I suppose we were taken to Brighton police station. I didn’t recognize the building, for obvious reasons, but I remember that everything inside was pale grey or blue and so shiny. The desks, walls and floors all had that nasty, hard gloss finish. They took Mum one way and me another – and Mr Panda somewhere else entirely. A policewoman came over and showed me into a small office with a desk and two chairs. As soon as Mum was out of sight, the floodgates opened. Mum had been so scared at the flat and I was desperate to see her again, to give her a hug. That would make everything all right.
The policewoman was lovely though. She put her arm around me, said she’d find me a nice cup of juice and told me everything would be all right. I had no reason to doubt her.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked.
‘She’s helping my colleagues.’ The WPC’s smile was warm. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘Helping them do what?’
‘Oh, they’re just asking your mother a few questions, that’s all.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
My police babysitter couldn’t have looked more pleased.
‘Fire away,’ she said.
‘How did you know to look in the panda?’
The policewoman chuckled. ‘Oh, it wasn’t any magic, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ she said. ‘One of the officers was peering through the letterbox and saw everything.’
‘Oh,’ I said. What else was there to say?
We sat there in silence for a couple of minutes. Every time I tried to say something, the policewoman looked over from the other side of the desk, then away again as no words came out. Finally, I said, ‘I’ve got another question.’
‘Okay.’
‘Will we be allowed to leave soon?’
‘Yes, very soon.’
‘You won’t lock Mum up?’
‘Not today, no.’
That was all I’d wanted to hear.
‘Good.’
The policewoman smiled again. I could almost see a thought forming in her mind.
‘How would you like to have your fingerprints taken?’
Fingerprints? Like a criminal? I’d heard about that. That was how the police caught robbers and baddies.
‘Yes please!’
‘Come on then,’ she said, and led me out of the room.
It had been terrifying being driven through town to the police station. Partly because I didn’t know what we’d done wrong. Mainly, though, because I was worried about what would happen to Mum. On the way home it was a different matter. I couldn’t wait to tell Mum all about my fingerprints and she was lapping it up. When I showed her the black smudges on my thumb, she held her own hand up.
‘Snap!’
I hadn’t seen Mum laugh like that in ages. She didn’t seem tired for once, or distracted. I didn’t know what the police had said, but it was good to have her back.
The mood soon altered when we got home. Mum had called Granny and Grandpa from the station and they were waiting in their car as we pulled up. From the looks on their faces, they weren’t happy. As soon as we stepped through the front door Grandpa wanted to know the full story. They were whispering on the other side of the lounge, but I could tell they were talking about the package and the panda. I think Mum tried to deny everything at first because her dad raised his voice.
‘So the police came all the way round here for that tiny little packet?’ Grandpa said.
Mum nodded.
‘They sent four officers for that?’
Another nod.
‘Well, it seems a bit heavy-handed to me,’ he concluded. ‘Are you sure you’re telling me the full story?’
Mum was adamant, but you could tell from Grandpa’s face that he didn’t believe her.
‘It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut,’ I heard him tell Granny as they left.
Like so many things, it was only years later that I appreciated how deeply this latest episode must have upset Mum’s parents. After three or so years of relative quiet they’d dared to hope she was going to settle down and, if she couldn’t win Daughter of the Year, at least be a responsible adult at last. Apparently not. But what was she doing getting involved with the police? Hadn’t she brought enough shame on the family? And why did it have to be drugs?
This was all kept from me. I knew nothing of the marijuana Mum had been smoking openly around the house for months. I knew nothing of her history with Yellow Dollies, or of how she’d sworn to Grandpa years ago that drugs would never be a problem again. All I saw were the angry exchanges between them, and that just made me sad.
The fallout from the police’s visit didn’t end at the froideur between Mum and her parents. A short while later, maybe a couple of days, there was another knock on the door. I swear my heart stopped.
The police have come to take Mum again!
Then I noticed Mum wasn’t surprised. I didn’t know if she was expecting the call or whether she just had nothing to hide this time. There was no panic, no rushing around trying to flush things down the toilet. Just a resigned sigh as she made her way over to the door.
The relief I felt when she flung it open and I saw a man and a woman in suits waiting for her. They don’t look like police. But I wasn’t sure. I’d seen people in normal clothes when I was at the station.
The visitors came in. They said hello to me and Mum explained they’d come to talk about me. Specifically, why I wasn’t going to school.
It was all pretty good-natured. Mum made them tea and nodded a lot while they spoke to her. I didn’t follow most of it. When they finally left, everyone was smiling. The second the door closed, however, Mum’s face changed.
‘Pack your things,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving.’
Looking back, I can’t decide if I was spectacularly dim or just a normal kid. I think it was the latter. We’re all brought up to think that Mother knows best, aren’t we? Whatever happened, that’s genuinely what I thought. She was the one constant in my life. Of course I was going to believe what she said and support what she did. Even when it was obviously so ridiculous . . .
We didn’t have much, but when you have to cart it all onto a bus, it can seem like a hell of a lot. We must have made two trips to our new home in May Road. All I really remember is that by the time we’d finished, I was standing in a new hallway in a new block in a new part of town. The landlady had just left and Mum smiled as she put her latest front-door key down on the little kitchen table.
