‘My dad was a drinker, and he looked after me because my mum went off. No one knows where. I mean she could be dead for all I know. It was weird though because I can remember her buying me a blue teddy and stuff like that.

She used to kiss me night night, and read me stories. I had lucozade and hot water bottles when I was poorly. I went to school and had a lunch box with Mini Mouse on it and I’d have a Wagon Wheel inside it and raisins some days. I was just like other kids then, apart from my dad.

Things got worse when my dad started hitting my mum and when he burnt all our Christmas presents once, as well as the tree with the little twinkling lights. Not that we had a lot of presents, but he just set fire to everything in the garden.

My mum tried to stop him but he kept pushing her, and he pushed her into the fire, and she burnt her arm and had to go the hospital. She told the hospital people that she’d burned it getting the Turkey out, but we never had a Turkey. Things like that kept happening and then one day - she just wasn’t there anymore.’