I also loved cuddling all the other babies they cared for in the years after I left. I remember thinking, ‘That was my life once. I’m glad that other children now get to have some of their love too.’
The fact that I stayed in touch with Joan and Reg was rare because most foster parents never see a child again once he or she leaves, usually because the adopting parents choose to cut off all contact.
I’m glad to say it was a different story for my eventual adoptive parents, Harry and Christine Hayes, who I’ve known as Mum and Dad ever since they first took me home in the summer of 1988, when I was nine months old.
A hairdresser and a graphic designer, respectively, they met in the early 1970s and got married within a year, when Mum was 18 and Dad was 24. They both knew they wanted children early on but, for whatever reason, it didn’t happen over the years, so they put their names down for adoption.
After a very long wait, where nothing happened at all, they decided to treat themselves to a luxurious holiday on the Amalfi Coast in Italy in early August 1988. And then, as if by fate, they got a call from their social worker – a lovely, kind lady called Christine Watson – the very day they returned home.
‘We’ve got a little baby girl available for adoption right away,’ they were told. ‘She’s called Chanelle and she needs a new home as soon as possible.’
Mum and Dad met with Christine that very same evening and, after hearing all about my plight, were determined to meet me and make me their own. Things began moving at lightning pace from that moment on and, eight days later, they came to see me with Christine at Joan and Reg’s place. Apparently I had just started crawling at the time and was quietly fixated by the tassels hanging from the bottom of their sofa. Mum and Dad said they were smitten with me straight away!
With the initial stages of the adoption quickly approved, they had a lot to do over the following week – such as a trolley dash around Mothercare in Huddersfield, in which they bought everything in one swoop, including a cot, clothes, toys and all the other essential baby gear. They also took me to their little house in Earlsheaton, Dewsbury a couple of times to see if I settled in a strange new environment and, happily, I did – enjoying a contented afternoon nap in the new cot they had just bought me.
Then, on 31 August, they took me home for good. I had my own proper family at last. Speaking to Mum and Dad in later life about the whole process, I’ve realised that it must have been very difficult for them to adjust. While most couples have plenty of time to get used to the whole concept of parenthood, starting with pregnancy, planning a nursery and pre-natal classes, Mum and Dad had virtually no time to prepare and they certainly had no clue about babies. So thank God for lovely Joan, who stepped in and showed them the ropes over those first few weeks. In fact, Dad remembers her teaching him to change a nappy, using a doll on the floor. It was all going perfectly well until he accidentally put the dress over the doll’s face and Joan said, ‘Well, the nappy is on OK but I’m afraid the baby died of suffocation five minutes ago!’
Although it was no doubt a crazy time for Mum and Dad, we all settled well into the new routine and I began walking at 11 months old. That November, I celebrated my first birthday, which was a special landmark for us all. My Uncle David bought me a cuddly toy called Wuzzle for the big occasion, which became one of my most loved teddies of all time. I also have Wuzzle to thank for helping me learn to speak because my very first word was ‘Woowah’ – a loose but distinct interpretation of his name! Another favourite companion was my toy rabbit, Betsy the Bunny, and I kept them both by my side for years. I even took Betsy into the Big Brother house with me 18 years later!
On 23 February 1989, the final adoption order was at last granted, much to Mum and Dad’s relief. They still say that day in court was one of the most memorable of their lives, especially as the judge was such a nice man. After the legal proceedings had ended, this judge, a man called James Barry, presented me with a story book, as well as a card for Mum and Dad.
It said, ‘Bon voyage. You have set out on a most important journey… May it be a long and happy one!’
They were so touched that they framed it and they still have it now. Later that day, they went to the pub with Christine, the social worker, for lunch to celebrate and then to a building society to open my very first savings account. Mum says she felt unbelievably proud and emotional to see the name ‘Chanelle Hayes’ written on the little banking book.
Unsurprisingly, I remember nothing of those days at all but Mum and Dad managed to capture the early part of my life by making me a series of yearly diaries and a ‘life book’, with old photos and detailed descriptions of my progress.
In my very first diary of 1989, they wrote, ‘To the little girl who has already given us more than we could ever have imagined. This book has been completed daily by Mummy and Daddy for a perfect little darling called Chanelle. We hope that she will treasure it always, as we will treasure completing it.’
Reading back over the diaries now, some of the entries make me laugh so much – like this one from 29 December that year, in which Mum wrote, ‘Chanelle learned a new word today: “No.” She repeated it over and over again. We put her to bed at 7.45 and she was still saying “No”.’
Another day, they put, ‘We went to Canthorne Park to feed the ducks but Chanelle thought it better to eat the bread herself than give it to the ducks.’ That sounds quite typical of me!
To illustrate what a naughty madam I was, Mum wrote soon after, ‘Today Chanelle generally got up to mischief. She was in and out of the fridge, playing with the toilet seat and throwing things in the loo. Later she had dinner – most of it ended up on the floor.’
