by Anya Peters
Sean Coughlan, a BBC journalist, got in touch a few weeks later, having read the NYT article. He subsequently wrote an article about me on BBC News Online Magazine, and there was an overwhelming response from the media. Once the initial spate of thousands of hits after the NYT article died down, the blog was then receiving about 120 hits a day. But in the week after the BBC article was published it received over 48,000.
My luck eventually turned when one of the emails turned out to be from a literary agent who had looked at the blog after reading the BBC article. She invited me to a local caf?for coffee. As we chatted, she wanted to know a bit more about my background—how I’d ended up in the car and where my friends and family were. I told her the bare bones of my story and she eventually asked me whether I had considered writing a book about my experiences.
It was like a miracle. I could so easily have slipped through the net and ended up like the other people I had seen living and dying on the streets, but instead I was being offered a lifeline, a way back to the real world. It felt like I was waking up out of a nightmare straight into a dream.
Epilogue
Sometimes I can’t believe this is over. I have to keep pinching myself.
I’ve found a place to live again now; somewhere I can start afresh and, I hope, in time put down roots. It’s only a room in a shared house—a small, cream-walled room that still smells of new paint—not a place of my own. But it’s a room with a door I can lock and curtains I can draw, and in many ways it is starting to feel like home already. After all this time of living in the car I finally have some privacy—no one staring in at me as they did through the windscreen as they walked down the laneway or past me on the street.
I have housemates again too, who are all friendly and relaxed and go out to work during the day. And I’m hopeful that soon I will be back out there with them. I am longing to throw myself into work again. But for now I’m relishing this time getting used to living indoors—being here where it is warm and clean and safe, and there are lots of plants and a big bath and shelves filled with books. I keep wandering in and out of the rooms just looking at things, picking objects up and putting them down again, finding the comfiest chairs, giving myself permission to be here.
Just propping a pillow against the headboard and lying back to read a book is an amazing feeling. For days I have pottered about doing nothing, feeling carpet under my toes, or standing barefoot on the cold tiles of the kitchen in the morning, eating toast dripping with butter and staring out at the early sky and down on the big horse chestnut tree in the neighbour’s garden, amazed at how quiet it is from up here, even with the window open.
There’s even a milkman who delivers, so there will always be milk for tea every morning. Even that makes me smile—knowing that I won’t have to drive off somewhere every morning to get it in a polystyrene cup, or pay over a pound for it, or drink it out on the street somewhere. It’s the small things I can’t get over.
I dreamed of doing so many things when this moment came: taking a long bubble bath with music in the background and a glass of wine in my hand; watching TV; cooking the food I’d fantasised about all those months. But on my first night I was too tired and just fell into a deep sleep. It will take a while for my body to get used to lying straight, to realise it can uncurl and slowly release some of the pain. But I know it will happen.
I had slipped into another world and started to fear that I would never find a way out. I understand why so many people turn to drink, drugs or crime to blot out the reality of homelessness—it’s almost impossible to live it and experience it at the same time; you have to detach from the harshness and the loneliness of it somehow. I really thought I had come to the end of the line. I couldn’t have imagined getting back to where I was before. I know it will be a difficult road ahead as I readjust and come to terms with everything that has happened, but everything feels possible again, and I’m feeling positive.
I’ve even had the courage to get back in touch with some of my friends from the past and have been amazed by how supportive they have been. None of them have judged me badly. I’m also back in touch with Brendan. I finally plucked up the courage to call him and have even been over to see him to explain about this book and how it came about. I haven’t told him everything about how I ended up living yet but quite surprisingly he has been the most supportive of all in me writing this book. So he will find out when he reads it. I hope Mummy and Kathy come back into my life one day too. I hope they’ll see that this isn’t a book about blame. Neither, apart from the abuse, is it about anyone doing anything wrong. It’s about people making mistakes and trying to make the best of the situation. It’s about being human, about falling and picking yourself up again.
