Summer Holiday/Bob

I left Georgia on my father's back aged three. He carried me two thousand five hundred miles and I was four when he lifted me down off the back of a lorry, somewhere in the English countryside.

We ended up in some kind of camp, where I started school and learned English; by the time he got his papers as a political refugee, I was nearly six; we then moved to London where he found a job on a building site. He was fortunate in that his skills as a carpenter were in demand and he was a hard worker who soon got promoted to foreman but he was saving hard and we stayed in the one room flat he had rented.

I first saw Alice picking up a half-eaten burger outside the shop; she was about three years old and stick thin. I was on my way home from school and when I spoke to her in English she clearly didn't understand me. I looked around for her parents but there was no one, so, not knowing what else to do, I took her home. Dad sat her in front of a bowl of stew which she wolfed down so fast it made her sick.

Dad soon discovered that she too was from The East, Ukraine he thought, but in spite of his asking around, we never found her parents. She was filthy dirty and had scabs on her knees and elbows, as well as what Dad thought were some rat bites. I took her down the hall to the shared bathroom and ran some warm water. She didn't know what to do, so I peeled the shabby dress that was her only garment over her head and helped her in.

She just stood there looking at me, so I undressed and got in with her. I knew about the difference between boys and girls and I had some idea of what grownups did in bed, because Dad sometimes bought girls back to our room when I was supposed to be asleep. I would lay there and watch as he got them to suck his willy, and make it hard, then he would push it into the hole between their legs and pump it in and out until they both made groaning noises; sometimes Dad would have to put his hand over the girl's mouth to keep her quiet. They were always gone in the morning.

Alice was not much more than a baby, but when I sat her down in the water, I could see that, just like the bigger girls Dad bought home, she too had a hole between her legs. I rubbed soap all over her, using my hand since there was nothing else and I paid particular attention to that interesting hole, even sliding a soapy finger inside; she didn't like that and started crying so I left it alone.

Five years later