Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart (3 page)

A
lthough I never thought much about my real mum and what happened to her when I was a little girl, something suddenly changed in me by the time I reached 14. I had this nagging feeling that there was a lot of important stuff I should know about – a sixth sense maybe.

I remember speaking to our old social worker Christine about it. We’d always stayed in touch over the years and I said to her, ‘How did my real mum die? Do you know?’

She hesitated but said gently, ‘Look, I can’t tell you that. It’s not up to me to make that decision. That’s up to your mum and dad, so you’ll have to ask them.’

Naturally, that only increased my curiosity further and something in her tone convinced me there was something awful I should know about.

I didn’t want to make too much of a big deal of it because I didn’t want to upset Mum and Dad by poking around into my past but, when I put them on the spot and asked how my real mum had died, they both became very cagey. Of course, if you
refuse to answer a teenager’s questions, they will automatically want to know at least a hundred times more urgently. So, though it had never been an issue before, it was now something I thought about a lot and was determined to get to the bottom of.

Over the coming months, I started asking my parents about her constantly but they felt I wasn’t ready to handle the truth. I’ve always been a stubborn little thing though and the brick wall they put up just made me more hell bent on finding out the truth. While my mates were more concerned with chatting up boys or scraping together funds for the latest shoes in Topshop, I was busy playing Miss Marple to piece together the clues I had about my mum’s life.

Because I was so preoccupied by whatever had happened, I started having recurring nightmares. I’d dream I was being kidnapped and then wake up, sitting bolt upright with my hair all sweaty and stuck to my face. It was always the same scenario – I’d be shopping in town and there would be this weird-looking guy in black clothes. His hands would come out of nowhere and snatch me away from a woman, who I guess was my real mum.

‘Let go of me!’ I’d yell but the man would just grin at me and then, as the woman disappeared from my sight, I’d wake up. I got so scared that I even refused to go into town with Mum for a while.

What was rapidly becoming an obsession started to make me difficult to live with. It felt like there was a big conspiracy to keep these missing strands of my history from me.

‘Mum, will you please just talk to me and respect my wishes?’ I’d ask her. ‘I really can cope with whatever the big secret is, you know.’

‘Oh, Chanelle,’ she would say. ‘I know you think you’re old enough but, when we adopted you, we made the decision not to tell you until you were older and we have to stick to that. It really is for your own good.’

When I got tired of that kind of conversation, I’d try a more direct approach and corner her as she was making breakfast or putting on a load of washing.

‘Tell me now,’ I’d demand, without even wishing her a good morning. ‘I have a right to know how she died. You owe it to me.’

‘Chanelle, we’ve talked about this so many times and, when the time is right, your dad and I will tell you everything. But not yet.’

These words were so infuriating. ‘So when will the time be right?’ I’d snap. ‘What’s the difference between now and in two or three years? You’re so mean to keep this from me. I’m not a kid anymore!’

But it was hopeless; Mum wasn’t going to budge. And whenever I brought up the subject with Dad, I’d get a firmer response still.

‘When you’re eighteen, you’ll be an adult and you can find out everything you want to know. But not now. That’s the end of the matter.’

Why couldn’t they see that I needed to uncover my past, just to know who I really was? The more they blocked me, the angrier I got. Fights became an almost daily occurrence and I remember once storming up to my room and slamming the door so hard the walls shook.

‘I hate you both!’ I screamed, throwing myself onto the bed and burying my face in the pillows. ‘Nobody understands what I’m going through. It’s so unfair!’

I must have sounded like a stuck record – and God knows how my poor brother put up with all the commotion. But then David was always a calm, placid boy. He would sit quietly in his room on his PlayStation while, all around him, World War Three was breaking out and then casually emerge half an hour later, saying, ‘What’s for tea, Mum?’ It must stem from his own past because
his real mum used to beat him black and blue if he so much as made a noise.

While I was going through what could probably be described as a bratty phase, I decided to get a tattoo. And not just a tiny, subtle initial on my wrist or something but a full-on, massive design right across my lower back. I had to use fake ID to get it done, which I’m not proud of, but now I hate the thing. It’s vile and, if it didn’t leave a white mark behind, I’d have it removed in a flash. It makes me feel physically sick and I insist on having it airbrushed out of my modelling pictures. Overall, I’m not a fan of tattoos on girls – and while we’re on that subject, Cheryl Cole’s bottom is the most repulsive thing I’ve seen in my life. What on earth was going through her mind?

When I got mine, it was quite funny though because, for about five years, I let my dad believe it was a henna tattoo and that I was having it topped up regularly. Only when I went on
Big Brother
did he realise that it was real and he yelled at Mum, ‘This is disgraceful! Why didn’t you tell me she had this monstrosity?’

Poor Mum said, ‘I’m sorry, Harry but she told me not to say anything!’

