5. Changing Fortunes

I was surprised to find him at home. He was sitting in the living room, in the dark. I pushed open the door and in the light from the hallway, I could see his head was in his hands. I quickly made to leave him alone.

But my Father waved me to join him, indicating I should sit beside him on the settee. Something had to be up. He never did that before. I couldn�t see his face properly, but his voice was cracking.

�I�m so sorry, Penny.�

Another first. I prepared myself for something serious, searching my brain for anything that I might have done to cause it. It had been a long time since he had hit me.

�We have to move again,� he said quietly. �My firm has let me go and we can�t afford to live here any longer.�

So that was it. I didn�t really understand, although I was already ticking off mentally the things I�d miss. But we�d done it before, we�d moved and set up a new home together, so it surely wasn�t that bad.

I was inwardly devastated at having yet again to change school, but Father was more important: it was my job to look after him.

It was such an unusual situation, sitting there like that. I put my arms around his neck and hugged him. And he hugged me back. Properly. I buried my face against his collar, filling my nostrils with the familiar scent of his aftershave. I didn�t want it to stop. I was just sad that it had taken something which had upset him in order to give me the opportunity to hold him.

There was a difficult period lasting a few weeks, when the house seemed different each time I got home from school. Furniture would be missing from a room. One Sunday, my Father�s beautiful car was driven away by its new owner. I said tearful goodbyes to my mates, handed back my schoolbooks. A man arrived with a big white van and my Father helped him load up what we were taking. I squeezed between them on the bench seat and we headed South.

It wasn�t that far, really, but in those few miles, the sky receded as the buildings grew taller and the trees became scarcer and I noticed the litter on the streets.

When we pulled into the estate, I didn�t realise we had arrived. It was dreadful � two vast quadrangles of dark red flats, piled on top of each other, with external balconies, gaudy doors and draughty stairwells at the end of each block. In the centre of each square was an area of dirty concrete, unencumbered by any greenery, just some abandoned washing line poles and the derelict remains of a children�s playground. The estate was ringed by cramped streets packed with all manner of vehicles in varying states of decay. We parked the van and picked our way through abandoned fridges and heaped rubbish and with a sense of disbelief, I followed my Father up to our new home on the second of four landings. The flat smelt sour.

Two bedrooms, my Father�s facing outwards, mine adjacent to the landing, a cramped and damp bathroom next to it, a dark living room and a small kitchen-diner. Dusty and stained carpet, peeling and missing wallpaper. A world apart from the spacious elegance of Kowloon or even the tired suburban orderliness of Mill Hill.

My disappointment was ameliorated by my improved relationship with my Father, who became more human each time life knocked him back. If the price I had to pay for that was living in this dump, well so be it.

I busied myself as the apprentice housewife again, unpacking and cleaning and late in the evening, he went out for fish and chips and we ate them together at the little kitchen table, just like a proper family. We tried to cheer each other up (�this flat isn�t too bad - we can make it nice, can�t we?�) and Father told me about the new job he had recently started in a warehouse behind St Pancras station, laughing about how mundane were his duties and unimaginative his managers. He had never discussed work before. Since that momentous evening in our old house in Mill Hill, when he announced the impending move, he hadn�t commented that I had been calling him �Dad� rather than �Sir�. Or perhaps he hadn�t noticed.

At least neither of us had to spend all day in our new home, forced to reflect on our changed fortune: I had my new school to attend and he left for work early each morning, often staying out with his new friends and colleagues until quite late. It was no problem � I kept his supper warm for him and snoozed on the settee so that I could serve it up whenever. I felt a bit sorry that my Father�s new work didn�t have its own canteen (like the bank had), for it meant he now needed my dubious cookery to keep him sustained.

School was a bit of shock too. A typical inner-London redbrick rabbit warren, named after an enlightened turn-of-the-century philanthropist and which had only recently ceased to be a boys-only establishment. Its heritage showed. There were well-equipped workshops for training South Camden�s future mechanics and plumbers, but there was none of the heady academic aspirations of the County Grammar I had left. That said, I fitted in more easily than at any of the other schools. Half my new class were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. Crossing the playground at break, you could hear half a dozen different languages. And the teaching staff were in the main encouraging and competent, though clearly exhausted much of the time. Oh well, even if the surroundings were a bit daunting, I could handle it. School is just like me, I thought, looks aren�t that important!

