Alex Batty was living apart from his mother

ALEX BATTY had been living separately from his mother and her new boyfriend for weeks before a final row prompted him to leave, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Melanie Batty, 43, moved from a caravan into a newly converted stone house in early November, but was only joined by her 17-year-old son two days before he dramatically fled the Pyrenees on foot in search of a “normal life”.

Greater Manchester Police has now launched a criminal investigation after she allegedly abducted Alex, then aged 11, from his legal guardian, his grandmother, while on a week’s holiday in Spain in 2017.

Since returning to the UK, Alex has spoken of living under false names with his mother and grandfather David Batty in and around hippy communes in Morocco, Spain and France, working for hours a day on the land in return for food and enjoying no social life.

He said this was because his “spiritual” mother was stridently anti-government and wanted to avoid him becoming a “slave to the system”.

However, this newspaper can now reveal that in the months before her cover was blown, Ms Batty had adopted a more comfortable lifestyle that

‘If you go into any bar then all of the patrons would know her, even though her French was non-existent’ appeared to involve her son less. She moved from a caravan near Lac Montbel to a £480-a-month converted cowshed in the hamlet of Villefort, Aude, with her boyfriend Fabrizio, who is believed to be Italian.

“The boy and his grandfather – I knew them as Zack and Peter – had been living somewhere else for the first five or six weeks after Melanie moved in,” said Tony Smith, who owns the property. “They joined a couple of days before it all blew up and Alex left.”

Mr Smith, 81, said Ms Batty had become well known in the local area, particularly in the nearby town of Chalabre, where she spent a lot of time sitting outside bars with her laptop writing what he presumed was a book.

“She knew an awful lot of people and was well liked,” he added. “If you go into any bar then all of the patrons would know her, even though her French was non-existent. The boy was rarely with her. Occasionally he and his grandfather would join.”

Alex, who received no education from 2017 but dreamed of being a computer engineer, has said Ms Batty was a “good person” but “not a great mum”.

Having previously tried unsuccessfully to explore the possibility of going home, he escaped on foot towards Toulouse in the second week of December.

He is now home with grandmother Susan Caruana in Oldham.