anything and everything, hurling hurtful comments at each other, often continuing rows into the early hours of the morning. I tried to shield baby Danny from as much of it as possible, but living with Tanya was getting harder and harder for me.

Sometimes she kicked me out of the flat after a row, and one night in January she told me I’d have to sleep in my car. I didn’t sleep a wink all night long, and as I lay there shivering, I realised that Tanya and I being together was doing more harm than good. I couldn’t see any way we could make it work in the long term, but at the same time I didn’t want to leave my baby son, so I kept trying.

We got into a pattern: we’d have a big row, Tanya would kick me out, then I’d go back a few days later to see my boy and we’d try again. Danny was two years old before I eventually decided enough was enough. Tanya kicked me out after yet another row, and I moved into a flat my friend was subletting while he worked away from home. Two weeks later, Tanya called and asked when I was coming back, and I told her that the answer was never.

I was relieved that at last the decision had been made, but it was horrible being away from Danny. I missed him terribly. He was just at the stage of chatting away in a mixture of baby words and real words and I couldn’t bear to miss any of it, so I persuaded Tanya to let him come to stay with me on the weekends. Hand-overs were difficult because the communication between us was in tatters by then, although I tried my hardest to be civil for Danny’s sake. I paid my child maintenance, but still we often argued over money. It was difficult, to say the least, but Danny was precious and I treasured every single moment with him.

It was a tough time all round. The only thing keeping me going was the thought of seeing Danny at the end of each week. I worked all the hours under the sun to make ends meet. My father didn’t teach me much, but he did teach me the importance of hard work. I’ve always been a hardworking man and I’m proud of that.

One Saturday night in October 1997, I was in my flat, with Danny asleep in bed, when Tanya knocked on the door. I opened it, expecting her to start an argument with me about something, but instead she was smiling and friendly. I’d had a few drinks by that stage and decided to let her in. One thing led to another and we ended up sleeping together. She left before the sun came up, and as soon as I woke I regretted what we had done. It was sending out all the wrong signals because, as far as I was concerned, the relationship was totally over.

I tried to forget about it and move on, but a few months later one of Tanya’s female friends – she didn’t say who she was – rang me while I was at work.

‘Tanya’s pregnant,’ she blurted out. ‘And you’re the father.’

‘And how on earth am I the father, then?’ I demanded. ‘Of course it’s not my bloody child. She’s just trying to mug me off.’

When I saw her next, as I was dropping Danny home the following weekend, she noticed my eyes wander down to her growing baby bump. I said I didn’t believe it was mine.

‘It is your baby,’ she shrugged. ‘You’ll see.’

The months passed and I carried on having Danny at the weekends, as usual. Then, on 3 June 1998, I got a call at work from one of Tanya’s friends to tell me that she had given birth to a baby girl. I thought it was nice that Danny would have a sister, but I still didn’t believe the baby was mine, even though she was born roughly nine months after Tanya and I’d had that one-night reunion.

The day after the birth, I drove Danny up to the Bristol Royal Infirmary so he could meet his little sister. Tanya had decided she was to be called Rebecca, Becky for short. Danny was excited about it, and I didn’t want him to miss out.

As we walked through the ward, Danny spotted Tanya and ran towards the cot where little Becky was sleeping.

‘Don’t wake her up!’ Tanya warned as he peered over the edge. I was proud of how quiet and gentle he was for a three-year-old. I could tell he instantly felt protective towards his baby sister.

‘Don’t you want to say hello to your daughter?’ Tanya asked me, and I sauntered over to the cot to have a better look.

Becky was a cute little thing, wrapped up tightly in a white blanket and with a little white cotton hat on her head. I didn’t want to fall in love but I simply couldn’t help myself. She was so adorable, I fell hook, line and sinker on the spot. It was overwhelming, just like the feeling I’d had when I first saw Danny. But was she mine, or was some other man going to come along and claim to be her dad? At that stage, I didn’t know.

