Owner of a Broken Heart

Norma Harris

Description

Owner of a Broken Heart is about one person''s struggles in life, starting from a troubled childhood right through to adulthood. After her own failed marriage, it cracks open emotional turmoil, resulting in her falling into a world of drink, drugs and anorexia, with her own child in tow. One day, waking up to the years of damage that has been done, she decides to start the road to recovery by getting help. In the search for a normal life, lots of things out of her control keep throwing her back into the black hole of heartache, refusing to be controlled and never giving up the fight. After having a second child, she manages to achieve a working relationship with her troubled teenage daughter, just in time to see her first grandchild being born.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528959520
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Owner of a Broken Heart
Norma Harris
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-08-28
Owner of a Broken Heart About the Author Copyright Information © Acknowledgements Chapter One Life at Home The date is 10 August 2004 Chapter Two Going into Care April 1986 Chapter Three Quarry Mount Chapter Four Finding My Path Second Thoughts Around 1992-93 time Chapter Five Drink, Drugs and Anorexia It’s now the year 2000 Chapter Six The Fight Chapter Seven Harassment Chapter Eight Abusive Relationship That was April 2012 Chapter Nine My Mother’s Funeral Chapter Ten My Father’s Funeral
About the Author
Norma has had a hard life but despite this, she is a kind and honest person with a love for nature. She tends to spend a lot of time in her own company bringing up her two children, which hasn’t been easy. She is always changing and you never know what she is going to do next, she is full of surprises. Norma is currently enjoying family life and spending time with her grandchildren.
Copyright Information ©
Norma Harris (2020)
The right of Norma Harris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528910224 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528959520 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
Austin Macauley, Andi Ali for kick-starting me again, my brothers and sisters for putting up with my madness, my partner, who has supported me every step of the way. Staff who worked at Quarry Mount for trying their best to help abused children.
Chapter One

Life at Home

The date is 10 August 2004
I was born in 1971. At present, I live with my nine-year-old daughter who was born in February 1995, in London. We now live in my childhood town in Lancashire on a rough council housing estate, where all the houses are in a grey pebbledash finish and the housing estate all looks the same from start to finish.

