(children chatter)
I've got loads, I've got loads of childhood memories,
but none of them are really good.
Erm, I don't think you remember the good stuff.
Being in the house,
Mum out in the pub,
or Mum comatosed in bed
and setting fire to the bedroom
to keep my brother and sister warm cos they was cold.
I can remember Lorraine setting the bedroom on fire.
And I were only young then. I were probably only about five.
But still to this day, if you talk about it to me aunties and stuff,
and they'll still say, "We don't know which one of yous it were."
And I'm like, "It weren't me!" Because I can actually remember it, to this day.
She were messing with matches and the mattress caught fire.
Back then you didn't have the double-glazing and stuff
that you get now.
The house was horrible;
no carpets, no central heating, locked in a room with no door handle.
And, erm...
...standing at the window shouting for help.
You know, because the fire had got out of control.
But I think, I think... I don't know, I think it were actually me.
But when we'd shut the bedroom door,
the handle fell off the door on the inside so we couldn't get back out.
So, there were only the handle on the outside.
But I think it were me that actually broke that
because I think I started unscrewing it with a knife or summat.
Just being mad kids.
(Lorraine) My mum used to take the door handles off.
She'd check in the bedroom there was no knives or forks
because if you got a knife or fork you could put the handle in
to get out of the door.
And, erm, we never used to get out of the room
until Mum was up and she was ready
to sort of release us from our prison, if you like.
(girl 2) I can actually remember me mum when we lived at Edge End Gardens.
I can always remember her staying up late writing.
Well, now I know what it were,
but when we were kids, we never knew what she were doing.
But she used to stay up late and just write and write and write and write.
She'd have, like, A4 sheets of paper, just loads of them on the bed.
And then, cos I can remember Andrew once pulled 'em off her bed
and she had to re-sort them out and put them back in order.
(Lorraine) I can just remember banging and banging and banging on the window,
trying to get out.
(girl 2) There were a woman that lived about two doors down
and she were a bus driver.
Well, it were her husband who got a ladder up to the back window
and got us out of the window.
I can remember me mum... Oh, she were going stir crazy.
It were... It were mad. That were mad, that were.
(Lorraine) Mum was never a touchy feely person
and she didn't give us cuddles or tell us she loved us
and she didn't give us kisses.
We got clouts around the head and smacks all the time and shouted at,
that was it.
Erm, and regardless of what all my family seem to think,
the sexual abuse was from somebody they knew.
I don't know whether she didn't believe it
or she just didn't want to believe it,
but she still left me in a position where it got repeated again.
Can I forgive her?
If she was alive today, I'd have a lot to say to her.
One of the reasons I hated her was cos I couldn't tell her
exactly how I felt as a child and the way she brought me up.
Erm, so, no, I can't forgive her.
Andrea Dunbar is 18 years old.
When she was 15
she wrote a play set in Bradford, where she was brought up.
Through friends,
the play was sent to the Royal Court Theatre in London,
where it's now having a successful run in the theatre upstairs.
Max Stafford-Clark is directing the play, Andrea's first,
as part of the Young People's Theatre Festival.
Well, I'd just become Artistic Director of The Royal Court.
So I read the plays submitted to the Young Writers' Festival,
and one outstanding one was in fact
The Arbor, Andrea's first play, which was written in green ink,
on a school exercise book which had been... The pages had been ripped out.
I'm going to bed. I'll see you when I get in.
- Why won't you tell me who it is? - Because I don't want to.
- OK, it's your life. Do what you want. - Don't worry, I will.
But don't run to me when people start calling you.
(girl) I'm a big girl now. I can look after myself.
- (mother) Do what you want. - (girl) I will, don't worry.
(Max) So I met Andrea
and it was an extraordinary first interview with a writer,
who at that point was staying in a battered wives home in Keighley.
She'd never been out of Yorkshire before, never been in a theatre.
(Andrea) Nowadays, people want to face up with what's actually happening.
Cos it's actually what's said.
And you write what's said. You don't lie.
If you write about something that's happened, you're not gonna lie
and say, "It didn't happen," when it did all the time.
The Arbor by Andrea Dunbar.
As soon as you earn enough money you can get out.
Fuck off! You're the one that needs kicking out.
Get out of my sight before I kill you.
You hit me and I'll hit you back and you'll get it off David an' all.
He won't be able to hit me.
If you don't shut up you won't be here much longer.
- I'll go now, if you want. - Fuck off then.
No, you get out.
No, you won't, will you?
You know nobody'd have you cos you're no fucking good.
Oh, shut up.
(Andrea) She's more like me than not.
I wrote more or less about my feelings.
I called the play The Arbor
because the street I lived on
is called Brafferton Arbor.
It's always known as the Arbor
and a lot of these things actually happened on the street.
(girl 2) They used to have a pen thing in the middle.
That were full of glass.
There'd be people having bonfires on the field.
They did make you feel welcome though. They were friendly people, but...
It's like me Uncle Tony, he used to be one of the ones
that used to sit round the fire and have a drink
and they'd throw potatoes on it and stuff like that.
It were all mad.
Even I used to sit round fires with them when we were younger.
"Dear Max, I'm sending you the bit of writing I've done."
"It's not much, really."
"That's because I've had to take Lorraine out of the nursery."
"They moved her up to a class with other kids
and it upset her so much I had to take her out."
"Now I don't get much of a chance to write."
"But if I could, I'd like to come down to London so I can get most of it done."
"I could leave Lisa at my mother's
and I could always bring one of my younger sisters to watch Lorraine,
while I write. Let me know what you think."
"I would really like to get it done. Andrea."
The Arbor. Act 1, Scene 6.
- (siren) - Hurry up, it's the police.
Stop the car. I want to get out.
Don't look round at them. Just act normal.
I want to get out. Tell 'em, Billy, to stop.
Do you want them to catch you?
When we get round this corner, jump out.
I'm not, I'm pregnant.
No, she's not. And you'd better not be, either.
Tell him to slow down a bit.
I can't, they're catching us.
Slow down, please.
I'm gonna try to pull up. Get ready to jump.
(tyres screech / car crashes)
They pull up and the girl is left in the car, which rolls into a snicket.
The policeman comes up to the girl.
- Right, come on, get out. - Don't talk bloody silly.
How can I get out when the car door is jammed in the lamp-post?
Well, get out this side then. And hurry up, I haven't got all night.
Give me a fucking chance, will you, man?
- What's your name? - Why?
- Because I want to know. - I dunno.
You mean you're not gonna tell me?
Give me a minute, it'll come back to me.
- Are you trying to be funny? - No.
