Becky

by Darren Galsworthy

  Eventually, Becky asked us for what she called a ‘real’ pet, and we took her to Bristol dogs’ home. Surprisingly, there was a litter of kittens there and she ended up staring at one kitten for so long that we let her have him. He was jet black except for four white paws and a white chin, and she called him Marley.

  In the dogs’ home, Marley appeared sweet and innocent-looking, but as soon as he came in the front door of our house he started causing absolute mayhem. We soon realised he was a complete psycho cat. He would climb the walls and curtains and claw his way around the furniture. Of course, Becky thought this was hilarious. One of his favourite games was to hide until I walked past, then he would jump out and land on my back, his sharp claws digging into my flesh. He would hang on for dear life while I ran around trying to shake him off. It was almost as if Becky had trained him to do this, because she would roll about in fits of laughter while I grappled with him.

  Marley was very much Becky’s cat. He never showed the rest of us any affection whatsoever, but he would purr and gaze up at Becky lovingly. He liked his freedom during the day but would always go into Becky’s room for a cuddle in the evenings, probably terrorising the hamsters who were huddled behind the bars of their cages.

  During my childhood, Christmas was always a disappointment, so I made a huge effort for my own children. Anjie and I would pull out all the stops to decorate the house and make it as festive as possible. She would bake lots of treats and, every Christmas Eve, I would dress up as Santa. I’d put on a padded red-and-white costume, complete with little spectacles and a big white beard, making Anjie and Nathan giggle. I would wait until Danny and Becky were drifting off to sleep before sneaking into their rooms with their stockings, which were bursting with treats. If they were already asleep, I’d quietly sing Christmas songs and jiggle about in order to get them to stir. I’d watch them breathing fast in their excitement and trying to stay as still as possible when they realised ‘Santa’ was there.

  After the presents were opened on Christmas morning, we’d visit my nan, May, who had more treats for everyone, then return home so I could cook our Christmas dinner. The children would spend the afternoon playing with their new toys, and Anjie and I would have a drink and toast another good year.

  We discussed having children of our own many times, but Anjie had previously suffered an ectopic pregnancy, which left her with only one fallopian tube, and it just didn’t happen. We paid for fertility tests and considered having IVF, but the cost was so high that we eventually decided against it. That’s why it was so lovely that Becky became like the daughter Anjie never had. It was a huge part of why they were so close. The way we saw it, we had three healthy children between us, so we just counted our blessings. We were happy and that was the main thing. I felt like the richest man in the world.

  Chapter 4

  My boy

  WEDNESDAY, 4 MARCH 2015

  Schoolgirl Becky Watts’s stepbrother charged with her murder: The stepbrother of Bristol schoolgirl Becky Watts – whose mutilated body parts were discovered earlier this week – has been charged with her murder. Nathan Matthews, 28, lived with his girlfriend, 21-year-old Shauna Hoare, not far from a house in the Barton Hill area where the teenager’s remains were found by police on Tuesday, almost a fortnight after her disappearance. The couple, both of Cotton Mill Lane, were first arrested in connection with the case four days ago before being re-arrested on Monday on suspicion of murder. Yesterday afternoon, detectives were given a further 24 hours to interview them, before charges were brought against Mr Matthews this afternoon. Mr Matthews is Anjie Galsworthy’s son from a previous relationship. Miss Hoare, who goes by the name Phillips on social media, was charged at the same time. A photo of the pair wearing fancy dress emerged today and has been spreading quickly on social media. Both were remanded in custody overnight and are due to appear at Bristol Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning. Police have also been given more time to question another three men and a woman arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.

  As time went on, my relationship with Nathan blossomed and we became much more like father and son. Nathan didn’t ever see his biological father, so he began to look up to me for advice and support as he hit his teenage years. I knew this was a huge responsibility, so I vowed to try my hardest to instil a sense of right and wrong and to teach him the importance of hard work.

