Finding out I’d failed yet another test at school, I screwed up the paper, doodled on my desk. Looking up, I saw my teacher watching me, concerned.
At the end of the lesson, she pulled me aside.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, gently. ‘You’re so bright, you could go far if you’d just knuckle down, you know.’
But I wasn’t really listening.
It was 2012 and, aged 12, school work was the last thing on my mind.
He was a world away from boys my age, with their acne I’d had a tough upbringing, and no real childhood to speak of.
Mum had left not long after my second birthday.
Then Dad had struggled to look after me on his own.
By the age of 11, I’d been living in…
