Ben (2 page)

That day, 24 July 1991, wasn’t just the day my son disappeared. In a way, it was also when I faded away as well. For twenty-two years now I’ve been known as ‘Ben Needham’s mum’. Journalists call me that. Strangers in the street ask if that’s who I am.

I’m always proud to answer ‘yes’. I couldn’t carry on putting myself through the daily hurt if I weren’t.

But before I was Ben Needham’s mum, I was Edwin and Christine Needham’s little girl. In their eyes I still am. Dad was working on the fairgrounds when they met, travelling the country and sleeping in a caravan. It’s fair to say that at nineteen years old he was already a bit of a jack-the-lad. About 5’6”, stocky, dark haired and brown eyed, like a lot of the guys on the fairgrounds, his arms were covered in tattoos. There’s an old girlfriend’s name on there somewhere, although that’s nowhere near as embarrassing these days as the ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ etched on his fingers. They all had that then. It was fashion more than anything.

Dad obviously had a way with words and my mum, not yet sixteen then, fell for him. She couldn’t have been more different physically. Tiny, size 8, slim, blonde haired and blue eyed. The closest she ever came to a tattoo was holding Dad’s hand.

But they were in love.

Suddenly, travelling around with the fairground and his Irish Gypsy friends didn’t seem to Dad like such an exciting job because it took him away from Mum too much. She couldn’t leave her factory job so he bit the bullet and began learning a trade as a builder. Then, eight years after they’d met, Eddie and Christine finally married, on 30 January 1971. They got a little terraced house in Masbrough, near Rotherham and, thinking ahead, they found one with two bedrooms. It was just as well. I was born ten months later, on 23 November.

Apart from the fact it backed onto the railway line, I don’t remember anything about that house in Midland Road because we moved when I was two. I did know why we moved, though. It was because we needed an extra bedroom.

Our new home was in a cul-de-sac in the old Rotherham mining town of Thorpe Hesley. It was a council house but it had three bedrooms. Mum and Dad were at the front and I was at the back with my new brother, Stephen. My room was slightly smaller than his, even though I was older, but it was lovely. Pierrot clowns were all the rage in the 1970s so I had lots of little dolls scattered along the windowsill, masks pinned to the purple walls, and pillowcases and wallpaper to match. I loved it.

Downstairs also had three main rooms – until Dad got hold of them. He loved knocking walls down and making things as open-plan as possible, so what was once a lounge, dining room and kitchen became one large space with an archway in between. That became his trademark in later houses. That, and installing an open fireplace. You’re not supposed to renovate council properties, but he always did a good job so no one complained.

Dad was a great builder but maybe he should have been a farmer. The house had a massive back garden and he filled it with all sorts of animals. We had geese, chickens, ferrets and – once Dad had dug the pond – fish of all different colours. He also built all the pens and hutches for the animals. One of my earliest memories is trotting out to the chicken coop and collecting the warm eggs every morning. I stayed clear of the ferrets, though. Their sharp teeth scared me.

I didn’t have a problem with the geese – although they seemed to have a problem with Stephen. They used to chase him all over the garden, hissing and squawking. Maybe it was his red-and-black lumberjack coat that attracted them. I remember him wearing it when he was helping Dad dig the pond. Even though he had a large shovel in his hand, the geese kept coming for him!

Dad and Stephen were always very close, but Dad always wanted to get Stephen doing more physical things. I don’t recall him playing with Stephen’s train set or Scalextric, and he certainly never would have suggested sitting down to do anything like that. Once Stephen was old enough, Dad strung up a punchbag in the garden and took him out there most nights and weekends for some sparring. He loved the open air. That was the Travellers’ way. He wasn’t a gypsy but it was certainly a lifestyle he had enjoyed. If it wasn’t in his blood, it was in his dreams.

I was a very girly girl. I liked pushchairs and dolls, make-up, dressing-up clothes and things like that. One Christmas I got a Tiny Tears doll – the one that ‘cries real tears’ on the adverts. They didn’t say it poos and wees as well! Sindy was the popular doll then, as well. More so than Barbie. I had a lot of her things. I liked pretending to be her mum. I’m sure even then I couldn’t wait to be a real one.

