Old Before My Time (3 page)

Making history as the first child in Europe to try the FTI drug, 2007

Me and Michiel presented with awards for completing the triple drug trial, pictured with Amber and Louis, 2009

Me and Michiel in my hot tub, 2007

My first day at Bexhill High School, 2009

My 13th birthday, 2010

Posing with my friends at a sleep over, 2010

With my ‘little brother and sister' Ruby and Louis, August 2011

Watching my book in production, 2011
photo courtesy Channel 5/Rabbit Productions

Preparing for the photoshoot for my book cover, July 2011
photo courtesy Channel 5/Rabbit Productions

Me and my best friend Erin, 2011

Chapter 1
Kerry
We're Having a Baby

T
WO LINES APPEARED IN
the window. ‘What the hell am I going to tell Mark? He's going to hit the roof,' I said to my friend and confidante, Jane. It was the fourth pregnancy test stick I had peed on in three days and the results were the same. I was pregnant.

I could feel the butterflies starting to flutter in my stomach just thinking of the conversation that lay ahead when my boyfriend came home from work. Thirteen years older than me, Mark was already a single dad to Stacey, seven, and Charlotte, twelve, from his previous marriage, so his nappy-changing years were behind him. We had only been dating for a couple of months and I thought I had been safe on the contraceptive pill. Despite the initial shock I was thrilled at the thought of being a first-time mum. It was all I had ever wanted. My first Christmas memory when I was a kid was the year my dad had made two blue, wooden cots for me and my sister Janie. I must have only been three, Janie was two, and we played with those cots for years, pretending to be mums to our rag dolls. We would carry them everywhere, feeding them and changing nappies.

Now I was twenty-four and my life would soon be complete.

I could never understand those career women who would sacrifice everything for their work. I would happily have given up my job in the school kitchen just to have a baby to love and care for. I thought there was nothing like the love between a mother and child, it was unconditional and everlasting and something I wanted. After years of dating boys who were afraid of commitment, I wanted someone to love me as much as I loved him or her; and a baby would give me that love I craved.

‘Maybe I should hang a pair of baby booties on the front door knocker. Perhaps that will give him a hint,' I joked with Jane, thinking of ways I could soften the blow.

When Mark arrived home that evening after his 12-hour shift at the parcel delivery company, I was sitting on the sofa alone watching
Emmerdale
. The four positive pregnancy tests were laid out on the cushion next to me.

As he took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair he noticed the plastic sticks on the sofa.

‘We're having a baby,' I chirped before he had the chance to say anything.

‘Are you sure?' From the look on his face anyone would have thought I had slapped him with a month-old kipper.

‘Of course I am. I've got an appointment with the doctor on Friday. But that will only confirm what I already know. We're going to be parents.' As I had expected, the reaction was not good. The silent treatment lasted for days as Mark sulked over the news of the addition to his family.

Looking back, I can understand Mark's less than ecstatic reaction. It was all happening too quickly.

Perhaps we should have been more careful. I was probably too young to be part of a ready-made family with another baby on the way. But I didn't consider that at the time. I had grown up in a large family. In my immediate family I was the eldest of three. My sister was only a year younger than me. When I was just three months old my mum had one hell of a shock when she took me for a check up at the baby clinic and discovered she was expecting Janie. My half-brother, Steven, was six years younger. My mother was one of seven and my dad was one of 11, so Christmases and special occasions were always big events.

Mark, on the other hand, had come from a small family. His mother, Brigitte, and her sister fled from East Germany as the partition of Berlin was beginning in 1951. After settling in Hastings, she met Mark's dad who was driving the trams. He had one younger sister and no nieces and nephews, so he was used to the quiet life.

Mark also had a good reason to be fearful of another baby. He and his ex-wife Jane, who was also my best friend, had lost their second daughter, Lucy, to cot death when she was just eight weeks old. The trauma of trying to give his tiny baby the kiss of life had haunted him for years and quite understandably he was worried that it would happen all over again. All of this was a perfectly acceptable reaction to the baby news, but, being a typical bloke, he didn't share his feelings with me. He just sulked.

The reality hit when I came back from my first ultrasound scan with a blurry black and white photo of our healthy baby girl and a due date of November 30 1997. Mark started coming round to the idea of the new addition and for the next few months we enjoyed our final period of freedom knowing our carefree days would soon be over.

We both loved dance music and clubbing. That's how we met. I was working as a shelf-stacker at Somerfield supermarket with Mark's ex-wife near my parents' home in Cranbrook, Kent. One afternoon as she was filling up her freezer section with fish fingers and I was rotating the full-fat milk in my fridge area, she said, ‘Me and Mark and a few friends are going to the Eighties Night at Saturdays nightclub in Hastings this weekend. Fancy joining us?' Why not? I thought, I'm footloose and fancy free.

Duran Duran's ‘Rio' was playing as we hit the club. ‘C'mon. Let's dance,' said Jane, dragging me on to the crowded disco floor. If I'm totally honest, eighties pop music wasn't really my bag, I was more of a trance and house music fan. I was having fun, though. As Duran Duran segued into Kylie Minogue we were really warming up to the music. Then I noticed Jane gesticulating to a bloke with a greying goatee beard who was standing by the bar.

