Chapter 1

At one year-old, sleeping in a makeshift cot had to do.  In from the hospital and put down, she sparked up, ignoring his cries of hunger.  She opened the door and business resumed as normal. 

At two, the same, but walking.

At three, he started to learn that movement meant getting in the way.  He sensed where he could be and when.  Noises told him when it was time to hide and when it was safe to come out.

At four, he was able to recognise that bad things were happening.  Mummy was on the bed.  The angry man, the one who’d slapped him, was on top of her.  Sean couldn’t understand what this older man – grey, ugly – was doing, but he could see part of his body had gone inside his mother’s.  He was making odd noises, rasping sounds, whimpers.  His mother clutched at a pillow and stared straight at the ceiling. 

A look to the left and the older man saw Sean.  Get the fuck out of here, you little shit, he shouted, and he threw the other pillow towards the door.  Fearful, the little boy scampered and returned to his space: a corner of the living room.  Something was wrong.  It’s just at four he didn’t have the ability to figure out what.

At five, the men kept coming.  Some would hit him.  Some would touch him, stroke him.  He’d cry every time.  He had no idea why.  And he’d see his mother lying there, the same as always, her line of vision unchanged.  Occasionally, she’d shudder.  She never wore many clothes, but the flat was always cold.  He shivered every day as he woke up, as he played amongst the syringes, the beer cans and the gin bottles, eyeing the line of white powder as it lay forgotten on the battered coffee table.  He didn’t know what these objects of desire were.  And he shivered as he went to sleep, his mattress strewn across the floor next to the radiator which was never on, the covers stained a different colour from when he’d begun using them.

At six, his clothes no longer fitted.  Some of the men liked that.  He hated how their hands felt: the dryness, rough, unloving, hurtful.  If he’d cry, they’d hit him.  If he’d cry again, they’d choke him.  His mother never saw a thing; she was always on the bed getting fucked, her eyes fixed on that same spot on the ceiling, showing a blank stare, only sometimes they were closed now.

At seven, when they came near him, he found a spot and stared too.  He thought his mother was teaching him an old trick.  Look after yourself.  She’d often be on her stomach now, a man above her, giving it from behind, another sitting nearby, watching; the third with Sean.  Her eyes would be closed – definitely closed.  She might even be asleep.  She could’ve been dead for all anyone knew, except she occasionally groaned.  No, she was alive.

After the men got off and up and left, she’d go to Sean, scream about the mess and collapse in a heap next to him.  He’d stroke her hair.  It always left a sticky residue on his hands.

He was hungry.  Hungry every day.  He drank water from the kitchen sink tap.  The cups – plastic – were grimy.  He’d scratch at them.  Mould would fill the space beneath his finger nails.  Drink in hand, he’d play.  He’d fly the needles around, imagining them to be the fastest jumbo jets in the world.  He’d taste a little of the liquid which had been spilt on the coffee table.  It was nasty, sharp, bitter.  It made him wince and he rinsed it down with the remainder of his glass of water.

At eight, oh at eight, he understood more.  The men kept coming, they kept lying on his mother, they kept moaning.  And they kept screaming.  And they kept punching and hitting: sometimes the furniture; other times, his mother.  Him.  And he knew what he didn’t want anymore: he didn’t want the men to come near him.  He’d bite them, their hands, anything that stuck out and was in reach.  He’d bite and they’d hit.  A sticky substance would drip down his cheek.  On his chin.  Over his clothes.  One time, he couldn’t open his right eye.  It stayed closed for weeks, he couldn’t remember how long.  The pain killed him.  But during that time, the men stayed away and he didn’t have to fight them off anymore.

When the eye opened up, though, they were back, ready to put their hands in again.

That was when he was eight: a child; devastated; unable to bear his soul, to share the tears that wanted to stream out.

Approaching his ninth year on this blessed earth, the door opened to three people he hadn’t seen before: two men and a woman.  They picked him up and took him away.  They didn’t say where they were going and he didn’t ask.  They didn’t even tell him who they were; he was too young to understand anyway.  Like he supposedly couldn’t understand what had been going on in the flat for the past eight years.  Without knowing it, he was happy to leave.  His mother was still on the bed as he was carried out past her by the largest of the men.  He’d never forget his final sight of her.  She didn’t know he was leaving; would she ever?  Did she even care?

