in the tearooms and snack bars are called Brontë. But it was the Asian community who’d really revitalized the city’s slum areas, producing oases of industrial and wholesaling prosperity. I’d been around a few of those in the past few weeks, hot on the trail of Billy Smart’s personal mobile circus.
I tore my eyes away from the view and looked up the Seagull Project’s address in my street directory. Stick’s information was sound so far. The street was third on the left, off the hill that climbed up the side of the Alhambra Theatre. I finished my coffee and set out on foot.
Five minutes later, I was outside two three-storey stonebuilt terraced houses that had been knocked together with a board on the front proclaiming ‘Seagull Project’. I stood around uncertainly for a few minutes, not at all sure what was the best way to play it. The one thing I was sure about was that introducing myself and explaining my mission was the certain route to failure. Bitter experience has taught me that voluntary organizations make the Trappists look like blabbermouths.
I eventually settled on my course of action. More lies. If my childhood Sunday School teacher ever finds out about me, she’ll put me straight to the top of the list for the burning fire. I walked up the path and turned the door handle. I walked into a clean, airy hallway painted white with grey carpeting. A large sign pointing to the left read ‘All visitors please report to reception.’
For once, I did as I was told and walked into a small, tidy office. Behind a wide desk, a mop of carrot red hair was bent over a pile of papers so high it almost hid its owner from view. I felt a pang of sympathy. I knew just how she felt. My own hatred of paperwork is so strong that I ignore it till Shelley practically locks me in my office with dire threats of what she’ll do to me if I dare to emerge before it’s finished. It’s just the same at home; if I didn’t force myself to sit down once a month and pay all the bills, the bailiffs would be a permanent fixture on the doorstep.
As the reception door closed behind me, a pale, freckled face looked up. ‘Hi, can I help you?’ she asked in a tired voice.
‘I don’t know, but I hope so,’ I replied with my most ingratiating smile. ‘I was wondering if you needed any volunteer workers here right now?’
The tiredness evaporated from her face and she grinned. ‘Music to my ears!’ she exclaimed. ‘Those are the first good words I’ve heard today. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.’ She gestured expansively at the two worn office chairs on my side of the desk. As I settled on the less dilapidated one, she introduced herself. ‘I’m Jude. I’m one of the project’s three full-time employees. We’re always desperate for volunteers and fund-raisers.’ She opened a drawer and took out a long form. ‘Do you mind if I fill this out while we talk? I know I’m being quick off the mark, but it saves time in the long run if you do decide to help us.’
I shook my head. ‘No problem. My name’s Kate Barclay.’ I knew Richard wouldn’t mind me borrowing his name. After all, he knew I’d never be making the loan permanent.
‘And where do you live, Kate?’ Jude asked, scribbling furiously. I plucked a number out of the air and attached it to Leeds Road, which I knew was long enough to reduce the chances of her knowing a near neighbour.
We went through the formalities quickly. I told her I’d been working abroad as a teacher and that I’d just moved to Bradford with my boyfriend. I explained I’d heard about the project from the city council’s voluntary services unit and had come along to offer my services. All the while, Jude nodded and wrote on her form. At the end of my recital, she looked up and said, ‘Have you any experience with this kind of work?’
‘Yes. That’s why I came to you. We’ve been living in Antwerp for the last three years and I did some work with a drug rehabilitation charity there,’ I lied fluently.
‘Right,’ said Jude. ‘I’d no idea they ran something like that in Antwerp.’
I smiled sweetly and refrained from saying that that’s why I’d chosen the Belgian city. No one in Britain has ever been to Antwerp, though I don’t know why. It’s more attractive, interesting and friendly than almost any other city I’ve ever been to. It’s where Bill’s parents came from originally and he still has a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins there that he visits regularly. I’ve been over with him a couple of times, and fell in love with it at first sight. I always use Antwerp now for obscure cover stories. No one ever questions it. Jude was no exception. She swallowed my story, made a note on her form then got to her feet.
‘What I’ll do is show you round now, to let you see exactly what we’ve got going here. Then I suggest you come to our weekly collective meeting tomorrow evening and see if you feel you’ll fit in with us, and we feel we’ll fit in with you,’ she added, moving towards the door.
My heart sank. The thought of enduring a meeting of the Seagull Project’s collective filled me with gloom. I hate the endless circular debate of collectives. I like decisions to be made logically, with the pros and cons neatly laid out. I know all the theory about how consensus is supposed to make everyone feel they have a stake in the decisionmaking. But in my experience, it usually ends up with everyone feeling they’ve been hard done by. I couldn’t imagine any reason why the Seagull Project would be any different.
I hid my despair behind a cheerful smile and followed Jude on her tour of the building. My target was clearly the second room we entered. There were filing cabinets the length of one wall and an IBM PC clone on one of the two desks. As well as its hard disc drive, I noted a slot for 5.25” floppies. A man in his early thirties was sitting at the computer keyboard, and Jude introduced him as Andy.
Andy looked up and grinned vaguely at me before returning to his keyboard.
‘The filing cabinets hold details of all the clients we’ve had through here, all the other agencies we work with, and all our workers. We’re trying to transfer all our records to computer, most recent cases first, but it’s going to take a while,’ Jude explained as we left Andy to his task. I noticed that the only lock on the door was a simple Yale.
The other office on the ground floor was the fund-raising office. Jude explained that Seagull was kept on the wing by a mixture of local authority and national grants and charitable donations. The staff consisted of herself as administrator, a psychiatrist and a qualified nurse. They had an arrangement with a local inner-city group practice, and there were always a few biomedical sciences students from the university who were glad to help.
The first floor contained a couple of consulting rooms, two meeting rooms and a common room for the addicts who were living in. On the top floor, addicts in the early stages of kicking heroin sweated and moaned through the first weeks of their agony. If they made it through that, they moved on to a halfway house owned by the project, which tried to find them permanent jobs and homes well away from the temptations of their old stamping grounds. The whole place seemed clean and cheerful, if threadbare, and I thought that Moira could have done a lot worse for herself.
‘We run an open door policy here,’ Jude explained as we made our way back downstairs. ‘We have to. As it is, we have to turn more away than we can treat. But they’re free to go any time. That way, if they make it they know they’ve done it themselves and not had a cure imposed on them. We believe it makes them less likely to fall into the habit again.’
I knew better than to ask about their success rate. It would only depress Jude to talk about it, and she seemed so happy to have a new volunteer on her hands I didn’t want to disappoint her any more than I was going to have to do anyway. As we reached the front door, I shook Jude’s hand and asked when I should turn up the following evening.
‘Come about half-past eight,’ she said. ‘The meeting starts at seven, but we have a lot of confidential stuff to get through first. You’ll have to ring the bell when you get here because the front door’s locked at six.’
‘Open door policy?’ I queried.
‘To keep people out, not in,’ Jude pointed out with a wry smile. ‘See you then.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ I muttered under my breath as I walked down