By Vicky Thompson – this year’s winner of the annual award in honour of our late deputy editor
North London, early 1985. Aged 19, I was very naive – brought up by my grandparents on a farm in the middle of nowhere, before running away to London aged 11 to be with my dad. But that’s another story…
Lo and behold, I got pregnant. My family had never met the father – not the sort you’d want to introduce to the devil himself for fear of offending him, let alone to very protective parents. Again, that’s another story.
My family were horrified. The result was reminiscent of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s punishment. I was banished from the family home. I lost my job in the family business and, four months pregnant, was completely penniless.
Good friends invariably save the day; I stayed with my friend, her mother and four sisters. Overcrowding became a problem. The only place to rest my weary, pregnant head was in a cupboard under the stairs. I absolutely loved it – just enough room for a single mattress and an upturned cardboard box which became a makeshift dressing-table.
For the first time in my life, I felt completely free. Life was great. We had parties where the electric would invariably run out halfway through the night. We’d either forgotten or couldn’t afford to top up the meter. Regular guests brought their own 50p pieces in the end. Nothing ruins a good song and dance like a ten-minute search in the dark for the right change.
I eventually moved out of my freedom cupboard. For a while, I lived in a hostel at the back of the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, and became friendly with the Bangladeshi families there. They took pity on me and fed me every night.
Things turned out all right in the end, as these things often do – 40 years, three children and three grandchildren later, I’m happily married. Not, I might add, to the children’s father; referred to by all of us as Voldemort. Again, that’s another story.
Talking of Voldemort, I’ve tried, in this tale of mine, to emulate the style of Jeremy Lewis, and have also attempted to insert pertinent literary references –
I couldn’t think of many.
However, I reckon a certain author of a certain successful book series somehow heard of my cupboard-dwelling days and got the idea for her main character’s childhood bedroom.
Who could make that one up?
