Essex Boy: My Story by Kirk Norcross Page B

to get tired of the hostel and Mum was angry we hadn’t been moved on. This dirty, often scary place wasn’t supposed to be a
permanent home, just somewhere for us to stay while the council found us a new house. But that hadn’t happened.
    Then one day my brother, who was fifteen by then, went across the road to Maxine’s to borrow some orange squash for a school trip the next day. I was in our room upstairs when the buzzer
went. I answered: ‘Hello?’
    ‘Kirk, open the door now!’ I heard my brother gasp.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘I’ve been shot.’
    For some reason I broke into floods of tears and couldn’t stop. Fear of what was about to come, I guess. We ran downstairs and he was out the front holding his chin, and the blood was
pissing out, like really pulsing out of him, and he was pure white. Duncan and a mate of his, Phil, arrived at the same time, and someone said, ‘Wayne shot him!’
    We all sprinted to Wayne’s room and Mum tried to kick the door open, yelling, ‘You shot my son, Wayne! I will fucking kill you for this!’
    We could hear him moving around inside, and just as Mum was kicking, the blade of a knife suddenly came through the door at her. He forced it right through the wood, trying to stab her. I
couldn’t believe what I was seeing and stood there rooted to the spot, completely terrified.
    Phil pushed Mum out of the way and kicked the door in, and before Wayne had time to do anything, Phil picked him up and slammed him against the wall, screaming, ‘You fucking little
shitbag. What are you playing at?’
    He kept picking him up and throwing him round the room like a rag doll, and I could see his head banging off the furniture. It only stopped when the police arrived to arrest Wayne.
    Daniel was rushed to hospital and we finally found out exactly what had happened. It turned out army-obsessed Wayne had turned eighteen earlier that week and immediately went and got an air
rifle. When Daniel was coming back to the hostel and saw him, he joked, ‘Don’t shoot me, Wayne!’ But he did.
    Daniel thought it was just a piece of cork that had hit him, but then he saw the blood. The bullet had gone through his chin and into his throat, a millimetre from his jugular. At the hospital
they realized there was too much swelling to take the pellet out, so he had to lie in bed for four days to let the swelling go down, with this thing lodged in his neck, before they could operate. He was really brave about it but Mum was so upset.
    In the meantime the police had released Wayne, saying he was mentally disturbed so they didn’t want to jail him, and the hostel was the best place for him. Then Mum’s crying stopped
and she went mad. She stormed to the council and refused to leave.
    ‘You want me and my sons to live in the same building as this mental idiot who shot my son! There is no security, only a few shit reception staff, and you think that is OK? You have to
take us out before someone gets killed!’
    She was so angry, I think she finally made her point. In the summer holidays a year after we had arrived, when I was twelve, we said goodbye to the hostel, and went on to the next stage of Essex
life . . .

 
SIX
    The Worst Estate in Essex
    To get us out of the hostel, the council moved us to an estate called Seabrooke Rise, which I can’t describe as anything other than a slum. If you live in Seabrooke Rise
you are known to be scummy, it’s as simple as that. Life there is like something out of the television show
Shameless
– this run-down council estate where everyone knows each
other’s business and all sorts of dodgy shit goes on.
    If I was out of the area and told someone where I was from they wouldn’t talk to me. They’d be scared to be associated with me, or of what I might do. But it didn’t bother me. All my pals were from Seabrooke Rise anyway – all the people I had hung out with when we were in the hostel were from that area, and let’s face it, no matter what