Prologue
Corey
The day I realised I was a whore, I cried. It’s a strange thing to have a sudden realisation that the ‘relationship’ you’re in is actually a quid pro quo situationship with a side helping of violent threat, a soupçon of coercive control, and a London borough’s worth of gaslighting.
When I finally acknowledged my place to sleep, the food I ate, and the job I hated were all contingent on pleasing the cruel prick I called a boyfriend, I’ll admit that yeah, I cried. I cried for the six-year-old me who did nothing but draw pictures of sunrises and sunsets over fields of flowers with comically large butterflies. I cried for the seventeen-year-old me who got caughtwith his hands down another boy’s trousers in his bedroom and was promptly kicked out with a backpack of clothes and a black eye for the road. The same seventeen-year-old me who got on his knees a few times in public bathrooms for money when he hadn’t eaten in days. I cried for the twenty-two-year-old me – the man I am today – who danced around a pole because his boyfriend wanted to make as much money off his arse as possible before he completely destroyed it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a relationship where I can give up all control and justbe. Give me a sexy older man with salt-and-pepper hair, a firm hand, and a soft heart, and I am good to go. But a sadistic arsehole who’s never heard the phrase safe, sane, and consensual in his life? No, thank you.
The sadistic arsehole in question, Dom, owns a night-club, Poles Apart, with his twin brother Dan. They think it’s a classy place with a discerning clientele. It is not. It’s a seedy dive bar with a pole on a stage and a crowd of two types of men: closet case middle-aged men hiding from their wives, who paw all over the dancers as if they were a dog to be stroked, and borderline psychopathic sex pests who leer at us and practically drool over our mostly naked bodies.
But if life has taught me anything, it’s that you have to look on the bright side. Yes, I was a whore. An unintentional one, but regardless, it’s what I was. And once I realised that, I was finally able to do something about it. I never wanted to be a dancer, and now I no longer am. And if I have anything to say about it, I never will be again. I may be homeless, sleeping on the streets, and starving most of the time, but I will never allow myself to be objectified the way I have been for the last few years. My friend Rain always said...
Fuck.
The gut punch at the thought of Rain takes my breath away.
We met at Poles Apart when he started working there as a dancer, too. He’d been living with Dan, my ex-boyfriend’s brother, and we just clicked on the first day we met. You know that feeling when you meet someone, and you just know they’re a person you want to know? That’s how we were straight away. We connected over sarcastic humour, nerdy references to niche British sitcoms, and, as became apparent recently, shared trauma.
I’ve never settled in a place long enough since I was kicked out of my childhood hometo make friends. I had a few mates at university, but I’m not in touch with any of them anymore. We drifted pretty quickly after graduation. Then I met Dom, and the rest is history. So, meeting Rain and feeling like I might finally have met someone who could be a real friend to me, someone I could be a real friend to as well, was so exciting. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the cards for us.
Dom, but especially his brother, were both possessive to an uncomfortable degree. They hated how well we got on, and so they worked really hard to limit our time together, or to make sure we weren’t ever left alone without one of them present. One might think they were afraid of what we might reveal to one another. Turns out, they were right to be. I witnessed my friend change over the past few months, closing himself off from everyone and becoming more jumpy and, tellingly, wearing make-up to presumably hide the bruises Dan was leaving on him.
My only friend disappeared overnight a week or so ago, and it was his disappearance and the realisation of what my life had become that finally prompted me to leave Dom, his club, and my old life behind. Again.
The number of fresh starts I’ve had inmy twenty-two years of life rather defeats the whole concept of a fresh start. I should probably start calling them something else – an ‘on-the-turn’ start, perhaps – instead of continually hoping for something better. Rain always said, “What’s for you won’t go by you”, something his mum used to say to him, I think. And I always hoped he was right. But if I’m honest, as I sit here in my soggy sleeping bag, under the cover of a second-hand tent pitched in the middle of a roundabout on Coventry’s ring-road, I have to wonder what I did to piss fate off so much that this is what has been designated as for me.
When Rain disappeared, I initially worried Dan and Dom had lost it completely and killed him. The thought scared me so much that I packed a bag of my stuff and did my own disappearing act. The only thing I packed that I actually care about is my box of paintbrushes and art pencils, a gift from my grandmother before she died.
It was only as I hopped about the country on several different trains trying to make sure I wasn’t followed, that I had time to think about it and realised Rain had clearly left on his own steam. The twins had been apoplectic. Dan, in particular, was terrifying. He threatened me to find out where Rain was, even though I had nothing to tell him. Screaming in my face andshowering me with his spittle, as he raged about how he knew I had information on where ‘that little slut’ had gone, was not the way to coax me into spilling Rain’s secrets. Not that I would’ve told him anything even if I did know where Rain had gone. They wouldn’t have reacted in such a violent way if they knew he was, in fact, dead at their own hands. No, they would have never mentioned his name again and hoped everybody forgot he ever existed.