Even though I grew up in Lancashire, I’d not lived here for a number of years. We moved back to Lancashire on 15 May 2003 and moved into our new home on 28 May 2003.
I was eight months old when my family first moved into Lancashire, so my dad could find work, we lived on a council estate not far from here. I remember bringing home a dead field mouse and my mum screamed her head off, telling me to get it out of the house, as she stood on a dining table chair screaming at me. Haha , I had found it at the bottom of the hill, where there was a farmhouse at the very edge of our housing estate. The farmhouse is still there today, but I do not think it is in very good shape.
I think this is me in my pram, I do have a small glimpse of a memory of being in this pram.
I was the youngest out of three, I had one older sister and one older brother. We use to roll down the hill at the side of our house on anything that had wheels, most of the houses were empty back in those days and everyone knew each other, life was easy, so long as I didn’t do anything stupid, like jump all over my dad’s car. Don’t know why I had done that. My dad caught me red-handed. All I heard was, “A you scone head.” When I looked up, there was my DAD! He said, “Get down here now!” That’s all I remember of that, he must have belted me one. My father was ex-army, he went into the army at 15 years old and he had served for 12 years, I think. He came out of the army when my big sister was born. The earliest memory I have of him is sitting on his knee at the table looking at a comic and pointing at a picture of a mouse asking me, “Is that what you brought into the house today?” Something like that. I also remember one of us, think it was my big sister, slamming the front door on someone’s fingers, Mum and Dad had gone over to someone’s house.
We were told not to open the front door, a friend knocked, so my brother or maybe I opened the front door, our big sister came along, shouting at us, something like, “Mum and Dad told us not to open the front door!” So, it got slammed shut, I think a little girl’s finger was in the doorframe and got trapped in the door when it got shut. We refused to open the door and someone had to go and get our parents from the neighbour’s house to come and open the front door!
I remember the day we moved out of that house, I was in the van with my dad I think, we did not have to wear seat belts back then, my dad slammed on the brakes and I flew off the seat into the footwell, haha , this was pre-nursery time and I was very young. I think my dad had hurt his back, not sure, they decided to move to a bungalow in the same town, just a different housing estate. Our back garden faced the local pub, we used to take bottles back and get money back for them, it was very much a drinking man’s pub, full of smoke.
I think my dad let me sit there with him once, I have a very small memory of picking up a large glass and drinking out of it, either that or I was being a cheeky, little git and nicking someone’s drink. I started nursery when we moved to the bungalow. The school was on the edge of the estate that we had moved to, I even remember starting nursery; I stayed in that school till it was time to go to the big school.
When we lived in the bungalow, we had paraffin heaters in the living room that we lit in the morning to get warm. I was not supposed to light the paraffin heaters, not sure if I tried to though.
I think my brother was allowed to light the heaters, he is 18 months older than me, so say for argument’s sake, if I was aged 4, that would make him 5–6 years old, lighting a paraffin heater with matches. It just seemed like Mum and Dad stayed in bed all the time, and we never ever disturbed them, never went near their bedroom door, well that is how I remember it. I’m not sure, but I think one of us set fire to the kitchen curtain.
There was a big grassy hill that people would walk up to get to the bus stop, at the side of the bungalow, it must have been raining because I slipped down it and got covered, head to toe, in mud! Haha . Then there was the time my big sister ran me over with a chopper pushbike, she was screaming at me to move and she ended up crashing into me with the bike, I don’t remember the impact, but I do remember crying and looking for my mum. Then there was the time I was sitting on the doorstep minding my own business when this little mouse came along and ran into the porch (I like animals by the way). I went in and told my dad about the mouse, my dad set out to find this mouse with my help, I wanted to see it again, well? When my dad found it, he killed it, much to my horror! I remember climbing on top of my dad’s very large fish tank and trashed it, chasing the fish around the tank. My dad had a smaller tank, he took the lid off it and one of the fish jumped out of the tank, it was flapping around on the floor—that is how I remember it. Roller skates were a big thing then, they used to strap on over your own shoes, my big sister had some on when she slipped and hit her head on the front door frame, haha , she had a really big lump that swelled up so big on her forehead and eye, my mum had to take her to the hospital on the bus! Then there was my brother and his friend who had found this metal pole with a point on the end, for some reason they were smashing up the floor tiles on the front doorstep of an empty bungalow. My brother was moving the floor tiles out of the way when the other lad hit him in between his fingers, I think my brother had to have stitches. I’m not sure what happened with the other lad, I think he legged it home.
I remember my mum trying to read us a story, she was laughing so hard she could not read it to us. Hahaha , and a plastic Father Christmas ornament that lit up, it was in the window of our living room. We were living in the bungalow then.
For whatever reason, we moved again into a three-bedroom house with a built-in garage and a driveway. When we moved in, the boards were still on the windows; my sister and I were in the bedroom when Dad took the boards off and there was a dead wasp or bee on the floor. Mum would scream and run out the room whenever there was anything flying around, so that installed fear into us kids; we were not happy about this dead wasp in our room, haha . Sometime later, might have even been the coming summer, we had a massive infestation of bluebottles or flies in the kitchen/dining room. The walls were covered, it turned out there was a small hole in the kitchen floor, they must have been nesting in there or something; I remember opening the kitchen door and got screamed at to close it. I freaked my mum out a few times, haha . I’d wake up, climb out of bed and go to the hall, Mum used to hang the sheets over the bannister to dry, I could hear her talking downstairs, so I would move the sheet to see if I could see anyone. Next thing was my mum screaming her head off saying there was a ghost in the house because the sheets moved! I went back to bed very quickly and quietly.
I remember my dad wall-papering the hallway in a brick effect wallpaper, he was always fixing his car or gardening. He brought home a little dog called Tanya. Do not know the story behind her, I