Now or Never 4

This has been the week from hell, although I’ve bought a cheap runaround and feel freer for it.
On Sunday, I got obliterated and blabbered shit to strangers in pubs about how crap the World Cup had been. Fifa, a Swiss-based charity, made £2.1 billion from the whole charade and paid nothing in tax to South Africa, etc etc..
On Monday morning, I woke up at about five and just made it to the sink. I hadn’t eaten the night before so it went down without clogging the pipes.
After that, I had the usual three-hour headache and eventually went back to sleep.
By three in the afternoon, I realised I’d missed my appointment at the library to discuss reading children’s stories for the Summer Reading Challenge.
Thinking of my daughter’s birthday, I called a man who’d agreed for me to paint the apex of his house for £250. Having sold my ladders the week before and with no money in the bank to rent some, I asked if he minded dealing with the hire people and stumping half the cost. He decided not to go ahead with the job (at least with me), and hung up. I could hardly blame him.
I had dinner, which was vile, and then went to an AA meeting in Putney, but it was Polish-speaking.
After a quick coffee, I excused myself and left. I don’t think they took offence.
I emailed the lady at the library to apologise and then went to bed.
Tuesday was to be my big day. At 2pm, I had an appointment at a rehab centre with a view to starting on Monday. This had taken eight or nine months of asking my counsellor and social worker.
In the morning, I emailed the librarian and then went to sign-on. I got back to the hostel by 1pm to pick up my paperwork for rehab.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
The guy next door from me, who’s turned out to be a good bloke, told me that four policemen had come knocking at my door just after I’d left to sign, so, thinking something was wrong with the children, I rushed downstairs to talk to the manager.
She allowed me to call the police station and I told them who I was. Then I went to my room to wait for their call back.
Five minutes later, someone banged on my door. I opened up and four policemen barged in.
They told me I was under arrest and started searching the room. I asked ‘what for?’ and one said ‘robbery’.
‘Oh, course, yeah,’ I replied, facetiously. ‘So I’m Dick Turpin now, am I?’
I showed them the letter from the rehab centre and urged them to let me go, but they just told me that they’d call ahead to say I’d been detained.
They read me my rights and handcuffed me, taking me downstairs (the back way, thank God) and put me into an unmarked car.
At the police station, my belongings were taken from me. I had my DNA, fingerprints and facial photos taken and then I was put in a cell to wait for an interview. Did I want a solicitor present? No.
Two and a half hours later, I was interviewed with tape-recordings by two women who told me a little of the crime I was suspected of committing.
I think they said that a fourteen-year old schoolgirl had been walking along the road behind the YMCA at 7.40 in the morning and a man fitting my description had attempted to rob her. When she wouldn’t let go, he put his hands around her throat and then fled.
They said that he had jeans on with a brown leather jacket and smelt of green plants.
I was asked if I smoked weed and laughed, which didn’t go down well.
I told them that I hadn’t owned a brown leather jacket for at least ten years.
Where was I that morning?
I’d have been either in bed or at breakfast. I remembered that we get bacon on Wednesdays and that I’m usually down early, so, with breakfast from 7.30 till 8.30am, it was highly likely that I was sat eating or waiting in the queue for freshly-cooked eggs.
The incident had taken place three weeks ago minus a day and I started racking my brains about what I might have been doing that day.
I asked how many other suspects they had, but I was their only one.
Once the interview was over, I was free to go on bail, but was booked in at another police station for an identity parade on Thursday.
After shock comes anger, so I got shirty with the super and ripped open the sealed plastic bags full of my clothes, but then he threatened to put me back in a cell. I left quietly, knowing that one more word would see back in. Police; they always have to have the last laugh, like bullies and immature folk.
I’d got my phone back, so I went outside and called the rehab centre to explain what had happened. They weren’t impressed and asked me to see my social worker for another assessment. I really thought that my whole world was caving in.
On the way back, I wondered what a robber would want from a schoolgirl’s satchel. A lunchbox? Lunch money? A child’s oyster card? Geography maps? A mini dictionary? It just didn’t make sense, and so I started thinking that I was being set up or framed.
7.40am didn’t seem a great time to rob someone. Maybe a car-owner in a driveway, but not a schoolgirl. Where was the point in that?
Being my second day without a drink or a spliff, my mind was alert.
What if the girl picked me out?