Looking back on it, he’d be sick one day.  The future: it brings with it promises of so much.  But with a past like his, what more could the future hold in store for him?

He didn’t talk to them.  He kept silent.  He didn’t even look at them.  He stared at the ground.  He was afraid of strangers: they might touch him; they might hurt him. 

They couldn’t have been further from the truth, for in the years to come safety didn’t come from being elsewhere; safety only came from not being with Sean.    

*

Still at eight: with the nuns of St Anthony’s.  A waiting game, waiting for the unknown, for what he was told would make him whole: a family.  Made to read.  Read and read.  He rebelled and refused to read.  Told to read the Bible.  Read about his saviour.  Beaten if he didn’t.  Beaten by the Fathers and the nuns.  Just like the other men used to beat him. 

            Eventually he read.  When he realised there was nothing else to fill the days, except thinking or praying, he read.  Read and read.  He read the Bible – three times through – read Louis Stevenson and Defoe, read all those the nuns could throw at him.  At first, he understood little.  They didn’t have time for much, but the nuns had plenty of time to pray and talk about the books they made him read.  And, over time, he picked up more and gradually understood.  He encountered characters and stories which could only have come from the deepest of imaginations.  Then, privately, he discovered different worlds altogether.  With his small weekly allowance, he saved and started out on Allan Poe, made his way to King and tried to grasp Wilkie Collins.  Stories of lust and murder and obsessions and revenge – stories with bite which brought out the goosebumps – which made the fancy pirate ship tales and stories of real life look stone cold boring, uninspired and ridiculous.  These dark worlds, he escaped to every day.  They taught him something new about people, about how we relate to one another.  The hurt he encountered in them, he recognised from his own life.  The hurt he’d never forget, never escape.  He identified with it all.  So others feel it too, he was relieved to find out.  So he read more.  He discovered all kinds of people when he read Poe’s characters, and Greene’s characters, and Conrad’s characters: the old man whose eye vexed and the beating heart.  The teenage gangster, Pinkie Brown, and Kurtz, the man who ruled by fear.  People, for to him they were as real as real got, to whom he could indeed relate; people he understood.  He saw characters with power like all those men in his past had over him and his mother, power which his mother didn’t and never would have – and he craved it to be his.

            By nine, he understood what you could achieve with power.  And you can achieve a lot.  The majority of his days were filled by reading.  Book after book, and no more of the fancy shit the nuns brought to him.  They tried Shakespeare on him.  Yes, Macbeth, yes King Lear.  But he sneered at the likes of Much Ado, of Midsummer.  The gripping plots, the murderous villains, the tyranny.  That was what he needed.  He might not have known all those things in life yet, but he could handle them in his mind.  He liked them.

            The day Sean’s reading was interrupted was the day he became different.  The day the Fathers and the nuns said goodbye to him – the day he was ten – he was lost somehow.  Not the guidance they thought they’d given him – no – but the freedom he had by being left alone to read material of his own choosing.

            Why you looking at this shit? the first foster father asked him, ignorant of a lot of things.  Get rid of it.  None of this crap’s gonna be in my home.

            A tough guy, the head of the Masters family, uneducated, unknowing, selfish.  A last ditch attempt at housing a boy they couldn’t house.  No one had wanted Sean.  Two-and-a-half years, they’d tried and couldn’t house him. He was taking up a valuable bed, one which would be used to support local kids in trouble, temporarily, until they were put back on the right track.  As soon as his history was discussed with prospective carers, they high-tailed it out of there.  No care for Sean.  No light of his own for the future.  Until the Masters visited one day.  On paper, not the best of families to be going with, but if they were the only one offering, what choice did the Holy Mothers and Fathers have? 

