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My body aches as I tread carefully down the stairs; my ribs, thighs and kidneys are throbbing. I wince, but I don’t care – at least I’ve still got both of the latter, I think wryly. I picked up some painkillers from the bathroom as I passed the cabinet – I’ll need those later. I get to the front door. It’s still Friday night. I can’t believe it’s the same evening as when I came in from the pub earlier. It seems like another era, like an age has passed. I feel like a different person, like something has changed for ever. I won’t be the same again. It was a significant moment – like a slave breaking free.
I open the front door a crack. I listen. Nothing. No dog barks. Mohra is young and is probably up on the bed with Barbara. She allows the pups up with her, but once they’re too big they get shunted to the kitchen. I look back down the hallway at the horrible swirling orange carpet, the pine G-Plan telephone table with the green Trimphone and phone books. There’s a horrible plastic lampshade hanging round a single bulb. I loathe the ghastly cheap print of a windmill on the wall. I absolutely hate this place. I take in the magnolia wallpaper, the chipped paint, the dreariness of it all. I tread over the doorstep and pull the door closed as silently as I can behind me. Then I tiptoe carefully over the gravel to the front gate and look back. I pause. It’s like the Beatles’ song, ‘She’s Leaving Home’ – one of my favourites. Then I remember Sean. Oh no! How can I leave my dear caravan saviour and the lovely Polish people?
My heart lurches, and my guts are gripped by fear. I wan
t to cry. I want to rush back down the gravel, down the side alley past the bins, through the garden, into the orchard and tap on his window, as I always do. Three little taps, which means me. I want to see his lovely white-haired head pop out over the stable door, and hear, ‘Oh, come in, girlie, why doncha?’ Standing there, I waver. I’m thinking back over the merciless Kevin beating, and I know I can’t go back now. It’s too late. I think he might actually kill me next time. No one would stop him. Barbara would actually encourage him and Ian would look the other way. Plus Julie would be nowhere to be seen, and wouldn’t care, even if she were there. I am on my own entirely. I have to face this. I can’t live my life here any more. And the only person I care about right now (apart from Sean) – and who really cares for me – is hundreds of miles away. Finally I pull open the wrought-iron gate and carefully slip through. I look back briefly for the last time, and then I’m gone. The great escape has begun.
There were no buses, so I had to walk to the station, which hurt a great deal. I wondered if I’d broken something, as my ribs were agony and it was hard to breathe, but I managed to get onto one of the last trains down to London. I had no real idea what on earth I would do when I got there. I’d never been on a long-distance journey by train before. My only experience of travel was by foot, bike or bus, and in the car with Barbara at breakneck speed. We had never had holidays or trips away, so I was totally unused to whatever it is you had to do when you travelled by train.
I bought a ticket to King’s Cross and sat in the train, looking out at the black of night, as lights, stations and buildings flashed by. There were a few drunks on the train, some odd men and smoochy young people. I felt my heart racing the whole time. I had been under scrutiny my whole life. I had always been watched, criticised, judged, beaten, hurt. I was always in the wrong. But now it was like I was watching myself. The experience of simply being alone on this train, hurtling into the unknown under the cover of darkness, in pain, but free at last, wasn’t yet sinking in. I felt really sad about Sean, but I had to go.
I had no real plan of what I’d do exactly when I got there. I would find somewhere to stay in London, somehow. I’d heard something about King’s Cross being a place for the young homeless or something. I felt determined. I didn’t want to land on Tim. I didn’t want to ruin his life or be dependent on him. I just knew I had to get away and find somewhere to go. I was sick of being a punchbag, sick of being blamed for everything, sick of being labelled and hounded and misjudged. Without Tim my life had become unbearable and Kevin’s final savage attack was the last straw. I knew I would miss dearest Sean, but I would contact him soon and explain everything. I loved him like a daughter, and I knew he cared about me – I felt he would understand and forgive me.