- So what's your name? - I think it's Andrea.
- What do you mean you think? - Alright, alright. It's Andrea Dunbar.
- Right, and where do you live? - Up there.
- Up where? - Up there on the Arbor.
- Right, well, get in that car. - What for?
Because I said so, that's why.
(man) It was notorious.
It was known as the toughest estate in, you know, in Bradford.
Buttershaw, and then the Arbor was the toughest street.
But not any more. Look at it now.
"Dear Max, here are some re-writes and a scene of me and Yousaf."
"Hope you like it."
"I think it's better talking to each other on the way
rather than in the house. Hope it doesn't matter."
"But I like it better. Will send you some more this week."
I wish I could have gone to school. I've never been.
Look at me now, I can't read, I can't write
and I can't get a job because of it.
I've got to work in textiles so I don't do any kind of writing.
People laugh at you when you say you can't read or write.
Ask 'em what they're laughing at.
They don't realise you come from a poor country.
They don't know what poor means over here.
In Pakistan, you can't say you're going on social security
or going to scratch on. They haven't got such places.
Will you carry these bags for me? They're heavy.
(girl) Act 2, Scene 2.
The girl's brother, aged 11 years, has just been killed in a car accident.
The father has already got over it
but the rest of the family are still upset.
The father's drunk. They're all sat watching TV.
I can't get over it, Mother. I'll kill that bastard that killed my brother.
Stop going on about it. He's dead, it won't bring him back.
Shut up, Dad. Don't argue with him, you know what'll happen.
David, you're upsetting your mother.
I'll thump that bastard in a minute. His son's dead and he ain't bothered.
What kind of a father is that? Can you tell me?
Take no notice. You know what he's like.
Will you all just shut your fucking mouths now? I've heard enough.
Enough!
Well, he's dead. Dead, do you hear that?
Can't you get it through your bastard head?
You know what'll happen if you talk like this.
- Don't ask for my help. - He's dead.
You'll be dead, you thoughtless fucking bastard.
It's your son that's dead. Your son is laid dead in that hospital
and you don't fucking care.
You're not a man, you're a thoughtless fucking animal.
- Shut up. - Do you wanna fight?
- I don't. - Well, shut up then.
- I cared for him, you know. - I said shut up.
Look, I won't tell you again. Have you seen what you're doing to her?
- Who? - Mother.
You two better stop it before you end up fighting.
- Keep out of it, you black bastard! - There's no need for that.
Just get out of here and don't come back again
or I'll smash them fucking black brains out of that fucking black head of yours!
- I didn't ask to be a Paki. - Well, just keep your mouth shut.
- Keep out of my arguments. - Stop it, David.
You know what he's like. He don't care about owt,
only his beer and his so-called fucking mates down the pub.
Oh, fuck off!
Don't you ever say that to her again.
Leave him alone, David.
He deserves it.
Come on.
I think it must have been hard for her
to have a mixed-race child on a...
on a whole-white and very racist estate.
Erm...
But you know, she, er...
She could have done a better job than what she did.
It was the consequences of her actions, not mine.
You know, she slept with an Asian man, not me.
I didn't ask to be conceived. I didn't ask to be born.
Quite frankly, I'd have rather not been born if I knew what I were coming into.
Take your fucking hands off me. Fuck off!
I can fucking walk on my own.
I got locked up that night through it.
I were gonna kill him.
He wasn't bothered. I had to get in the police car.
They put me in and I got back out. I still remember that.
Our Andrea moved out. That were the day our Steven got killed.
She moved out and she went to live
with Yousaf, Lorraine's dad,
and that's how she got caught with her then.
I didn't like him, me. When I found out, I were gonna kill him.
I'm not racist, but I just couldn't do with Pakistanis.
In them days, you just didn't agree with it. Know what I mean?
And I didn't think Andrea would ever do owt like that.
And she said, "Oh, he's alright. He isn't like the other things."
But he didn't seem that bad. Once you got to know him, he were alright.
And if you were black in Buttershaw and you were a Pakistani,
you'd have got driven out of your home.
Now it doesn't matter now, does it?
Act 2, Scene 6.
The lads are sat on a wall talking about the girl.
Fucking Paki lover.
Look at her. You dirty girl! Dirty!
Oh, go on, carry on. I don't give a fuck what you think about me.
Hey, I don't give a fuck what you think about me.
- Carry on. Look who's here. - What's wrong?
These wanna know why I'm going out with a Paki.
What's it got to do with you what she does?
- Why do you go out with white lasses? - Better than a Paki.
It's up to her what she does.
Don't you tell her otherwise or I'll beat your fucking brains in.
What's it got to do with any of yous anyway?
Tell her, or I'll throw you over the wall.
We wanted to go out with you.
What, all fucking seven of you? What do you think she is, a fucking robot?
Well, you asked.
Don't bother. They're the fuck-it-and-leave-it type.
- We're not. - You are.
- Fuck off before I belt you. - She's a Paki lover!
You'll get your fucking neck broken next time.
You're not big enough.
Yeah, you fucking bastard.
You make me sick, all of you.
- You make me fucking sick. - Take no notice of them.
The more you argue, the more they'll have a go.
Come inside.
I bet everybody was shocked, her having an Asian baby.
Not being funny, I don't think they were
into Asians in them days as well.
Everywhere you're gonna go...
They call us white trash and...
I don't personally, but other whites, some whites, the bad whites, give them,
call them, "Black bastards, get back to your own country."
And I don't think it's right, me.
Act 2, Scene 5. The girl getting pregnant.
The next day, the girl went to the doctor's.
She didn't ask the doctor for an abortion.
She was 14 weeks pregnant.
The girl walked into the house. Yousaf was waiting for her.
- Is he gonna let you have an abortion? - He said I can't.
Bastard, he is. The white fuck.
The doctor won't give you an abortion
unless you've got a reason not to want it.
Can't you tell them the father's fucked off?
That's not a good enough reason.
What's that in your hand?
Oh, it's a letter from the hospital for some tablets.
- Tablets? What are they for? - Headaches.
- I know how to make you get rid of it. - How?
By pulling you off a chair when you're not expecting it.
- What makes you think that'll work? - I know it will.
My friend did it to June and she lost her baby.
- That doesn't mean it'll happen to me. - If it don't, I'll find another way.
Why can't I just have it?
- It's better you didn't. - Why not?
Because you won't be able to go to work.
Yeah, I know. So?
- Where will you get the money from? - You, where do you think?
You're not getting any money off me. I need mine.
Well, what if I got a childminder and I went back to work myself?
Alright. I'll let you have it on one condition:
That when the baby's three months old,
you'll get a childminder and go back to work.
