CHAPTER 4
The man on the gate looked at me for less than a second, his eyes flicking away to the backside of some young horsewoman, judging from her clothes, which were rather tight across her rump.

Boots, tight trousers: some men seemed hard-wired in their reflexes.

I spotted some low buildings off to my right, and headed for them, looking for the name of the horse or owner’s name written on my shelter. I needed to know where it was so that I could stay clear of it, avoiding the risk of any collision with the owners in question. The animal was in the second row, a tall man and a teenaged girl at its gate. I memorised their appearance before moving away as quickly as I could without it being too obvious. I worked my way back past a large number of tents and cars to a dirt track at the bottom of a short bank, on the other side of which was a long line of food trailers, generators rattling away to drive their fridges and the smell of their products sending pain through my stomach. As I watched, a refuse sack was thrown into a container behind what smelled like a burger van. I looked down the road, and there were too many people about. Maybe later.

I went through a gap in the fence to a large grassy area, ringed by similar trailers and tents, some obviously professionally made retail affairs while others looked more home-made, with metal frames showing the marks of welding supporting plastic sheets or tarpaulins, tat of all kinds on hanger rails or folding tables. At least two places sold hand-made riding boots and shoes, while others offered subscriptions to magazines like ‘Farmer’s Weekly’ or ‘Horse and Hound’, or insurance, fertiliser, bull semen (that one REALLY caught my eye!); my senses were hyper, made even more so by all the food I could see and smell.

There was a show area across another dirt roadway, a tannoy announcement blaring out that a round of some animal beauty contest or other was about to start, and an utter cliché of a ‘country chap’, all tweed jacket and flat cap, chucked most of a burger into one of the black bins scattered around the field. I ambled almost past the bin, managing to trip and fall into it as I reached it. I knocked it completely over, which naturally meant kneeling down by it to shovel the spillage back in.

Half a beefburger went into my bucket, under the cloth I had laid over it.

That became the pattern of my life for the next few days. Once or twice, I was late to a bit of food waste, to find it covered with cigarette or pipe ash, but I still ate it. The alternative was hunger. I saved the bits and pieces through each day, taking them back to my little house on wheels each evening, where I forced down whatever I had been able to find. The tea and coffee stands were selling their wares in plastic cups, which found their way into the same bins. Rinsed out in a toilet sink, they served to carry water to ease my thirst, which always seemed worse after a mouthful of congealed fatty food.

The nights were shockingly cold, but I did my best with the old blankets in the horsebox, watching for the grey of the pre-dawn before sneaking out for a pee. I didn’t want to leave it till people were up and about, but I thought that the security guards who patrolled at night would be far more likely to pick me up if I did my business in full darkness.

Three nights only, and then it would be over. Bank holiday traffic would be made far worse by a parade of trailers and vans heading home, and I couldn’t be there when it happened. That Sunday evening, I was just settling down in the twilight, knowing I would have to be away from there before dawn. Pickings had been awful through the day, and all I had found for my bucket were two apple cores and a quarter of a cheese sandwich. That had actually made me smile, because I knew the stand it had come from. All the neatly0cut white bread sandwiches were labelled as ‘Cheddar’, ‘Red Leicester’ and so on, but this one was clearly processed plastic sludge. I didn’t care about its quality just then, being more concerned at the lack of quantity.

“Kid!”

My heart fell through the floor as the woman called out to me from the back of the horsebox. Could I get through the side door? How fast was she? What would Charlie want to do to me THIS time?

“Kid! You hungry? Got some hot food here. Better than from a bin”

I saw her in silhouette as she lowered a bag over the gate, a smell of hot fat coming from it.

“Going to step away from the back of the box. Be nice if you could tell me what’s up. Maybe I could help”

I grabbed the bag, scurrying back to the front of the box, as far as I could get from the risk of seizure, and it was chips, hot chips, with a steak pie, and a can of fizzy pop, and then it was gone, and so was I. My sobs started, and I curled up around my overfilled stomach, trying my best not to howl my grief and fear to the world. I heard the latch of the gate opening, and I knew it was too late to run, but something was ordering me to stay where I was. Two arms went round me, not to seize but to cradle and rock.

I don’t know how long we sat together, but my hysteria and tremors gradually wound down. My head lay on her breast, and I realised she had said absolutely nothing through me collapse, just holding me there, safe for a moment.

“Ken?”

A deeper, male, voice replied.

“Yes, duck? You OK?”

“This one isn’t. Can you go and get the water warm, and the kettle on? We’ll be over in a bit”

“Wilco”

She turned her attention back to me,

“I don’t know what it is, darling, but I will take a guess. No police—Ah! Right, then. No need to wriggle. That’s my hubby ken, and I am Lorraine, and we have a stall here at the show. Proper camper van as well. I think you need a feed and a decent night’s sleep, as well as, from the smell of you, a hot shower. Where are you hurt?”

I finally found my voice, cracked as it was.

“What do you mean?”

“Kid, I was a bloody nurse for years. I can smell something on you. Anyway, later. You want to be polite and give me your name in return?”

My heart spoke before my brain.

“Debbie”

“Oh. Like that, is it? Read about people like you… oh: seen you pee a couple of times, so I know what you are, officially, like. But you’re Debbie, then. You up to a short walk? And Ken and me, we don’t really do coppers, if you see what I mean. Shower and a cuppa. How old are you, Deb?”

“Twelve”

“Jesus bloody wept! Right, then. Which of us do you want to wash your back?”

