My darling Norman,


Ever since you were a baby you would always demand my attention. You never let me put you down in your cot and would scream and scream until you were blue in the face, so I’d have to pick you up and cuddle you. I moved your cot into my room, but even then you only settled when I finally lay you down next to me in my bed. You looked so peaceful and angelic when you were asleep – like a sweet little cherub. But as soon as I got up out of bed the next morning, you would wake up with that strange look on your face and scream bloody murder!

When you started walking, you’d cling to the back of my skirt and follow me around like my own little shadow. I tried to encourage you to make some friends but you never seemed interested. You only ever wanted to play with me, not Daddy. In fact your favourite game was to play dress up in all my clothes! I rather hoped you would settle down in school, but you kept begging me not to send you there because you hated the girls. Did you hate them really? The teachers said you were very quiet and detached, as if you were in your own little world.

Then when Daddy died, you became even more possessive of me. You wouldn’t let me see my friends and you hated it when any of them came round to visit me. You would get very jealous and angry. You would try to find anything sharp in the house to throw at the birds from your bedroom window! You hit one of them once and killed it, do you remember? I found it in the bathroom covered in blood.

When we moved and bought the motel, you seemed happier at first. You liked helping me see to the guests, but would never eat with them at the dinner table. You preferred to eat in the parlour. That’s where I found more of your dead birds - not covered in blood this time, but with their gruesome body parts sewn back in using my needle and thread. You said it was because you wanted to learn taxidermy of all things, so I bought you some books for your 13th birthday.

Later on when I met Joe, you became very aggressive. Joe was a good kind man and would have looked after the both of us. I thought you would feel less anxious knowing that you didn’t have to keep protecting me all the time. All I ever wanted for you Norman was to be a normal teenager, have a normal life - get a girlfriend, see the world, do normal things. But then I came to realize, despite everything I tried to do for you – you were always going to be my strange little boy.

I loved you very much my darling, even right to the end.

Mum xx