And it kicked off immediately.  On day one, the arrival: the announcement of no more books.  Pansy’s game.  Try sports instead.  On day two, shouted at for asking for too much food.  For, you know, one can have too much.  Day three was fine: nothing happened, for Sean kept well to himself: he went to the dinner table when summoned to do so; he washed his hands after pissing; he went to bed when Bed was called; he barely said a word.  On day four, he asked to go to the park.  It was almost his eleventh birthday; surely this privilege could be extended to him.  He got a right hand for that.  Like an ironing board falling over, he tumbled to the ground, almost knocking the mandatory scotch bottle off the coffee table.  Good job he didn’t; who knows what reaction would have met him for that.  On day seven with his new saving grace – a family – as he reached for a plate from the cupboard, for he now prepared his own lunch, he lost grip of it.  It crashed to the floor, smashing into three pieces.  White, Ikea, cheap.  Ron Masters came at him for that.  As soon as the plate rumbled against the floor tiling, Sean heard Masters coming, so he ran for it.  He ran into the living room which was connected to the kitchen, past Marie Masters and right into the clutches of the master of the house.  He wriggled, but it was no good; the big man was too strong.  A right hand connected with his hip.  You will pick it up, my boy.  Up, up!  And he was dragged back into the kitchen.  As he bent over to pick the pieces up, a hand smashed against his back side.  The blow sent him forwards on to his knees, right onto one of the two remaining pieces of plate.  His skin cut open and the piece in his hand fell.  Three further pieces appeared before him as it collided with the floor and broke up.  Stupid boy.  Look what you’ve done now.  Clumsy, boy, clumsy.  For good measure, for clarity, for whatever reason, the right hand met him again, this time on the small of his back.  He cried from the pain, his lower jaw rolling back in on itself.  The big man stumbled off into the distance, leaving nothing behind him but rubble.  Day nine was his eleventh birthday.  The wounds from two days before hadn’t even begun to heal.  He hadn’t picked a book up in four days – the last time he was caught with a book, on day five, he’d been hit – and he felt vacant.  They’d bought him a birthday cake and he’d been promised it after lunch.  Lunchtime came and so did Sean eagerly.  You can’t wait patiently for anything? the foster father grizzled.  Sean got to cut the cake.  He ate a piece, smiling.  He ate a second – wolfed it down, actually.  Greedy git, he was called by the foster father.  He didn’t care.  He went for a third, all fingers and thumbs, thrilled that he could eat what he wanted for the first time there.  A lump of the chocolate icing fell from the top of the sponge on to the table cloth.  Pick it up, boy.  He picked it up, but it smeared, leaving a stain behind.  Look what you’ve done.  Masters’ eyes bulged and his wife protested.  In response, his right hand flew across her cheekbone.  She landed on the nearby sofa, clutching at her skin.  Look what you’ve done, he bellowed again, picking Sean up by his ear.  Look.  But you want more?  You still want more?  He pushed Sean’s face into the newly cut piece of cake which sat on his plate, waiting for consumption.  It squashed as his face pressed down on it.  He breathed pieces into his nose and choked.  Coughing, he tried to lift his head up, but the man’s hands were still applying the push.  You still want it?  Sean was calling, Please, but the sound was muffled in the sweet.  Violently, his head was yanked free, but too hard, and he ended up on the floor next to the sofa, by Marie Masters’ feet.  He wanted to clutch them; he dared not.  The big man stalked over him, the bogeyman hovering over a child tucked up in bed, and he cried for the monster to leave him alone.  Not again.  But he kept coming.  He pulled Sean up by his hand.  He threw him on to the sofa so he landed hard on the wife.  She coiled up in defence and pushed Sean away, afraid of more pain, into the clutches of the giant whose hand clasped round his jaw.  So tight – enough, the little boy thought, to crush his jaw and make his teeth fall out like crumbs.  More cake, you say.  Sean’s head started to spin.  His eleven year-old brain was disintegrating.  The men were standing over him in his bed, on the sofa, in the bathroom.  He remembered what they’d do to him, but he saw no faces.  He saw only one face as he envisaged a hand coming towards him.  He opened his mouth the little way he could, allowed a finger to slip inside, feeling the men’s touch, and bit.  Bit hard.  Harder than ever.  Bit so much he felt bone, tasted something altogether and intoxicatingly new, and heard an unfamiliar sound: screaming, hurt.  He wouldn’t release his grip.  They were touching him, running their hands up and down.  He clenched tighter and the mammoth came down to his level.  Never let go.  He couldn’t see the man before him.  A blow to the head made Sean vibrate.  Their hands rubbing him.  Still, he bit; he almost chewed.  Another hit.  The men weren’t there anymore.  This time, he only saw bright colours.  The finger in his mouth, his eyes closed.  He didn’t feel himself hit the ground as he came crashing down.