Alright then, you're on.
(Pamela) Well, she moved in with him, did our Andrea. And then,
it got to the stage he were tying her up.
You know, to a chair, so she couldn't get out.
Then, this particular day, somebody knocked at the door,
he answered the door and that's how she got away. And that's when she left him.
They know me as Lorraine. The little white girl.
As far as they're concerned, the only Pakistani I've got in me is,
my mum slept with a Pakistani but I'm not Pakistani.
Erm, there's absolutely no logic in that, but that's the way they see it.
You know, you don't have to be... English to be part of a family.
You know, I can be Muslim and still be theirs.
(Andrea) We've lived here for about ten years.
Who's that? Pamela?
(Andrea) Yeah, nine or ten anyway.
My granddad.
(mother) We don't all live here now.
There were ten of us all together, nine now.
(interviewer) And have any other of the children ever written anything?
No.
(interviewer) What do you feel about Andrea writing a play?
I'm proud of her.
(interviewer) Mr Dunbar, where do you think she gets the writing from?
- Why do you think... - Not from me certainly.
I don't know, it's just what she learnt in school, I should imagine.
("Gang Bang" by Black Lace)
Well, I suppose the film began when we'd had about three previews.
More or less for the press.
So, this bloke Oscar Lewinstein came along to see it.
He'd rung and asked me
if I'd be interested in making it into a screenplay.
I mean, I think you're thankful for the play
and then somebody comes and asks you to do a screenplay.
All sorts goes through your head.
(Michelle) My husband is not a bastard. It's your daughter and her mates.
(Sue) Are you satisfied now?
(Rita) Will you stop blaming me? It's as much your fault.
(man) It's all of you.
It's your husband.
It's your daughter. If it's on a plate he's gonna take it.
He wouldn't be a man if he did owt else.
Don't blame us till you find out what's been going on.
(man) Go on, Kevin, just you tell 'em.
(laughs) Up the IRA!
Don't you stick your oar in or I'll fucking flatten you, bastard.
You tell him, man, you tell him.
It's all your fault. If you had sex with him, he wouldn't have to go elsewhere.
Keep your mouth shut.
Well, is that what you've been saying? You dirty bastard.
See what you've caused? Now you've done it.
- Oh, get fucked, will ya? - I'll fuck you in a minute.
Send them on Manningham Lane. It's the best place for 'em.
It's best place for you.
(interviewer) What gave you the idea for the film?
Was it personal experiences
or just viewing life on the estate or what?
Parts of it was and... parts wasn't.
But you sort of see...
You see things happening on an estate, wherever you live.
I mean, I don't find it shocking to write about it.
I have had a few reactions
but I don't think it's nothing to worry about.
You know, I've only had, you know like about three people complain.
It's not bad off a whole estate, is it?
At one time she was living at Keighley.
But she didn't live there for long. As she said, "I'll be back."
You know, to Buttershaw.
That's when she met Lisa's dad, that's how she got caught with Lisa.
Because they've all different fathers, haven't they?
Oh, me mum must have picked some right saddos, I swear down.
Men twice her age or near enough.
Jim and my dad were round about the same age. They're 50-summat.
Me and Andrea went out for about, how long? Six years.
And had a child called Andrew.
Erm, took it from there, really.
She wanted to stay down and live with me
and we tried that and she says no,
she wanted her own house because she had Lisa and Lorraine.
He's a strange sort of character is Jim.
Because I never thought of him as a bad person when we were younger, at all.
I mean if he used to tell us off,
I mean, obviously we didn't like him then.
Wiggy. We all called him Wiggy.
He weren't a bad lad. I think he helped Andrea out more than owt else.
I don't know if you know Jim. Well, he was, erm, he were a twat with kids.
What he used to do with them is dump 'em off, stick 'em in his car,
put their clothes in a bin liner and drop 'em off at me sister's
and then just drive off. Not say, "I've dropped the kids off."
That were only Lorraine and Lisa. It weren't Andrew.
It were just them two all the time.
Where our house were, you could see the bus stop.
Sometimes you'd see 'em stood there with bin liners
cos Jim had kicked 'em out.
They were having to go back up to their auntie's at Buttershaw.
(Lorraine) Ann and Steve, when we lived with Jim,
they used to live across the road.
Ann must've thought we was crazy, cos all she could see
were these three kids waving out of the window.
We were always in the house, we didn't play out.
I don't know how, but we started going over there and I loved it.
I didn't get called golliwog, had lovely food, got cooked for,
had loads of area to play, loads of toys.
We were always over there every day, straight from school on a weekend,
probably sleep there all the time.
Well, in my eyes, I classed them as me family anyway.
So, they're always there, no matter what.
I see them as just like my mum and dad.
They've always been there for me
and I've always gone on holiday
with Ann and Steve, over the years.
Erm, yeah, they've played a very big part in my life.
And they always used to say to me,
"You're gonna grow up to be such a pretty young lady."
They says, "You're so pretty."
And I used to think, "They don't know what they're talking about."
They was right, I grew up to be very pretty.
And, erm, they've been there for me ever since.
I remember Mum fighting with Jim all the time.
Getting stiletto shoes and proper clawing him with 'em.
Erm, I vaguely remember her falling through a glass window
and having all them stitches in her face.
Yeah, that happened down at Great Horton Road.
She were absolutely stone-eyed.
(Lorraine) I was looking after Lisa and Andrew.
Her and Jim was out at the pub, as usual.
Erm...
And I heard it from upstairs. Came running down.
I can't remember how many stitches she had, but she had loads.
She tripped over and fell straight into the bottom pane of glass.
Cut her face and everything.
I phoned the ambulance and we got it all in, sorted it out.
(Lorraine) Back then as a child, I knew she drank a lot.
If she could spend every single day in the pub,
she would spend every single day in the pub.
Today, as an adult, I'd say she was an alcoholic.
She wasn't functioning, she was just an alcoholic. You know, she was very sick.
That's where I spent my small years, in the pub.
The Beacon, Cap and Bells.
With my mum. If anybody left a drink, I'd drink 'em.
You know, just all the little lager and blacks that were left over.
Boring.
You know, if I was lucky
I'd get 20p and I'd go to the shop and buy a packet of custard creams.
Best Buy custard creams used to be 19 pence. I'll never forget it.
She used to go to the pub in the afternoon as well
and this little old man Willie used to come pick us up to school
and then go back to Jim's.
So, I wouldn't say that she liked to drink as much
as what people tried to make out.
You see stuff in the papers, it were drink that killed her,
but it wasn't the drink that killed her.
It were just one of them things that happens.
