I’mGLADMum deserted me!

LAURA WILTHEW is very proud of her crisp new school uniform. Time and again she adjusts her navy striped tie and stops to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. ‘ Isn’t it smart?’ she says, her eyes gleaming. ‘ I paid for it myself, with my own savings.’

Her breathless enthusiasm is catching. It’s impossible to look at the slightly-built 5ft 5in teenager, beaming with such genuine pleasure, and not want to smile too.

But then there’s plenty for 15-year- old Laura to be proud of these days. She’s had a new haircut. She has a new bedroom of her very own to decorate with posters of her favourite pop groups. And, best of all, she answered all the questions correctly in a maths test at her new school the other week.

‘I was dead proud because I got full marks — that has never happened to me before,’ she says. ‘I was always in trouble at school and my mum said I was silly. But it was me, Laura Wilthew, scoring top marks.’

It seems hard to believe that this confident and happy young woman is the same bewildered and wretched child who made headline news when she was abandoned by her own mother five months ago.

The sorry saga began when Elaine Walker, 45, and her elder daughter, Laura’s 17- year- old sister Stacey, flew to Turkey for a sunshine holiday without Laura back in June.

There, Elaine fell for 26-year- old Turkish DJ Ali Murat — the man she now describes as her ‘ soulmate’ — while Stacey ‘ fell in love’ with local barman Huseyin Mokhtar, 26.

Mother and daughter were unusually quiet when they returned to the cottage in the

picture-postcard village of Redmire,

North Yorkshire, which they shared

with 15- year- old Laura. But three

weeks later, the unsuspecting

teenager returned home to find the

house empty — and her mother and

sister gone.

In the media furore that followed,

Elaine was pictured with her arms

clasped around her toyboy lover,

proclaiming: ‘ It is time I did something for myself. We’ll be staying in

Turkey for ever.’

Meanwhile, back in Yorkshire,

Laura was taken into the care of

social services, facing what seemed

an uncertain future. It is heartbreaking to learn that as she packed her

meagre possessions into a small

suitcase and left her bedroom for the

last time, she carefully selected a pile

of precious photographs of herself

and her mother.

The family snapshots remained

with her when she was taken to a

council- run Family Centre. They

stayed with her when she was

returned to her real-life father, who

was divorced from her mother five

years ago and now lives in nearby

Darlington.

And it was only a few weeks ago,

when Elaine dismissed her daughter

Laura as a ‘liar’ in a magazine article,

that those precious family photos

were thrown in the bin.

Today, Laura visibly shakes when

she talks about her mother. She

pokes her finger repeatedly at her

mother’s face beaming out from the

magazine article.

‘She was interviewed in this horrible magazine and she talked about

me. She said: “Laura is evil, making

up stories.” She said I’m just an

attention- seeker and that my sister

Stacey feels the same way about me.

‘I’ve read that again and again. To

call me evil is . . . is . . .’ Laura fights for

words. ‘ Horrible.’ And she is right.

How could a mother sink so low as to

attack her daughter this way?

‘ If I saw her in the street now, I’d

just walk past her,’ Laura continues.

‘ I’ve finished with her. When I read

the magazine article, I threw all the

photographs of me and her away.’

BUT over the past four

months, while her mother has

continued to cavort with the

Turkish suitor 19 years her

junior, Laura’s life has changed beyond recognition. And for the better.

‘I’m not going to let my mum hold me back any more,’ she says simply. ‘I’m going to work hard at school and hopefully go on to college. I’m so happy now that I can say it’s almost been worth my mum leaving me so I can get my dad back.’

To fully appreciate Laura’s joy in her changing fortunes, it is necessary to remind ourselves of her unsettled upbringing with an overbearing and selfish mother.

Three-times-married Elaine Walker has five children by five different men. Her eldest son Michael Elliot — whom Laura never met — was taken into care and died in December last year, aged 26, a chronic alcoholic.

Her other sons, Dean, 24, and Russell, 20, left home as soon as they could and now live in Middlesbrough.

