CHAPTER 1
My decision to leave home was made at 10 o’clock one morning as I lay in bed at Charing Cross Hospital. I actually left early one morning nearly six weeks later, just two months after my sixteenth birthday. Disappearing successfully took a fair amount of courage.
Deciding where to go did not present a problem, broadly speaking. When I was five Mum took us to Cornwall. I was too young to know where in Cornwall. I was not to know at the time how important the place would become to me. All I remembered was that my Dad was not there and it was the happiest summer of my life.
We stayed, my Mum, two brothers, and myself, in a cottage by the harbour of a small Cornish fishing village. In my memory it was perfection: sunny days, warm nights and the sun sparkling on the sea. At night, with the sash window wide open I could hear the combined sounds of river, sea, ducks and seagulls.
I expect, in reality, the weather and the holiday in general were not perfect all the time, but the brain tends to dispose of the less pleasurable elements of memory and concentrate on the things that make you feel warm and happy inside. The only place I’d been happy for a long time was in my imagination. Through all the bad times I’d remembered that holiday and how content the four of us had been.
The coastline of North Cornwall covers some 125 miles. I determined to make my way to Bude and walk until I recognised the place of my dreams. It was a big adventure and not to be undertaken without meticulous planning.
You may wonder why I did not ask my Mum or either of my brothers if they knew where we had stayed. I hadn’t seen my Mum for eleven years and didn’t even know if she was still alive. My brothers were older and would probably remember. Aside from the fact that they were living in New Zealand, I could not ask because I planned to disappear and to give even one person a clue to my whereabouts could easily have jeopardized my entire plan. Secrecy if inconvenient was imperative.
My father, if nothing else, was a generous man. Where money was concerned he could have burnt vast quantities if he had been so inclined without making himself noticeably the poorer - the benefit of this being that I had accumulated a fair amount of money with which to support myself when I disappeared. I had even engineered an account unknown to him. It would have been stupid to let Dad trace my whereabouts through my AMEX card, although it would be handy to use the account to lay a false trail should he make an attempt to find me.
I made several trips to camping shops where, with cash, I bought a rucksack, sleeping bag and a light one-man tent. It was summer so I did not bother with a jacket or waterproofs. I had not reckoned with the perversity of the English weather. I thought I had all the requirements of life on the road, with the emphasis on travelling light. These items I stored in left luggage at Paddington Station at vast expense until the right moment came.
One Wednesday Dad went away on an unscheduled ‘business trip’. I had the house to myself because Gran was in Belfast with Auntie Kathleen. I gave myself a day to get organised. I had the few clothes I needed together in one drawer: shorts, T-shirts, underwear and a jumper, all new. I put them into a plastic carrier bag along with my personal stereo and Game Boy and then grabbed my faithful old bear; Pythagoras. Next morning I left my room tidy and slipped out of the front door. At the end of the road I was soon lost in crowded streets. Rush hour. Anonymity. I caught the tube at Charing Cross with countless commuters and alighted at Oxford Circus. Here I found a trendy hair salon and presented myself for a grade three cut. I was sad to see my carefully grown shoulder length blonde hair; ‘long for a boy’ on the shop floor being swept away by the trainee, but pleased with the change it effected in my looks. On impulse I got my ear pierced at the same time in the full knowledge that it was something Dad would wholeheartedly disapprove.
From there I caught the Victoria line to Euston. I was positive Dad would try to find me. I was all he had left apart from Gran and I could not see him giving up and accepting my departure easily. He knew the right sort of people to use in order to find me. My plan was to lay a false trail to be followed, preferably in a different direction to the one I planned to take. So at Euston I bought a ticket for Newcastle with my AMEX card and then made my way via the Northern and Bakerloo lines to Paddington. With cash I bought a single ticket to Exeter. Out with the locker key, I gathered up all my purchases and assembled them as best I could. I gave my expensive Tommy Hilfiger jacket, a birthday present from Dad, to a boy about my own age who sat begging by the stairs to the Bakerloo tube. With him was a sad eyed dog of indeterminate breed whose head stayed perfectly flat to the floor, only his eyes following me around. Feeling suddenly guilty that I was taking to the road with sufficient money to subsist on, I made a dash to the nearest food shop and bought a carrier bag of food for both of them and stuffed twenty pounds in to the boy’s grubby hand. After all, his reasons for leaving home may not have been dissimilar to my own, except his Dad had not been wealthy.