Getting a hideous tattoo and fighting with Mum and Dad
non-stop
illustrates how frustrated I was becoming at home and I felt that I couldn’t really share my problems with anyone. David and I were close but we didn’t share those kinds of things and I think I wanted to protect him from it anyway. And, of course, my friends didn’t understand what I was going through. None of them were adopted, for a start, and they certainly hadn’t had mums who’d died in weird, unspoken circumstances.

As I could never share what was eating away at me with my mates, they were a bit baffled as to why my home life constantly resembled a battleground. We’d meet up and they’d be like, ‘What’s up with you today then?’

‘What do you think?’ I’d say. ‘I’ve had another fight with Mum and Dad – I bloody hate them.’

‘Oh, just the usual then.’

Well, not exactly. What we were dealing with here were not typical teenage strops about pocket money or staying out past 11pm. That stuff seemed so trivial to me. This was a much bigger issue and, if I’m honest, I really didn’t know how to handle it. As my rows with Mum escalated, she’d simply refuse to talk to me or send me to my room.

One day, when I had turned 15, after arguing for about the zillionth time, Mum told me cryptically, ‘There are things you don’t understand. And you won’t be able to understand them until you’re an adult.’

‘But I am grown up enough now,’ I protested. ‘Everyone says I’m very mature for my age. I’ve even got two jobs.’

I was working part-time as a waitress at a nearby hotel called Cedar Court and thought this surely proved how responsible I was.

‘Chanelle, please just let it go,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My decision is final. You are too young and that’s that.’

Then, as a tide of frustration and anger washed over me, I yelled, ‘What do you know? You’re not even my real mum!’ As my temper boiled over, I couldn’t stop. ‘I don’t know who you think you are but you can’t tell me what to do! You have no right!’

It must be like a slap in the face for any parent to hear such vicious words and I could tell in an instant how badly I’d wounded her.

‘You are not my real mum!’ I repeated, out of sheer desperation. Seeing the pain fill her eyes as my words sank in, she looked like a broken woman.

Looking back, I wonder how I could have been so cruel. It makes me feel sick that I intentionally tried to hurt her like that. Mum would do anything in the world for me and my brother, so
the way I treated her still haunts me. Thankfully, she has forgiven me for all of that now but sometimes I look back and can hear myself shouting those nasty words. It’s then that I want to call her just to tell her how much I love her.

W
ith my relationship with my parents deteriorating, I decided that, if they were going to treat me like a baby, I might as well behave like one. So that was when I decided to run away. With all my questions and tantrums getting me absolutely nowhere, it seemed like a good way to make a stand to my parents and punish them at the same time.

One night, after a big fight, I was pacing my room, feeling so angry and like I had nowhere to turn. ‘I have to get out of this house,’ I said to myself. The situation was quite literally driving me crazy.

It was dark outside and, when I was sure that Mum, Dad and David were all downstairs watching TV, I shoved a change of clothes and some schoolbooks into a carrier bag and climbed out of my bedroom window. Dropping onto the garage roof, I then jumped into the bushes beneath. This was a pretty big deal for me, as the idea of being a tomboy appalled me and I’d have much preferred to use the front door. Incidentally, those bushes were a mess for ages afterwards and my dad moaned for an eternity about the Chanelle-shaped dent I left in them!

Wanting to cause as much worry as possible, I didn’t bother to leave a note before I left but instead scrawled some horrible comments in the life book they’d made me when I was little. There was a really cute baby photo of me with them, which they’d captioned ‘Chanelle with her new family’. Cruelly, I wrote underneath, ‘Well, you’re not much of a family, are you?’ I wish I hadn’t done that now. It was such a lovely book and I’m still upset I spoiled it like that.

At the time, I didn’t care about hurting them. I just wanted to be out of the house, so I’d scrabbled together a few pounds in cash and caught a bus to Wakefield train station. I was trying to look as grown up as I could but, in reality, was absolutely petrified. I almost didn’t go through with it and contemplated getting the bus straight back home again. But I had a point to prove and that determination somehow pushed me on.

Even though it was fairly late in the evening and a good hour and a half away, I’d decided to go to Hull, where a girl I knew called Emma lived. She was a bit older than me but Alison and I had met her on holiday a few times and had a right laugh with her. The train pulled in to the platform and I got on, praying I wouldn’t see anyone I knew and that I wouldn’t get stopped for a ticket. As I didn’t have much money, I hid in the toilets for the entire journey. The stench was totally revolting and churned my stomach but I kept saying over and over to myself, ‘Just a little bit longer. They’ll be so worried by now. Serves them right.’

When I arrived in Hull at around 11pm, I called Emma from a pay phone. If she hadn’t been in, I had absolutely no back-up plan in mind. But I would probably have slept rough at the station, rather than go home. Fortunately, she picked up the phone after a couple of rings.

‘Hi, it’s Chanelle,’ I said sheepishly. ‘I know you’re not expecting me but I’ve come to visit.’

‘Are you kidding? You’re mad!’ she said, laughing and not knowing the half of it. ‘It’s late – why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

‘Um, it was a spur of the moment thing. I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well, you’ve done that. OK, wait there and I’ll come and collect you.’

