Escape From Evil (20 page)

‘I wish I’d let your father put you into care!’

I couldn’t bite my tongue at that.

‘You vicious old cow!’

But she was already storming off. I can’t remember what happened to the vegetables that day, but we never spoke of it again.

Although I couldn’t have my freedom by leaving Tremola Avenue on my sixteenth birthday, I could do the next best thing. I bought a motorbike.

It was a lovely Honda MB 50, with a top box and – best of all – matching wheels! I couldn’t have been happier. Now the whole world – or at least the south-east part of the UK – was my oyster. Eighteen years after my mother had fled to the Isle of Wight for an illicit weekend, I had taken my first innocent steps towards joining the same mods and rockers crowd. It wouldn’t be the last time our paths crossed . . .

Of course, you can’t buy a bike without the accessories. All the bikers at the time were wearing leather jackets with tassels, so I thought,
I’ll have one of those.
I really thought I looked the business. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed.

Longhill School didn’t care how you travelled there, but they did care what clothing was worn on the school premises. The headmaster – the very same headmaster who had had to deal with my mother, I learnt later – said my jacket did not conform to school policy.

‘You’ll have to leave it at home or not come in yourself.’

True, I was wearing it mostly because it was cool, but all bikers wear leather for protection. Underneath was my uniform. I couldn’t see what the problem was. And neither, miraculously, could Grandpa.

‘What are you doing home?’ he asked when I arrived back early that day.

‘I was sent home to change,’ and I explained.

‘We’re not going to stand for this. I’m phoning the head.’

To my amazement, Grandpa rang the headmaster there and then and told him in no uncertain terms that my jacket was a safety measure and that as long as I didn’t wear it on the premises there should be no complaint from the school. It worked. The next day I returned in full tassels.

The look was important. I had matching DM boots and snake-effect trousers for wearing at weekends. Gone were the days of cycling and fresh air. All I was interested in now was drinking and smoking and riding – and I wasn’t alone. Every Friday night I’d ride into Brighton and drink at a pub called the Hungry Years. It’s called the Charles Street Bar now and it caters for a different clientele, but in the 1980s it was where all the bikers hung out. So that’s where my new boyfriend, Simon, and I liked to go in our biker garb.

Simon was a seventeen-year-old apprentice scaffolder by day, but he had the DMs, the leather jacket and the attitude. His hair wasn’t that long, but otherwise he looked the part. Every weekend there was a heavy-metal disco upstairs until the small hours, so I wasn’t getting home until very, very late. But, as far as I was concerned, my grandparents could have no complaints. Yes, I was out, but they knew where I was – roughly. I was usually courteous and I did my best to get along with them. After all, I only had to get through my exams and then it would all be over.

Spring 1986 finally came and I sat down to take my O levels. The level of revision I’d managed to squeeze in was laughable. How I wished I’d taken them a year earlier, when some of the questions would have meant something to me. But I did my best – that was a habit I could never break – and in the end I scored higher than a lot of people who’d worked hard. It was also important to me to keep my word to Grandpa. I’d said I’d take them and I was going to. When they were over, however, that was a completely different story.

I finished my final exam at one o’clock one Friday in June. An hour later I had filled a hired van with all my possessions, including everything from my ‘bottom drawer’. With Simon at the wheel, I was ready to start life as an adult.

It wasn’t a shock to my grandparents. They’d known my plans and put up with my flat-hunting stories for the last few weeks. Now the moment had arrived and we parted exactly as I knew we would. Granny gave me a squeeze and told me to call her if I needed anything. Grandpa just held out his hand. As I reached to shake it, he said, ‘Good luck, Cathy.’

As we pulled away, I didn’t look back once. Tremola Avenue was my past. I had my independence now. I was in control of my own life, of my own destiny.

No one will ever tell me what to do again.