‘Home sweet home, Cathy.’
She never explained why we’d run away so suddenly, but I guessed it had something to do with our smart-looking visitors. What had they said to her that made her so scared? And why did they say I had to go to school? That was up to Mum, wasn’t it? She was in charge.
That’s genuinely what I thought. It just didn’t enter my mind that Mum would be flouting the law. To this day, I still don’t know why she was so against me going. Was it laziness? Or had her own experiences scarred her so much she didn’t want to put me through it? All I can really surmise is that by disappearing from our old address, she hoped the social workers – as I learnt they were called – wouldn’t be able to find us. But, God, I wish I knew what she was thinking.
Please tell me there was a plan!
Our new place was a split-level basement bedsit, although jargon like that meant nothing to me at the time, of course. All I knew was it had stairs and passages and doors – three great ingredients for adventures! You stepped inside the front door straight into the lounge, where a large open fire offered the flat’s only means of heating. There were a couple of chairs already there and a sofa which turned into a bed. That was where Mum slept. I had my own space – under the stairs.
It sounds awful when I tell people now, but I was so thrilled at the time. I had armchair cushions as a mattress and plenty of room for me, my reclaimed panda and Mushka to cuddle up together. I’ve always hated sleeping in the dark, so Mum unscrewed – or maybe just snapped off – the angled doo
r of the cupboard and hung a curtain instead, which I could have open or shut depending on my mood. I was so happy in there. It felt like I was in a tent.
The adventures didn’t stop there. Rising from the lounge were a few stairs and suddenly you were up by the toilet and kitchen. Best of all was a back door leading out into a garden full of beautiful red poppies. That was my secret passageway.
The garden being in full bloom makes me think we moved in warm weather. Coastal summer nights can still be chilly though. Unfortunately, Mum couldn’t afford to buy coal for the fire. Ever resourceful, she got hold of all the junk mail that shared blocks of flats accumulate by the front door and set light to those. When that died down I could sense her eyes scanning the lounge, looking for something else. Luckily I didn’t own any thing suitable, otherwise I got the feeling it would have been sacrificed. Drawing a blank, Mum said, ‘Come on, we’re going out.’
It was pitch black outside. I probably should have been in bed long ago.
‘Where are we going?’
Mum smiled and her whole face lit up.
‘We’re going hunting!’
That was all the encouragement I needed. Our prey, however, didn’t quite live up to its billing. For the next half an hour we traipsed up and down the local roads, looking in bins, going through gardens, scrabbling around for anything that looked like it might burn. Finally, laden with boxes and branches and bundles of newspaper, we struggled back home and, a few minutes later, cuddled up together in front of a lovely roaring fire.
That became another of our little rituals. I liked it. We got to spend time together and always had a hug at the end. Even when Mum was too ill or tired to come out scavenging, I would happily do it on my own, trawling the night-time streets without a care in the world, knowing we would be all toasty together soon enough.
Just writing these words makes me feel terrible. No one in their right mind would allow a six-year-old out at night to scrabble for sticks in dark parks and poorly lit streets. And that’s the tragedy of it all. Mum obviously wasn’t in her right mind. I just didn’t realize.
You can only live with what you’re given and kids are supremely adaptable. I honestly never noticed anything wrong with the way we carried on. We did what we did. There was nothing for me to compare it to. As far as I knew, every house in the country got by the same way. There must have been hundreds of us up and down the length and breadth of Great Britain, collecting kindling at night. I honestly thought that, if I thought about it at all. I never once suspected it was anything other than normal.
Staring at the fire was pretty much the only entertainment we had. We didn’t have a TV or radio, although at some point Mum did take delivery of her old record player and boxes of LPs from Granny’s house. I was really excited about it, but Mum wouldn’t let me play it while Granny was there. So, as soon as she’d gone, I grabbed the plug and shoved it into the wall. A large button marked ‘on’ seemed the obvious place to start, so I pressed that and—
Nothing.
Confused, I looked at Mum, who was just staring. Her eyes looked sad.
‘Sorry, love, there’s no electricity.’
So that’s why she wouldn’t let me touch it in front of Granny.
I was really disappointed, but not for long. Feeling sorry for myself is not in my nature. I hadn’t had a record player that morning and, to all intents and purposes, I didn’t have one now either. I was no worse off.
Evenings, then, were spent staring at the red flames burning whatever trash I’d managed to reclaim. Mum would read or doze or smoke her sweet cigarettes, staring into space, just thinking. Sometimes I would sew or knit or crochet, drawing on those life skills Granny had insisted on teaching me. There was nothing I liked more than adding another few feet to my latest Doctor Who-style scarf or weaving a few woolly pom-poms for the cat to play with. A few months after moving in, our flat was full of the things.
I also began to play cards. Typical of what I recall as their suburban Jerry and Margo from The Good Life aspirations, Granny and Grandpa had regular whist or bridge nights at their home, attended by Grandpa’s boss, colleagues and friends. The more I stayed at their house, the more card games I picked up. Granny was the real enthusiast and was happy to give me my own deck and a couple of ‘teach yourself’ books.
