Author Note:

Thank you so much for coming back to read Chapter 1! Please review and comment so I can improve my writing, I will be so happy if you do.

Lots of appreciation for my beta ct522 for helping me with this chapter and thanks to Abagail Snow and alatariel-gildaen who commented on this one too.

There is some London slang used in this chapter. Please go to the bottom of the chapter if you would like a translation.

Chapter 1 Not at Home

"My name is Katniss Everdeen.

I am 19 years old.

I come from West London.

I had to leave home because my mum is mentally ill and she neglected me.

I don't get along with my step dad.

I was fostered as a teenager and now I'm a proud mum and a university student.

The first fostered young person from my borough able to go."

At least that's the official script given me by Shae, my mentor for when I stand up at community and young people's events, but sometimes things aren't always that easy to understand and explain.

So this is the real story that I want to tell and it might just be the real story of somebody else too.

Age 11.

It's raining again and I'm standing in puddles outside the entrance for Flat 15, St Quintin Tower, Latimer Road London W10. At least that's where the social worker who escorts me says I am, but I recognise it as the road with the spicy food smells, an unkind street that always made my tummy rumble as I searched for forgotten change in telephone boxes. I always needed just enough for a small bag of lukewarm chips. I repeat the address like a silent mantra to its new significance; I won't ever allow myself to be lost.

"You're lucky to be coming here" the social worker breaks my thoughts, obviously hoping I'm listening. I know my face must look blank.

"They're a lovely family, but they already have three girls living with them and they're not really supposed to have four. However they know how much you want to be near your home and your sister, so they're very happy to have you."

The bit about wanting to be near my home isn't strictly true, but I ignore this mistake to get to the more important question.

"Where is Prim?" I interrupt guilt and worry bubbling up inside me again. These are the only emotions I've been feeling since we got off the train, except well if I'm honest, a little bit of pushed down curiosity about this new life I seem to have been picked out for.

"She's still in hospital dear, but when she's feeling better. I'm sure she'll come to live somewhere very near here."

I nod, it's my only option, and I've accepted that for the moment. I'm freed from the prison of home, but restrained by some new system I don't quite yet have the key to.

As I'm still feeling angry that she might have something to do with taking Prim away I decide to watch her squirm, besides she's also a social worker, a kind I've been taught not to like since I first learnt to speak.

"Why can't I go home instead of here? Why did my mum and my step dad sign those papers so I don't have to go back?"

Of course I do know why really. I've been angrily comparing myself to other children since I turned eleven and I even have my mother's words to prove it.

"You don't really want to be like all those other children do you Katniss? If you do, you can't stay here, but I know you're not like them, not at all."

The social worker knows I know this. She's seen the bandages on my arms to confirm it, but she tries to answer anyway.

"Umm… I think… well umm… you see." She trails off muttering something about some people not understanding the meaning of unconditional love. I simply scowl as the two words go over my head, but I secretly cling to this new explanation and resolve to look it up in a book when I can find one again.

The social worker presses the buzzer, a happy jingle that stands out on a grey day. A pretty lady comes down to open the door, at least I think she must be pretty as she wears lots of makeup, gold jewellery and she smells like a flower. She also wears almost posh people clothes. The kind I've seen in catalogues lying abandoned on doorsteps.

She starts talking to me as we enter the flat and it's a welcoming voice, which says her name is Effie. I zone out to check the more important safety of my surroundings. I look around and decide dust would most definitely be unwelcome here. The walls are a gallery of photos, posing little children, ladies in long evening dresses with styled hair and an imposing overweight man with a scruffy beard wearing a suit. There are also pictures of older girls with darker skin that might be a bit more like me. They don't look quite so comfy with the camera.

We leave this room and upstairs there a lot of closed doors, one of them must belong to me. One does, but it's not just for me. There are two beds almost touching each other. One is decorated with baby clothes, the pile almost high enough to cover a scan photo, which has central place above the pillow.

