Abandoned (21 page)

I didn’t allow myself to think of the dangers—I had detached from almost everything by then. The depression numbed a lot of the fear. Most of the time during those months I couldn’t think or concentrate, I was barely functioning. I’d spend hours just staring out at the trees in ’my’ laneway, as I soon came to think of it, watching the evening and morning light, the birdlife and animals, getting back there earlier and earlier, grateful to be away from the bustle and aggression of the city streets.

For the first few weeks I never saw any other cars there at night, and soon the laneway began to feel like home. It was a huge relief to have a place to come back to every evening—to no longer have to drive about looking for different streets to sleep in. I could just about afford the petrol to drive between there and the hospital car park each day and when I had done all I had to during the day I drove back to it almost eagerly. When I got there, if I hadn’t eaten it already, I’d divide the baguette, which was my usual evening meal, into three, open a tin of sardines and make two sandwiches. I’d save the third piece for breakfast. After eating I’d just sit there staring out at the dark or lie in my sleeping bag across the front seats, waiting for sleep to come.

Towards the end of the first month there things changed. I was just falling asleep when the headlights of another car suddenly swung into the laneway. It parked up a few car lengths from mine, the engine still idling. Drum and Base music thudded over the sound of the engine and I heard loud voices, laughter and the sound of doors slamming. Footsteps crunched in the undergrowth in the woods. Strong winds snapped across the sky and fallen branches and dry leaves rolled noisily about the laneway. Suddenly I realised how very alone and vulnerable I was out there. No one would hear my screams.

I rubbed cautiously at a small area of the windscreen with my elbow. A collage of wet leaves was already stuck to the outside. It was impossible to see who was there, or what they might be doing. Fighting waves of panic, I reached for my mobile, but suddenly realised there was no one to call. I quickly pressed it for the time: it was 11.22 p.m. My car was pointing in the right direction to drive straight off, as I’d always planned to do if another car pulled up. But my whole body had frozen with fear. Sweat began to pour down me. ‘Please, don’t let me die out here tonight,’ I heard myself say.

The footsteps came closer and voices got louder. I checked the door locks. I strained to hear what they were saying, trying to guess how many people were out there, if they’d bother to check out my battered old car. I picked up the knife I’d used earlier to spread the sardines. My hands shook as I fumbled about in the tray behind the gear stick for the car key. My fingers closed around it and I reached over to the steering wheel to slot it into the ignition. The footsteps paused and the voices hushed.

Still in my sleeping bag I hauled myself across to the driver’s seat and, without turning on the lights and with my toes still inside the sleeping bag gripping the pedals, I turned the key in the ignition and drove straight off. Dark, shadowy figures stepped back against the bushes, but I couldn’t see their faces behind the condensation on the windows. I made it to the road at the top without using lights or wipers, and almost without breathing. I’d escaped, I was alright!
Thank you, God.

I parked somewhere else for a couple of nights after that, too scared to go back. But I always felt even more exposed anywhere else. Passing the laneway again one evening I saw that it was empty and parked up, drawn by its stillness and tranquillity. Maybe they wouldn’t come back. I stayed awake the whole night, listening out for the sound of another car arriving. But it never did. So I went back night after night.

I got used to cars coming now and then after that, and having to move off for a few hours, or for a night. Occasionally, if they were parked far enough away, I would roll over in the sleeping bag and just lay there, my face pressed into the car seat, hoping whoever it was would reverse back out, but expecting to be showered with broken glass any second. But mostly, if I saw another car there when I arrived, or if any came later, I would just drive straight off, and wait somewhere else for a few hours before driving back. I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. I had to get stronger before I could face anything else. And apart from those times the only place I ever felt calm was when I was there, back in amongst the trees.

