by Joe Layburn
“Don’t take no notice of her, she’s had a bad day. You buy yourself a Big Mac with this.”
She gave me the money and a strained little smile.
“But promise, darling, not booze or drugs.”
I started to speak, but she’d already turned away.
The pair of them clattered off down the road in search of some pub or wine bar where they would no doubt drink till they were ‘off their faces’. That was one of my dad’s expressions, but I decided to put any thought of him straight out of my mind.
Not that there was much room there suddenly.
You know the feeling you get when someone’s watching you? When you’re telepathic, you sense if people are tuning in to your thoughts, earwigging on your private conversations.
I had that feeling now and it made me nervous. Whoever it was had not bothered to announce themselves in the usual friendly way. They were just lurking beneath the surface of my mind like a crocodile in a pool.
Finally, he spoke. It was a strange voice, deep and brooding.
She shouldn’t have talked to you like that, Georgie. Women like her have got no class.
Who are you? I asked.
I felt queasy suddenly. My temples throbbed.
You can call me Jack, like Jack the Ripper, he said. I’m hoping very much that we will soon be able to meet.
MELISSA
“So, who is this Jack the Ripper?” I asked Fatima.
“Well, unless he’s come back from the dead, he’s not the serial killer from Victorian times who murdered women all around Whitechapel.”
I shuddered. Fatima really knew how to spook me out.
“Seriously, you think some serial killer has come back to life?”
She did that thing she does with her hands where it looks like she’s throwing confetti up into the air.
“Melissa, you exasperate me. You’ve watched so much rubbish on those cable TV channels it’s messed up your head.”
I just smiled. I never minded Fatima teasing me. Now that we were real friends - not just thought-friends - and I was round her house all the time, I felt so happy. There wasn’t anything she could have said that would have made me slip back into my bad old ways. At school, though, I still hadn’t lost my reputation for what Kele in our class called “amazing acts of violence and destruction”.
“Innit, you’re worried about Georgie?” I said.
“Of course I am. It’s been so hard for him on the streets. And now there’s this Jack. . .”
“So why don’t you just tell his dad where he is and he can pick him up?”
She frowned and it was like a little cloud had passed across the sun.
“Melissa, you’re not to let Georgie know that his father phoned me. If they are ever to be reconciled, Georgie must find his own way back to him.”
“It’s not like you can be there to stop bad stuff happening to him, though.”
“Melissa, I trust Georgie to keep himself safe. He’s an amazing boy. Brave and resourceful.”
I just clicked my tongue.
“But you did sort of lie to Georgie’s dad. He thinks that Georgie is staying with people you know.”
“I didn’t say staying with. I said he’s being looked after by someone I know.”
“Yeah, but what if this Jack is pure evil? Like, there’s a programme I saw where this vampire can shape-shift and one minute he’s like a raven, or a crow or something and then he’s a bat, but always he’s this totally evil super spirit and there’s no good in him at all and no human can ever fight against him.”
Fatima shook her head slowly.
“Melissa, there is a lot of evil in this world and it’s done by human beings, not by vampires who can turn into blackbirds. Human beings can be stopped.”
“I said raven or crow, not blackbird.”
“OK, Melissa, whatever.”
HYUN-MI
I’ve actually met the Dear Leader in the flesh, or “in the flab”, as my father put it. My father was his personal doctor - well, one of a whole team of them. The Dear Leader’s health was far too important to be entrusted to just one physician.
Because my father travelled with the Dear Leader on his endless trips around the country - inspecting our million-strong army, visiting factories and farms - he got to see what was really going on in North Korea. He also got to see the Dear Leader in his underpants.
“Doctors are forced to look at sights that no mortal should have to see,” he’d tell me with a wink.
If you talked to my grandmother about the Dear Leader’s physique, she would giggle like a young girl and wave her bony hands around like fluttering birds.
“Oh, he must be a weightlifter, he’s so muscular and strong. And you know he is our country’s greatest ever boxer. He once went into a ring with the nation’s ten best fighters and beat them all at once.”
When grandmother babbled on like this, my father would put down the medical book he was reading.
“Stop filling the girl’s head with nonsense, Mother. He’s a fat old fool who couldn’t even win a fight against you. In any case, he’s got a heart condition, though I admit it was a considerable surprise to me to find he actually has a heart.”
Grandmother would simply listen to this blasphemous talk then give a toothless smile. As much as she idolised the Dear Leader, she loved my father more.
“Your father is such a joker,” she would tell me. “Next he will try to tell you that our Dear Leader is not the world’s greatest golfer.”
She smiled sweetly at my father.
“He is not the world’s greatest golfer, Mother. Do you have any idea how rare it is in golf to shoot a hole in one, yet our Dear Leader claims to score three or four of them every time he plays.”
“It shows how fine an athlete he is.”
“It shows that he’s a liar and the people he surrounds himself with are too scared to contradict him.”
Grandmother suddenly looked serious. Her paper-thin skin was still smooth despite her age, but she was frowning now.
“You would be wise to stay in his favour yourself, dearest one.”