Tanya took Becky home a few days later, and we went back to the routine of me having Danny each Friday to Sunday.

‘Why not take Becky as well?’ she asked one Friday night when Becky was three months old.

I was reluctant, as I didn’t want to spoil the time Danny and I spent together, but Tanya wouldn’t take no for an answer.

‘She is your daughter,’ she insisted. ‘You’re going to have to start looking after her sooner or later.’

‘We don’t know that she’s mine,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m not having her until I know the truth.’ I’d thought about getting a DNA test, but it was expensive and at that time I didn’t have the cash to spare.

Finally, Tanya said, ‘You’re not having Danny if you don’t take Becky too.’

She knew she would win with that. I was backed into a corner, with no choice other than to take little Becky home with me. I could remember all the routines from when Danny was a baby: getting up in the night to feed her from a bottle, bathing her carefully in a little baby bath, and dressing her in her tiny clothes. It was during these moments that I started to look at her more closely, and I noticed her hazel eyes were starting to look exactly the same as mine. I melted inside when she beamed up at me, and my stomach filled with butterflies whenever she reached out to grab my finger. I’ve always been a complete softie at heart, and Becky was winning me over more and more every time I saw her.

I was out one weekend with the kids, Danny holding my hand and Becky, who was six months old, in her pushchair, when I bumped into Anjie on Kingswood High Street. I felt flustered but Anjie’s face broke into a huge grin as soon as she saw me.

‘Darren! How are you? I haven’t seen you in ages!’ she said.

Suddenly, I got the same rush of electricity running through me as I’d had ten years previously, when we first met, and I felt tongue-tied. I’d caught glimpses of Anjie over the years while she was out and about in Bristol – usually with her little boy – but we’d never had the opportunity to chat properly.

‘Oh, you know – keeping busy,’ I forced myself to reply, gesturing at the kids.

‘They are very cute,’ she said, the smile not leaving her face. ‘Are you still with Tanya?’

‘Oh no, not at all,’ I answered quickly. I really wanted Anjie to know I was single. I was disappointed when she then told me she was in a relationship, although something in the way she talked about it gave me a hint she wasn’t too happy.

We parted, promising that we would go for a drink and a good catch-up soon, and for the rest of the day I thought of nothing else but her. I’d honestly never had such strong feelings for anyone in my life, and the possibility that things might work out between us was incredibly exciting.

A few months later, I was in the pub having a pint after work when she walked in with her friend Kim. I could tell from the expression on her face that she was not in a good way, although she raised a smile when I asked if I could get some drinks in and join them.

‘I was hoping to see you,’ Anjie said, taking a seat. ‘That’s why I came here.’

It turned out that things were on the rocks with her boyfriend, but she hadn’t had the guts to tell him yet. We had a few drinks and she came back to stay at my flat, just to clear her head. I said I was sorry she was having such a difficult time, although secretly of course I was delighted at the thought that she might soon be single. A few weeks after that night she broke up with her boyfriend, and we started seeing each other. I was over the moon.

Everything was so easy with Anjie. We instantly felt like we were two jigsaw-puzzle pieces that fitted together perfectly. She was warm, loving, gorgeous to look at and great fun to be with. I’d gaze at her sometimes and have to pinch myself because I couldn’t believe my luck. One night, when we were cuddled up in front of the television, she looked at me and said something that stopped my heart beating.

‘We were always meant to be together, you know,’ she said. ‘I always knew it would be you and me.’

It turned out that when we first met, Anjie had felt the same connection as I had. It felt like the most natural thing in the world for us to be together.

I soon realised that Anjie was the kindest person I had ever met. Most people have the ability to be kind, but with Anjie it just radiated from her. She was lovely to everyone she met, and could never do enough to help someone in need. She would spend her days helping elderly neighbours with their shopping and chores, and she loved being around children. I couldn’t believe my luck that I’d found someone like her. As far as I was concerned, she was an angel on earth.

