The Tramp.

Tandra's just left me to get on the train to Hayes while I await the one to East Grinstead. It'll be here in thirty three minutes.

A blond man with a graying beard sits in his usual space by WH Smith, bartering and heckling for our spare change. It's a shame for him that the people of London are too tight to pay for his drugs. He's thin and he's tanned, and he may well of been good looking twenty-odd years back, but now he's just the Charing Cross Tramp. I get up from my seat by the Swatch stall and walk over to buy More magazine; I've finished on my Look and my Heat. I almost walk past him and he asks me for my change. I start to dig around in my pockets when our eyes meet. Does he recognise me: Isn't this the man who used to call me Princess?

The man who tore up my life and I never got over it, the man who keeps me awake all night, every night through my nightmares, the scars on my hip.

All that effort I made, trying to block out the painful memories over years, and its worth nothing; Now, standing there at the station, I ran away, paid 20p to lock myself in the toilet and cried so hard that someone came and knocked on my door to ask if I was okay. I said no, and when they asked whats wrong, I made up some spew about how I'd been dumped, as its perfectly viable and they probably can't be bothered to follow-up on that because it's just not that interesting.



But if I told them the truth... well, that doesn't bare thinking about.



Here are the parts I can remember:

His names Paul, and he his children are called Lisa and David. He used to live in Eltham, on Crookston Road. He was the manager for Mercedes Benz in Beckenham and Bromley Hill. He never could get over his hey-day in the eighties when he dated half the cast of Eastenders cast including the one whose nose fell off, who introduced him to the hard stuff. He settles down with a wife whose name I can't remember and has his children. They get divorced because of the drugs. He falls in love with a young woman named Carmel.

That was the past.

It all gets a bit hazy from there, but here are the things I can remember:

• A two-year-old girl called Nicole.
• A new house in langley park. It had thin walls.
• Happiness.
• Screaming though the thin walls.
• Sleeping through the screaming.
• Hard drugs down the toilet.
• Waking up alone; seven years old.
• Blood on the kitchen floor.
• Something shiny in the blood.
• A nice police woman called Mairead, who let me hug her.

Crap, I'm shaking. I run through the station to where my train awaits me. I curl up on my own, put on my sad song playlist and cry solid.

I get home about half twelve in the morning and go up to my room, not telling anyone why I'm crying or what I've seen.