The Journey to a Better Life

Chapter 1

'Madison get up now you little brat' says Danielle from the other side of the door. Little did she know I was already up with everything I own packed into my bag. 5 minutes later I was downstairs putting my shoes on about to leave this house for the last time. I picked up my football and whispered 'goodbye' as I legged it out of the door out of fear of getting hit for speaking too loudly in the morning. Instead of turning right at the end of the road to go to school I went left towards the park where I could spend the day playing football instead.

It was around 12 o'clock and I was starting to get hungry. I hadn't eaten breakfast and I had been playing football all morning. I decided to take the short walk into the town centre where there was a Greggs and I could get a sausage roll with the money that I had in the front pocket of my bag. Just as I had walked into the Greggs a police officer tapped me on the shoulder 'Madison Wright?' he asked 'you need to come with me' my school had obviously put out a report I was a 9 year old kid in the foster care system that hadn't turned up to school it was going to happen sooner or later. I followed the officer out of Greggs with a sausage roll that he had kindly paid for for me and we walked over to his car. We drove to my social worker Rachel's office where she gave me the biggest hug and immediately made me feel safe.

After a short while she asked 'what's going on Madison, it's not like you to not turn up at school?' 'I can't live with those people any more. I had to find a way out and this was the easiest way,' I replied. I then showed Rachel the  bruises up and down my body from where I had been hit by Mark when he was in his drunken state. Rachel was taken aback. The police officer who I had learnt was called Max made a call out to his team to go and arrest both Mark and Danielle on account of child abuse.

Rachel started making some calls I assumed to other foster carers. After around 5 minutes she came back telling me she had found a new home for me to live in. After she grabbed my very large file we drove the hour drive to where my new foster carers lived. The drive was over an hour long which meant I would more than likely be moving schools again, meaning new friends, new bullies and hopefully a new football team.

'Here we are' she announced as we pulled up in front of a posh looking house. I was nervous but also excited to see what these people were like. As we walked up to the front door I became more and more nervous. Rachel knocked on the door and that was the moment that my life changed forever. All my nerves disappeared once I saw Alessia Russo and Leah Williamson standing in the entrance to the house. 'Hey little one' Alessia said softly followed by a 'come on in' from Leah. I was too in shock to speak let alone move. I was standing there in front of two of my biggest idols.

Once the realisation wore off Rachel and I went into their house. I was in awe that there were so many trophies around the house. Then it hit me that I was going to be living with two of the best women's footballers in the world. Once they had filled in all the necessary paperwork Rachel said goodbye and left. It was just the three of us standing there together very awkwardly not knowing what to say.

Leah finally broke the silence 5 minutes later 'you like football?' she asked whilst pointing at my ball that was sat by my bag. 'Its my favourite thing ever' I replied. Alessia then suggested that we take my things up to my room and then we could go out into the garden for a kick about before dinner so that's exactly what we did.  Whilst Leah and I were playing some football in the garden Alessia made dinner for us, Spaghetti Bolognese, one of my favourites. Whilst eating dinner Alessia asked 'so do you play for a team Maddison?' 'Not since I've been in foster care' I replied 'I'm mostly self taught, I've learned a lot just from watching YouTube videos and practising by myself' 'trials for the Arsenal under 11's team are coming up' Leah added. The rest of dinner was fairly quiet, we didn't really know what to talk about (we had been talking about football all afternoon so that topic was fairly exhausted)

After dinner I helped Leah clear the dishes and Alessia went to find a movie for us to watch. She decided on the first Harry Potter movie as I had never seen it, it was also one of Leah and Alessia's favourites. I sat in the corner of the sofa whilst Leah and Alessia sat cuddled up together at one end of the sofa. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I remember is Leah carefully stroking my arm to wake me up enough to go to bed.