I ended up at King’s Cross at one-thirty in the morning. Suddenly it felt a very scary place to be. Drunks were lurching about everywhere, on the floor, groaning in alleyways. I walked around the station several times, with every step being agony. I wasn’t sure what to do next. A couple of guys leered up to me, and I managed to duck and weave my way away from them. They gave me a bad feeling, like the guys outside school from the Cowley Road. I sensed danger, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck the minute they started careering over towards me. I saw loads of people who were clearly looking for drugs, and plenty of heroin addicts spaced out on the floor, shivering, wrapped in blankets, or with a dog on a string, lying on pieces of cardboard.
‘Louise, you will end up on heroin and be pregnant by the time you are sixteen,’ rang in my ears from Mrs Drayton. I looked at the heroin addicts and thought, No way, not me, never.
‘You are a whore and a waste of space, just like your mother, and you’ll have a drink problem, just like her.’ The constant prediction from Barbara also went round and round in my head.
No, not that, either, I thought, as I tried to find a corner of the station to rest in. I was shaking with fear, exhaustion and hunger by the time I found a homeless shelter for young people, which was advertised as being in a white stone gateway some way down the road, as part of the old entrance to Euston station. When I finally got there on foot, I found a notice pinned on the closed door saying simply, ‘Sorry full tonight’.
My heart sank. I stood there trying not to cry. I wanted to lie on the grass nearby and holler my heart out but I had to stay safe. I started walking around a little park in front of the entrance of the station. Men kept appearing out of the surrounding bushes, buildings and from behind bins, hissing, ‘Need somewhere to sleep tonight?’ I kept saying no and then hobbling away as fast as I could. Eventually I found a bench. I just had to lie down. I put my rucksack under my head and my jacket over it, held onto both very tightly and hoped for the best. My head was spinning with fatigue and I started drifting off into sleep almost immediately.
Suddenly I felt a tug at my trousers. Then a yank, and I realised my jeans were being pulled down. I tried to sit up and there was a dark, ghoulish presence over me, with a guttural voice saying, ‘You’re coming with me,’ like they knew me already. He was in his thirties, in a leather jacket, with a crew cut and piercings. He smelt very bad, as his hot hideous breath wafted over me.
I started kicking, despite the pain, and managed to wriggle out from under him and off the bench, rucksack in hand. I ran into the main station, panting, hurting and horrified, and found a place by a ticket machine and sat down on the floor with my back to it. I had to be vigilant. I was not going to sleep, obviously. Looking at the station clock, it was now coming up to four-thirty. I had found out from a guard that the Underground started running at about five-thirty, so I would get a tube from Euston and find another mainline station. I was now so spooked, so terrified and felt so unsafe that the only thing I could think of was going to find Tim, despite my best intentions not to do this. I had to get to him. That was now my mission.
London was going to be very difficult, the state I was in. I didn’t want to land on Tim, but I knew instinctively that if I didn’t I might wind up dead or worse. Suddenly all I could think about was getting to Tim. Once I got there I would make up some story. I didn’t want to affect his life or his career but I was at a total crossroads. I had to get somewhere, to get straight, and I needed to see him so I could work out what to do next.
Fare dodging, I managed to get to Waterloo and then waited for the first train to Portsmouth at five-thirty. I hadn’t enough money for the ticket, but slipped by the barrier and got on. I had no food, no drink, no nothing. It had been a very long night. Luckily I still had some ten pences for a phone call. I had to save those to call Tim. I had no idea where I was going or what Portsmouth would be like or even where Tim lived exactly. All I knew was I had to make my escape from the hellhole that was my life, in the dead of night.
Tim was wonderful. He came along on his bike, even though it was only seven-thirty in the morning, after I had spent my last ten pences on a phone call from a red phone box. We walked slowly back to his shared student house with him wheeling his bike. It was like the night we met all over again. He was my hero, still. However, I didn’t tell him why I had come, or that I had come from London, or that someone had tried to rape me on a bench. I just made out that I was missing him and wondered if I could stay a couple of days.
He could see my bruises and cuts, as my face was now swollen, so I guess he knew something was very wrong. But Tim was kind and understanding; he didn’t press me to spill my story. He accepted me as I was. I appreciated that, as I would have cried and cried and not been able to stop if I’d told him. He took me out for breakfast, and kept asking if I was okay. I nodded, ate and then slept for a whole day. His whole attitude was one of care, kindness, acceptance and love. I drank it up. I was like a dried-up sponge thrown into a tub of lovely sudsy water. I sucked it up and recovered. Tim’s flatmates were fine about me being there. Tim went to uni, to his classes and lectures, and came home and studied.