Stacey — the result of a short-lived romance with a local builder — was apparently her mother’s firm favourite.

Finally, when Elaine and her hapless children were living temporarily in a woman’s refuge, she met bouncer-turned-crane-driver George Wilthew. After Elaine gave birth to their daughter Laura, the couple married and the affable Wilthew took on all the children as his own.

But eventually, Elaine left George for another man — as was her wont — and the couple divorced in 2000. For a while, Laura remained with the father she adored — until Elaine decided to return and claim her back.

Laura recalls: ‘I was ten years old and I knew I was special to Dad. Mum had left but I didn’t want her to come back to get me. I wrote Dad a letter. I told him everything I wanted to say ever.

‘ It said: “ I am so sorry for what Mum has done to you. Some day we will get her back for what she has done to us. Love you with all my heart, Laura.”

THEN, one morning, I was upstairs and Dad came up. He said, “ Mum’s here” and I started crying my eyes out. She was there with the police. She said she had custody and they came in to drag me away.

‘ I remember crying and crying to my dad. He got really angry with the police, shouting at them. There was a scuffle and I just had the chance to give him my note. He has told me since that he couldn’t even read it for five days. He just cried.’

Laura’s new home was a pretty sandstone cottage nestling in the heart of the village of Redmire. But the child was distraught. A fortnight later, she attempted to run away back to her father’s house in Darlington.

Forced to return home to Redmire, Laura quickly noticed that her mother and Stacey shared many things — with Laura the clear outsider.

She recalls: ‘Mum was really close to Stacey. They would get special WeightWatchers food and things like that together, but I would have to eat other food.

‘Stacey would get new clothes and I wouldn’t. When I did, they would be awful, especially as I got older.

‘The only time I ever went on holiday with them was when I was 11 and we went to Turkey. But I didn’t really like it. My mum was so tarty with all these men. I thought it was horrible. It would make me feel sick.’

Back home and floundering at school, Laura was hardly encouraged by her dismissive mother.

‘I was bullied at school and I didn’t do very well. I was cheeky to the teachers but I was always unhappy. Mum didn’t do anything about it. She would just say I was being silly.

‘ I was on my own for most of the time at school. But then I met a friend who was also getting bullied. That was Jacqueline. We would always try to look out for each other — and her family are like my own.’

Relations between mother and daughter worsened when Elaine became infatuated with another younger man.

‘He was called Steve, and one thing that would make me sick was she would talk about what went on in the bedroom with him.’ Laura shudders at the thought. ‘My stomach would turn. I felt sick.’

That romance lasted for around four years and ended just before Elaine Walker’s ill-fated cheap break to Turkey. When she and Stacey returned, they were uncharacteristically reticent to discuss their holiday. However, Laura noticed nothing wrong — until some three weeks after their return, when she came home one afternoon in July.

She remembers walking in through the front door and automatically calling out for her mum, the way teenagers do.

She recalls: ‘I shouted for Mum and Stacey, but no one shouted back. There was no food in the house, and then I noticed there were no coats on the landing, which was very strange.

I went upstairs and it was then that it began to really dawn on me. I went through all the cupboards, drawers, everything. There was nothing. All the clothes had gone, the alarm clocks, the posters.

‘I tried to ring their mobiles, but of course there was no reply. I searched for a note, but there wasn’t anything for me.’

Laura pauses, then adds with bitter irony: ‘It turns out she had left notes for all her friends, but nothing for me. She had even remembered to tell the housing association that she was moving out — but she’d forgotten to tell me I wouldn’t have a home.’

Searching frantically through all the drawers, Laura found £ 25 in cash. Later, Elaine would claim that she had left Laura the money as a gift. But Laura insists: ‘That was a lie. It was money I had earned myself doing part- time work — money I was saving so that I could go on holiday with my mum and my sister the next year.’

Laura doesn’t cry easily — and of this she is proud. She says: ‘ I walked around, trying and trying to think, even just for a second, but you can’t.

