Michele Gorman - The Second Chance Café in Carlton Square

I felt like such a dick then. Here was this lady, working with troubled kids every day, probably for little pay and little thanks, and I was swanning in sounding like I only wanted the cream off the top of the barrel. ‘Yes, of course, of course, that’s why I’m here,’ I said as my face reddened. ‘To offer them that chance.’ I took home every one of the files she’d prepared for me to consider.

Just the bare bones information I’ve got is enough to break your heart. A catalogue of foster care, school disruption and instability. I wanted to hire them all, so how was I supposed to choose between them to make a shortlist? I’m not exactly opening Starbucks nationwide. I’ve only got room, and money, for two trainees at a time.

I’m not looking for the best candidates, per se, like you would for a regular job. I’m looking for the ones who most need the help, and the ones who most want it. It’s like going into a bakery and asking which cakes taste okay. No, no fancy decoration or mouth-watering icing. Someone else will gladly have those. I’ll take the ones that are irregularly shaped or might have fallen on the floor, please. They’re still perfectly good, just not as obviously appealing as the perfect ones.

A hulking form suddenly blocks most of the light from the open doorway. ‘Yo. This for the interview?’ his deep voice booms.

‘Yes, in here. You must be Martin. Hi.’

He doesn’t look like a Martin. He walks in with a sort of half-skip, half-lumber, as if he’s got a bad limp on one side. ‘Yo, I’m Ice,’ he says, putting his fist in front of me for a bump. I must not do it right because he sucks his teeth at me. The kids are always doing this to me – when I don’t get out of the way fast enough at the Tube station, or dither over the bowls of fruit at the market or hold up the queue in the local Tesco. Basically, whenever they judge me hopeless, which is a lot. ‘Wagwan?’ he asks.

He means what’s going on. ‘Well, we’re renovating the café to get it ready for the opening, as you can see!’

He looks around as I look at him. His file says he’s fifteen, and his face looks babyish, but he’s huge, man-size. There’s a thick metal chain snaking into the front pocket of his jeans, which are so low they’re nearly around his knees, and his mini Afro looks too old for his spot-prone brown face.

I know he’s trying to be intimidating, but it’s so clearly bravado that I just want to say ‘ Aww !’ and pinch his babyish cheeks. Though he might break my arm if I did.

He keeps looking around as I explain about the six-month training scheme and what would be expected of him. Eventually he says, ‘Why you making it a café, not a pub? It’d be banging working in a pub.’

‘Aren’t you a minor? You can’t work in a pub.’

He sucks his teeth again. ‘True dat.’

‘Maybe you could tell me why you’d like to work here?’ He shrugs his answer. ‘Can you think of any reason you’d like to work here?’

‘It pays, yeah?’

‘Right, yes. Any reason beyond the money?’ Though at trainee rates he wouldn’t really need that chain on his wallet.

‘Nah, man, my social worker say I got to come.’ He pulls a crumpled paper from his non-chained pocket. ‘She said sign this.’

I take the short, photocopied statement from him and add my signature to the bottom.

Ice snatches it off the table and leaves without a backward glance.

By mid-morning my hand is starting to cramp from signing so many attendance forms. Some of the kids bother to sit down and a few even humour me by answering a question or two. Others turn up with their paper already in hand, waving it for a signature.

I’m in so far over my head that I should be in a submersible. I may have grown up in a tough part of London and be on first-name terms with PC Billy Bramble. I may have seen the fights break out down the market when the gangs kick off. But I’ve never lived that life myself. I like to think I’m street. I’m really just street-light.

Take the kid who rumbled me for gawping at the purplish blood droplet tattooed on his arm. It had a triangle above it, like a gang symbol. ‘You starin’ at my tatt?’ he’d said.

I could feel my face go red. ‘Erm, sorry, I was just interested. Is it supposed to be blood, or a gang sign of some kind?’ I couldn’t sound more lame.

‘Teletubby,’ he said.

I’d never heard of them. The Teletubby Massive? I didn’t want any gang members in my crew.

He pointed to the red blotch beside the drop. ‘Tinky Winky.’

‘You mean it’s an actual Teletubby?!’ I tried to bite down my smile.

‘Joker blud did it to me.’ He shrugged. ‘I wanted a stopwatch.’

Just as I was starting to wonder if this boy with a children’s character on his arm might be worth another look, I asked him why he wanted to do the training programme.

‘Everybody likes coffee, yeah? I can drink that shit all day.’

‘Well, yes, but you’d actually be working, not drinking coffee. And hopefully it won’t be shit.’

‘I can slip it to my bluds though, yeah?’

He really thought I’d pay him to hand out free coffee to his mates all day.

‘I can let you know by next week, okay?’ I said, scribbling my signature on his form.

Mum and Dad would have cuffed him on the side of the head for answers like that. I can hear Dad now. Lazy sod . My parents were working by the time they were teens, and not just making their beds for pocket money, either. Mum cycled all over London to pick up and drop off clothes for my gran’s tailoring customers. ‘Join a Union if you don’t like the deal,’ Gran used to say of the sweatshop wages she paid her daughter, but she bought Mum off by letting her keep any tips. Mum was slightly easier on me, and she’d never let me cycle across the city. She often took me with her to help when she cleaned houses, though. There was less risk to life and limb but the wages were still crap.

On his way out, my latest applicant passes a boy just coming in. ‘Yo, Tinky Winky, ’sup?’ says the boy.

‘Fuck off, dweeb.’

‘That’s Professor to you,’ he says.

I watch this brief exchange with interest. Not because the new boy, with his tall lanky frame, looks as if his brain has no idea what his arms and legs are doing, or that he doesn’t seem frightened by his tattooed rival. His close-cropped wavy black hair and mixed-race complexion don’t differentiate him from most of the other kids.

It’s his three-piece suit and the fatly knotted blue tie round his skinny neck.

And his briefcase, which he sets on the table between us.

‘I’m Joseph.’ He sticks his hand out for me to shake. His long-lashed brown eyes are the first to look directly at me all morning. ‘It’s your lucky day,’ he says. ‘You can cancel the other punters, because you’ve found your future employee.’

‘Well, I hope I have, but I’ll still need to ask you some questions, okay?’ Who told him to be so cocky in an interview? I glance at his file. Lives with his mum and older brother, who seems to be mixed up with one of the local gangs. ‘You’re seventeen?’

‘Yeah, but don’t let that fool you. I can do anything you can, and I’m really good .’

His suggestion is unmistakable.

That won’t do him any favours and the sooner he realises it, the better. Just to prove the point, I ask him if he can drive. No? What about buying alcohol legally? Are you registered to vote? No again? ‘Then you can’t quite do anything I can,’ I say, ‘so let’s stick to the interview, okay? Why would you like to do this training?’

There’s a scattering of hairs on his face where he’s been trying to shave, and his suit sleeves cover his knuckles. I bet he’s borrowed it from his big brother. He might have borrowed the razor too.