When I finally got back in touch with a case-worker at one of the homeless charities I’d phoned before Christmas, he apologised, saying he had been really busy. Again he promised that he’d phone me back when he had some news about deposits and rent in advance. And I promised to keep my phone on. Quite unrealistically, I was putting all my eggs in one basket again, waiting for that one call, not seeing beyond that. I’d told him I was living in my car, but I’m not sure he believed me. I only got in touch with them when I felt clear-headed and strong enough, so I probably never sounded like someone in all that much need. When he finally called back he said I wouldn’t get the deposit and month in advance from anybody but if I tried to move into a homeless person’s hostel I would have more chance of getting help and being able to move on from there. I told myself I couldn’t do that because I would have to give up my car, but it was more because I was still in denial; I still wouldn’t make myself visible enough to go to one. Anyway, I’d have to be mentally ill before I was likely to be offered a place in one, and mental illness was what I was trying to ward off. And the only way I knew to avoid that now was to stay in the calm of the trees.

Sleeping in the car during the summer was sometimes unbearably hot, even when I got to London at the beginning of September. Sometimes, even in the laneway at the beginning, I would have to lie for as long as possible with the door open, my legs hanging out, worried about heatstroke but poised to lock myself back in if any people or foxes came. Gradually the months moved on to winter and when the cold finally set in I was stunned by it. And my life was soon reduced to simply overcoming the cold and getting through each day.

I would sleep in a hat and gloves and as many layers as I could inside the sleeping bag but would still wake up shivering, feeling as if there were slivers of ice floating about in my blood. But I still didn’t know what else to do. I had shut down. The position I was in was too overwhelming to even think about.

The cold penetrated every part of me: my teeth, my eyebrows, my chin, my hair, my sternum, the curve of my waist. It seemed to circle my tonsils, stiffen my eyeballs, hang from my lashes. It was everywhere: in my car seat, on my dashboard, in all my boxes and bags heaped up on the back seat. I couldn’t escape it. It found its way to my kidneys, waking me almost hourly, forcing me out from under my, by then, warm layers into a brutally cold, pitch-black night to relieve myself yet again. I kept suffering nosebleeds from my right nostril, too, and I blamed that on the cold as well.

The heater in my car had never worked, but I couldn’t afford to leave the engine running anyway, or to draw that much attention to my presence. I didn’t want to die out there in the laneway, but each night, as winter tightened around me, I calmly accepted the possibility that I might—that one of those mornings I might simply not wake up.

Chapter 47

A
ll the time in London I was still emailing off job applications. It was the main way I had of applying for jobs. I couldn’t go to a Job Centre because I would have to tell them my address in London. Once they knew I was ‘of no fixed abode’ I thought I would have to queue up every week with all the other rough sleepers to get my benefit money, or get nothing at all. In the state of mind I was in, I was convinced that the only way I could survive, and get any strength back, was by staying as invisible as possible and that meant not getting recognised by other people, including other people sleeping rough like me. It was partly denial about my situation but also a survival tactic. It was also something deeply ingrained: a lifetime of secrets had made it hard to be publicly visible.

So I applied for jobs online, where only an email address is needed for contact details. I was registered with every job search site that I knew, and applied for dozens of jobs weekly, but they only ever resulted in one interview. It was for an administrator to work part-time in a woman’s home. It meant I wouldn’t have to dress up or worry about my appearance too much every day, and it made me think it would be possible to do it while living in the car for a while until I’d saved enough money to rent a room. I wanted it so much and was determined not to mess up the interview. I knew I had to make an effort with my appearance for that at least.

As soon as the launderette opened I washed my clothes so I would have time to iron them in a corner of the hospital when I went in to have my shower. I had an iron in one of the unopened bags in the boot of the car; I just needed a socket somewhere to plug it in. I spent half an hour frantically hurrying from place to place and floor to floor in the hospital looking for a socket in an unused corner somewhere that I could use discreetly. I was hoping to use the floor of the corridor as an ironing board, but every time I thought I had found the right spot, someone always appeared just as I was about to plug in the iron. I started to think I was hallucinating them, like I’d thought about the guy in the green dressing gown down near A & E.

I knew I couldn’t give in to thinking like that, not if I was going to have any chance of getting this job and ending all this. I got the lift down to the basement and ran out to the car park. I had no idea what I was going to do. In the end I drove to a church I’d never been to before to ask if I could use a socket there. When it came to it I couldn’t bear to tell the priest the truth about living in the car in case he turned me away, so I made up a story about having just come from the launderette, losing my door key and needing to iron something urgently for an interview. He was quite amused by my predicament and happily agreed to let me use his ironing board.

