Sam and Chester Read online

  About the Book

  When Sam Bailey-Merritt was just two years old, almost overnight he lost the ability to speak or to function properly. His mother, Jo, was at a loss as to what to do as she saw her son grow increasingly isolated and begin to suffer from uncontrollable meltdowns. Eventually, Sam was diagnosed with autism.

  Sam’s condition continued to worsen, and just when Jo had all but given up hope of being able to help him the family went on a day trip to a local miniature-pig farm. Sam immediately formed a bond with a tiny ginger piglet called Chester, who stood alone, apart from the rest of the litter. The connection between the boy and the animal was instant and their unusual friendship blossomed from the moment the family brought Chester home. The pig refused to leave Sam’s side – it was as if he knew that Sam needed a friend. And, for the first time in five years, Jo saw her son really laugh.

  While Sam’s confidence grew, Chester grew too – the micro pig that was only supposed to become as big as a Cocker Spaniel in fact ballooned to three times that size. Chester has turned Sam’s life around – Sam now has the ability to communicate his feelings and make friends, and is kind and caring towards others.

  Sam and Chester is the heart-warming story of how a teacup-sized pig helped to transform the life of a boy with autism. It is the emotional story of a mother’s fight to win back her son.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Prologue

  1. Shattered Dreams

  2. The A Word

  3. Castaway

  4. Back in the Ring

  5. Big Cats and Court Fax

  6. New Beginnings

  7. Slice of Heaven

  8. No Way Out

  9. Silver Lining

  10. Pennywell Pig Farm

  11. Best-Behaved Piglet

  12. Meet the Neighbours

  13. Squealing with Laughter

  14. Cheese and Swine Party

  15. Teacher’s Pet

  16. Porker

  17. Pig-Headed

  18. The Pig Move

  19. Poorly Pig

  20. Home Sweet Home

  21. Wedding Bells and Pig Tales

  22. Media Hog

  23. Chester to the Rescue

  Epilogue

  Picture Section

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Sam and Chester

  How a mischievous pig transformed the life of my autistic son

  JO BAILEY

  with RUTH KELLY

  Prologue

  Devon, England, January 2009

  The barn was full of scents as we entered: a mixture of fresh straw, dung and the farm animals themselves. We could hear the pigs oinking softly, a constant hum of noise that seemed to suggest contentment and happiness. Intrigued, we walked over to the pen and looked inside.

  He was so small that I didn’t spot him at first, but tucked away in the corner of the pigsty was the only ginger piglet of the litter. He looked sad and lonely, like my son Sam, who had autism, often did. He looked tiny and lost.

  Neither that little piglet, nor I, realised it then. But in that moment, both he and I were found.

  Life had just changed for ever.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shattered Dreams

  Benalmádena Pueblo, Spain, Summer 2005

  I CLOSED MY eyes and enjoyed the sensation of the cooling Mediterranean breeze on my face.

  I was sheltering from the searing midday sun on our veranda. Luckily for me, I wasn’t on holiday: I lived full-time in Spain, and had done for fourteen years, ever since I’d finished university. I worked in Málaga as a translator and also in operations at Málaga airport. Not what you might call a typical ‘Brit Abroad’ on the Costa del Sol, I was fully integrated into Spanish life, for most of my friends were Spanish and my husband, Jaime, was too – in fact he barely spoke a word of English.

  Our two-and-a-half-year-old son, Sam, was currently at the supermarket with my mum, who also lived in Spain, while our eleven-month-old boy, Will, was having a nap. Consequently, I had a rare five minutes to myself. I was very tempted to follow Will’s lead – it was hard to stay awake in such heat.

  Every now and again, sitting there on the veranda, I caught the zesty scent of the nearby orange groves, which sweetened the air and added to my somnolence. The wicker chair creaked beneath me as I sank further into the padded cushions. Kicking off my flip-flops, I eased my feet up on to the coffee table. I couldn’t put a price on how nice it was to snatch a few moments to myself; being a mum-of-two didn’t give me much time to relax. My eyelids grew heavy and rolled sleepily down as I gave in to the heat and my exhaustion. It was, after all, the time of day when most people took a siesta. Nonetheless, I kept half an ear listening out for Will’s cries in case he woke, not quite allowing myself to drop off fully.

