3: Shock
When George woke up, the first thing he noticed was the thumping headache, followed closely by his raw throat. It seemed to be a combination of throwing up and feeling dehydrated, on top of whatever they'd injected him with. Just thinking about the injection and his odd breakdown made him embarrassed, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut to block out the memories. Thankfully, more practical matters took over, and he rolled out of bed to search for a toilet.
The room was unfamiliar, but the first door he tried led to an en suite with a grotty toilet. A little repulsed by the black mould growing on every wall, George sighed with relief before shaking off and examining himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. He looked pale and his eyes were tinged with red, but that was pretty reasonable for someone who had spent the night being sick in a hospital. The fact that his mum was dead weighed on his stomach and he felt for a moment like he was going to be sick again, but the nausea passed and he headed back into the room, eyes aching from the headache.
"George?" a voice asked. It belonged to a skinny man with bad acne on his shaved scalp who looked into the room. "Oh, you're up. How're you doing?"
The tone was friendly but George got the impression that the man was only interested in going back to whatever he'd been doing before.
"I'm okay," he replied, shrugging.
"Fancy some breakfast?"
"Not really." His stomach was still playing up and George was sure he wouldn't be able to keep toast down.
It was obvious that the man had expected George to come with him for some breakfast, because he looked like he had run out of things to say.
"I'm supposed to give you a tour after breakfast, if you want."
George wished he knew what time it was, but he'd never worn a watch and there was no clock in the room. "I'll try some orange juice or squash or something."
"I'm Ian, I work here part-time," the man said, sounding awkward as he walked too-close to George through the narrow corridor.
"Where am I?" George asked, rubbing one of his eyes and wishing his throat didn't hurt so much when he spoke.
Ian looked over for a moment with an odd expression, but he seemed to let it go. "This is Scarborough House, it's a children's home."
George had guessed as much. "Do I live here now?"
"I suppose so. You'll have to get a new room and stuff, but you'll settle in okay." Ian didn't seem to be very experienced, but he did know where the kitchen was. He led George through a cramper preparation area and into a mini-cafeteria with brightly coloured plastic chairs and two tables covered with plastic tablecloths. "I'll get you orange juice, since you're new."
Actually, George would have preferred to get his own orange juice so he didn't have to sit like a lemon at the table while he waited. Mercifully there were no other kids around, and the mound of unwashed crockery by the sink suggested they'd missed the breakfast rush.
Ian returned with the juice and set it down on the table in front of George, along with a mug of hot water and a sachet of instant coffee for himself. "So, welcome to Scarborough."
The place was a dump and the slight smile on Ian's face suggested as much, but George was in a new place and out of his depth, so he acted polite. "Thanks. How many kids live here?"
Ian tapped his chin. "I think there are fifteen currently. Do you know how living in care works?"
George had seen two episodes of Tracy Beaker and thought he could make a guess, but he let Ian explain anyway.
"You'll live here at Scarborough and go to school nearby with the other kids. You might get fostered occasionally and go to live with some parents, either for a trial or for a long period to try and give you a bit of normality, and if you're lucky you'll get adopted. I haven't been here long but the lady who runs the place says that adoption is pretty rare once you've finished primary school."
"Do I get my own room?"
"No, you'll have to share eventually, but we've got space at the moment so you could have a week by yourself. If you need to talk to a counsellor, everyone who works here is around for a chat any time." Ian scratched at a pimple on his ear. "Do you want me to show you to your room or give you a grand tour?"
"Tour sounds okay."
They wandered around the housing block for ten minutes while Ian pointed out the finer points of stuff like mealtimes and the school routine. It didn't sound too bad and George was feeling a little better about his future by the time they arrived at a cramped room on the top floor with a view over two identical housing blocks.
"I think they're called Morecambe and Brighton, but I haven't seen any of the kids," Ian explained, pointing to the distant outline of some flat-roofed buildings. "That's the local primary, but the secondary is a tube ride."
"Which bed is mine?" George asked. There were two single beds set against opposite walls, and a black line drawn in marker divided the room in two halfway between them.
"Either."
"What about my clothes and stuff?"
