James had blood on his face, a broken nose, I learnt later. Oliver was screeching in pain like a wild animal from the hook that had caught his forehead. Neither man noticed me leave. Like a sleepwalker, I disappeared into the night. It was almost ten years before I saw either of them again.

33

Rebecca

Jodi let me stay, numb and traumatised, before I fled the country. I should have gone to the police but a misguided sense of loyalty to James and a deep-seated belief that it was all my own fault guaranteed my silence.

Jodi was there; a true friend. She held me together, anchored me to her loyalty.

‘If you want to go to the police, I’ll come. I’ll be with you every step of the way.’ It was never an option. I couldn’t blame someone else for something that was down to me. It took the next ten years for me to realise that I’d been an innocent victim of someone else’s warped and psychopathic nature.

‘There is one thing I’d like to do before I leave,’ I said.

Jodi came with me to the High Street. She understood when I stopped outside the first red stripy pole I spotted. Mitch used to say he was off to the stripy pole for a short back and sides. I walked in and requested the same. I had my hair shorn, spiked on top and shaved up the back.

That day was when I took control.

Winter 2004

A child’s impotent silent suffering lives on,

long after adulthood has drawn a cloak

across the scars.

Pretence that all is well soon fades

and impotent rage follows in its wake.

Control is what will ease the pain.

34

Arthur

Meeting her was fate. It was written in the stars. Perhaps the time was right. A perfect alignment of Pluto with Saturn and Uranus must have occurred above the zeniths on that particular day: 12 November 2004.

The date is forever etched in my memory. If future meetings were not always a coincidental colliding of souls, our first locking of eyes had been completely out of my hands. Rebecca was a gift from the gods.

I’d been using the gym in Muswell Hill as a place to escape my self-inflicted solitude. There was a healthy buzz about the place that sucked me in and lured me unwittingly onto the treadmills. I’d been a member for about six months when she appeared, as if by magic.

People watching had become a hobby but I soon moved on from Starbucks and the local coffee joints where idle customers had lost their thrall. I now preferred to mix with people working out; people with a sense of purpose in life.