"Clove is 16 and pregnant; she'll be here for a few more months" I hear Effie say, her voice now sounding slightly tired. Glimmer and Cashmere sleep next door. Glimmer is pregnant too."

The social worker leaves and after Effie tries again to reassure me; I curl up in the corner of my new bed and rest my chin on my knees. Hours turn to days, days to weeks. Clove tosses and turns in her sleep and moans in the night. She whispers in the dark that she dreams of when her mum drunkenly tried to set her on fire in her bed, proudly pulling on my fingers to feel the burn scar on her face. She talks in her sleep about her boyfriend threatening to pick her baby up by the scruff of its neck and drop it on the pavement because she refused to have an abortion. She's not so proud of that dream. Glimmer laughs loudly as she tells the others how I only bath once a week, the water comes out black and my nails are always dirty. Cashmere pulls on the backs of my legs to see if I am strong enough to stay upright, and pushes to see whether I fall down the stairs.

I answer my first question; it's not that safe here after all….

London 2010

It's November, when I first see him. The air is fresh and alive with what I stupidly in childhood called 'the magical season.' The time of year starting with the mystery of Halloween, continuing with the smoke of Bonfire Night, fireworks of Diwali, tastes of Eid and then the excitement and hope of Christmas and New Year. The only time I could actually pretend a fantasy world was all around me, rather than just in my head.

My heavily scuffed trainers crunch on the last of the crispy curled leaves still lingering in on the footpath. I know it's a 'him' because of the spike of apprehension that stabs through me and screams potential threat. It's silly really, I feel nothing when I see the hoodies and shotters, little wannabe gangsters and spaced out junkies that are ever present at the bottom of my block, but something about the way he is alone says 'different' and different is something only I am allowed to be.

If I hadn't been looking for treasures for Lucas I would never have noticed him. My eyes are darting left and right through the barbed wire seeking out toadstools, beetles and creeping birds, even snake like tree roots with forked tongues. Anything I can share with my nature hungry little boy after our long day apart, but I am looking and he is there. A large figure hunched where there shouldn't be one, partially shaded from view by the tangled blackberry bushes and overhanging trees. A sideways glance of my eye catches a baseball cap covering messy blonde curls and a dirty orange hooded top, before the sudden rattle of a train emerging from the tunnel with a shower of electrical sparks startles me into movement and the stranger turns his head. I see big blue eyes go impossibly wide. So I run, chasing the train along the next section of 'cut and cover.' It's almost as if I'm trying to hide from the stranger in the undergrowth, my braid streaming behind me as I tell myself I'll stop when I reach the bridge.

My braid, a sleek silky plait that extends from high on my olive oiled head down to my waist. It's an unusual hair style on a girl like me, except to the few I have offered an explanation. As a child my hair was never taken care of, my mum in her illness forbade me to learn to brush it myself. She wanted me to remain forever her dependent little girl who would always cling to her side. My step dad never disagreed with her; I think he liked to watch me suffer. On bad days I look in the mirror and I can still hear his voice. "Your hair is the best thing about you" he said. Even then I knew it was a lie, the laughter and fascinated stares from rarely seen other school children more believable than the words of the only man I had known as a father. My matted locks were not something to be proud of, they were a mistake that I still feel the pain from. When I was ten I dared to whisper I didn't like my hair and after I refused his offer of the kitchen scissors, he was so angry he ripped my hair out clump by clump until my roots would never go back in place again. Now I'm proud of my hair, never let down, always plaited in place. No more foster sisters counting the number of times I run my detangling fingers through it. No knots.

Now I can pretend I am free as I cool my pace, familiarity seeping back into my veins so I can try to forget my weird encounter and dismiss my out of character response. I cross the bridge onto my favourite side of the path. A spiral black metal staircase leads down to two adjacent paths, the Grand Union Canal towpath and the meander into the real retreat, past a sign that proclaims "Welcome to Meanwhile Gardens" in ten languages.

I love this place.

