by Tom Avery
The left side of my face was purple and swollen like a giant plum. Blood was seeping from my nose and was visible between my teeth. There was a red line cut into my chin. I guessed that this last one was from where I had hit the cupboard door.
Prince had stopped with me as I inspected myself in the car window. I looked at him. He was shaking and his face was pale and drawn. I knew that I couldn’t expect him to take the lead, but I had no idea what to do.
We started with the obvious. ‘Come on, let’s get some plasters,’ I said.
The notes that my uncle had handed me were more than our usual allowance and more than my father had given us when he had sent us away, but it was still not a lot.
At the entrance to the chemist’s, I handed Prince one of the notes and instructed him on exactly what to look for. I didn’t go in. I didn’t want to risk the chemist asking me too many questions. We had no one we could trust.
I looked through the glass, watching a shell-shocked Prince walking up and down the aisles. He disappeared behind a taller shelf and I tried my best to stop the blood dripping from my chin. I opened my school bag. Prince had stuffed it with some of our things. A few pens, our two favourite DVDs (my uncle had given us one every couple of months), a few school books and, bundled up in the bottom, most of my clothes. I pulled out a white sock and pressed it against my chin.
I looked down at the sock. Slowly a red ring appeared at the bottom of my vision. The arc of blood continued down the sock. My chin was bleeding a lot.
Up and down the high street, shops were beginning to close. Shutters were coming down. Shop assistants were walking or cycling home. I watched a man walk towards the entrance to the train station as dozens of people came through the other way.
This set me thinking. We couldn’t go back to the house, my uncle had made that clear. We couldn’t go to either of our schools, they would only call my uncle. If anyone from our schools saw us, we could be in the same trouble.
By the time Prince came outside with the plasters, I had made a decision.
‘Come on, Prince.’ I picked up the bags, threw one to Prince and headed to the train station.
***
I bet you’re wondering what our favourite DVDs were. You’ll be surprised. Well, you’ll be surprised at mine. Prince’s favourite was a set of four Sponge-Bob episodes. That’s OK for a nine-year-old, right?
Well, mine was Finding Nemo. When you’re a twelve-year-old boy, you don’t tell other twelve-year-old boys that your favourite film is a cartoon about a fish. But it always made me happy.
I loved the beginning, when Nemo’s dad is really protective. He won’t let him go out alone, or even to school. He just wants to be there all the time. And then when Nemo gets taken, his dad does everything to get him back.
I don’t really like Nemo though, and you should like the main character. He makes me cross right at the beginning, when he doesn’t do what his dad says.
But I like the blue fish. She’s funny. She thinks she can talk to whales and she can’t remember anything.
***
I’ve never had a problem remembering things. I can remember that day so clearly. The way the blood felt, soaking into the sock. The way the plasters kept peeling off my chin. An image of Prince, staring at his shoes as I spoke to the ticket man. He was still pale. He seemed little, even littler than he was, I mean.
The train tickets were a lot of money. We wouldn’t have much left. They would take us into town, and then all the way to London. We could have gone anywhere, but we knew that there were a lot of people in London. It’s much easier to be invisible when there are lots of people around. Much easier to hide. And besides, we’d never been to London before.
The man at the ticket booth looked at us both very strangely. I thought for a moment that he might not sell us the tickets, but he did. There was obviously no rule against selling tickets to blood-soaked children. He tapped away on his computer and then they came shooting out of a slot into his waiting hand.
He slid the tickets, and our change, under the glass screen. The train wasn’t going to arrive for fifteen minutes. We wandered into the little shop attached to the waiting room.
We looked around slowly, happy for our minds to be distracted by the bright and familiar wrappers of crisps and chocolate bars. We’d left the food we’d bought earlier in the kitchen, but neither of us felt hungry.
We’d been in the shop for maybe a minute when the woman behind the counter growled, “Are you planning on buying anything then, boys?” We both looked at her blankly, then at each other. In the end we bought a big bottle of cherry pop.
Ten minutes later we were boarding a train. We knew that in one hour and fifty-four minutes we’d be in London, but we had no idea where we might end up.
I like trains. I’m not one of those people who take pictures of them but I think they’re great. Buses are too slow. They stop all the time for people to get on and then they wait at lights and get stuck in traffic. We used to get a bus into town sometimes and it would take about half an hour.
In half an hour on the train we were further from the house than we’d been in three years. The day’s events seemed to travel back in time. They could have been months ago.
Have you seen that Superman film where the lady has died, so Superman flies around the world so fast that time goes backwards? It felt like that.
The further we travelled, picking up speed, the safer and happier we felt. Further from my uncle. Further from that house. Further from everything we knew.
Chapter 10
We arrived at the huge, London station late. It was getting really dark, but the station was lit as bright as daytime.
Lengths of green metal made a criss-crossing, arched pattern far above our heads. Hanging from this, on bars made from more metal, were signs. They made me think of bats with long, long legs. Like a cross between a giraffe and a bat, hanging from the ceiling.
Signs to the exits, signs to the platforms, signs to the toilets. We didn’t follow any of the signs, but rather, followed our noses. As soon as we stepped off the train, we smelt the sugary scent of fast and fried food.
