I was running on empty.
Our children Jaxon and Dakota – both autistic – were six and three. Dakota wasn’t sleeping and my husband, Darren, had just started new shifts in a call centre.
We were both juggling work with sleep deprivation, surviving on a few hours each night.
We’d worked hard to buy our Newcastle council house but we couldn’t take the children out for meals and the lack of space as they were growing older made the situation worse.
We’d applied for a grant to help build Dakota her own bedroom but it had been refused and that was a real blow.
I don’t know how we would have coped if we hadn’t won the lottery.
One morning, I sent Darren to the shop to get some milk. He bought a scratchcard, did it in the car, then came home, saying we’d won a million.
The thing is, my brother is a practical joker and a year earlier, he’d tricked me into thinking we’d won the lottery when the numbers came up.
So I was convinced this was another wind up and kept saying to Darren, ‘Where’s the milk?’ while he was shouting, ‘We’ve won a million pounds!’
It was only when 8am passed and Darren hadn’t set off for work that I began to realise this could be true and we sat together waiting for the lottery office to open. When we went shopping for the first time after the win, we were almost scared to buy anything.
We lived in a two-bedroom former council house, with Dakota, who was three, sleeping at the bottom of our bed.
We moved to a five-bedroom house in Gosforth, and both children could have their own rooms while we built a gym.
It meant we could also afford to pay my parents to come and help care for the kids, which was the physical and emotional support I needed. Darren gave up work to help care for them, and we saw them both come on incredibly.
The children attend a special school close to our new house.
Our biggest purchases were a new Range Rover and an electric BMW i4.
Right from the start, we knew we wanted to guard our money and save it because it was our children’s future and we knew they’d need support for the rest of their lives.
Just the thought of that was really emotional.
I’ve always loved art but never had the time to do it because of work and children. I started doing my butterfly and bug pictures and sculptures after we won, and now I have a market stall.
Now, as I look at our new life as a family, I will never forget just how very lucky we were.
As told to Amanda Cable
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