"I'm gonna take you to your old flat and pick your stuff up today. The council will want to clear it out before long," Ian said, sighing and turning to leave the room. "We can go now if you fancy it?"
"Why not?"
The brief trip to the flat didn't take long, and even though Ian told him to bring everything he wanted because the rest would get taken away, there wasn't much beside clothes. Just a few books and toys and valuable stuff like his mum's jewellery and purse. George fitted it all into three carrier bags and Ian seemed a little taken aback at how meagre it was.
"Tell you what," he started, picking up the carrier bags, "Most kids bring three times this much, so if I load these bags into the car and you bag up your mum's clothes and books and that, I'll take it to one of those places that pay you by the kilo."
Ian disappeared out of the door and headed for the stairwell, and George grabbed a few more bags. He felt sad going through his mum's old stuff, and because he was an only child and they lived together he felt really close to her, but when he searched for stuff they'd done together it mostly seemed to be watching TV and bedtime stories. Half of the clothes in her wardrobe he didn't recognise, and while the child in him hoped for a hidden stash of money or birthday presents, he got no luck.
The majority of his mum's existence sold for £12.10 plus a tenner that Ian gave him in return for a couple of dresses that still had their tags.
"My girlfriend's gonna love these," he said, realising a second later that he sounded too happy. "If that's okay, I mean."
George shrugged. "Better that someone uses them. Mum was always on about re-using."
Ian smiled. "How about I take you to McDonald's or something for lunch? Then we'll go back to Scarborough and you can settle in with your stuff."
"Gotta be better than stewing in my room."
Ian chuckled. "You're pretty cool," he said, swinging into a side turning slightly faster than he needed to.
George smiled, but everything seemed to remind him of his mum and he stared out of the window in silence for the rest of the journey, wondering how she'd feel if she was around to see him.
When they got back, Ian set him up with a couple of school jumpers from a cupboard downstairs, and he could just use his old shirts and trousers. He would be starting on Monday, which gave George the usual feeling of glum as he looked at the uncomfortably button-up shirt.
He whiled away the afternoon putting his stuff away in his new room, leaving the other side bare. The walls looked bare so he decided to wait until there was a shopping trip or something and buy posters. His mum didn't like him putting stuff on the walls because it damaged them, but there were hundreds of marks and holes from previous kids sticking stuff up so he didn't think anyone would mind.
It wasn't until the evening when he started to feel lonely again. Dinner had been okay, with a couple of other kids saying hello, but they all had their own conversations and he'd mostly eaten in silence. When he was back in his room, under a worn duvet with nothing but him and his thoughts, he'd been unable to keep his mind from drifting back to his mum and the more he thought, the darker he felt until one of the house staff had heard him sobbing.
The weekend was impossibly tough. All of the other kids lounged around the house, bickering and sharing homework, but he had none of that. Being in his room made him sad and led to a couple of other staff having to calm him down, but there was a vicious-looking older girl who hogged the TV and he found himself constantly watching boring American dramas if he stayed downstairs. The tatty pool table looked fun, but nobody wanted to play with the new kid and the grass was damp so the little football net remained unused. After enduring an entire Saturday of boredom and a Sunday that looked as if it was going to go the same way, George decided he was better off trying to get his head into a book in his room than listening to two tween girls fighting over a magazine. He climbed out of one of the dining chairs and headed upstairs, hoping to get an early night ready for his first day of a new school, but as he closed the door a beefy arm slid through and held it.
"Yo, you're the crybaby new kid?" a teenager asked, shoving the door open and stepping inside, glancing at the vacant bed.
George backed up, heading for his bed while another younger kid stepped into the room, looking a couple of years older than George.
"Yeah, it's him," the other kid said, his voice breaking so the final syllable came out in a weird rumble followed by a cough.
"We're not gonna hurt you," the teenager asked, cracking a grin as he took a seat on George's bed and bounced slightly. "Just got a couple of questions. I'm Josh, this is Javid."
It didn't take a genius to work out that with one guy guarding the door, partly against escape and partly in case anyone came upstairs, the lads in George's room weren't there to welcome him nicely.
