Читать книгу Hailey's Story - She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived - Hailey Giblin - Страница 8

ON 16 APRIL 1986, I WAS BORN IN THE FISHING PORT OF GRIMSBY. When I was delivered, in the Princess Diana Hospital, I weighed seven pounds and ten ounces, a little bundle of joy. I am the only girl of six children born to my mother. I have two younger brothers and three elder, all born in Grimsby.

By today’s standards, if you go by the early-morning TV misery shows, my broken-home family of mixed-parentage siblings was quite normal. When my mum, Amanda Jayne Brown, was 16 she married David Lewis, and went on to give birth to her first child, Ben, and then, two years later, to Adam. After a marriage that lasted five years, she and David split up when they realised they were too young to hold on to the commitment. Anyway, that is what I was told. The boys kept the name Lewis.

Before long, my mother met David Baxter and soon after marrying him she gave birth to my brother Hayden. I was born next. The four-year marriage was destined for disaster. By this time I was nearly two years old. Even at this early age I was already broken-home material, fit for the likes of Jerry Springer’s or Trisha’s show.

Mum’s split from David Baxter was an acrimonious affair that resulted in the family home being taken from us because of financial problems. After this, David Baxter went abroad with a woman.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the aftermath of this break-up would follow me around for a few years, as you will see later. During Mum’s estrangement from my father, she developed a relationship with a man called Wayne Edwards, and eventually I would accept him as my dad.

My mum’s relationship with Wayne, a butcher in Humberston, started when she went into his shop and they got talking, and then, I suppose, it went from there.

At first, Wayne would visit my mum from time to time… he wooed her. He stayed over a few nights and then he would go back to his flat above the shop. After a while, my mum left the house in Northcoates, near Humberston, and moved in with Wayne, bringing me and my three brothers with her.

Once we were all in his flat, Wayne happily looked after his business and we accepted him as our stepfather. After four years, the relationship between him and Mum produced their first child, Joshua, and later their second son, Hadleigh, was born. These two were given the surname Edwards, as I was, because my mother used the name Edwards, although my birth certificate records my surname as Baxter. I remember I was lying down in the front room with my brother Hayden when Mum asked me, ‘Would you like your name changed so that you have got the babies’ last name as well?’

Mum asked my two eldest brothers, Ben and Adam Lewis, the same question, but they didn’t want to because they were still in contact with their biological father on a friendly basis. He seemed to be a nice dad. All I know about her relationship with her first husband, David Lewis, obviously came from details she told me.

To this very day, Mum has stayed with Wayne. So I think the relationship she has got now with my stepdad is a strong one, a stronger one than those others. It has survived the test of time.

I would say that Mum is the one who wears the trousers in our household. That may well be what has made the relationship last. Wayne, not being a domineering man, is someone my mother can live with, which I mean in a good way. He has lost his temper with me on a few occasions – that’s between him and me – but he has been good for my mum.

My first school was Cloverfields Primary and then I moved up to Humberston Comprehensive, which I thought was a lovely school until what happened to me when I was 11.

Just about everyone remembers their first day at school, as either one of happiness or one of sadness or fear. Mine, I’ll never forget. I was moving up from day nursery to school. You were allowed to bring a teddy bear, because we had a teddy bears’ picnic, and this girl had a toy thing in the shape of a ruler. One whack on your wrist and this thing would wrap itself around it.

We were playing Ring-a-Ring of Roses and this girl – her name was Emma Holmes – kept cracking this toy on her arm and the teacher, Mrs Braithwaite, said, ‘Take that off your arm.’ Eventually, the teacher took it off Emma and put it on her teddy bear.

We were going round in a circle and I pulled this toy off the teddy bear and started whacking it against my arm. I was playing with it for about ten minutes, but I didn’t really get told off for it. Then Emma started crying and pointing at me, ‘She’s got my whip thing, she’s got my whip thing.’