How would I ever be able to see my children again? And what about the court hearing for parental responsibility in fourteen weeks? I wouldn’t stand a chance. Without my children, there’d be no point to life. Life would cease to have meaning.
I got back to the hostel and looked at my emails. I hadn’t sent any on the date of the robbery, 23rd of June. Then, I looked at the writer’s website I post stories on and found a story called ‘Harmony’ that I’d written and posted that day.
It was about socialism, centred around William Morris and how he felt that he was a slave to the rich. In the story, I’d added a paragraph about meeting my sister at Bonhams that day, and memories of that day (from about 9am) came flooding back.
I then googled ‘news 23 June 2010’ and found that England had played Slovenia that afternoon. From that, I recalled joking around at breakfast with John and Nicholas. I’d asked, with tongue in cheek, how we would ever cope with the masters of Slovenia, those who were paid zillions for their shining talents in the glorious Belgian league.
It felt good to remember, but I knew that I needed evidence to clear my mind and name of the police’s accusations.
That night, I went to an AA meeting and expelled my anger to the group. It felt good to get it out.
After writing some, I went to bed feeling confused and restless.
Wednesday was whacky.
I’d run out of money and needed a paltry £1.20 to get to Springfield at 2pm to see Eileen, my social worker, about funding for rehab, which had last week been given the go-ahead but had by this time been re-referreed to the panel for the following day. Because of the latest government cuts, she’d told me it wasn’t looking good.
Every week for the last month, I’d watched Question Time and heard about the cuts that needed to be made for Britain to sustain life in the grip of a seemingly unending recession. School projects were being scrapped, the elderly were getting it in the neck and unemployment was everywhere, so I quietly accepted any withdrawal of funding that may have been coming my way.
Eileen and I talked about the police and what I strongly believed was some sort of weird set-up. The front page of Metro showed a 19 year-old girl who’d heard gossip outside a courthouse and texted this nonsense to a legal. She was part of a jury on a delicate case concerning a suspected paedophile (albeit without evidence). This ignorant girl was given a suspended sentence for her stupidity, and Eileen and I agreed that she shouldn’t have been on a jury in the first place.
I relayed my fears that perhaps the girl had made this whole thing up, and Eileen commented on the coincidence of the girl on the front cover of Metro.
‘There’s some very strange things going on in our business,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m not going to be one of its victims,’ I replied.
I got back to the hostel, had supper and then drove up the road to an AA meeting and splurged out my crap to them again.
Checking emails late that night in the TV room, I saw one from The Big Issue saying a piece had been published and would I pick up £60 from the office?
Would I!?
On Thursday morning, I got up and scrabbled around for enough ones, twos and fives for a fare to Vauxhall.
Once there, I spoke to Shirley, the Big Issue’s lovely receptionist. We chatted about things for a while and she gave me a little wad of copies. A man came down the stairs and handed me £60. I signed for it and asked Shirley if she’d like anything from Starbucks.
‘No, thanks. You should spend it on yourself,’ she said.
‘I think I’ll have a coffee and pretend I’m a yuppie for a while,’ I said.
I read the piece outside the café and found that it wasn’t the poem I’d sent but a two-page story of 1000 words, about me and a tramp I’d met.
They called the story ‘Mirror Man’. Usually, there’d be one story and three poems on the Streetlights spread, but not this week. It was all from me.
After reading the story, I sat there with half a tear teetering over a hedge of lashes in my right eye. I felt an enormous sense of pride and accomplishment.
I’d written the story as a political bidding of woe and corruption and placed it on the writer’s website to see if they liked it. Dark and unforgiving, I’d been surprised when it didn’t even receive a comment, let alone a cherry.
I took the bus back and wondered what to do with myself. I had to be at the other police station at 3pm for the ID parade and decided to take the Big Issues back to the hostel first.
I talked to someone about the crime I was supposed to have committed and told him I feared I was being set up. He told me he’d been ‘fitted up’ by them before and even served a jail-term for the privilege. His advice was to get some legal advice so I called the lawyers in charge of my case for parental responsibility and was put on to their criminal department, who told me it was too late to come with me to the police station and that it was probably nothing.
Then, the resident I was talking to mentioned that the hostel operated a CCTV system. Perhaps my whereabouts had been captured.
I leapt up and went to the support office and talked to the manager.
What he told me beggared belief.
