Free Abandoned by Lee Shepherd

workers have a duty of care to provide to you. We do what we think is in your best interests. Besides, we can’t legally give you this information until you turn sixteen, when it is deemed you are old enough to be able to understand and cope with this information.’ Seeing the look on Jonathon’s face, he continued hurriedly, ‘But seeing as you are coming up sixteen in a few short months, what do you want to know?’
    ‘I want to know everything,’ Jonathon replied. ‘Who am I? Where am I from? But first of all you can start off by telling me who my mother is. My real mother!’
    ‘I don’t really know much about her to be honest Jonathon, as I was only assigned as your Social worker after you had been placed with the McMullen’s. All I know is her name, which is, or was, Shelley Winter.’
    ‘And what about my real father?’
    ‘He was never named on your birth certificate, so I’m afraid I honestly can’t help you on that one.’
    Jonathon just sat there, processing this information. Why had his mother left him? Who was she as a person?What was so bad about him that she had to give him up?
    At this moment he thought of another passage from his Bible, which he was now becoming more and more familiar with. He remembered Isaiah 49:15.
    Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee
.
    Jonathon just sat there quietly for the rest of the journey, running this verse over and over in his head, each time emphasising the last sentence: he would not be forgotten.
    He spent the next couple of months in a residential care home in Workington, Cumbria, with four other young people from different areas. He never really spoke more than two words to any of them.
    The others never bothered him though, as he was now a solid-framed, stocky teenager with muscles bigger than normal for someone of his age; the last few years of lifting hay bales and helping out around the farm obviously had some benefits. That, along with his piercing blue eyes and rugged features, meant that the other kids were quite wary of him. His brooding, introverted nature just added to his enigma, so the others gave Jonathon a very wide berth during his time in the home.
    ***
    Jonathon turned sixteen in the August of 1989, and as the local authorities no longer had a legal responsibility over him, they helped him get his own flat, sorted out his benefits, and sent him on his way, not before giving him the only information they had regarding his mother, which was his birth certificate, and his chronology from the day he was born and all throughout the course of his time in care. Jonathon by now just wanted to get as far away from there as possible. He wanted to forget his past. The more hethought about trying to track down his mother, the more he despised her for leaving him to endure the agonising traumas of his short life. As far as he was concerned, the McMullen’s were, and would always, be his true parents. Within the first few weeks of living on his own, in an attempt to bury everything about his past, he immediately changed his name via Deed Poll, opting to amalgamate his two heroes Charles Bronson, and Bruce Lee, giving him his new title, Charles Lee. He secretly hoped he could emulate their bravery, and felt as though this would be the start of his metamorphosis from victim to hero; and with it, he decided to enlist into the Army, specifically the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment, (KORBR).

Chapter 8
    After passing his initial army fitness and aptitude tests with flying colours, Charles, to give him his new title, was accepted and enlisted into this proud regiment. Due to his high entry-level score, he had numerous options to choose from rather than just infantry fodder. He decided he wanted to become a medic, as he quite liked the idea of patching up wounded soldiers; it kind of reminded him of the times Edna had bathed and bandaged up his wounds.