After that, I remember, I got a good telling-off for taking this wraparound toy when the other girl had already been told she couldn’t have it. Try explaining that to a five-year-old. So my first day at school is etched on my memory, and it wasn’t a good one.

That morning I’d tried to claw and scream my way out of going to school. They said I screamed and screamed and screamed and didn’t want to go. But, thankfully, I wasn’t an introverted child, and my mum said that, as soon as I got inside the school and saw all the kids with their teddy bears and all that stuff, I was fine.

But Mum told me later that she went home crying because I’d screamed that much and was holding on to her neck. After that, she got my stepdad to take me to school in case I started crying again. Before long, though, I was all right and I progressed well at school. I am a great reader and at school they did an achievement task at the end of the year where you were assessed to find the best reader and the best writer. I was nominated the best reader for two years running.

When I think back to when I was really young, I recollect the bad things in life. I don’t know if that is how I mark time – by putting dates to these sporadic events – but that is how history is remembered too: for all the bad things, wars, invasions, plagues, death. I mean, most people will be familiar with the dates of wars, but not with dates when great discoveries were made. Some know 1066 as being the year of the Battle of Hastings, but who can recall when Louis Pasteur discovered penicillin? As much as the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain are sacred to some, my past is even more sacred to me. We all recall historical dates connected with some dire act of misery. I’m no different in my personal memories.

One particularly strong memory I have is of the time my brother Hayden was playing with the coal fire. I was very young. That was when we lived in Northcoates with our biological father. I remember him sitting in his chair in the corner and my mum in the kitchen doing the dinner.

Hayden had this roll of sticky tape that he was rolling out and putting on the fire unsupervised. Without warning, he draped a flaming trail of fire on my wrist. As quick as a flash, I darted through the house towards the kitchen. I was a screaming, flaming Chucky doll with this roll of burning sticky tape stuck to my arm.

I can remember the strange, new, intense sensation of being burned by the blazing plastic. When I got to the kitchen, my mum plucked me up from the floor, put me on the sink and doused cold water on the burning flesh of my wrist. Not a fond memory.

This was no accident; call it a stupid prank, but I don’t know many people who have suffered from the same sort of joke. The effect it had on me remains with me to this day. My brother’s act was deliberate and has scarred my mind to the point where, although I didn’t fall into the fire itself, I am very concerned for children going near an open fire.

Putting that negative and painful memory to one side, I do actually have, from time to time, one or two good flashbacks to the past. It’s not all gloom and doom. I remember waking up in the morning and finding a dog on the end of my bed and then going downstairs, where there were even more presents to greet my searching eyes.

I remember the first time I saw Father Christmas, as he walked into the room trailing a black bin liner behind him. But there was something distinctly odd about him: he was wearing the full Father Christmas outfit, but with pointy, high-heeled shoes. Ladies’ shoes! Mind you, at that age I still believed he was really Father Christmas. In fact, I didn’t pick up on the high heels at first. I think it was Hayden who said, ‘Look at Father Christmas’s shoes,’ and then my mum pointed it out and shrieked with laughter as she said, ‘Yes, he has got funny shoes on.’ I remember that, and that Christmas was the time I got a play kitchen.

Would you believe, it was only about a year ago that I learned the true identity of Father Christmas – well, the identity of this particular Father Christmas. It was my maternal grandmother, Joan. I found out from my auntie, my mum’s sister, when I tricked her into telling me.

Although I considered myself to be a clever girl in the academic sense, I wasn’t clever enough to question Father Christmas’s high-heeled shoes. I was still pretty naïve and innocent in the ways of the world.

I always wanted to learn things. I was even keen to learn how to make a pot of tea. My nature was a giving one; I always wanted to do things to help people. I remember asking my mum and stepfather – from now on I’ll call him my dad – for years, ‘Can I make you both a cup of tea?’ Every time they sternly said no because ‘the kettle is hot’ and ‘the water is hot’.