ELEVEN

I honestly thought this was the start of something new. Mark, Brian and those evil bastards who’d driven my mother to her death were long gone from my life. School was over – no more detentions or tellings off for no homework. And it was also ‘bye bye’ to Granny and Grandpa. There were no hard feelings, not from my side anyway, but I was glad to be out of their house. Out of their control.

Control, I realized, was what I’d always wanted. The hours I’d spent perfecting my dancing, judo, knitting, sewing, homework, drawing – in the end it had all come down to me wanting to master the skill, to be the best. To take control of it.

Because that was something my mother had never been able to do. From the moment she’d fallen pregnant, her destiny was out of her hands. Reading through the box of correspondence that Granny had given me recently, I could see she’d had to fight even to keep me. It wasn’t just her partner or her parents or her school who wanted a say in her life, it was the local council and even, for a while, the police. This wasn’t a woman in control.

Mum had never had the whip hand at any point after that. Apart from, perhaps, the time she worked at American Express, there was always someone calling the shots. Social services removed me, the police arrested her time after time and, of course, there were the men who abused her. I didn’t know if they were the same ones who gave her the heroin or whether she had dealers unknown to me. Either way, that was where the real control came from. As far as I can tell, from the moment she began earning a decent wage at AmEx, she’d given in to the temptation of drugs. And when she lost her job she would do anything to get her hands on the stuff that would one day kill her. That was game over, as far as we were concerned. That was the point that Mum lost control forever. I swore that would never happen to me.

My new home was a top-floor flat in Lansdowne Terrace, Hove, which I shared with Simon, my boyfriend of ten months. We’d planned my escape from Tremola Avenue together. What could be more romantic? Two lovers loading a van and driving off into the distance. It was like a Hollywood chick flick. The reality turned out to be a bit different.

You think it’s going to be amazing to live together, but what young teen ever imagines the drudgery of domestic life? He’d never had to wash up or cook or clean or shop for himself, and my experiences were long in the past. We’d certainly never had to worry about bills. We truly imagined just spending our days and nights making love and partying. How many young people have fallen for that?

It would have been easier with a bit more money. As an apprentice scaffolder, Simon was not bringing home much. I managed to get a job at the Prudential, which was courting school-leavers at the time, but that only paid about £60 a week. Our rent was £52, so that didn’t leave much for heating, food or luxuries. Candles became our light, kettles of hot water filled our sinks. We lived off tins of beans and dry bread. It was an eye-opener for Simon, but of course I’d experienced it all before.

There wasn’t a shortcut to cost-cutting that I didn’t know. The electricity meter ran off 50p pieces, but after all our other costs these were few and far between. Fortunately I had the next best thing. One of my acquaintances from the Hungry Years tipped me off about the money mould and even lent me his. Essentially it was an ice-cube tray, except instead of cubes, the ice came out in the shape of currency! I couldn’t believe it would work, but the second I pressed the icy coin into the meter I heard the electricity fire up. The only problem was that you were soon left with a rusting coin box. Some people drilled a hole in the bottom to bleed the melted water out, but as soon as the meter inspector saw that, you were rumbled. For a while, though, it worked just fine.

Our only luxuries were our bikes. Mine was only a 50cc – the maximum engine size for a sixteen-year-old – but Simon had a 125. After insurance and tax, we didn’t have a huge amount for fuel, but we made it pay. Gone were my weekends of cycling and fresh air and packed lunches with health freaks. Now everything was about leather and sweat and petrol fumes. And, God, I loved it.

By now I was practically part of the furniture at the Hungry Years. I knew everyone and everyone knew me. That’s how it felt, anyway. In practice, there was a large crowd of bikers – the Rising Sun gang they called themselves – all dressed the same in tasselled or studded leather over denim, and I didn’t know much more about them than their names and their engine sizes. Different people came and went all the time, but there was always a face or two I recognized, someone who would look after me if Simon wasn’t around. As the only sixteen-year-old, and certainly the only young girl, I never had to buy a drink – it was wonderful!

