I looked up in surprise, startled to find out this hard man’s real name. Jock did not look like a ‘Nigel’ to me.
‘I wouldn’t do that, Sarah,’ he said, grinning like a little boy being told off by a popular teacher.
‘Don’t you tell me any of your fibs, Nigel. How old are you then, Joe?’ she asked.
‘I’m sixteen,’ I said, more aggressively than I probably should have done, but I was fed up with people thinking I was younger.
‘Are you sure?’
‘’Course I am, you mad woman.’
‘Oh, now,’ she clucked. ‘I don’t want to upset you, lovey. How long have you been here?’
I was getting tired of all the questions and said nothing. I just wanted to get some soup inside me and go back to my cardboard box for more sleep.
‘Is anybody looking after you?’ she asked, looking across at Jock as she spoke.
‘Yes,’ Jock sighed. ‘I’m looking out for him.’
‘You make sure you do, Nigel. He looks very young to be down here. Who else have you met?’ she asked me.
‘Jake.’
‘Oh,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘The less said about him the better.’
Just at that moment Jake came stumbling over for his soup and I could see she was trying to pack him off back to the boxes again as quickly as possible so that she could get back to talking to Jock and me.
‘Keep Joe away from him, Jock,’ she said once Jake was out of earshot. ‘That boy is confused. And that Max! You stay away from him, Joe, or he’ll get you into a lot of trouble.’
‘I fucking told him today, Sarah,’ Jock assured her.
‘You keep him in your sight all the time, Nigel. And don’t let Jake anywhere near him.’
I felt comforted by this kindly woman’s obvious concern for my safety, but at the same time her words of warning worried me. I had met enough violent and dangerous men during my childhood to know that I didn’t want to meet any more. Standing in the middle of a strange city in the dark and cold made me feel suddenly vulnerable, and anxious to hurry back to my box so that I could curl up under my blanket to hide from the world until morning. I moved off but found Sarah was coming with me.
‘Is that your box?’ she asked, obviously horrified.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s OK.’
‘For goodness sake!’ She turned to Jock. ‘Nigel, find Joe a decent-sized box. He can’t sleep in that little thing.’
‘He can have mine,’ Jock muttered grudgingly, wandering off to find himself something else while Sarah settled me in and made sure I was as comfortable as I could be, like a mother tucking in her child even though he was too old for such attention. It was an experience I had certainly never had with my own mother and I didn’t know how to react to it. She took no notice of my protests that I wasn’t a kid. By the time she had finished, every part of me was as warm as toast apart from my nose.
The next time I woke up it was morning and Jock had already disappeared. I felt a momentary lurch of anxiety at having lost my protector, but I knew I couldn’t really expect him to look after me just because some mad old woman had told him to in the middle of the night. Jake was the only one of our group still around.
‘Where have they all gone?’ I asked.
‘Up the centre. Want to come?’
Although Sarah’s warnings about Jake were still ringing in my ears, I didn’t think I had any choice, unless I wanted to stay in the park on my own. The park workers were already starting to clear away the cardboard debris of our almost abandoned camp. I decided any company was better than none and went with him. As we made our way through the streets, I became aware of a car drawing up beside us and I recognized the old Mercedes I had seen Jake getting into the previous evening. Jake stopped as the man I now knew was Max got out and came round to talk to him.
‘Hiya, fella,’ Max said to me. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah,’ I nodded cautiously.
There was something about this man that told me I shouldn’t give him any cause to get angry. I noticed the big gold sovereign rings on his fingers, and he had the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on his knuckles, as well as the illustrations I had already noticed on his neck.
‘Do you need any money?’ he asked.
I couldn’t understand why he would be offering money to someone he didn’t even know. Then I remembered how Mohamed had given me money for nothing and told myself not to be so suspicious, and that maybe people were nicer than I had been led to believe by my childhood experiences. I took the fiver he was offering and slid it into my pocket.
‘If you need anything, you come and see me,’ he said with a wink that should have seemed friendly but didn’t.
The following days fell into a routine. We would go to the centre in the morning to get something to eat and have a shower. The volunteers there were always really good with us and helpful. There was a doctor there each day, who checked us over and gave us prescriptions if we needed them. I had always had trouble with asthma, so they gave me a prescription for an inhaler. It was nice to know there was someone to go to if I got ill. Then we would wander out into the streets, buy something to drink and drift around from place to place getting pissed and begging, going back to the centre for an evening meal and then settling down under whatever cardboard we had been able to find for another night. I never needed to touch the money in my bag because everything was provided or could be bought with the change that people gave us.
I frequently ended up spending most of my time with Jake because Jock and his girlfriend, Charlotte, were always drunk and stoned and hanging out with the tramps and winos around the Strand, while Jake and I didn’t want to be doing that the whole time. Charlotte was a really pretty girl and I never worked out what she was doing with Jock and the other losers. Jake and I got bored with their company quite often and wanted to see different things and different places, so we would go off begging together. Jake knew all the different outreach centres where we could get food through the day and my initial wariness after Sarah’s warning faded as I got used to him. He seemed pretty harmless to me. It wasn’t such a bad life, I told myself: better than being locked in a cellar and continually beaten up and raped, and better than being in a care home with everyone bossing you about and treating you as if you were some kind of problem.
Some nights Jake would disappear and not turn up again till the following morning.
‘Where have you been?’ I’d ask.
‘Oh, I just stayed at Max’s for the night,’ he would say, obviously not interested in saying any more.
I’d been in London for a week and a second weekend had come round when Jake told me that Max had asked to have a word with me, to check that I was OK. I wasn’t that keen, but I remembered he had been friendly and given me a fiver the last time we had spoken, so there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about it too much. It was broad daylight in a busy street anyway, so what could happen?
‘Why’s he so interested?’ I asked.
‘He’s just worried about you,’ Jake said, shrugging. ‘Because you’re a bit young he wants to check that you’re OK.’
The Mercedes pulled up beside us again as it had before and I saw that there was another guy with Max, who looked like a minder, with an evil fighter’s face that had taken a few punches over the years. They told me his name was Brad.
Max greeted Jake effusively and handed him a bunch of cash.