I'm Still Here Mum

By Micheline Scarlett

In his teens Royce Scarlett was a bit of a tearaway, regularly in trouble with the law. But he was also devoted to his mum, who stuck by him through thick and thin. When matters came to a head and Royce was sent to prison for drug dealing, he began to see the error of his ways and was well on the path to becoming a responsible young adult. But Royce never had the chance. While he was in prison he developed a rare cancer, and he died at the age of just 22. This is Royce’s tragic and moving story, by his mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mereo Books
• Release date: Jun 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781861514295

Book preview

MICHELINE SCARLETT

I’M STILL

HERE MUM

The story of Royce Scarlett, A young man who lived too fast and died too soon

Copyright ©2015 by Micheline Scarlett

Smashwords Edition

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Mereo Books, an imprint of Memoirs Publishing

Micheline Scarlett has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover, other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The address for Memoirs Publishing Group Limited can be found at www.memoirspublishing.com

The Memoirs Publishing Group Ltd Reg. No. 7834348

Mereo Books

1A The Wool Market Dyer Street

Cirencester Gloucestershire GL7 2PR

An imprint of Memoirs Publishing

www.mereobooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-86151-429-5

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Roots

Chapter 2 Motherhood

Chapter 3 School

Chapter 4 On the move

Chapter 5 The wrong road

Chapter 6 Out of control

Chapter 7 Wanted by the police

Chapter 8 Behind bars

Chapter 9 A very special cancer

Chapter 10 ‘Shall I go to sleep, mum?’

Chapter 11 Aftermath

Chapter 12 Remembering Royce

Chapter 13 Little bits from Royce’s diary

APPENDIX – Renal Medullary Cancer

This book is dedicated to my son Royce Scarlett, who was born on 25th June 1983 and who sadly passed away on 6th December 2005. I was unable to protect Royce from a rare, aggressive and dreadful killer disease, one which needs recognition throughout the world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my family for sticking by me through my turbulent life, especially my mum and my dear departed dad, my son Simon and daughter Marie and my three grandchildren (who call me ‘Supernan’), my friends, past and present, and all of Royce’s friends who are always there for me. I would like to give the utmost thanks to 'Pupsy' Webb, who helped Royce throughout his football years, and thanks and appreciation to the Rev Marvin Hector, who helped him while he was in prison. To anyone else who knew Royce and loved him, thank you for being his friend. Then last but not least to 'Bert', just for being there.

INTRODUCTION

This book of memoirs follows the life of my beloved son Royce 'Ducky' Scarlett. Parts of his life are too personal to write about, and it was these times when I found it hard to put pen to paper. On the flip side I could always find something funny, and I often laughed out loud. My granny always said everything happens for a reason; I'm still looking for that reason and probably I will never find it.

This little book may shock those who don't know me, it may bring horror and disgust to anyone who has been affected by drugs or has lost someone through hard drugs. For that I am truly sorry. Please don't judge me, we can all so easily make mistakes. Royce paid for his wrongdoing and I know he would have become a better person through his ordeal, but sadly he never got to show his true potential in life.

As a mother I know we all try to protect our children, sometimes at great cost to ourselves, as I found out myself. Looking back I know I could have changed a lot of the things that happened in our lives, but we can never get those times back - we can only go forward. I lost my son to the justice system. I'm not saying he didn't deserve to be punished but I had great expectations that he would return home and change his life around. Unfortunately he never got that chance, he never got to sleep in his own bed again, he never got the chance to flood the bathroom, or run up a huge phone bill. The one thing he did get the chance to say was 'sorry Mum.'

As for me, I got the chance to show him how much he was loved and although I know our lives could have been different, I have no regrets.

CHAPTER ONE

ROOTS

Granny was very spiritual; in fact the family had nicknamed her ‘the spook’. She only had one eye and a cataract had formed over the other, so she was almost completely blind, but that woman could tell instantly which of us had walked into the room. We didn’t even have to mutter a word and ‘that’s our Gaynor’ or ‘that’s little Ian’ she would say within seconds of us entering.

