I told myself it would be harder for people to overpower me now that I was sixteen and six foot tall, but the fear was too deeply embedded inside me to be susceptible to reason. I was tough, because I was ferocious like a cornered animal, but I was still just a boy and knew a determined man could easily beat me. The feeling in my stomach wasn’t all fear. It was partly excitement too: excitement at the thought of starting a new life in a community of people like myself, people who would understand me and what I’d been through and wouldn’t want to hurt me, people who had been abused and hurt and knew that the outside world could often be a kinder place than their own homes or the care homes they had been put into.
I believed that even if I had to sleep rough on the city streets I would still be part of a community, and there would be people coming round with food and blankets and all the basic essentials that I needed. Sleeping on the streets amongst friends would be infinitely preferable to anything that had happened to me in my life so far. It sounded free and adventurous, a million times better than being trapped alone in a cellar with no light or air or food as I had been for so many years, physically unable to speak to anyone. It was as if the kids in the care homes had been talking about a real never-never land–somewhere where kids like me could go to make our fortunes. When everything in your life is shit, you are eager to grab at any slim hope that there might be something better out there just waiting for you to discover it. If you didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t be able to keep going at all.
I could see the faces of the guys in the car watching me as I scooped up my bag and ran towards them, and they didn’t look too bad. They were grinning and looked friendly. I put my hand on the handle of the door to open it just as it was ripped away from me with a screeching of tyres on the wet surface. The driver must have hit the accelerator all the way to the floor, and the car shot back on to the road and joined the rest of the traffic. I could see the guys’ faces laughing back at me through the rear window and I knew they had planned this humiliation from the moment they had spotted me. They had seen someone less fortunate than themselves and decided to give me another kick just for the fun of it.
I felt the same boiling fury I had experienced when wrecking Mum’s house rising back up inside me, but there was nothing and no one I could take it out on. Turning round and bending over, I yanked down my trousers and pointed my backside at my vanishing tormentors in a futile gesture of contempt. Even as I did it, I knew it was useless. What would they care that I had bared my arse at them like some ape at the zoo? It would just make them laugh all the more heartily, congratulating themselves on being the ones on the inside of the car amongst friends, not the sad loner left on the empty verge.
Pulling my cold, wet trousers back up, I collapsed on to the sodden grass and curled up into a tight ball to cry. At that moment it seemed as if that car had been my last chance of escape. It seemed as if I was never going to be allowed to get away and I was doomed to a sort of terrible limbo for all eternity. Everything poured out in those sobs. More than anything I blamed God, because who else could there be who could be so determined that I shouldn’t be allowed to escape from the things and people that hurt me? What had I done to make Him so angry with me?
Because I had my head in my hands, I wasn’t aware of the taxi approaching until I heard the engine coming to a halt beside me. I looked up to see what new tormentor I was going to have to deal with now. When I saw the light on the car, I was puzzled. Why would anyone think that I could afford a taxi?
‘I didn’t call a taxi, mister,’ I said as the Asian driver climbed out and came round the car towards me.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, looking as if he was genuinely concerned. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Charing Cross,’ I replied, ‘in London.’
‘What’s down in Charing Cross?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got family there,’ I lied, worried that he would realize I was running away and would turn me in. Even though I was six foot tall I knew I looked and acted young for my age, and was obviously too young to be going to London on my own. ‘I’ve got to hitch because I’ve lost my money.’
‘Why don’t you let me give you a ride?’ he suggested.
‘Listen, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ve only got two pounds and I don’t want to be spending everything I’ve got on a taxi to London.’
If he thought it was funny that I was so ignorant I thought a journey of several hundred miles in a taxi would cost only a couple of pounds, he was too polite to show it. I’d never had money of my own before and so I had no idea really of the cost of anything. I imagined the handful of ten-pence pieces in my bag was going to last me for several days, until I got myself sorted out in some way.
‘You can’t stay here all night,’ he said, gesturing towards the traffic speeding past. ‘No one will stop for you in the dark, and then the police will come and pick you up. Let me take you to the station so that you can catch a train.’
‘I told you, I had my money stolen.’
‘I can lend you the money for a ticket.’
I was taken aback for a moment, suspicious of this unasked-for offer of kindness but tempted by it at the same time. Part of me longed to climb inside his warm dry taxi and get away from that bleak, exposed verge as quickly as possible. The other part of me feared a trap. I didn’t want to get into a car on my own with a strange man. I had been caught too often that way before. But on the other hand he seemed a genuinely kind and gentle man, and he did have a proper taxi with a number and everything. After a few minutes of him cajoling and me snapping at him suspiciously, he managed to coax me into agreeing to go with him.
He opened the back door, but I could remember previous trips with Uncle Douglas or in police cars, and hearing the snap of the locks going down and not being able to get out, so I threw my bag on to the back seat, slammed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat as if I thought that was what he expected. He didn’t seem bothered, hurrying round to the other side and climbing in. As he pulled out into the traffic, I stared straight ahead, trying to maintain a distance between us while I worked out what his game was. I had a clear plan in my head of what I would do to him if he showed the slightest sign of trying anything on with me.
Chapter Five The Muslim Samaritan
As he drove me to the station, he told me his name was Mohamed and gave me a piece of mint-flavoured gum as he chatted. He seemed a nice man and I began to relax my guard a little as I chewed. I didn’t like driving back into the city that I was trying to escape from, but I could see that he was right: I might never get away on the road. If he was genuinely willing to get me a train ticket, that was an offer I wasn’t in a position to refuse. Arriving at the station, he parked in the taxi rank and we went in to the ticket office together, both of us unsure of how to behave with one another. The large, unsmiling woman behind the glass stared at us with a sort of unbothered hostility over the top of her half-moon glasses, like a headmistress trying to work out why a misbehaving pupil has been brought to see her.
‘A single ticket for my friend to get the next train to London, please,’ Mohamed said politely.
‘They’re doing repairs to the track,’ she told him. ‘Services have been suspended and he’s