Jeanne and William Morecombe had spent seventeen years in a state of ongoing panic.
The marriage of the family wealth of Jeanne Bridges and the entrepreneurial fortune of William Morecombe meant the happy couple could settle into a life without any real problems. They had a mansion of a house, several staff to run it, and many friends with similar wealth. When Jeanne became pregnant with first Ben and then Oliver, her life was hardly any different. Even the births of her sons were without challenge.
A surprise third pregnancy raised the couple’s hopes for a daughter to round out their family. The boys were in Junior Primary when they excitedly welcomed their new sister Alicia Mary Morecombe into the family. Everyone cooed over the new baby’s raspberry curls and remarked on her startling stone-grey eyes.
But where their sons had been simple to manage, Alicia was wild and unruly from birth. As a baby she screamed all hours of the day and night. She pushed herself up in her highchair as a six-month-old, limbering up for the chance to walk, then she walked at ten months. At two years old she was climbing, opening locked doors and going missing only to be found fast asleep in unexpected places, like under her cot or in a linen basket in the laundry. She spent almost the whole of three strapped into her pram whenever the family went out, for her own safety and for her parents’ sanity.
By the time she was three and a half she began defiantly writing her name, LEISHA. No-one could convince her that her name was anything else or that it was spelt any other way, and her parents began to understand that their young daughter was plain odd.
Strangely, Leisha’s favourite lesson in Reception at her exclusive school was Religious Education. She loved the quiet of the chapel and the lack of any expectation of output, but most of all she craved the thrill of smoting, the drama of pillars of salt, and the terror of lion’s dens. When she discovered the Ten Commandments, she sat for hours considering them with her five-year-old brain. It seemed to her the grown-ups had never heard of these rules, making her do things on a Sunday when it was the day of rest, saying Oh God! and Jesus! frequently in spite of blasphemy being outlawed, and her father complaining sorely about Grandma every day when he should be respecting his elders.
Leisha wasn’t sure why you shouldn’t cover your neighbour’s house (cover it with what?) and adultery still confused her. Her parents had responded to her question that it was something adults might do, not wanting to explain the intricacies of it to their tiny daughter. Leisha decided kids should not commit childery, although what it might be still intrigued her. She saw countless incidents where adults stepped over the lines drawn by Moses’ commandments, but with God on her side, she was pleased to find a flawless way to take control of her life, which up till now had been restrained by pointless rules, annoying pram buckles, and frazzled adults.
Intrigued by the lack of religion in her family’s Easter and Christmas festivities, she asked for a Bible for her seventh birthday and her parents, believing this was a good sign, presented her with a gift-wrapped Study Bible a few weeks later. She spent many summer days leafing through the thin pages, stopping here and there to look at an interesting passage. The words were sometimes difficult, but her parents were keen to assist, hoping this would be a turning point in improving her behaviour.
Joni Page 