Brave: How I rebuilt my life after love turned to hate

I can still remember those first horrifying split seconds, that exact moment when I realised that the liquid that was dripping down my hair and through my skin wasn’t water, but something much, much worse. And by the time my brain had scrambled enough sense to find a name for it – acid – every nerve in my body was screaming in pain.

I remember the old woman who I ran to. Moments before, she had just been any other person waiting for a bus and she could now have been my saviour. Except that when I grabbed her hands, pleading – begging – for her to help me, she looked down at her own flesh where the acid from my skin had seeped into hers and she cried out terrified as she watched her own flesh disappear.

I remember screaming for water.

I remember running into the road, weaving among the traffic, trying to get away from myself.

I remember feeling my ear melting from my face. I remember the sense of it shrinking and shrivelling on the side of my head. And the smell, I remember the smell, but I couldn’t describe it here on these pages. The smell of your own face melting is not something anyone should ever have to attempt to conjure up in their mind. Not that part of an act of pure evil.

Yet among all that pain, that searing, scorching-level pain, I knew exactly who was responsible. My brain cut through that raging heat, the white fire that seemed to engulf every nerve in my body and reminded me of one name.

I remember that name more than anything.

I was struggling so hard to survive, just to live, not to melt away, although that’s what I was doing in that moment; running like a wild woman into the road, seeing the horrified faces of strangers who had stopped to help and now ran from me to save their own skin. Literally.

But say I’d been able to pause that scene. Say I could have stopped it there and then, just for a minute, just for a second, I could have had one logical thought that wasn’t consumed by pain. I’ve no doubt as to what it would have been. I would have thought: how did our love come to this?

Chapter 1

Intensity (#u5267be30-3979-51c5-bacd-7dff8fa89951)

‘Mum, can I borrow a tenner?’

She glanced at me quickly and then back at Coronation Street.

‘Pass me my bag, Adele,’ she said.

I hovered beside her as she fished around in her handbag for her purse, the scent of my Calvin Klein perfume filling our small living room. But just as she pulled her black leather purse from her bag, just as she was about to flip it open, she looked up at me.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Bowling.’

I tried to sound casual, looking straight ahead at the TV, but I still saw her give me a quick scan up and down: thick mascara, pink glossy lips, long dark hair falling down my back, stringy top, jeans …

‘In heels?’ she asked.

I shot a quick glance at my dad then, but luckily his eyes were fixed on the TV. When I turned back to Mum, I saw that her eyebrows were raised, awaiting an answer, the hint of a smile curling at the corner of her lips.

‘Yeah, I’ll hire bowling shoes when I get there.’

She looked at me for a second before shaking her head, turning back to her purse and pulling out a crisp £10 note.

‘There. Have fun,’ she said, putting it in my hand. ‘… And be careful!’ she called after me.

As I picked up my overnight bag by the front door, I couldn’t resist a smile because, of course, I had no intention at all of going to the bowling alley; that was the kind of thing I did when I was 14. Now I was 16, and me and my friends had already figured out which pubs we could get served at.

Seconds later I’d left our red-brick terraced home, the blueish light from the television flickering behind our bay window as I hurried down the front path towards the bus stop.

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.

Just got on the bus. C u soon x

My friend Laura Woodcock. I was staying at hers tonight and we lived on the same bus route into town. She always texted me when she got on the bus so we could travel into town together.

The bus stop was a short walk from our house – a route I’d taken so many times in my life because this house was the only home I’d ever known. I’d first toddled this route when I was tiny, my hand in Mum’s, my older brothers Adam and Scott trailing alongside us, but these days I’d hurry along to it in my heels and whatever outfit I’d planned for my night out.

I felt the fresh crunch of the £10 note inside my palm and smiled to myself again. As the youngest, and the only girl in a family of two boys, I was used to getting my own way. For as far back as I could remember I’d always been a daddy’s girl. My dad worked long hours as a self-employed painter and decorator, but he always had time for me. He’d spoil me rotten too: whenever we went shopping and I snuck some chocolate into the trolley, Mum would always tell me to put it back on the shelf, but I only had to whinge to Dad and it would be mine.

