Marie Franklin will never forget the day her daughter was born. “I was 10 days late, fat, fed up,” she recalls. “I went to the hospital three times before they let me stay. I was excited and scared. Then my waters broke, and an hour and a half later I had a baby girl. The moment I held her in my arms was amazing, but weird — I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God!’ But it was ... lovely.”
It’s an ordinary yet wonderful story of mother-child bonding, but what happened next is neither ordinary nor wonderful. After leaving hospital, Marie and her partner Steve took baby Chloe back to their house in Bristol, England. But rather than sitting down to a cup of tea, the new mum had what she’d denied herself, yet craved, throughout her pregnancy — not a glass of wine or a cigarette, but a hit of heroin.
A year later Chloe was taken into care.
Photo: Bloomberg
For many mothers like Marie — vulnerable young women with a history of low self-esteem, sex work and drug addiction — that could have been the end of the story. But she is one of the lucky ones. In July last year, after five months apart, she was reunited with her daughter at Naomi House in Bristol, one of only four addiction treatment centers in the country that cater for mothers and babies, and the only one for women who’ve escaped sex work.
Marie, 23, doesn’t offer any comfortable excuses for how she ended up in such a dark place. Growing up in a three-bedroom house in Leicester, England, with two older brothers, she was a loved child. “My dad left when I was one, but my mum did the best she could. She always put us first.”
It was at school, rather than at home, that Marie had problems. The bullying started in primary school, but got worse when she started secondary school. “It went on every day, in and out of school, physical and verbal.”
Photo: REUTERS
When she was 15, the family moved to Bristol. It was a fresh start, and she was eager to make the most of it. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to be bullied here.’ And maybe I tried too hard and mixed in with the wrong people.”
One of those people was Jenny. At a loose end in a new city, Marie went to the pub with one of her brothers and got chatting to Jenny, who was six years her senior. She was flattered that this pretty, older woman was interested in her, and they started spending time together. “I looked up to her,” she says. “It felt nice to have a friend.”
About a month after they met, Marie was at Jenny’s house when her friend started smoking heroin in front of her. “I asked what it was and if I could have some, so she gave me a bit,” she recalls. “Then I had some more; then I was sick. I didn’t really feel anything — I just fell asleep, and when I woke up the next day, it was late in the afternoon.”
THE HIGH LIFE
Despite this underwhelming first experience, Marie was soon getting high every day. To begin with, she shared Jenny’s heroin, but after three weeks her friend started to get annoyed. That’s when she told Marie how she paid for the drugs: by sleeping with men for money. She set up appointments with clients at their houses, once or twice a week, and there were no pimps involved.
Even now, Marie refuses to claim any sense of victimhood. “I wouldn’t say it was Jenny who got me into it; I’ve got my own mind,” she says. “I didn’t really think much of it. It wasn’t nice, obviously, but it was worth it to get the money for the drugs. The first time was scary, but the money made it better.”
For the next six months, Marie’s life revolved around heroin and sex work. Then a friend told her mum. “She just went bonkers, as you can imagine,” she says. “I felt disgusted with myself. I was ashamed that she knew.”
Her mum’s reaction was enough to make Marie come to her senses. She stopped working and taking drugs, went back to school and did her General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams. She got a job in a bar and went to college to study art. When she was 18, she got a place in a shared house.
It was after meeting Steve — another former addict — that it all went wrong again. “I remember being lonely, but I don’t really know what took me back there,” she says. “I just remember thinking I could do with a smoke.”
Before long they were using heroin every day, though this time Marie funded the habit with her jobseeker’s allowance.
After a year, the couple split up and she got clean, but she quickly formed another relationship. Luke wasn’t an addict, but he was a thief.
“I was going out car-nicking with him,” she says.
It was after Luke was sent to prison that Marie found out she was pregnant. “I’d always wanted a baby, but I was nervous and scared ... and because I was on my own, I got back with Steve.”
Although Steve was still using drugs, Marie managed to stay clean throughout her pregnancy.
“It was difficult, having it in front of my face every day, but I knew I couldn’t because of the baby,” she says.
But as soon as Chloe was born, all such qualms fell away. “I had drugs straight after; I’d been looking forward to it, as bad as it sounds.”
When asked what kind of mother she was during those first few months, Marie’s voice drops.
“All right,” she says. “She was all right. She was fed and clothed, all the essential things ... but the house was a mess. I didn’t care about the house, I didn’t care about myself; I just cared about the drugs. So I looked after her, but not the way I should have looked after her.”
One day when Chloe was about a year old, Steve took her to the doctor’s. While they were out, the police raided the house for drugs, and Marie was arrested. When Steve returned with Chloe, child protection services were waiting to take her into custody.
“They said it wasn’t the right environment for a baby to be in,” she recalls. “It was hell: She was my baby. It made me realize what was important to me.”
In an effort to get clean and get her daughter back, Marie moved out of Steve’s into a women’s hostel — but everyone there smoked drugs too. The only comfort was that child protection services had agreed Chloe could live with her grandmother, and Marie was allowed to visit twice a week. But that didn’t stop it hurting.
“I’d take her to the park or the zoo and give her her meals, but it broke my heart every time I had to leave her,” she says.
Marie started going to a drop-in center run by One25, a Bristol-based charity that supports women affected by sex work. One25 runs Naomi House, and as soon as Marie heard about the center, she spoke to her social worker.
“I just knew I could do it in here,” she says. “When I was told I’d been accepted I was so excited. Then I moved in, and my life changed. Big time.”
An ordinary-looking house in a Bristol suburb, Naomi House is currently home to four women and their children. Marie and Chloe have their own room — pink and girly, with one of Marie’s paintings hanging above the bed, pictures of Chloe covering the walls, a cot in the corner and a pile of children’s toys under the window.
That it’s not a “normal” home is clear from the packed daily program, ranging from group therapy to workshops on relapse prevention, the sex industry, anger management and parenting, as well as dance, drama, art and holistic therapies.
“That’s what I like about this place,” Marie says. “It’s not a conveyer belt: Get them in, get them out. You work on yourself, what you need to work on to keep yourself going, to keep yourself clean.”
What does Marie need to work on?
“Relationships,” she says. “And myself.”
The results, says Marie, speak for themselves.
THE ‘GOOD MUM’
“If you knew me before, I was totally different,” she says. “I’m proper creative now, I love cooking, I like singing ... And I know I can be a good mum.”
Seeing the easy affection between her and Chloe, now a boisterous toddler, it’s clear these aren’t empty words.
“Having Chloe here, just seeing why I’m doing it, it’s really helped,” she says. “I’m doing it for myself as well, but she’s the thing that keeps me going: every morning, when I wake up and she’s there jumping on me.”
Marie will soon be moving into her own apartment.
“I’m really excited, but ... I’m scared at the same time,” she says. “I’m going to have a good support network — people I can turn to and meetings to go to — but I’m not going to be in this bubble. It’ll just be me and Chloe and the world. I’m nervous because anything could set me off in the wrong direction. But I want to keep thinking like that, because then I’ll be ready for it.”
Note: All the names in this story have been changed.
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