Nipper (26 page)

I’m back from the brink, back in the real world, back on dry land. I don’t want to be in that negative limbo land of drugtaking and violence; I don’t want to be running all my life from a father whose anger has infected my mind and whose sickness has eaten into my soul; I don’t want to see that blackness behind the eyes when I stare into the glass.

I want to be Good Charlie, whatever that means and whatever it takes.

*   *   *

After that night I know I have to change my ways and try to turn my life around yet again. I’ve been writing letters to Sophie since she moved back to England and she’s started an Advertising course at Lancashire University in Preston. There’s something about her I can’t get out of my head, like she’s been sent down to me from whoever’s up there to save me from myself – like a kind of guardian angel – and she’s the only one who can do it.

When her face flashes through my mind it makes me happy: it’s like an oasis of calm and serenity in the turmoil of my life and I feel better about myself. Is it her innocence or am I idealising her and putting her on a pedestal? After all, she’s not really an angel, she’s just a human being, flesh and blood like me. But she seems so nice and friendly compared with some of the people in my life.

I have to move on from Spain, as it clearly isn’t helping at all. I decide to go back to see Sophie in Preston, to see if it really was just a holiday romance or something stronger. I still don’t trust myself and think that maybe my mind wasn’t operating rationally the last time I saw her, and Bobby wants to come with me see his girlfriend Katie.

I haven’t told Sophie we’re coming, as Bobby and I want to surprise her and Katie. Armed only with an address of some student halls in Preston, we board a train and set off on the journey. On the train I start worrying that maybe she’s met someone else or has gone home to Cheshire for a holiday, or even worse, given me the wrong address. But Bobby
reminds me that we’ve been writing to each other and it’s obviously the real address.

When we arrive at the student halls Sophie isn’t there. Someone on the intercom buzzes me in when I explain who I am. Sophie has been telling all her student friends about me – brilliant.

I leave my bags there, and Bobby goes off to see the twins in the next block and I go for a walk outside to calm myself down, as I’m getting really excited about seeing her again. Bobby comes back out from the other block and we decide to go for a beer in a pub near the halls. I only have one drink, just to calm my nerves, then have a game of pool, thinking about what I’m going to say to her. Then we walk back half an hour later to see if she’s come home. I press the intercom.

‘Hello, is Sophie home yet? It’s Charlie.’

‘Hi! It’s me,’ comes a familiar voice. ‘I’m coming down now.’

My heart is pounding and Bobby keeps ruffling my hair up, trying to make me look a mess while giggling in that mad way he has. The door opens and there she is, looking even better than I’ve remembered. I must have dreamt about this moment.

I still can’t believe it’s Sophie, or that she could really be pleased to see me.

But I can’t mistake that look on her face. I can see she’s deliriously happy to see me. We grab each other really tight
and kiss. It feels unbelievable to be back with the only person on the planet I’ve ever had a serious connection with. There’s something about her, the way she looks at me, that smile that would light up a room, her infectious laugh and her honest eyes.

That’s what I’ve thought about all this time. How honest her eyes are.

We stay in Preston for three months, Bobby with Katie, me with Sophie. Bobby and I get jobs in Southport at Pontin’s Holiday Camp – not as Red Coats but as builders. The place is having a revamp and they need people to demolish it.

Travelling is a nightmare every day, and Sophie only has a tiny room in the halls with a shared kitchen and toilet. It’s cramped and I’m not used to sleeping next to anyone, especially in a single bed. But the boss of the building company we work for has some chalets on site that aren’t being used so we move into them and the girls sneak up at weekends. We hide them in the back of a van and nip them past security at night.

I’m finding it hard to adjust back to a normal life as I’m still a bit wild and have come off drugs very fast. I can also be paranoid, waiting for something to go wrong, as it normally does when I’m around. Bobby’s getting restless as well: he went abroad for the high life and a change of scenery and we’re now back working in the UK – and in a place as dreary as Dundee if not worse, only now without his friends.