I'm not like Willie.
Rita, Sue and Bob Two... Three.
She were like my dad, dinnertime, nights.
Come home dinnertime, sleep, back out at night.
Oh, yeah, but she did that for years.
Every day.
We used to say, "I don't know how you do it. A young lass like you."
Especially with her having kids an' all.
Yeah, she liked her drinks.
She ended up with a lot of friends when she got a bit of money out of the film.
She didn't get that much really,
but she had a lot of cling-ons. Cos them days, no one had nowt.
(Andrea) I remember it when we first moved on.
Grass ain't like it were now.
It used to be... Well, the council didn't cut it as much.
So it used to be right tall and all kids could hide in it.
I mean, I can even remember myself when my mum used to shout us.
And we dug down in the grass.
(Lorraine) It was a red-hot sunny day.
Erm, and the grass was all way overgrown and stuff.
We'd been playing hide and seek and my Auntie Pamela shouted,
"Lorraine, it's your dad. Lorraine, it's your dad."
And, erm... I was happy.
And he wanted to take me for the weekend.
I think we were all shocked when he turned up.
He asked Andrea if he could take her,
you know, for the day, and she said no.
She said, "You're not taking her, just in case you ran off with her."
(Bhangra music)
(Lorraine) He bought me loads of clothes and when we got to Jim's,
Mum just ripped them all up, cut them up.
She said, "I'm not having my daughter dressed as no Paki."
And, er, ripped the lot up
because it was, like, velvet dresses with frills on and stuff.
My dad promised he'd come every weekend after that,
and every weekend I used to look out of the window
and every weekend he never come.
(Lorraine) "Dear Max, I'm sorry about the other agreements
but to be honest I really forgot about them."
"I have to move them out of the way of the kids."
"Lisa seems to have a fascination for them and hides them."
"No, I'm not still with Jim."
"I haven't got much time for him any more."
"Anyway, I've got so used to doing what I want to do
that I'd rather not have someone around to try and tell me I should."
"He was always saying, 'Do this, do that."'
"I never did like that, but that's besides the point. Love, Andrea."
Keith, they called him. Keith.
He were nice to the kids. He had time for the kids
and she'd known him for quite a long time,
but sort of picked up with him when she fell out with Jim.
I don't know what the falling-out were about, you know.
He was a stable influence.
Yeah, and she seemed better in herself. Her confidence levels were better.
Mum had come home drunk. She was with Keith then.
We wasn't living with Jim.
And she come in and she opened the door, just Mum being Mum.
And, erm, she thought I was asleep.
I heard my mum every single time she come home. I was aware.
I just... I pretended I was still asleep
cos I might have got in trouble if I was awake.
And, erm, they was talking about me, Lisa and Andrew,
and just from nowhere, I just, erm...
Well, she just said that she'd regretted having me.
That...
And she'd regretted sleeping with an Asian man.
She couldn't love me to the same level that she loved Lisa and Andrew.
Might have been innocent on Mum's part,
but it was portrayed as very racist on my part,
considering I was the only one that had colour.
You know, so, erm... You can't say you love two kids more than another.
She didn't write a play for about seven months.
She didn't want to know anything. She just totally left it.
She was depressed and things were catching on.
Everybody getting on to her.
Well, she couldn't sleep and she did, she used to phone me up and say,
"Look, I can't sleep." And I'd say, "Look, do you want me to come up?"
And I used... She says, "Yeah." So I used to go up and stay the night,
sleep with her and she used to calm down. Cuddle up, calm down.
And that were it and then she slept.
That week before she died she'd come here and say,
"Have you got any tablets?" And I'd say, "What for?"
She said, "Headache."
She said, "I've got this headache and I can't get shut of it."
And that were it with her. I thought...
Cos we were really shocked that day she died.
Yeah, that day, when she died, yeah.
She asked me to go to the pub with her and I said no.
And, you know, I wish I had've done.
Erm, I think she collapsed in the Beacon pub.
I don't think she actually died in the Beacon pub.
I think, well, she might've done.
But they pronounced her dead at the hospital,
erm, some hours later, or it was some hours later before we found out.
But she died in her home, didn't she, the Beacon pub?
She practically lived there anyway.
And it were some sort of embolism.
Totally unrelated to, erm, to any drink or owt like that.
I went in to see her, with the kids.
And we were talking and I saw a little,
oh, it gives me tears now, eye drop running down from her eye,
and I said, "Andrew, your mum's crying."
He says, "No." I said, "There, tears."
And he says, "Oh, yeah, yeah."
I said, "You know, your mum knows you now, she sees you, she can hear you."
And that were it, really.
(Lorraine) She'd died and she hadn't bought us one Christmas present.
I was so angry.
Not one single Christmas present. It was only five days before Christmas.
She had the audacity to drop dead, so I can't even tell her how I feel.
(Lisa) To this day I won't have anybody say a bad word against me mum.
No way. Lorraine does, but I think part of it is because she does miss her,
but she's got a mad way of showing it.
(Lorraine) I don't recall crying at my mum's funeral.
Not at all.
Erm, I can just remember thinking, "It's over."
You know, that's it, things can only get better now.
(interviewer) Have you read the play or are you going to see it?
No, I haven't read it. No.
(interviewer) But are you all going down to London to see it?
Well, the wife is and my other daughter Pamela,
but I'm at home with the children.
(interviewer) Mrs Dunbar, have you read it or will it be a surprise?
(mother) I've read it.
(interviewer) So it won't be so much of a surprise when you see it?
No, but it'll, you know, be summat different, won't it?
(interviewer) Do you hope Andrea will write more plays?
Yes, I hope she'll make a success of herself.
I think she wrote with great wit and great perception
about the things happening round her.
It's a tragedy that she never wrote the plays of her maturity, comparatively.
I think after Christmas, that's when they sat us down
and asked us who we wanted to be with and where we wanted to stay.
Obviously I'd always been close to me grandma anyway,
so I decided that I wanted to be with me grandma.
Andrew wanted to be with his dad
and Lorraine went to live with my Auntie Janine.
Cos they used to get, like, moved.
Erm, like, we were moved about a bit, really, as kids.
Erm...
But that's probably why I don't remember much of me childhood, really.
Everything was weird, and then I got separated from Lisa and Andrew
and that was odd.
Being the person that had looked after them for so many years, it was hard.
My Auntie Janine, she was what, 18?
I was 11 years old so there was only seven years' difference.
I used to go down to the Woodside Estate just next door to Buttershaw.
Had some friends there. There's a guy that I fancied.
I wanted to be big and hard and show him that I could be grown up and stuff.