On quiet daytimes like these I feel like it's mine. My own space, here all the different parts of me can come together without overcrowding each other. Clove once identified why I wasn't like the others that already lived in my foster placement.

"You're afraid of the outside Katniss, indoors is all you know. We're afraid of the indoors, we're used to the streets and until you know the outside too you won't belong."

The outside.

I know it well enough now, both hers and mine.

I walk past a canal barge named 'Freedom' which bobs up and down with promises of adventure piled high on its roof. A grey swarm of pigeons run across my path like rats after some casually tossed pitta bread, only to be scattered by a speeding man on a bike. An olive skinned teenage boy named Thom hangs his mum's washing over the edge of a balcony, acknowledging me with a sullen nod of the head. It's funny how all the new build flats on the other side of the bank have been made to look like luxury apartments, but the trikes clinging to balcony railings, towels draped out of windows and the sound of mum's screaming at their kids lets me know we haven't been gentrified like the rest of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea wants us to be, well not quite yet.

I leave the towpath and pass the skate park. More often than not it's crowded with boys from my estate mixed with rich children who like to come here from surrounding areas, easily distinguished by their parent purchased helmets and knee pads. Today it's deserted. The gardens themselves are a tiny sliver of green trees with a pond threaded through, sandwiched between the canal and the estate tower blocks behind. I'm usually alone here; only vague shouts, spluttering moped engines and car horns remind me that the rest of London is still there. The whole place is always green, even the pond which is bright and stagnant in the summer and a murky dark green now. Another young mum is holding her toddler by the hood as he leans over the wooden boards to see into the water, her other hand pulling firmly on the lead of a Staffordshire terrier eager to be off smelling the bases of the trees. I realise this could be a photo of me. I love to bring Lucas to the pond dipping classes and mini beast hunt run by the 'Community Hub' at the bottom of my block. That is when my studies don't get in the way.

The garden around the pond is made up of Moroccan urns and mosaics and logs for a playground. The whole thing is surrounded by corrugated iron fences, as if to say to us from the estates "this isn't your back garden." It's pointless really, graffiti coats everything. The spider's leg writing is probably just unwelcome scribbles of nonsense to a casual passer-by, but to me each tag conjures up names and faces, reminders of who actually lives here and to whom this place really belongs. If you look up, the tower blocks overshadow it all. I swear that mine in particular must be the highest in London. If you look at the top too long, you start to feel dizzy and it's easy to imagine all the buildings are falling over, claustrophobic as they obliterate the green.

I climb over the grassy mounds to the left and walk through the gated tall black railings topped with metal spikes. There's a sharp colour change here from green to grey, homes and littered pavements made entirely of granite and concrete, thin lift tunnels and elevated narrow walkways. Two hundred flat white windows on one side and two hundred cluttered balconies on the other. The only attempt at decoration is a subway style pattern of blue and white tiles, like something you'll see in a hospital or police station. My home is just another public building really. The walkways criss-cross over derelict basketball courts and abandoned garages, linking the blocks together. Urban tightropes where you can't see who is coming and what might be round the corner, a lot like life here in general. Dumped furniture can be found in dark corners, not because we don't care, we simply have no way of disposing of it. There are a lot of places to hide and sometimes you just might want to. A row of shops also includes a betting agency, pub, doctor's surgery, a drug and alcohol outreach programme and a library, in that order of importance. You don't have to leave this place if you can't face it. At the back of the shops is also a small nursery, where I am headed. That is if I can manage to sneak past Gale's living room window without being noticed.

Gale is my oldest friend, at least that's what I tell myself. Sometimes I think that he still thinks otherwise, except when someone gets some of the girls from South Kilburn to come here, or better still some European, Japanese or Brazilian females to 'show around the ends.' Then I'm relegated to being 'my bredrin Katniss' or if he's feeling extra protective then his 'liccle cousin.'

I've known Gale since I was twelve years old and he was fifteen. Effie was linked up with his foster carer Hazel for support back in the day and now the latter is one of those 'serial foster carers' with the award certificate for one hundred young people. Yohana, my outspoken foster sister prefers the title 'Does it for the money' and apparently that's not always viewed as a bad thing these days. But who am I to say?