‘Kevin!’ Mum would moan at him.

‘Oh come on, Colleen, it’s just a bar of chocolate.’

And I’d grin to myself.

My brothers have tormented me my entire life, as older brothers do, from practising their WWE moves on me when I was eight or nine, in my knee-high white socks and hairbands, to throwing my dolly out of the pram onto the floor just to tease me. But all I had to do was shout ‘Mum!’ and they’d get told off.

‘Leave your sister alone!’ Mum would shout through from the kitchen.

I’d quickly realised that being the little sister made me almost invincible. But it wasn’t always me that got the better of them. With all male cousins too, I’d often get left out of their games growing up. I’d run behind them, hoping they’d let me climb trees alongside them on sunny days when we’d have a picnic down at Toby Walk, but often they’d run too fast for my little legs to keep up. It had made me try harder, develop a tougher skin, be feisty when I needed to be. But that wasn’t a bad thing.

The bus rounded the corner as I noticed that the sky had deepened to a deep blue since I’d left the house, and illuminated by the lights inside the bus I saw Laura waving to me. I got on and took a seat next to her.

‘All right?’

She’d put her jeans and a strappy top on too but I wasn’t sure why either of us had dressed up. We didn’t really fancy a big night tonight.

‘I’m knackered,’ Laura yawned.

‘Me too,’ I said, catching her tiredness. ‘I can’t be bothered to drink tonight.’

‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘Let’s just pop to the pub for a couple of hours, though. It’s something to do.’

The last few weeks had been full of new starts for me. School had finished in the summer, and I’d got my GCSE results. They were OK, enough to get me on the beauty course at Lowestoft College. I hadn’t been a swot at school, I’d done enough to get by, but for me it was all about my social life. I’d made some great friends there – Jade, Remi, Paige, Becca, Madison and Jessie – while Laura was an old friend from middle school.

We were a pretty tight-knit group: we’d grown up together, hanging around in the local park each night after school, pooling our money and convincing strangers to buy us a bottle of vodka from the corner shop or a packet of Mayfair Superkings. We’d hang out there until 10 or 11 when we all had to be home, but on a Friday night – once my parents had gone out – I’d usually sneak back out to a friend’s house. There we’d spend the rest of the evening texting boys, or giggling about who’d been snogging who in the park while the boys practised their wheelies around us.

It was all so innocent then, but now life had changed, we were all growing up. Over the summer I’d lost my virginity to a boy. It wasn’t anything serious, just kids messing about. I’d met a couple of other girls too, Rachel and Amie, along with another girl, Lauren – who was doing the same beauty course at college as me. I had wanted to be a nurse at one point, but somehow the beauty course had seemed like an easier option. I loved it too, especially the anatomy and physiology, learning all about the skin, the muscles and bones, blood vessels and capillaries.

I was only a few weeks into the course so we were still covering the basics like how to cleanse, tone and moisturise – it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to doing that each night anyway, the same for painting nails, but it was interesting to learn about cuticles and how to treat them. I really felt different since leaving school, older, more grown up, so it seemed funny that just like any other 16-year-old girl I still borrowed money off my mum and fibbed to her about where I was going. Anyway, it was amazing what I could get out of a tenner – drinks in the pub, a takeaway, a packet of cigarettes and a taxi home. I was never quite sure how I managed it.

This would be a low-key night, though. Me and Laura weren’t looking for a big one. We got to the pub, went in and found Amie and our other friends. We actually ended up having a laugh: there was always some gossip to giggle over. I sank one vodka and coke after another, the ice clinking against my teeth as I finished each one, and I always left the bar with that little buzz just because I’d been served. I loved hearing who was snogging who, or who’d broken up that week. It was still like being at school, only better because we could buy our own booze now.

It got to about 11.30 and the atmosphere in the pub changed as people started to talk about moving on and collected their coats and bags to step out into the dark September night.

‘Shall we just go home?’ I asked Laura, swaying a little as I did. I hadn’t noticed just how the drink had gone to my head.

She nodded. But when I opened my purse to see how much I’d got for the taxi home, it was empty and there was nothing in Laura’s purse either.