Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

from his own past becausehis real mum used to beat him black and blue if he so much as made a noise.
    While I was going through what could probably be described as a bratty phase, I decided to get a tattoo. And not just a tiny, subtle initial on my wrist or something but a full-on, massive design right across my lower back. I had to use fake ID to get it done, which I’m not proud of, but now I hate the thing. It’s vile and, if it didn’t leave a white mark behind, I’d have it removed in a flash. It makes me feel physically sick and I insist on having it airbrushed out of my modelling pictures. Overall, I’m not a fan of tattoos on girls – and while we’re on that subject, Cheryl Cole’s bottom is the most repulsive thing I’ve seen in my life. What on earth was going through her mind?
    When I got mine, it was quite funny though because, for about five years, I let my dad believe it was a henna tattoo and that I was having it topped up regularly. Only when I went on
Big Brother
did he realise that it was real and he yelled at Mum, ‘This is disgraceful! Why didn’t you tell me she had this monstrosity?’
    Poor Mum said, ‘I’m sorry, Harry but she told me not to say anything!’
    Getting a hideous tattoo and fighting with Mum and Dad non-stop illustrates how frustrated I was becoming at home and I felt that I couldn’t really share my problems with anyone. David and I were close but we didn’t share those kinds of things and I think I wanted to protect him from it anyway. And, of course, my friends didn’t understand what I was going through. None of them were adopted, for a start, and they certainly hadn’t had mums who’d died in weird, unspoken circumstances.
    As I could never share what was eating away at me with my mates, they were a bit baffled as to why my home life constantly resembled a battleground. We’d meet up and they’d be like, ‘What’s up with you today then?’
    ‘What do you think?’ I’d say. ‘I’ve had another fight with Mum and Dad – I bloody hate them.’
    ‘Oh, just the usual then.’
    Well, not exactly. What we were dealing with here were not typical teenage strops about pocket money or staying out past 11pm. That stuff seemed so trivial to me. This was a much bigger issue and, if I’m honest, I really didn’t know how to handle it. As my rows with Mum escalated, she’d simply refuse to talk to me or send me to my room.
    One day, when I had turned 15, after arguing for about the zillionth time, Mum told me cryptically, ‘There are things you don’t understand. And you won’t be able to understand them until you’re an adult.’
    ‘But I am grown up enough now,’ I protested. ‘Everyone says I’m very mature for my age. I’ve even got two jobs.’
    I was working part-time as a waitress at a nearby hotel called Cedar Court and thought this surely proved how responsible I was.
    ‘Chanelle, please just let it go,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My decision is final. You are too young and that’s that.’
    Then, as a tide of frustration and anger washed over me, I yelled, ‘What do you know? You’re not even my real mum!’ As my temper boiled over, I couldn’t stop. ‘I don’t know who you think you are but you can’t tell me what to do! You have no right!’
    It must be like a slap in the face for any parent to hear such vicious words and I could tell in an instant how badly I’d wounded her.
    ‘You are not my real mum!’ I repeated, out of sheer desperation. Seeing the pain fill her eyes as my words sank in, she looked like a broken woman.
    Looking back, I wonder how I could have been so cruel. It makes me feel sick that I intentionally tried to hurt her like that. Mum would do anything in the world for me and my brother, sothe way I treated her still haunts me. Thankfully, she has forgiven me for all of that now but sometimes I look back and can hear myself shouting those nasty words. It’s then that I want to call her just to tell her how much I