I’d made some terrible choices but, at my lowest, someone very special stepped in… By Stephen Gillen, 53
The wet flannel felt rough against my skin, but the hand that wielded it was kind.
‘There now,’ my Aunt Madge said, once she’d finished scrubbing me all over. ‘You’re all ship-shape.’
‘Aunt’ Madge had raised me from being a baby.
My biological mum had been just 17 when she had me, and I’d been sent to Belfast to live with Madge, who was actually my great-aunt.
A no-nonsense woman, but with a soft side too, I adored her. Everybody did! She was the heart and soul of my family.
Then one day, when I was nine years old, I peered into the front room and saw Madge sitting on the settee. I could tell something was wrong. Despite the open fire, she was shaking.
That was the last time I saw Madge alive.
It turned out she had an aggressive form of cancer. She was taken into a hospice and I wasn’t allowed to visit. Just weeks later, my Uncle Gerrard,Madge’s brother, came home and burst out crying.
‘Your Aunt Madge is gone,’ hesobbed.
It didn’t seem possible that my wise, kind and funny Aunt Madge — the only mum I’d ever known — was really gone.
Not long after, I was walking down the road with Uncle Gerrard when, to my delight, I saw her across the road. I could only see her back view, but she was wearing her usual headscarf and I just knew it was her.
‘Look!’ I cried, pointing. ‘It’s Aunt Madge!’
‘Your Aunt Madge is gone,’
Gerrard replied crossly. Yet I’d been so sure… Soon after, it was decided I should go to live with my ‘real’ mum in London.
Trouble was, ‘Mum’ was pretty much a stranger.
I’d been a good kid in Ireland. Now, with everything I loved taken away, I was deeply angry. Mum and I fought like cat and dog and eventually I was put into care.
Some of the homes were brutal and I became even angrier, regularly running away and breaking into places to sleep. Sometimes, at night, I’d talk to Aunt Madge for comfort.
At 14, I was given three months in a Youth Detentionduring a fight.
The sentence was supposed to be a short, sharp shock. Instead, I made more criminal connections, sending me further down the wrong path.
Soon crime was all I knew. Aged just 21, I was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiracy to commit robbery, possession of a firearm with int