We had slept for the last half-hour of the journey and had woken hungry. We hadn’t eaten since our small lunch in the park.
Prince walked behind me. His head was down. We entered the fast-food outlet, weaving through the hundreds of people who stood, walked and ran through the station, waiting for trains, waiting for loved ones, waiting to go home.
Prince seemed far from himself, a combination of fear, tiredness and hunger pulling him down. I knew that food would help, so I got a cheese-burger for myself, and a cheese-burger and chips for Prince. I got us both a tap water; that was free.
We sat on smooth, plastic chairs fixed to the floor, a table between them. They were outside the restaurant, but still within the vast station. Prince slid down until his chin was nearly resting on the table, whilst pushing chips into his mouth. After just a few mouthfuls he pulled himself up and greedily unwrapped his burger.
I had done all that I could to clean myself up, but my bruised and swollen face still drew looks from some of the people who swarmed through the station. There was a smart-looking, white man at the table next to ours. He was wearing a suit with a pink tie. He was eating some chips whilst tapping away on his mobile phone, and every so often he would glance sideways at my face. I think he looked worried.
His wallet was resting on the table. A thick leather wallet with two letters stamped into one corner, SD. I pulled out our remaining money and counted it carefully. I knew exactly what it would buy in the shops that we had used for the past three years. I also knew that, in our normal circumstances, this money could have kept us for almost a week. But these weren’t our normal circumstances and we had nowhere to go.
I made a quick decision and found that I was prepared to steal far more than chicken legs. Unwrapping my own burger with one hand, I slowly worked the squashed box of plasters out of my trouser pocket
with the other. As I leant forward to take a bite of my food I carefully threw the packet of plasters right by the suited man’s feet. He looked up from his phone and then reached down to pick up the packet. My hand shot out and his wallet was in my pocket in a moment.
Prince stared at me wide-eyed, his burger halfway to his mouth, suspended in the air. He knew what our father would have said about stealing. The man straightened up and handed me the packet. His fingertips brushed my open palm as he placed the plasters there and I wondered if he noticed how damp it was. My heart was racing and my face felt as if it had been in the sun all day.
‘Thanks, mister,’ I said quickly, then addressed Prince. ‘Come on!’
At the same time the man said, ‘Are you OK?’
I just nodded to him as I tried to stand up. I didn’t know if my shaking legs would hold, but they seemed to be fine as me and Prince rose in unison.
‘Hang on!’ The man’s voice burnt my ears and I felt his large hand close around my wrist. ‘Have you..?’ I turned to face him as he continued. ‘You’ve nicked my wallet!’
I had no energy and no words. I could sense Prince shuffling backwards, looking around for a place to run. I just stared at the man. He looked confused now as well as worried. He said, ‘I think I’d better get the police.’
He held on to my wrist and looked around the station. His free hand reached for his phone and began to dial.
All the time my heart had been thumping harder and harder, and then it just stopped. A heavy hand was laid across my shoulder and a rough voice sounded from a metre above my head. ‘Everything all right here?’
I looked down. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Prince staring at the person who had laid his hand on my shoulder. The voice continued in its heavy, London accent. ‘Let go of my nephew’s wrist and I’m sure we can sort this out.’
Nephew? That voice was definitely not my uncle’s. One, it sounded nothing like him. Two, since when did my uncle stick up for us? No, that was not my uncle.
I finally looked up. I saw the underside of an unshaven, white face.
The man claiming to be my uncle carried on speaking before the wallet man could say anything. ‘I know what you’re thinking, white uncle, black nephew...s.’ There was a pause before the s in nephews, as if he had just noticed Prince. ‘They’re my wife’s sister’s kids, and a right pain too.’ He then addressed me, looking down at my confused expression. ‘What have you been up to?’
***
Like I said, lying is not my thing, but I loved drama at school. Our drama teacher was the best. I’ve tried as hard as I can but I can’t remember his name. He was still definitely the best, though. He really listened to everyone’s ideas and he helped us make them better. I must have only had him about ten times before we left but I remember he used to say ‘imagine’ all the time. It was like his catch-phrase.
One lesson he brought this big box out and he asked us to imagine what was inside it. We all had to come up with ideas. I put a cap inside. Everyone at my school had a cap.
Someone suggested that the box contained a magic pen. We then had to think about why the pen might be magic. My group decided that whatever you wrote with the pen came true. Like if I wrote, ‘Emmanuel Anatole lived in a little, quiet house by the beach’, then that would happen.
The drama teacher loved that idea and he asked us to write what we would write if we had that pen. I wrote about that house by the beach. I didn’t want Prince to live there, but every time I thought about him not living there I felt sick. So I wrote that Prince lived there too. I added some of the usual stuff too, like computer games and our own football pitch.
What I really wanted to write was ‘and then Emmanuel lived happily ever after’, but that felt a bit silly.
The drama teacher always said that I was really good at drama.
***
So I didn’t lie, but I tried some drama with the man at the station. ‘We haven’t done anything, Uncle, this man just grabbed me.’