Not one to be daunted by the prospect of a scalding, I kept suggesting that I make them a cup of tea, so when I got a little bit older and more able – I think I was about ten – I was allowed to. I skipped into the kitchen, joyful at the prospect of making my very first pot of tea. After I became competent, I would take an early-morning cup up to my mum in bed, and a coffee for my dad.

Mum would get up, put on her dressing gown and come downstairs and tidy up, whereas Dad would end up falling back to sleep and leave his coffee there to go cold for an hour. I would go to my bedroom and he would call out, ‘Hailey, do me a favour, duck.’

‘Yes, what’s the matter?’ I would ask enthusiastically.

‘Will you make me a fresh cup of coffee? I’m sorry, I forgot that one,’ my dad would groan.

‘Yes, all right then,’ I would chirp.

But after a couple of weeks I got bored with making hot drinks and Dad wasting his. So in the end, when he kept saying, ‘Will you make me a fresh cup of coffee?’, I would put on the kettle and while it was boiling I would place the cold cup of coffee in the microwave for 30 seconds to heat up. With the kettle boiling, they couldn’t hear the noise of the microwave. I only told him about a year ago that I used to do this. I was a fast learner.

Although I was always looking to please people and was doing well at school, I always fell short of pleasing my mum in the sense that I didn’t make her totally happy. Her disappointed outlook on life I put down to the fact that she may not have been wholly happy with her own lot, as she was really stressed with work. Mum is a workaholic.

Her job was as a care assistant, working in an old people’s home all hours of the day and night. On reflection, I suppose juggling your life between work and your husband and six children must have been a bit of a balancing act. As a grown-up, I can see that nothing makes my mum happy. I don’t want to sound like I’m attacking Mum’s integrity, as she did congratulate me on my academic achievements, and she did attend school from time to time to see my work. But my gaining these qualifications didn’t really please her in the way I felt it should have done.

In a way, I felt Mum never really supported me enough with homework, with subjects like maths. I used to enjoy maths until I was ten or eleven years old, but after that people used to say, ‘You don’t like maths, do you?’ I would steadfastly defend myself, ‘Yes, I really like maths and my maths teacher and everything.’ I used to go home with homework and Mum used to say, with defeatism in her voice, ‘Go and ask your dad… I’m not great at this, but your dad is good at maths.’

So Dad would sit there and say, ‘I’ll do it for you,’ and he would do the work for me. But I look back on this now as the easy way out. You are supposed to say, ‘Sit down and I will read the question out and you try and work out the answer,’ instead of having someone else just write it down for you.

Mum was very busy with her work and I was the only girl. I felt that my brothers got everything and that my being asked to make the tea for everyone was a poor consolation prize. But then, for a while, things changed and for a good few years Mum and I became best friends and developed a loving relationship; we were inseparable.

Dad and Hayden used to do the father-and-son bonding routine of going to the football on a Saturday. Mum would get a can of Coke and a bag of bonbons and the two of us would sit there and watch repeats of EastEnders, do each other’s hair or go out shopping. That’s the sort of thing mums and daughters are supposed to do together, isn’t it?

As I became older and more self-reliant, I fitted in with Mum’s routine. At that stage I didn’t feel neglected.

In trying to recall a spontaneous memory from that time, I remember the times I would be out in the street near to home. It’s in part simply a fond memory and in part a growing-up memory that shows how I was starting to think for myself. The ice-cream man used to always come about ten minutes before teatime. Often Mum would comfort me by saying, ‘You can have an ice-cream tomorrow night, OK?’ and then, ‘Go on, you can go and play outside for ten or fifteen minutes and I’ll shout for you when your dinner is done.’

Of course, I would catch sight of the ice-cream van and without hesitation I would saunter up to the van. Feasting my eyes on what was on offer, I’d have the brazen brainwave of saying to Don, the man serving, ‘Oh, yeah, my mum hasn’t got any change today, but she said, if she gives you the money tomorrow, could I, you know, have a cornet?’