It hadn’t left me much time to get to the interview but the woman had given me clear directions to her house and I was hopeful I’d make it. But on the way I got lost in roadwork diversions. Finally, twenty minutes after I was supposed to be there, I phoned to say I was just a few roads away and would be there any minute. She was justifiably annoyed and told me not to bother, as she needed someone reliable. I tried to convince her that it was the traffic, that I was reliable and would be there in five minutes at most, almost begging. She softened and agreed to see me, but I had trouble finding parking on any of the roads near hers. She had already said I could park on her driveway but there was no way I could let her see my car with all my possessions heaped up on the back seat, covered over with its faded black sheet. It was another twenty minutes before I got there.

It was raining heavily and I ran the three or four roads from the car to her house, with my bag over my head, trying to keep my hair dry, the rain splashing up my trouser legs. When she opened the door she looked me up and down and told me it was too late, that she had to go out for a meeting. I tried to persuade her to let me come back another time for another shot at it, but she must have seen the desperation in my eyes.

’I don’t think so,’ she said coldly, closing the door in my face. I walked away, feeling desolate, trying to swallow all the emotion that was threatening to come up. I could shut myself down almost at will by then. I drove back to the car park and spent the afternoon in a corner of Starbucks, just sitting there in the warmth, with my back to everyone, not thinking of it once, almost as if the whole incident hadn’t happened. I spent a lot of time that winter sitting in a corner of Starbucks, hoping no one would realise I was homeless.

The experience confirmed one of my fears. I had worried for a long time that although my voice on the telephone still sounded respectable and my CV was impressive on some things, I no longer had the right ‘image’, and that when potential employers met me they would always be disappointed. I hadn’t worked properly for almost two years by then, and with all this time sleeping rough in the car—my appearance getting shabbier and shabbier—I was already feeling unemployable. I didn’t completely give up hope of a job, though. I couldn’t; it was the only way out of my situation.

My other sleeping place, the one I drove off to at any sign of trouble, was a church car park I’d discovered was empty at night. It was surrounded by quiet streets of elegant Georgian houses. From where I usually parked in it I eventually realised I could see the old house of the therapist I’d visited for about eighteen months, almost ten years earlier. Sometimes, when the wind blew the branches aside, I could see the tall arched window lit up yellow at night, and through it the winding stairwell spiralling all the way up to the top floor. Giselle was the one person I’d told my entire background to, all the secrets of my childhood. Sitting there in the car at night waiting for it to be dark enough, or to brave the cold to get undressed, I’d find myself thinking of all the childhood stuff I had started to unwrap in the basement room of that house back then, and all those early memories would come back to me in thoughts or dreams.

Once, when I was very young and Brendan was taking me home one night, he stopped the car to watch the moon. It must have been somewhere along the Old Kent Road, a bright, straight road that seemed to go on forever in a very run-down area. I hadn’t known he was my dad then. We sat in silence for ages, with the engine turning over, watching a big ivory moon in a black sky sail up over the rooftops.

Brendan was never much of a talker, but before we drove off he broke the silence by telling me that whenever I looked up and saw the moon he would be there, not far away, seeing it too, and to always think of that. ’Okay?’ he said. I was already learning to shut myself off by then, and just sat on my hands and shrugged, continuing to stare right at the moon. I tried to tell him with my mind how much Mummy and I needed him there, my breathing like Morse code, turning to the window so that he couldn’t see the emotion snag across my face.

I swallowed back the secrets I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone and tried to keep the emotion from my voice and eyes as I shrugged again and told him that ‘I don’t need someone to be always there.’

The rest of that drive back was mostly silent. I pretended not to care about what he’d said. But in the wing mirror, I kept in my sight the big ivory moon that was following us all the way home; it was reassuring seeing it there around every turn.

And looking up through the windscreen at the moon night after night in the laneway, I often thought of Brendan and wished he’d phone me, or that I could phone him. But I could never tell him how I’d ended up living—if he could have helped me he would have done it back in Brighton. I knew I’d be in his thoughts, though, and seeing the moon he was never far from mine. It was like a constant reminder of him. It always had been.