I never imagined we’d be homeless at Christmas
so much tension.” The first night they were there Mark broke down. “We were in the room and he just said, ‘I can’t do this’. I said, ‘You can do this, it’s all we’ve got’. But I’d never seen him like that before. He’s my rock normally but it was the stress of trying to cram all four of us into one room.”
Kimberley set about organising the tiny space to maintain as much normality for Kai as possible. “We got a little bookshelf to fit in the corner. Kai loves books and we’ve read to him every night since he was born. Fortunately the hostel received a lot of donations of books so we were able to keep our normal routines and change as little as we could for him.”
Thanks to the support she received from Shelter, Kimberley and her family are now back on their feet and looking to spend a normal first Christmas in their new home with their new baby Fern, who was born in May.
Kai is now six and Mya is three. Kimberley has gone all out to make Christmas in their new twobedroom flat near Aylesbury beautiful. There are Christmas lights, a pretty tree and she has used a chalk marker to decorate each window with traditional Christmas scenes. I’m really nestling into the spirit of Christmas this year in our new home,” she says. “It’s such a wonderful time of year, especially with the little ones. My husband cooks absolutely the best Christ-mas dinner and being in our own home at last means we have no worries now.
“But I’m keen to tell our story to give hope to other people who may be feeling hopeless, and to show that with the right support you can get your life back on track.”
● To support Shelter’s urgent appeal visit shelter.org.uk or text SHELTER to 70020 to donate £3.