After staying with Trixie for about two years, they moved into a flat in the middle of Villalonga as Alex started to feel lonely.
“We used to sit at a cafe quite often and the school was right next to it,” he recalled. “I’d hear the school bell ring, the kids would come out of school and it really made me miss it. I walked up to my mum and I cried my eyes out because you know, I’d had enough.”
Then it was on to France, with Melanie’s goal of finding them a permanent community.
Alex describes moving around from place to place as “tiring” and “repetitive”. “I wanted to have some permanence,” he said.
Alex worked to help support his mother. “I was made to work at 14 and she was perfectly healthy to work. And she never did,” he said.
He recalled that his mother was so engrossed in her spiritual work that he needed to earn money to pay for her rent and get food for the family.
Melanie never took a break from her work, Alex said, adding: “It’s not normal is it? You know it messes with people’s heads quite a bit.”
Then aged 15, he moved to a campsite in Belesta in the Pyrenees, south-western France, but without as much work in the local area, he said he got by with just one simple meal of pasta and sauce on its own for some time.
After a period of tension due to Alex challenging Melanie’s theories, she did not allow him to live in her caravan and he was forced to spend six months sleeping in a tent.
“It was winter time – raining, it was wet, it was cold all the time. And my mum was living in this campervan with heating, water and electric – [yet she] would rather me sleep outside in a tent.”