The police had come looking for me two weeks ago and he’d found the room I’d changed from being occupied by someone else, so assumed that I’d left. If he’d only typed my name, he’d have found me still there in room 309. But no. He was probably stoned at the time.
When I asked about CCTV footage, he told me that it’s recorded over every week. By this time, I was angry. Had he done the right thing two weeks ago, I’d have been seen in the canteen chomping away at the time of the robbery and I could have told the police to take a serious hike. As things stood, all I could do was ask John and Nicholas if they recalled my comments about the mighty Slovenia at breakfast.
When I looked at the time, I realised that I had to be at the police station in under an hour.
I got there just in time and immediately asked for their duty solicitor but there was no one available.
I had no idea what to expect.
Then, just as I was about to be taken, a solicitor introduced himself and said he would represent me.
We followed an officer down some stairs and into a room, where I was asked to look into a video-recorder. I had to look ahead, left, right, and then ahead again. This took fifteen seconds.
Then, the officer started trawling through his database of people who looked similar to me and, with the help of the solicitor, we agreed on eight faces to join me in the ID video-parade.
I was told that the witness would view the line-up in the next ten days and the solicitor would inform me of the outcome. If she hadn’t picked me out, I’d be in the clear and could resume life again.
That night, I felt as if my world was falling apart. I looked at the photos of my daughters and cried. With no booze or dope to knock me out, sleeping was tiresome.
The next day, Friday, I went to my appointment at the rehab centre.
I drove there and parked up. It looked like a nice old house.
When I entered, I was greeted by a man called John who asked me to blow into an alcohol-reader. Not having drunk a thing for five days, I was clean as a whistle.
The assessment went well and I was offered a place to start next Monday.
On my way down to Guildford, having been allowed to stay at my mother’s flat for a few days by my sister, I called Eileen to tell her the news.
She had news, too. The panel had been postponed yesterday and I wouldn’t know whether funding was there until the following Thursday. She asked me to let it go and not worry, but my head was pounding and the wires of my mind were crossing and spitting at each other, so as soon as I got down the A3 and parked up, I went to the pub.
I can’t remember much after that, but when I looked at my wallet I knew I’d gambled.
I didn’t have another drink till Tuesday, when I had to go to my solicitor’s office in Battersea to drop off my daughter’s birthday presents. (I haven’t gone into it but my children’s mother and I had a court-hearing about three weeks ago and it went well, but a full report from Cafcass has to be done and that takes sixteen weeks, so I’m trying to let it go till then, only she wants me to never see the kids again. The judge was great and asked her why on earth she didn’t want the children to have a father. She had nothing to say. My stomach muscles involuntarily quaked and I cried a tear or two when I was told I couldn’t see my birthday girl on the big day and that all presents had to go through solicitors. I’m allowed to send one ordinary greeting a month till then. What can I say or do against the law when it’s weighted on the maternal side so heavily?)
They said I needed to write greetings on postcards but I decided to be a rebel and bought a birthday card with an envelope! I left it open so they could decipher words like ‘love’ and ‘beautiful’ for themselves. Once I did that, I went to the hostel, collected my things and paid my bill. It felt so good to get out of there.
I scored some grass and, once down the A3 sobbing to some love songs, I parked up and got smashed.
I’ve been holing up at Mum’s flat for a week now and the sheer pleasure of cooking for myself is inexplicable. ‘Don’t know what you got till it’s gone,’ etc.
On Thursday, no call came from Eileen and I started to get anxious. Then, on Friday, she called and told me the good news.
I was booked in for Wednesday at the rehab centre for three months residential treatment!
It’s now the day before, Tuesday, so I thought I’d get this off as I am incommunicado for the whole three months. I wish you all the best time and please remember how amazing life is.
I am stronger than I know and can get through this. The next court hearing for parental responsibility should coincide with my final days at rehab, although I have just heard that I’ll know nothing about the robbery-thing until my return to bail date at the police station in mid-August. Having that hanging over me is like a vulture waiting for me to die in a desert.
If the police knew how many lives they wreck, or try to, up and down the country, I wonder if they’d do things differently.
Whatever happens, I’ll fight for my innocence and clear my name if I have to, but my solicitor reckons I’m worrying over nothing.
The truth will surface in the end, I can assure you of that, even if it is a set-up. I know; you think I’m paranoid, but you know what they say, don’t you?
‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!’
Toodeloo for now!