B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

  ‘I’ve heard what’s happened to you,’ he said in what I now realize was a kind voice.

  ‘Fuck off and leave me alone,’ I shouted, immediately afraid and defensive.

  ‘What are you being like that for?’ he asked, looking genuinely taken aback. ‘I’m just offering to talk to you.’

  ‘I want to speak to a white person,’ I yelled, having no idea that what I was saying was deeply offensive and quite probably illegal.

  Incensed by my ignorant attack, he forgot all his training and launched himself at me. Filled with panic and fear and anger, seeing only Amani’s face in my mind’s eye and desperate to escape a beating, I grabbed a paperweight off the desk and hit him hard on the head with it. It must have been a powerful blow because it brought him to his knees, even though he was a big guy. As he shook his head and tried to pull himself back on to his feet, I made a run for it, clutching my bag as always, barging past Jock in my haste to make a getaway.

  ‘Oh my fuck,’ Jock said. ‘What’s he done to him?’

  He, Jake and Charlotte ran after me and eventually caught up with me in the street, hauling me round a corner and out of sight.

  ‘They’ll be calling the police to you after that,’ Charlotte said once she got her breath. I could hear sirens going and immediately feared they were coming for me. Had I killed the man?

  ‘We’ve got to get him out of London now,’ Jock said, apparently sobered by the sudden burst of activity and excitement.

  Jake seemed to be keen to get away from London and Max as well. He knew that he was going to be in for a beating himself for what had happened the previous evening, as it had been because of him we had pulled up in the Strand, giving me my chance to escape. Although I still didn’t trust Jake, I felt that it was up to Jock and Charlotte whether they let him come. They seemed to think he was part of their gang, so we all walked to the mainline station. My eyes were darting in every direction at once; I was certain I would hear a screech of tyres at any second and find myself thrown on to the back seat of a speeding Mercedes.

  ‘I know where it would be best to go,’ Jock said, pointing at the departures board.

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘We know a lot of people there, Joe. You’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Plenty of homeless people there,’ Jock went on. ‘I was there before I came to Charing Cross. I go back and forth to a squat there sometimes. Max wouldn’t know about it.’

  Once we were on the train, I immediately felt safer. We were all being pretty loud, the others still being drunk from the night before and now high on the excitement of our morning’s activities, and we were all shouting and swearing a fair bit to keep our courage up. It felt good to be part of such a close group, even if one of them was Jake, and I wanted the rest of the passengers on the train to see that I wasn’t a sad loner any more, that I was part of a gang and that I wasn’t going to allow myself to be a victim any longer.

  Chapter Ten

  The Squat

  ‘I don’t know for sure if I’ll be able to get you in here,’ Jock admitted as we lurched off the train at our destination and headed for the squat.

  By this stage the idea of living in a community had taken on the same romantic appeal for me as Charing Cross had when I was stranded on the side of the motorway slip road. I could hardly imagine how great it would be to be living with my friends in a warm, dry house of our own, surrounded by like-minded people. I believed I would feel like a king in his own castle.

  ‘Even though they know me, they can be a bit funny about new people,’ Jock went on, preparing me for the worst. ‘There aren’t that many squats around here, so people tend to want to keep them to themselves, if you know what I mean.’

  He led us through a few quite nice streets and finally came to a halt in front of a big old house which had all its windows boarded up. It looked as if it had once been an office of some sort, maybe for a dentist or a doctor or someone like that, with accommodation or flats upstairs. There was a big gravel car park in front of the house but no cars. It looked desolate and a little forbidding from the outside.

  As we crunched across the gravel, I felt my nerves building up again. I didn’t like the look of the boarded windows. They reminded me too much of being trapped in the cellar, or in Uncle Doug’s vile house, or in the bedroom of Max’s flat. I hated the idea of not being able to easily escape from any place if things turned nasty–which in my experience they always did in the end. I didn’t like the idea of being trapped anywhere, because that was when things always went worst for me. The great thing about being out on the streets had been the feeling that I could run away at any moment if danger threatened. I had no idea what was going on inside this lifeless-looking building and by the time I found out it would be too late to make a run for freedom. At the same time I did like the idea of being safe and warm indoors.

  My instinct was always to distrust everyone until they proved they were sound, but I knew at some stage I had to put my faith in someone if I didn’t want to live like a frightened animal all my life, and if I wanted to be a permanent member of any group of people. Jock had always stuck up for me whenever he was around and conscious, so I had to believe that he wouldn’t take me somewhere that was dangerous, especially with Charlotte there as well. I might not be able to trust Jake, but I felt I had to trust the other two because they had earned it. Jock had actually physically fought for me on the street the previous night and now he was bringing me to a safe place, using up favours from other people. So few people in my life had ever stuck up for me or tried to help me since Dad had died that it was hard to know how to react to someone who did. Even my brother Wally, who had tried to be kind to me during my imprisonment in the cellar, had never actually done anything about sending help once he was free of the house himself. What Jock and Charlotte were doing for me meant a lot to me.

