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keeping out of his way.
    I remember one time I was kipping upstairs with Alfie. I used to like that, because we could stay up late and his mum always did a nice spread for a bit of supper. At about seven the next morning, his dad shouted through, ‘Make us a pot of tea, son.’ Well, Alfie jumped up and I think he made a bit of toast as well, took it into his Mum and Dad, and then we sat on the end of their bed and had a bit of ajoke with them. Lovely, ordinary family life. It didn’t mean anything to Alfie because it was so normal, but it made me feel all warm and sad at the same time.
    It couldn’t have been more different from life in our flat downstairs. On a Sunday morning, you could always tell who’d been on tea duty in our house because they’d have a great lump on the back of their head. One minute you’re asleep, the next minute … whack. Now you’re wide awake going ‘What … what … what?’ – Jim Irwin’s just knuckled you in the head. He’d just stand there ready to put another one in, saying, ‘Make the tea,’ then he’d go back to bed. Spiteful bastard. I could go on and on about the beltings and vicious treatment we took off that excuse for a man, but when you’re reading about it one punch is pretty much like the next. It’s different when you’re on the receiving end, though. I can’t even say that he got tired of doing it, or that we got used to it. He didn’t and we couldn’t.
    Only the people close to us knew what we were suffering. The rest of the world thought he was a hero taking on a widow and all her kids. Good old Jim, heart of gold. If only they knew the real man behind closed doors. A drunken, childbeating slag.
    And so my early years drifted away. Those years that form a child’s mind and set patterns for becoming an adult. What a waste.
    Â 
    Suddenly, I’m twelve, Mum’s pregnant, Jim Irwin’s in the money and we’re on the move back to Hoxton.
    This time we moved opposite my aunt Rosie Wall, a lovely woman, a real comedienne. All my aunts on the McLean side were comediennes, every one of them could make you laugh until you had tears in your eyes. I thought the world of Rosie because she always talked about my real father. I’d sit in her kitchen listening to all the little stories she could tell me about him and it was like bringing him alive again.
    Jim was still being handy with us, but he must have been up to some handy work elsewhere, because his expensive suits and flash car didn’t come from a lorry driver’s wages. It turned out that he’d been working with Ronnie Knight and a few others running the ‘long firm’ racket. The scam was that a few likely lads would get together and take out a short-term let on a warehouse. Then with some dodgy references and a few fancy letterheads they’d set up as distributors. All kinds of goods would be ordered in bulk from the manufacturers and paid for on the nail. The suppliers must havethought they were dealing with a right up and coming firm. It took a good bit of up-front money and a few months’ work, but the end result was still worth it. All of a sudden, business would take off, on paper anyway, so orders would have to be doubled. The suppliers must have thought they’d got a right result, what with all the deliveries of TVs, washing machines and fancy gramophones to the lads at the warehouse – all on the knock of course, because this firm was very credit-worthy. Then … wallop … everything’s sold off – all pre-arranged – to receivers all over the country. And all that’s left in the warehouses are a few empty boxes, a load of cobwebs and a pile of bills sloping up to the letterbox. It would be a few months before the suppliers would get suspicious, so the villains could be well away, probably starting up somewhere else, before the scam was