麻豆约拍

Jemma Bere had an unconventional childhood. She was home-schooled by her mother who believed in “education by stealth” – teaching her life experiences as they travelled from place to place. While other children were eating cereal before school, Jemma would spend her mornings feeding monkeys in Thailand and Bali. Growing up learning valuable life lessons on the road may sound idyllic, but it was not without its struggles.

Just as she was about to move out and start a life of her own, a tragic event forced Jemma to make a split-second decision that would save her family and change her life forever. In Life Changing, Jane Garvey hears the stories of those who have lived through extraordinary events that have shaped their futures. This is Jemma’s story.

After time spent in South East Asia, Jemma and her mother moved on to Turkey, where they were living on a boat with her brother and step-father. Her mother’s marriage broke down, and she met a new partner, Shakey. Spurred on by dreams of an idyllic life in a countryside cottage, they returned to Brecon, to live near Jemma’s grandmother. Her grandmother did not approve of the way the children had been brought up, recalls Jemma: “I think she thought we were absolutely bonkers.” Jemma settled into life in Brecon, and while she was studying for her GCSEs, her mother and Shakey had two children, Alex and Billie.

The Brecon Beacons

Their family life became more chaotic: Shakey was a heavy drinker and would often go AWOL when an after-work drink got out of hand. Jemma’s mother would head out in search of him, sometimes for hours at a time, leaving Jemma in charge of three children. Her mother’s relationship with Shakey became strained. “I became increasingly conscious of it being an issue when I came home from school, for example, and things hadn’t been done – [like] cleaning the kitchen after breakfast. Just the gaps in things that would have normally been done, because they’d been having arguments that lasted for days. My mum started drinking more herself at that point.” As the eldest sibling, Jemma tried to fill in these gaps.

A fresh start

When the time came for Jemma to start university, she felt relief at the chance to gain a bit of breathing space. While she was completing her A levels, her family had moved to Spain, while Jemma stayed behind with her grandmother. She reflects: “From what I could gather, the first few months were really positive. My mum was in sunnier climes, which obviously she was enjoying. I think it represented a new start.”

These optimistic times were short-lived, however. One afternoon, Jemma returned to her grandmother’s house, to find Shakey’s sister Diane’s car parked outside. “I just had a gut instinct that it was bad. Irreparably bad.” All that Diane could tell Jemma was that her mother had been hit by a car.

By this point in her life, Jemma had developed fantastic self-reliance, and she decided to put her Spanish A-level to good use by phoning all the hospitals in southern Spain to locate her. It was a matter of mere hours before Shakey called to say her mother had died. She had been crossing a road, when a speeding truck hit her. Shakey and the children all witnessed the accident. Jemma remembers: “Billie kept saying mum had bumped her head. The immediate aftermath was horrendous. Now, they have very little memory of the accident. But unfortunately, they also don’t remember a great deal of her.”

麻豆约拍 or away?

After the funeral in Brecon, Shakey, Alex and Billie moved back to Spain. Faced with the choice between moving to Spain or going to university, Jemma chose university. She flew back every holiday on the cheapest flights she could find. The visits became increasingly fraught, as Shakey was struggling with single parenthood and drinking to cope. Jemma reflects: “He was never malicious, he wasn’t aggressive towards the children. But he was in the pub more than he was with them, so much so that the children’s Spanish was increasingly better than their English.” Alex and Billie had a “wonderful” Spanish-speaking nanny, Marisa, who loved them and enrolled them in a Spanish school. But shortly after Jemma finished, Marisa had to return to her home in Argentina.

Marisa was reluctant to leave the children, fearing that Shakey couldn’t look after them. These fears were soon realised. “It was a matter of two or three weeks before I got a phone call to say that the children had been taken in by social services.” Jemma immediately organised a meeting with social services in Spain, in which she was told that Shakey would have to get a house and job, and stop drinking for three months. Jemma remained in the UK, but checked in with the children regularly and helped Shakey secure a house and job. She left the rest up to him. Unfortunately, three months passed and Shakey couldn’t stop drinking. Jemma was contacted by the authorities to say that, unless a family member could care for Alex and Billie, they would be put up for adoption. There was no guarantee they would be kept together, that Jemma could still see them, or that they would be put in the care of an English-speaking family. Jemma had to make a snap decision, and before she could give it any great thought, the then 23-year-old heard herself saying: “I’ll look after them then.”

Jemma reflects: “The speed of such a big decision was shocking. I’m a researcher, I weigh up all the arguments, if I’m buying a new item, I’ll spend months researching. This was right from the heart.”

Her decision received a mixed response, “Either people think you’re stark raving bonkers, or people think it’s amazing.”

At the time, other than her degree, Jemma had no savings or assets and she was living in a house share in Bradford. “I thought it would just be a matter of filling in some forms, then I’d go and get them. It wasn’t like that at all.” Jemma moved back to Wales, where she had to involve Brecon social services, international social services and Spanish social services. Somehow, she had to fund the process. “I had a credit card I’d got when I joined university that I’d never used. My mum always said ‘credit cards are for emergencies’.” This was an emergency. Billie and Alex were moved from a care home to a traditional Catholic orphanage in Spain. Because she was reluctant to get their hopes up, Jemma couldn’t tell the children what she was trying to do, and by that point, they’d stopped asking if they were going home.

Finally, she got some news. “I’d just finished a shift, I was doing some care work at the time, and I’d gone to the pub to meet a friend. It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and my lawyer phoned me and said ‘I’ve just heard from social services and got the paperwork through. You can go and get them whenever you want.’ I can’t describe the feeling, whether it was relief, excitement, or fear. Probably all of the above.”

Parenthood

The following Monday, Jemma moved into a house, which she furnished using the money that was left on her credit card. That weekend, she flew out to get Alex and Billie, who were aged eight and nine; Jemma was just 24.

The children’s English soon improved, helped, no doubt, by the Teaching English as a Foreign Language qualification that Jemma had completed at university. With the reassurance of a permanent home, Jemma noticed an interesting change in the children. “One of the really positive signs I saw was when they started arguing. They were so close, they only had each other for such a long time, it was a sign they were growing independently of each other.”

Now, Billie and Alex are 23 and 24, a fact which has highlighted to Jemma the enormity of what she took on. While for many years she acted as their parent, now, she says, “I’m their sister. But I’m the big sister who always gets the last word, guaranteed. I’m a big sister with extra super powers.” She is so proud of the adults both of them have become. “They could have gone in a completely different direction, but they’re just such lovely, well-rounded human beings. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”