Don would give in and say, ‘Go on then, I’ll give you an ice-cream.’

As I recall this, I remember how much I wanted that ice-cream. I wanted an ice-cream that minute, there and then, not tomorrow. That was as far as I pushed the boundaries of innocence as a child. I knew no different, but it shows how childhood innocence was looked upon by the ice-cream man.

I pulled that ruse quite often, but then Mum and Dad cottoned on and they would come out to the van and say to Don, ‘Did Hailey have an ice-cream last week that she forgot to pay for?’

Don would innocently reply, ‘Well, actually, she had about four’ as he looked at me with that ‘You’re not supposed to do that’ expression on his face.

When I got a little bit older, I used to do the same thing but the very next day, when the ice-cream man came, my mum would give me the money and I’d say to Don, ‘Oh, there’s the money for your ice-cream.’

I would say to Mum and Dad, ‘Oh well, I don’t want one tonight because I used the money for today’s,’ and they would say, ‘Well, go on and have one anyway.’

Something that happened not long ago made me recall this particular memory. We went for a day out to Hemswell Market, where I used to go shopping with my granddad on a Sunday. I walked past an ice-cream van and I saw this guy inside and, to my utter astonishment, it was Don. It was the same ice-cream man, in the same van, and it brought the memories flooding back like a burst dam. And didn’t it seem as if time had stood still? I was just standing there thinking, God, how strange is that after all these years?

I went straight over and said hello to him. To my amazement, he remembered who I was. He was like, ‘God, I haven’t seen you in ages. You look so grown up now. You’ve cut all your hair off.’ My hair used to be down past my waist. It was like I had accelerated all these years forward to where I was now. God, if only that had been possible! I just stood there and I had a lot of fiery flashbacks. All these disjointed memories came flooding back.

That brings me on to a memory tinged with both happiness and sadness that was brought on by the memory of going to the market with Granddad. When I was still in primary school, on Fridays my mum used to go to this fish and chip restaurant with her dad, Granddad Don, and Grandma. The place had the peculiar name of the Pea Bung – that’s what Granddad used to call it, anyway. ‘We’re off to the Pea Bung on Friday,’ he would pipe up.

When my mum got back I would eagerly ask, ‘Did you have a good day, Mum?’

With a twinkle in her eye, she would reply, ‘Yes, guess where I’ve been.’

‘Where?’ I’d say.

‘Go on, have a guess,’ she would challenge me.

Feeling I’d been left out, I would ask dejectedly, ‘You haven’t been to the Pea Bung with Granddad, have you?’ Because as a child it was my favourite place.

Mum would bring me down but then lift me up by answering, ‘Yes, I have, but next week we’ll go, and we’ll go on a Saturday.’

‘Can’t I go on a Friday?’ I would plead.

It was always, ‘No, you can’t, because you’ve got school, so we’ll take you on the Saturday instead.’

Still, the chance to go to the Pea Bung, even on a Saturday, was a treat beyond comprehension. The expectation of what lay ahead on Saturday would fill me with delight. To some the place was just a normal, everyday chip shop with a restaurant. But to me the Pea Bung embodied all that was good in the world: there I could sit, look out of the window and see the world go by while enjoying the company and a special treat from Granddad.

He would proclaim with gusto, ‘Well, I’m going to have fish,’ and, as he looked expectantly at my mum, he would ask, ‘What are you going to have, Mandy?’

Mum would pick herself a mouth-wateringly tasty piece of fish from what was on display in the hot, glazed servery and, in turn, ask, ‘What do you want, Hailey?’

Shivering with excitement, I would gather my thoughts and say, ‘Can I have a small sausage, please, with chips?’