As I got older, Mum would let me play out at the front of the house. Because it was in a cul-de-sac there was no danger from traffic. There were four other little girls I used to play with: if one was out or having her tea, there was always someone else. I never lacked a playmate.

Rotherham is only half a dozen miles from Sheffield, where a lot of Mum and Dad’s family lived. Sometimes my aunties used to come and visit but more frequently Mum, Stephen and I would jump on a bus and go and visit her mum and dad.

When I turned eight, I remember asking Mum one day if we could visit Grandma and Granddad but she said, ‘Sorry, love, I’ve got too much to do here.’

‘Can I go on my own then?’ I asked.

I didn’t know where those words came from. I hadn’t planned to say it. But Mum thought about it for a few moments, then said, ‘Let me give your gran a call.’

An hour later, Mum was seeing me off at the bus stop. I felt like a queen when I handed my two pence over to the driver. Independence at last! But as soon as the doors closed and I saw Stephen and Mum waving outside I felt like the loneliest person in the world. I’d done the trip dozens of times with them but everything looked strange on my own. Still, I knew it was ten stops, and I was standing by the door from the ninth one. I’d never been happier to see anyone than I was when Grandma swooped me down from the bus.

After that success, I began nagging Mum to let me do it on my own again at every opportunity. I loved having my own little bit of freedom. Best of all, I loved staying with Grandma and Granddad. Sometimes, Gran would take me shopping or we’d all go to
the local working men’s club. There was a kids’ room set up there so I was never short of new friends to play with. I never grew tired of seeing Grandma Edna’s face as the bus pulled up.

‘I’ll always be here for you, Kerry.’

And she would be, long after I stopped catching buses.

I didn’t know any different at the time but, looking back, we were not a well-off family, by any means. Dad worked all hours but he didn’t bring home much more than what was needed to cover the basics: roof, clothes, food. We never went without any of those.

The only thing Dad couldn’t always provide us with, I learnt much later, was time. He came from a ‘work hard, play hard’ background and nowhere was that lifestyle better exemplified than on a building site. Most of his workmates thought nothing of putting in a ten-hour shift of hard labour then drowning the stresses of the day in a pub at night. Mum didn’t mind Dad doing it occasionally, but only ever with warning. On the times he’d just not come home until we were all in bed – and his dinner was in the bin – Mum told me there were harsh words spoken. It’s testament to them as parents that us kids knew nothing about those rows, even though Mum now admits she came close to calling it a day more than once.

It didn’t help that the construction business was going through one of its downturns and Dad was forever chasing work. I remember him having contracts for Tarmac and Murphys, which were local. Sometimes the only jobs around were too far away to commute to every day, so Dad just moved out for a few weeks or months. We knew he was only doing it for our benefit but it was hard. We missed him, especially Stephen.

Mum had the rawer deal. Holding down a job herself while looking after two kids and struggling to make ends meet couldn’t have been easy for her, although at least she didn’t have the nightly dread that he’d come home drunk. I remember her counting down the days to the weekend, when Dad’s money would come through. We ate well on Sundays, then it was watching the pennies again for the rest of the week.

What my parents lacked in funds they made up for in imagination. Summer holidays were out of the question most years but occasionally, whenever there was a bit of spare cash, we would jump in the car and take a weekend break in a caravan in Skegness or nearby Chapel St Leonards, in Lincolnshire. The beaches there were wonderful. Once, when times were really hard – so hard that we no longer had a car to get to the seaside – Mum and Dad came up with an alternative:

Hitch-hiking.

Stephen and I had shoulder bags and Mum and Dad had rucksacks, sleeping bags and a tent and we just walked to the main road and stuck our thumbs out! We weren’t there long when an articulated lorry the size of a house pulled over.

The driver called down to Dad, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Anywhere you’re going,’ Dad replied. ‘Especially if it’s near the seaside.’

‘I can drop you in Whitby?’

‘Perfect.’

So Whitby it was.

We all climbed into the cab but instead of staying there, Mum, Stephen and I went behind the seats to the driver’s little cabin
area. He had a bed in there for us to sit on and there was plenty of room for our luggage. Best of all, he said, ‘Help yourself to a Lion Bar from the box.’