It did take a while though, before I felt reasonably comfortable walking around the neighbourhood. During the day it wasn�t too bad, especially when I began to recognise other kids from school and could exchange a wave, but after dark it was unnerving, even if only popping down to the �open all hours� to fetch my Father some smokes or a fresh bottle. My age was never questioned by the hard-working Sikhs who ran it - they soon marked me down as a good customer.

The random noises were the most unsettling aspect of living on the estate. At any time of day or night. Not like the general rumble in our nice part of Kowloon, or the soothing hum of traffic from the motorway in Mill Hill. This place could assault your eardrums at any time with anything from a drunken fight to a baby�s scream. Car alarms, random shouting - it took a long while before I had an unbroken night�s kip.

But you can�t dwell on these things and I soon enough began to feel settled. I made new friends and enjoyed being in the top set for all my subjects at school. Quite a novelty, and I took care not to be too smug about it. It was quite OK for a whole year. Parts of it were great.

Dad even took me away for a week�s holiday: a coach to Great Yarmouth and a caravan on the cliffs. It was amazing. We had a fabulous time, indulging in all the British seaside traditions � bags of greasy doughnuts, walking slowly around the model village and girly screams on the big dipper. And that was just Father - I yelled a bit as well! Bouncing along on a fleabitten donkey on the beach was not quite in the same league as posing on a lovingly-groomed pony in the New Territories, but I still enjoyed it.

One memorable evening, we went on a long walk right out of town, over the sand dunes. We paused and could see nothing but sand and sea and sky; not a soul around apart from the two of us. My Father lit up and for the only time I can remember, told me about something from his own childhood: a seaside holiday somewhere unpronounceable in Scotland. Staring out to sea and talking so quietly I had to lean close to listen, he confided to being an only child, and I could sense his pain when he mentioned his own parents, about whom I knew nothing and from whom I had been denied contact. He told me a few anecdotes and I caught myself beaming at him. I willed him to tell me more. But the second he trod his stub end into the sand, the door closed, almost as if he was extinguishing the flame of his own memory.

The next day, I braved a less than subtle question about his past, hoping to persuade him to resume his reminiscence and tell me of the family beyond. The moment had passed, though: he changed the subject automatically and I knew he would never speak about it to me again.

Back in Camden, my friends couldn�t understand why I kept going on about it: spending your fifteenth birthday on holiday with your Dad was hardly the hippest thing to do.

I just couldn�t explain how it was the best birthday present I�d ever had.

I wasn�t exactly ecstatic to be living in a run-down inner city estate, but as I began my Fifth Form - exam year - life was bearable. Schoolwork was interesting and I was consistently near the top of my class in all my GCE subjects. I had a good circle of acquaintances through school, and was included in a loose gaggle of girls that swept up most of the waifs and strays who failed to qualify for membership of the �cool� gangs. We were a rare assortment of teenagers, almost all of us born outside the UK, or at best, second generation English. We had our own slang and a truly awful accent that seemed to afflict us all when we were together - a hybrid North London twang with double negatives and a West Indies via Karachi disregard for correct verb endings. �N�aht ah mean, innit?� In unguarded moments, I to this day catch myself thinking in it, even if I�ve successfully managed to regain my own neutral accent and received pronunciation. With a hint of a lisp.

Unlike the other gangs, my group�s principal topic of conversation was not usually boys. Several of the other girls were instinctively discouraged from such distracting thoughts by their cultural and family backgrounds - husbands would be chosen for them in good time - and quite bluntly, one or two others of us were just too damned �minging� to have stood much of a chance of attracting any half-decent Sixth Former, even if we�d wanted to. Just as well then that I wasn�t in the least bit interested in that particular subject.

But that�s not to say my teenage hormones weren�t every bit as active as those of my classmates.

It took a long while to bounce back from Celia's rejection. I hated myself for being so stupid, for misreading the signs. When I finally restored my self-confidence, I was determined not to repeat my mistake. And as an added imperative, I was desperate for any reason to stay out of that miserable flat as much as possible.

For my Father seemed to be in freefall decline. His despair seemed to permeate the very walls of the place. And he was often an unpleasant companion, even if he was my Dad, snapping and moody. There were times when I began to be afraid of him again.

He succumbed to depression. The last of his confidence and optimism had deserted him and the constant drudge of his work, and the seediness of our surroundings, seemed to push him into a perpetual circle of bad temper and melancholy. I don�t think I appreciated quite how bad he was feeling, poor man. And I was certainly not as supportive as I should have been. But I was a selfish teenager now, wasn�t I? Didn�t he realise I had pressures too?