The room is still full of my bags and boxes. It’s taking me a while to bring myself to open them, to have the courage to put things on shelves and away in drawers. To find a place for even the smallest possession is emotional in ways I hadn’t expected. I’m doing it slowly, bag by bag, evening by evening, finding everything a home—somewhere to belong.
It’s hard to believe there will be no more cold nights sleeping in pain with my head against the car doors; no owls calling through the trees at night or foxes wailing; no birds keeping me awake at five in the morning; no rain blowing in through the unsealed car windows, or other cars turning up in the pitch dark. I shiver when I think of it—it’s only now that the reality of all the dangers I faced every night is starting to hit me.
My first instinct was to hide all the evidence of my homelessness—to start afresh, burn my boots and put down new roots—to have nothing more to do with the way I was living. But I keep reminding myself that there is nothing to be ashamed of in how I ended up. Lives unravel. People don’t, or won’t, keep up for all sorts of reasons and have to find other ways of living all the time. I am not the first and I won’t be the last. And although my life felt over many times in the last year, I now see how lucky I have been all along. I had almost given up, but it seems that life is full of second chances after all.
Yes, I have been very lucky, and I won’t ever forget that. So many times in the car, when I expected things to go wrong, they didn’t. Something always turned up. But it’s more than just luck.
When I was in the car I used to feel I had a guardian angel watching over me. Sometimes, when walking away from the car, leaving it there with all my bags and boxes heaped up on the back seat, I would imagine a pair of angels standing either side of it. And I knew it would be safe, everything still there when I got back. Glancing over my shoulder as I turned to walk out of sight, I would see their huge, radiant, white-feathered wings draped across the green, mud-streaked roof, shielding it. Last night I imagined them here, with me, in this room.
The bed still felt huge after so long in the cramped inside of my car, and as I rolled over half-asleep in the luxury of a warm duvet I felt tiny, like that little girl again. And I imagined them whispering down to her, ‘You did it, little Anya, you made it, you survived.’
If you want to read Anya’s blog, or start your own, go to: http://wanderingscribe.blogspot.com
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who made this book possible. To my agent, Camilla Hornby, for having the vision to see this as a book at a time when I was only brave enough to write it as scattered suggestions throughout a blog. To my patient and enthusiastic editors, Sally Potter and Susanna Abbott, and the dedicated team at HarperElement for taking a chance on me and for making this happen. And to Andrew Crofts for help in bringing my story to life.
Thanks, too, to New York Times journalist, Ian Urbina, and Sean Coughlan of BBC News Online magazine for shining their light down into my laneway when I so much needed it. And to the bloggers everywhere, whose encouragement, support and compassion helped me through the darkest months, and to believe in myself again.
For those whose practical help I was so grateful for: to Hugh for the sleeping bag; to Reverend Jim for the bag of food that got me through
a bank holiday weekend I don’t know how I would have got through otherwise; for the replacement St Christopher that was sent to me poste restante, and for all the other help that seemed to turn up just when I was most in need of it. I hope all your kindnesses come back to you many times over.
To all those people who are still locked in their own chains of abuse. I hope this book comes into some of your hands, and that my story gives you hope that there are second chances—that however impossible it seems, you can survive and can move on.
Lastly, and especially, to Claire and Sunil for coming when you did. To the other Andrew, for not turning your back when you were the first one I got back in touch with and told about this book and how I had been living; for the bolthole in Cornwall and all those long drives down; and for chocolate and your faith in me. I am very grateful. Love and thanks to Kate, also, for getting back in touch, and for all the late-night phone calls and the best margaritas. And to Alex, for reminding me of the Emerson quote you stuck to the side of my computer: ‘Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.’
Copyright
This is a work of non-fiction. In order to protect privacy, some names and places have been changed.
HarperElement An Imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The website address is: www.thorsonselement.com
and HarperElement are trademarks of
HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
Published by HarperElement 2007
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© Anya Peters 2007
Anya Peters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34830-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Table of Contents
Coverpage
Titlepage
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
