table he had set up for us to eat from, and I dived straight in the moment he put the food in front of me, shovelling it into my mouth. The next moment I realized there was sweat breaking through every pore of my skin and my eyes were streaming with tears again, but for a different reason. It felt as if my mouth was on fire and I gulped water from the glass he had given me.
‘Hot, hot, hot!’ I gasped. ‘More water.’
Mohamed giggled as he went out to get a jug. ‘It is only a mild curry,’ he said, laughing.
‘You call that mild? It’s taken the roof of my mouth off.’
He had given me a spoon to eat with, but he was tucking in himself with his hands, which shocked me. I had spent so many years forced to scrabble for scraps of food off the floor as a child at home that I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to eat like that and get their fingers so stained and sticky if they didn’t have to. I certainly didn’t intend to follow his example. If it could burn my mouth the way it had, I didn’t want to risk burning my fingers too.
We were both easy in each other’s company by then. He talked about his family and where he had come from and how he had arrived in England with his father. He tried to prompt me to talk about my life, but I didn’t want to even think about it, let alone talk about it, and he didn’t push me. I had also told him the lie about my family waiting for me in Charing Cross and I didn’t want to give him any reason to think that he should try to stop me from running away from home. Now that he was becoming my friend I felt bad that I had told him lies. I had always been falsely accused of being a liar when I was a child and I hated the idea that now I was actually turning into one.
‘The record “My Boy”–is that your dad’s record?’ he asked once we had finished eating.
‘Yeah,’ I said, and I could see that he was looking at me, waiting for me to go on. Reluctantly I told him about how Dad had died in the explosion in the garage he worked in, while I was sitting in the car watching, just five years old, but I didn’t tell him anything about what had happened after that, once Mum got her hands on me and started to wreak her campaign of revenge, hiding me away from the outside world for years. I could see that he was shocked enough by what I had told him: there was no need to go any further. He stopped asking questions, not wanting to upset me any more. I could see that his eyes were beginning to glaze over with tiredness and I was certainly exhausted myself, but I wanted to put off the moment of going back on to the street for as long as possible.
‘I can drop you back to the station now if you want,’ he said eventually, ‘or if you like I have a spare sleeping bag and you can sleep here for a few hours. I have no bed to offer you, I’m afraid.’
I could see that he was being very careful not to make it sound as if he was trying to take advantage, and I had also realized by then that there wasn’t a bed anywhere in the flat. He hadn’t given me any reason to distrust him and had shown me nothing but kindness.
‘OK,’ I said, as casually as I could manage. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting a few hours’ sleep.’
‘Good.’ He seemed pleased that we had made a decision and bustled around clearing away the plates and folding up the table so that there was room for two sleeping bags on the floor. Almost the moment he put the light out I heard him start to snore.
Lying on a hard floor was not comfortable. Even at the worst of times, when I was locked in the cellar at home for days on end, I had still had an old mattress under me. But as I wriggled around trying to find a position I could sleep in, I was aware that I was going to have to get used to it, because once I got to London it was likely I was going to be sleeping rough for a while before I made my fortune or met the love of my life and managed to get a roof over my head.
Eventually I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew it was half past four and Mohamed was nudging me up from a deep sleep, out of which I was very reluctant to pull myself.
‘You must get train,’ he said when I finally came to the surface enough to remember where I was and to make sense of what he was saying. At that moment all I wanted to do was slide back to the blissful oblivion of sleep, but Mohamed was being insistent. ‘I make you a drink.’
He came back from the kitchen with a glass of orange squash.
‘I will be back in a minute,’ he said, disappearing out of the room again.
I drank the orange and got up to go to the bathroom. The door to the other room was ajar and I could see him down on his knees with his forehead touching the floor. I had never seen a Muslim at prayer before and had no idea what he was doing. It seemed to me that the whole world was populated by nutters, but at least Mohamed was harmless.
A few minutes later he came out and made me something to eat, and we set out for the station in the taxi. We arrived a few minutes early, so he came in to wait on the concourse with me. There were already crowds of passengers bustling around us, hurrying to get to their destinations. I felt a sense of apprehension building again, and was constantly shooting furtive glances around the station in case a policeman headed in our direction, or anyone who might recognize me.
‘If you are ever in trouble, Joe,’ Mohamed was saying earnestly, ‘you must ring me.’
‘OK.’
He wrote his name, address and telephone number down and passed it to me. I’m sure he must have guessed that I hadn’t told him everything about my past or my plans for the future, and that there was something not quite right about the way that I was spiriting myself away from my home town. I assume most people knew that Charing Cross was a magnet to homeless kids in search of better lives than the ones fate had dealt them, but he was sensitive enough not to question my lies or try to stop me. Offering to be there for me should I need a friend was the best thing he could possibly have done for me, but I tried to make out it was no big deal. As I folded the piece of paper into my pocket, he gave me a wad of money.
‘No, no,’ I said, feeling that he had done enough for me, not wanting to be any more in debt to him than I already was.
‘You repay me when you can,’ he said, pushing it into my only partially reluctant hand. ‘Send it in the post.’
Although I vowed to myself that I would do exactly that at the first opportunity, I expect he already knew that he would never see that money again. Once I got on the train I discreetly counted it and found he had given me £60, which was very generous for a man who was living in a bare flat and working every hour to try to support his ex-wife and children.
‘You look after yourself,’ he said, shaking my hand firmly. ‘Be good and be strong.’
It seemed to me that he was a little tearful about saying goodbye. I wonder if perhaps he was as much in need of a friend at that moment as I was.
As I turned and trotted off to find the London train, I felt a renewed surge of excitement. I was nearly there, nearly free of the city where I had been imprisoned ever since the day my father died, and I was about to have a whole bunch of new experiences.
‘Is this the train for London Paddington?’ I kept asking anyone who would listen, no matter how many of them assured me it was. I had never been on a train before and I didn’t want to risk getting on the wrong one, being whisked away to some other strange city and having to buy another ticket. I was mesmerized by the buzz of the station as the trains came and went and everyone else hurried around looking as if they knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going. I had no idea how far it was going to be from Paddington to Charing Cross; I just felt certain that once I was in London I would safe, able to melt into the anonymous crowd and leave the long agony of my childhood behind once and for all.
The London-bound train was surprisingly full. Maybe other people had had problems the previous evening like me but there were still quite a few seats in the carriage I chose. I settled down, looking all around me in awe, still nervously asking everyone if it was the right train. I was impressed by the space and comfort of the carriage, until the conductor came along and chucked me out, pointing out the signs on the window and the fact that I didn’t