  We went round the house to a side entrance and Jock banged on the door with some sort of pre-arranged code. A few seconds later the door opened a crack and a pair of eyes appeared on the other side.

  ‘Jock!’ The eyes turned into the house and shouted out the news. ‘It’s Jock!’

  The door opened immediately and we were swept inside amidst a bunch of new faces. Just as on the streets of London, everyone in the house seemed to know Jock and to be pleased to see him.

  ‘Come in, Jock.’

  ‘Charlotte’s here too,’ Jock said. ‘And I’ve got some mates with me.’

  I could hear girls’ voices asking one another what was going on, passing on the news that it was Jock, sounding pleased. As my eyes adjusted to the room, I saw them all rushing up to give Jock a cuddle and I noticed Charlotte getting a bit stony-faced. She needn’t have worried, because most of them were really rough. Once we were inside and I realized there was no threat to my safety, it seemed a very comfortable house. It was quite clean, despite the fact that people’s clothes were strewn over every surface, and really warm, because for some reason the electricity was still working and there was central heating.

  There seemed to be dozens of people and it was a while before I was able to sort them out and work out that there were actually about fifteen of them living in the house. The boys were less effusive than the girls in their welcome, circling Jake and me warily, obviously wondering who we were and whether we posed any sort of threat.

  ‘I hope they’re not staying here, Jock,’ one of them said when he didn’t think I was listening.

  ‘Come on,’ Jock said, grinning and slapping him on the back. ‘Give them a break.’

  ‘He’ll never let two of them in,’ the other man said.

  I discovered that the man they were talking about was called Ben. He was head of the squat, but he was out of the house when we arrived. I felt quite intimidated at the thought that there might be an authority figure who could give the thumbs up or down to us being allowed to stay. I kept quiet as the others all introduced themselves.

  ‘Don’t he fucking talk, Jock?’ one of the girls
asked.

  ‘He’s just a kid,’ Jock said and I wished I could think of something to say that would show I wasn’t.

  Ben arrived back with a girl and seemed as pleased to see Jock as everyone else had been. ‘Jocky, boy! Where have you fucking been? You haven’t been down here for months.’

  ‘I need you to do me a favour, Ben,’ Jock said once the greetings were over. ‘I need you to take two lads in for me.’

  ‘Listen, mate, there’s no room here. The rooms are all taken.’

  ‘They can sleep on the floor–they’re not bothered.’

  The two of them went outside to chat about it and at that moment a girl came into the room who didn’t look like any of the others. She looked clean and well groomed, with her wavy hair pulled up into a tight bun which showed off her face. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. The moment she walked into the room she stared at me and then smiled in a way that made my insides feel like water.

  ‘What’s your name then?’ she asked.

  ‘Joe,’ I stuttered.

  ‘Hi,’ she smiled again, staring straight into my eyes. ‘I’m Lisa.’

  Jake gave me a nudge in the ribs. ‘I think she likes you.’

  ‘Fuck off, Jake,’ I said, giving him a shove and feeling the blood rushing to my face as the girl continued to stare at me.

  I don’t know what Jock had said to Ben, but when they came back into the room he said that Jake and I could stay.

  ‘Oh, I know he’s staying,’ Lisa said, nodding towards me. ‘He’s cute. He’s my blue-eyed boy.’

  The more little comments she made about me the more annoyed I could see the other boys becoming, the darker I blushed and the more incapable I became of speaking. Now Lisa had drawn their attention to me, the other girls were starting to show an interest too.

  ‘Eyes off!’ Lisa snapped and I noticed how quickly they obeyed, as if they were frightened of her, as if she was the boss.

  That afternoon the others showed me around the area, taking me to the outreach centre, which was housed in a few conjoined Portakabins a couple of streets away. The volunteers there seemed to be more organized than those in London. There was a black guy working there called Tom, but by then Jock had explained to me why it was wrong to say anything or judge anyone by the colour of their skin. It was as if Jock was educating me in some of the social skills I had missed out on in the years when I had been kept prisoner. Now that I was thinking more clearly, I realized that this guy was really nice and nothing like Amani, and I could understand now why the Jamaican in London had taken such exception to my attitude. Tom spent a lot of time with me and taught me a lot more about the history of slavery and Africa and racism. In the end I got to trust him so much that I was able to confess what I had done to the Jamaican volunteer in London.

  ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to tell anyone. I don’t think you’ll be doing anything like that again, will you?’

  I promised solemnly that I wouldn’t.

  Whenever new people arrived in the area the staff at the centre encouraged them to have a check-up with the doctor. I had found the doctor in London really helpful about my asthma, so I was happy to do that. The first thing he did once he had written down my details was to take a blood sample to test for HIV.

  ‘I’m not saying you’ve got anything,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want to worry you, but it is a standard procedure.’