Because Anjie’s previous relationship had been so troubled, she had taken the difficult decision to have her son, Nathan, stay with her mum, Margaret, during the week and come to her at weekends. Nathan was twelve when Anjie and I got together, and we decided that it was best for him to stay in the same school, which meant he had to stay with his nan, who lived five miles away. Anjie still saw him every day, though, because she used to walk over and take him to and from school, morning and afternoon, meaning that she had covered 20 miles by the end of the day. She was too broke to afford the bus fares.

Nathan didn’t see anything of his biological father, so when she decided it was time to introduce us, I was keen to make a good impression, hoping I might become a father figure to him.

‘Nathan, this is Darren,’ Anjie said when we picked him up from his grandmother’s one weekend.

‘I haven’t seen you since you were a little boy – you’ve grown loads since then.’ I grinned at Nathan, but he regarded me suspiciously. I could tell straight away that he was possessive of his mother. The minute we got to Anjie’s house, he wanted to play-fight with me in the garden. It took a few hours of playfully throwing him around for me to break the ice with him, and that was it – we were fine after that.

It was time for Anjie to meet Danny, who was four, and Becky, who was not quite two. This was a different kettle of fish as both my kids loved her the second they set eyes on her. Danny immediately sat next to her and listened, all ears, as she read him a story, while Becky just gazed at her in awe. Anjie was a natural mother, through and through.

When Nathan first met Danny, he shyly invited him up to his room to play computer games. Danny was thrilled – he didn’t have anything like that at home. Suddenly, a boy eight years older than him was inviting him to play on the PlayStation with him. That was awesome! They remained locked up in that room for hours, and we barely heard a peep out of them. I think Danny had always wanted an older brother, and Nathan provided someone for him to look up to. From then on, Danny adjusted to life as the ‘middle child’ in our family, which suited him just fine.

Becky was too young to play with Danny and Nathan, so she mainly spent her time with Anjie and me. She was quite a demanding child, who would scream at the top of her lungs for hours on end for no reason that we could ever work out. I’d had her checked out with a doctor and there was nothing physically wrong. It seemed as though she was just staking her claim for attention in the household. When we started feeding her solids instead of milk, she would scream in between spoonfuls of baby food because we weren’t giving it to her fast enough. She was like a little monster sometimes – but I was still a doting dad and nothing was too much trouble.

At first, I would often take my kids out for one day every weekend to give Nathan time alone with his mum, because he seemed a little jealous when she was affectionate towards my two, particularly Becky. But Anjie was adamant that she wanted us to be a family and that we should do things together. When she said that, I gave her a huge hug. I would have done anything for my kids and I think they knew that. I wanted to give them a proper family life – the life I’d never really had – even if I could only do it at the weekends. Anjie wanted to give them a great home too, so that’s what we set about doing. For the next fifteen years, all of our energy was put into making sure the three kids had a stable upbringing with plenty of love. And there was so much love in our house it was unreal.

Eventually, the kids and I were seeing so much of Anjie and Nathan that it made sense for me to move in to Anjie’s house in Hillfields, which was just a few miles from where I had been living in Barton Hill. We then moved together to a new house in the St George’s area. In both houses, Nathan had a room of his own, while Danny and Becky shared a room. During the week, the house was quiet as it was just Anjie and me, but at weekends it was like living in a madhouse with three kids running around, winding each other up and playing games. But we didn’t want it any other way.

I still hadn’t bothered to get a DNA test because I knew in my heart of hearts that Becky was my daughter. Tanya hadn’t named me on the birth certificate, though, and I wanted things to be clear, so when Becky was two years old I decided to go ahead with the test. When the results eventually came back they proved that she was definitely my daughter. By then, I loved her so much I don’t think it changed anything, but it did feel good knowing for sure that she was mine. I knew then that I would never, ever be forced to let her go.