As I had not seen a train timetable I found myself with an hour to wait, so I went to the shop on the station and found a book to read on the journey. Stupidly I kept looking around me, all the time expecting someone to come and find me on Dad’s orders or worse Dad himself home and guessing what I was up to. It was all so silly, Dad was in Florida, he’d phoned me the previous night. It would be another five days before he got the first inkling that I’d run away and by then I’d be long gone.
On a sudden impulse I went back to Smiths and bought two postcards, one I sent to Lizzy, the message said simply ‘thanks’. I sent a postcard of Tower Bridge to Kit, on which I scribbled that I was on my way and I’d be in touch. If I had told anyone where I was going it would have been Lizzy. But I did not want to risk her being compromised by Dad. She had not pestered me because she understood my reasons.
With time to kill I set about exploring the station. It was very drafty and open, the platforms seeming to merge with the forecourt. The breeze created by the high open domed glass arches was very pleasant, but I could imagine the place becoming very cold and desolate in the winter. Next to Platform One was an old clock with three faces, just by that in a chair sat Isambard Kingdom Brunel cast in bronze and further down a bronze statue of a soldier, commemorating railway workers killed in both Wars. A train pulled out from platform two creating clouds of smokey diesel and sending the pigeons into a panic.
I wandered back to the forecourt feeling slightly thirsty and peckish. There were plenty of stalls from which to buy food. I opted for the Burger King kiosk and sat on a seat opposite the flower stall munching my burger and fries whilst I watched smart suited businessmen pay exorbitant prices for bunches of flowers which would probably be half dead by the time they reached their wives or secretaries. Looking around I was amused to see a Paddington Bear stall; I bet the tourists loved that.
My eyes were bigger than my stomach, as usual, but there were plenty of pigeons to finish my bread roll for me. Paddington Station was undergoing a face-lift and it was hard to hear the station announcements over the noise of heavy machinery and pneumatic drills. Obviously a prerequisite for employment in the train announcement business was to have a nasal voice so that the minimum number of people could understand or interpret the broadcasts that came over the tannoy.
Ten minutes before my train was due I made my way to the platform. Late morning seemed to be a good time to travel, not too much competition for seats. When the train arrived I parked myself by the window and settled down to wait for the journey to begin. We pulled out of the station on time. The London bit of the journey was boring, so I started my book. I put it down when we began to pass fields and watched the countryside flash by the window.
I had thought this would be the point where relief would flood over me and I’d have an overwhelming sense of freedom and happiness. It did not happen, not then. It reminded me of the GCSE exams. I had expected to feel elated when I walked out of the sports hall after my last paper and instead I’d felt downright depressed and had remained so for the rest of the day. I comforted myself with the knowledge that the next morning I had felt on top of the world. I pondered whether or not I’d ever know how I had done in those exams and whether or not it really mattered.
When you’ve seen one field you’ve seen them all and soon I was engrossed in my book again. I had read over half in the two and a half hours we took to reach Exeter. I’d been so engrossed I had not even visited the buffet car.
When I got off the train I suddenly realised how thirsty I was so I walked into the town, found a café and sat outside in the sunshine drinking coffee. Then I set about finding the coach station. As it was the height of the summer season I was fortunate to find I could get a coach to Bude mid afternoon. I hadn’t a clue what Bude would be like, but I guessed I would be able to get food there and if necessary I could find somewhere to pitch my tent.
It was gone six o’clock when we pulled into the coach station, but Bude being a seaside town and it being late August was still quite busy, and I had a choice of places to eat. I had a walk around. The place seemed to be composed of two streets on a hill, not a big as I was expecting, but sufficient to meet my needs, I located the launderette and established where I could buy food. Bude seemed to specialise in two things – outdoor and surfing gear. I did not think I’d have much use for the latter, not being able to swim very well, but if I needed any extra camping equipment I’d be able to get it in Bude. Time was getting on and I did not fancy trying to put my tent up for the first time without having a practice – there had been no opportunity to do this before I left London. After walking round a while longer I found an inexpensive hotel and booked a room for the night. At first the girl at the desk, herself only about sixteen, looked a bit doubtfully at me – I do look young for my age. Offering to pay cash there and then seemed to clinch the matter.