  Nathan’s main interest was computers. He was brilliant with technology, and I was always amazed at how fast he was with a keyboard. He was forever sorting out things for his mum and me on the computer, and he knew all about the latest gadgets and computer games, much to Danny’s delight. Despite the eight-year age difference between them, Danny and Nathan were thick as thieves. They would spend almost every weekend in Nathan’s room, playing on the PlayStation and generally larking about. Occasionally, they invited me in to play with them as I passed the bedroom door. I quickly learned, however, that they only got me involved so they could laugh at how terrible I was. I would get really wound up trying to play the car-racing games, and the pair of them would crease up in hysterics whenever I crashed. Even Anjie would get in on the act, standing by the door and commenting on how rubbish I was. Nathan was very competitive and liked to try to beat me at everything. On the rare occasions when I actually won a game against him, he would sulk for hours afterwards. He could be a bit of a sore loser!

  As well as trying to beat me at computer games, Nathan would enjoy trying to outwit me in other ways. He was always trying to get one up on me and would tease me mercilessly, but I would give as good as I got. It was all friendly banter. Nathan had a good sense of humour and enjoyed having me as a sparring partner. As time went on, he would try to get Danny and Becky to join in, and then the three of them would gang up on me. He particularly used to enjoy writing messages on my car when it was dirty. I often found things like ‘Watch out, blind old fart driving’ on my back window, while Danny, Becky and Nathan rolled around laughing.

  Nathan wasn’t always so cocky, though. Now and again he still needed his parents. Once, when he was twelve years old, he caught the bus to Kingswood – about a mile from where we lived – to spend his birthday money on a computer game. After buying the game, he forgot which bus to catch home and burst into tears. I received a frantic call from his mother and raced from work to pick him up. He looked a little sheepish when he saw me, but he was very relieved.

  When they weren’t cooped up in their room, Nathan and Danny liked to go out on their bikes, so when Becky was old enough to keep up, the whole family often went for long rides on the Bristol and Bath Railway Path, which is specially for walkers and cyclists. Although Nathan wasn’t into team sports, he was interested in shooting and archery. I had a couple of air rifles and an archery kit, and the two of us used to spend hours in the back garden together, messing about with them. We challenged each other to hit various targets and competed to get the best score. When he was thirteen I bought him his very own air rifle for his birthday, and I’ve never seen him so happy. He wanted to go out and shoot with it immediately, and soon grew to be pretty good at it.

  Much like Becky, Nathan was a bit of a loner at school. Despite being quite a confident kid, he didn’t make friends easily, so when he was fourteen I enlisted him in the Army cadets. I had done this myself at his age and thoroughly enjoyed it. It taught me a lot of self-discipline and gave me a sense of pride, and I thought it would do the same for Nathan. Of course, he already had an interest in guns, so he was thrilled when I suggested the idea. I think he was hoping he would make some friends there too – which he did. Being in the cadets gave Nathan a good sense of being a part of the community, as they were always out and about fundraising and doing charity work, such as packing bags for customers in supermarkets.

  After a few months he got the opportunity to go away to camp with the squadron on Salisbury Plain, a military training ground. He was thrilled and couldn’t wait to go, so I agreed to give him a lift there.

 
‘Thanks for the lift. See you soon, Dar,’ he said, jumping out of the car with his heavy rucksack on his back.

  I chuckled as I waved him off because I knew from experience what he would have to endure in the week ahead. He had 5.30 a.m. starts, 10-mile treks and lots of drill-training to look forward to. But I also knew that he would have a great time with his new friends; it would do him a world of good.

  When I picked him up at the end of the week, he looked absolutely knackered. He slumped into the passenger seat of the car, unable to raise the energy to speak.

  ‘You look wiped out, son,’ I commented. He simply nodded in reply, and went straight to bed when we got in. After a few days of recovery, he was full of beans again, and I overheard him telling Danny how much he had enjoyed it.

