Chapter 26
He didn’t know how much longer he could take it. Night after night they rode up and down the track at the back and threw bags of dog shit into the garden. He’d only spoken to them a couple of times about the noise and how it disturbed the kids at bedtime, then their ‘gifts’ had started to arrive. He’d been polite, which is more than they’d been. He knew their type and the dangers. He knew bullies when he saw them.
When he was a kid it had been a decent enough area, nothing to shout about but much better than this. Since the factories closed it had steadily gone downhill. Good people had left and the others, ejected from the city under various ASBOs, had moved in.
The ex-council house his Mum and Dad left him was virtually worthless as a result. The council had tried sticking lipstick on this particular pig by landscaping the place but the turf disappeared over the course of a couple of months and the little trees had been torn down.
The Police wouldn’t pursue the bikers; too dangerous they said and the local Officers were few and far between. The ‘kids’, as some people insisted they were, didn’t care anyway. They had no fear. It wasn’t like when he was a youngster. Big, blue, growling vans. Riot grills, searchlights, crew of six, black nylon jackets. You didn’t hang around when they turned up.
‘The twats in the anoraks’ they’d called them. Now, he sat in the back room and wept.
She put her arm around him and kissed his head. “Come on, love. I’ve tucked little Daisy up and Emily and Harry are waiting for you to go upstairs and give them their bath. This won’t last forever. We’ll get out of here one day.”
He looked up at her, wiped his eyes and forced a smile.