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 Page A

even keen to learn how to make a pot of tea. My nature was a giving one; I always wanted to do things to help people. Iremember asking my mum and stepfather – from now on I’ll call him my dad – for years, ‘Can I make you both a cup of tea?’ Every time they sternly said no because ‘the kettle is hot’ and ‘the water is hot’.
    Not one to be daunted by the prospect of a scalding, I kept suggesting that I make them a cup of tea, so when I got a little bit older and more able – I think I was about ten – I was allowed to. I skipped into the kitchen, joyful at the prospect of making my very first pot of tea. After I became competent, I would take an early-morning cup up to my mum in bed, and a coffee for my dad.
    Mum would get up, put on her dressing gown and come downstairs and tidy up, whereas Dad would end up falling back to sleep and leave his coffee there to go cold for an hour. I would go to my bedroom and he would call out, ‘Hailey, do me a favour, duck.’
    â€˜Yes, what’s the matter?’ I would ask enthusiastically.
    â€˜Will you make me a fresh cup of coffee? I’m sorry, I forgot that one,’ my dad would groan.
    â€˜Yes, all right then,’ I would chirp.
    But after a couple of weeks I got bored with making hot drinks and Dad wasting his. So in the end, when he kept saying, ‘Will you make me a fresh cup of coffee?’, I would put on the kettle and while it was boiling I would place the cold cup of coffee in the microwave for 30 seconds to heat up. With the kettle boiling, they couldn’t hear the noise of the microwave. I only told him about a year ago that I used to do this. I was a fast learner.
    Although I was always looking to please people and was doing well at school, I always fell short of pleasing my mum in the sense that I didn’t make her totally happy. Her disappointed outlook on life I put down to the fact that she may not have been wholly happy with her own lot, as she was really stressed with work. Mum is a workaholic.
    Her job was as a care assistant, working in an old people’s home all hours of the day and night. On reflection, I suppose juggling your life between work and your husband and six children must have been a bit of a balancing act. As a grown-up, I can see that nothing makes my mum happy. I don’t want to sound like I’m attacking Mum’s integrity, as she did congratulate me on my academic achievements, and she did attend school from time to time to see my work. But my gaining these qualifications didn’t really please her in the way I felt it should have done.
    In a way, I felt Mum never really supported me enough with homework, with subjects like maths. I used to enjoy maths until I was ten or eleven years old, but after that people used to say, ‘You don’t like maths, do you?’ I would steadfastly defend myself, ‘Yes, I really like maths and my maths teacher and everything.’ I used to go home with homework and Mum used to say, with defeatism in her voice, ‘Go and ask your dad… I’m not great at this, but your dad is good at maths.’
    So Dad would sit there and say, ‘I’ll do it for you,’ and he would do the work for me. But I look back on this now as the easy way out. You are supposed to say, ‘Sit down and I will read the question out and you try and work out the answer,’ instead of having someone else just write it down for you.
    Mum was very busy with her work and I was the only girl. I felt that my brothers got everything and that my being asked to make the tea for everyone was a poor consolation prize. But then, for a while, things changed and for a good few years Mum and I became best friends and developed a loving relationship; we were inseparable.
    Dad and Hayden used to do the father-and-son bonding routine of going to the football on a Saturday. Mum would get a can of Coke and a bag of bonbons and the