Erm...
And I started smoking bong buckets.
I couldn't bear it there no longer.
I tried self-harming, I've still got the scar for it.
I took two overdoses and said, "No, I'm not going back."
And Steve and Ann agreed to foster me.
Life got great.
I can't remember if she were 12 or 13.
One day Steven's mum and dad were babysitting.
When we come home she'd done a runner.
Blown, had Lorraine, gone, back up to Buttershaw.
And she said,
"My auntie's gonna do my bedroom
and do this and that and give me this and that."
So off she went and I went, "Well, fair enough." So off she went back up.
And then, again, she took another overdose or something
and social services brought her back down here again.
So, then they said, "Well, she obviously doesn't want to go back there."
"She has a choice of either going in a home or, well,
do you want to look after her?"
So, she said, "Yeah, I want to stop here." So we said, "Yeah."
By the time I went to live with Ann and Steve,
I was smoking cannabis every weekend. I used to get spending money and stuff.
I used to be in the park drinking with all the lads.
I had short back and sides.
I wasn't into feminine things because that's not,
that's not what I knew. But I soon learnt.
Act 2, Scene 3. The girl is sat on the bus talking to a friend.
Going out with Paul tonight.
- Who? - Paul. He's my latest.
- Where did you meet him? - Our Tony's party. It's his best mate.
- What's he like? - What, in looks or in bed?
- Either, if you're gonna tell me. - He's great in bed.
Certainly knows what to do with a lass. So funny, the first night, though.
- Do you want to know? - I'm listening.
Well, we were just talking and we were well drunk.
He started on about the girls he'd screwed and who he'd like to screw.
He said, "Are you coming to the toilet with me?"
I thought he were joking so I just laughed,
but he weren't, so I went.
- Where, in the toilet? - Yeah. He had a piss.
- I bet you're having me on. - No, seriously.
- I held it while he had a piss. - Give over.
Honest. But then we had it off.
- Weren't it a bit cramped? - Not really, we did it standing up.
The only problem was it kept slipping out.
- What did? - His cock. What do you think?
- Are you sure you're not having me on? - Seriously, swear on my baby's life.
How is your young 'un? Ain't seen her for a while.
She's alright. She's OK.
- How old is she now? - She's five months, nearly six.
She's just come out of hospital.
- Why? What's wrong with her? - She had impetigo, quite bad as well.
Fares, please.
- Ten, please. - You full fare.
- Me, no. - You how old?
- Nearly 15. - 15 full fare.
I'm bleedin' nearly 15. I'm not yet.
You know, by the time I was 15, I'd started to develop as a young woman
and I was getting male attention, you know. Erm...
But I was naughty with it. From getting raped at 14...
...I just turned into a bitch, you know, erm...
Back then I didn't know that I'd made a decision to just use and abuse men.
You know, the way I felt used and abused by them.
And then it just... It just went downhill very fast.
I started drinking at every opportunity, smoking weed every single day.
By the time I was 15, I used to go up to the Buttershaw Estate
and I used to walk up from Great Horton because it's, like, 20 minutes' walk.
And, erm, I got introduced to crack cocaine.
When I first took it I said, "There's nothing to that."
So I kept doing it.
They said, "The more you have it, the more effects you'll get."
They wasn't kidding.
What I soon found out is taking crack, you need something to come down.
Erm, so then I started taking heroin.
Basically it went from, erm, dope, to acid
and then all the lads on the estate were having mad turns.
They used to hang round in a big gang where they used to go to the woods
and pick magic mushrooms and all that.
So that were, like, all the acid scene.
And then it went to ecstasy and then from ecstasy, it went to heroin.
(Lorraine) I was just an outcast.
"She ain't got no mum and she's a Paki and..."
Yeah, even through to upper school I got bullied. Ann and Steve...
Steve used to have to pick me up from school.
They used to have to let me out five minutes early.
I was working at a place with a guy called Dave and Tracy.
They were supervisors. I got a supervising job there
and, erm, they was heroin and crack cocaine users.
And from 17, I never put it down.
I couldn't get up at six o'clock in the morning and keep a job down.
My behaviour was very erratic.
I wasn't a day person any more, I was a night person.
I said I was 18, I went to work in a house.
Erm, in Huddersfield.
There was a guy in the house with me all day.
I had to man the phones, give out my description,
take them upstairs, do the business, let them go,
give the man his money and I'd keep my money. I used to make hundreds.
It's the easiest way for a woman to make money, innit?
Physically, it's not, it's not, erm, demanding. Mentally...
I've seen girls hang themselves over it.
You know, erm...
But I suppose that's just how it is, innit?
Erm, I don't really want to talk about it.
She rung me one day and I 1471 'd it
and it were summat like Angels, erm... I can't remember.
And I rung it and it were... it were a massage parlour.
That were one reason why I knew she were there.
What else would she be there for?
Erm, Lisa had once said something about somebody had come to her house
with some coats that Lorraine had nicked.
Er, when did I know?
When some prostitutes came on to the Arbor
looking for her cos she'd pinched some Tommy Hilfiger coats.
They pulled me up at the bottom of the street
and asked me if I knew who she were.
I thought this looks like trouble so I said no.
And that's when she told us everything
because she just told us she were working at Manchester Airport.
And then she came back with all these nice clothes and I thought,
"Oh, yeah, she must be getting a decent wage."
I were even wearing the clothes me sen.
Used to say to her, "Why do you sell your body to people?"
She went, "For me drugs, how else do you expect me to get 'em?"
(Lorraine) OK, my first pregnancy.
I was living in...
...a hostel.
I had various different partners.
I moved from the hostel and I managed to go into a young persons' project.
For ages I wanted a child and then I'd completely gone off the idea,
then I knew I was pregnant.
I told everybody I was pregnant.
I told Ann and Steve I was pregnant, I told the family I was pregnant.
No, I was a good parent. I was... I was a good parent.
Social services did their little assessment and everything was fine.
He was well catered for, but this time round, I was on a methadone programme.
I didn't want a child. You know, I could barely cope with the one I had.
He was, like, eight month or something.
So I said, "The only thing I can do is move back to Buttershaw Estate,
be nearer the family where they can help me."
I was too far gone.
Even with the kids, the first two,
she didn't have food in the cupboards. She didn't have baby milk.
Erm...
It's probably one of the hardest things any mother could ever admit.
Erm...
I couldn't look after 'em.
I mean, the two that got took off of her, she had chance to get them back.
But the drugs were more important. They said if she got off the drugs
and got rid of the bloke that she were with,
she'd stand a chance of getting them back, but she didn't.