"I'm sorry, I just get upset about my mum sometimes," George said, moving as far from the teenager as he could. "I'm trying to stop."
This got a chuckle both both of the others.
"It's not that we're here for, you can cry your eyes out every night for all we care," Josh said, jerking his thumb at the door. "We're the other end of the corridor."
"Then what is it?"
"You're new here, so you don't know how it works. You see those buildings out there?" he asked, pointing vaguely at the curtains. "The kids over there hate everyone in this block, always have. You go to school, you're gonna get decked by some nutter after revenge. We're the only guys who can help."
George was scared. He'd been in a couple of scraps before, but it wasn't much more than a trip on the playground or a smack with a ball. The two dudes in his room were big enough to beat him silly, and if he got beaten up on the street on the way to school he wouldn't have a hope of getting away.
"Don't sweat," Javid said. "We'll protect you."
"Yeah, grade-A stuff. We walk all you little kids to the primary school in the morning before getting on the tube," Josh added. "Same service on the way back."
"What's the catch?"
Josh laughed. "Clever boy! Nothing major, just a pound a week from your pocket money."
George paused for a moment to work it out. He only got two pounds a week from the children's home, and it'd be harder to get sweets and stuff if he was down to a pound, but the way that Josh and Javid were acting, there wasn't much chance to refuse. It occurred to him that if the two older lads escorted eight or nine smaller kids to school every day, they'd be making nearly a fiver each, plus their two pounds.
"So, you paying up?" Javid asked, a nasty expression on his face.
For a moment, George hesitated, not sure what to say, so Josh jumped up and bunched a fist.
"I don't wanna play dirty, but everyone pays us. If you're the exception, it won't just be the kids out there beating on you."
"Okay, okay. I'll pay you, but I haven't had any pocket money yet," George said, not mentioning the money he'd got from Ian. "I can pay whenever we get it."
"Wednesdays. We'll come and get it from you," Josh said, smiling and giving George a shove on the shoulder that almost made him tip backwards onto the duvet. "C'mon Javid, let's split."
The two boys disappeared down the corridor and George pushed the door shut. There was a nasty atmosphere after the threats and George wanted to cry again, but if the staff were in before eight o'clock they'd probably have little sympathy. He settled for burying his head under the pillow and biting the sheet, blinking hard.
True to their word, Josh and Javid walked a group of younger kids to the primary school in the morning, setting off twenty minutes early so they'd have time to double back on the tube. George counted ten kids in the same uniform as he was wearing, including himself, so Josh and Javid were making plenty out of them. The staff seemed to think that the older boys were just being nice and making sure that everyone got there safely, so they didn't make much effort to investigate. George doubted that they knew about the money, but if he grassed them up Josh would turn him to mincemeat.
School dragged and nobody from Scarborough Block was in his class, so George spoke to a couple of boys and took part in a kickabout at lunchtime but didn't meet anyone he could call a friend. He was a little bit small for his age and so the bigger football-playing lads didn't give him a second look. Only after weathering a brutal sliding tackle from a Year 6 did he earn a little respect which stretched to smiles in the classroom after lunch.
Josh and Javid were nowhere to be seen after school, but George spotted a couple of kids from Scarborough Block hanging around so he walked over to ask what they were supposed to do.
"We just wait for them to arrive. They've gotta come from their school first, and it finishes fifteen minutes later, so it'll be a while yet," a boy explained, looking at his digital watch which was adult-sized and hardly fit.
George liked to go straight home from school, kick his shoes off and get a snack, but it looked like he was going nowhere fast. He took a seat on the low wall at the front of the school and watched the world go by.
"I'm Adam," the boy said, smiling. "You're new."
"I'm George," he replied, smiling back. "I got here on Friday."
The boy nodded like he knew this. "I've been here for two years nearly. Did Josh ask you for money?"
"A pound a week, yeah."
"He's such a dick. Keeps stirring up trouble with the other blocks and then makes money out of us. I have to pay him one-fifty because I got my money nicked at school once and I couldn't pay on time," Adam replied, shaking his head.
"Couldn't you explain that to him?"
"You try explaining anything to that psycho. He acts friendly at first, but it doesn't take long for him to show his dark side."