I moved in with my grandparents when I was twelve. My mother was living in Grangetown with a bloke I didn’t get on with. He was on drugs and I thought he was a bit of a psychopath, so I was happy to be out of the picture. I came to stay here and I just sort of never went home, and, given what has happened to my mum, I’ve been lucky to be at a distance from her life.

My mum never had any money and Grangetown, where she lives, is a miserable place to bring up a family. Over time it got her down and she became depressed. She used to have a job as the manager of a cleaning company, but she lost that. I first worried about her when I noticed she wasn’t eating and looked ill. Then she started stealing stuff from my grandparents; she took their money and their jewellery and she nicked my computer games and the console. It became the norm. It was like oh mum has stolen my stuff again. Then one day I came into my bedroom here at my grandparents and she was taking her drugs. After that there was no longer any secret about it. Next, the police rang to say she’d been arrested for theft and she went to prison for a couple of months. We went down and got Kieran and Kelsy and they stayed here at my grandparents, and I helped look after them. After that she tried to get some order back into her life by doing a course in sociology at Middlesbrough College, where I’m studying now, but that didn’t last. At the moment the whole family is here with my grandparents. My mother wants to make a fresh start out of Grangetown. She says she wants to go and live in Nottingham.

I’m seventeen. At the moment I’m doing an IT course, and I hope to go to Teesside University and get a degree. I’ll hang around here until I know my brother and my little sister are safe and then I’m going to America. My girlfriend, who I met on the internet, lives in Maryland. I went to see her last July and I want to go back and be with her. There’s nothing for me here and I’ll go away the moment I can.