Hazel ran a launderette on the Brunel estate and as far as I know those machines still whir around way past closing time, hypnotising exhausted washers into sleep after a busy shift somewhere that doesn't pay enough for them to buy a washing machine of their own. I should know, I was there often enough when I first moved to independence, balancing my washing basket precariously on top of Lucas buggy. The detergent and sleep suit television programme keeping him entertained just long enough for me to practice university application forms on my lap. She never had much time for Gale and his two younger brothers Vick and Rory, preferring to spend her non-working time on her own young daughter Posy instead. Gale says she used to spend what was supposed to be their allowance on as many classes for her as she could. I don't know if that's true, but I do know she worried that too much time around the foster kids would somehow corrupt her little girl, knowing Gale, she was probably right.

However lazy a foster carer Hazel was, it was much better than being passed around the numerous families that couldn't cope with his need to be with his brothers or at home with his own mum's drunken rages. I don't know that much about what happened to him before he came into care. Information from a few joking snippets or angry rants about how life is unfair is all I have. I do know that Gale copped it most to protect his brothers. His mother had numerous chances to sort herself out before social services finally pulled the plug when she broke both his legs by slamming his bedroom door on them repeatedly after he ran away, refusing to clean up her vomit.

We started spending time together at one of Effie's foster care association fun days, slumped together in the corner of a bouncy castle, whilst the little ones were entertained by a clown telling a story about a 'naughty social worker.' An exchange of texts and we never looked back, the months following were a liberating blur of skates at the Queensway Ice Bowl, nights watching the sun go down at the memorial park and imagining what we'd do when we left care. This progressed rapidly onto pouring buckets of water down into his racist neighbours window, playing 'knockdown ginger,' lighting fireworks out of double decker windows and 'bunnin' on the top floors of multi storey car parks, our legs dangling over the edge whilst we contemplated doing a Spiderman jump onto the traffic jam below.

We got older, relationships changed. Evenings at under 18's club trying to sneak alcohol past the bouncers ended with fumbled sex on park benches, school playground Wendy houses left just in time to commandeer black cabs. We always bolted just the right distance from home, fare unpaid. Soon we were not alone. The temptation to bunk off college for him and school for me too great to resist when there were petty rivalries to attend to, jumping tube ticket barriers to get to MC and DJ battles in some tower block goodness knows where. My voice as the only girl needed to end the contest.

I always listened to Gale because he's older than me and that's important here. There are always parts of the system he negotiated first. However I started charting waters that he hasn't swum and he has taken a path that my head won't ever fully have a compass for.

Then there was Lucas.

I should have seen it coming, the cracks creeping up the walls of his first new flat. He was both emancipated and abandoned at the same time, just when I found out that the life inside me was not just my own. The burnt cheese on toast he tried to make for the first time leading to a smashed tumbler above me on the wall, pieces of glass raining down like the tears of more lost trust. The end came during a row about how well I had still managed to do in my GCSE's. I was thinking that maybe one day I could go to university, the unimpressed reaction I received prompted the thoughtless reply of "Sometimes I just hate you so much." Then he threw me off the bed and across the room. The purple bruises from my impact with the floor a reminder of why with Lucas; I should always try to be alone.

I don't always manage it.

