In April 2015, with Roman desperately unhappy at school, Molly posted a plea on her Facebook page for his classmates’ parents to send her “beautiful son” birthday cards. “Roman doesn’t have any friends and often cries himself to sleep,” the post began. It was shared around the world. “Maybe 40,000 times,” Molly says. (Interestingly, her post breaks only the second of the Kingsford rules, by disclosing that Molly and Roman are related.)
Neither Molly nor Roman, nor his two brothers, nor his dad Ian, who says he hates social media, were prepared for what happened next. Thousands of people left birthday greetings online. At the office of a friend – whose address was hastily borrowed to protect Roman’s privacy – cards and gifts began to arrive. Molly formalised the chaos into a Cards For Roman Facebook page.
Friendships were made, and some of them have lasted – to the extent that in April, a year after his mother’s plea for help, Roman celebrated his 12th birthday with 150 friends, strangers and Facebook friends at a Nando’s in Exeter and at a second party in London. They have even met up with well-wishers in Germany.
While Molly tells this story, talking quickly because there is a lot to fit in, Roman scurries to and fro with his gifts: a Star Wars chess set from someone in the Netherlands, pictures from Brazilian schoolchildren (Molly says he is very big in Brazil), wicker baskets of cards.
But sometimes Molly worries. “A bit. I think, what happens in years to come if he Googles himself and finds ‘Lonely boy with no friends’?” Last year the local paper ran a front-page headline saying just that. “I thought, oh my God, what have I done?” Roman was with her, and comforted her. “But it is true,” he said. “I am really lonely.”