One night I’m feeling particularly edgy. I’m sitting in a pub in Preston with Sophie and I’m pissed.

‘What are you looking at?’ I say if anyone even glances at me.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Sophie asks me.

And before I can stop myself I tell her everything. It all comes flooding out, everything about my childhood, about how my parents split up when I was ten months old and how me and Tommy spent the next three years being snatched by either Mum or Dad in a tug of war. How I told the judge I wanted to be with my dad when I was only four and how for the next twelve years I paid the price for my stupid mistake by being put through daily torture and living hell by my drunken, psychotic father who beat, punched, kicked, bit, strangled, smashed and battered me and then subjected me to hours and hours of mind-bending inquisitions more or less every day of my childhood until the night I paid him back – just ten minutes in return for twelve years of horrific abuse. How I then walked out and went to live with my mum who I’d hardly even seen between the ages of four and ten.

Sophie just sits there saying nothing. She can hardly believe what I’m telling her at first, but she knows how hard it’s been for me to open up to her like that and that everything I’ve just told her is the plain, honest truth.

‘I always saw you as this bright, funny guy,’ she says.

She is overwhelmed, but at the same time I think she now wants to save me –
you’ll do for my summer project
, she must be thinking.

But I know it’s more than that. For me to let my guard down and tell her this is huge and I can only do it because I know she’s a really genuine, kind and caring person. If you met her you’d know what I mean.

And even now as I’m telling her about what I went through I still can’t understand why someone like her, as beautiful as her, would go for someone like me.

The work has finished at the holiday camp and Bobby decides to go back to Scotland, as he’s never felt the love he first thought he had for Katie. I’m getting restless as well, because I’ve moved back to the small room in the halls with no job while Sophie is at university. I have too much time to think again as I’m alone most of the day and I never really wanted to move back to the UK. It was meant to be a holiday but has turned back into a life.

I sit down with Sophie one night and tell her I’m going back abroad for a while, as I can’t handle not working and her being at uni all day. I know it’s going to break both of our hearts but I can’t be alone for more than a couple of hours as I start thinking about my childhood – my demons are never far away.

‘I’m coming with you,’ she says instantly.

‘Don’t be crazy, you can’t leave university.’

‘I don’t care about uni, I just want to be with you.’

‘It’s your life! And I don’t want to be responsible for ruining it.’

She’s crying now. ‘It’s
my
life, you can’t make decisions for me, I’m coming with you.’

I have never had someone love me so much that they would give up everything to be with me. I don’t know if it’s me being selfish or lonely or even flattered but I eventually agree and promise to look after her.

There’s still the issue of telling Sophie’s parents and we have to travel back to Cheshire to break the news that I, some nutcase from Scotland, am taking their precious little girl away to a foreign country for the summer.

I have never met two nicer people in my life. Her dad reminds me of Tom Sellick, the one in
Three Men and a Baby
– a proper family man who loves his wife and kids, and even though his daughter is getting involved with someone who he probably thinks is the worst thing to have happened to her, he still supports her in any decision she makes and in my eyes that’s true love from a real father. Even though we’ve never met before and he doesn’t know me, he gives me a big hug and says, ‘You’ll look after my daughter.’

Her mother is an older version of Sophie looks-wise and her parents seem to be equal in every decision in life they make. Sophie’s happiness seems to be the main agenda in their life even though I still get a feeling that they personally think I’m not right for their daughter. But whatever makes Sophie happy is good enough for them. I only hope I can live up to their expectations as I still have very mixed feelings about where my life is going.

*   *   *

So off I go again, only this time I have a girlfriend to look after – and I find it hard to look after myself. We move to another part of Spain, but then things go downhill really fast. While I’m out looking for a job I leave Sophie at a hostel for a couple of hours and tell her to keep the door locked as there are always weirdos and thieves living in those kinds of places.

When I get back Sophie is crying.

‘I went to the toilet and I was only gone for two minutes.’

