Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [19]
The relief I felt when she flung it open and I saw a man and a woman in suits waiting for her. They don’t look like police. But I wasn’t sure. I’d seen people in normal clothes when I was at the station.
The visitors came in. They said hello to me and Mum explained they’d come to talk about me. Specifically, why I wasn’t going to school.
It was all pretty good-natured. Mum made them tea and nodded a lot while they spoke to her. I didn’t follow most of it. When they finally left, everyone was smiling. The second the door closed, however, Mum’s face changed.
‘Pack your things,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving.’
Looking back, I can’t decide if I was spectacularly dim or just a normal kid. I think it was the latter. We’re all brought up to think that Mother knows best, aren’t we? Whatever happened, that’s genuinely what I thought. She was the one constant in my life. Of course I was going to believe what she said and support what she did. Even when it was obviously so ridiculous . . .
We didn’t have much, but when you have to cart it all onto a bus, it can seem like a hell of a lot. We must have made two trips to our new home in May Road. All I really remember is that by the time we’d finished, I was standing in a new hallway in a new block in a new part of town. The landlady had just left and Mum smiled as she put her latest front-door key down on the little kitchen table.
‘Home sweet home, Cathy.’
She never explained why we’d run away so suddenly, but I guessed it had something to do with our smart-looking visitors. What had they said to her that made her so scared? And why did they say I had to go to school? That was up to Mum, wasn’t it? She was in charge.
That’s genuinely what I thought. It just didn’t enter my mind that Mum would be flouting the law. To this day, I still don’t know why she was so against me going. Was it laziness? Or had her own experiences scarred her so much she didn’t want to put me through it? All I can really surmise is that by disappearing from our old address, she hoped the social workers – as I learnt they were called – wouldn’t be able to find us. But, God, I wish I knew what she was thinking.
Please tell me there was a plan!
Our new place was a split-level basement bedsit, although jargon like that meant nothing to me at the time, of course. All I knew was it had stairs and passages and doors – three great ingredients for adventures! You stepped inside the front door straight into the lounge, where a large open fire offered the flat’s only means of heating. There were a couple of chairs already there and a sofa which turned into a bed. That was where Mum slept. I had my own space – under the stairs.
It sounds awful when I tell people now, but I was so thrilled at the time. I had armchair cushions as a mattress and plenty of room for me, my reclaimed panda and Mushka to cuddle up together. I’ve always hated sleeping in the dark, so Mum unscrewed – or maybe just snapped off – the angled door of the cupboard and hung a curtain instead, which I could have open or shut depending on my mood. I was so happy in there. It felt like I was in a tent.
The adventures didn’t stop there. Rising from the lounge were a few stairs and suddenly you were up by the toilet and kitchen. Best of all was a back door leading out into a garden full of beautiful red poppies. That was my secret passageway.
The garden being in full bloom makes me think we moved in warm weather. Coastal summer nights can still be chilly though. Unfortunately, Mum couldn’t afford to buy coal for the fire. Ever resourceful, she got hold of all the junk mail that shared blocks of flats accumulate by the front door and set light to those. When that died down I could sense her eyes scanning the lounge, looking for something else. Luckily I didn’t own any thing suitable, otherwise