Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived Read Online Free

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 andfinding 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