I looked the part too. I was still spending hours getting ready to go out, striving for the same effect which as an adult now takes two minutes. But at that age you’re absolutely convinced that every eyelash has to be just so. Every item of clothing, especially my beloved stilettos, had to be spot on. That attention to detail really appealed to me. And when I saw that everyone had patches on their denim jackets I leapt onto that bandwagon with gusto. Pictures of skulls, semi-naked women, rats and poisons – the darker the image, the better – all went onto my jacket. I didn’t give a monkey’s about the pictures, I just loved sewing them on, creating this work of art to parade around the pub, and soon I was adding sinister drawings and patterns to everyone else’s coats.

I must have looked pretty good, if I say so myself, because I can’t think of anyone else who would have got away with the stuff I did at the Hungry Years. Apart from the heavy-metal disco every weekend, there was a jukebox in the bar that everyone used to play their Iron Maiden, Motörhead and AC/DC favourites. Not me. The money I saved on drinks went straight into playing Perry Como, ‘Rambling Rose’, Neil Sedaka, old classics like that. If another biker gang had come into that pub, the Rising Sun’s reputation would have been gone.

Actually, I don’t know if there was much of a reputation. They weren’t Hell’s Angels or anything like that. There wasn’t a leader as such. They just liked to feel part of a group, so they all had their Rising Sun emblems sewn onto their coats and stuck on their bikes. They were all just happy to spend their nights playing pool in the Hungry Years – where I was a bit of a shark, I kid you not – and their days haring up and down the coastal roads.

I loved anything on two wheels – the faster, the better. My little 50cc would be barely out of the blocks when some of these other guys were dots in the distance, so I’d just jump on the back of one of theirs and enjoy it that way. Looking back, if I discovered my son was doing that now, I’d go spare. We would be clocking 100mph up these windy roads, bombing along, weaving in and out of traffic, with not a care in the world. Then we’d hit the five-mile straight on the A27 to St Dunstan’s and really put our feet down. That’s when I’d be clinging on so tight I could barely breathe and the speedometer would creep up and up until it was ticking 160mph. Absolute lunacy. But absolutely the best feeling in the world.

I had no trouble finding a ride. These guys were all in their late twenties and early thirties, so having the sexy sixteen-year-old on the back was a bit of kudos for them. But it wasn’t all cock fighting because Simon, or anyone who didn’t have their own powerful machine, was also invited to ride pillion.

I wasn’t the only girl in the group. There were a few women, mostly about ten years older than me, and all of them happy to get involved in the laddish games of wet T-shirt competitions, topless dancing and the usual bloke-pleasing antics. The era of ‘free love’ was very much in vogue in the Rising Sun. I’ve always been a one-man woman, so that wasn’t for me. But as a teen, at the height of my nascent sexual powers, I found it all really erotic and fascinating. I felt so mature just being part of it.

I suppose, reading this, you’re thinking: ‘How did you not have an accident?’ The answer is: I did. Ironically, it didn’t come when we were racing with the Rising Sun. If it had, I probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. I was out with a couple of Simon’s friends. Their bikes were only 125s, but that was still more powerful than mine, so I was on the back as usual.

We were in Peacehaven, pottering along, looking for somewhere for lunch. Simon pulled alongside us to indicate there was a Wimpy coming up and that should have been the end of it. But as we fell in behind him, his back and our front wheels connected. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air – with the bike just behind me. I landed on my knees and didn’t have time to react to the giant shadow bearing down on me. Fortunately, most of the bike missed me, but the exhaust settled straight on the open wound on my leg. It already had gravel and crap in it, now it was being seared by the heat of the engine.

From there it was a case of waking up in an ambulance and panicking.
Am I alive? Do my legs work? Can I still walk?

They obviously gave me painkillers, but not enough. Worst of all, nobody answered my questions. I must have blacked out again because the next thing I remember is being in a hospital bed, cursing and screaming at the shock and the pain. Suddenly I heard a disapproving voice.