She rose with a grunt before taking my hand to help me up, leading me out into the gathering darkness.

“Get this in your head, girl: we are not going to do anything you don’t want us to. We are not going to hand you over to whoever it is that has you shit-scared. If you want to leave now, run off again, we won’t try and stop you. But I think you need a bit of a rest before you do that, a bit of safety, breathing room. We can give you that”

“But you don’t know who I am…”

“Don’t care right now. You can tell us later, if you want to. Hang on…”

She got me to e hedge as I threw up the chips, pie and pop, before handing me a mint.

“Thought that might happen. Suck on that. You drink tea?”

“Yeah”

“Ken will have the kettle on. You a Gog or a Scouser, love?”

“Welsh”

“Well, me, me and him, we are Ken and Lorraine Petrie. I am from Cannock, he’s from a place called Shelthorpe…”

She kept on talking, calming me as she led the way back onto the showground, my wellies and bucket abandoned in the horsebox, along the dirt track past the food wagons and up to a cluster of small wooden single-storey buildings. Tucked up against them was a dark blue Commer van with a bellows roof conversion, a medium-sized frame tent and one of the tarpaulin-covered trade stands beside the vehicle.

“Home from home, love! Well, it’s home for us most of the year, but you take my meaning. Ken, love? You take sugar, Deb?”

“Just milk, Mrs Petrie”

“Loz, love. Mrs Petrie was his Mam. Ken? White without for the girl”

The van had a large sliding door on the left side, and it made a hell of a noise as it rolled back on its guides.

“Ken, love, this is Debbie. Deb, this is my darling hubby Ken. How’s the water doing, love?”

He was a stocky man, tattoos down both arms looking messy and smudged in the van’s lights, a dark beard almost touching his chest. That light showed my new friend Loz, who was of a similar build, with a very matronly chest and long, obviously dyed black hair tied back in a ponytail.

“Got enough if we use the pump, duck. What’s your size, Debbie?”

“She won’t know that, love. Just get me a small in a T-shirt and an XS in one of those print skirts. And could you pass me the first aid kit?”

“Wilco!”

A little generator was chugging away next to our (I caught myself at that thought, but let it go) camp, and as Ken rummaged under the tarp, Lorraine led me into the frame tent, carrying a much larger box than I had expected.

“Right, kid. Shower’s in here. Ken’s rigged up a recirculatory thing, so you can have a longer wash, but it means you re-use the same water. Just like being in a bath, really. Here’s the deal: You can do it in private, or one of us can help you. You can say who you would prefer, but I would like to give you a check-over. Got a good nose, I have, and I am a bit worried. Your call, girl”

My makeshift nappy was really uncomfortable just then, and I wanted to get clean, but that would mean having to find some way of replacing it, which would be almost impossible in the circumstances. Sod it. No man about.

“Could it be you, please? Yes, I am hurt”

She closed her gaze for a second, mumbling something under her breath, before looking me directly in my eyes. I noticed hers were a startlingly clear blue.

“Deb, love, I think I know what it is going to be, so I will say this: I was a queue rank. Ken was REME. How we met”

“You were a what?”

“Army nurse. He was a fitter, army mechanic. We met in a NAAFI when I was stationed in Rinteln. Germany. I was a nurse for years. Haven’t forgotten much. How many times?”

I started to cry again, and as she held me to her, she started slipping off my clothes, leaving me, in the end, with no choice. I managed to stammer “Don’t know…”

As I mumbled something about them having me for three years, I could feel her stiffen. Firmly, but not roughly, never roughly, she turned me so that she could see where I hurt.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Ken!”

His head came through the doorway.

“Yeah? Oh, fucking hell! I’ll need to add some cold to the shower. I’ll grab the other kit”

I realised Lorraine was stripping off her own clothes, just as the generator’s note changed and the shower came to life.

“I am getting in with you, love. I need to check you over properly, and I want us both as clean as possible. No shame, love. But we need to think about the law”

“That’s who put me there. That’s who keeps taking me back”

“Care home, Borstal or orphanage?”

“Care home. Three years”

She muttered again before we stepped into the curtained area under the shower, just as the man put something down beside the first big box.

“Right. Clean us both first, OK? Ta, Ken”

He left us alone, and Lorraine began the process of rinsing away the filth, before jumping back with a yelp.

“Ken!”

I am sure he was simply standing outside the tent, his response being so quick.

“Dirty fuckers have given her crabs!”

“Ain’t got any blue, duck. Think Phil will have some spare, though. Shave for now?”

“Yeah. No choice. Deb? You been feeling itchy down there?”

“Yes”

“The bastard who did this to you left you a present”

“That’s ‘bastards’, Loz”

“Fuck. Sorry. You know what nits are? These are like them, but you get them down there instead of in your hair. Lice. What we want to do… There is a cream you can get to kill them, but we haven’t got any. Friend of ours is… Someone we know isn’t too careful who he sleeps with, so he keeps a supply at home. Till then, we need to get rid of your hair, on top as well as down there”

She drew a long breath, looking over the top of my head, before continuing.

“Then there’s the other problem. When they did what I know they did, they weren’t too careful. You’re torn, and it needs fixing. How much pain can you stand? Only got a little bit of local left”

She shook her head, clearly annoyed with herself.

“How old is this kid, Petrie? Sorry, love. Local anaesthetic. I need to do some stitching, and I will tell no lies, it will hurt. I also need a good look at the site, just in case. And I am afraid you’re going to be on soup for a while”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“That’s if you stay with us. Do you want to?”

What choice did I have?