I walk into the flat and Gale places a wad of twenty pound notes into my hand whilst I check the fridge to see if there is any food inside. The smell of 'grade' and cigarettes still seems so strong even though it's been years since smoking was banned outside. I go into the living room and they are all slouched down on the uncoordinated mixture of sofas, armchairs and beanbags, anywhere you can sit but never on the floor, their legs wide apart and arms stretched over the backs as if they'll never feel big enough. Gale goes to sit down with his brothers. They could almost be triplets now, their hair tight in corn rows as they cover a sofa bed with sorted bags. Darius, who says he's got connections with the mafia in Green Lanes, is taking phone batteries out in the corner. He says he can get you anything, but he only has a chip toothed grin for me. The bean bag where Thom and Tyrell normally lounge is empty; the latter finally back in Feltham YOI because at least he gets three meals a day there. Marvel and Thresh are on the sofa nearest the TV, their eyes glued to the usual conspiracy theory documentary, black and white subliminals flashing on the screen. Charlie, one of the youngers, is practically lying on the other bean bag, his ginger hair covered by a hood even though we are indoors. He raises his left ankle to me so I can see his new electronic tag. Mo and Khalid are messing about with the DJ decks, they beckon me to come over and I guess my lyrical opinion on some bars is required.

Jamil is the only one who is not sitting down.

"Seriously" he's saying. "Cash machine give you five oners straight up, feds can't trace nothing bruv. Easy money."

Gale looks up from his fingers

"That kinda messin with technology stupidness leads nowhere but back to pen fast blud. True say it's clean, but I'm not on it. Allow it."

Marvel laughs

"Don't give me jokes! Manz be reppin on road in north weezy same as any one. You been in this since day. Why you acting so vexed about something minor? You be on that train tonight trust! Anyways we need your gal…."

He trails off as Jamil shoots him and me a sharp look.

"Could you be more bait bro?"

He checks to see how much I'm listening, but I'm used to fading into the background, the mix tapes on the floor suddenly becoming more fascinating than the clock across the room I'd been watching before. Khalid tries to change the subject.

"Some next man bin down on the train tracks by Great Western. Bare writin on ours. It ain't SK. Some dry ting."

Jamil takes the hook.

"I don't care, he's slippin! If I see him I'll fuck him up. Watch!"

I make my way out the security door quietly. I'm hoping not to be noticed this time. However Jamil has beaten me to it. He's climbed out the window like it's him who needs to escape to another place in his life. He corners me on the concrete walkway, leaning like he's relaxed against the wall. I'm not good at understanding people, but I can read movement, my mind learning from younger years of being my mums trigger, my response to sudden movement from anyone unavoidable for years after. "Don't flinch" she'd cry "Don't flinch."

So I know he can grab me how a spider grabs it's already bound prey.

He holds out a bundle of grimy t-shirts with some objects concealed underneath. I know what they are.

"Take it, don't dash it, don't ah nam."

I don't really know Jamil. My only real conversation with him was when the unit where he used to live took their washing machine back and he appeared at my door with armfuls of dirty trackie bottoms and a scowl that matched my own. That was years ago now and aside from Gales stories, he's really just a stranger to me. My mind flies back to another stranger, too blonde and beautiful to possibly be real and I wonder if he was really my conscience, those piercing blue eyes seeing through me to my true nature, violent, distrustful, manipulative and deadly, trying to appeal to the little girl that I was or the educated woman I'm starting to become. But that is fantasy and I have to make a decision now. After all, I don't understand why my conscience chooses to prick now after all the things I've done where I've had to split my identity into a million pieces just to stay sane.

This is here, this is now and this is real.

So I take the knives and again I run, knowing this time, one day I'll have to look back.

Slang:

'Shotters' - drug dealers usually young 'ends' - your neighbourhood 'bredrin' - close friend like family 'liccle' - small and cute

'knockdown ginger' - a game of knocking on people's doors and then running away until they get really angry

'bunnin' - smoking cannabis 'grade' -high quality cannabis 'YOI' - young offenders prison 'oners' - one hundred pounds 'feds' - police

'pen' - prison 'allow it' - leave it, stop it, not worth it 'give me jokes' - something so stupid it's funny 'Manz' - refering to myself e.g I

'north weezy' - north west London 'since day' - forever 'bait' - stupidly obvious, likely to get caught

'next man' - an unimportant person who is not part of something 'bare' - a lot of 'dry' - boring, too difficult to understand

'slippin' - in another gangs territory, where you don't belong 'dash it' - throw away 'ah nam' - to tell tales, grass on someone