‘What’s happened, what is it?’ I’m now really panicking.

‘Everything’s gone. Travellers’ cheques, credit cards,’ she sobs. ‘Everything’s been stolen.’

Luckily I have the passports in my pocket. But yet again my new life seems to have turned to disaster and this time I’ve dragged Sophie into my constant run of bad luck.

I get a job bringing people into a club and one night I’m offered some ecstasy. I’m soon back into my own selfish ways, forgetting the promise I made Sophie’s father. This isn’t because of my difficult childhood, this is down to my weak, addictive personality.

I’m out in the clubs all night, hours after she’s given up and gone home, back to whatever apartment we’re staying in. Sophie’s watching me as I literally try to kill myself with drugs and drink, and my raging temper keeps flaring at the slightest provocation. I’m on a self-destruct mission and Sophie hasn’t a clue how to deal with it at such a young age. I can’t look after myself and will never let anyone get too
close, so what chance does an eighteen year old have of changing me, even with the love she seems to feel for me?

I’m still too young to be in a relationship, or at least I think I must be. I still don’t trust anybody and find it very hard to believe that somebody that age loves me. I don’t want somebody tagging along when I’ve got all this baggage and I don’t want to hurt her. And finally, to be really honest, I think so little of myself I don’t think she can be worth much if she cares about someone like me. I can’t trust myself so why should she trust me? It’s like that old Groucho Marx joke, ‘I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.’

We break up even though it feels as though our relationship has hardly even begun. After just one month of living together she’s moved out. I don’t even know who finally ends it, me or her. All I know is that I’m a disaster zone and if she’d stayed with me any longer I would have dragged her down with me.

Why am I doing this? Why can’t I accept love from someone who I know is the best thing in my life? These are questions I ask myself again and again in the following days and weeks, while I have another drink in another bar and snort another line of coke.

After eight months of this mayhem and misery Sophie goes back home to England. She’s out of my life for good.

I can hardly believe it. I’ve thrown away my one chance of happiness. I don’t even want to think about it and I try to tell
myself I’m better off on my own. I’ve always been a loner at heart, I say to myself, and I don’t need anyone else.

I’m like the Littlest Hobo, the lone wolf. I’m like my dog Bonnie, except that she was trusting and loyal. I’m like Dad in a way that I hate – I’ll turn on anyone who shows me love and destroy everything in my path.

A few weeks later I leave Spain and go to see some lads from Tyrone in Ireland that I have met up with during this period.

I just can’t settle anywhere or with anyone. I’m destined to be a loner, pushing my body to the limit and leaving a trail of destruction behind me.

When I arrive in Ireland in 2000 at the age of 24 I make a promise to myself never to take drugs again or drink alcohol to the extent I have been for the past few years. And this time I mean it.

If my time with Sophie has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to be that guy who doesn’t trust anyone or let anyone get close to him. Sophie made me want to change: if I can’t live with myself how would I ever be able to live with anyone else?

Over the next three years in Ireland my life is turned around. I’m back playing football, going to the gym, and I make a lot of good friends. I have the odd hiccup – I’m completely drug-free but there’s still the very occasional night out in town when I get drunk – but nothing major, as I have truly started learning to control my fists and my anger.

I’m now working as a barman in a seriously posh hotel in Balls Bridge in Dublin, the Herbert Park. I’m enjoying life again, like the times when I was younger with Tommy and Bobby.

I hardly ever have any arguments with anyone – except on a football pitch. Referees are the new enemy, but you can always shake hands at the end as it’s now about passion and not violence.

The only problem at this time is something that has been eating me up inside for the past three years. It’s the guilt and remorse I still feel – guilt over what I have done to Sophie and remorse that I have thrown it all away.

My guilt keeps nagging away at me – for taking Sophie out of her university course, for promising her a life I would never be able to give her and for being so selfish. I should have stopped her coming with me back to Spain as I was in no fit frame of mind to have someone to look after when I couldn’t even take care of myself.