A Place of Safety

My father did not want to give in, but tears were pouring down the face of my sister and my mother.

Two days later we went to stay with my father’s brother and his family. There was not enough room in the house but the menfolk said there would be safety in numbers.

Throughout March and early April we girls hardly left the house. We would take it in turns to sleep. There was almost no food available and we lived on boiled corn and wheat.

My uncle’s neighbour had forty people staying in his house, and his wife called to my mother through the window saying that their houses had been burned by the paramilitaries.

On 22 April they came early in the morning. They pointed their guns in our faces and forced us outside. The men were ordered to step forward with their hands on their heads, then they were led away. We thought for sure they’d be shot and we cried all day. That afternoon they returned, but we could not throw our arms around my father because he had been beaten with the handle of a shovel and his collar bone was broken.

That night a local Serb policeman came to the house and told us the paramilitaries were out of control. He told us to leave.

‘There is no safety for you here,’ he said.

As soon as it was light we were once again forced into the street. This time the men were ordered to sing the Serbian national anthem. I saw my brother’s jaw jut out in refusal. The soldier poked him in the back with his gun but still Brahim refused.

My mother screamed at him to sing but he would not.

‘We’ll make you do what we say,’ they said, but Brahim would not even answer.

The captain walked back to his car and pulled out a can. He shook it so we could all hear the petrol inside. Then he poured it over my mother’s head. He pushed her and my sisters back in the house, threw the can in after them and locked the door.

In terror my brother began to sing, but the captain would not listen. He lit a cigarette and smoked it.

Brahim sang for all he was worth.

When the captain’s cigarette was finished he tossed the butt into the house.

The noise was unbearable. The whoosh of the flames, my brother’s singing and the screams of my mother and little sisters as they were burned alive.

That night my father paid a man to take my brother Brahim and me away from Kosovo. To take us to a place of safety.

Chapter Five (#ulink_ca6f1ff9-4394-53ff-a442-fb081a948f36)

Luke is a clever boy. Everybody says so. Ten straight A’s at GCSE. His reports always bring a smile to his mother’s face:

Walker is a model student with a firm grasp of Latin grammar. A bright pupil who fully comprehends the importance of Tudor history.

Well, I’m failing bloody miserably on the streets, he thinks.

‘A bit slow on the uptake,’ Caz always teases.

Thank God for Caz. She sussed straight away that he didn’t know his arse from his elbow and has taken him under her wing. Why she did that is still not clear to him. Tom always says that nothing in this life is for free, that everyone is on the take, but Luke can’t for the life of him see why Caz is being so kind to a basket case like him.

‘I like a challenge,’ she says.

Whatever her reasons, he’s bloody grateful.

Hot meal—she knows where to get it. Dry place to sleep—she’ll put you right. And if you need some gear she’ll do a deal with Sonic Dave, who everyone says is a bit of a nutter but likes Caz because she reminds him of his baby sister.

This morning, when he woke up in a squat on Brixton High Road and she was gone, her sleeping bag rolled into a fat sausage, Luke was overcome with panic, gut-wrenching, sickening panic. He didn’t dare move, afraid to go anywhere without her, afraid that if she came back for her bag he’d miss her. He sat in that spot for two hours, staring wildly around him.

It had been dark when Caz had blagged them a space in the squat last night, but now he can see as well as smell the damp patches spreading across the walls and the black sack of rubbish in the corner. There’s someone else in the room, buried deep under a green blanket. Luke can’t see who it is but he can hear the coughing.

He needs a pee. It started as a vague pressure in his bladder but it’s built to a searing pain. But he’s not moving, he’d rather piss himself in his bag.

The door opens and Luke’s heart leaps at the sight of a female figure silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Caz?’

She shakes her head and Luke can see now that she’s at least ten years older. Luke thinks he might cry, and a weird strangled sound comes out as he tries to swallow down his tears.

‘You okay?’ says the woman, the accent thickly Eastern Bloc.

‘I just wondered if you know where Caz went?’

The woman shakes her head, then almost as an afterthought shouts behind her in a language Luke doesn’t understand. A voice shouts back.

‘Gone for make money,’ the woman translates.

‘Where?’ Luke asks.

The woman shrugs. ‘Streatham, maybe.’

Luke doesn’t know where that is but maybe he can catch a bus. He’s got a map in his rucksack. Maybe he should make his way over there, see if he can spot her. Then again maybe he should stay here.

The figure under the blanket pokes out his head and vomits onto the floor. A pool of brown viscous liquid meanders towards Luke. The decision has been made for him.

The tube rattles and shakes as it passes through the belly of the capital. Luke has grown used to the way people avoid him. To be honest he would do the same, given that he hasn’t had a bath in three days.

He can see now why tramps hunch in on themselves. It’s the shame of being dirty, of being different. They don’t want to be noticed.

He gets off at Balham and blinks into the daylight. Where should he start to look for Caz? The woman at the squat had said she’d gone to get some money. Most likely she meant begging.

He looks around the entrance of the station and catches sight of a man sat on a blanket, a teardrop tattooed under one eye.

‘Spare some change.’

Luke shakes his head. ‘Do you know Mad Caz?’

‘Cocky Scouser?’

Luke laughs. ‘That’s right. Have you seen her?’

The man eyes Luke’s dirty trainers and rucksack. Caz has tried to make Luke understand the rules of the street. Never take someone else’s spot, never move someone else’s stash, and never give anyone up.

‘If Caz wants you to find her, you will,’ says the man.

Luke’s desperate, he doesn’t know what he’ll do without her.

Perhaps it shows in his face, because the man’s harsh eyes slacken—or perhaps that’s just what Luke wants to think.