Emma picked me up on her scooter and, as soon as she saw me, she said, ‘Let me guess. You’ve fallen out with your folks.’

‘Yep. Majorly,’ I said and nodded. ‘I hate them.’

She smiled sympathetically. ‘Right, tell me all about it later. Hop on.’

I put the helmet on and climbed on behind her and we set off for her mum’s place a few miles away. But within minutes, just after we joined the M62, we were faced with a total disaster.

‘Shit! The police!’ Emma said, as a flash of blue lights appeared behind us.

‘Shit!’ I echoed, as she pulled over onto the hard shoulder. ‘What will we say? I’m not going home. Please don’t tell them I’ve run away!’

With both of us panicking, the policeman approached us and said, ‘Do you know it’s illegal to ride a scooter on the motorway?’

‘Er, no. I’m really sorry,’ Emma fibbed. ‘I had no idea. But I won’t do it again, I promise.’

‘Well, I still have to impose a penalty fine. You’ve broken the law and you were posing a serious danger to yourself and other motorists.’

She gave her details to the officer, as I sat there praying that would be the end of it and we could scoot off to her mum’s house via some country lane instead. But the look of terror on my face must have been a giveaway because the policeman then asked for my name and address. After I’d told him, with my heart thudding, he frowned at me.

‘So what are you doing here this late at night? Wakefield is a long way away. Do your parents know you’re here?’

‘Yes. Well, kind of. Anyway, they won’t mind. They know Emma,’ I stammered.

‘How old are you please, miss?’

‘Er, I’m fifteen.’

The policeman sighed and looked at his watch. It was at least 11.30pm by now and he looked as if he really could do without the hassle so late in the evening.

‘I think you had better come with me to the station,’ he said. ‘We can call your parents and ask them if they’re happy about you being away from home.’

‘No, please. It’s really OK. They’re fine with me doing what I want. You don’t need to call them,’ I begged. ‘Please just let me go home with Emma.’

But he was adamant and insisted we both go to the police station, which was so humiliating. My first attempt at running away and I couldn’t even make it through a couple of hours before being found out.

‘Mr Hayes, I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour but I have your daughter Chanelle here at Hull police station,’ he said into the phone. There was a pause. ‘Yes, she’s safe and well. But I take it you didn’t know she was here?’

There was a pause. ‘No, I thought not.’

As their conversation continued, I sat with my head bowed, feeling like such a baby. And though I tried not to cry, I couldn’t help it.

Emma hugged me. ‘Don’t get upset,’ she said. ‘You can come and visit me another time.’

‘It’s not that. I’m just going to be in so much trouble,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ she tried to reassure me. ‘They’ll just be glad to get you home.’

‘You don’t know my dad,’ I said, sniffing.

Then I heard the officer say, ‘Yes, of course. We’ll look after her here until then. See you later.’

It turns out that Mum and Dad hadn’t realised I’d gone until they got that call – no doubt assuming I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep.

In desperation, I tried one more time to win over the officer. ‘Do I really have to go home? I want to stay here with Emma.’

It was no use. ‘Yes, you do have to go home, young lady. You’ve got two very concerned parents back in Wakefield. Do you realise the risk you put yourself in by not telling them where you’d gone?’

I said nothing and stared at the ground. And as I waited for Dad to pick me up from the freezing cold police station, I felt nauseous about his reaction. When he arrived an hour or so later, he looked pale and worn out but he didn’t even need to say anything. I could tell from his expression how angry and disappointed in me he was.

We drove back without speaking a word. Mum was still up when we got home and she dashed to the front door and flung her arms around me when we arrived. But then she took a step backwards and the expression on her face changed drastically.

‘What on earth were you playing at? You can’t just go off on your own without telling us. Anything could have happened and we would never have known where you were.’

Feeling too exhausted for a big scene, I ran straight upstairs to my room and shut the door. I climbed into bed fully clothed and remember crying myself to sleep.

Next morning, I feared the worst but, weirdly, it was like nothing had happened. I think Mum and Dad must have decided that creating more drama would not get us anywhere. I was prepared for a full-scale row but, instead, they seemed to want to bury it and carry on as normally as possible.

But within weeks of that, the tension soon built up again and I decided to go to Bridlington, where we often used to go on our caravan holidays. There was a girl called Jo, who Alison and I had become friendly with the summer before, so like a homeless stray, I turned up on the doorstep with my things and begged to stay. My plan was just as ill-thought out as before though, as her mum insisted on calling my parents and I was carted back home again, embarrassed and furious in equal measure.

But just like last time, Mum and Dad were happy to brush over what I’d done.

‘I hope we can draw a line under this behaviour now,’ Dad said. ‘You need to live by our rules if you want to stay in this house, OK? We can’t have you skipping school either. Your education is too important.’

I could see that this much was true. And, while I was mortified to have made such a mess of running away again, part of me was relieved to get back to school. I genuinely didn’t like missing my lessons so, after that, I vowed to stop the disappearing acts.