Once-missing Alex Batty has said he is in the early stages of a romance after returning home from Europe where he had lived with his mother who allegedly kidnapped him aged 11.
The British teenager revealed he has already been on several dates after making his surprise return to the UK in December after six years on the run with his mother Melanie, 43, and his grandfather David, 64, first in Spain and later in France.
‘I’m talking to someone at the moment,’ Alex told the Mirror and said he hopes to get a good job to buy a house before getting married.
‘I want to get a decent job so that when I get a wife and kids, they won’t have to worry about money like I did,’ he added.
Alex is turning 18 on Tuesday and will be celebrating with his grandmother and legal guardian Susan Caruana, 68, her new husband, his uncle and his cousin over a pub meal.
Alex Batty (pictured) revealed he has already been on several dates after making his surprise return to the UK in December after six years on the run with his mother Melanie, 43, and his grandfather David, 64, first in Spain and later in France
Alex is pictured with his mother and grandfather after allegedly being abducted when he was 11
Alex told Good Morning Britain he began to have doubts about the nomadic lifestyle favoured by his mother by the time he was 14 (pictured: Alex with his grandmother)
But the teenager said he will go on a bar crawl to mark the occasion tonight and already enjoyed a vodka-lemonade-filled night out after he returned to England.
Having reconnected with many of his old school friends, Alex previously said he plans to get ‘absolutely hammered’ at his birthday celebration.
Alex said he won’t mind if his mother and his grandfather can’t contact him on his birthday out of fear of giving up their location while they are facing an international child abduction probe.
The teenager said he does not want to see his mother and grandfather behind bars and that his mother ‘did it out of love’, referring to her taking him abroad to Europe when he was 11.
‘I hope the police don’t find them. I love them both but if I don’t see them again it’s not a big deal. You can love someone and not talk to them,’ he told the Mirror.
Alex also said that if he could tell his mother and grandfather anything right now, it would be that he is alright and hopes they are too.
Since being back in the UK, Alex has settled in well back in Oldham with his grandmother and started a computer programming course as he hopes to become a computer software engineer.
He also plans on getting his first tattoo once he turns 18, saying he is thinking of a rose tattooed under his left ear – ‘but I might get something in a more hidden area for job purposes’,’ he added.
His mother Melanie took on the name ‘Rose’ while on the run, but Alex, who went by Zack Edwards, said the tattoo he was considering had nothing to do with his mother.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain in January, Alex said he will ‘probably not’ ever see his mother or grandfather again.
It came as his mother Melanie, 43, told friends she had to ‘keep running’ as she went into hiding with her father, David, 64.
On January 3, Alex revealed more details of his nomadic lifestyle, saying it was ‘very, very boring’ due to being so isolated from people his own age.
Alex still thinks and speaks in French and said it was still weird socialising with peers.
Alex Batty, 17, has now returned to normal life in Oldham with his grandmother after six years abroad
Alex disappeared during a holiday to Spain with his mother Melanie and grandfather David
Alex is pictured with his mother Melanie, left, and her father David Batty, middle
The teenager, who wants to go to university to study computer science, said he wants to be a computer software engineer
‘I’ve found it difficult since I got back talking to people my age,’ he told the Mirror, adding: ‘It still doesn’t feel real that I’m back. It’s still not really sunk in. I think it’ll probably hit me sometime soon, but it hasn’t yet.’
While on the run, Alex said he often didn’t have access to the internet and avoided social media out of fear of being found. Even if he did have a good internet connection, the teenager only used it to watch Youtube.
‘The only thing I miss is that because we were so isolated, I could listen to music blasting while singing along to it and no one would be bothered by it,’ Alex said.
Meanwhile his mother and grandfather face an international child abduction probe.
‘That’s why I didn’t come home sooner. All I worried about was them getting locked up,’ Alex said, speaking to Good Morning Britain on January 3.