Eleven year-old Sean awoke in hospital, a nurse tending to him, reading the chart that was hooked on the end of his bed, and he found the Masters to be gone, out of his life and merely a sticky memory of the past.

*

So at eleven, he was back with the Fathers and the nuns.  A different bed, a different room – one he had to share with another boy named Davey – but he was back, taking up their space.  They let him read, this time without checking up on the material.  There’d be no room for Sean, no time for him, no care for him.  He was a number too high. 

Davey was an unusual one.  It took him three weeks to speak to Sean, the first and only time, never responding to a Good morning, never having the decency to show manners.  He had ginger hair and his face was covered with freckles.  His nose was long – think Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – and his chin pointed.  When he breathed, the room filled up with a quiet swishing, like the noise of the sea, except at night when the noise became a wailing, one could never tell whether from suffering or from pleasure.  Perhaps a mixture of both.  The frequent sound of screams woke Sean up every night.  Like a car horn had been sounded by his bed, he’d dive up. 

But in the third week, the time when Davey decided to talk to Sean for the first and final time, the loudest scream of all was heard.  Sean’s heart skipped a beat when his eyes opened to find Davey standing right over him.  Do you see it? he asked, hysterically.  Do you?  Sean answered, I don’t understand.  Again Davey screamed, worse than a cat being mauled in a fight: It’s there, it’s right fucking there.  Ssh, Sean encouraged.  But the violent meowing continued.  Shut up.  You’ll wake everyone.  When all else failed, Sean grabbed Davey by the mouth, handled him like a rag doll, his hand covering Davey’s nasal holes.  Little Davey began to flounder, waving his arms dramatically.  Sean just stared at him, eye to eye, as he suffocated the boy.  It was only Father Jacob and the three nuns who’d stomped into the room to explore the origins of the screams they’d heard which prevented Sean from killing poor Davey.  Poor little Davey.  Poor, annoying, irritating Davey.  The kid needed to be strung up.  See something?  Not on your fucking life.

            Needless to say, after that Sean and Davey were no longer on speaking terms.  As roommates, they were parted; something about safety being the number one priority.  Instead, Sean was transferred to some out-of-the-way broom cupboard of a room.  It still reeked of disinfectant, so recently had it been cleared out for him.  Or maybe it had been used for storing brooms.  No windows, just four close concrete walls, a bed and a table with a lamp upon it.  It was here that Sean continued his reading; that his fascination with the perverse, the grotesque and the vulgar, much like the two lives he’d now left behind, grew.  Each day, always by table light, he’d read.  Read and read.  His command of the English language developed – he was confident when using words – his imagination flourished and his desire to read more was insatiable.

            It wasn’t until he’d just turned twelve that Sean was finally re-housed.  Another year-and-a-half of wasting space, but filling it the only way he knew how: with his mind and with his books.  Chloë Miller and Simon Banks weren’t married, much to the chagrin of the church, but they were financially viable, keen and able to care for a child.  The incident with Davey had been quietly brushed under the carpet and all looked to a positive match for Sean and his new parents.  Initially, it seemed that little could go wrong.  The new parents speedily became devoted to twelve year-old Sean, despite all the oddities they soon discovered about him: he hardly spoke to them; he’d snatch; he growled like a dog when he didn’t get his own way or when he became angry; money frequently went missing from Chloë’s purse; the cat mysteriously disappeared. 

