Lunnon Charlene - Abducted

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First published 2009

Copyright Charlene Lunnon and Lisa Hoodless, 2009

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers 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

ISBN: 978-0-14-193138-8

Abducted

Charlene Lunnon and Lisa Hoodless both live in Hastings, East Sussex. Charlene with her partner, William, and baby daughter, Rubie-rae; Lisa with her son, Kyle.

On 28th June 1995 a man was released from prison in Kent, where he had served four years for the kidnapping of an eleven-year-old girl and the attempted kidnapping of a seventeen-year-old. A month later he moved to East-bourne. This was in the days before the Sex Offenders Register and he slipped quietly off the police radar.

In 1998, 14 miles along the coast in Hastings, two young girls were becoming firm friends. They liked clothes and sweets and computer games and the Spice Girls. After they had reached their tenth birthdays, their parents decided they were responsible enough to walk to school together every morning without adult supervision. After all, it was only a ten-minute walk.

The man didnt have any friends, or a job. He lived alone in a dreary flat above a shopping centre. His only interest in life was pretty young girls

Lisa and I were best friends from the day I started at Christ Church Primary School in June 1998, when I was nine years old. Id moved schools quite a few times by then because Id been in and out of foster care since I was very small, but at last I had a proper home with my dad and I hoped that I could finally settle somewhere and make some real friends.

Christ Church Primary seemed much bigger than any school Id been to before, with a confusing layout. There were two different staircases up the middle the little kids went one way while the bigger kids went the other and I thought I would never be able to find my way around. A boy called Dan was assigned to guide me for the day, pointing out where the toilets were and so forth, but although he seemed nice I felt nervous and too scared to strike up a conversation with anyone.

In the Year 4 classroom, Id only just started writing the sentences the teacher asked us to copy out when the lead snapped off the end of my pencil. I looked in my pencil case and realised Id forgotten to bring a sharpener.

Does anyone have a sharpener I can borrow? I whispered timidly to the group sitting nearest.

A voice behind me said, Ive got a Spice Girls sharpener. I turned round to see a girl with short, curly, light brown hair and two round bunches on the sides, like Princess Leia in Star Wars.

Thanks, I said. I loved the Spice Girls. Baby Spice had been my first favourite but now I preferred Posh because she was so sophisticated and I liked the way she dressed.

You can keep it, the girl said, and I smiled shyly at her.

Youre new, she said. What school did you go to before?

Ive just moved down to Hastings to stay with my dad. I was in London before.

Where do you live?

I told her the name of our road.

I live just one road down from yours, she said. My names Lisa. Ill play with you at break time if you like, if you havent got anyone else to play with.

I nodded and grinned and was about to say Yes, please, when the teacher told us to stop talking and get on with our work.

At break time we walked out to the playground together, chatting all the way. I really liked her shoes, which were a bright blue, green and yellow mix with foam rubber soles and a strap across the top. She liked the hairband I was wearing with my name spelt out across it in different-coloured letters on a black velvet background. I liked her funky nail varnish blue with yellow dots and the fact that she was so little and sweet and happy. She smiled the whole time, as if she didnt have a single care in the world.

I invited her up to my dads house that evening and she arrived wearing a little pink cardigan and denim hot-pants and those blue sandals and we just hit it off. We quickly found out that we both collected teddy bears and arranged to swap some with each other. We liked playing Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation, and doing our hair and playing card games like Crazy Ace. The time just flew when we were together, and we never ran out of things to chat about. Dad was happy that Id found a friend, and so was I.

It was only two weeks till the end of term, but then it was the summer holidays and we spent the whole summer playing together, either at my house or at Lisas. She had swings in her garden, but her dad was very strict so we spent more time up at mine, having water fights in the paddling pool, making little camps, walking to the Spar to get ice creams or sneaking up to throw water balloons at her older brother James. She often stayed overnight at mine, although I never stayed at hers because her dad didnt like noise. Id never been allowed to have a friend staying over before, but I loved it. We would stay awake for hours, whispering secrets to each other and telling each other about our lives.

I had quite a story to tell, I suppose, and it was very different to Lisas background. She had a brother and two sisters, and parents who were married and lived together just a nice, normal family, or so it seemed to me. There was nothing normal about my childhood, though it was a bit more settled now that I was at last living with my dad, his wife Philomena and her daughter Ceri-Jane. It had taken a long journey to get there.

My mum was an alcoholic and a heroin addict and she kept trying to go clean but couldnt manage, even when she was pregnant with me. I was born prematurely and addicted to methadone, which meant I was very small and couldnt breathe for myself, so I had to be kept in an incubator in hospital for several months before I was allowed home.

I had two half-sisters, Carol and Rose, but they were much older than me twenty years or so and had their own homes. Carol had kids of her own, and I saw her from time to time but I hardly saw Rose at all. I also had a couple of much older half-brothers but Id never met them and didnt know anything about them.