  ‘It was amazing,’ he said, as they sat on his bed. ‘We got to shoot with real guns and everything.’

  ‘Wow!’ Danny said, hanging on his every word. Danny really looked up to his older brother, and I felt a little surge of pride that Nathan had enjoyed doing something I had loved when I was a kid. He stayed in the cadets for three years and then joined the Reserves for another two years after that.

  At school, Nathan was quite average, never academically brilliant. He was probably best known among his fellow pupils for his wheeling and dealing – buying computer games and sweets and selling them on at a profit. When he was coming to the end of his time at his secondary school, The Grange in Warmley, his grades started to slip. Anjie and I grew concerned about his GCSEs, so we paid for a private tutor for six weeks to give him some extra help. It worked – Nathan’s marks improved dramatically and he managed to pass six of his exams.

  As a reward for the turnaround in his grades, the school gave him three tickets to watch a Bristol Rovers match. As a family we weren’t really into football, but Nathan, Danny and I went to watch the game together and, surprisingly, we had a blast.

  ‘Now look, boys,’ I said as we stood in the family section of the stadium waiting for the game to begin. ‘That man over there is the referee and he will constantly make the wrong decision. We don’t like him.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Nathan agreed.

  The three of us spent the whole game shouting colourful abuse at the referee. It was hilarious but, looking back, it’s a complete wonder that we didn’t get thrown out.

  During the months leading up to Nathan’s sixteenth birthday, he nagged Anjie and me for a moped, so finally we agreed to pay for him to do his compulsory basic training (CBT). Beforehand, I took him to buy some leathers and a helmet. I had owned multiple motorbikes in my lifetime, and was keen to impress on him that safety comes first.

  ‘You will get a bike one day,’ I told him as he tried it all on. ‘But let’s start with the protective kit, shall we?’

  On his birthday I drove him to take his training and his CBT test. It was a viciously cold day in January, and as I dropped him off I wished him luck. While he was doing it, I waited in the car. It took hours and hours, but I didn’t want to drive home just in case he needed me.

  At last, he appeared and started to walk towards my car looking really ill. He was pale as a sheet and I could tell he was frozen to the bone. The intense training followed by the test had completely exhausted him.

  I held my breath as he got into the car sighing. I was worried that he hadn’t got through it but he turned to me with a huge grin on his face.

  ‘I passed!’ he shouted, and I punched the air in delight.

  ‘Well done, son!’ I said. ‘Yes! Now let’s get you home to warm up. You look like you’ve got hypothermia.’

  The pride I felt at that moment was so immense, it couldn’t have been any greater if he was my biological son. I was just delighted for him. As a surprise, I had secretly spent around £2,000 on a moped, which was waiting for him at home. I quickly phoned Anjie and told her the good news. She knew that her job was to wheel the bike out of the shed and into the garden for Nathan to see when we got back. It was all wrapped up and ready, in the hope that he would pass that day.

  When we jumped out of the car, Anjie and I grinned at each other, waiting for Nathan to see his bike. To our disappointment, he walked straight past it.

  ‘Hot cup of tea please, Mum,’ he muttered to Anjie. He didn’t even look at the moped.

  ‘Here’s your bike, Nath,’ I called. ‘It’s all legal. You’re free to ride it now if you want.’

  He turned and looked at the moped for a few moments before answering. ‘Nah, I’ll go out on it tomorrow. Thanks Dar, thanks Mum.’

  The poor sod was too frozen to think about anything other than getting warm again. I didn’t blame him, to be honest. Once indoors, he sat in front of the gas fire for the rest of the evening, trying to get the feeling back in his hands and feet.

  The next day, however, he woke up and immediately got dressed in his leathers, ready to jump on his new moped. He asked Anjie to take pictures of him posing next to it, and he was beaming as he zipped off down the road. He looked so happy and confident. I felt really proud of him that day, and I could tell Angie did too.