            Sean even started school.  Normal school; the regular kind that regular kids attend.  Out went the daily religious education lessons taught by the caring nuns of St Anthony’s; in came playground fights, lunchtime arse-touching, kiss chase, swearing, bullying, and tormenting.  Of course, Sean played no part in games of kiss as he had no friends.  He was an outsider from his first day stepping foot into the place.  Alone, but not lonely – for he had his imagination and his books, just as before – a loser, a boff, weird, all the names that kids will endeavour to call one another, none of them terms of endearment, no matter how much we, as adults, later in life try to fool ourselves.  Sean was sure he had nicknames – the natural insults that come from being at school – perhaps more than others, but he didn’t hear them.  Maybe that was because kids were wary of him.  There was something about him that put off the foul odour of bully.  Something menacing.  Perhaps it was because on his second day a kid one year older than Sean pushed into him in the corridor.  Deliberately.  While most to whom this happens cower or mumble in defence, Sean casually turned and, in front of dozens of fellow students, grabbed the kid from behind by placing his arm around the boy’s neck and punched him twice on the side of the head.  As the boy lay there on the floor, quivering in agony, peeing himself, Sean undid the boy’s belt and pulled his trousers down.  Taking them from the scarred boy’s legs, he walked away, happy as a prize pigeon.  The other kid got all the ridicule.  The other kid got all the humiliation.  That got people talking.  And that got people scared.  And that meant the loner was left well and truly alone.  Perhaps that’s what kept him safe.

            He was safe until the day he put himself in danger.  Almost a year, he’d been there; almost a year of education, of students, of teachers, but not of friendships.  They still kept away from him.  At this time, he sometimes craved friendship.  Approaching the age of thirteen, he craved something else too.  His loins ached and he lusted after the tanned legs in the hallways, the skirts of the summertime.  There was one girl: brunette, five four.  She’d caught his eye shortly after his arrival.  The same age, she was a popular one.  Strutting around, she knew it; knew she caught the eye of many an admirer.  Whenever she noticed the stare of a fellow onlooker, she changed the plans of her journey and hung around a few minutes longer.  She liked being looked at; she lusted after the attention she received from it.  Sean saw this so he wasn’t shy about looking.  With all but his tongue sticking out, he’d follow her some days.  From room to room at lunch, he’d see her chatting with friends, chatting up the cute guys, flirtatiously conversing with the younger teachers as they passed by.  He even noticed some of them catch sight of her legs and ogle.  They were all in this together, guys.  She’d notice him following her sometimes, and she’d smile.  She’d move more slowly, suggestively, swaying her hips that little bit more, licking her lips, stretching as if tired.  And he’d fantasise about fucking her.

            As the weeks passed and became months, the skirts got shorter as did Sean’s patience.  Seeing those legs – long, shiny, brown – he wanted to touch, to grasp what the softness of a girl’s skin would feel like against his hand.  He wanted to put his hands in places they did in the movies he’d sneakily watched.  He wanted to know how her pert rear would feel between his finger tips.  He wanted to put his face there.  And he wasn’t prepared to wait and watch any longer.

            With nothing but the inkling of a plan in his head, he found himself following her as usual.  The time was ripe.  Outside, the sun shone brightly.  Her legs came out as part of nature’s due course.  And, boy, the tan had been worked on this week.  Following her through the Maths block, along the main corridor which highlighted students’ capabilities by displaying graphs and bar charts and triangles proving Pythagoras’ Theorem on the dull, concrete walls, he could smell her scent and it put him on heat.  He walked faster when she said See ya to her two friends.  She took this route all the time: out of the Maths block, into English and a left to the toilets.  It was always quite deserted around here.  Plus, the sun was out, enticing sports stars to strut their stuff and revellers to hang around in their cool groups.  She knew he was behind her, he could tell: the hips, they moved more freely – too freely – and he gasped.  Her magical powers ensconced him and he began to salivate.  Just one touch.  Just a handful.  He reached out to her, his pace quickening all the while.  She was none the wiser.  Even though she felt his presence, she’d never give it away by looking back at him; that’d ruin her game and make it too easy.  Without checking around, as she neared the dark blue door, he came up beside her.  As she took her final step to the door and put her hand out to open it, he shoulder-barged her and she slipped through easily enough.  He followed her in with one big step and grabbed her.  He touched, he ran his hand right there from the lower edge of the skirt upwards, and he sighed.  He couldn’t believe he was touching her.  He was hard, pulsating, and he still wanted more.  Grabbing her by the hair, he pulled her mouth to his and kissed her hard.  Not defenceless, she bit, drawing blood on his lip, and slapped him.  He smiled as they were stuck together.  She tried to scream, only successful in making a muffled sound; his lips wouldn’t move.  He kissed and kissed, driven by passion; she resisted and resisted, and he pulled at her body to keep it close to his, all the while his hand rubbing with the speed of an express train, her body shaking, reeling.