Within minutes my order would arrive in the safe hands of a waitress: two massive sausages, some big, fat beefy chips, peas, gravy and a thirst-quenching glass of orange juice to wash it all down, all accompanied by doorstops of bread and butter. It was a magical experience that words can’t fully capture. ‘Wow’ might be the best word to describe it. And yet, from the outside, the place was nothing special. It was on the corner of Freeman Street, in Grimsby: a brick building with two windows. We used to sit near the window at the far end. The place had a strange sort of sliding door; and it was narrow, so only one person at a time could squeeze in.

We would go in and Granddad would announce regally, ‘A table for three, please.’ They would show you to a little high-sided booth. The booth was like Santa’s sleigh: it instilled a feeling of sanctuary, even of womb-like security. That cafe, with its ‘olde worlde’ charm, meant a lot to me. There I was protected from all the evil in the world. So it meant more to me than just being ushered to our booth and sitting there, Mum, Granddad and I. I don’t recall Grandma ever coming with us on a Saturday.

Afterwards, we used to have a gentle stroll around the wondrous marketplace and, to keep me contented for the trip home, they would buy me a small bag of sweets.

That’s my special memory of the Pea Bung, an enchanted place that remains in my thoughts; a place that offered warmth, security and comfort. If I could wish myself back to anywhere in the world, that would be it.

The reverence I felt for it was destroyed, though, if anybody else came along with us, including my brothers. They were infringing on my special place, and it would infuriate me. This was my special world, and I would think, Don’t you know, you shouldn’t really be here. This is my place with Granddad and Mum.

I knew I was Granddad’s favourite; he always called me special. I like to think so, anyway, because there were so many of us children. He used to give everyone else a normal-sized birthday card or Christmas card but, when it came to my birthday or Christmas, I would get a really big one from him and he would always write inside: ‘To my darling Hailey, hope you have a wonderful birthday, my special girl, love from your Funny Granddad.’

We called him ‘Funny Granddad’ because he was a witty and amusing man. Everything he used to come out with was funny; he was just that extraordinary type of person.

As much as I would describe the Pea Bung as my sanctuary, I would describe my grandfather as my rock. However, nothing is forever, and, at 14, my world was to collapse soon enough. I remember being near the front door, when we lived in Glebe Road, in Humberston, and my cousin Keeley burst in, her face ashen. ‘Where’s your mum, where’s your mum?’ she wailed. She was crying her eyes out and in that split second I knew what had happened.

Granddad’s death was a shock to us all: he wasn’t ill and it was so sudden. He had a lady friend who lived around the corner and they used to go out shopping or he would go and have a natter and a cup of tea with her. From what I was told, he went round there one day and he was sitting in the front room having his regular cup of tea when he said to her, ‘I don’t feel very well, can I go for a lie down?’ So he went and lay on her bed and, when she went to see if he was all right, he had died. He was seventy years old. My rock had crumbled.

That morning, before Granddad died – I think it was a Friday – Mum had mentioned going out for fish and chips at the Pea Bung. Mum had bought another house, as our finances were better, and she was planning on going there that morning to do some work. So it was a big surprise that she was thinking about taking Granddad to the Pea Bung, and I was under the impression that I might be able to go there this time. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.

Since then, my memories of the Pea Bung have been tinged with dark clouds of sorrow, but fond rainbow-coloured memories still shine through like shafts of sunlight on a stormy day.

Many years later, I plucked up the courage to make a pilgrimage to the Pea Bung. My visit conjured up a mixed bag of memories. In a way, I felt proud of the cosy little place. Still there were the protective booths, the seats, the funny little door. One other thing I recall is that they had this unusual wooden spoon bearing the words ‘Don, the world’s biggest stirrer’.

I used to quiz Granddad about this. ‘What does that mean?’

Amused, he would throw his head back and say with a laugh, ‘I’ll tell you when you get a bit older.’