  After that, Nathan rode his bike all over Bristol, and he made some new friends as he met other moped owners. I used to laugh as I saw them all riding past the house together, as if they were in a pack.

  When he left school, Nathan trained as an electrician at City of Bristol College, and owning the moped helped him to get an evening job as a delivery boy for Domino’s Pizza. He also worked at Sainsbury’s on weekends. At that point, he was showing all the qualities I had wanted so much to give him. He was hardworking, dedicated, and he was earning his own money.

  ‘He’s like a mini-me,’ I bragged to Anjie as we watched him ride off to work one day. She couldn’t have been prouder of her son, and I was chuffed to bits with the man he was becoming.

  A few months later, Anjie called me in a blind panic while I was at work. She was such a blubbering mess that at first it was hard to make sense of what she was saying.

  ‘Nathan’s been in an accident,’ she said, sobbing down the phone. ‘Someone drove out of a junction and straight into him.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ I asked, my heart missing a beat.

  ‘Yes, but he’s in hospital,’ she said. ‘He was taken from the scene by an ambulance, but his bike is still by the side of the road. Can you go out and find it?’

  ‘Right, OK, love,’ I said. ‘Try not to panic.’

  Nathan had been riding through Kingswood at about 35 mph when some idiot drove straight into him. He was thrown over the bonnet of the car on impact and ended up crumpled on the road, screaming in pain. His handlebars had smashed into his stomach and he had snapped his wrist as he landed but, other than that, he was OK. I silently thanked our lucky stars that I had made clear to him the importance of wearing appropriate protection while out riding. His helmet and leathers probably saved his life that day.

  I left work immediately. My friend Andy Collins drove me in his van to search for the moped, which we discovered on the side of the road. I was horrified because it was completely folded in half. I felt sick as I loaded it into the back of the van, thinking about how much worse the accident could have been.

  Later that day, we went to collect Nathan from hospital. He was in pain and feeling very sorry for himself.

  ‘Come on, boy,’ I said putting my arm around his shoulder. ‘Let’s get you home. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.’

  ‘I thought he was going to have a go at me about the state of the bike,’ he told his mother, who laughed.

  ‘You are far more important to him than any bike,’ she replied. ‘Darren cares about you – he doesn’t give a damn about the bike. That can be replaced – you can’t.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nathan replied. ‘All right, then.’

  I think he needed reassurance every now and again that, as far as I was concerned, he was my son. He gave me a little more respect for a while after that, before we reverted to our normal relationship, which involve
d lots of banter and teasing of each other.

  When Nathan turned seventeen, he asked if he could learn to drive a car. I was fully behind this, because Anjie and I had been shaken up pretty badly by the moped incident. I figured that he would be a lot safer in a car. We paid for lessons with a driving instructor because I knew I would never have the patience to teach anyone. Many moons ago, I did once try to give Anjie a driving lesson, and the hour I spent in the car with her scarred us both for life!

  Nathan was so keen, he took to driving like a duck to water. He had absolutely no problems at all. When it came to his practical test, I drove him to the test centre and waited for him, and once again he walked out of there grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘Let me guess – you passed?’ I asked.

  He nodded in reply.

  ‘Well done, son,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘I’m proud of you. You’re doing really well – but you’re still not driving my car!’

  Nathan always underplayed his successes and would never let on that he was pleased I was proud of him, but you could see it on his face. He couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. Within a few weeks, he rushed out and bought his first car – a sporty-looking white Renault Clio – with the money he was earning from his three jobs. I was less than impressed with this purchase, as when I gave it a test drive I could tell it was falling apart. The gearbox was on its way out, the clutch only engaged when my foot was a couple of inches off the floor, and there was rainwater leaking in, causing the electrics to fail.

  ‘This car is junk,’ I told Nathan, but he just crossed his arms and huffed at me.

  ‘I like it; it looks cool,’ he replied. It turned out to be one of those things I needed to let him find out for himself. After a few days he started moaning his head off about the car not running properly.