He told how after first being taken to live his new life with his mother he was excited to be back with her – but after a few years he realised it was ‘not the best for me’.
‘In the past six years I’ve met one maybe two people my own age who I’ve made friends with,’ Alex said.
He described nomadic life as ‘boring, to say the least’ and ‘very isolated from my own peers’.
The teenager first discussed returning to the UK with his mother at the age of 16, but said it was a split-second decision to leave when he escaped early in December, leaving a note to his mother on a table.
‘It was a normal day. To be honest I didn’t think I was going to [leave], it was a very very quick decision for it to be that day.
‘I made food for everyone, played it chill of course and then around 10.30pm I wrote the note and by 12pm I was gone.’
After finding out Alex had fled, his mother reportedly made a late-night dash from her remote hideaway in France and is said to have travelled to Spain.
Alex, from Oldham, was 11 when he did not return from a holiday to Spain
Alex flew to Malaga in September 2017 before being taken to a ‘spiritual community’ in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Investigators believe Alex escaped the rural community in southern France and spent days trekking across the French Pyrenees before being picked up by a trucker who took him to a police station in Revel, near Toulouse
Alex said he was tired of his nomadic lifestyle and wanted to return home to see his gran
Alex has been living a nomadic lifestyle with his mother (pictured) for the past six years
The 17-year-old made his escape at midnight on December 11 when his mother Melanie was asleep in bed.
He was found by a delivery driver after he had walked for 22 miles over two days, drinking from mountain springs and sleeping in the woods.
Alex told the programme he began to have doubts about the nomadic lifestyle favoured by his mother when, by the time he was 14, he took jobs in construction, painting and renovating houses in order to earn money to eat.
He was taken across the border from Spain to France where they joined various spiritual ‘communes’ over the years.
‘We stayed in a lot of caravans and we stayed in a lot of houses, always up mountains hours away from any kind of village or anything like that,’ he said.
‘One day I just thought, ok, I can’t take this anymore. I knew that everything was already kind of in place for them to leave where we were so if I were to have left they would be gone by the time the police arrived.
She described how she feared she might never see Alex again, continuing: ‘I used to think about Alex every single day and that was painful. But now I won’t think that way anymore.’
Ms Caruana added: ‘It’s amazing. It’s amazing to wake up in the morning and not have that deep pain the my stomach.’
Remarkably, she told GMB she could forgive her daughter: ‘I don’t want them to go to prison, that’s the last thing that I want.’
The transition back to normal life has been challenging since his arrival back to the UK just before Christmas – celebrating it properly for the first time in six years.
‘I’ve had one friend in the past six years that’s been my age. Everyone else that I’ve known has been a lot older than me, so I’m very comfortable talking to adults but with children my age it’s completely different.’
But Alex said he is enjoying being back in the cold and wet British weather, adding: ‘I love the rain’.
Alex Batty (pictured left) with his mother Melanie and grandfather David six years ago
Alex Batty spoke out about how he escaped in the dead of night and walked for miles
Gite de la Bastide in the part of the Pyrenees where teenager Alex was living
The now 17-year-old is ‘fearful of the glare of publicity’ since returning to the UK
Isolated from people his own age and having not attended school since he went missing in October 2017, Alex had become disillusioned by his life forced upon him by his ‘anti-government’, ‘anti-vax’ parent.
The teen even tried to join a top French school earlier this year to follow his dreams of one day working in IT. But this failed when staff became suspicious and called the police.
During his time living off the grid, Alex had convinced his mother to move to a rented farmhouse rather than living in the mountains.
He was weary of constantly moving house and working in exchange for food and boarding, and said he only made one friend his own age during his six years away – a Spanish girl he met in a café.
She is said to have forced Alex to live in a ‘spiritual community’ instead of returning to his grandmother, who is his legal guardian.
The teenager added he learned languages by himself and studied maths and computing from textbooks but didn’t attend school.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed in January that it had launched a criminal investigation into his alleged kidnapping.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk