Daddy's Little Earner (23 page)

That weekend the staff were taking all the children
from the halfway house out to Skegness to go roller
skating.

‘One of us is going to have to stay here with you all
evening,’ they told me grumpily, ‘because you can’t be
trusted, which has really pissed us off because we’d all
like to go.’

‘That’s not my fault,’ I retorted. ‘It’s your job. It’s what
you get paid for. It’s up to you whether you trust me or
not.’

‘If we could trust you,’ they wheedled, ‘you could
come with us.’

‘Well,’ I said, as reasonably as I could manage, ‘how
are you ever going to learn to trust me if you don’t give
me a chance?’

For some bizarre reason they believed me, despite my
record for running away at every opportunity, and agreed
to take me with them. They must really have wanted that
night out. The moment we arrived in Skegness they all
got into the holiday spirit and seemed to forget that I was
famous for absconding and needed to be watched every
second of the day. I simply wandered off the moment
their backs were turned, hitchhiked back to Norwich and
went straight to Brian’s flat.

The police came looking for me early the following morning, banging on the front door while Brian lowered
me out of a first-floor window at the back. I legged it
down the road and met up with him again once the police
had searched the flat and gone away empty-handed.
Whenever I was with Brian life seemed like one big hilarious
adventure, but there was a serious edge to our escape
plans this time because I really didn’t want to be caught
and incarcerated in Salter’s Lodge.

Brian wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be
with him. He believed that social services were letting me
down and that I needed to be got away from Norwich
and away from the danger of Dad getting his hands on
me, so we decided to run away together. The plan was
that we would hitch down to London and Brian would
find work as a painter and decorator to support us until I
was old enough for us to return to Norwich and live
legally as a couple.

I was so flattered that he would be willing to do such
a thing for me that I didn’t stop to think about the practicalities
of the trip. He had a very comfortable life in
Norwich and yet he was willing to give it up and run off
with a fifteen-year-old girl, risking getting into trouble
himself in the process. No one had ever offered to do anything
like that for me in the past. Why would I hesitate
for even a second before putting my fate into his hands?

S
winging his rucksack onto his back and tucking
Dick-the-Shit into the front of his leather jacket
as usual, Brian led me to a roundabout leading to the
London road and we settled down on the verge to wait
for a lift. Almost the first vehicle to appear was a police
motorbike and for a moment I thought the game was
up before we’d even managed to get out of the town.
But as we watched in amazement the bike tilted, went
into an uncontrollable skid and toppled over, dragging
the poor rider along the tarmac with it. All Brian’s good
biker instincts came to the fore immediately at the sight
of a fellow traveller in trouble. Thrusting Dick into my
arms he told me to go into the nearby park while he
helped the policeman. It was a typical Brian gesture,
the sort of thing that made him popular with everyone
he met.

Once the policeman had been safely removed in an
ambulance and the fuss had died down, we took our positions
again and headed south in the first truck that
stopped for us. We were in no particular hurry to get to
London and Brian was always open to new experiences
when he was on his travels. He had a little one-man tent
in his rucksack so we could stop off wherever we wanted
to and pitch our own private camp, squeezing into the
tent together to sleep. As we still had a bit of money in our
pockets from his last giro and my earnings from the
street, we spent a couple of days in Banham, a village that
boasts a famous cider house, and got absolutely sloshed,
living in our tent in the woods like a couple of runaway
kids. It all seemed to be a great adventure and I always
felt so safe with Brian, confident that he would protect
me from any danger.

When we finally arrived in London we took the tube
to King’s Cross, which Brian knew was a place where we
might be able to find cheap accommodation. I’m sure he
genuinely was trying to save me from Dad and from
incarceration in Salter’s Lodge, but it probably wasn’t the
best idea for us to head straight to one of the most infamous
red light districts in the country.

It didn’t really matter how cheap the accommodation
was because by then we’d spent all the money we had set
out with. With nowhere to stay and no money in our
pockets we just wandered around the streets talking to people who looked as though they might inhabit the same
sort of world as us, until eventually someone told us about
a squat they had heard of in a derelict house which might
be worth investigating. Our luck was in and when we got
there we were told there was one small room still going
spare on the ground floor. Even by our standards the
house was in a pretty disgusting state, but at least it was
a roof over our heads and it took us off the streets. A tent
is of limited use when you’re in the middle of a city. We
didn’t fancy sleeping rough and we could hardly turn
up at a homeless shelter given that I was underage and
on the run.

There was a sink in the room with a cold tap that dribbled
all the time. There was nowhere else in the house for
us to wash or shower and I only had the one set of clothes
that I had run away from Salter’s Lodge in. Each night I
had to wash out my one pair of knickers, scrubbing at
them with a bar of soap as I’d seen Nanny do so many
times at her kitchen sink. It was a bit like being a child
again, surviving between Nanny’s weekly washing sessions,
only worse because there were no clean clothes
waiting for us at the end of each week. My spirits were
pretty low but I still hoped Brian would be able to find
work and look after me, as we had agreed.

To give him his due, he did his best to look for work
so we could buy some food, but he just couldn’t find
anything. I guess by then neither of us looked or smelled particularly appealing. It soon became obvious that the
only option left open to us was for me to go on the game to
get a bit of money together so that at least we wouldn’t
starve. It was a scary prospect but hunger was scarier. The
grubby, manic streets of King’s Cross were a thousand
times more terrifying than the block in Norwich, and I
no longer had Dad’s reputation to protect me when I was
out there, parading around for business. I was just one
more runaway teenager amongst hundreds, a truly disposable
item in the desperate marketplace for youthful
flesh. If one of my punters had decided to kill me and dispose
of my body who would have known or cared? Only
Brian and Dick-the-Shit, and who would have taken any
notice of anything Brian had to say when he was the guy
who had brought me there in the first place?

Most of the time I got myself high on speed or acid
before I went out to work just so that I could overcome
my fears, but the drugs cost even more money and meant
I had to service more punters. It was like I was sleepwalking
through a bad dream, doing everything by rote just as
Dad had taught me to, not wanting to allow myself to
think too much about what I was doing and where it was
likely to lead me. The other prostitutes working in King’s
Cross all looked older and harder and more vicious than
any of the girls I had ever met in Norwich. There was no
one here like Lucy. These were people who everyone had
given up on, junkies and schizophrenics and God alone knew what else. I’d never really known many black people
before, apart from Gail, and I didn’t understand the
way they or their pimps acted or talked to me. I couldn’t
tell the difference between their normal speech patterns
and threatening behaviour. It was like occupying an alien
landscape, where I was unable to read or understand any
of the signs around me; everything seemed strange and
dangerous, angry and aggressive.

The routine of walking up to kerb-crawling cars was
exactly the same as it had been in Ber Street, but there
was no local country lane to take the punters to now, just
scruffy back streets and seedy hotel rooms that could be
rented by the hour. The street where I worked looked a
bit like Albert Square from
EastEnders
, with seats in the
centre surrounded by black railings and a path all round
the outside, full of furtive shadows, litter and parked
cars. I was so intimidated by the manic activity and the
aggression all around me that I would only do one trick
at a time, earning just enough so we could buy some food
and some drugs, scurrying back to Brian and Dick as
soon as it was over and then not going back out there
again until the money had run out and we were hungry
once more. It wasn’t like working for Dad, where I
would have to stay out until the last client had gone
home; I was my own boss now, I could do as many or as
few as I wanted. Except I wasn’t really the boss – hunger
was the one in charge.

One of the pimps on the street, a black guy dripping
in charm and gold jewellery, was being quite flirty and
nice with me one afternoon when I was looking for business.
There wasn’t much going on. The punters were
always more discreet in the daylight and because I was
new to the area I wasn’t able to recognize the regulars
unless they made themselves obvious, which put me at a
disadvantage.

‘Do you need any help?’ he asked cheerily.

‘Well,’ I admitted reluctantly, ‘yeah.’

‘I’ve got a nice little job if you want it.’

He had such a disarming way about him I agreed to
go with him without thinking, my powers of judgement
no doubt befuddled by a mixture of drugs and hunger. As
he led me down onto a tube train the fears were already
starting to take root inside me. What was I doing? I was
in a strange city and I knew nothing about this guy. Why
had I agreed to go with him? But by then I was too scared
to say anything or make a run for it, so I just sat silently
beside him in the loud, rattling carriage, waiting stupidly
to see what would happen next. I was no more than a
defenceless, lost child. I had no idea where we were going
or how I would get back and I had no money at all. I had
put myself completely at the mercy of a man who made
his living from pimping. His mood had changed now we
were down in the tunnels of the underground and he was
talking to me in an aggressive tone, all his smiley street charm evaporating as if I had irritated it out of him, as if I
was a burden to him with my childish nervousness.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he snapped. ‘You’ll fucking see
when we get there.’

I felt a prick in my arm on the side where he was sitting
but by the time I looked down there was nothing
there. Looking back I’m pretty sure he injected me with
something, but at the time I couldn’t work out what had
happened and my mind was beginning to cloud over even
more. I suddenly felt really stoned and couldn’t concentrate
at all on what was going on around me, like I was
dreaming the whole scene. A little part of my brain told
me that I was going to die, but I couldn’t do anything
about it. I could do nothing but submit to this man’s guiding
hands as he bundled me roughly out of the carriage at
our destination. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep
but he kept propelling me forward, catching me and
propping me back up impatiently whenever I stumbled.
There was no way now that my legs would have been
able to run even if I’d had the courage to try. It was taking
every ounce of my concentration just to walk and I
wouldn’t have known where to run to anyway.

As we emerged into the light I couldn’t see any white
faces in any direction. This was a world he was comfortable
in and I felt very alone and very vulnerable. He led
me along roads filled with identical-looking little houses. I could hear reggae music playing and the atmosphere
was relaxed and friendly and hippyish. I was aware of the
aromas of unfamiliar foods. When we went into one of
the houses there seemed to be people everywhere, and I
think there was a party going on. My escort gripped my
arm hard, pushed me down firmly onto a settee and left
me as the party went on around me in a dizzying sway of
strange faces and voices, none of which I could quite get
into focus. Despite all the fears clamouring to make
themselves heard in my fuzzy head I was unable to stop
myself from giving in to the overwhelming need to sleep.

When I woke up it was five or six o’clock in the morning.
The room swam into focus around me as I strained
to remember where I was and how I had got there. All
about me were sleeping bodies but I couldn’t see the pimp
from King’s Cross anywhere. I felt a rush of relief to find
that I was still alive and apparently unharmed. Being
careful not to disturb anyone I gingerly got to my feet and
tiptoed out of the house, quietly pulling the front door
behind me and walking away in the dawn light, not having
any idea where I was going but wanting to put as
much distance between me and that house as possible.

However hard I tried to concentrate I couldn’t work
out what might have happened during the hours that I
was sleeping in that house, but I was deeply grateful to be
alive. Had I been raped, perhaps by more than one man?
Or did they just leave me alone since I was so soundly asleep? God knows how I managed it with no money – I
must have begged a tube fare off someone or jumped the
barriers – but I got back to the squat where Brian was
almost at the point of contacting the police to report me
missing. He was beside himself with worry and I was
deeply shaken to think how much danger I had put
myself in. I could so easily have disappeared that night,
never to be seen again, and I doubt if the police would
have put in too much time looking for me.