>
Cry Myself to Sleep
He had to escape. They would never hurt him again.
JOE PETERS with Andrew Crofts
In loving memory of my wonderful dad ‘George William’, 1944–78.
Thanks for those early years together. These memories I will treasure for a lifetime; until the day we meet again I accept you’re here by my side in spirit.
To my baby that I never got to see, may God rest your soul. Granddad will look after you until the day we meet in heaven and I finally get to see you.
In my thoughts all the time.
Love,
Dad x
Table of Contents
Chapter One My Life Goes up in Flames
Chapter Four Standing on the Slip Road
Chapter Five The Muslim Samaritan
Chapter Fourteen The Aftermath
Chapter Seventeen My Kind Defender
Chapter Eighteen Looking for Lisa
Chapter Twenty-One A Walk On the Wild Side
Chapter Twenty-Two Descent into Madness
Chapter Twenty-Three Bids for Freedom
Chapter Twenty-Four On the Run
Chapter Twenty-Five A Bit of a Houdini
Chapter Twenty-Six Surviving Abroad
Chapter Twenty-Seven Boy Meets Girls
Chapter Twenty-Eight California Dreaming
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
E-book Extra
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One My Life Goes up in Flames
I was only five years old and my father was the centre of my universe. I knew he was the most important person in my short life, but what I couldn’t possibly know at that terrible moment was that he had been the only protection I had from enemies I didn’t even realize I possessed. I knew that I loved him far more than I loved Mum and I knew that he loved me with the same intensity, that I was ‘his boy’; but I didn’t realize how much Mum hated me for being Dad’s favourite, or how much my half brothers wanted to hurt me.
Mum and Dad’s marriage was in tatters by that time, and Mum must have seen me as being on his side and so loathed me in the same way that she loathed him. I knew she was capable of physically hurting me, because she had done so in the past, but I had no idea how far she would be prepared to go in the coming years.
On the day when everything changed for ever I watched my father burning to death in front of my eyes. I could do nothing to help him as he ran around the garage in flames, screaming from the pain while I struggled to escape from the car, where he had left me in order to go to work. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion and all the other grown-ups were rooted to the spot by the horror of what they were witnessing. There had been a smell of petrol and a carelessly thrown cigarette end which had been caught by the wind and blown back into the building, igniting the spilled fuel and turning my father into a living torch as he worked underneath the engine. Eventually I fought free of the car and ran to help him, but someone grabbed me and held me tight before I could reach him.
Dad never recovered consciousness after the ambulance took him away, and Mum instructed the doctors to turn off his life-support machine a few days later. I had to listen while she and Marie, Dad’s girlfriend, fought about it in the hospital, and then fought about me. Even though I wanted to stay with Marie, Mum wanted me back, not because she loved me but because she wanted to take her revenge, and the law was on her side. I had to accept that Dad had gone for good and I was going to have to live back home with Mum and my sister and four brothers, two of whom hated me as much as she did.
From the moment I walked through the door, a small boy needing