It made me wonder if other families in Pyongyang, our capital city, ever had such conversations. Were they too frightened to criticise Comrade Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader, in case the secret police kicked in their doors and dragged them off to prison? Or did they just believe all the propaganda, however unbelievable it seemed?
Of course, I knew well enough never to say bad things about Kim Jong-il in public. I’d always join in when the children at my school were praising his superhuman feats. And no one sang more lustily than me when it was time for a chorus of No Motherland Without You, our country’s favourite song. You really want to hear it?
Even if the world changes hundreds of times,
People believe in you, Comrade Kim Jong-il,
We cannot live without you,
Our country cannot exist without you,
Oh. . . Our comrade Kim Jong-il,
Our country cannot exist without you.
You could never get away from that awful tune. It blared from loudspeakers on the city streets. Every night it would sound from televisions in the Pyongyang apartments where I and the rest of the country’s elite lived our fortunate lives. By fortunate, I mean compared to everyone else in North Korea. But we were far from free.
OMAR
I can totally see why Sadiq freaked out. He was upstairs in our bedroom, supposedly doing his coursework for uni, but really just daydreaming and staring out of the window. Suddenly two police cars pulled up on the street below and guess who got out of one of them? None other than George Smith, the ex-leader of the British Fascist Party - the man Sadiq and his former friends once plotted to kill. My big brother’s terrorist mates had fled the country and he’d just begun to hope that his past might not catch up with him.
The police came and banged on our front door and Sadiq was almost wetting himself. He couldn’t work out whether to lock himself in th
e bathroom or hide in a wardrobe. But it turned out the police and Georgie’s dad weren’t there to see Sadiq. What they wanted was a word with our sister.
By the time Sadiq had composed himself enough to tell the police he didn’t recognise their authority, and to denounce George Smith as a little Hitler who wasn’t welcome in our home, Fatima had got Melissa making everyone a cup of tea.
The police were all crammed into our front room on the rickety chairs and the beaten-up old sofa. George Smith was perched on one of the arms looking world-weary. Even so, he was smiling as though he couldn’t quite believe he was sitting down for a cuppa with a bunch of British Bangladeshis.
“Sadiq, shut up please and help Melissa in the kitchen,” said Fatima. To my surprise, Sadiq did exactly what he was told.
For a while it was like no one could remember exactly why they were there. The big clock on the wall ticked loudly. People coughed and cleared their throats as if they were about to speak. My sister, who had this strange look on her face, didn’t seem to want to help the situation. I kept hoping my parents would return. But they were probably browsing in one of the pound shops where my father loved to look for bargains.
Finally, George Smith began talking in that rasping voice I remembered from Cable Street. It had this dangerous edge to it, like some of the voices you hear when you walk past pubs late at night.
“So, Fatima, we meet again.”
He seemed to find this funny and his famous blue eyes sparkled.
“Sounds like a line from a film or something,” he said. “Like I’m Batman and you’re Cat Woman.”
Fatima touched her fingertips together.
“You wouldn’t be Batman, Mr Smith. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Touché, Fatima,” he chuckled. “Well, we may have to agree to differ on who the good guys are. The thing is, I’m here to ask for your help.”
He swivelled round to face one of the police officers.
“That’s how I want to keep this. Just a friendly chat, not an interrogation or anything.”
“You shouldn’t really say anything until her parents get back,” the policeman muttered.
Fatima shook her head slowly.
“I’m not your friend, Mr Smith, but I am a friend of Georgie’s. If helping you doesn’t hurt him, I’m prepared to listen.”
Smith rubbed the dark stubble on his chin with the palm of his hand. In the silent room it sounded like he’d taken a sheet of sandpaper to his whiskers.
“Have you seen Georgie since that day in Cable Street?”
The three policemen and the policewoman all shuffled awkwardly in their seats. It was clear to them that my sister was blind and couldn’t see anyone or anything.
“I’m sorry, darling. I mean, I know you’ve spoken to him, but have you actually met up with him?”
Fatima laughed in that way that always reminded me of tinkling wind chimes.
“I don’t need to see Georgie to know he’s all right, Mr Smith. I speak to him, yes, although he doesn’t really want to talk to anyone at the moment. He feels confused. He still believes he did the right thing when he crossed from your side to ours, but he doubts you’ll ever understand.”
Smith scratched at the bristles on his right cheek.
“Look, Fatima, shall we cut to the chase? I want Georgie back home with me. So do my wife and daughter. We’re all frantic with worry, to be honest with you. I know London’s a big place, but I can’t believe it’s so difficult to track down a young boy.”
He flashed a look of annoyance at the police officers.
“I also don’t understand why there were possible sightings of him the first couple of weeks he was away, but they’ve all stopped now. The police reckon he’s not sleeping out on the streets any more. They think someone’s helping him stay hidden - that he’s in a squat, maybe, or even someone’s house.”
He broke off suddenly and looked up at the ceiling. His head was cocked on one side like a dog straining to hear telltale sounds from upstairs.
