'How I went from teen runaway to successful author' - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life ‘ How I went from teen runaway to successful author’ By You Magazine - May 27, 2018 Desperately unhappy from an early age, author Alex Brown fled her chaotic family life at 16. She describes how she found a new home in the unlikeliest of places. Alex, aged 12 The memory of the day I ran away from home is so vivid that it feels as if it happened yesterday. I was 16, desperately unhappy and felt an overwhelming sense of relief to finally escape the abuse that I had endured for years at the hands of my mother. My parents separated when I was six years old and my dad was portrayed as a villain – the man who had left me. Ongoing contact with him was made impossible and I had no way of finding him, so going to live with him was never an option. Instead I began planning my escape to London. With only two qualifications to my name – O-levels in English language and literature, subjects I was naturally good at (it had been impossible to revise for exams at home with all the chaos and fear) – getting a job wasn’t easy. However, I managed to find employment as a full-time, live-in mother’s help. The following week, I left home taking just a bag of clothes and some books with me. It was hard work caring for a baby and doing all the cooking and cleaning for the family when I had no proper experience other than babysitting my three younger siblings. But I was grateful to have somewhere safe to live, plus meals were included and a very small wage akin to the pocket money that I’d never had before. Gradually, I started to make friends through another teenager who lived in the same street. I remember spending an evening at her house watching a film with her mum and dad and feeling really happy and relaxed for the first time in my life. They were a normal family who cared about each other, unlike mine who weren’t bothered about me living independently at such a young age and never asked me to come home. ‘I was 16, desperately unhappy. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief to FINALLY escape the abuse’ But this all changed when the couple I worked for moved back to Hong Kong. Initially, I was able to find another live-in job but that ended after a year or so and I found myself homeless. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to save a small amount from my wages so I had some money to buy food and was able to sleep on a friend’s sofa for a while. When I didn’t want to overstay my welcome I would store my bag of belongings in a locker at a railway station and then sit in the all-night cafés in Soho, eking out a cup of tea so I didn’t have to sleep on the streets. Eventually, having run out of money and favours from my friend, I hit rock bottom. With nowhere else to go and no one to ask for help, I ended up on a bench in a park for a few nights. I felt so scared and alone that I remember being overcome with relief in the middle of a cold night when a police car pulled up and the officers asked me what I was doing. Fearing that I would be in trouble or, worse still, they would make me go back home, I told them I had got separated from a friend who I was supposed to be staying the night with. Looking back, I’m sure they didn’t believe me, but they said that I could wait at the police station and call my friend from there. I spent the rest of the night in a warm interview room with a packet of biscuits while I worked out what I was going to do. Aged 20 The following day, my friend’s mum said I could use her address on my CV and after adding a couple more O-levels (you could get away with it back then) I got a job working as a telephone operator for BT. I also worked as a waitress at the local Beefeater restaurant in the evenings so I could afford the rent on a bedsit in a seedy but cheap part of London. It was a steep learning curve working out how to budget and trying to make ends meet, and I often had to make a choice between buying food or putting money in the electricity meter. There were also the other tenants in the building to contend with. I quickly learned to ignore the banging on my door in the middle of the night from people wanting the drug dealer who lived on the same landing and I tried to sleep with a blanket over my head to block out the sounds of arguing and fighting. Eventually, I applied for a flat through the local council’s hard-to-let scheme and was allocated one on the 17th floor of a tower block on a notorious estate in South London. Even though the lift never worked and the flat was almost derelict, it was a turning point. Some people would have been horrified at how rough it was but for me life became easier because I no longer felt alone. Not having any family to fall back on or give me support was hard. But there was a real community feeling on the estate and the other residents, who were mostly older and had lived there a long time, looked out for me. They were so kind and, even though they had very little themselves, they gave me a bundle of kitchen essentials to help me get started. I loved living there and never felt frightened or intimidated by the gangs of youths that hung around. I’d grown up on a council estate and was used to it. Alex today. Photo: Phillipa Gedge Gradually, I was able to build a fulfilling, normal life for myself by working hard to get promotions or new jobs so my income increased, which meant I could give up the waitressing and pursue evening classes instead. A real highlight was when I had saved up enough money to buy a washing machine so I didn’t have to lug my laundry up and down 17 flights of stairs to the launderette. Another was when I bought my first car, a clapped-out VW Beetle that my neighbours helped me restore in exchange for cups of tea and cans of beer. Since that day 30 years ago when I ran away, feeling normal has become very important to me, as is the great relationship I now have with my dad after finally finding him, and being able to afford what I need. Even now that I’m a successful author with a wonderful husband and daughter and home of my own, that time in my life will always be a reminder of how things might have turned out very differently if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to experience the kindness of strangers. Alex’s latest novel, The Wish, is published by HarperCollins, £7.99. 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