By this point the wallet man had let go of my wrist. He still looked worried but he also looked a bit scared.
The man pretending to be my uncle was grinning at him.
‘These boys stole my wallet. It was right here, then they came along and it was gone.’
The large, rough-sounding man laughed. ‘These boys stole your wallet? They are a pain, but they’re not thieves.’
The wallet man was turning a bit red. He said, ‘Listen, I just know it was here before they sat down.’ He pointed to the corner of the table where his wallet had been, then brandished his phone. ‘I don’t want to cause trouble but I think I’d better call the police.’ Then he pointed at my face and said, ‘Is he all right?’
The man pretending to be my uncle looked down at me again. He ignored my swollen and plastered face. ‘Right, boys,’ he said. ‘Empty out your pockets. This man thinks you might have taken something of his.’ I looked at him pleadingly, but he just said, ‘Go on, get on with it.’
Prince glanced at me and I nodded.
My little brother quickly pulled out the lining of his trouser pockets and the remains of the cherry pop label fluttered to the floor. Prince had spent at least fifteen minutes tearing it up on the train. He was going to dump it on the floor, but I thought a ticket inspector or someone might kick us off. He had nothing else in his pockets.
I emptied my left pocket on to the table, it contained the rest of our money in coins and a crumpled packet of plasters. I reached for my right pocket, the moment of truth. My hand plunged in and there was nothing there. I pulled out the lining and still nothing.
The wallet man looked as confused as I felt.
‘I told you, mate, they’re not thieves,’ our pretend uncle said.
The wallet man looked behind him into the fast-food restaurant. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. . . I guess I must have left it at the counter or something.’
‘You’d better go and check, mate, anyone could have picked it up,’ our pretend uncle said.
‘Yeah, cheers.’ The wallet man got up and hurried into the restaurant. As he did so, he glanced over his shoulder, looking at my face again.
The large, rough man said, ‘Come on, boys, time to be gone.’ He led us both through the station and out of the nearest exit.
Why did we follow him? What would you have done? ‘Stranger danger’ and all that. I guess we followed him because we had nothing else to do. I don’t mean that we were just bored. We had nowhere to go, no one to see and nothing to do. And I guess we followed because he had helped us. For once I wasn’t trying to look after Prince and me, someone had looked after us. He seemed pretty great.
He led us out of the nearest exit and kept on walking. He asked us our names and where we’d come from. He didn’t ask about why we were on our own, but it felt like he knew all about us.
‘Right, boys,’ he said, ‘my name is Mr Green. You can call me Mr Green.’ He smiled at this, I don’t know why.
Then he said, ‘Do you want to do this properly?’
I didn’t know what he was asking, but then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the wallet, the letters S.D. clearly visible.
‘What?’ I said, tapping my own pockets. Even though I knew that the wallet wasn’t in there. ‘How did you do that?’
He shrugged, then opened the wallet. He pulled at the contents and handed me two very crisp notes. ‘So, do you want to do this properly?’ he said again, tapping the wallet against his palm.
I looked at Prince. His mouth was open but then he looked at me and smiled. We were both smiling.
Mr Green really did seem great.
Chapter 11
It was about 10pm when we left the station. Mr Green said we had to hurry. He said he had some friends that he wanted us to meet. Friends like me and Prince. Friends that me and Prince would like.
When we went past another fast-food restaurant Mr Green replaced the burgers we hadn’t finished, but then we hurri
ed on. We got on a bus that took us over a long bridge.
Looking back, I guess it must have been London Bridge. At the time me and Prince had no idea. We were just marvelling at the sights. When we had got on the bus Mr Green led us up to the top deck. He pulled out his mobile phone, pressed a few buttons, and raised it to his head.
‘Hello, mate,’ he said into the handset. ‘You got good news for me?’ Mr Green got up and moved a few seats away from me and Prince.
We got off the bus about fifteen minutes after the bridge. Mr Green had put his phone away. ‘Come on, boys, this is us,’ he said. No one on the bus gave us a second look. We felt safe.
‘Where are we going, Mr Green?’ Prince said.
‘Ah ha,’ he replied. ‘You’ll soon see. It’s somewhere where no one will come looking.’ It was as if Mr Green knew exactly what we wanted to hear. After a few moments he carried on. ‘Now, boys, you need to be nice to my friends and they’ll be nice to you. They’re all good. But some of them you need to be extra nice to. OK?’
I think I knew what he meant.
***
There was a boy at my secondary school that you had to be extra nice to. He was scary. Most of the time he was a right laugh and well funny in class. He would have failed terribly at trying not to be noticed. His name was Ryan.
Most of the fights that happened involved Ryan’s friends, and everyone knew that there wouldn’t have been a fight if Ryan hadn’t set it up. He never got in trouble though.
Ryan was something of a king amongst his friends. They would have done anything he said. Maybe they were scared of him like everyone else was.
I remember one maths lesson. The teacher was at the board showing us something. Ryan picked up his friend’s pencil case and threw it at a girl in the front row. It sailed past her and slapped against the white-board. The teacher turned round and stared at Ryan.