You know, there were so many drug addicts on the estate.
They knew what you were doing, where you were going,
who you were ringing.
If I bought tinfoil, my Auntie Pamela would know about it within five minutes.
I used to have to get other people to go in the shop for me and stuff.
Erm...
The only person that stayed normal with me at that point was my grandma.
I don't think any of the family realised how much I loved my grandma.
Regardless of what I were doing or how bad it got
or how down and out I got,
erm, there was only my grandma I cared about. Because she was lovely.
And she'd give you what she could and help as much as she could.
She had time to talk to you. You know, and...
In her own little way, she showed her affection in that way.
None of the rest of the family did.
It was all swearing and cursing and shouting. My grandma wasn't like that.
Late '90s it were. It were just all them high-rise flats.
I don't know, it were mad. There were just lads just running in,
booting doors in, ripping boilers out. You know, in empty flats and that.
It got to that stage so there were no sense of community,
whereas from years before you could see the community. Do you know...
(Max) In 2000, 20 years on from The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too,
I went back to Buttershaw, to interview people for a new play
that showed what had changed there since the early '80s.
The play was called A State Affair, a verbatim play,
where the actors spoke the words of the interviewees they had met.
The final words of the play were those of Andrea's own daughter, Lorraine.
I don't know why I was involved with A State Affair to be honest.
Erm...
To me A State Affair was a progression of Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
It highlighted how the Arbor
and the Buttershaw Estate had changed
and how the people living on the estate had changed.
You know, erm,
from drug addiction to a serious lack of community and communication.
How it all broke down.
That's really all it is to me.
There's two moments when we did A State Affair
that'll stick in my mind forever.
One was when we did it at the Soho Theatre
and Lorraine was in the audience
and there was this big speech at the end,
where she talks about her mum, talks about Andrea,
and I just looked at Lorraine, just tears streaming down Lorraine's face.
I was on stage thinking, "Keep it together, don't start crying."
My eyes were welling up as well.
I was thinking, "I've got to keep this together here."
And then the second time was when Lisa Dunbar,
Andrea's second child,
who was in the audience,
screaming and crying, going, "No, I can't, no."
And leaving the theatre and people in the audience going, "Shh."
This audience telling her to shush. They thought it was someone being noisy.
If only they knew the story.
"If my mum wrote the play now, Rita and Sue would be smackheads,
on crack as well and working the red-light district,
sleeping with everybody and anybody for money."
"Bob would probably be injecting heroin, taking loads of tablets as well."
"As a piece of writing Rita, Sue and Bob Too is OK."
"As a piece of autobiography, it's disgusting."
"She made herself look a right tart."
"OK, she's got three different kids to three different men,
that's bad enough, but to tell everyone..."
"It was coming up to her memoriam. She'd been dead eight years."
"Shaq was trying to persuade me to go to the grave with flowers. I couldn't."
"One night when she thought I was asleep I heard her say
she wished, she had thought... she..." Sorry.
"I heard her say she wished she'd had an abortion with me."
"How could she say that?"
"Every day I feel hurt, pain, anger, hate."
"That's why I went on heroin, to block out those feelings."
I didn't agree with anything she said.
She were more or less blaming my mum for her being on drugs.
I wouldn't ever use me mum dying as an excuse
for anything that I've ever done in my life, really.
Cos we've all got to learn by our mistakes.
To me she were bang out of order what she were saying.
I wouldn't have even spoke about my mother like that. Simple as.
I'm ashamed for her saying that
because at the end of the day, me mum is who she is.
Erm, it kicked off a riot.
Well, not a riot, but I mean
a lot of the family were disgusted by the words what Lorraine had said.
I know where Lorraine came from when she were saying that
because Lorraine ended up having drugs.
She had a couple of kids,
kids were taken off her and that's what's happened, really.
End of 2001, I went homeless and then met Johnny...
Otherwise known as Kitten. I was 21.
He was lovely, absolutely lovely.
Had money, smoked drugs, got on, had a good sex life.
Erm, he was attractive,
funny, caring, gentle, loving,
but within a month that had all gone.
He was just the most vile, most violent creature I ever come across.
I got forced onto the street. I didn't do it for long.
Erm, not a nice experience.
Oh, the things that man did to me.
He was committing robberies, left, right and centre,
but he was feeding my addiction.
But he was crack psychosed to the eyeballs.
Erm, I didn't dare breathe in front of him.
Erm, he got me pregnant, swore down blind it weren't his baby.
Erm, the baby went into my fallopian tubes.
Then he kept beating me up,
so it must have just come out through the beatings.
And, erm, then he got a screwdriver
and abused me with a screwdriver, internally as well as physically,
and then raped me and when I sat up the baby came out.
He... He'd imprisoned me for, like, 12 days.
No drugs, no food, no toilet.
The only thing I had was water.
After 12 days I managed to get out.
I went to the doctor's cos all this had happened with the pregnancy.
He found me at the doctor's. He came back, out of the blue.
He dragged me into hospital. He was saying, "She's been in a fight."
He went up the stairs before me. And I just couldn't...
I says, "He's beating me up."
I ran down the stairs and locked myself in the toilet.
He kicked the door off in front of these two guys.
Got my head and started smashing it on this toilet seat.
The guys rang the police.
As soon as he heard the sirens, he left.
I ended up passed out on the floor.
They caught him about five month later
in a completely different town.
This man locked her in with no toilet or nowt.
Erm, and I think she'd been beat up
and I think it were a caretaker or something that got her out.
That lad got quite a few year for that
cos he'd already done summat similar to it.
He ended up going to prison for Section 18 and false imprisonment.
(Lorraine) Act 2, Scene 8.
She was arguing with Yousaf for two days.
He beat her during them two days.
She couldn't stand it no more.
The girl was sat with a neighbour talking to her.
I think if it were me, I'd stab the bastard.
I thought about it but I daren't.
You can't just let him carry on like that.
- But I can't hit him back. - Why not? I would.
Easier said than done. Before you know it,
he's got me on the floor and he's knocking ten tons of shit out of me.
I suppose it's hard cos he's bigger than you.
I don't think that makes a difference.
I hit him back once but I landed off the worst for it.
- You frightened of losing the baby? - Oh, yeah.
Every time he comes near me, I think, "Oh, what have I done now?"
To look at him you'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
A lot of people say that to me.
He's so quiet and speaks dead nice to you, using his manners.
You don't see many round here using 'em.
He's a bastard, really.
He likes for people to think that he's nice, and a lot do,
but I'd love those people to come round to ours when he starts.
- Has he done it to you before? - It's his favourite thing.
He's always done it.
