Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood. Tim Pritchard
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she had just bought from Currys. He turned over chairs and smashed a glass.
Then he punched her in the face.
Sharon fought back but he pushed her over, held her down on the ground and laid into her with his feet. She struggled and shouted and screamed at him. But he carried on kicking her as he held her down. It was during the kicking that Sharon made up her mind what she was going to do.
When the worst was over and he had gone upstairs she gingerly got to her feet, sat on the couch and called her friend.
‘This can’t go on. It’s got to stop. I can’t live like this. I’m gonna kill him.’
She had already planned it in her head. She was going to wait for him to fall asleep, then she would put a cushion over his face and stab him.
‘I’m going to do it now. I have to do it.’
Her friend was silent for a while. Then she reminded Sharon that she had other responsibilities.
‘If you kill him you’ll be locked up and there won’t be nobody to look after the kids.’
That sobered Sharon up. But she still knew that she would have to do something. If she didn’t get out of there the next day she really would kill him. She meant it. She would kill him.
By that evening she had worked out her plan.
The next morning Sharon waited until she heard the door slam. It meant that Delroy had gone off to his job making bracelets and necklaces in Hockley, the jewellery quarter of Birmingham. She packed the kids off to school and went straight to social services.
‘I need to get out of here.’
The woman at the counter could see how urgent it was. Sharon’s face was black and blue.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I need to get far. We’re going to London.’
Sharon’s mother lived in north London. It was the only place where she knew someone she trusted and which was far enough away to be safe.
Social services rang round and found a women’s refuge hostel in Tulse Hill near Brixton, south London.
Sharon thought that Brixton sounded good. She knew that Brixton had a large black community similar to Handsworth. It would help the kids fit in.
She went home, packed a suitcase and collected her passport and bank book. Then she walked, bent almost double with the pain from the kicking, to the bookies down the road where she worked. She explained to her boss what had happened. He was good about it. He gave her £400 in wages and wished her luck.
Then she went to the kids’ school and spoke to the head teacher, Miss Dillon. The head teacher understood immediately and wrote her a letter to help get the kids into another school in London. Then she collected JaJa, Chantelle, Saffiya and Naja, took them home, sat them down and talked to them.
JaJa was shocked when his mum came out with it.
‘I’m leaving. You can either stay here with dad or come with me.’
But he didn’t hesitate.
‘I’m coming with you.’
They were each allowed to pack their stuff into a small bag. They wanted to take their bikes and their other toys but Sharon explained that they couldn’t take everything. Naja was the most upset. He wanted to take his Ninja robot that he had got the previous Christmas. It was too big to fit in his one bag. They left it behind with everything else. The TV and stereo and everything. They left it all behind. Before they closed the front door Sharon turned to JaJa.
‘I know this is gonna be hard and you are going to hate me but I’ll make it up to you.’
JaJa followed his mum out of the house, into a black taxi and from there to the coach station in New Street. His mother never told them why they were leaving. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew why they’d left. He knew that they’d left there because his dad was hitting her. He knew that his dad was living with another woman.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going to London.’
On the coach JaJa tried to keep the strange feelings rising up in his stomach at bay by looking out at the changing landscape.
At Victoria coach station he watched his mum dial the telephone number of a women’s hostel in south-west London.
JaJa knew that he wasn’t going back to Birmingham. What he didn’t know was that he would never see his father again.
The family was given temporary accommodation in a small room in the hostel. It was five metres by three metres. It was for the whole family; five of them with all their belongings. JaJa stood and looked out of the window.
I thought what the hell is this? We just come from a nice house, a big place, to somewhere new, somewhere I got no friends, and I thought I’m going to have to start all over again. I realized this was for real and we’re not going back to Birmingham. In Birmingham I had mixed friends, Chinese, black, Asian friends. Now I had no friends and nothing and no one.
Sharon could see that her son was upset. She did what she could to comfort him.
‘We’re staying here now. Don’t worry, we’ll sort ourselves out. We’ll find a house. We’ve just got to wait a little while. We’ve got to go through this rough stage for a bit. It’s going to be hard at first, it’s going to be horrible, but I’m going to make it right.’
JaJa felt like crying.
I went to the window by myself and I remember I looked out and tears started to go down my face. It was a little window and I thought, ‘No way, where are we?’ and the tears kept coming. I remember it was a grey day and it had just finished raining and it was dull outside. It just looked strange. The whole atmosphere was just strange.
His mum sat him down and talked to him again.
‘Don’t worry. It will get better. You’ll start school soon and meet some new friends.’
That calmed JaJa down a bit.
But he wasn’t sure that he believed her. He just felt like crying and crying. And he was amazed that his mum wasn’t in tears too.
The truth was that even if Sharon Kerr had felt like crying there was no time to fall apart. For the sake of the kids she had to show that she wasn’t scared. But she was scared. She was leaving a nice house in Birmingham and heading into the unknown. She knew it was going to affect the kids, uprooting them from their schools and their friends. But she could see no other way out. She now had a plan and she was determined to make it happen. Her back was still hurting from the kicking that Delroy had given her in Birmingham. That spurred her on and reminded her of why she had left.
As soon as she got settled into the Tulse Hill hostel she called her mother who lived in Tottenham. Sharon hadn’t brought with her any of the kids’ sheets or pillows or blankets and the hostel didn’t provide them so her mum told her to go to the TSB bank in Tulse Hill and she would speak to her branch and get the money sent over straight away. Within hours of arriving, Sharon was clutching £300 to spend on bedclothes. She deliberately didn’t tell her mum where she had taken the kids because she knew that Delroy would try and find them and force them to go back to Birmingham.
The next day that’s exactly what he tried to do.
Delroy turned up at Sharon’s mum’s house and banged on the door demanding to know where they were. When she refused to let him in, he kicked down the door. Sharon was glad that she hadn’t told her mum where they were because she knew that she would try and get them to reconcile. That’s the sort of person her mother was. She saw the good in everyone. She even saw the good in her violent and abusive boyfriend.
Talking