Joe Peters - Cry Myself to Sleep - He had to escape. They would never hurt him again.

By that stage my head had been so messed with I was a real problem to anyone who tried to control me, even those who had good intentions and were hoping to help me. I was still too afraid to tell anyone the truth about what had been done to me throughout my childhood. The anger and fear and misery of the previous decade were stewing up inside my head and finally one day I flipped in the care home I was in at the time and exploded.

I was sixteen years old and I went on a wild rampage, smashing up my bedroom, not caring about anything any more, raging like a wild animal. The key workers tried to restrain me, but it was too late for that. My anger made me too strong for them and I managed to escape, running out of the home without having any idea where I was going. Once I was outside, I could see the rest of the staff having a meeting inside and I grabbed a brick, lobbing it through the window at them, shattering the glass and hitting one of them on the shoulder.

That night, when the police brought me back yet again, the man in charge of the home told me he’d had enough, and I was to leave.

‘Pack your bags and get out,’ he said, ‘and don’t come back.’

‘I ain’t got nowhere to go,’ I snapped.

‘Go back to your mother. You’ve got a home to go to.’

I knew Mum and the others had gone away for a few days and the house would be empty, so I slept in the garden shed for the night, planning what I was going to do next. I knew I had to leave the area and the only place I had ever heard of was Charing Cross in London. I’d heard other kids in the care homes talking about it after they had been caught and brought back, telling one another how great it was in the world of the homeless and free.

‘Yeah, you’ve got to get away from this place,’ they’d tell me. ‘Charing Cross is the best place you could go to. There are millions of homeless kids there.’

Although I harboured the same wild dreams of becoming rich as most other young boys, it was the thought of finding someone to love, who would love me back, that was my greatest goal.

The next morning I broke into the house and went through it, collecting every bit of small change I could scrounge, as well as all the food and clothing I could find in the cupboards, stuffing it into my bag. There wasn’t much there to take, as Mum squandered virtually every penny anyone brought into the house on drink, spending all her time down the pub and no longer cooking family meals for any of them. As I went, I left a trail of furious devastation behind me, smashing everything that came within reach, burning my bridges and making it impossible that I could ever return.

My heart was thumping as I stood by the side of the slip road down to the motorway at dawn. I was wearing my blue ‘shell suit’ and trainers–which was pretty much the only uniform I ever wore at the time–trying to thumb a lift down to London before anyone spotted me and took me back.

The adrenaline was still pumping from my rampage, the anger still throbbing in my head, and now I was anxious to get away from the area as quickly as I could, in case one of Mum’s neighbours had heard the racket that I’d made when I was ransacking Mum’s house, or seen me coming out and called the police to report the crime. Even in my agitated state I felt a bit guilty about all the damage I’d done, but at the same time I felt a strange sense of satisfaction at having finally taken a small revenge for all the pain that gripped my heart. I wanted it to be a final gesture to her and to my brothers and to Amani, before I disappeared from the area, losing myself for ever in the bustle and excitement that I was sure I would find in London.

I had all my worldly possessions, and whatever else I had been able to snatch from the house, in my precious bag. It was a sort of holdall backpack thing that was to become my closest and most treasured companion in the coming years. When you have practically nothing in life, you cling tightly to the few possessions you are able to truly call your own.

I was on a nervous high at the thought of finally escaping, like a freak burst of sheer happiness, which was helping me to cope with the cold of a spring morning and the steady drizzle that was soaking through to my bones, making my cheap clothes stick uncomfortably to my skinny, shivering frame and my hair hang lankly over my face. I must have looked a bit rough already, having slept the night in the shed before finally plucking up the courage to break into the empty house, and it had been at least an hour’s walk in the rain to get to the slip road; so I suppose it wasn’t surprising that the cars kept on streaming past and not even slowing down to consider offering me a lift. If I had been sitting inside a nice warm, dry, clean car, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to stop in the rain and open my door to someone like me either.

It hadn’t occurred to me for a moment during my walk to the slip road that I might not get picked up at all, but as the hours ticked past and the cars, vans, motorbikes and lorries kept tearing by, most of the drivers not even giving me a second look, I felt fear gripping my guts with increasing intensity. What if I was left standing at the side of the road until a police car or someone who knew me came past and spotted me? What if they took me back and I had to face Mum and the rest of the family after I’d trashed her place and stolen her money? It might have been only a couple of quid in ten-pence pieces, but I would be judged on the principle of the thing, and the fact that I had dared to challenge her. I knew from past experience how immediate the punishment for even the smallest imagined transgression could be if she and Amani managed to get me on my own, and I could clearly picture what they would do to me for daring to make such a brave stand. I knew the authorities wouldn’t take me back into the care home after I had lost my temper and hurled a brick through the window at them, so I couldn’t expect any shelter there either. I had no option but to keep standing by the side of the road with my thumb out for as long as it took.

The hours kept on going by and the rain barely let up. My initial high spirits sank out of sight. After a whole day of being ignored, during which I took only the odd break to delve into my bag and eat the food that I had grabbed from the house, my feet aching from the standing around, a car full of young guys pulled up a few yards away from me. I felt my heart leap back to life with a mixture of relief, excitement and apprehension. Apart from wanting to get away from the cold and the wet, I was desperate to get out of sight and on my way, and finally my chance had come. Scooping up my bag, I ran towards the waiting car, my stomach tight with fear. I was always wary about climbing into cars with strangers, ever since Mum had sent me off with ‘Uncle Douglas’ in his car. I knew that once someone had you in a locked car you were trapped: you were their prisoner and they could pretty much do what they liked with you. I had no way of telling who were the potentially dangerous people amongst the world of strangers I was now entering; often in my experience it was the ones who were nicest to you at first who turned out to be the cruellest once they had you at their mercy.

I told myself it would be harder for people to overpower me now that I was sixteen and six foot tall, but the fear was too deeply embedded inside me to be susceptible to reason. I was tough, because I was ferocious like a cornered animal, but I was still just a boy and knew a determined man could easily beat me. The feeling in my stomach wasn’t all fear. It was partly excitement too: excitement at the thought of starting a new life in a community of people like myself, people who would understand me and what I’d been through and wouldn’t want to hurt me, people who had been abused and hurt and knew that the outside world could often be a kinder place than their own homes or the care homes they had been put into.