The Beginning Of The End
- Sonny's Dad
- Aug 16, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 19, 2024
The 2nd of August 2013
On August the 2nd 2013 Sonny took the decision to go home and we never saw him again.
That weekend started typically I’d gone over to Dronfield to get him and driving back we stopped to stay at my folks for the evening.
The next day Sonny was starting to make noises that he didn’t want to come out with me and didn’t want to stay at my place that evening. I was annoyed by this as I felt that Sonny didn’t have any good reason to not want to stay at my place but I felt that if I pushed it too hard he would just say he didn’t want to come to Manchester at all. This is where I truly believe that what had happened previously where Sonny refused to come to Manchester and it went unresolved came back to haunt us.
It was never Sonny’s fault, it was Sarah’s – she gave too much responsibility to a 6 year old at the time and she was about to do it again with an 8 year old.
I remember calling Sonny at my parents house and telling him I’d back there soon and we’d be going out. From the get go he was saying he didn’t want to stay at my place. I tried to reason with him and understand what the issue was but he just said he didn’t want to stay.
The reason I believe it was wasn’t the reason he ultimately gave.
When he stayed at my parents house rightly or wrongly my Dad would allow Sonny to stay up as long as he wanted. It was his house so it was his rules. My Dad’s response to this was always that we only got to see Sonny for 4 days a month so he wanted to make sure Sonny had as much fun as he wanted. I suppose I understood.
Sonny loved it and over time got used to it. Like any grandchild he had the run of the place and him and my Dad we very close. I think Sonny didn’t want to come that night because maybe it wasn’t quite as much fun having to go to bed a bit earlier, I did understand that but it wasn’t a good enough reason for Sonny to fall out of his routine of not staying with me.
We spoke a number of times about this but Sonny just said didn’t want to stay, we were just going round and round. At some point he must have called his Mum and told her as I started to receive texts of Sarah saying that Sonny was upset and that he only wanted to stay at his Nana & Grandads.
I told her I would speak to Sonny about it and he can stay there that night but it needed addressing.
The next day I drove up to their house so speak to Sonny. He was a little bit sheepish as I expected and he didn’t really want to talk about it. We went out to the park to play football. I tried to tell him that it was important to spend time together and that there was no reason at all why he shouldn’t want to stay at my place, that was his home as much as it was mine.
We played long ball on the pitch and we were just swatting the ball back and forth to each other. Sonny wasn’t really engaging, he didn’t have an answer at all as to why he didn’t want to stay other that “I only want to stay at Nana & Grandads”.
The next thing I knew my phone started to ring – it was Sarah. I answered it and she said “is Sonny with you” and I said “Yes he is, we’re playing football on the field”…..she said…..”well he’s just text me and said he wants to come back to Dronfield”…….I was like “what?”. My first thought was how can that be, he’s with me how can he have messaged her. He only has a phone to play games on and we are out of the house. It was then I could see him fiddling with his phone towards the other side of the pitch and I realised….he must have still been able to connect to the Wifi from the house and he’s been messaging her whilst we were playing football.
The last words Sarah said on the phone that day was - “I’ll call you tomorrow to discuss it”…..she never did.
I put the phone down to Sarah, walked over to Sonny and said “come on then Sonny if you want to go home you can go home”.
We went back to the house, packed his stuff up – he told my parents he wanted to go home and that he’d contacted his Mum. They were both really disappointed and upset. Unbeknownst to Sonny, they knew what I’d been through to establish contact with him and he was now saying of his own accord he wanted to go home. It was all quite devastating.
We set off on our way. I’d arranged to meet with Sarah at a pub car park close to Dronfield. There was little conversation between me and Sonny. I think Sonny knew it was a big thing he was doing even if he didn’t quite fully comprehend. I didn’t talk really. I remember crying buy I had sun glasses on so Sonny couldn’t see.
Sonny said to me a few times “I’m sorry Dad”. I don’t really know what he meant by that. I think he was bright enough to understand him doing what he was doing was much bigger than he could actually comprehend. I do think his intuition was telling him it wasn’t quite a simple as just taking him home. He was only 8 though, he couldn’t really have understood the bigger picture.
When we arrived at the collection point Sarah did something that I pretty much summed Sarah up. Given how upset I was and the magnitude of what was happening, when me and Sonny got out of the car she rushed over to him with her arms spread out wide, smiling, laughing and saying “Sonny, Sonny”……almost as if she knew what was happening was the end for me and Sonny. Not a shred of respect or compassion for our position. She didn’t utter single word to me, she just turned round and walked back to the car.
And that in essence was the beginning of the end.
Me and Sarah either spoke or messaged sometime after so I could find out what was going on. She told me at some point Sonny didn’t want to stay at my apartment because he said his room was noisy. This simply could not have been true as we were on the top floor of building, Sonny’s room was at the back overlooking the Northern Quarter, it had no adjoining neighbor and all the windows were double glazed – there was no noise.
To prove this I even made an offer to Sarah – I said to prove what he’s saying isn’t true you and Sonny can come and stay in my apartment for the weekend. My girlfriend, because she is a lovely person, agreed to let Sarah stay in her home. I told Sarah we would get a hotel in the Centre for a couple of days and she and Sonny could spend time in Manchester and stay at the apartment – thus proving there is no noise there, Sarah refused – she refused because she knew Sonny was making up little stories again but didn’t suit her to get to the bottom it.
It suited Sarah for Sonny not to have a Dad or paternal grandparents and now she had the perfect excuse “it’s not me this time, its Sonny, its Sonny decision”.
If I’m completely honest, even though me and Sonny still didn’t have the bond that he had with his Mum we were still close and actually thought we were close enough that Sonny would quickly realise what he did was wrong and that he wanted to come back to Manchester to spend time with us.
As a family, this is what we all thought and we discussed it endlessly to work out what the best solution was. We all agreed that ultimately Sonny needs to want to see us. He can’t be forced into it as we will only ever end up in these situations where at the drop of a hat he can say he doesn’t want to see us anymore.
There needed to be something coming from Sonny, he needed to miss us. So we decided to wait it out and see if he wanted to come back to us. That was the only way we thought this could work long term, Sonny needed to want us.
He never did, we never got that call to say “Dad can I come and see you”. Me and Sonny did exchange messages for a while afterwards but he never asked to come to see us.
Sonny did message me that night – “Hi, this is Sonny, I just want to know that you are ok?xx”….we exchanged a couple of nice messages and I ended them with “night night xx”.
We were still exchanging messages up until the 25th of Oct 2015. Upto this point Sonny had never asked to come and see us and had not spoken to any of us since he left but we were in contact and always about Man City, I could see by his messages he was still obsessed with them.
Then they stopped, on the 30th of October I told him that I was actually over in Sheffield in a couple of week’s time and did he want to meet for lunch. There was no response. I continued to send messages but he was no longer responding to me. Then on the 17th of December 2015 I sent him this –
“Hi Sonny, do you fancy coming down one day over Xmas for a few hours – I’ll come and pick you up and maybe your Mum can come and collect you? If you fancy it and want to chat about the arrangements let me know and I’ll sort something out with your Mum”
His response was this –
“How many times do you need to know I DON’T want to see you”
And from that point on Sonny’s communication with me either completely dropped off or his responses were quite hurtful.
Since that message off Sonny I have sent him over 125 messages plus more. I have had 8 responses and they have all been quite sad to read. I still message him but he never responds but I do it just to remind him he has a Dad and his Dad will always be there for him as long as he can be.
Comments