Dreams by Mongolita

Lily has one year left before sitting in  her GCSEs and will be taking her mock exams after Christmas. She goes to the library after school to revise and also to keep warm. Her house is cold, damp and has poor lighting which prevents her from keeping focused on her studies.

Lily was born in the poorest and most  deprived parts of Liverpool where unemployment is high and crime is the profession for many youngsters. She is the youngest of three children, all living at home. Her oldest sister Olivia finds it difficult to keep jobs longer than four weeks. Her brother, Leo, has no ambition either and has never worked a day in his life. He is the favourite son and he does no wrong in his mum's eyes. He is always asking for money to keep his drinking and smoking habits.  Susan, her mum, cleans public toilets early mornings and does the washing in the afternoon for the residents at a nursing home. George, her father, also has two jobs. He is the washer upper at the Ship Inn pub. His second job is to sweep the roads and empty the waste bins in the town centre. Despite their efforts, they can't make ends meet. 

She most certainly doesn't want to follow the path of Olivia and Leo nor have a thankless job for life like her parents do. So she is determined to get excellent results on her GCSEs despite the challenges she faces to study. She likes Maths and Science, one of the subjects essential to study medicine. She must obtain high grades to be accepted at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, the best teaching hospital there is in the country to study medicine.  

Lily’s passion and interest in the human body started at an early age back in primary school when her teacher brought a diagram into school to teach the class Biology. She borrowed many books from her teacher thereafter to learn more about human anatomy. And that's how her dream to study medicine began.

Lily is an organised, studious, independent and determined young girl, totally opposite to her siblings. She is well aware that her parents cannot afford to help her financially with her studies. She works in McDonald's on weekends and will save some of her wages for the university and some will go towards housekeeping to help her mum. 

This particular Saturday after finishing her shift she goes food shopping for the family. It is a half an hour walk before she gets home carrying the heavy shopping but she doesn't mind doing it to help out in the house. As she walks through the door, she sees her bedroom door wide open and immediately thinks of her money. Her heart skips a beat, she throws the shopping to the floor and runs to her bedroom, lifts her mattress up and exactly what she feared happened, all her money saved for the last six months had gone!! Only one name came to her mind: Leo.