“He’s not here with you, is he?”
Fatima smiled serenely.
“I can’t tell you where he is. I just know he’s safe.”
Smith struck the side of the sofa with a fist.
“I’m getting the hump with you now, Fatima. Do you mean you can’t tell me where he is, or you won’t?”
The dark-haired policewoman took hold of Smith’s coat sleeve as though she feared he might leap up and hit my sister.
“Mr Smith, I am happy to cooperate with you and the police. I sense how upset you are, but the only way you’ll get your son home is if he wants to go back himself. Force won’t work. It didn’t work in Cable Street and it won’t now.”
At that moment, Melissa appeared in the doorway with a tray full of my mother’s best china cups and saucers. She looked shocked. George Smith, with his politician’s instincts, seemed to sense it was time to change his line of attack.
“Hello, young lady,” he said, all charming again. “I believe I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting you before, haven’t I?”
Melissa started to shrug and the cups slid from one side of the tray to the other as though we were on a ship at sea.
“It’s a simple question I’d like to ask you. Do you know where my son is?”
He had got to his feet and was reaching to take the tray from Melissa’s uncertain grasp.
Fatima raised her hand.
“You don’t have to answer him, Melissa. You don’t have to talk to him at all if you don’t want to.”
Melissa was starring wide-eyed at Smith. I wondered if she was having some kind of Cable Street flashback. Then her mouth began to work like a fish struggling to breathe.
“I did just speak to him when I was in the kitchen, as it goes,” she said finally.
Smith nodded. The bald policeman with the purple veins in his nose leant forward in his chair.
“If you’d just like to hand over your mobile, we can probably use it to track him down,” he said gruffly.
Melissa swayed from side to side like a big tree in a forest about to fall.
“It wasn’t on a mobile. It doesn’t work like that. He seemed really scared, I mean, he was terrified. He said there’s someone after him who wants to hurt him. He said their name was Jack.”
HYUN-MI
Night in the nearest big Chinese town to the border is scary, but exciting too. The neon lights and garish advertising hoardings make the whole place look like a giant fairground. In North Korea there is no advertising, just posters of the Dear Leader. State-run stores are where you’re supposed to do your shopping – drab, grey buildings that don’t bother to let you know they’re there.
In China, if you have money, you can buy McDonald’s and Coca Cola; the glitzy adverts make them look like the food and drink of the gods. I’ve never seen such things before. In North Korea there are no fast food restaurants. At times in North Korea there is no food, full stop.
During the famines and food shortages in my country, people boil up grass to make soup. Imagine that! You see them squatting by the side of the road, collecting it in bags. Sometimes, as I drove by with my father in his limousine, I’d see them keel over with hunger. Sometimes they’d force clumps of it into their mouths but it would stick in their parched throats.
One journey with my father still haunts me. It replays in my mind like a film.
I am sitting up front in his shiny black limo.
“How can they eat plain grass?” I ask him as he swerves around the potholes in the badly rutted road. “Surely it’s no good for humans.”
I look across at him in the driver’s seat and I wonder if there are tears in his eyes.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” he says. “The Americans have sent proper food for the people to eat. But the Dear Leader is keeping it just for the army and his friends.”
“We are his friends, though, aren’t we?” I ask.
“Yes, dearest one, but not by choice. I hope that
one day you may have the chance to see other places in the world and discover the truth about our homeland. In other countries there is plenty for everyone to eat. People are treated with dignity there.”
“Why don’t you take me, Papa? It would be fun to travel with you.”
He tries to smile.
“Because we can never leave. Not together, anyway. I don’t think the Dear Leader will invite me to travel with him again when he next goes to China or Russia. He’s not so happy with me these days. And for you, a female, there is no possibility of escape. . .”
Suddenly I scream, “Papa stop!” and instinctively his foot slams down on the brake pedal.
A frail old woman, more ancient than my grandmother, has wandered into the road. My father has managed to stop the car just a foot or so away from her. The old woman stands there swaying, as if in a breeze, staring at us through the dusty windscreen. Then, without making a sound, she closes her eyes and falls forward onto the bonnet. Her face is still angled towards me. It is more skull than skin.
I scream again and again. It is the only sound apart from the low noise of the car engine. Then it occurs to me that my father hasn’t switched it off. He is still sitting there with his seatbelt on. He hasn’t got out of the car. I know we haven’t hit the old woman; she has collapsed because she is weak with hunger. Why won’t my father help her?
I stare at him now. He is breathing heavily and drops of sweat are falling from his forehead. Finally, he reaches down and puts the limo into reverse. I gasp as we begin to inch backwards. Whatever is he doing? Slowly the old woman slides off the bonnet and disappears from our view. It is like watching one of my china dolls fall down the side of my bed.
We back up a few more feet until we can see her crumpled form just lying there. I want to shout at my father, to demand that he take care of her. But it seems his mind is made up. He turns the steering wheel and manoeuvres around the bundle of bones and rags just as if he was making his way around a hole in the road. Then he puts his foot down on the accelerator and we speed away.