What gets me is he doesn't stop until I'm out cold on the floor.
He's a bastard.
I think I'm gonna have to leave him.
- When? - As soon as possible.
- He's terrible. He's going nuts. - What do you mean?
He's hitting me that much, I can't stand it any more.
I feel I've got to get out.
- I've got to get away from him. - What, for good or just for a while?
For good for me, and this baby.
I've got to get away for good.
I mean, if he's hitting me really bad now, what's he going to do to the baby?
- He wouldn't harm a baby. - Oh, but he would.
I won't give him the chance to lay his hands on that.
If he can do it to me while I'm pregnant he can do it to the baby once it's born.
2002, I went to jail.
I was at the scene of a guy robbing a woman.
The police knew I hadn't actually committed the robbery
and all they wanted was his name but I was too scared to give his name
so I ended up pleading guilty to the robbery
and getting two years, seven months.
In fact I can honestly say, the best time of my life were that sentence,
where it was easy.
It's just nice, no worries, no freedom, no abuse.
Erm, being cared for.
Because freedom had give me nothing but headache and trouble.
I was still using heroin throughout that sentence. I was getting it sent in.
It's not hard to get drugs in prison.
Act 2, Scene 9.
This is a scene of the girl and Maureen in the refuge.
I'll be glad when I've had this baby.
(Maureen) What you gonna call it?
Julie, if it's a girl, or Lorraine.
And Jason or Christopher if it's a lad.
I'm glad we got away from that dump.
It may be a dump, but I quite miss it.
I miss my mum
and all the kids
and funnily enough, I quite miss me dad and all me mates.
And it's a bit quiet here, innit?
Within 30 days of getting out of prison, I was pregnant with Harris.
Cos I let her stay here when she got out of prison.
She'd just found out she were pregnant with Harris after she'd been here.
And she didn't take a suitcase with her
and she'd left some clean clothes on the side.
So I went to put 'em in a suitcase. I weren't looking.
I seen a chemist bag with one of my kitchen spoons hanging out of it.
So I thought, "What's this?"
A dirty great big needle hanging out of that bag
and there was still heroin on the spoon.
So obviously I went mad. I wrapped it up in a tea towel, put it in the bag
and I went all the way to Bradford because I were gonna kill her.
Cos my little one could have picked that up, do you know what I mean?
And I were really mad with her.
But then I found out she'd cut her tag off as well.
I didn't know that she'd had a tag.
She'd cut it off before she come to my house.
The birth, Ann was there.
She was the first to hold him.
And I actually cried when I had Harris.
He was the first baby that I really, really wanted.
I stayed mostly clean.
I used maybe once every two week through Harris's pregnancy.
He was born an addict. Erm...
He was my everything.
I bet Rafee's about 50 now.
I made him hold Harris.
And he was so pleased with himself cos he'd never held a baby before.
And he used to make sure Harris had everything, make sure I had everything.
Cigarettes, food in the cupboard, blah-di blah-di blah...
In the back of my head he was a client, but he wasn't,
if you know what I mean. It was different, you know.
He was a sugar daddy, for want of a better term.
He provided me with my drugs whenever I rang up, you know.
He was an importer of crack cocaine and heroin.
Erm, it was like I hit gold when I got him.
He ended up getting me married off.
Because he was a married man with kids, he introduced me to a guy.
I fell in love with him and ended up marrying him.
Half arranged, half love.
Well, I liked Saif instantly, he was handsome.
You know, I am vain and the first thing I do look at
is if somebody's handsome or not.
I had to spend nine week away from Harris when I was in prison.
It was hell.
I missed his first birthday on a recall.
You know, I only ever got one birthday with him.
And we think children don't know what's going on.
I remember being in prison and my husband bringing Harris up
and he was so angry.
Because not only had Mum gone, he was now moved into a different house.
You know, fair enough he went to my foster parents, to Ann and Steve,
he went to his nan and granddad, but Mum wasn't there.
He wasn't waking up next to Mummy.
Some children, you could give 'em to you
and they'd have screamed and carted on, wouldn't they, you know what I mean?
At one year old... He weren't even one.
It were April so he weren't one till June, so he were 11, ten month old.
Ten month old, that's a fact, yeah, ten.
He were as good as gold. But what Lorraine did say,
"You've got to put six bottles in his cot at night
cos if you don't, he'll wonder what's going on."
And he'd drink 'em and sling 'em out,
drink 'em, sling 'em out, till the morning.
And then, where the cot were there, cot's there and our bed's there.
So we used to put... Cos he used to stand up like that, looking at you.
As soon as you had eye contact with him, that were it,
you had to either get up or get up with him, be it whatever.
So we, we used to put, like, a dressing gown round it.
And his head used to come up and he'd be going...
He'd be looking for you.
And you'd laugh, cos I've got a mirror and you could see him
and you'd laugh and then you'd think, "Right, just get him."
So we'd put him in the middle of us, bless him.
But he were not a minute's problem.
He smiled all the time.
He were absolutely gorgeous.
I think the job of a social worker is so important.
Because we attended meetings, where sort of we'd say summat
and then it'd be a revelation to somebody else.
One of them didn't know she'd had two children taken off her.
You know what I mean?
How could you make an informed decision with so little knowledge?
They'd ask you on one hand and disregard everything you'd said.
They promised us a degree of confidentiality
but then went and told Lorraine, which potentially caused a lot of conflict.
It got back to her. She said, "Why have you been saying that about me?"
We suggested that it were more of a weaning-off period back over to her.
Regular weight checks, things like that.
He hadn't been eating.
She wrote a letter, "Don't you accuse me of not feeding my son."
We didn't think she should have him.
Ann and Steve. I put them through hell.
I knew they were looking after him.
You know, and I was so grateful for them to do it,
but I was so jealous and envious that he wasn't with me.
I wanted him with me, where he belonged, with me.
I was just being downright bloody selfish.
I just can't for the life of me see how they could come to a conclusion,
that somebody heavily on drugs, erm, with her background,
you know, could think she were capable of,
you know, maintaining a normal, safe environment for Harris.
You know, it just doesn't... Doesn't sit right with me, anyway.
The only good thing to come out of that, it were over a gradual thing.
She got him back over a few weeks.
I stayed on a methadone script.
I got off of it but I couldn't get more than five days of abstinence.
I think I was having a nervous breakdown.
I split up with my husband.
You know, I ended up in a women's hostel.
My addiction got worse.
(Lorraine) Two... Two... Two years and one month.
He was talking, he was walking, he'd feed himself, he was in a nursery.
He was a clever little boy.
