Too Much Trouble (4 page)

‘Come on!' I said. I picked up his bag and headed for the door.

‘You look after him, Emmanuel.' Those were the last words I heard my father say.

It was on my last day in Africa. A very long day. I remember being woken up by my mother. She held out a cup of hot porridge to me and told me to eat and get dressed. Then she fussed over Prince. He was still so little at six years old.

When I was dressed my father came inside, and a man, whose face I knew but whose name I didn't, came in behind him.

‘This is Mr Ekpo, Emmanuel,' my dad said, smiling at me. ‘Say hello. He is going to help us.'

I said hello shyly. Mr Ekpo was a vast man and his
face was set grimly, as I had seen it before. He didn't look angry but his face was far from friendly.

‘Is the little man ready, my love?' my father called past me to my mother, who was encouraging Prince to eat.

My mother looked up and nodded. I thought I could see tears blossoming in her large eyes; eyes that were normally crinkled in a smile.

‘OK,' my father went on. ‘Emmanuel, I need to speak to you.' He took me by the hand and led me out of our one-room house. He called over his shoulder as we left, ‘Please, Mr Ekpo, have a seat. My wife will get you a drink.'

Outside it was as hot as ever, the sun beating down on our heads and reflecting up from the dusty ground. A car was parked in front of our house. The first car I had seen for months. The first car I had seen since my uncle had left. It was a brown, battered jeep, with a small flag emblazoned in chipped paint on the driver's door.

‘This is hard,' my father said, ‘and I want you to listen carefully until I am finished. You understand, Emmanuel?'

I nodded and replied, ‘Yes, Dadda.'

‘You ask me why you don't go to school, and Prince
always asks when we can go into town. I can tell you, Emmanuel, because you are getting big now, that it is not safe, and your mother and I, we want you to be safe. You understand?'

I didn't understand, but I nodded again and said nothing.

‘You and Prince are going to see my brother. Victor will look after you.'

For a moment I was excited at the thought of an adventure coupled with seeing my uncle. Then I realised my father hadn't included himself or my mother in his explanations. ‘You're coming?' I said, my voice cracking slightly.

‘Emmanuel.' My father looked at me, his glistening eyes a mirror of my mother's. ‘Take this. It is all I have to give you.' He handed me a worn, brown envelope.

I turned it over carefully.

My father took it back and pulled out the contents item by item. A very small wedge of notes. ‘Enough to buy something to eat,' he said. A slip of paper with a phone number and address, those of my uncle Victor. And two tickets, one for me and one for Prince. Tickets for the plane that would deliver us to the safety my uncle would offer.

He stuffed them back into the envelope, and
pressed it into my hand as Prince came running outside, followed by Mr Ekpo, and finally my mother, carrying my canvas school-bag.

‘We are going to town, we are going to town!' Prince hollered at me, beaming.

I looked at my father, who gave me a pointed look.

My mother came over and gave me the bag. It was fuller than I'd ever packed it for school, the broken strap wrapped around it tightly.

‘Tell your uncle that he was right,' my mother whispered into my ear. ‘You tell him that your dadda said he was right.' She gave me a quick hug and went over to Prince.

Mr Ekpo had climbed into the jeep and was clearly waiting for us. My father took me by the shoulder and led me over to the passenger door.

‘You will be gone when I return?' Mr Ekpo asked my father.

‘Yes, yes!' my father replied impatiently, and then addressed me. ‘You look after your brother, OK? You look after him, Emmanuel.'

So I did. I looked after Prince.

It wasn't hard to get out of the school building. I looked up and down the corridor to check that no one was coming. I hadn't seen where Mrs Marshall and the teaching assistant had gone. When I was sure there was no one around, we headed for the nearest fire escape.

The difficult part was getting through the school gates. By this time all the parents would be long gone and the gates would be sealed. If you had a teacher's pass, the gates would open for you. Otherwise you had to press a button and ask the receptionist, Miss King, to let you through. I didn't think that Miss King would be too keen to see me and Prince
strolling out. Our only chance was if someone was passing through just as we arrived at the gates. Someone trusting enough to let us out without asking questions, or gullible enough to believe any story we told them.

I walked quickly across the corner of the playground leading from our fire exit to the main gates. I longed for a passer-by as we walked. Prince hurried to keep up, still pressing the blue ice-pack against his swollen and bleeding fist.

‘Where you off to then, boys?' The heavily accented voice stopped us dead in our tracks. My heart froze in my chest. I turned to see Dave Williams, the school's caretaker, walking towards us carrying a long length of wood over one shoulder.

‘Er, doctor's, sir,' I said hesitantly.

‘Er, doctor's? What you got, an ‘er' cold?' Dave cracked a broad smile at us both, then started at our grave expressions. ‘Oh, you must be very ill. I never see you without a smile, Prince.' At this, he walked on past us. ‘Come on then, boys.'

