Nicol and Mooney grew up in a chaotic household in London. Their mother had six children and, Mooney says, terrible taste in men, who were unreliable at best. Her and Nicol’s father was from Saudi Arabia and left their mother when she was pregnant with Mooney. As a family, they stood out: “We were all different colours. Me and Tommy are brown, we have a white sister and the dads of my two younger brothers and sister are Jamaican.” They moved from home to home, sometimes living in refuges, escaping the violent men in their mother’s life.
And yet, despite similar upbringing, the two couldn't be more different.
Mooney lives with her husband and two boys in a stylish, modern house, but asks me not to disclose the location because she has been attacked in the past for her campaigning. She looks around and says it couldn’t be more different from her and Nicol’s childhood. Her husband, a marketing executive, has done well for himself. As has she. Mooney taught nursery and primary schoolchildren before becoming an education adviser and academic.
She's a campaigner for her brother, the recidivist career criminal who the courts finally lost patience with and imposed a 99 year sentence to give the public some reprieve from his petty crimes.
She thinks about the life Nicol could have led. “That’s what makes me so angry. The education system, the prison system; it’s all geared towards damaging the most damaged.”
As usual, no sympathy for the victims of her brother's depredations.