All in all, I grew into a very normal toddler – albeit one that strongly knew her own mind from an early age. My favourite food was sausage with Yorkshire pudding and I was forever demanding that for tea – with the obligatory ketchup that I called ‘sauce sauce’. And if I ever heard an ice-cream van chiming nearby, I’d drop everything and beg, ‘Ice peam – want one!’ And, of course, I almost always did get one.
Mum also tells me how she used to get me dressed in the mornings, only for me to get undressed again and throw all of my clothes down the stairs! She also once bought me a gorgeous, expensive dress with cute little bells on the bottom but I hated the tinkly noise and naughtily cut them all off when she wasn’t looking!
I clearly liked fashion from an early age, as Mum says I was constantly rooting through her wardrobe, putting on her shoes and covering my arms in her bracelets and beads. One time, my diary records how Mum took me to see her twin sister – my Aunty Susan – who said to me, ‘I like your top, Chanelle.’ In reply, I looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘It’s a blouse.’ Talk about headstrong – and I was only 18 months old at the time!
Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, it appears that I was developmentally well ahead of other babies my age, as a health visitor called Mrs Dickenson told Mum and Dad during a routine assessment around that time. ‘It’s remarkable,’ she said. ‘Chanelle is far more advanced for her age than any other baby I’ve seen in twenty years of doing this job.’ What a result!
Mum and Dad say I was also very into singing and I woke them up most days belting out some nursery rhyme or other – even if I couldn’t quite pronounce the words. One of the diary entries from back then says, ‘I feel that maybe Chanelle might become a singer. She can even hit high notes, which are a little deafening at times. Even as I write she is doing a little solo act – and she doesn’t like it if I join in.’
A few days later, Mum noted, ‘Chanelle spent all morning singing away. Her voice is so strong and she is not a bit bothered about who hears her. Even the lady about six houses away has said how she good she is and that she thought it was the radio when she heard her. No, it was just Chanelle in the back garden.’
When I was two, Mum went back to work at her old hair salon and I would trot along with her most days. I think I actually became a bit of a star
attraction for the customers, as I was always singing and dancing for them and would help put the hair nets on all the ladies’ heads. Bless her, Mum still does hairdressing today but now she works at old-people’s homes, doing all their blue rinses. And she still only charges them £3 a pop. I’ll often say to her, ‘Mum, how can you earn a proper living off that?’
And she’ll say, ‘Well, I’m thinking of increasing it by fifty pence soon.’
But she never does – she’s so generous and kind-hearted like that.
One of my favourite things to do as a toddler was ‘playing kitchens’ and helping Mum make cakes. Well, I say I ‘helped’ but usually I was just licking cake mixture off the spoon. They’ve got an old photo of me practically with my foot in the bowl and Mum noted in my diary one day, ‘Gave the mixing bowl to Chanelle and she put it on her head.’
Not quite The Great British Bake Off, was it?
Around this time, we moved house, to a bungalow in Middlestown, a small village outside Wakefield, where I started nursery school. Apparently I loved it and never once shed a tear when Mum left me there. I enjoyed learning, even at that age, and preferred activities that used my brain to playing with dolls. In fact, I only ever had one Barbie in my life and thought she was the dullest thing on earth!
My big passion was for stories and reading and, every single bedtime for years, my poor dad had to sit on the floor at the side of my bed, holding my hand and reading my books aloud. I wouldn’t let him go and sometimes he’d be there for two hours before I drifted off to sleep and he could finally let go of my hand and creep out. He would often go straight to bed without any dinner afterwards because he was so exhausted. I adored Postman Pat and Beatrix Potter but my absolute favourite was Thomas the Tank Engine, and Dad – who often called me Jadey-pie because my middle name was Jade – says a typical exchange might go something like this:
‘Night, night, sweetheart, it’s time to go to sleep now.’
‘No! I want to hear the one about Percy the Small Engine!’
‘Come on, Jadey-pie, you’ve had lots of stories. You can hear all about Percy tomorrow.’
‘No! Tell me it now!’ And with a perfectly timed quiver of the bottom lip and a couple of stray crocodile tears, Dad always gave in. But in a way, I think we both look back on those times as a really important part of our bonding process. It was something that we did together; just the two of us, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
People have often asked me what it’s like to have adoptive parents but I can honestly say that I don’t think I feel any differently about them than if they were my own flesh and blood. I certainly grew up to love mine as if I had been born to them and, nowadays, it never really crosses my mind that I’m adopted. I know they feel the same way about me too. We’ve always been extremely close and, after everything we’ve been through as a family, that’s what matters – not what’s on my birth certificate.
CHAPTER THREE
Happy Days
In September 1992, when I was almost five, there was suddenly huge excitement in the air: I was going to have a new baby brother! Not due to Mum and Dad conceiving a child of their own but because they had decided to adopt again. Dad initially wanted to go for another girl but one day Mum sat him down and said, ‘Harry, you already think you’ve got the best little girl in the world, so why give another daughter such a hurdle to leap over?’
‘Hmmm. Fair point,’ he said, thinking this through. ‘Let’s ask for a boy then.’