  ‘What’s HIV?’ I asked, showing yet another massive gap in my knowledge of the world around me. I guess other children soak up these sorts of facts by socializing and listening to adults as well as by going to school. By keeping me in the cellar all that time, Mum had put me about three years behind where I should have been when it came to general knowledge and an understanding of things in general. When the doctor explained what it was and how it could be spread, I started to shake with fear again. When I thought back to all the men who had raped me as a child without using any protection, not to mention Max and his punter, it seemed I was about as high risk as it was possible to be without being a junkie sharing other people’s needles. Every act that he mentioned as being high risk I remembered having had done to me at some stage, and the panic grew until I was unable to hide how agitated I was.

  ‘How long will these tests take to come back?’ I asked.

  ‘A month,’ he replied.

  ‘A month?’

  I thought I was going to pass out. How was I going to be able to live with this anxiety for that long? I was now convinced that I was going to die of HIV before I had even had a chance to find the love of my life.

  The doctor was a kind man and must have been able to see how hysterical I was, and he promised to get my test done as a priority.

  ‘I’ll let them know at the centre when I have the results and you need to come in and see me again,’ he said.

  I went back to the squat with my nerves jangling, to find Lisa eagerly awaiting my return.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lisa

  Lisa was waiting to take up where she left off with her flirting and teasing, which was throwing me into a bit of a panic. It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy her, because I did; I just didn’t know what to say to her or how to react to the way she was coming on to me. I had no experience upon which to draw, because no one had ever teased me like this before, and I had never felt attracted to anyone in this way before either.

  She was actually less than two years older than me, but she was a hundred times more confident and worldly. I could see that all the other boys in the house fancied her and tried to impress her or catch her attention, but she just brushed them off and concentrated all her attentions on me. Her interest in me obviously mystified the others as much as it mystified me. I was such a scrawny-looking dork with a ridiculous pudding-basin haircut–how could anyone fancy me? Even Charlotte was surprised by the way Lisa was coming on to me.

  ‘It’s not like her,’ she laughed. ‘She doesn’t usually give any of the boys a chance, but she really seems to like you.’

  As the evening wore on, Lisa separated me from the others, telling Jake to piss off when he didn’t take the hint quickly enough for her liking. She sat down beside me and we started talking properly in a way I had never talked to any girl before. Like the homeless kids I’d met in London, she’d had an awful childhood, constantly being raped by her dad from the age of four until finally she ran away from home. When she eventually spoke up about what was happening to her, her mother turned on her, telling her what a dirty little slag she was, as if it was all her fault. Her parents’ marriage collapsed soon after that, but it was too late for Lisa to be able to rebuild her relationship with her mother. Her experiences had made her very reluctant to sleep around like the other girls in the house. I could understand her reluctance to get physically close to anyone else completely: like me, she had only ever known it to end in violence and pain.

  ‘These others are fucking slags,’ she told me contemptuously. ‘They’ll sleep with anything in here. Stay away from them. They’ve all got sexually transmitted diseases too. You’ll catch the lot if you go anywhere near them.’

  The girls must have known how she felt about them and seemed to steer clear of her, as if wary of upsetting her. She got on better with the lads and would happily hang around with them as long as they didn’t try to touch her. The only girl she had any time for was Charlotte.

  ‘Charlotte has told me a bit about what you went through,’ she said.

  By that time I had already realized that Charlotte was the biggest gossip going, but somehow I didn’t mind that Lisa knew such private things about me, especially if it had made her feel able to open up about her own past. I felt safe with her, protected. When she found out what had happened to me in London she laid into Jake so hard I actually started to feel quite sorry for the poor lad. It seemed as if he ended up being everyone’s punch bag. Actually I didn’t think he was that bad–just weak and lacking in any moral courage. Lisa said I wa
s being too soft on him. Once she knew, she wanted him to leave the squat, and every time she saw him she couldn’t resist giving him another slap. But he still stayed around, dodging the punches, which confirmed my suspicion that he didn’t have much personal pride.

  Jake had managed to pal up with one of the other boys that first evening in the house and the guy said Jake could share his room. But no one offered me a place, which I found a bit hurtful. I couldn’t understand how Jake had got an offer straight away and I hadn’t. It was only much later that I discovered they had all been warned off suggesting I share with them.

  ‘I might have to sleep outside tonight,’ I told Lisa as it grew late and the others started peeling off to their beds.

  ‘Oh?’ she said innocently. ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘None of the others want me in their rooms.’

  ‘You’ll have to share my room then,’ she said. ‘It’s only small but we’ll be OK.’

  Small was hardly the word for it. It was pretty much a box room, the floor completely covered with a double mattress and a pile of her abandoned clothes.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked doubtfully, looking around for a corner that I could curl up in, alarms going off somewhere deep inside my head. I was happy that she was willing to be my friend like this, but not sure what was expected in return.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind, as long as you don’t try anything on.’