Amelia's story

Where do I start
,
princess? One day you will ask me why I have
never spoken about my childhood,
and that
, my sweetheart,
is
when I shall hand you this book.
Once you have rea
d the words from cover to cover,
you will have the answer to your question.
For some, a childhood can be a very scar
y part of life, and for me it was. I learned
that when your life and destiny is in the hands of t
he devil himself (or in my case,
the devil herself)
,
there is only one safe place of escape and retreat
—
your mind.
In
reading this book, you will be taken on a journey of a young woman you won’t know or recognize. That woman is me
,
sweetheart, your Mama. You may cry and feel the pain and struggle of a young woman
,
but in turn
you will wonder
at her strength and will to carry on. I never knew how I would tell you my life story
; it
is not a straightforward chapter from my lif
e. T
here are many diversions, which is why I decided
that
writing this book for you was the best way for both of us.
But first, my princess, let me talk about you and what I want for you.
M
y hopes and dreams
. . .
As I write
this
,
you are only
two years and eight months old.
You have
the energy of a hundred children
and confidence of so many more!
You are extremely intelligent and never fail to surprise me. I wonder at your creative skills and learning capabilities, which many have said exceed your years. This is probably why you are not in the least bit interested in sleeping at any time
—
your brain is far too busy
! Only when your body has said, “Enough is enough” are you forced to sleep!

Based on
my own childhood, I had to
be
sure you wanted for nothing.
You
need
to feel so loved, safe
,
and secure
so
you w
ill
grow up to be a loving, independent, beautiful woman
without insecurities and doubts. I hope you can honestly say that you never knew fear, rejection
,
or pain. The m
ost important thing for me
as your mother
is that you always fee
l happiness when looking back on
your own childhood. All those memories
will
cement
the
fact that you were, and always will be, loved unconditionally.
There are a few things I want you to remember and take with you through your own life. Here are five things you can never recover: 1.) A stone once thrown; 2.) A word after it’s said; 3.) An occasion once missed; 4
.) T
ime when it has passed
; 5.) A
person after they have passed on. Don’t go
through your life with regrets,
darling
. M
ake the most of every single m
oment
.
Princess
,
you have brought me so much more love than I have ever dreamed of
and
more than I ever believed possible. You are my inspiration and whole world. I love you
.
Now
,
to end this prologue with a
favour
ite
phrase of mine
by an unknown
a
uthor
:
I
n
the end it’s not the amount of
breaths
we took, but the moments that took our breath away.

Back to Table of Contents

On a cold December morning,
I was thrust
onto
this planet with great force following a
thirty
-hour labor suffered by my mother
,
Heidi Sue
Thomas.
T
his was the day my tragic childhood began. My birth was not to be the great family celebration it should have been
. A
las
, it was
quite the opposite.
My
m
other was a twenty-year-old
woman
—
a rebel for her own cause! She met her first love (my fath
er), Christopher Jason Gillingham,
in a conservative club in
Manchester
during the summer of 1968,
in which
my father was on a two
-
week leave from the R.A.F. They fell in love
,
and within three months
they
were
officially
engaged.
My mother was
born Heidi Sue Thomas
in
1947 in
Denton
,
Manchester
. She was born without emotion and did not feel for the nee
ds of others, only for herself. S
he was incapable of feeling;
it
was not something that came naturally to her. She could not identify with the word
sympathy
at all.

I
found
out much later in life (
during my thirties
) some very
truthful hurts about my mother. S
he was admitted to a psychiatric ward in her late teens,
and
she was an uncontrollable
,
destructive force, full of hate for everyone. She poisoned everything good that came i
n contact with her,
and she was
a true destroyer of good. She never felt remorse for her actions and
she
could not be
reasoned with at all. So, to me, she was
not really human at all. If diagnosed in this day and age, she would more than likely
be
diagnosed a
s a sociopath
.

H
owever, this was the 1960s
,
and it was a completely different world
back
then, with a com
pletely different set of rules. S
hame was something no family wanted to suffer
,
least of all my
G
randma and
G
randad Thomas (my mother’s parents). They were such proud
people, church
goers every Sunday. Grandad Thomas was a scout leader and a factory foreman,
and
my
g
randmother
was a housewife and full-
time mother. So they did what a lot of families did in that period of time
to cover up the shame—they
dealt with it quietly,
so as
not to draw attention upon themselves from the rest of their community.
They were the first family on
the
ir
street to own a car (Morris Minor
,
I believe). To own one
car was a luxury in those days,
unlike today where the
re are multiple cars per family.
T
h
e streets were so much quieter. C
hildren
could play safely on the road; that’s
how rare it was to see a car. My
g
randparents bought
their first house for £2,500—
a large sum in those days. My mother was an extremely attractive
woman with
dark
,
sultry looks
and
deep
brown eyes, and she knew it to,
and used this to her advantage to get what she wanted and get
away with anything she needed
.
My mother had a normal childhood and was brought up by fairly strict parents; they were a typical nuclear family.
My mother and her brother,
Geoffrey
,
were ten years apart in age. They were dressed, fed
,
and cared for well. Mother had a good education and went to grammar school. She would receive a good clip
’
round the ear
by her father
if she was out of l
ine, which was al
so pretty normal back then.
At the time
of their meeting,
m
y mother and father were both nineteen
years old, but the law at the time stated that any couple wishing to marry without parental consent had to be
twenty-one
years of age.
My
f
ather’s parents were against the marriage
,
as they thought
my mother
was
not good enough for their son. R
umors had spilled out into
the village with regards to her
promiscuous antics and general behavio
u
r.