After the luxury of our home, the room seemed very basic. Nothing seemed to match. The curtains, bed cover and frieze were all different patterns, none of which complimented each other. The furniture was a mixture of different woods and veneered MDF. It did have a television, a trouser press and a kettle. I decided against putting the television on. I wasn’t going to see any once I took to the cliffs, so I might as well get used to that now. I made myself a coffee and settled down to finish my book. The hotel was very noisy; constant thuds and bangs, the occasional screaming child, the boom of televisions and radios. However, once I’d settled into my reading it all faded into the background. Around eleven o’clock I decided I had had enough, I’d nodded off twice and woken up when my book had fallen out of my hands. I undressed and made to slip into bed – sheets and a blanket – as far back as I could remember I’d always had a quilt. I climbed in and put the bedside lamp out. Light seeped in under the door from the corridor and through the thin curtains, my room being in close proximity to a street lamp. Within ten minutes I was pushing back the sheet and blanket, drenched in sweat, the room was like furnace. I opened the stiff, over painted sash window and crawled back onto the bed. The sounds of traffic and people drifted up from the street and I half wished I had found somewhere quiet and cool to pitch my tent. Not long afterwards I fell in to a deep sleep only disturbed many hours later by the alarm clock. I padded down the corridor and took full advantage of the shower. Who knew when my next one would be. I ate a hearty, if slightly greasy, breakfast and repacked my rucksack. I walked back into town to buy some food – biscuits, cake and bottle water, an apple to be healthy and a copy of The Times. I found a second-hand bookshop and traded my book in for another; I could not spare the room to carry every book I read with me. Then I got out my map and set off.
*
Gran and Granddad moved to London from Belfast shortly after they got married. Dad was born and brought up in a high-rise flat a stones throw from Clapham Junction. His father was a Lighter-man on the Thames and when Dad was fifteen his father died following an accident at work. He was crushed between two tugboats.
Any plans Dad might have had for higher education bit the dust there and then. After finishing his O levels, keen to support his Mum, he got any work he could, not all of it strictly legal.
By the age of eighteen he was managing a small restaurant in Soho, his obvious aptitude for hard work and ability to organise being recognised by the owners. This is where he met my Mum; she was seventeen and a waitress earning extra cash evenings and weekends whilst studying for her A levels.
It was lust at first sight and only two months into the relationship Mum found herself pregnant. If any excuses can be made on their behalf it is that neither had been in a relationship before and both were sexually naïve. It is doubtful, in the normal course of events, that the affair would have lasted more than a few months; it certainly would not have ended in marriage. As it was, both decided that the only sensible course was to marry. This met with much opposition from Mum’s parents and eventually estrangement because they felt Dad was a ‘wild card’.
They married in a register office when Mum was four months pregnant and Mum moved in with Dad and Gran. Ever ambitious Dad found himself a job as a gopher for a local entrepreneur, Billy Smith, chauffeuring and collecting debts, whilst continuing to speculate independently in other areas. He joked to his friends that he would make his first Million by the age of twenty-five. When Mum was eight months pregnant Dad announced that he had found a small house for them to move into with Gran in Plumstead. A week later Mum went into hospital and the twins were born. When she left the hospital it was not to return to the flat in Clapham, but to the new house. With the house had come a battered Hillman Imp, which was soon replaced by a brad new Ford Capri.
Mum and Dad decided to stop at two children. Life seemed to progress quite happily. Dad was bringing home good money. Mum and Gran never asked what he was involved in - ignorance being bliss – and he never volunteered to tell them. The money kept coming in and that seemed to be the main concern for all parties.
When the twins were five Dad announced they were to move again, down the hill into Greenwich; a bigger house in a more exclusive area. The twins were to attend a private school. He wanted them to have all the opportunities that had never come his way. They would get an excellent education and good jobs.
By the time Dad was twenty-five, true to his word, he had made his first Million. To celebrate they moved again, this time to a big white terrace house in SW1, a three-storied property. For Mum’s twenty-fifth birthday Dad bought her a Merc. They went out to celebrate, Gran baby-sitting a usual. Both drank too much and nine months later I was born; a mistake as Gran never tired of reminding me, but there was no shortage of money and Gran was always there to help, so apart from a temporary change in Mum’s figure the pregnancy would not have been much of a problem.
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