The World Out There - 18. Eighteen

Liam leaned forward on the room’s window sill. His bladder was full and getting uncomfortably so. He couldn’t hold it off any longer or he could wet himself. He pushed himself upright and walked the short distance to his room’s door and walked the full length of his room in only a few seconds. He pulled his key out of his jean’s pocket. It took a few moments to unlock the double lock on the door - he had to repeatedly turn his key around and around to finally release it. When he had done, the lock let out a metallic clunk and he pulled the door open.

The toilet was across the small hallway that all four rooms opened onto, but before he rushed across to it, he turned back and double-locked his room’s door. Even just going to the toilet, he still always locked his room’s door. He didn’t want anyone else in the hotel sneaking in there and rummaging around through his few things. He barely had anything worth stealing, but he was more worried about someone finding out who he really was.

He barely noticed the hallway as he strode across it. It was the oblong space at the top of the stairs, a short corridor from which all the doors there opened. No one had made any attempt to decorate it: long ago faded lino on the floor, and the walls had once been a pale green, but almost all colour and tone had faded out.

He locked the toilet door behind him. Stood over the toilet bowl, he undid his jeans and began to empty his bladder. A rush of pleasure and comfort swept through his abdomen as his bladder quickly emptied. Stood there he had to look around himself at the toilet as there was nothing else to look at, and he didn’t want to look down at the toilet bowl.

The walls were painted in the same pale green, though this hadn’t faded as far, and the same old lino as the hallway, but the toilet system dominated the tiny room. It was the old type of toilet - a big and heavy porcelain toilet bowl, the cast metal system tank was actually mounted high up on the wall with a chain hanging down from that tank which had to be pulled to flush it. The toilet bowl was so old that the porcelain had become stained and discoloured - from what, Liam didn’t know. That was why he no longer looked down into it.

He zipped up his jeans, pulled the toilet chain, which let a roar of water to fall down and rush around the toilet bowl, and then he left the toilet.

As he stepped back into the hallway, he found he wasn’t alone. To his surprise, there was a woman stood there in front of an open door to one of the other rooms. She was looking into the open doorway.

She was probably not much older than him. Her thin and narrow body was dressed in a denim mini-skirt and a short, white blouse that just reached the waist band of her skirt. Her legs were covered in pale grey leggings, with black ankle-length boots on her feet. All her clothes looked worn and as if they had not been expensive originally. Her head was covered in very dark black hair which was cut into a short style that feathered out at its ends over her ears and neck.

“Hurry up Carter!” she called into the open doorway in a thick South London accent.

“Keep your knickers on!” a man’s voice replied.

A moment later the man stepped out of the room. He appeared to be only a few years older than Liam, but that’s where any resemblance he could see ended. This man was heavy set, his fleshy body filling out his clothes. His round and plain-featured face looked out from under a head covered in short, dark brown hair. His hair was cut so short that it was barely longer than a crew-cut and emphasised how round his head was. He was dressed a black hoodie over a bright red t-shirt and grey jogging bottoms, with his feet covered in bright orange trainers.

Liam had seen many lads at Nurton Cross who looked like this man, who seemed to embrace shaven heads and jogging bottoms as almost a form of uniform.

The man, called Carter, looked up and saw him, saying, “Hi mate.”

“Hi,” Liam replied, turning towards his own room.

The woman turned around too, her face much slimmer than Carter’s, and exclaimed, “Oh God! You look just like him!” She turned back to Carter and added, “It’s him from the newspaper!”

A cold and hard fist gripped Liam’s stomach, forcing a wave of nausea up his throat and making a cold flush sweep over his face. He’d been caught, someone had recognised him, and he was caught. He was only a few steps away from the safety of his room, but the door was locked. It would take too long to unlock it. They would catch him. They had caught him. He was trapped there. He stared back at them. He had to escape, he had to.

“For God’s sake Kelly, this is getting fucking stupid! You’re seeing him fucking everywhere,” Carter complained.

“I was wrong about that man in the supermarket, all right,” the woman, Kelly replied.

“That guy was Asian,” Carter said. “And you said you saw the guy from the newspaper on the bus here and out on the street, twice.”

“All right, I wasn’t right about them,” Kelly admitted.

“And you’re wrong about this guy too. He looks nothing like that guy they stuck on the frontpage. That guy was all podgy,” Carter said towards Kelly. Then he turned his attention onto Liam. “I’m really sorry mate. My crazy bitch girlfriend has gone real crazy today. She saw the front page of today’s The Sun and now she thinks she sees that guy everywhere.”

“But if we find him, they’ll pay us a fortune. It’s only common sense - them newspapers pay a fortune for shit like this,” Kelly said, though her explanation was directed at Carter and not him.

“See what I mean mate - she’s cracked in the head,” Carter said, directing his words at Liam.

“I’m fucking not!” Kelly replied, slapping Carter on the arm to emphasise what she had said, though that slap seemed far more playful than angry. “Oh, you’re not that like him, are you?” she added, now staring closely at Liam.

“I’m Carter and this is my crazy girlfriend Kelly,” Carter said to him.

“I’m Li-Leo,” Liam replied. His mind almost slipped up. He’d nearly said his name was Liam, correcting himself at the last moment. Judging by the completely unchanging expressions on Carter and Kelly’s faces, neither of them had noticed.

“See you round mate,” Carter said to him before turning his attention back onto Kelly. “Come on or we’ll be late for me mum’s Sunday Dinner.”

“I’m not eating that stuffing or hers, it’s real rank,” Kelly protested.

In the next moment they were gone, their feet rushing down the building’s stairs, as they continued to bicker between themselves, and Liam was left alone there.

He rushed to his door and hurriedly unlocked it. He pushed himself through and, just as quickly, double-locked it behind himself. He was safe back in his room, safe from outside, safe here. He threw himself down onto his old armchair, ignoring the metallic groan from it, pulling his feet up in front of him and hugging his knees close to his chest. He just wanted all this to stop and for him to be left alone.

Carter and Kelly hadn’t really recognised him, but they had come close to it. Would he be as lucky next time? He couldn’t stay hidden in his room from now on, even though that was all he wanted to do. He had to go out there.

Friday morning, two days ago, he found a letter waiting for him in the building’s hallway. It was a crisp, white envelope with his name and address typed on the outside, well the name Leo Brown. It looked so official and that had taken him back a moment. He took it up to his room and only there did he open it. It was a letter from Bryn, his probation officer. Bryn had never written to him before, Liam quickly read the letter. At first, he’d expected something unpleasant, that he had done something wrong, but as he read, it he saw it was just Bryn giving him more instructions. Bryn had arranged three interviews for three different apprenticeships, all of them on the following Monday. Two in the morning and one in the afternoon. None of the apprenticeships seemed interesting or even something that he’d told Bryn he was interested in. Two were for the building trade and other one was “Warehouse Management”, whatever that meant. The last paragraph had snapped hold of his attention. Bryn said that if he didn’t attend these interviews then that could be considered a potential breach of his parole. Was that even right? He couldn’t risk getting on the wrong side of Bryn - so much now relied on keeping Bryn happy, even though the man rarely smiled.

He glanced over at the room’s window sill and saw Bryn’s letter resting on top of his stack of seven books. The crisp, very white paper was still folded neatly into three. Those apprenticeship interviews were the next day. He had to go out to them. He couldn’t just stay there in safety. What if someone on the way to those interviews recognised him? What if someone at one of those interviews recognised him? What would he do? He had no answers, he certainly had no strategies on what to do next.

He closed his eyes and pressed his face into his knees, almost folding his body into two.