Chloe Sims - The Only Way is Up - My Story. Chloe Sims
all I’ve ever really wanted.
Even after everything I have been through, I still believe in that fairytale ending. I’ve met the man of my dreams – all I need now is my castle to live in.
Those are the things I’ve wanted ever since I was a little girl – I just didn’t realise how much of a rollercoaster my life was going to be before I got there…
One of my first memories is the day I woke up and realised I was in the house alone.
I was only three years old. One morning, I got out of my bed and went downstairs to get my breakfast. Dad had gone to work – he worked at Billingsgate Market and used to get up at 3am, so I knew he wouldn’t be about. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I am guessing I must have gone round the house looking for my dad or next door neighbour Auntie Sylv – she wasn’t my real auntie, we just used to call all our neighbours on the estate ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’, but she used to look after me when Dad was at work. I remember going down into the kitchen where our pet dogs were kept in a cage and letting them out.
A few weeks prior to this first memory, my mum had left me with Auntie Sylv and never returned. I cannot really remember what happened, but I know the facts. My mum and dad had split up, and I had stayed on in the house we lived in with my mum. Sylv would often babysit me, and one day Mum dropped me off at hers and never came back to collect me. Poor Auntie Sylv – looking back now, she must have been beside herself with worry, wondering what the hell was going on, but she didn’t let on to me. She just looked after me and made me feel safe.
A few days passed and still nothing. My dad came to the house to see me as usual – I think he came to visit at least twice a week – and to his horror no one was home. He knocked at Sylv’s to see if she knew anything, and she explained that my mum had disappeared.
My dad immediately moved back into the house and took care of me. Auntie Sylv was always on hand to babysit. Back then Dad used to leave for work at 3am and at first Sylv would come in and get me shortly after and take care of me until he got back. Sylv lived next to us and because it was terraced and the walls so thin, she could hear if anything was going on, plus she had keys.
My memory of the whole thing is really hazy.
Actually, I have so few memories of Mum, too, that I can barely even remember her face. I’ll never know why she left and we’ve never seen her since.
Sometimes it feels like I’m looking down on someone else’s life, but actually it’s my life. I mean, who does that? What sort of woman just walks out and leaves her child? However bad things get, I don’t understand how a mother could do that to her daughter.
I have found it hard being a mum to Mady but, no matter how bad things have got, I would never have walked out and left her. I don’t think it will ever sink in what happened that day. Why Mum left me, I guess I’ll never know. As far as I’m concerned, I will never meet her.
Things seemed pretty normal when I first came into the world. I was born at King George Hospital in Newbury Park, Essex, on 2 November 1981. My mum and my dad were both very young at the time – she was 19 and he was 20, and I think that has a lot to do with what happened over the next few years.
My dad’s best friend had met a girl and asked Dad if he would go on a double date with her and one of her friends – and her friend turned out to be my mum. Apparently, she was wearing a really wacky outfit so maybe I get my unconventional dress sense from her! They hadn’t been dating long when Mum fell pregnant. Dad, being the honourable man that he is, asked her to marry him and they had a shotgun wedding.
At the time, my mum, who was originally from Dagenham, was working in an office and my dad had been working at the fish market for a couple of years. Dad was an east London boy, through and through – he had grown up in Bethnal Green but, when he left home, he moved to Essex.
When they married, they got a council house in a place called Clayhall, near Ilford. My mum had been brought up by her nan and granddad, after her own mum and dad left her, and I often wonder if that, too, had something to do with the events of my childhood.
I know I used to see her nan and granddad before my mum left because my family have told me, but I don’t remember them. I’ve met her dad a couple of times, too, and I know he was a hippie, but I don’t remember him either. I know very little about her family. In fact, I don’t even know if she had any brothers or sisters.
My Nanny Linda – my dad’s mum – has a few photo albums with pictures of my mum and dad. There are some from before I was born, including their wedding photos, and others of me when I was a baby, so I know what my mum used to look like. But, honestly, I think, if I hadn’t seen those pictures, I wouldn’t know what she looked like.
Over the years, my dad has told me a few stories about my mum, and one that sticks in my mind is that Dad was a skinhead at the time and having a skinhead was the height of fashion back then. Anyway, one day my mum decided she wanted to be a skinhead as well and had her head shaved like Britney Spears! Dad tried to point out to her that it was only meant to be the men that shaved their heads, but she was having none of it. I guess she was pretty wacky!
I only really have a few memories of that house in Clayhall – the first one was when I must have been about three. I remember sitting on the stairs, crying because my mum and dad were having a Chinese takeaway and I was meant to be in bed, but I wanted to stay up and try some. Mum had said no, so I was crying because I didn’t want to go to bed. Eventually, my dad gave in and let me stay up and have some sweet and sour chicken and a prawn cracker. I was so pleased – I felt really grown up!
I also remember we had two dogs: they were English bull terriers called Brook and Sims, and one of them had had pups, so my dad had put a cage in the kitchen for them. By now Mum had left, and, with Dad out at work, it was just the dogs and me. I don’t know how long I sat with them as they jumped round, yelping and barking – I thought it was quite good fun! Our next-door neighbour, Auntie Sylv, heard the commotion from the dogs and, using the spare key she had, let herself in to check that I was OK.
I still had my pyjamas on and I had wet the bed, so I was soaking and stinking of wee. I told Auntie Sylv there was no one at home, just me. She took me back to her house next door and got me cleaned up and washed my pyjamas – I remember them drying on the washing line.
Again, my memory of the exact event is hazy, but, sometime shortly after my dad decided that I should live with Auntie Sylv because of the strange hours he was working. He felt this would give me more stability. So, I moved in with Auntie Sylv, where I stayed for the next nine years. She was just the nicest person you could meet; she was about 20 stone and found it difficult to walk, but nothing was too much trouble.
Her house was always pretty chaotic. Bless her, she didn’t have much and material things just didn’t matter to her – some of the rooms didn’t have carpet, and I remember jumping over the gripper rods so I didn’t prick my feet – but she had a heart of gold and she took me on. She looked after me like a daughter and she’s an angel inside.
Auntie Sylv became my mum – she was the one who walked me to school, she cooked me my tea and looked after me. My dad was working long hours at the market and he just couldn’t care for me on his own, so I lived with Auntie Sylv in the week and then I saw him every weekend.
Auntie Sylv and her husband, Uncle Gordon, already had a 16-year-old daughter called Kelly. They only had a two-bedroom house, so I had to share a room with her. She never complained, and I used to really look up to her. She would be getting ready to go out clubbing with her friends and she would be there, putting on her make-up, listening to music. I would sit for hours watching her transform her face. I think it was those days of watching Kelly that gave me my first taste of make-up