Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood. Tim Pritchard

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Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood - Tim Pritchard


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      Finally her number would come up and it would be her turn at the counter.

      ‘Have you got anything for me today?’

      ‘No, sorry. Nothing today.’

      What do you do? Do you go, ‘I’ve been waiting here all day and that’s all you can do? That’s all you can say to me? I’ve waited six months and you still haven’t got any accommodation you can put me in?’ ’Course I said I’ll take anything.

      Sharon found the waiting and the hanging around for proper accommodation unbearable. So when a letter eventually arrived saying that somewhere had come up on an estate in Brixton she didn’t think twice.

      When that envelope from the housing people arrived saying that we could move to Angell Town, it was a proper relief. Finally, our own home. It was the best thing what happened to me.

      The housing people took her to a council block in Angell Town called Marston House. She was amazed. Like JaJa she’d never seen an estate before. When they opened the door of 124, Marston House, she was delighted. She had been in Streatham Vale for so long that she didn’t mind that it looked like a dump. It had five bedrooms. It’s the biggest place I’ve ever seen. It’s like a palace.

      When she finally got the keys, the kids ran in and each chose a room. The joy didn’t last long. When Sharon opened the door later that day, a group of kids were standing there, looking at her threateningly.

      It was proper scary when we first moved there but because we were desperate we didn’t have no choice, so I didn’t care. So I said to my kids I said, ‘Remember where we come from, we’re from Birmingham and no matter what happens, don’t change the way we are.’ And I don’t think we never have. But that helped us because we got tested. From the same day we moved in we were tested. I was tested by them kids standing in front of the front door. It was like America. When I went out they were standing there and when I came back they were standing there.

      The flat had been a squat. A crack house. It was used by kids on the estate as a place where they could ‘coch’; it was a place to smoke and drink, away from the prying eyes of their parents. The housing department had taken the flat back, given it a lick of paint and put in new, sturdy locks. But the kids still hung around. Sharon felt that she was marked. She got her kids together.

      ‘Let’s just stick together, nobody can’t farce with us. Nobody can’t mess with us coz if they do we are gonna fight.’

      And she was ready to fight.

      The next time she went out, she opened the door and spoke firmly to the kids hanging round outside.

      ‘Can you move away from my door, please?’

      It helped that she and her family were black but she was conscious that they weren’t Londoners and that the other people living on the block were testing her to see how she would react.

      When she came back she repeated her request.

      ‘Can you move from my door, please?’

      Slowly she began to ask the kids their names and even throw questions at them.

      ‘Angell Town. Is it good? Is it nice round here? Where are the shops?’

      It worked. They began to realize that they couldn’t intimidate her. It wasn’t long before Sharon, Elijah, Chantelle, Saffiya and Naja Kerr weren’t the new kids on the block any more.

       Chapter Three

       Simon

      Eight years old. That’s when my life went downhill. From eight years old nobody looked after me. I just lived on the streets and made do by myself. There was no one except me and my friends.

      Phat Si

      Phat Si wasn’t always Phat Si. That nickname came later. His first nickname was Fat Si. Fat because he was tubby, Si because he was born Simon Maitland from Stockwell, south London. His family lived on the west side of the Brixton Road, in a council house on the Stockwell Park Estate. He felt lucky that he’d been born into a happy and protective family. He was spoiled by his five sisters and loved by his mum and dad. He admired his dad. He was tall and big and good-looking and, unlike most of his friends’ dads, he wore a suit and carried a briefcase like a proper businessman. Everyone loved his dad and wanted to hang out with him. But Si was most proud of his mum. She was beautiful. That’s what he remembered most about her. Beautiful, and, to his young eyes, elegant and statuesque.

      He felt he was lucky to have such good parents. They threw birthday parties for him every year until he was eight years old. They were big parties, with cake and jelly and presents and all his friends and family around him. Life was good. Life was how it should be for little kids. That’s when things began to change.

      Eight years old.

      One afternoon he came home from his school, St Helen’s, which was just up the road from his house, and pushed open the back garden door which was always unlocked so that friends and neighbours could come and go without having to ring the doorbell. He expected to see the house full of fun and action. That’s how it usually was.

      This time it was different. He didn’t hear the usual noise of kids running around, or his mum shouting at them to keep them quiet. He couldn’t hear the clanging of pots in the kitchen or smell the waft of rice and beans being prepared for dinner. He knew then something was wrong. He just couldn’t tell what. He pushed open the door, a sense of panic rising inside him.

      I came home from school and there was no sign of my mum and my sisters. I had no idea. I was young. I didn’t know whatwas going on. I pushed open the door and there was nothing in the house. There was no one. I was petrified. I was shocked, innit? One minute there was a family there and the next minute no one. It was a difficult stage for someone as young as me to go through. D’you get me?

      Gripped by panic he ran through the house shouting for his mum. But there was nothing. There was no one. The TV was there and the sofa. But there were no records or books on the shelves. There were no clothes in his mum’s wardrobe, no toys in his sisters’ rooms. He didn’t understand. Terrified by the empty house he ran up the road towards Brixton where his dad had a shop. It was a designer clothes store in Granville Arcade, just inside Brixton market. He ran breathlessly through the market bumping into disgruntled passers-by and found his dad slumped behind the till of the shop.

      ‘Dad, there’s no one in the house. Mum’s not there.’

      His dad gave him a sad, resigned look.

      ‘I know. Your mum’s gone.’

      His dad already knew. He’d gone home earlier in the day and discovered it was empty. He told his son that he wouldn’t be able to stay with him, that he didn’t have the means to look after him and that Simon would have to live with his grandmother in John Ruskin Street in Camberwell. It was that simple. There was nothing else his father said. Maybe there was nothing else his father could say.

      That evening his father led him by the hand to his grandma’s house. And that’s where Fat Si spent the first night the day his mum left.

      My grandma explained my mum and dad got split up. She didn’t explain why. She said my mum and sisters had gone to live in another country. It wasn’t the same no more after

      that. I never understood why I’d been left behind. But I didunderstand that I was on my own.

      From the moment that his mum left, Fat Si’s life became more difficult. He found himself constantly angry and frustrated. At school he dropped his studies and did dumb stuff, like getting into fights and talking back to teachers. He was suspended.


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