Saving Gary McKinnon Read Online Free Page A

the church to organise the banns. It’s perfectly legal to marry at the age of sixteen in Scotlandand no parental permission is needed, which is why for centuries many young couples fled from England to Gretna Green, just over the border, where a marriage can be conducted by a blacksmith.
    Gretna Green is still one of the world’s most popular wedding destinations, hosting over 5,000 weddings each year. All the weddings are performed over an iconic blacksmith’s anvil and the blacksmiths in Gretna became known as anvil priests.
    Because the church official we had visited was worried about me being so young and was afraid that my parents might not have known I was getting married, he called unexpectedly at our house. The man explained his concerns about my age and my mum told him she had advised me that because of my age the marriage had a higher chance of failure but that in the end I made my own decisions. Charlie was a good person whom my mum and dad trusted and were fond of.
    Charlie and I married four days after my sixteenth birthday, as planned. It was a freezing cold December day and Charlie’s friend Jim, Jean’s brother, who was the best man, had flu and collapsed in church during the ceremony. Fortunately he soon recovered and Charlie and I were married, with Jean as my maid of honour. Seeing the photos now, I look like a little girl dressed up as a bride.
    We were married the year that hundreds of students demonstrated against the Vietnam War in New York’s Times Square and twelve young men publicly burned their draft cards – the first such act of war resistance.
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    Gary was born just over a year later in 1966, the same year the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, refused to send British troops to Vietnam. I was seventeen years old.
    My mum had worried that because of my impulsive nature and my age, I might change quite quickly and want to follow another path in life, and in a way she was right. I went into hospital as a very young girl who was in love, happy with her life and about to have a baby, and I came home almost as a stranger, with a totally different outlook.
    I looked around the one-bedroom flat that was home and saw it as dark and dull. I was upset because my pet bird had died and I thought that someone had forgotten to feed it. Above all, I felt as though I didn’t belong there anymore. I felt guilty for changing but the change just happened.
    When I went out to shops or to the park and saw other girls with their babies, I didn’t feel a connection with them. Many very young girls had three or four children and this scared me so much that I decided then and there that I only ever wanted to have one child.
    I also knew I couldn’t live in the same place forever until I died, as many people did at that time. Just the thought of that terrified me.
    When Gary was born he was healthy and well but wouldn’t feed. The nurses were concerned about it but left me to deal with it and I was panicking. I don’t remember how long it took or how I managed it but it seemed to take forever before I eventually succeeded.
    I used to be fascinated just watching Gary for hours as he lay in his cot. It was amazing that this little life had come from inside me.
    I initially saw Gary as a baby that I fed and cared for and was protective towards. I loved it when he gripped my fingers with his tiny hands but when Gary said his first words I was totally smitten – I realised that he was a real little person, and he was my little person.
    Gary stood up in his cot one day, looked at us and said clearly, ‘Mammy, Daddy.’ He was about ten months old and from that day on his speech came on leaps and bounds.
    Charlie made a brilliant dad. He had an amazing and very natural Glasgow sense of humour, like Billy Connolly, and he made everyone laugh.
    Before Gary was born I had a dream about a baby with a mischievous face, auburn hair and freckles, wearing a nappy