  We lived only twenty minutes from Spain’s party city of Málaga, but the view from our veranda couldn’t have been more different. There were no bars, clubs or skyscrapers rising from the water’s edge here – Benalmádena Pueblo was a sleepy seaside village with picture-postcard white-washed buildings tangled in vines and brightly coloured flowers. The village centre was called the Plaza de España: it amounted to a fountain, circled by a series of cafe tables set out under the orange trees. It was peaceful – it was a place you would want to raise your family, just as we intended to do with our boys.

  Our house was on a quiet street, roughly a fifteen-minute walk from the beach. It was a dream home that Jaime and I had designed and built from scratch. Spread over four floors, it was spacious and had a garden with a pool, palm trees and a stone gazebo smothered in jasmine and bougainvillea. You could see the sea from our bedroom balcony, as well as the dozens of swimming pools that paved the way down to the sea. At night, the sky would glow like the northern lights from all the family-run restaurants stretching along the bay.

  As I sat sleepily on the veranda, drifting somewhere between a doze and sleep, the peace of the afternoon was suddenly shattered. I was jolted firmly awake by the screeching noise of a car pulling into my drive.

  ‘Jo, Jo!’ I heard my mum crying out.

  I was out of my seat instantly and had just reached the front of the house when my mum and Sam came hurrying through the door. My mum was clearly distressed and carrying Sam in her arms. Tears were streaming down my little boy’s face as he clutched his eye.

  ‘Something awful has happened to Sam,’ Mum spluttered.

  ‘What?’ I panicked, chasing after them into the living room.

  ‘He smacked his head against a concrete pillar in the supermarket.’

  She passed Sam into my arms and I cradled him against my chest. His eye was swollen and already turning blue.

  ‘You silly sausage, what have you done?’ I pushed his blond, tear-soaked hair back from his eyes. Sam didn’t reply, he just buried his face into my warm body.

  I glanced up at my mum for answers. She was shaking.

  ‘He didn’t half take a knock, Jo,’ Mum said, her voice quivering with shock.

  She explained how Sam had been running up and down the supermarket aisle with his head bent over the refrigerators, trying to get his eye as close to the counter as he could without touching it. Sam had recently developed an obsession with straight lines – it was most peculiar – and he’d been trying to line up his eye with the horizontal lines of the fridges.

  ‘He was so preoccupied that he ran full speed into a concrete column and fell on his back. He didn’t even see it.’

  She said that the staff in the supermarket had been very helpful – but when they’d tried to cool the bump with a cold flannel, Sam had la
shed out at them.

  ‘He just would not have it, he was screaming. I couldn’t calm him down, he was almost hysterical.’ Mum’s voice cracked at the memory of seeing her grandson so distressed.

  Looking down at Sam, it was hard to imagine he was the same boy my mum was describing. He was calm and content now as he rested in my arms. My mum handed me a bag of frozen peas and I carefully placed a corner on Sam’s bump. He didn’t even flinch. As I stroked his soft blond hair, Sam reached his little arm up to my ear and started to stroke my lobe.

  I’ll never forget the look my mum had on her face that day. She looked at Sam with a worried expression etched into her features. And as she watched her grandson stroke my earlobe, over and over again, she slowly shook her head and turned to me.

  ‘There’s something not quite right here.’

  ‘I know,’ I snapped at her, the words shooting out before I had a chance to stop them. And they took me by surprise as much as Mum, for up until that point it hadn’t consciously occurred to me that there was something wrong with Sam. I had noticed some small changes in his behaviour recently, but I’d put them down to Sam developing.

  Shakily, I took a deep breath and regained my composure. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to have a go. I just don’t know what to make of it all,’ I explained weakly.

