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 and we moved in to a rented house.

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. She just kind of moved in with us.