‘The only thing I could think of to do was to call my friend Jacqueline. I couldn’t think what to say, so I just blurted out: “My mum’s left me.”

‘ Jacqueline came around to stay the night, and when she was with me I shed a few tears. I don’t cry a lot, but I did then — just a bit.’

For two days, Laura remained in her mother’s empty house, switching off the lights at night and going to bed in the darkness alone, before she was invited to stay with her friend’s family.

She says: ‘ In the end, someone told social services. Whether it was school or a neighbour, I just don’t know. I had stayed in Mum’s house for two days before moving in with my friend’s family.

‘ It was when I was moving my stuff out that neighbours started asking what was going on. I started to feel better about her going, but I was still muddled.

‘One day, at my friend’s house, I just locked myself away in a room. I couldn’t handle it.’ A social worker arrived and took the visibly distressed child to a family centre, while police attempted to track down her father.

Laura says: ‘ It was about this time, after it had been all over the papers, that I saw my mum talking on the TV. She was with this young Turkish bloke, Ali. I just wanted to hit the television really, really hard. She said she had left me money when she hadn’t, and that it was my fault I wasn’t there.’

Laura stops, and then admits: ‘I cried then, a few more tears.’

In a bizarre twist of fate, Laura’s father George Wilthew was holidaying in Turkey at that same time with his new partner, Diane McDowell. By chance, he saw his former partner on television. Texts from family back home alerted him to the fate of his daughter.

George flew home from Turkey immediately — and after five long years apart, father and daughter were finally reunited.

Laura recalls: ‘ Diane had told Dad: “She’ll be big now, you know.” But Dad just had this picture of a ten-year- old girl in his head. When he saw me, he couldn’t believe it. But he just said: “ Give us a cuddle.”

‘There were tears again — lots of them — but they were a different type of tears this time.’

Most importantly, Laura was introduced to George’s new partner — the warm, straight-talking Diane. Laura took to her instantly.

The couple drove her to their immaculate three- bedroom terrace home in Darlington. Laura says, with the breathless enthusiasm of a teenager: ‘I’ve got my own room, which I can decorate any way I want.

‘ I tried to go back to my old school but I got to the gates and just broke down. Dad took me home and we found a new school. Now I’ve got my new school uniform and I’ve made friends.’

Laura pauses for effect: ‘ And I got full marks in my maths test. I’m allowed new clothes and I’ve had my hair done.

STILL, the best thing is just having my dad and Diane. It’s like having a new mum, but a proper mum. We can talk about girls’ things.’ Laura adds under her breath: ‘Diane says my mum is a disgrace to all women.’

As Laura talks, her father smiles and watches with obvious pride and affection. The two exchange

frequent glances — Laura

constantly seeking the reassurance and approval she so

obviously craves. They are

still gingerly setting the

boundaries of their own

new father- daughter relationship.

Laura says: ‘ Sometimes

we have little arguments,

Dad and me, but we

always say sorry, don’t

we, Dad? It’s okay to

have play fights and then

laugh it off, isn’t it?’

Her father nods, and

Laura continues to

speak. In the four short

months that she has been

living with her father and

his partner, this remarkable young lady has discovered new values which

were all but absent in her

previous life with a dismissive and self- centred mother.

The child who was once a

lonely outsider, scared of criticism and yet so scornful of success that she was a troublemaker at school, has become confident, mature, ambitious — and loved.

She leans forward and adds, almost conspiratorially: ‘ When I met Dad, he showed me that note I wrote all those years ago. It had been in his wallet for five years, along with a little picture of me. He had looked at it every day.’

Laura leans back and smiles contentedly. ‘You know, my mother really has done me a favour. It’s almost been worth my mum leaving me so I can get my dad back.

For the first time in her life, Laura is forging real ambitions. ‘When I grow up, I’d like to be a receptionist in a law firm. I want to do a bit better at school and go to college.

‘ I’m not going to let my mum hold me back any more.’

Additional reporting:

CHRIS WEBBER