Arseholes.
No, Rain had taken off on his own, escaping the shitshow that was life with those two sadists. I knew all too well from my own past experience that sometimes it was best simply to walk away and leave it all behind. The pain, the fear, and the people who were supposed to love you, but didn’t. I only hope he’s found somewhere safe. And that Dan never finds him.
Shaking myself out of those maudlin thoughts, I check the time on the cheap pay-as-you-go phone I’d gotten in an amateur attempt to be untraceable. I’ve watched a true crime show or two in my time, and I absolutely was suspicious enough of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dickhead to believe they could have hidden a tracking app somewhere in my phone. God knows what other lengths they would go to findsomeone they viewed as their property, and I was under no illusions anymore that property was exactly what I had been to Dom.
No. Not Dom. Dominic.
I refuse to continue using the nickname that made him seem softer. He was a hard man, and no nickname would ever be enough to soften his edges.
Registering the time, I start packing my things into my ratty backpack. I’ve been leaving my tent and sleeping bag here each day as I search for a job. I don’t think any employer worth their salt will be too pleased to see me dragging my home around with me on my back like a sad little human snail, but my backpack contains every other possession I have in the world, so I’m not leaving it lying around anywhere. No way. Before I crawl out of my shelter, I check my reflection in the broken mirror I found in the bins behind B&M, the discount store in town.
My bleached blonde hair dye is just starting to grow out, giving a hint of the natural auburn hair in my roots. My already pale skin looks a bit sallow, no doubt a side effect of not getting enough proper food and vitamins recently, but I can’t do anything about that right now. I spray my hair with dry shampoo andtease my fingers through it before using a very small amount of wax to swoop it back into a semblance of a style. I hate that I’m still wearing my hair how Dominic liked it, but until I can get to a salon, it’s the only style that doesn’t make me look as though I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. I put my contact lenses in – entirely cosmetic, another hangover from Dominic, who thought aquamarine eyes would be a better money-spinner than my natural green eyes – and then add some eye drops because these things are itchy as fuck.
Don’t ask me why I’m still wearing them. I don’t know the answer myself. My best guess would be that subconsciously, if I hide my true eyes from the world, maybe people won’t see the real me living rough with nothing and no one on my side.
Or maybe it’s because the less time I spend looking at my real reflection, the less time I spend hearing my grandmother’s voice in my head, asking me what on earth I’m doing with my life.
Deciding my reflection is as good as it’s going to get today, I zip up my backpack and head out into the cold.
Making my way through the small patch of trees that is this makeshift campsite, I peekout, checking to see if the road is clear. A pair of headlights is approaching, so I dash across the road and onto the pavement before I’m spotted. Being mid-November, it’s still dark at this time, and I have somewhere to be before the sun comes up. I follow the ring-road into the city centre and make my way through West Orchards, the main shopping centre – one of the only places in Coventry open before seven o’clock in the morning – and exit onto Trinity Street, nodding a “good morning” at the Lady Godiva statue as I pass.
I cross St. Michael’s fields and reach the base of the old cathedral tower, my shoes failing miserably at protecting me from the dampness of the grass. My wet feet squelch a little in my Vans as I pad softly through the quiet streets, my only company the fox scurrying away into a hedge as I approach.
The only part of the old cathedral still standing, aside from the footprint of the building presumably destroyed during the war, is the tower. It’s technically a tourist attraction, only £5 for the pleasure of climbing, but after a chance encounter with the caretaker a few days ago, when I explained why I wanted to go up there, he said he’d leave the door unlocked for me. I thought he might be a bit mad offering to open up a place like this for some homeless guyhe just met, but he just winked at me and told me he’d once been where I was, and if this could give me a bit of relief, then he was happy to do it. With a gentle handshake and a comforting pat to the back of my hand, he’d pressed a tenner into my grip and walked off. He hadn’t even blinked at the bruises on my face and the stiff way I carried myself after some drunk students had decided I was a punching bag a few nights before – the reason I had moved out of the city centre and into my little ring-road roundabout oasis.
I haven’t seen the caretaker again, but as promised, when I push on the heavy, studded, wooden door, it gives way just like it has the last three days. I climb the one hundred and eighty steps before emerging onto the roof and taking in the breathtaking cityscape below, the lights of homes and businesses twinkling as the city stirs for another day. The winter wind up here is biting, and I wrap my flimsy jacket tighter around me as I take my usual spot, sitting cross-legged, leaning back against the central spire facing east. The position offers some protection from the elements, thanks to the low walls surrounding the roof, as I wait for my favourite moment of the day.