Her storytelling was legendary. Out of the whole family, I was the one who encouraged her to tell her tales, and she told some weird and wonderful ones. Whether they were true or not was a different matter, but they always managed to capture my imagination. The rest of the grown-ups in the family took it as just ‘a load of old bull from the old woman’.

I must have been around eight or nine, in the early 1960s, when Granny took me to my first spiritualist meeting. My mum and dad said I was ‘unsettled’, whatever that meant. I suppose nowadays they would have some sort of name and medication for being ‘unsettled’, but back then there were no fancy descriptions for a child’s behaviour, you were just plain and simple ‘naughty’ and you got a slap, or in our case we got the stick which had its place constantly at my dad’s side, perched up in the corner by the fireplace within easy reach when any one of us five kids misbehaved.

I can’t remember where this meeting took place as my granny travelled constantly between our home in Leicester and Yarmouth and often took me with her. All I remember is being in a large room. The floorboards were old and tired looking, which was not unusual back then. There was a huge black iron fireplace in the center of the main wall, while the rest of the walls were plain, probably painted white, because I’m sure there were no colour swatches from B&Q back then either.

The room was empty apart from a number of old hard-backed chairs lined up against each wall. There weren’t even any plants or ornaments dotted around. I was mystified, as the adults who had come to the meeting spoke about me as if I wasn’t even there. I remember holding tightly on to Granny’s hand and looking up at her, begging to know what was going on.

There must have been about half a dozen people in that room, but the one that stood out was a giant figure of a man resembling a huge gorilla, like one I’d seen on the school trip to London Zoo. That was the first time I’d eaten salad with sweetcorn in it, making me feel sick. It’s funny how you remember things like that. ‘If you feel it you remember it’, Granny would always say.

This man to me, as a young slip of a girl, seemed huge, eight feet tall and eight feet wide, and frightening with it. I can still remember him distinctly with his thick jet-black wavy hair and a full beard covering half his face, and a moustache that was growing somewhere from up his huge nostrils and hanging over his top lip. He was a frightening character, but even so I felt a sense of calm in that room. I was a little confused, to say the least, as to why Granny had brought me there; I suppose that as a young girl with an adventurous mind I was just a little bit excited. I also thought it was our little secret, as I hadn’t heard her speak about this encounter to anyone in the family. In fact a few years later I asked my mum about it and she had no idea what I was talking about and shrugged it off as one of my many strange dreams. It was no dream, I know that. I can still remember the floorboards creaking as the big man walked over to the fireplace and poked the remains of the burnt wood, sending sparks flying up the chimney. Then he pulled one of the chairs to the middle of the room, making a horrible scraping noise along the floorboards, the kind of noise that instantly makes you want to cover your ears.

I was told to sit on the chair, which I did with feet dangling and still nervously holding onto Granny’s hand. I was facing the window and could see the long garden filled with lovely plants and flowers. We didn’t have a garden like that at home, just a small back yard where Dad would keep his toolbox and all sorts of bits and pieces ready to fix anything that was broken. Why didn’t everyone have a beautiful garden, I thought?

I was in awe of this peaceful calm afternoon, at least until I heard a horrible rumbling noise that shook the room. A second later a train thundered past the bottom of the garden. I suddenly felt sad. I really believed after that that to have a nice garden you would have to have a train line running along the bottom of it. Why don’t grown-ups tell you these things?

Back in the room, the big man had positioned himself behind me and laid his huge palms one each side of my head. I could feel the roughness of his fingers against my cheeks and wished he wasn’t pressing so hard. I have no idea how long I was in this situation, but it was long enough for me to see another train pass by the bottom of the garden. It was strange, because this time there was no rumbling, no noise, no nothing; it was as if I was in another place that was very serene and quiet. Either that or this man had made me deaf with his huge hands.

I was getting scared now and I held onto Granny’s hand even harder. I squeezed my eyes shut until I felt the big man’s hands relax and slowly slide from their place at the side of my head. I didn’t dare open my eyes, as I was so scared of what I might see; had I been transported to another planet? Was I ever going to see my mum and dad again? Or my brothers and sister?

I felt Granny pull me gently from the chair to my feet, and still with my eyes closed I let her lead me out of the room. I didn’t open my eyes