  I thought over his recent behaviour. A few months before, Sam had taken to lying on his belly and running his favourite toy car backwards and forwards in front of his eyes; he would sometimes replay this action for hours on end. He also insisted on watching the same episode of Thomas the Tank Engine again and again. He craved repetition, which was a little odd, but I didn’t think anything was ‘wrong’ with him as such.

  Yet I’d also noticed that Sam liked to flap his hands, as though they were a bird’s wings, when he was excited – for example, when Tinky-Winky appeared on Teletubbies or when Thomas the Tank Engine did something silly – or when he was particularly anxious about something. Was it normal? I thought it must be, for he seemed a happy enough toddler, bouncing and dancing to his favourite television shows. Perhaps if Will had been older than Sam I would have noticed differences in their development but, as it was, I was just a young mum learning as I went along.

  But my mum, who had two grown-up daughters, knew better. Sensing my stress at her comment, Mum now softened her gaze and joined me on the sofa. She was a beautiful, well-dressed and elegant woman with high cheekbones and youthful skin. My dad had left her when I was little, but she’d never let that get her down. Mum had moved from London to Málaga not long after my older sister, Sarah, and I had relocated there. She was the heart and soul of her expat community: a regular at the British Legion Club and always out doing things with her friends.

  ‘Jo, love,’ she now said, delicately, ‘this obsession Sam has with straight lines, it’s not normal. I think you should take him to see someone, if only for your own peace of mind.’ She smiled at me, reassuringly.

  I was grateful to have my mum there for support. But in a way her presence made me sad. For as wonderful as my family was, their solicitude reminded me that the one person I really wanted to talk to about Sam, I couldn’t reach.

  My husband Jaime: Sam’s dad.

  To my intense sorrow, my marriage with Jaime was breaking down. We’d been drifting apart for some time, but things had become even more difficult since he’d moved to Seville last November for work. My husband was gone all week, as he had to be, and the geographical distance had put an added strain on our already faltering marriage. In recent months, our communication had deteriorated to just a handful of phone calls in between seeing each other at the weekends. The more we drifted apart, the more needy I became. I had this beautiful dream home, but no husband to share it with. And now our son Sam seemed to need our help, but we weren’t a team any more, ready to leap into action.

  I told my mum I would think about what she’d said, and she then headed back to her villa in nearby Torremolinos. I was left alone with just the boys and the sound of the Mediterranean for company.

  That evening, I tucked Sam into bed next to Will’s cot. Their room was so cheerful, with bright yellow walls and shelves filled with cuddly toys and children’s books. Yet it hardly reflected how I was feeling at that moment, as my brain whirred unstoppably over my mum’s words.

  ‘Sleep well, boys.’ I kissed them both goodnight and slipped out of the room. I’d be checking on Sam throughout the evening to make sure his bump wasn’t bothering him but, for now, I returned to the breeze out on the veranda and became lost in my thoughts.

  As dusk settled over Benalmádena Pueblo, I listened to the hypnotic chirping of the cicadas. My mind replayed everything that had happened that day. Who can I ask about Sam’s behaviour? I wondered. Up until that point, we’d only needed to see the doctor for coughs or colds. This was one of the rare moments since I’d moved to Spain that I felt like a foreigner.

  I decided I’d start with Sam’s nursery. Sam went there five days a week; it was only a five-minute drive away in Benalmádena. I’ll ask them about it, I thought, when I drop the boys off tomorrow morning.

  But the nursery manager had only reassuring words for me when I spoke to her the next day. ‘We haven’t noticed anything strange with Sam,’ she said cheerily. ‘He’s very well-behaved. A beautiful blond blue-eyed boy!’

  I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Maybe I don’t have anything to worry about. I took the name of a child psychologist from the manager anyway, as Mum was right: I should see it through for peace of mind.

  Just as I was leaving, though, the manager added: ‘There is one thing we have noticed . . . Sam doesn’t talk to any of the other children.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was taken aback. It was another alarm bell.

