Tony and I stayed together until Kyle was two years old but ultimately we didn’t have enough in common and didn’t love each other enough to make it work. By the time we broke up, I was relieved rather than sad, and now I can focus all my attention on my perfect little boy.
Motherhood was a complete revelation to me. I thought I’d known beforehand what it meant to love someone but I’d never experienced anything like the complete, overwhelming sensation I get when I look at Kyle. Just the tiniest things he does – like saying ‘barjeypooh’ instead of ‘barbecue’ or doing his Mr Tumble – give me butterflies in my stomach. The love is completely different from anything else in the world.
I was over the moon when Charlene got together with William and then announced she was pregnant. He’s a gentle, kind guy and I get on well with him, which is lucky since I spend so much time with Char. She’ll be a lovely mother and I know Kyle will be thrilled to have a little baby to play with. I hope they’ll be good friends as they grow up.
I’ve got my own flat just down the road from Charlene’s, and I keep it obsessively clean and tidy just as I used to do with my bedroom at home. My sister Christine comes to stay sometimes but she knows she can’t make a mess on my home turf. The only one who’s allowed to leave things scattered around is Kyle, whose toys seem to get everywhere.
I’m up at Charlene’s house every day at some point. We’ve both got other close friends as well but there’s a depth to our friendship that you don’t find more than once or twice in a lifetime. When you’ve been in a traumatic, life-threatening situation with another person, there are ties that link you for ever whether you like it or not. It would be the same if we’d been shipwrecked on a desert island or held hostage by terrorists. Extreme situations can bring out the best or the worst in you, and because we were so young we didn’t always make the right decisions – but we made them together, as a team.
My little sister Georgie still lives at home with Dad and he’s fiercely protective of her. She doesn’t have half the freedom I used to have. I think he would like to keep her under lock and key if he could. I don’t ever want to be like that with Kyle. When he’s old enough, I’ll have to let him go out with his friends but I’ll be strict about knowing where he is and what time he has to be home. It would be impossible to protect him from all the sick people in the world, like Alan, without ruining his life in the process.
The three people who were most affected by our abduction were my mum, my dad and Charlene’s dad. I know it will haunt them as long as they live and they’ll never actually get over it. My mum and dad still won’t talk about it. One day I was reading a book by Sabine Dardenne, a Belgian girl who was abducted and held captive by a paedophile for eighty days. She was kept in a horrid little cellar and as I was reading, I just felt so grateful that things were so much easier for Charlene and me. Mum couldn’t understand why I was reading the book, though. She wouldn’t touch it herself. She still gets panicky about how I’m going to get home when I’ve been out somewhere at night, or if she calls my mobile and I don’t answer.
But the truth is that Charlene and I are fine. We’re not alcoholics or drug addicts, as some people seem to expect us to be. We’re young mothers who look forward to watching our children growing up and starting our careers, and I hope that we will always live near each other.
After a horrific, shocking event happens to you, you have a decision to make. You can decide to let it affect you or you can decide to put it behind you and move on. Charlene and I have both moved on. We will be best friends for life – not because we were abducted together but because we love one another.