Mum was never interested, so it was just as well that Granny had shown me half a dozen different versions of solitaire. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed playing against myself. I loved mastering any new skill. Then, once the fire had died, the light went with it, so that was bedtime. Life was pretty simple.
Without paying the electricity or gas bills, there wasn’t much in the kitchen that worked. This didn’t seem to bother Mum, though. As I’ve said, she never really had an interest in food. Apart from our treats at the café in Preston Park, I don’t really remember her eating at all. She was much more comfortable with a cigarette in her hand. It’s only now that I think: but why didn’t she feed me?
Mum must have thought she was being clever by not letting Granny discover our lack of power supply when she brought the record player over. It turned out that Granny wasn’t fooled for a minute. The next day there was a knock on the door and, before I could panic, I heard her voice. When I opened the door she was holding two foil parcels.
‘I’ve brought your lunch, dear.’
Wow!
I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I smelled the warm pie cooked that morning in Saltdean and transported so lovingly the six miles to our house. Mum thanked her, but she didn’t eat hers, despite Granny’s best efforts.
‘Well, I’ll wrap it up and you can have it later,’ she said.
In the end, I think I had it for tea.
Granny popping round with meals wrapped in foil or cling film became a regular occurrence. She never stayed long, just dropped them off and vanished. It was really lovely of her, especially going to such an effort to keep the food as warm as possible. I couldn’t even remember eating a hot meal at home before that. Not that it bothered me. It was just another one of those things.
Granny didn’t come every day. I think Mum told her not to. She’d say she could cope. She couldn’t though. If Granny didn’t appear I’d go out on my bike and see what I could forage or scrounge from the other kids. When that didn’t work I turned my attention to the sweet shops. It’s amazing how many sweets you can stuff in your pockets while the shopkeeper’s turned the other way. It was totally wrong, I knew that. But if I didn’t have those sweets I wouldn’t be eating that day.
Soon the local shops became wise to my tricks. As is so often the case, it was getting greedy that proved my downfall. I remember at Easter really craving these little chicks made out of pipe cleaners at the sweet shop. Even though it was the chocolate I really needed to fill my rumbling tummy, I couldn’t leave without making a grab for one of the wire toys – which is when the shopkeeper’s hand landed on mine.
He shouted at me, but I’d seen him do it a dozen times to other kids. I wasn’t the only one with sticky fingers, although I might have been the only one who needed to steal to eat.
I was never banned from any of the shops that caught me – I think they expected all children to have a go at shoplifting – but I quickly realized I needed to think of something else. So, with Granny’s help, I went shopping for groceries.
‘Mum’s going to make a roast,’ I told her.
That made Granny so happy I didn’t dare tell her the truth: that there would be a roast – but I would be the one cooking it.
That afternoon, while Mum slept, I disappeared into the tiny kitchen and began peeling vegetables, the way I’d seen Granny do it. I took out this large piece of pork and laid it all neatly on a baking tray. I covered it with some grimy oil that looked like it hadn’t been touched for years, then shoved it all in the oven. I didn’t know what number to turn the dial to, so I span it all the way round. Granny’s roasts normally took a couple of hours, so I decided to come back and check then.
I really thought it was that simple. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing really. I didn’t know if the vegetables needed the same time as the meat or if they went together or even how long the meat required in the first place. It was all guesswork, based on meals Granny had cooked for me down the years – so it was obviously never going to end well.
My biggest mistake, I realized some time later, was not appreciating that the cooker ran on electricity. It didn’t matter what number I set the temperature to; with no power, that oven wasn’t going to do anything. But I didn’t know that. I’d never seen Mum use it, so I didn’t know lights should have come on. It didn’t even occur to me that it should have been getting hot.
Two hours after I’d put it in, I called Mum to the little table and proudly served her uncooked meat and raw carrots. It was disgusting. Bless Mum, though, she ate a few of the veg. But I was mortified. All that effort and I couldn’t get it right. I’d only wanted to feed Mum and I’d failed.
Not every flat we lived in had an indoor toilet, but May Road did, which was lucky because Mum spent a lot of time in there being sick. Sometimes her illnesses came out of the blue. On other occasions they followed a night out. Either way, I would stand next to her with a cold flannel or just hugging her or sometimes crying to see her in distress. I didn’t like it.
Mum’s nights out weren’t as regular as they had been when she was working, but they were a lot more random. They went on for longer too. I watched her dabbing some perfume on one night and studying her face in the mirror, and guessed something was going on. I caught her eye in the mirror.
‘Am I going to Granny’s?’ I asked.
Bending down, she gave me a squeeze. ‘You’re a big girl now. You’ll be all right.’
Yes, I thought proudly, I will.
I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t disappointed. I certainly didn’t feel abandoned or anything like that. As much as I loved staying at Granny’s bungalow, with all its home comforts, nothing beat the thrill of just being at home. Everything I had – and it wasn’t much – was here. Most importantly, though, I wanted to be there when Mum came home. Just in case she needed my help.
Escape From Evil Page 5