After a while I began to recover and I would clean up, cook, draw and try to wo
rk out what I should do. I had no money. Tim was kind and had just enough for two for a week or so (he could always ask his parents for more), but it became clear very quickly that I would have to do something. I couldn’t tell him what was going on. I was frightened I would lose him if he knew the whole grimy, horrible truth. He might not like me any more.
He knew I’d left school early, and that it was something about my hair and make-up. I made it into a good story. Tim just had me down as a cool, artistic rebel. He was middle-class but I was gritty working-class, and I think it made him feel good to be with me. He suggested I just draw and paint as much as I wanted, and so I began to make a portfolio of my work. He encouraged me to apply for art school, but I knew I didn’t have a chance, as I had absolutely no qualifications to speak of, plus my reading and writing was still way behind.
We soon started to think about moving into a bedsit with a double bed. Living together was lovely and peaceful, although our single bed was tiny. So I decided I would earn some money. I chatted to people in pubs, like I had in Oxford, and picked up cleaning and ironing jobs. Thanks to my years of housework training I was well qualified in that department. I made myself pleasant and put it about I was looking for work, and I soon had several cleaning jobs on my hands. I didn’t mind, as it was cash in hand and I was good at it.
Meanwhile, once we had moved into our bedsit, which happened to be next to a posh girls’ secondary school, I set myself the task of learning. I was furious about the holes in my education and I really wanted to catch up. I watched the girls being dropped off in their neat little uniforms by their mummies in their huge gleaming cars every day, and felt envy. As they were hugged or kissed on the head, given a lunch box, a wave and a smile, I realised I came from a different planet. So I set about sorting myself out.
I developed a daily routine. In the morning, while Tim would be studying or at a university lecture, I would listen to BBC Radio 4 and hear Brian Redhead explain the news (current affairs still interested me). Then, when the school bell went, I would settle down to teach myself to read and write. I got the dictionary and literally worked my way through it, trying to learn words. I’d read very few books, and I began to work my way slowly through a novel, looking up words, which Tim had suggested. The Catcher in the Rye was a great place to start. I got work in a pub in the evenings, pulling pints. This was good for my maths, as I had to add up in my head (like in the greengrocer’s). Meanwhile, Tim and I had a wonderful time together.
I soon decided that I should try to sign on to help us financially, as things were tight. I also applied for housing benefit. At first, Tim hadn’t told his parents that we were together. But it became clear after a while, as he didn’t like hiding things from them (unlike me, who found it easy), and they sent him some extra money. They were kind, supportive and thoughtful: like proper parents should be. They didn’t judge either. However, I didn’t want to be dependent on Tim or them; I wanted to make my own way. Tim was helping me plan my way to art school. He found the pubs where the art school students hung out and we went there a lot and chatted to them and found out what we needed to do. He really encouraged me, so I started to apply. My portfolio was growing daily, and I really hoped I could somehow get in.
One morning, I was jumping up and down on the bed, listening to Jimmy Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, which I thought was fantastic. I was just in Tim’s white shirt, with nothing underneath. The doorbell rang, and I thought it was the postman, who usually called at that time of day. Although I was in the shirt I was fairly decent, as it was big – at least to open the door a crack and take a letter in. However, when I opened the door, there was a middle-aged man in a plaid jacket and matching hat, with a clipboard.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Mr Jones and I’ve come about your recent housing benefit application.’
He showed me his lapel that had a badge saying he was from the council. I was standing on the doorstep in Tim’s shirt and nothing else, looking flushed from jumping on the bed. Hendrix was still blasting in the background.
‘Can I come in?’ I didn’t know what to say. He looked at me seriously and said, ‘I need to check some things before you can get any money.’
I felt put on the spot. I didn’t know he was coming but he was a council official, so I let him in. I thought, well, I really need the money, so we’d better sort it out. I showed him into our bedsit and turned off the music. I gestured for him to sit on the bed, which he did. I sat on a little upright chair opposite him, with our clothes all over it.