We found an acceptable compromise: steering clear of each other and sharing sullen mealtimes but little else.

It was therefore fairly understandable that when something good came along, I grabbed it and treasured and nurtured it.

And �it� came in the form of a divine First-former who lived in the next block of flats. We'd shadowed each other to and from school for a couple of weeks before we fell to chatting. We had much in common: we hated where we lived, had difficult parents, and were less than impressed with many aspects of our school. Maz was always funny. She had a lovely accent, part nasal London, part sensual Mediterranean, from her Greek family, although she herself had been born and raised in the neighbourhood. Once it became clear we were destined to become close mates, I took time to study her as she prattled and joked and larked about, and I simply loved what I saw.

I was old enough to understand my own feelings. Why my spirits would lift when I saw her; why I had that tightness in my windpipe whenever our bodies were close. I had felt much the same with Celia, but this time I was determined to remain in control of my emotions.

There couldn't be another incident. I would have to be so damned careful.

As for Maz, well I never did quite work out how much she simply followed my lead, or whether she had genuine feelings for me too. The issue bothered me. I spent countless hours in my crummy bedroom, agonising over it. I tried to imagine myself three years younger, at her age, and wondered whether had the opportunity arisen, I could have been emotionally attracted to an older girl, but always the spectre of Kowloon destroyed my train of thought and I knew I couldn�t imagine how a �normal� girl could feel. At twelve, I wasn�t given any opportunity to learn about relationships through innocent experimentation.

What was undeniable was my own infatuation with her, which was becoming more painful by the day. Maz became the unknowing focus of my existence, constantly in my thoughts. She represented the only human to whom I had any capacity to offer my love. The urge to hug and hold her became near- impossible to suppress.

I daydreamed about her, imagining the two of us in warm, exotic places, her beautiful dark eyes sparkling with shared pleasure. At night, I comforted myself to sleep, shoving a spare pillow down beside me and clutching it to me, stroking the soft cotton and trying to imagine the feel of her olive skin against my hands. And when I had whispered and planted soft kisses on my imaginary Maz's lips, I would lift the hem of my nightie and push the pillow between my legs and roll about the bed, squeezing my thighs hard around my hand and riding the ripples of warmth.

I knew exactly what I was doing. And I wanted the real thing.

We spent all our free time in each other's company, usually away from the wind-blasted flats and the embarrassment of our respective families. That said, I did enjoy Maz�s place - her Mum was friendly and funny and there were always loads of delicious snacks and treats to try, but more often, I would rather have Maz all to myself. We had a special place: she took me there and we claimed it for ourselves - a long-abandoned hut on the edge of a disused railway marshalling yard. We had to climb through two fences to get there. We knew others used it - sometimes the unpleasant traces of a tramp's overnight stay or a fresh pile of dog ends would indicate someone else had been there, but most of the time, it was our private sanctuary, where she could tell me all I needed to know about the Pop Charts and I could lead her astray by sharing the occasional Consulate menthol ciggy, filched from my Father's packet. It gave me a wonderful excuse to sit close, and enjoy the buzz from feeling her leg close against mine, or the touch of her fingers as we passed the illicit weed back and forth.

I simply had to do something about it. I was finding hard to concentrate on my schoolwork, willing the time to pass until I could seek her out in the melee of the playground and walk back home with her, hearing about her day and gazing at her lovely, animated face.

My Father�s unpredictable mood swings were usually too daunting for me to risk bringing Maz back to our place and there were too many noisy siblings crammed into her own flat, for us ever to have found time alone.

But for once, the Gods smiled on me, for my Father announced he was going to a reunion dinner somewhere in Town and would be late back. That was if he made it back at all, I thought unkindly, since he had taken to getting truly smashed of late. As the one who put out the trash, I knew just how much booze he was putting away these days.

Maz was very excited at the prospect of a sleepover - I'm sure it was much more of a novelty in those days, especially in the community where we lived.

I have to admit, it was a meticulously planned seduction. I had no moral qualms about plotting to take the twelve-year-old to my bed. In the many hours I had lain awake before the day, I had rehearsed and refined the gameplay and when the evening came (a Friday, I recall), I was as nervous as a West End stage manager on Opening Night.

We just larked about for the evening until I feigned tiredness to entice her into my room. I had laid out my old Guide sleeping bag on a mattress of blankets on the floor, but once we had changed for bed, Maz didn�t hesitate to take up my offer to snuggle down beside me on my narrow divan.

