Settling down for bed, I wracked my brain for the latest story before I was quickly interrupted.
‘I can’t take this anymore Mum,’ my daughter Serenity, then 10, cried out.
‘I want to go into the kitchen and chop my foot off,’ she blurted, bursting into tears.
Sitting in shock, I didn’t know what to do.
Was she capable of doing such a thing? Would she try?
‘You’re going to have to hide the knife block,’ I whispered to my husband Bill, now 45, when going downstairs that evening.
Would Serenity actually try and harm herself in that way?
It was an intense, gut-wrenching feeling that didn’t sit right with us.
Needing to warm a hot water bottle on a nightly basis, as well as hearing Serenity screaming out in pain, I knew she wasn’t being dramatic – she’d been in agony since she was born…
