Last night he had been taken out to King’s Cross Station. There, his friend Joseph had walked up to completely strange men and asked them if they wanted ‘the business’. All the time this had been going on, Jimmy had stood with Owen, holding him tightly by the arm. He had never been so frightened in his life. Joseph was doing what was called ‘clowning’. Picking up a punter and offering him a ‘chicken’. Chicken was the term for the younger boys. If they were under the age of ten then they were termed ‘spring chickens’ and were worth a fortune.

Jimmy was a bit concerned about Owen’s height at first, but one feel of his face, so smooth and silky, was proof to any discerning punter that he was indeed a chicken. As luck would have it, Owen had been violently sick and Jimmy had taken him home and given him a good hiding for being so stupid. In Owen’s mind this was preferable to doing with one of those men what Jimmy had made him do. Now, with a black eye and bruised body, he was safe for a while. It hadn’t taken him long to suss that much out.

Sylvester Stallone was stitching himself up on screen and with the resilience of a child Owen watched avidly. First Blood was his favourite video and Sylvester Stallone his favourite actor. He didn’t like the other videos that Jimmy liked to watch. Joseph was in some of them. Joseph and Jimmy and other boys. Some of them were really young. Like the little boy Jimmy kept in the bedroom whom no one was allowed to see. He cried all the time so they had to turn the television up loud to drown him out. Then every so often Jimmy would bring back a man who would go in there with him and then the crying would be terrible for days after.

Owen had glimpsed him only once. He was about five years old, half caste with enormous brown eyes. But he had seen him in the videos that Jimmy watched. Joseph said that when they made the videos Jimmy gave them whisky and pills and it made them all laugh. But Owen didn’t think he would laugh. He just wanted his mum. His mum and his old bedroom. He had only come up here for a couple of days. Now it was two weeks and he was scared. He was sick of pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was sick of it all. Especially Joseph and Jimmy.

‘You’re not watching that crap again, are you?’ Jimmy’s loud voice brought Owen out of his reverie.

Jimmy walked over. His cumbersome body rippled with fat. He had on nothing but a pair of grubby underpants. Owen instinctively pulled the flimsy pyjama jacket he was wearing tightly around his body. He was not allowed to wear his own clothes.

Jimmy sat heavily on the broken-down settee. He patted the cushion beside him.