LIFELINE LEAPFROG
As discussed following the first two parts, I am slicing away a chunk of the early part of the book to avoid distress. There is a huge story I want to write, but it has to start somewhere, and that place involves Charlie Cooper. This offering bypasses that with a summary, and then leads into the story at a later date.

I intend to include a fuller beginning when I publish commercially, but just not here, not now.

Anyone familiar with my work will know exactly what Cooper is, and how he likes to spend his quality personal time. I left Billy about to meet him and Don, and I need not spell out what happens over the next three years of care home life. A summary:

Much abuse. Much of what you read in ‘Job’ and ‘New Beat’. Two escape attempts by Billy, in both of which they meet a friendly police sergeant. I have described the bars on the windows. Billy marks his shirt cuff with the width of the bolt, and when he is awaiting return from the police station again, he finds he is left in a storeroom for once, rather than a cell: there is a prison visitor inspection in full flow, and Sgt Friendly does NOT want him seen or spoken to. There is a lost/stolen bicycle in the room awaiting disposal. It has a saddle bag, and a flat cycle spanner slips into his underpants after a quick check against his shirt cuff…

Now read on.

It was Don on duty rather than Charlie that night, and I heard his steps on the stairs as I always did. Please, god, not tonight. If it had been Charlie, my door would have been the most likely to open to a dark silhouette against the forty watts of the landing light, but not then, not that night.

I felt so, so guilty, wishing that piece of shit onto another child, but I simply couldn’t face another visit. I was leaving, one way or another. It had been a warm day, so the margarine I had managed to filch had melted nicely, One screw held the bottom of the sash window down, and it hadn’t been drilled, probably because the bars had been fitted first. The flat spanner came out from under the carpet, where the stain was, and I set to work on the nuts, praying that Don wouldn’t find his second wind.

Four off. I lowered the bars to the carpet below the window, leaving them in place as a ladder, and started on the final screw, using the straight bit stamped out on the bike spanner. Please, please don’t chew the head! There was a squeak of old wood, and the tool slipped just slightly, just once, before the screw started to emerge from the sill. Not now, Don.

The window made a slight rumble, and there was a tap on my partition. I rushed over.

“Not now, Benny. Got to be quiet”

“What was that noise?”

“Leaving, mate. Please shush!”

“They’ll catch you, Billy!”

I was absolutely clear in my own mind how I meant the next words.

“No. No they won’t. If I don’t get away this time, I am not coming back”

I heard a hint of a sob and a soft “Good luck!” and I was off. Out the window and onto the extension roof, my quilt ready for the barbed wire on the wall, the bars ‘ladder’ giving me just enough extra height to reach its top. Over; a long drop to the pavement, my knee giving a twinge, and then haul down the quilt so it wasn’t visible to some random passer-by or fucking copper.

I made my way as stealthily as I could, listening for any cars, especially shitty little ones in a shitty grey paint scheme. According to my little alarm clock, it was about three in the morning, and I didn’t expect any motor traffic, not even a milkman, till much later. Any engine noise was likely to be my sergeant or one of his friends.

I realised I didn’t have a clue where I would go. Mam had made it very clear I wasn’t welcome, and my old trick of fare-dodging on the trains wouldn’t work at that time of night, as there were no actual trains running. I had concentrated entirely on getting out of Mersey View, with no plan beyond making it to the street. I still headed towards the tracks, though, for want of any better ideas.

I sat on the rail side of the wall along the line trying to dig out an idea, anything coherent, and there was a rumble. Not a car, not a uniform, but a long line of flatbed goods wagons heading south. As the train was passing me, it stooped, probably for some signal or other, and my mind was made up. I knew the dangers of playing on the rails, I knew how easily those steel wheels could slice away limbs and life, but did I care? I had told Benny the absolute truth: if I didn’t get away, I was never going back.

I got up the side of one of the wagons, getting into the load bed just as the train jerked forward, finding some sort of gravel or sand under a tarpaulin. I had a flashback to a night in a boat as I burrowed under the covering canvas, wriggling my body to create a hollow to lie in. Comfy…

No. No sleep. Not now. The train picked up speed, and I stuck my head back out of the cover to let the breeze flush my lungs and drive away the other sand delivery. Mr Sandman, please fuck off to some other kid. I am not interested, not just now.

Stop and go, for what felt like hours, before we rolled into a vast expanse of parallel tracks that I eventually realised was Crewe. The train stopped, and I waited a long time before realising that we were going no further. Over the side, stumbling in the darkness, and there was the actual station and the end of my twelve-year-old body’s strength. Everything hurt, from the cuts I had managed to pick up from the barbed wire, despite the quilt, to the constant pain in my backside and the itching around my willy. I found a train sitting at what looked like a dead-end platform, a guards van butted up against the buffers. It wasn’t locked.

Slam-door trains, they were called, but no slamming, not that night. I eased the door shut as quietly as I could manage, and once again my luck was in. I suspect there was some sort of maintenance plan involved, and the parcel space in the drafty old rolling stock was filled with bits of carpet. I burrowed in, managing to get out of sight just as torchlight flashed into my temporary home.

“Fuck all here, Jim. Be rats again”

A second voice: “Probably some fucking tod fox. Piss everywhere, they do, the fuckers. Check the doors anyway, mate. Stink, they do, and the piss is worse”

Fumbling. Slamming. Receding footsteps.

And sunlight. Oh god, where was I? How long had I been asleep? I could hear a lot of footsteps outside, from the measured thump of man’s boots to the quicker tick-tock of women’s heels. I gave my makeshift nappy a quick check to make sure it wasn’t leaking before slipping out from my nest and easing the door open. Onto the platform among a crowd of people, platform signs read ‘Shrewsbury’, keep your eyes down, girl, smile a little; close up behind that couple, just another family tripping down the steps to the guard checking tickets. Wait for the man and woman to stop, fumble in their pockets, and run.

“Stop, you! He yours?”

“Never seen him before!”

The last I heard from the guard, as the sound of his feet faded behind me, was a declaration that he couldn’t be arsed. Glass and wood doors, hit them with a bang, and out onto stone pavement. Town centre obviously to the left—go right, away from crowds. Double round the corner, past a tunnel. Slow down. Walk. Just another kid late for school on a Friday morning, whatever the time actually was.

Breathe. Feel the sun.

The buildings opened out a little, then on my left disappeared entirely to reveal a deep and dirty-looking river. Nobody seemed to be paying me any attention, but it was a main road, and that invisibility couldn’t last. There was an opening on my left, as the road started to run slightly uphill towards a couple of pubs, and I ducked into it, finding some old steps that led down to a path through shrubbery and across open grassy spaces to a lane. Fencing on one side; lots of parked vans and horseboxes on the other. The agricultural showground. My stomach rumbled noisily as I crossed the lane in a smell of chips and other fast food, and I had one of the cleverest ideas I have ever managed to dredge out of the back of my mind.

The vans and horseboxes were all empty. There were neither tents nor caravans next to them, but I could see a large number through the fence, which was also where the cooking smells were emerging from.

One horsebox would do. The one I chose had a name painted on the side, which I assumed related to some spoilt kid’s pony, and the owner’s name and address were there as well, advertising a plumbing business. Blankets and other rubbish inside. A bucket and an old pair of kids’ wellies that were only slightly too big.

Pause, Debbie. Think this through. If you can talk your way through the gates, there will be food there to nick. If you don’t manage it, then Charlie will be waiting, and Don.

My stomach lurched.

I picked up the bucket and headed for the gates to the Showground.