I used to pick him up from the nursery and he knew,
he'd run to me and go in my pockets
cos he knew I had sweets in my pockets for him.
I said, "Why didn't you leave him with me that night?"
If you knew you were looking for drugs
and you were going out, why didn't you?
Because I'd lent her $20 that day and I always think to myself,
if I hadn't had lent her the $20...
But it's like the policeman said,
"If it hadn't have been that day, it would have been another day."
(Lorraine) I'd got money off Ann but then I couldn't score.
Erm, and I was really, really withdrawing.
He was with me that morning but, erm,
I had stacks and stacks of methadone in that cabinet.
Cos I used to use and try not to take the methadone.
I used to take the methadone, erm, when I really needed to.
But there was a certain drug dealer that I used to sit down and smoke crack with
and, er, he just used to give me it.
But I couldn't get hold of him that day,
cos he, he hadn't, erm... he hadn't got nothing on him.
He went to bed, Harris went to sleep, obviously.
I think in the morning, when she woke up, I don't know,
but you can presume, she wanted to go to sleep,
he'd obviously wanted to get up.
Somebody'd heard her downstairs shouting at Harris,
"Harris, get the eff to sleep."
They'd heard him running about because the lady I went to the hospital with,
she said he'd got some nail varnish and he'd been messing with it.
Erm, I went to sleep with him on the bed. Yeah.
Erm, I had my hand and arm underneath his head and we went to sleep.
I woke up and he never did.
I remember sitting on a caravan step just crying,
just like, erm, what can you do? You couldn't... In fact it hurts me now.
Well, there's nothing you can do about it, you know what I mean?
Just awful.
A lot of people have got a lot... (sobs)
It never... It can never be put right because, erm...
...situations are as they are and we'll have learnt lessons from this
but they won't learn lessons at all cos...
Well, when she got him back, obviously whatever circumstances,
whatever lifestyle she chose to live...
We've got to live with seeing the cemetery every day, virtually,
you know what I mean? How can it not occur to you?
Everybody let Harris down.
We didn't, with hindsight, fight hard enough.
We made the right noises, but they were pissing in the wind.
Lorraine came to see Kathy after a few days,
but she looked like she weren't bothered.
Kathy said, "Why ain't she crying?"
Cos if it had been her with her kids
and, like, I said, if it were Nicole, if my child died,
I'd be in, I'd be in total meltdown.
I wouldn't be able to speak to anybody for crying.
And she just walked in normal, smiling and... It were weird.
It just all seemed weird at that time.
But it's, like, I stuck up for her and said, "People grieve in different ways."
And I even went to stay with Lorraine for a night.
And, er, she asked me if she could have Nicole for a week.
I said, "Can you hell." I said, "You deal with losing your son."
Cos this were only a couple of days after he died.
And she were wanting to have my child and I was like, "No."
But... I don't know, it's a horrible mess, that.
We just went to, erm, the graveside and just took flowers,
you know the flowers that everybody had brought.
Because we hadn't got no vases,
she was just sticking 'em in the grave like that.
You know, just one flower after another.
But then she started to go like that with her hands
and she were, like, getting all the soil like that.
And, erm, I thought I'd better go help her here,
so I got down and I started doing it.
Cos she wanted to get the soil to put the flowers in.
Erm, she ended up back in Lingfield Mount
and I think she were there for about a week. And then they arrested her.
My mum were absolutely devastated.
And she said, erm, if...
Same as the day that she were took into hospital after this stroke.
And if she'd have known Lorraine were there, she'd have had summat to say.
Cos she swore blind she didn't do nothing, you know, to all of us.
And then when me mum got to find out,
she'd say, "I'd shoot her for what she's done."
"She's no granddaughter of mine."
Bradford Crown Court heard how Harris Dunbar, at the age of just two,
had developed such a craving for methadone
that as his mother took it for her heroin addiction in front of him,
he'd hold out his arms screaming, as if for a fix himself.
He died last year
after swallowing the equivalent of a teaspoonful of methadone,
prescribed for his mother's heroin addiction.
Lorraine Dunbar is the daughter
of the late Bradford playwright, Andrea Dunbar,
who became famous 20 years ago for her film...
- It's not very flattering, is it? - No.
...about life on the downtrodden Buttershaw Estate in Bradford.
Lorraine was just 11 when her mother died
from a suspected brain haemorrhage
and her daughter had descended into drugs by the age of 14.
The judge said Dunbar had totally failed as a parent
by omission rather than commission.
Today she was jailed for three years and nine months for manslaughter
by gross neglect of her son Harris.
John Cundy reporting. More than 100 mourners attended...
Embroidered it a little bit, didn't they?
(turns TV off)
I didn't think for a minute he'd died of drugs or owt related.
He'd had methadone and dotheipin.
Whether he'd been given it or whether he'd taken it of his own free will,
we'll never know, will we?
Cos you can't just go around thinking forever, "Did she? Didn't she?"
I mean, I thought to myself last night, "Whatever happened, happened."
Now, he's not here.
Whether she give him it, whether he picked it up,
it shouldn't have obviously been in the room. It were.
And that's all there is to it now.
You can either say to her, "On your bike, I don't wanna see you again,"
and just think, "Forget 'em all," and just get on with your life
or you can think,
"I won't do that and I'll sit back and you know, I'll write to you
and maybe see you and see how long you get and see what you come out like."
I don't think it's ever something you come to terms with.
Erm, the fact of the matter was, I was responsible.
It took me over a year to even think
and start looking at the facts that this was my fault.
You know, I allowed this and I caused this, with no intention at all.
But I chose drugs over my son.
"If I wrote a play, I'd do it about Buttershaw Estate."
"I'd show some people getting their lives together
with a lot of courage and determination,
but it would also show others going down a big steep hill
into a big black hole."
(Lorraine) Today, I do every day clean and sober.
If I ever felt like using, then I'd only have to think of the consequence
of losing him and that's more than enough to keep me clean.
I think I had to grow up.
I had to see the world as it was and stop blaming it
and being very resentful towards everyone.
And being angry, I guess.
(Andrea) With having Lorraine,
I don't knock about with anybody, same as Arbor.
I wouldn't say I've got any friends cos I don't bother with nobody.
Keep myself to myself.
I think sometimes everybody gets that way, wishing they hadn't.
Then they think... I suppose sometimes you wish you hadn't
cos you wanted to do this, but when you've actually got 'em...
I mean if they were taken away from you, you'd soon miss 'em and want 'em back,
even though you can't do things you'd like to do.
I don't think really they are that much trouble,
not as much as what people make them out to be.
Maybe it's just Lorraine, cos she's a good baby. I don't know.
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