Chloe Sims - The Only Way is Up - My Story. Chloe Sims
childhood, thanks to Auntie Sylv and my dad and his family.
Social workers used to come and visit me once a fortnight to check that my living arrangements were going well; they would sit me down on my own and ask me questions about Auntie Sylv and Uncle Gordon and if I was happy. They used to record everything I said on a Dictaphone and then, after they had finished talking to me, they would let me play with it while they went to speak to Auntie Sylv in private.
It was only when I was a bit older that I really got to know all my family. They had fancy clothes, sleek and glossy hair and always smelled nice. And I was definitely more like them. I remember when I was about seven I refused to wear anything but party shoes! I was a proper princess. Obviously, the party shoes I wore weren’t meant to be worn all the time and weren’t hard wearing, so I was getting through a pair every few weeks and my family kept having to buy me new ones.
It was around that time that my dad met a woman called Karen and they started dating. I liked her straight away. She was a model and I thought she was beautiful. Back then, she looked like a brunette Claudia Schiffer and, together, she and my dad made a very glamorous pair. They were like something out of a film – a real Hollywood couple!
After a while, they moved in together to a one-bedroom flat in east London. It was small, and at the time Karen worked full-time in a bank, so it wasn’t practical for me to go and live with them. Then, when I was 11, Karen fell pregnant and had a little boy – my brother– and all my dreams came true.
Ever since I could remember, I had wanted to live with my dad and, finally, that wish became a reality.
When Karen was pregnant, I remember panicking that it would be a baby girl and I would be the ugly one because, with those two as parents, she would bound to be gorgeous. My dad must have picked up on those fears about the new baby because I remember him telling me, ‘Don’t worry about the new baby. I’ll always love you.’
Anyway, when my brother was born, my dad was more settled and felt more sorted in life with a new house and things, so he decided it was best I move in with him. I know it was his plan all along, but he didn’t want to uproot me until he knew 100 per cent – which he did as this point.
With my dad, Karen and a new baby, living in a one-bedroom flat wasn’t going to be easy. I think Auntie Sylv was really sad to see me go but she was doing it in my best interests. That’s the kind of person she is – even though it broke her heart, she was doing it for me.
My dad managed to scrape enough money together to get a house in Beckton, east London, which was a cheap area and the only place they could afford. He literally spent every penny buying the house so we could be a proper family. I had my own bedroom, which was in the loft – right up in the eaves – and he took hours painstakingly decorating it and making it perfect for me. In my room, I had a double bed and a telly. I had finally got my dream – living with Dad and being with my new family.
Auntie Sylv helped me pack up all my things. She was a proper hoarder and never threw anything away so I had loads and loads of stuff that I had accumulated over the years. We put it all in bin bags and that’s how I turned up at this new house with my stuff – most of which was only fit for the bin, anyway! The thing was, I wouldn’t throw any of it away because that was how Auntie Sylv had brought me up. God knows what Karen must have thought when I rocked up with all that junk.
Despite having my dream come true, I wasn’t happy. My dad was working every hour to pay for this house that they couldn’t really afford. Karen went back to work full-time at the bank and my brother went to nursery. We had moved over the six-week summer holiday and I was due to start secondary school in the September.
I went to Brampton Manor in Newham and, when I started there, I hated it – I was different to all the other east London kids and I didn’t fit in. There was a much wider ethnic mix at the new school and I wasn’t used to it. It was really hard and took a while, but eventually I settled in and managed to make loads of new friends.
Finally, I was happy – I had a nice home, I liked school and my step-mum Karen was really good to me. Most of all, I loved my baby brother. I’d already looked after baby Frankie all those years before with Auntie Tina and I loved babies. I just wanted to mother him and I used to help Karen feed him and change his nappies. It was like having a real-life baby doll!
When I was 13, and totally settled at my new school with all my new friends, my dad announced that we were moving again. He had bought a run-down house back in Essex to renovate so we could afford to be back in an area where he wanted to be. Plus, Karen had had two more kids by then – my sisters Frances and Demi – and we needed more space. Also, I don’t think they approved of my East End ‘ghetto’ friends and wanted to move me back to Essex.
By this time, I didn’t want to go back – I was gutted about leaving all my new mates. But my dad told me he had bought this house in Collier Row, near Romford, and we were moving, and I was going to start all over again at a posh school called Bower Park. I remember he showed me the brochure for the school and then I really didn’t want to go there.
At Brampton Manor, we could pretty much wear what we wanted within reason, the uniform was not strict at all, but in this brochure all the girls were wearing blazers and ties and looked totally different from me and all my friends. They looked so posh and stuffy! How was I going to fit in there?
My dad and Karen had made their decision, though, and that was that. We moved just before the end of the summer term, and all through the summer holiday I was going backwards and forwards to Beckton to meet up with my old friends. I also used to stay a lot with my cousins, Frankie and Joey, in Bermondsey, south London, as well.
When the start of the new term came around, I couldn’t believe how big the school was – it was massive compared to my old one. There I was in a blazer that was several sizes too big for me, looking like a right idiot. And I had the shock of my life when I saw that none of the girls looked anything like the ones in the brochure.
Those girls had all been wearing knee-length skirts but in real life they were wearing mini-skirts and had make-up on and tight shirts showing off their boobs! It was my first taste of what Essex girls looked like.
On the first day, they asked a girl called Helen Woolf to show me around. She was really pretty and looked so cool and, although she was shy, she was very popular. I soon realised that all the girls were a lot more grown up than me. They were reading teenage magazines like Mizz, and on Saturdays they used to go shopping for music, which was something me and my old friends had never done. There was me thinking I was the cool one from east London, but really I was a tomboy compared to all these girls.
I quickly realised I had to change the way I looked but my dad wouldn’t let me wear short skirts or put on make-up. That’s when I got in the habit of putting on my make-up and hitching my skirt up as far as I could on the way to school, and then I would rub it all off on the way home and roll down my skirt. I’d be asking Helen if every trace of make-up was gone to make sure I didn’t get told off.
Then the bullying started. First of all, it was just name-calling – they used to tell me I looked like I had Down’s Syndrome and I looked like an alien. Unfortunately, their first impression of me was that I was ugly and it stuck: you’re so impressionable and sensitive at that age and kids can be so cruel. They used to sing ‘Spaceman’ at me, a song in the charts around that time, and they would write it all over my books. It was so different from my old school in Beckton.
One day, it was particularly bad – a boy in my class called Lee Hayton tried to set fire to my hair with a lighter. The other kids would be making fun of me and I’d sit there with tears streaming down my face, but they just carried on. I was in floods of tears every single day.
On another particularly bad day,