The World Out There - 1. One

His room was quiet today. Usually he would have his radio on, filling the room with noise and music and sound, chasing away the silence, but not today. He couldn’t take the risk of hearing the radio news, not today.

He sat on the window’s wide, wooden sill and stared down at the street below through the window’s dirt smeared glass. He was only four floors up, but already the people in the street seemed small, like little animated dolls. Everyone down there seemed to be hurrying along the pavements or rushing across the narrow street. Did those people have somewhere where they had to be, or were they hurrying away from something? Liam stretched his back against the stiffness pulling at the base of his spine from sitting there so long. He arched his back again and stopped. He wasn’t Liam anymore - he was Leo Brown, and he had to remember that.

For the last four weeks now, his world had been reduced down to this one room, but at least he was safe here. For the time being, he was safe here.

Liam turned his head and glanced at his room. No… Leo did, not Liam, but Leo. It was a small but functional room, tucked into the eves of the building. It was barely two and a half times bigger than the old single bed pushed against one wall, and was dominated by the bay window, with its wide wooden window sill that pushed out from the building’s roof. Light would flood in through it during the day and sitting in it gave him a view of the street below, which always seemed busy with activity.

This room was so tatty and even smaller than his one at Nurton Cross, but everything was so different than it had been at Nurton Cross.

His room was on the fourth floor of a run-down Bed & Breakfast hotel, south of Waterloo station. His floor was probably the attic, tucked in under the building’s roof. There were three other rooms on this floor, but at least there was a loo and shower room too. He would hear people in the other rooms, but he didn’t know who any of them were. He barely left his room. He only left it to use the loo and to go out once a day to buy his food for that day. There was a small supermarket three streets away, and he could shop there without the need to speak to anyone. He only wanted to leave his room for the shortest time each day possible. He didn’t like it here, but at least he felt safe here, or he had.

Donna, his resettlement worker, had found him this room but he’d had no choice in it. She’d met him on that first day and taken him here in her old car, barely speaking to him on the long journey. When she’d shown him the room, she’d handed him the radio she had bought for him, and then left him alone. She’d barely stayed two minutes in his room. He’d been told that she was there to help him adjust to his new life, but she seemed to want to spend as little time with him as possible. Did she know his real name? She did call him Leo all the time, but she always said it so purposefully, as if forcing herself to remember it. He hadn’t seen her since she had brought him here four weeks ago.

Before he’d left Nurton Cross, she made him fill out the forms to make sure he got his benefits and told him she would find him a room in a temporary accommodation. A week before he was due to leave, she told him she’d found him this room, but that was all she told him about the room. He knew nothing about this until Donna brought him here on that first day. There was no chance he could return to living with his mother, and nobody had even suggested that.

The more he thought about it, and he had plenty of time to think, because there was nothing else to do here, the more he was certain that Donna knew who he was.

He stood up from the window sill - the old wood had become uncomfortable. His buttocks and the back of his thighs had become numb. He stretched his back again and slowly walked the few steps towards the armchair. He then sat down onto it. The armchair’s seat sank down under him, the metal springs in it squeaking as it did. It always did this, but he ignored it. He rested back into it.

He had only taken a journey away from this room twice since he’d moved here, and both times it had been to visit his Probation Officer, Bryn.

He’d been able to catch a bus directly to and from Bryn’s office, which was housed in gleaming office block up at Euston. He’d thought that buildings like that one had only been built in Docklands, not the Euston Road. It seemed to be completely made from glass - huge floor-to-ceiling windows right across the whole building. He’d felt intimidated when he’d entered the building. He was greeted by a large white and sparsely furnished reception area, with a woman dressed in a security guard’s uniform sat behind a glass and metal desk. He’d had to walk up to her and tell her his name before he was allowed to ride the lift up to Bryn’s office. As he’d done so, his heart had been pounding inside his chest. He had to remember his new name and say it right.

Bryn’s office was small and in a sea of similar offices covering the same floor. He’d had problems finding it - they were all the same in that criss-crossing landscape. Bryn was sat behind a Formica desk which was strangely empty, his dark hair cut so short that it seemed to bristle over his head. He wore a very tight white shirt, with his strong muscles very visible underneath. The man’s sheer physical presence seemed to fill the small space. Liam had sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair - not just the chair making him feel uncomfortable - as Bryn reeled off his questions in a cold and unfriendly tone.

“What’s your mobile phone’s number?” Bryn asked.

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“What?... Oh, right,” Bryn replied.

Bryn’s whole tone had been cold and distant towards him. It was obvious Bryn knew his real name and his history.

The worst part of those days had been the forty minute or so bus ride there and back. As it pulled up to the Bus Stop, the bus was bright, shiny red and modern on the outside, not what he remembered. When he boarded it, he found it was equally bright inside, dominated by yellow handrails. His eyes had hurriedly searched for somewhere to hide but there wasn’t any. Even the back seat of the bus was open and bright. He hurriedly sat himself down on an empty seat, tipped his head down and pulled the hood of his hoodie over his head as far as it would go.

This bus was so much cleaner and smoother and modern than he remembered them being. He could have enjoyed traveling on them, but he felt so exposed. He expected someone to recognise him and call out his old name. The other passengers there seemed to be staring at each other. Then he saw the CCTV screen, sat under the electronic display boards, that announced the name of the next stop. It was showing him images of the bus’s interior, the images of different passengers appearing on it in rotation. Then his own image appeared, in side on profile, sat on his seat, only a brown turf of hair sticking out from under his hoodie, his fringe escaping its covering. His very face was up there on that CCTV screen where anyone could see him and recognise him. He was so open and exposed there.

No one spoke to him or even seemed to say anything on that bus, he was able to leave it in silence when it reached his stop, but that didn’t ease his nerves. He only felt safe when he was finally locked away in his room again.