My heart stuttered back to life and breath returned to my lungs.

‘Thanks, Mr Williams,' I voiced, and Prince smiled weakly as the caretaker pressed his pass
against the sensor. He pulled the gate open as a voice crackled over his walkie-talkie.

‘Hello, Dave?' Miss King's voice was clearly strained and I could feel our luck ebbing away.

‘What's up, Judy? I'm just down by the gates.'

I grabbed Prince's arm and hurried through the open gate, putting ourselves the other side of the black metal bars that surrounded the school.

‘Come on, Prince,' I hissed and broke into a trot.

I could hear the conversation continuing over Mr Williams' radio as our trot became a run and in a few steps, an all-out sprint. As we reached the end of the short stretch of road that the gates stood on, we heard the caretaker's voice pursuing us.

‘Hey, you two, what are you playing at? Get back here!' Dave was a big guy, not huge, but big enough and slow enough that we weren't scared he was going to catch us. I'm not sure what we were actually scared of, but I know that every step I took in that frantic dash was fuelled by fear.

For the second time that day I ran until my legs or my lungs gave out. This time it was my lungs. We found ourselves sandwiched between a tall, garden fence, a gate set in it every four or five metres, and the backs of what I guessed were garages.
I crouched on the pebble-strewn path, my body screaming for rest. I had thrown our bags down and the contents of one had spilt out. Prince leant against a fence, his hands on his knees, the ice-pack long since discarded, and his head down.

‘What. . . are. . . we. . . doing?' Gasped breaths punctuated Prince's question as he tried to re-fill his lungs.

I didn't answer for ages. I collapsed further on to the path, my head resting on one of Prince's school books. I looked up at Prince before I answered.

‘I don't know what we're doing, but I do know that they weren't about to drop that one. Mrs Marshall was gonna keep going until Uncle Victor turned up. Did you want to hang around for that?'

Prince looked down at me, then up at the top of the fence. He didn't answer my question but asked, ‘Do you know where we are?'

I had no idea. We walked back to the end of the alley and looked for a road name. Gillott Road. We still had no idea where we were. We could have been on any one of a hundred roads around our area. We turned round again and followed the alley to the other end. It came out on to another road that we didn't know, Lords Lane.

We had no intention of retracing our steps, we didn't know who might be searching for us, so we took some aimless turns, hoping to find something familiar.

After about fifteen minutes of wandering we found one of the entrances to the park. As we went through the gate I pulled out the loose change, all the money we had in the world, from my jacket pocket. Prince ran ahead as I counted it slowly, down to the last penny. There was not enough.

Not enough for anything much.

I loved our park. In the middle was a huge, open space. A field of green, defined by white lines and football goals. It was pretty much on top of a hill, so it seemed like the sky went on forever. A concrete path ran all the way round the grassed area and paths led off this into the woods around it. One path led to a play-park, another to a BMX track, where me and Prince had often had foot races, jumping over the obstacles and charging up and down the ramps. We took another path to a smaller and more secluded field where the park-keeper rarely went.

This field was sloping and finished with a steep incline down to a row of trees that were perfect for climbing. Me and Prince picked the biggest tree.
We climbed until we thought no one would be able to see us from the ground.

Here we spent the rest of the school day. Neither of us mentioned the morning's events. Another thing we didn't mention was the fear that clung to us like the cling-film that covered Asad and Ikram's sandwiches every day - suffocating. The fear of what would happen if Prince's school did manage to contact my uncle. Of what would be awaiting us when we returned to the house.

We played boxes and hangman in the notes section of my school planner. We practised hanging from the branches by our ankles. We tried to climb to the highest branch. When we got hungry, Prince pulled out his Chomp and I had the rest of my Space Raiders.

We were still hungry, but we had both been hungrier before.

My uncle gave us an allowance every month. It had been the same for the last two years. Sometimes he would bring us the money, sometimes it would be thrust at us by one of his friends. For the first few months, the money ran out before my uncle appeared again. I didn't know how to ration then.

For those weeks we lived on anything we could scavenge. That was hungry. I learnt about rationing pretty quickly after that.

It wasn't too bad during the week. We would sneak into the free dinners' queue at school. The weekends left us with fewer options.

I remember one Saturday. We were starving. We had not been in England long, and had not smelt the scent of a barbecue before, as it wafted through the air from a neighbouring garden. We didn't recognise the smell, but it still made our mouths water and our stomachs ache.

We sniffed the air around us, and licked our lips.

‘Can I have some of that?' Prince asked. Prince's adjustment to our new life had been quick, but he still expected to get what he wanted.

We went through the loose panel at the back of the garden, and made our way down the path, following the enticing smell. I gave Prince a bunk-up to look over each fence as we went.