You can’t get a better start to a holiday than that.

I can’t believe we did it now – and Mum and Dad are horrified when Stephen and I remind them. In fact, they’ve apologised for being so stupid but I don’t think it was stupid at all. They couldn’t afford trains and hotels so they did what they could. It was what it was: a great adventure. And Stephen and I have never forgotten it.

If money was tight before then, it was even more so following the arrival of a new little baby brother in 1979. I couldn’t have been happier when Mum brought little Danny home from hospital. I think I thought he was a doll I could play with. For practical reasons, when Dad’s next work opportunity came up – once again, miles away – he and Mum decided it wasn’t fair on her if he stayed away from home.

The first I knew about it was coming home from school and discovering Mum loading some of my clothes into a suitcase.

‘What are you doing with my things, Mum?’

‘I’m packing them up, love. We’re moving.’

‘Where to?’

‘Chapel St Leonards.’

I couldn’t believe it.

‘Wow, our new house is going to be at the seaside!’

I was so desperate to tell Stephen that I didn’t realise that Mum had only smiled at that. She hadn’t said yes, she hadn’t said no.

On the weekend after the school summer term ended, Dad piled everything into his Mini and we all squeezed in where we could.

‘Next stop, Chapel St Leonards,’ he said.

I couldn’t wait to get going. We’d only been to Chapel for weekends before, and now we were going to stay for ever. If we got there at all …

Even though Mum and Dad had sold all our furniture and bulkier belongings, the Mini was still packed to the brim. We could barely see each other in the back for all the bin bags and boxes around us, and the boot didn’t have an inch of space left. All of which must have made the little Mini very heavy because an hour after we’d set off, I suddenly heard Dad start to swear, moments before we ground to a halt. I looked out of the front window and realised we were on a hill – and there was no way the poor Mini was going to get up it.

Half an hour later, Mum, us kids, and half the contents of the car were on the side of the road. Even then the gradient was too steep. Eventually, Dad squeezed us in again and set off back down the hill to find an alternative route. He managed to laugh about it later, but for a while the air was blue.

I think I must have nodded off after that because the next thing I knew the Mini was going slowly again. Dad seemed to be taking a short cut between two rows of white static caravans.

‘When will we be there?’ I asked.

‘Right about … Now,’ Dad said, and swung the Mini to a halt next to one of the caravans. ‘Welcome to our new home.’

The caravan was nice. There was a permanent double bedroom at one end, a toilet, a kitchen and a dining and lounge area. Giving up my own room full of my beloved Pierrot masks to sleep on the lounge seat-cushions with my two brothers was not exactly the trade-up of the century, but I didn’t think twice about that because we’d always had so much fun in caravans on
our weekend breaks. Stephen and I loved converting the table and seat into beds. We didn’t feel hard done by at all. Like so many of the things we did with Mum and Dad, it was an adventure. Who wouldn’t want to live so near the beach and amusement arcades for the whole summer holidays?

It was no coincidence that we ended up in the caravan. Dad’s new job was renovating and decorating a chalet park across the road. There were about fifty that needed their brickwork repointing and paintwork doing up. Part of the deal was that we got full use of a caravan while he worked. The second part of the deal was that we could then move into a chalet as soon as one was ready. On top of that, I think Dad still missed his old Traveller days. This was his compromise.

As much as we tried to pretend it was a holiday, by the time September came around, Stephen and I had to join our new primary school. I think children today would be a lot quicker to take the mickey out of us for living in a caravan. In fact, most of the kids I met thought it was cool. And in any case, our ‘foreign’ accents were much easier targets for ribbing than where we lived. I guess our Yorkshire tones did make us stand out in Lincolnshire, but I couldn’t work out why anyone was laughing at us. They were the ones who sounded like farmers. Maybe I shouldn’t have told them that …

We moved into one of the Kingsfield Park chalets in time for winter. I think we were the only people on the whole site. Seasides empty when the seasons turn, and coming back after school was like entering a ghost town.

The following spring I took – and failed – my 11-plus and in May I joined Lumley Comprehensive. Not long after, the school
merged with another local comp and became the Earl of Scarbrough High School. I didn’t notice much difference except the uniform changed from burgundy to black and white.