I couldn’t wait for the secret of the spoon to be revealed to me. Mum used to say that it was because he used to stir up trouble with all the little old ladies behind the counter and pull their leg and tell them jokes and try to mess about by saying things like, ‘Well, she said this about you,’ and they would go, ‘Did she, really?’ and then he would say, ‘No, not really.’ So they got a big spoon and put it on the wall for him.

Then, when we went back not long ago, I was devastated to see that the place I once worshipped had been changed. Its whole sanctity had been disturbed. The essence of what the Pea Bung was all about seemed to have been lost. Gone were the special Santa’s sleigh seats, all knocked out and replaced with new seating. I felt quite uncomfortable. It sounds silly, because it was only a fish and chip shop, but it wasn’t special any more, like it used to be. The charm had gone.

But I still ordered two sausages, chips, peas and gravy, a glass of orange juice and some bread and butter. Mind you, there was a small consolation when I was approached by some of the staff – half of them I didn’t even know – and they declared, gobsmacked, ‘You’re Don’s granddaughter!

‘How old are you now?’ they asked.

Then someone said, ‘I remember you when you were six years old, sitting there, when you knocked over your glass of orange and the look on your face was just like “Oops”.’

‘Oh, did I?’ I said.

They all remember me, although I don’t know them. You can guarantee that every time I set foot in there they will go, ‘Your granddad was called Don, wasn’t he?’

‘Well, I’ve never seen you before but yes he was, yes,’ I say.

On that first return visit, I had a feeling of loss when I looked around for Don’s ‘stirrer spoon’ and it wasn’t there. I asked where it was and if I could have it, and they told me, ‘Come back when we have sorted the shop out and you can have that.’

The lady said it had been taken down only about three or four weeks earlier, because they were changing everything around. When I went back again, they had clearly made the changes to the place, but the spoon still wasn’t there. And that was that.

That day Granddad died, Mum and I were alone in the house after Keeley had left. Mum sat on the stairs crying her eyes out, and I was crying beside her. I reached out and put my arms around her. I felt enormously upset, as if my world would explode in a million pieces. It was just Mum and I. So I thought, Well, I’m going to look after her because nobody else is here. That is the feeling I think I had from that time on.

Losing my granddad in my early teens had an overwhelming and disturbing effect on me. The loss of such a strong alpha male from my life left a void, a chasm so hollow that even the moon could not fill it. I ached and ached until there was nothing but hollow numbness within me.

Granddad made me feel safe; he was like a best friend. I couldn’t do anything to disappoint him. Whenever I was around him I was always good and behaved myself, but out of respect, not fear. He insulated me from the pain I will tell you of later. Although I minded my Ps and Qs around Granddad, I never had to stand on ceremony.

I was talking to my friend not so long ago about it, and I realise the amount of respect that I showed Granddad was overwhelming: I would have licked the mud off his boots. And yet, for all the respect I showed him, I didn’t show enough to others around me. Basically, all the respect went to this one man. In my eyes, he was the only one worth it. And I felt that he respected me just as much as I did him.

My idea of dying is illustrated by the way you see some elderly people who are content to be able to say that their family has grown up safe and well. I will be the silly old woman contentedly baking cakes, in maybe about 70 years’ time.

Shattered as my world was, somehow I had to piece it all together again and get on with life. I found it really hard to deal with losing Granddad because he was the only one I wanted to be close to. Through his love and understanding of me at that time, he gave me something that nobody else was able to. I felt special around him. I felt that I was not just being loved; I felt a love between us that was paramount, one that lasted because I was his favourite one.

After Granddad died, I felt that I wasn’t anyone’s special one, and nobody came to my rescue. I used to think he would always be there for me and I would always be there for him. When it came to the finality of accepting he was dead, I still hadn’t come to terms with the loss. And I think that contributed to my going off the rails. There was no one to give that same amount of respect to. I had no reason to be on my best behaviour any more.

