I Just Wanted to Be Loved: A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.. Stuart Howarth

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      Geoff knew nothing of my past so it must have been a huge shock to him when he opened a newspaper one morning in August 2000 to see that I'd been arrested for killing my stepfather. I could understand anyone not wanting anything more to do with me after the way the papers reported it at first: ‘Cold, calculating killer in a black BMW executes well-loved family man and outstanding council employee’ was the general message. But I wrote to Geoff and Sue from jail apologizing for the fact that I wouldn't be around for a while and telling them the bare bones of the story, and I got a lovely letter back.

      ‘Our hearts go out to you,’ they said. ‘We had no idea what you'd been through because all we saw was this happy-go-lucky jokey guy. As soon as we saw your car pull in at the farm, we'd start laughing.’

      I got lots of letters from former Norweb clients, all expressing support, but Geoff's was the one that meant the most to me.

      He asked if he could do anything at all to help. Now, in the early months I was in jail, Tracey began having trouble keeping up with her mortgage payments and I wasn't earning so I couldn't help her out. We decided that she should sell the house and rent somewhere until I got out of prison, then we'd be able to buy a place together as we'd been planning. However, her house needed some repairs before she could get a fair market price for it and Tracey didn't know any builders she could ask. I was worried she might get ripped off so I wrote to Geoff and asked if he would help her to find some reputable people, and he did what he could.

      Next, Geoff wrote to say that he and Sue wanted to visit me. This was around December 2000, four months after I'd gone in. I was a category A prisoner by then so they had to come right inside the jail. I was embarrassed for them to see me like that but Geoff made it clear where he stood straight away.

      ‘You shouldn't be in here,’ he said. ‘It's a piece of nonsense. I'd like to stand bail. I'll suggest that you come and stay with Sue and me at the farm until the trial and I'll vouch for your behaviour. After that, I've no doubt you'll be released. Any judge will be able to see you're a good man.’

      I was so emotional I couldn't speak. If I'd felt that he was a father figure before, now he was offering to do things for me that a real ‘dad’ would have done and I was incredibly moved. No one had ever taken care of me like that before.

      The bail application didn't work but he went through the whole rigmarole anyway. A team from the court went to Geoff's place to assess his suitability, then he appeared in front of a judge and offered £30,000 as bail. In court, he said that I would live and work with him, that it was obvious I wasn't a danger to society, but the judge refused his offer and I was taken back to my cell feeling totally dejected.

      Geoff didn't give up, though. He made a second bail application offering £50,000, but this was turned down as well. I was distraught. Each time I got my hopes up that maybe I would be walking free that day and going back to the farm; each time those hopes were dashed. I suppose the judge was reasoning that I'd been charged with the crime of murder, which was too serious for bail. I'll always be grateful to Sue and Geoff for trying at any rate.

      When I came out of Strangeways in September 2001, Geoff was on the phone straight away, urging me to come and work for him, but I didn't feel ready to take on any kind of responsibility. My head was shot to pieces and I had no confidence that I'd be any good any more. I worried that when I went to visit business clients they would be whispering behind my back: ‘He's the one I told you about; he's the murderer.’

      Geoff kept trying, though. He said, ‘I want you to be my business-development manager. I wouldn't offer if I didn't know for sure that you can do it. Besides, it will be good for you to get back to work.’

      I had my pride and I didn't want to accept what I saw as his charity but I started helping out just to keep myself occupied. I've always been a person who needs to be busy and I'm a perfectionist in everything I do. I wouldn't take a salary at first but I started popping into the office and making suggestions about ways he could increase turnover and attract new clients and Geoff seemed to like my ideas.

      By November, Tracey and I were able to move out of the pub and start renting a lovely little house in Ashton-under-Lyne. It was on a quiet, suburban street and I felt safe there. I felt we'd be able to nest and create a proper home for ourselves, just as soon as I could get over all my problems.

      But despite the support I was getting from Geoff, Sue and, of course, Tracey, my life was worse after I came out of prison than it had been before I went in. I couldn't cope with the reality of what was going on inside my head, and so before long I fell back into taking street drugs, just as I'd been doing around about the period when I killed my stepfather. Just as I'd been doing ever since I was five years old and hung around sniffing glue with some older kids in our neighbourhood.

      It was plain stupid. I hadn't touched a single drug in prison, despite the fact that they were widely available, but as soon as I was out I felt I needed something to numb me and make reality more bearable, and I had plenty of mates who could get me drugs at the drop of a hat. In my experience most bodybuilders have psychological problems and they take drugs to mask them, trying to change their state of mind and get happy again. In my case, I felt this huge, gaping emptiness inside me – I describe it as feeling like a hole in my soul – and I kept taking different substances to try and fill it.

      Drugs had always been a comforter to me, especially cocaine. That white powder seemed to wrap its arms around me and take away all the demons. I could find it at any club I went to, often without paying. I'd slip off to the toilet with a snappy bag of white powder and a house key and snort a couple of lines inside a cubicle, then I'd feel uplifted, confident and comfortable. The abuse I'd suffered faded into the background and I'd chat away animatedly, living in the moment.

      The buzz doesn't last long, though. Fifteen minutes later you have to slip back to a cubicle for another couple of lines or you'll plummet down further than you were before you started. You feel elated and energetic while it lasts, then knackered when you come down. While there's plenty of white powder around, it's easy to stay up all night chatting and drinking and smoking the hours away, but when you get home and crawl into bed you feel as though you've been knocked over by a juggernaut.

      I'd been offered ecstasy several times but was wary of trying it after the case of Leah Betts hit the headlines in 1995. She'd taken an ecstasy tablet at her eighteenth birthday party, collapsed into a coma and subsequently died. It was reported at the inquest that it wasn't, in fact, the ecstasy alone that killed her; she had died of water intoxification. You're told to drink lots of water to avoid dehydration at ‘raves’ but she had drunk too much and the ecstasy prevented her kidneys being able to deal with it, so the combination of the two proved fatal.

      Her parents mounted a huge campaign to raise awareness in young people that it could happen to them too. There were posters with the slogan, ‘Sorted: Just one ecstasy tablet took Leah Betts', and I think it had a big influence at the time. It certainly made me stop in my tracks.

      But then, as my mental problems worsened, and after I'd made several suicide attempts anyway, I thought ‘What the heck? If I die, I die.’ And the first time I took an ecstasy tablet, I thought, ‘You bastards! All this time society's been keeping me away from this drug and it's wonderful!’

      It was a good substance for me because I loved the universe when I took it. I felt loved-up and not at all angry or depressed. I'd stand in the club saying to Tracey, ‘I love you, I really love you,’ for hours on end. You don't feel ‘drugged’ on ecstasy – you feel as though you are thinking really clearly for the first time in ages and you are acutely aware of little things, like the curve of an earlobe or an individual melody in the music that's playing.

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