Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again.. Joe Peters

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СКАЧАТЬ cars kept on streaming past and not even slowing down to consider offering me a lift. If I had been sitting inside a nice warm, dry, clean car, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to stop in the rain and open my door to someone like me either.

      It hadn’t occurred to me for a moment during my walk to the slip road that I might not get picked up at all, but as the hours ticked past and the cars, vans, motorbikes and lorries kept tearing by, most of the drivers not even giving me a second look, I felt fear gripping my guts with increasing intensity. What if I was left standing at the side of the road until a police car or someone who knew me came past and spotted me? What if they took me back and I had to face Mum and the rest of the family after I’d trashed her place and stolen her money? It might have been only a couple of quid in ten-pence pieces, but I would be judged on the principle of the thing, and the fact that I had dared to challenge her. I knew from past experience how immediate the punishment for even the smallest imagined transgression could be if she and Amani managed to get me on my own, and I could clearly picture what they would do to me for daring to make such a brave stand. I knew the authorities wouldn’t take me back into the care home after I had lost my temper and hurled a brick through the window at them, so I couldn’t expect any shelter there either. I had no option but to keep standing by the side of the road with my thumb out for as long as it took.

      The hours kept on going by and the rain barely let up. My initial high spirits sank out of sight. After a whole day of being ignored, during which I took only the odd break to delve into my bag and eat the food that I had grabbed from the house, my feet aching from the standing around, a car full of young guys pulled up a few yards away from me. I felt my heart leap back to life with a mixture of relief, excitement and apprehension. Apart from wanting to get away from the cold and the wet, I was desperate to get out of sight and on my way, and finally my chance had come. Scooping up my bag, I ran towards the waiting car, my stomach tight with fear. I was always wary about climbing into cars with strangers, ever since Mum had sent me off with ‘Uncle Douglas’ in his car. I knew that once someone had you in a locked car you were trapped: you were their prisoner and they could pretty much do what they liked with you. I had no way of telling who were the potentially dangerous people amongst the world of strangers I was now entering; often in my experience it was the ones who were nicest to you at first who turned out to be the cruellest once they had you at their mercy.

      I told myself it would be harder for people to overpower me now that I was sixteen and six foot tall, but the fear was too deeply embedded inside me to be susceptible to reason. I was tough, because I was ferocious like a cornered animal, but I was still just a boy and knew a determined man could easily beat me. The feeling in my stomach wasn’t all fear. It was partly excitement too: excitement at the thought of starting a new life in a community of people like myself, people who would understand me and what I’d been through and wouldn’t want to hurt me, people who had been abused and hurt and knew that the outside world could often be a kinder place than their own homes or the care homes they had been put into.

      I believed that even if I had to sleep rough on the city streets I would still be part of a community, and there would be people coming round with food and blankets and all the basic essentials that I needed. Sleeping on the streets amongst friends would be infinitely preferable to anything that had happened to me in my life so far. It sounded free and adventurous, a million times better than being trapped alone in a cellar with no light or air or food as I had been for so many years, physically unable to speak to anyone. It was as if the kids in the care homes had been talking about a real never-never land–somewhere where kids like me could go to make our fortunes. When everything in your life is shit, you are eager to grab at any slim hope that there might be something better out there just waiting for you to discover it. If you didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t be able to keep going at all.

      I could see the faces of the guys in the car watching me as I scooped up my bag and ran towards them, and they didn’t look too bad. They were grinning and looked friendly. I put my hand on the handle of the door to open it just as it was ripped away from me with a screeching of tyres on the wet surface. The driver must have hit the accelerator all the way to the floor, and the car shot back on to the road and joined the rest of the traffic. I could see the guys’ faces laughing back at me through the rear window and I knew they had planned this humiliation from the moment they had spotted me. They had seen someone less fortunate than themselves and decided to give me another kick just for the fun of it.

      I felt the same boiling fury I had experienced when wrecking Mum’s house rising back up inside me, but there was nothing and no one I could take it out on. Turning round and bending over, I yanked down my trousers and pointed my backside at my vanishing tormentors in a futile gesture of contempt. Even as I did it, I knew it was useless. What would they care that I had bared my arse at them like some ape at the zoo? It would just make them laugh all the more heartily, congratulating themselves on being the ones on the inside of the car amongst friends, not the sad loner left on the empty verge.

      Pulling my cold, wet trousers back up, I collapsed on to the sodden grass and curled up into a tight ball to cry. At that moment it seemed as if that car had been my last chance of escape. It seemed as if I was never going to be allowed to get away and I was doomed to a sort of terrible limbo for all eternity. Everything poured out in those sobs. More than anything I blamed God, because who else could there be who could be so determined that I shouldn’t be allowed to escape from the things and people that hurt me? What had I done to make Him so angry with me?

      Because I had my head in my hands, I wasn’t aware of the taxi approaching until I heard the engine coming to a halt beside me. I looked up to see what new tormentor I was going to have to deal with now. When I saw the light on the car, I was puzzled. Why would anyone think that I could afford a taxi?

      ‘I didn’t call a taxi, mister,’ I said as the Asian driver climbed out and came round the car towards me.

      ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, looking as if he was genuinely concerned. ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘Charing Cross,’ I replied, ‘in London.’

      ‘What’s down in Charing Cross?’ he asked.

      ‘I’ve got family there,’ I lied, worried that he would realize I was running away and would turn me in. Even though I was six foot tall I knew I looked and acted young for my age, and was obviously too young to be going to London on my own. ‘I’ve got to hitch because I’ve lost my money.’

      ‘Why don’t you let me give you a ride?’ he suggested.

      ‘Listen, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ve only got two pounds and I don’t want to be spending everything I’ve got on a taxi to London.’

      If he thought it was funny that I was so ignorant I thought a journey of several hundred miles in a taxi would cost only a couple of pounds, he was too polite to show it. I’d never had money of my own before and so I had no idea really of the cost of anything. I imagined the handful of ten-pence pieces in my bag was going to last me for several days, until I got myself sorted out in some way.

      ‘You can’t stay here all night,’ he said, gesturing towards the traffic speeding past. ‘No one will stop for you in the dark, and then the police will come and pick you up. Let me take you to the station so that you can catch a train.’

      ‘I told you, I had my money stolen.’

      ‘I can lend you the money for a ticket.’

      I was taken aback for a moment, suspicious of this unasked-for offer of kindness but tempted by it at the same time. Part of me longed to climb inside his warm dry taxi and get away from that bleak, exposed verge as quickly as possible. The other part of me feared a trap. I didn’t want to get into a car on my own with a strange man. I had been caught too often that way before. But on СКАЧАТЬ