In relation to what I went through at such a young age, the message I would send out to children of a similar age would be to try to take a leaf out of their loved one’s book, like I did with my granddad. If I tried to be a person who was just as good as him and treated people with respect and they didn’t give it to me in return, then fine. But at least I was showing it to them. I was trying to do the best that I could for other people, just as Granddad did. I try to treat them with respect, as he did towards me. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Thinking about how that wisdom could be applied today, when values have changed so much in such a short space of time, I realise relationships seem not to be valued as they once were. But the grandparent–grandchild relationship can be invaluable if one party can inspire respect in the other and vice versa. This relationship of mutual respect could play an important role for today’s teenagers, faced by the pressures of modern life, especially the lure of drugs and violence.

My experience is that grandparents have an important role to play in the development of the core values that were once held by the majority of people, not the minority, as appears to be the case now. I remember one time I was sitting at my aunt’s house and I kept kicking the settee and my mum told me off, saying, ‘Don’t do that, please.’ Granddad came in and I was thinking, How far can I push it? He came over and put his hand firmly on my knee and said persuasively, ‘Don’t do that, please.’ I thought, Oh, I’ve been told off by Granddad. I was able to learn right from wrong, and the respect I had for him played an important role in that learning process. Respect helps people learn right from wrong, whereas the imposition of a domineering person’s will to force another to learn something is, I believe, how rebels against society are made.

The central point is that, out of love and respect for someone else, people can turn their own life around and even challenge society’s bad guys. But I know that, as much as I had respect from my grandfather when he lived, in some sense it died with him. So I had to become strong within myself. My idea of becoming strong may have been slightly distorted because of the predominantly male influence in my life. I couldn’t very well exchange my feminine skills for harder, masculine ones.

I do know that, when Granddad passed away, I felt deserted, as if he had been a traitor to me, had let me down and done me wrong by dying. I just thought that my world had come to an end. I was obviously angry that he had left me, and I thought, Well, you were supposed to be here for ever, to look after me and make sure that nothing bad happens to me again.

Whether or not it was because I was younger when Grandma died – I was just six then – I don’t know, but Granddad’s death had far more impact on me. I know that Catholics like to see the body before it is interred, and, although my faith is Church of England, I recall seeing Granddad lying in the Chapel of Rest before going to his funeral to pay my last respects. I had to come to terms with my anger at him for leaving me. When I set eyes on him laid to rest, my world fell apart again, but he had drilled into me that, when you die, you go up to heaven, and he used to always say that about Grandma.

Sometimes he used to talk about Grandma and he would announce, ‘Oh, it’s raining again,’ and I would say, ‘Yeah, I know,’ and he would muse, ‘Well, that’s your grandma up in heaven, washing the floors and all the water is dripping down.’ At other times he’d say, ‘It’s sunny today. Everyone is having a good time up there, they’re having a party. When the sun shines, everyone is happy.’

I always remember he used to tell me, ‘Oh, Grandma’s not very happy today because the clouds have come out. She’s not very happy, don’t want to know us today.’ I suppose it was a collection of nice memories. He didn’t just say, when you die you’re dead. He treated death with respect and humility.

So when I went to see him in the Chapel of Rest I was able to relate to what he had said about death. It was sunny the day we went to see him, so I thought, He must be up there and he must be happy, the sun is out, he must be having a party. A lot of my anger dissipated when I went to see him. I’m pleased I did.

With regard to going to see a loved one before he or she is buried or cremated, I think that is down to everyone’s individual needs, but for me it was right, as young as I was. I was asked whether I would like to go or not, and I made the decision myself. Straight away I said yes. And I was proud that I saw Granddad in his best suit.

I remember he was obsessed with frogs. As you walked through the door of his porch, a frog noise greeted you, which always made me giggle. Every time I walked in I would say, ‘That silly frog, he’s everywhere.’ Granddad even used to have black socks with frogs on, and things like that, right to the end. So he took his humour, this fun side of him, to the grave. Thanks for everything, Granddad.