The whole thing took less than half a minute. One moment we were chattering, the next our faces were close together and silent, then I leaned to her and kissed her lips, watching her eyes close and holding her so very softly until they reopened with a sparkle of excitement. She smiled so happily, and it seemed so natural and right, easing her back on to the pillow and peppering her lovely face with my kisses.

That night I couldn't bear to close my eyes. To risk wasting any of those precious moments. Maz slept in my arms. Her hair was against my chin, smelling faintly of the menthol cigarette we had shared out of the bedroom window, after I had thrilled her by raising her top and kissing and licking her flat little breasts and shocked her when my tongue probed her mouth for the first time. Her small, hard body was pressed into my stomach, separated from my own by just the thinness of her oversized t-shirt.

I was wanton, naked, having tugged off my nightie agonisingly slowly, so as not to disturb her. In my crotch, I was aflame. I clenched my upper thighs and willed my inner muscles to be calm, to suppress the delicious throbbing within. I merely succeeded in making the back of Maz's shirt warmly wet. Even my scrawny little tits tingled when she shifted in her sleep and her back brushed the eager, sensitive nipples that were straining towards her. I cursed my own inhibitions, for I ached to reach around her and lay my hand between her legs. My bravery had found its limit.

I lay my face against her shoulder, my lips to the intimate warmth at the nape of her neck and eventually dozed, still wearing a stupid, contented grin.

After that first wonderful night, there was no subsequent embarrassment. No sheepish looks or avoiding each other. We continued as secret young lovers. Maz was as keen and willing as me. In our railway yard den, we could be together, alone and snatched minutes in each other�s arms made anything and everything fine again.

Which of course meant that life was about to kick me in the teeth again.

She came around to my flat as soon as her parents had announced their plan to move. We both cried. Her folks intended to set up their own restaurant in Aylesbury or Milton Keynes or somewhere like that, miles away. Before she left, I am pleased to say we had one glorious day together, playing truant and cuddling naked in my bed, and discovering at last and with mounting excitement the joys of full-on petting and mutual masturbation. It was exhilarating, made better by the guilt of being absent from school and I lost track of the times we aroused each other to elated, almost disbelieving climax. One of those unforgettable moments, sadly never repeated.

How empty I felt after she had gone. I had nothing to look forward to, over and above my boring routine of school and housework. Evenings spent sitting quietly in the corner of the living room, toying with my homework and watching whatever channel my Father had on, waiting to bring him his tea or find a fresh pack of fags. I had entirely lost direction and was very sorry for myself.

And so when my Father lost his job again, he slid down to an unprecedented level of depression, and I followed him. That was the last permanent job he had.

He now had excess time on his hands, to drink and let his anger fester. So that by the time I slipped into the flat after a day at school or, more likely, an evening hanging around the estate to prolong my return, he was ready to lash out at me. Better me than anyone else, I supposed, but it did seem unfair. At least his blows tended to be verbal at that time, although he had resorted to giving me a sudden slap if I really pissed him off.

We polarised into our separate, uncomfortable existences.

Father became secretive. Not exactly paranoid, but I suffered badly from his unpredictable mood swings. One day I thought he was out and went to his room to collect the laundry. As I opened the door, I heard him rush to the other side and he swore terribly, slamming it shut in my face. I had a very uneasy feeling that he was not alone in there, although I didn�t dwell on my supposition, in case I discovered something I would have preferred not to.

Reliant on benefits now, he increasingly resented giving me money for shopping and I had to hide my cash, after some notes went missing from my housekeeping pot. Another oddity was the mail. Normally the few items of post we had were left on the sideboard until one of us got around to dealing with them, but for weeks, there had been nothing there. I hoped that it meant he was getting our bills paid directly by the Social.

One bitterly cold day in February 1983, there was a van being loaded under the flats when I returned from school, and I was puzzled that the large teak dresser in the back looked just like ours. That�s because it was. My father had sold it: one of the few remaining links with our lovely home in Kowloon.

For all his faults, I still wanted the best for him, and if he found some casual work, I would try to enthuse and ensure he had a clean, ironed shirt and a decent packed lunch to take with him. It hurt me to see how he much he had lost faith in himself. I missed seeing him neat and tidy in his suit and tie; when he went without shaving it seemed to emphasise his decline, but it would have taken a much braver girl than me to have mentioned anything. And I always did seem to have a fading bruise somewhere or other, just in case I thought otherwise.

The unthinkable happened a week before the end of the Spring Term, when I was already preoccupied with the prospect of spending the Easter holiday with my head buried in revision books.

Next Chapter: 6. Alone