  I booked an appointment with the child psychologist as soon as I could, but he couldn’t see us for another week. In that time, my anxiety levels rocketed. In the days leading up to our appointment, I spent a lot of my time scrutinising Sam’s behaviour. His latest ‘thing’ was to sit in front of the washing machine holding our pink oven glove. When the cycle started, Sam waved the glove. When it stopped, Sam stared vacantly at the drum. He would sit, cross-legged, on the kitchen floor for the whole washing cycle if I didn’t pull him away. I was desperately worried and so wanted to help him but I just didn’t know how. Something was not right with my boy, I knew that – but I didn’t know exactly what was wrong. I needed someone to give it a name so that I could start to deal with it. Night after night, I went to bed hoping that our upcoming appointment would show us the way forward.

  When the day arrived, Sam and I headed into the waiting room of the child psychologist’s office in Torremolinos. I was clutching the notes I’d made on my son, the papers crinkling in my hands as we waited to see the psychologist. The room was crammed with games, books and a climbing frame with a slide – everything you might need to keep a child amused. I fanned myself against the sticky Spanish heat while Sam played quietly in the corner with a toy fire engine. The bump on his brow had gone down, but there was still a nasty bruise: a visible reminder of his peculiar behaviour, and how it could get him badly hurt.

  A door opened abruptly and a short, slightly round man appeared, proffering an outstretched hand. The doctor ushered me into an equally busy room, only this time it was packed floor to ceiling with medical books. The fan on the ceiling was whirring at such velocity that the paperwork on his desk looked like it was about to take off, save for the paperweight pressing it down.

  ‘Shall I fetch Sam?’ I looked back at my son in the waiting room.

  ‘No, let him play.’ The doctor eased himself into the chair behind his desk and gestured for me to sit too. He had warm, hazel eyes and smiled broadly at me. He seemed kind. I hoped he could help.

  Yet as the appointment progressed, I felt as if I was in some sort of therapy session rather than there to get help for my son. I chatted about the changes I’d noticed in Sam while the doctor listened and nodded whe
never I paused for breath. I peered back at my son in the adjacent room as I described his behaviour, feeling increasingly frustrated that the doctor wasn’t looking at him. The next thing I knew, the hour was up and the doctor hadn’t offered any explanation as to what could be wrong with Sam – or even examined him. Instead, he suggested buying some picture cards and asked me to work with Sam to encourage him to predict what might happen next after the scene shown, as well as to say what the people in the cards might be feeling. With hindsight, I can see the doctor had a diagnosis in mind and was asking me to work with Sam on things that he might find difficult, should the doctor’s suspicions prove correct – but at the time I didn’t know any of that. I walked away still none the wiser about what was going on with Sam.

  ‘Mum, it’s useless. The doctor’s visits don’t seem to be helping.’ I recounted what had happened to my mum. She told me to try and stay calm but it wasn’t easy. For fourteen years I’d loved living abroad but now, faced with trying to get a diagnosis for Sam, I realised just what a difficult position I was in. For I was based in a country where I didn’t know the ins and outs of the national health system – and not knowing where or who to turn to for help was frightening.

  Over the next few weeks, as I tried to get my head around the Spanish health system and Sam and I began his ‘homework’, my son’s condition rapidly deteriorated. It soon became clear that the picture cards were a non-starter because, almost overnight, Sam started to shut down.

  The first big change concerned his eyes. Sam wouldn’t look at me, his dad or his baby brother any more.

  ‘Sam, baby, I’m over here!’ I would wave my hands in front of his face.

  Nothing. He stared through me as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘SAM!’ I tried again, and again. Nothing. He stared obsessively at his own fingers rather than at us, holding them close to his face or flickering them in front of his eyes.

  ‘Sam, stop.’ I pulled them away. He was scaring me.

  But a minute later, there he was, ‘flickering’ again. His eyes had turned cold and vacant, as though there was nobody home.