And that’s how David came to be the fourth member of the Hayes family.
He arrived when he was around 15 months old and I was overjoyed that I had this new ‘toy’ to play with – although I caught chicken pox and then passed them straight on to him within a few days of him settling in!
David was endlessly fascinating to me but Mum and Dad insisted I was very gentle with him because he’d had a traumatic start in life too. David’s birth mother had been abusive towards him and, as a result, he was quite behind in his development. He wasn’t yet walking when he joined us, simply because he hadn’t had enough time or attention spent on him. That all changed really quickly though and the social workers were amazed at how quickly he flourished in Mum and Dad’s care.
But, while I was majorly excited by this new person, like most kids who are faced with a new sibling stealing all the limelight, there were times when I did find him pretty annoying. One time, I remember hitting him around the head with a pillow and saying to Mum, ‘I’ve had enough of David. Can you make him go away now?’
His presence also made things more cramped in the house. We lived in a converted bungalow and the bedrooms upstairs were tiny. Mine was probably the smallest of all, with just a bed and chest of drawers for furniture. I used to have to walk on the bed just to move around – it was like Harry Potter’s room under the stairs!
One thing was quickly clear about David and me though: we were like chalk and cheese. While I was loud and confident, he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But we grew close over time and have always considered ourselves brother and sister. In later years, we both went to the same schools and, though I was four years above him, I became very protective of him. Because he was one of the quiet ones, people pushed him around a lot, which I’d get so angry about.
One time, his little friend came up to me when I was on prefect duty and said, ‘Are you David Hayes’ sister?’
‘Yeah. Why?’ I said.
‘Well, this lad keeps stealing his lunch money and he’s just letting him get away with it. I thought you’d want to know.’
That got my blood absolutely boiling. ‘Right, who is it? What class is he in?’
I went to this boy’s classroom and dragged him out, saying I needed to speak to him about a prefect matter. When I got him outside the class, I pinned him up against the wall.
‘Listen here, you little shit,’ I said. ‘If you ever take my brother’s dinner money again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
Looking absolutely terrified, he just nodded and then wrestled free and ran off down the corridor. After that, he never did it again! I never told David but he must have known I’d stepped in, as the bullying stopped from that day onwards.
David was never particularly academic but not everyone has to be the Brain of Britain, do they? Nowadays, he’s 22 and works in the local branch of Sainsbury’s, which he’s more than happy with. He’s a hard-worker and that’s all that matters.
At home, David and I always knew we were adopted – it wasn’t some big secret that Mum and Dad kept from us. The life book they made for me explained that I used to have a different mummy but that she had gone away ‘to Heaven’. Mum and Dad never went into any detail about it – why would they? I was too young to know about anything horrible like that. The book also explained to me that I had two half-sisters, Maria and Melissa, but again, being so young, I never hankered after more information or asked to meet them. It was just the kind of information you soak up as a kid – a bit like knowing that you never cross the road without holding your mum’s hand. If I did ever ask any questions about my past, my parents would simply say, ‘That was your life then, this is your life now.’ It was only much, much later that this answer was not enough to satisfy my curiosity.
When I started ‘big school’, at Middlestown Junior, I took to it like a duck to water and pretty quickly established myself as ‘top of the class’ in all subjects. I was a total swot and teacher’s pet, and Mum and Dad say nobody ever uttered a bad word about me in my school reports or at parents’ evenings. It was all, ‘Chanelle doesn’t even have to try at her subjects. She breezes through everything.’
Singing continued to be a speciality of mine – and I went through a phase of making up lyrics, including an oddly profound number about God, in which I sang, ‘Don’t let people die.’ On a cheerier note, my absolute favourites were the songs from Calamity Jane and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, along with Rod, Jane and Freddy – my parents once took me to see them live
in Barnsley, much to my excitement. You could say I was a bit of an exhibitionist really – if there was music playing in a shopping centre or wherever, I’d just start singing and dancing, showing off like some hyperactive performing monkey!
So you can imagine how much I loved going to my weekly ballet lessons. The opportunity to dress up in a leotard and tutu and prance around for an appreciative audience was a dream come true for a girl who loved stealing the limelight. I also wore my Brownie uniform with pride and took real pleasure in getting my various badges – for all those things like making tea and being kind to animals. Somehow those accomplishments seemed so very important at that age. My partner in crime at Brownies was my close friend Alison, who I grew up with, and we thought it was extra amazing because her mum was Brown Owl, so we’d parade around every week like we were top dog!
When I started at my secondary school, Horbury High, I continued to be a bit of a clever-clogs and got really into studying foreign languages. I loved Spanish and decided in my early teens that I wanted to become fluent and move to Spain. For a long time, my dream job was to be a speech therapist in the sunshine.
The only subjects I wasn’t so keen on were History and Geography – although now I wish I’d paid more attention because these days I get really worried about natural disasters like tsunamis. Can you get a tsunami in Yorkshire? I’m not sure but I still panic about it!
Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart Page 2