‘Who are you chasing?' I shouted to be heard above the disco beat.

‘That's my ex, Mark.' I had heard Jane talk of her ex-husband and her two daughters and I had always been impressed by how they managed to stay good friends after their divorce. What I didn't realise was that she was playing match-maker.

‘Can I get you a drink?' Mark asked once we had finally fought our way from the dance floor to the bar.

‘I'll have a vodka with lime and lemonade – no ice,' I replied, not realising that this was his attempt at a chat-up line.

Drinks in hand, we talked about work and music. Mark and I had more in common than I imagined. We shared the same taste in music and the same dry sense of humour. But there was zero chemistry. I just thought he seemed like a nice bloke. As the weeks passed, I went out more with Jane, and Mark would always be there too. Call me stupid but I didn't think anything of it – a bunch of girls and one bloke who always seemed to make a beeline to talk to me. I didn't even realise that he had made a special effort and combed his hair, which was dark brown, cropped short and peppered with a hint of grey. Mark was just another friend. That was until Christmas when I invited Mark to a party.

‘You can stay at my place if you don't want to get a taxi home,' he offered. So I did. Two weeks later I had virtually moved in. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It turned out Mark was a bit of mix master. He had a set of DJ decks at his house and he would make me mixtapes, which were as good as anything I'd heard played at the clubs. Mark also introduced me to the rave scene. In those days – the late 90s – illegal raves were still popular and the Kent countryside across the border from our home in Sussex was a prime location. It was always a game of cat and mouse, the ravers versus the police and authorities. Under the darkness of the night we would drop Mark's daughters off at the babysitters and drive out into the countryside, following an anonymous tip-off and a convoy of headlights into the countryside until we arrived at a field where there was a party in full swing. We would dance non-stop, my favourite tune at the time was ‘Take Me Away', by a band called 4 Strings, a really uplifting dance anthem that always got me waving my glow sticks in the air. When the sun rose over the hedges we would head home, relieved that the police and council officials had not raided the party. Once I had a taste for the great outdoors, Mark introduced me to festivals like Global Gathering and Cream Fields, three days of non-stop dancing. I was in my element.

After a hedonistic summer of festivals and fun, Mark and I started preparing for our new arrival.

We were living in a two-bedroom council house on an estate in the sleepy seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea on the East Sussex coast. Space was at a premium. We had no room for a nursery and money was tight. I had changed jobs and was working as a chambermaid at a local hotel while Mark was working up to 12-hour shifts at the local Amtrak parcel delivery company just to make ends meet. He always said to me, ‘Don't worry about money,' which I later realised meant we never had any money so we had no worries. With two children to care for and a third on the way there was never any spare cash for luxuries at the end of the month. We begged and borrowed to collect what we needed for our new arrival. My mum had bought us a second-hand pram, a friend gave us a cot and I had found a used Moses basket for sale in the small ads of our local newspaper. It was all set up in our bedroom ready for the new arrival.

At 3 a.m. on Monday December 1 1997 I was woken up by an agonising labour pain in my tummy.

‘She's coming,' I shouted to Mark as I reached for the TENS machine and attached the electrode to my spine to ease the pain.

‘I think you'd better stay home from work.' I winced as another pain shot through my body. I was two days past my due date and although it was my first child I was sure it wasn't a false alarm.

Throughout the day I counted the seconds between the contractions as they got shorter. I ran myself a hot bath to ease the discomfort. At 7 p.m. – just as we were sitting down to a takeaway kebab – the contractions changed.

‘I think it's time for hospital.' Mark helped me into the back of his red Ford Sierra and drove me five miles to the maternity unit at Hastings Conquest Hospital.

I will never forget the moment – 2.50 p.m. on Wednesday December 3 – when Rita the midwife laid my baby on my tummy. Just days before I had gone into labour I had a dream about our baby. I imagined I was being handed a bundle of blankets and all I could see was one big blue eye, nothing else. Now as I looked down, my head still drifting away on the large doses of gas and air, I saw just one eye, bright blue and sparkling like an aquamarine gem, looking up at me. It lit up the room. She reached out to touch the air with her perfect little fingers and I immediately felt relief. The pain was over. Our little girl was healthy.

I looked at Mark, who had stayed by my side throughout the entire delivery and said, ‘Don't it look like she's got highlights?' Her head was plastered with a thick mop of brown hair.

‘Hello, Hayley,' Mark whispered. We had already decided we would name her after the comet Hale Bopp, which had been streaking across the sky on the night that she was conceived.

She was absolutely beautiful. Weighing in at 6lb 6oz, she was perfect. As we cooed over her, a smile broke out across her elfin face. It was the first of many.

‘She's gonna be a cheeky one,' Mark warned, ‘she's got your wicked glint in her eye.'

I would have punched him playfully but I didn't have the energy. After a 40-hour labour I was knackered but I was also the happiest woman in the world.