Indigo children, he explained, are supremely empathetic, curious and strong-willed – traits I had already demonstrated – and often considered strange by other adults and their peers. The concept of indigo children had been coined in the 1970s by a psychic, after the colour of their aura, but it had gained credibility since the 1990s. Once my parents better understood what I was capable of, they began to embrace it.
I got more and more into spirituality. I learned how to read tarot cards. I began using a dowsing crystal to tap into my sixth sense and answer questions that were puzzling me. I could see people’s auras and learned how to interpret the different colours to tune into their emotional energy. And because I felt the presence of spirits, I became something of a psychic medium, doing readings for people using messages I was hearing. I gave readings to my mum, dad, aunt, grandmother and even a great-uncle who I never saw. After I had a dream about a lady who said her name was Glenis, my mother told my grandmother, who immediately recognised the significance. Glenis was my great-uncle’s wife. I had never heard of her or seen any photographs of her, but I described her exactly as she was. Since that day my great-uncle believed in spirits.
We found out there was a church in Ferndale, about a 15-minute drive away over the valley in Rhondda, which held spiritualist meetings. We paid it a visit and the people there were really nice and welcoming. We started to go quite regularly, and it became a little outing for my brother and me. I felt quite at home there and enjoyed the singing, the prayers and the psychic readings.
Paul Hanrahan even wanted me to join his psychic circle – a group of like-minded experts who gave spiritual readings. I was still only ten years old, though, and due to my condition this wasn’t an option.
I was in a contented place. Two years on from my Asperger’s diagnosis and a year after quitting school, I was feeling a little less anxious and quite optimistic about life in general. Sadly, it would not last.
It was approaching Christmas when my dad and I went out to go shopping for presents for my mum. From out of nowhere a car appeared in front of us at a junction. There was nothing my dad could do. We crashed into it, the impact throwing me forward. My head exploded in pain. I was so shocked at first that I didn’t know what had happened. When I came to my senses I realised my face had smacked off the airbag that had inflated on impact. My dad was slumped forward on his.
Oh, good lord, I thought. Please, no.
I couldn’t breathe between sobs. I thought he was dead. Within seconds, though, he started to come round. My nose was in agony. The medics who were quickly on the scene confirmed it was broken. And when they told me Dad was going to be okay I began to calm down, but I was badly shaken. When we’d had time to digest what had happened we realised there was nothing my dad could have done. The other driver had just pulled out in front of us. She appeared unhurt.
Our physical scars soon healed, but the incident would have psychological repercussions for years to come. The woman initially denied responsibility for the accident, and we were lucky that a group of builders working on a house nearby saw what had happened and told the police they’d seen her pull out without looking.
After thinking I could control my anxiety, that incident sent me backwards. Whenever my dad left the house I was terrified he would be in another accident. My GP said I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After the legal wrangling that followed I was awarded a significant sum in compensation, money that would be held in a trust for me until I turned 18. It was one positive to take from the highly distressing incident. And then another episode unsettled me even further.
One of my home-school tutors was an older woman called Mary who took a shine to me. She was in her sixties, and dressed quite shabbily, though she lived in a large house in Pontypridd, about 12 miles away. While some other teachers just turned up, took me through some exercises and left, Mary was intrigued by me. She saw potential in me that no other teacher had recognised before, and was amazed by my reading capacity and intelligence for my age. She was more willing to move away from the curriculum and have more meaningful conversations about a broad range of topics. I enjoyed her visits and thought, finally, here was someone who understood me.
But then it took a turn.
Mary invited me to her house for a change of scene and wanted to take me to the theatre. My mum and dad were concerned she was overstepping the mark, but they were afraid to say the wrong thing so went along with it. Mary was getting me out of the house, after all. It was surely a positive thing, right?
Mary was very snobby. She would make comments about shelf-stackers in supermarkets as though they were beneath her and talked about ‘stupid’ people. She was quite a eugenicist, who would have happily seen certain types of people discouraged from reproducing. She started to become fixated with me, weirdly obsessed. When we were alone she said, ‘You know, Sophie, you are better than your parents. You could achieve so much more if you weren’t with them.’
I had been flattered when she’d made comments about how special I was, but this was too much. It was like she was trying to turn me against my family.
Once, when she was in our house, she spied my mum and dad’s magazines on the table. She picked them up and said, ‘Who reads books like this, Sophie?’
‘My parents, but I occasionally glance through them as well,’ I said, feeling defensive.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you wouldn’t buy them now, would you?’
She made comments about the many photographs of pets we had in frames on the wall, saying it was weird and they should be confined to photo albums. And she used to discourage me from engaging with my mental-health nurse, who she thought was a ‘stupid, blonde bimbo’.
She thought I was a very gifted child who needed specialist care. Without my family’s permission she got in touch with Christ College boarding school in Brecon to enquire about me going there. I knew she was a bad influence and she made me feel uncomfortable, but I grew attached to her because she was the first person to help me get my confidence back in my academic abilities.
Then she wanted me to go to London with her and stay with her son. It all started to get creepy.
‘I wish you were my granddaughter,’ she told me. ‘We would be able to spend a lot more time together and I could teach you so much about the world.’
It was like she saw me as a way to fill a void in her life. One day the snow was so bad she couldn’t get her car out, so she wouldn’t be able to keep her appointment to see me. But rather than accept it, she walked the ten miles in the driving snow to my house just to see me for a couple of minutes.
That was the final straw as far as my parents were concerned. They could see that an extremely unhealthy relationship was developing. They spoke to one of the psychiatrists who’d seen me about my anxiety attacks. He immediately agreed with them that it was weird. He reported what was going on to the local authority and Mary stopped coming to the house after that. We were glad to bring an end to what was a strange episode, but it was unsettling.
Mary had a strange energy around her, and it was disturbing to think that someone could come to my home and fixate on me. Already it was clear that I had attracted some obsessive characters. But it was to get a lot worse.
Blending steely determination with more than a little natural grace, I moved through the ballet moves, concentrating hard to maintain perfect posture throughout. Glissade through assemblé to relevé, I loved the combination of discipline and elegance, and the pursuit of producing something beautiful.
‘Excellent, Sophie,’ my dance teacher