Sour: My Story: A troubled girl from a broken home. The Brixton gang she nearly died for. The baby she fought to live for.. Tracey Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ be Marmite’s. I never saw him again after that. One day, I’ll take that DNA test, but not now. Truth is, I’m scared to find out. Which result would be worse? Finding out you do have a rapist for a father. Or discovering you’d wasted all those tears and anger on a rapist who was no relation at all?

      So, that’s me – a by-product of fuckery. Beyond those black marks, my past is blank. Or maybe there are no good bits to know about. As they say, badness is genetic. I think they might be right.

The Estate

      They call it bipolar now, but it was manic depression back then. Mum’s episodes meant my brother and I would be shipped out around foster carers and care homes a couple times every year, a few months here, six months there, but we always ended up back in the same place in south London: the Roupell Park estate.

      Althea was nine years older than me. I’ll be honest, there were times that she got on my nerves, but sometimes she could be a cool sister to have. She didn’t take no shit. Her hair was always nice. She wore beehives, French plaits and Cain rows and had a nice boyfriend. She had a good job in WH Smith and went to work every day. When Mum was ill, she had our backs. She wasn’t afraid to cuss people off, tell them to mind their own business. But as Mum’s episodes became more frequent, Althea’s patience ran out. Then of course, there was the balcony incident.

      Besides, she was pregnant. Did I mention that? Not heavily – can’t imagine Mum would have had the strength to dangle two – but it was enough to make her pack her bags. I couldn’t blame her for getting out when she did. She left home early, coming back to visit now and then.

      We’d started fighting a lot by that point, so can’t say I missed her.

      Now Melanie. She was a different story. Mel was seven years older, and a virtual stranger. Althea he could cope with, but my dad took a dislike to this younger child taking all Mum’s attention away from him, so she was sent to live with her dad. He had married this white lady in Clapham, so yeah, Mel got lucky.

      When she walked back into our lives as a teenager, after a fight with her dad, it was like having Naomi Campbell coming to visit. I remember when I first set eyes on her I couldn’t believe it.

      She was modelesque, man. She had long, glossy hair and pale skin. She was tall and slim and beautiful. Nothing like Althea in her WH Smith shirt with her silver name tag. I liked the swagger of this new person I was going to have to get to know.

      At last, a breath of fresh air in our claustrophobic yard. Best of all, she worked in fashion. OK, so she was a sales assistant at an Army and Navy surplus store, but don’t matter if it’s camouflage gear. Clothes are fashion, innit?

      She had her own money and her uniform, man, I’ll never forget it – she had sexy tops and pencil skirts that were cowled round the waist. I thought, wow, this looks exciting. She seemed like girly fun.

      Boy, was I wrong. Melanie liked partying, she liked her freedom, and she didn’t have no time for irritating siblings. Most of all, she really didn’t appreciate taking orders from an unhinged reggae fan who liked to walk round the estate naked. Her rows with Mum were vicious. She might not have been dangled off a balcony, but soon Melanie too realised Roupell Park was not for her. She lasted about six months before storming out and slamming the door behind her, without so much as a goodbye.

      “Two bulls cyaan’t live inna one pen.”

      That was all I remember Mum saying about the matter of another lost daughter, and Mel was soon forgotten as quickly as she had appeared. Thankfully, she left behind at least one spangly top in the washing machine.

      I’d pose in front of the mirror, with socks stuffed down my front, looking forward to the day I’d be able to get dressed, look fly and hit the dancehall scene.

      “You was such a lovely-looking baby,” she used to tell us at least once a day.

      I preferred Yusuf’s company to the girls’. He should have been a comedian, man. We would stay up and talk all goddamn night. When we got the car bed – all red wooden wheels and a spoiler instead of a headboard – we’d spend so long wrestling over the quilt, we’d end up falling asleep in it together. Eventually, we forgot about the nightly fight for the driver’s pillow, and just topped and tailed it together.

      As all baby brothers should, he worshipped his big sister. Quite right too. Anything I did, he wanted to do too.

      If I wanted to take conkers and throw them at passers-by from the balcony, he would join in.

      Ice cubes, eggs, anything we could get our hands on. What’s the point of having a balcony, if you can’t throw shit at people walking by?

      We’d wait for the distant explosion of rage to come from the kitchen – “Where’s my fucking eggs?” – then hightail it to the caged football pitch area we called the Pen.

      Ivy, the old Jamaican lady who was our first foster carer, was a spiteful old witch. She lived in Peckham, and looked elderly and sweet like somebody’s nan, but truly was the meanest woman I’d ever met. She salted our food to stop us eating too much and keep the food bills down – even over-salted the Wotsits, the bitch.

      Her house smelled medieval, like the scent of an old woman, with everything velvet. Velvet curtains, velvet tablecloth, velvet wallpaper. She beat up her grandson, poor kid. He could barely look you in the eye. Made him hoover the house every day, the mad old bat. Once he made the mistake of using the hoover to try and remove a stain from her precious velvet wallpaper, so she caught him and beat him with a stick.

      I ain’t letting my little brother stay some place like this, I decided. So we packed our bags and got ready to escape. Her poor grandkid pleaded to come with us.

      “Please,” he said. “I don’t have money now, but when I do, I’ll pay you, hand up to God.”

      He held his right hand up to the wallpapered ceiling, just in case we didn’t believe him.

      “We don’t want to leave you here, honest we don’t, but we can’t take you with us.”

      I told him we had to think about ourselves. He didn’t argue much after that.

      We must have told the social workers about it, because later we heard that Ivy had been shut down. Wonder what happened to that poor kid. I hope he strangled the old witch and buried her in a velvet coffin in the back garden.

      The next time we were sent to Birmingham to stay with a nice Muslim family, that was much more like it.

      The woman’s husband looked like a real-life gorilla, big and fat and hairy, but he was lovely. They had twin daughters who they treated real nice. It felt like the middle of nowhere, though, and we couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying, so we were glad to get back home, where we understood people. Still, I missed their garden and the pistachio cakes the mother made.

      Yusuf liked the residential care home the best, well, until, that is, the others discovered he still sucked his thumb. It was just like the “Dumping Ground” in the Tracy Beaker books, but with a lot more toast. Toast, toast, toast – that was all there was to eat in between meals, but at least they let you make your own meals and do your own thing. Felt like a proper little adult.

      It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than living on eggshells, waiting for that music to be СКАЧАТЬ