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the accompanying cold shiver of imminent threat – whether from the icy wind or the equally cold treatment of our Houseparent or co-residents.
    Our dorm was made up of me, Georgie, Win, Fat Sam, Jonesy and Lennox. Lennox was black and at first I was afraid of him because despite having lived in the suburbs on the outskirts of London – the Smoke – there were still not that many blacks even in Croydon, the slum hole of the locality. My only direct experience of coloured people was when Pop had a fight with one over a betting slip at the bookies one Saturday when he’d taken Win and I with him because Ma was struggling around full-bellied just before Jill and Emm were born. He was bigger, harder and meaner than Pop, and Pop’s belt had stayed firmly buckled even after he’d blacked one of Pop’s eyes and kept the ticket. He’d grinned cheerfully as he pocketed it and strolled back inside the bookies, giving Pop a mock salute by way of thank you as he went. His teeth had gleamed unnaturally like stars in the night sky and whenever Lennox grinned, my five-year-old’s brain kicked in and instinctively remembered the mocking black face and the sparkling teeth, with Pop crumpled and defeated. I learnt after a while that Lennox was actually a gentle giant without the will to hurt a fly and then my riotous imagination turned him instead into a Tom Robinson – but that came much later.
    I was bolstered initially by the daily expectation that we would be returned home shortly. The board outside the home stating ‘Children’s Home and Orphanage’ remained merely a label in those first weeks. It was a home for us children so I accepted it without question. It took some months to find out the precise meaning of ‘orphanage’, by which time it was a self-evident truth that we were stuck there, and not about to be collected by Ma or Pop any time soon – if ever. I ate the tasteless lumpy porridge for breakfast, did what I was told to by frosty-faced Miss Liddell and trudged obediently between school, ‘chores’, and keeping a low profile.
    Chores were specifically allocated and regularly rotated week on week. Mine varied between polishing and dusting the dorm, corridor, communal room and meal area, and mopping the floors on a Saturday morning. Miss Liddell’s motto was ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’ so every bit of spare time not otherwise accounted for would be filled with a chore if she caught you hanging around. I idly wondered once what work the devil was finding for her hands whilst we did all the work and she did none, but that was soon answered by a slap or a pinch when I slackened off. The irony was that a punishment for ‘laziness’ was often more chores so I also learnt how to make myself scarce, thereby avoiding not only the allocation of more chores, but also more trouble. The first few weeks, however, were spent tediously learning that particular lesson. The older the boy, the heavier the duty. At nine, I was deemed old enough to mop the floors and help turn the younger ones’ mattresses once a month, so gradually my stick legs and scrawny arms developed their own rangy strength. Mopping the floors involved not only a damp sweep but also the accompanying dry mop, followed by the polish applied with the heavy bumper mop. By the time I was finished, I’d be sweating, arm muscles burning and weak from over-exertion. I became used to the smell of water and disinfectant so strong my eyes smarted. If I ever now encounter it in the corridor leading to the cells where I’m interviewing one of my clients or after Mrs Mop has done her piece in Chambers, I’m still unwillingly transported back to a Saturday morning in the home, and my arms and back aching.
    The only ones who regularly got out of chores on a Saturday in our dorm were Win and Lennox. Win because he cannily got himself a paper round at the shop on the corner of the only block of houses near us. Lennox because our Houseparent displayed her