            As the door flung open, Mr Edwards, the Maths teacher who happened to be walking at the other end of the corridor on his way to have lunch when he saw a boy push a girl into the toilets, entered and pulled the two apart.  Confused, for at first glance it looked like the boy and girl were making out, he ordered both to the Head Teacher’s office.

            Mr Edwards was only able to say what he saw.  The girl, however much Sean denied it, claimed she’d been attacked, that she was in no way kissing her predator.  Sean, fully in control again and no longer consumed by an over-sensitive dick, used his brain and came up with the perfect defence.  Just like one from a story he’d read.  The predator becomes the prey; the hunter, the hunted.  She’d been flirting with him for months – others must’ve seen it; besides, she’s a floozy and does it with almost anyone who’ll pay attention.  A valid attempt to manipulate his superiors, one which made him feel smart.  But a failed attempt – we know that not all books have satisfying conclusions.  The shoulder tackle, Mr Edwards insisted, even through his confusion, looked violent enough to indicate that foul play was indeed at hand.  Unable to fully prove Sean’s guilt, the Head Teacher decided to reassign Sean to a different school.  The girl was left to endure months of counselling at the hands of a stranger in an attempt to resurrect the inflated ego which had just been so utterly deflated.  To cap off being carted to another school, the perfect couple, Chloë Miller and Simon Banks, suddenly weren’t perfect anymore.  A claim of indecent assault – founded or unfounded, it didn’t matter to them – was too much to handle and a call was made.  They were out of there, so Sean was out of there.

            Back to the thankful Fathers and nuns he went, but this time there was a surprise in store for all.  Barely a week had passed by when a family visited: a father, a mother and their daughter.  They wanted to help.  You know, every town has its do-gooder.  Anything we can do, they proudly stated.  They looked around, they read the files, they met Sean.  They read his file again.  They talked about him to the resident psychiatrist.  They were even told about the incident at the school.  Bet she stopped flashing that arse, the father thought but didn’t vocalise. 

Little did he know that in shortly over two years, when both she and Sean would be fifteen, his daughter would go in much the same way as the girl at the school: short skirts, seductive poses, shapely arse.  Little did he know that Jodie, as she sat not two feet from him, would also get into a tangle with Sean, that she would smile, and suck, and fuck.  Little did he know what he was getting himself into when he, his wife and Jodie all agreed, Yes, let’s help him.  Let’s help Sean.  Let’s make him an Anderson. 

Little did Sean know too, but he had a good feeling about this one from the word go.

*

Jeff Anderson, the man created fear.  He took Sean on, and he won.  He didn’t have to get violent, not like the others.  Words, gestures, promises: they were enough.  It took some time, but soon enough the lack of speaking, the snatching, the growling like a dog, the anger, the stealing, even the cat disappearances, disappeared.  Sean was turning.  Or he was being turned, carefully manipulated by a clever man, one who knew how to handle kids and how to deliver what every youngster needs: discipline.  If the beast within Sean could ever be tamed, this was the man to do it.  Yes, he still felt the urges – at thirteen, at fourteen, at fifteen, who doesn’t? – but he had to control them.  There were places to sort them out anyway – toilets, for instance – and there were times in which to do it – out of his way.

            Fear never turned to respect, Sean later realised.  Ruling by threat doesn’t automatically garner respect and Sean had none for Jeff Anderson.  But as time passed and as the family started to feel like a family to him, instead of just a group of people together each and every day, the familiarity of routine and of the people around him grew on Sean.  He felt belonging.  A certain satisfaction, he also felt.  Love, perhaps, was there too.   

            It was almost three years before it all went wrong.  Before lust fought its way back to the forefront and finally regained control and dominated.  Before she fucked it up for him by fucking him.  Before he returned.  Before fate kicked in once more.