Coming through the front door after school on a Friday afternoon, I could hear voices chattering in the kitchen.
‘Hi, love,’ my mum Elizabeth, now 59, smiled. ‘Say hello to Jay.’
Looking after me and my disabled sister Gail, then 16, all alone, Mum liked to let her hair down and have mates round at the weekends.
‘Hi, Christina,’ Jay smiled. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Hello,’ I waved shyly back.
I later found out that his real name was Ambrose Thomas Stevenson, but I only ever knew him as Jay.
He was nice to me – at 10, while Mum’s friends were always kind, they never paid me much notice.
I thought of Jay as a father figure – like family
Jay took an interest and took the time to chat to me, asking me about school and my day.
After that, Jay became a
