Humber Boy B by Ruth Dugdall Page B

easy target. I’m small, skinny and pale. ‘My fine-boned prince’ Mum would say when she was happy or just ‘runt’ when she wasn’t. My smallness was something she enjoyed more when I was little, but when I failed to grow and Stuart pointed out how weak I was, how Adam was so much stronger, she changed her mind. I’ve always been small, the other lads in prison thought I was a wimp, the lads who pushed weights in the prison gym and did sit-ups each night when we were locked in our cells, calling to each other breathlessly as they counted to a hundred before changing to squats. But they were wrong. I’m not a wimp. I may be skinny, but I’m more lethal than any other boy I met in prison.
    Dangerous. That’s why the judge had me locked away for so long, even though at ten I was only just legally responsible. That’s why I have to be Ben, because the real me is so feared, so wanted, that even to keep my first name was a risk. Someone in the Home Office changed my name when I was still ten and, entering my first secure unit, I was re-named by some civil servant who’d never met me, but my shiny new name didn’t keep me safe. For six years I was ghosted from secure unit to secure unit, up and down the country, then for two years I did a tour of the YOIs. If I couldn’t hide in the prison system, when I was surrounded by scum, how can I hide in the open, among decent people? They may call this freedom but it feels like a bigger prison with more to fear.
    After I’ve eaten a handful of cornflakes, with no milk because I ran out yesterday and forgot to buy some, and from the packet because I still don’t have any bowls or spoons, I decide to walk.
    My feet take me towards the bridge. It’s not my bridge, this is the Orwell not the Humber, but it still makes my heart flip like a fish in a bucket, it’s so huge and beautiful. Perfect in its concrete-footed steadiness, the even arches and straight, straight lines. From down here at the water’s edge I can only see the tops of lorries magically moving down the bridge, like a remote control truck I had when I was a kid. Who got me that toy? Not Mum, certainly not Stuart. Could have been my dad, on one of his fleeting visits when he was docked in Hull and Stuart wasn’t around. Before. Those lorries could be remote control, red lorry, yellow lorry, green. Spaced perfectly.
    Can’t see cars, not from down by the river, just Maersk and P&O and Quality. Only words over concrete. The blue sky around it, fluffy clouds like grazing sheep under a perfect disc of white, the sun seemingly bumping the only grey cloud in the sky.
    The footpath is closed, which is a shame because it looks like it leads down to the water’s edge: Danger Men Working. But there are no men here, unless you count me, there’s only a single barrier, a foot maybe two high, and that sign. Adam would never be stopped by a sign, he was fearless. If I’d been more like him, things would have turned out differently. I walk around it and go down to the water anyway, finding it isn’t so hard to ignore the warning.
    The river is full, rippling in the middle with a band of stillness before each bank, so I know a boat must have recently passed, the water is still settling. I can see all this, but I can also see another bridge and hear shouting, Noah and Adam’s voices as clear as if they were next to me, so I squeeze my eyes and come back to Ipswich and this moment and being Ben.
    I need to put my feet in the water.
    On the other bank, to the left, a line of red brick houses, crumbling, they must be way older than the bridge, they must have seen the river being the main route through, the docks in the distance with cranes reaching into liners carrying cargo. Now their view must be red lorry, yellow lorry, Bartrums and China Shipping. Dock lorries, from Felixstowe port to the rest of the UK, onwards to the rest of the world. This bridge allows all this travel but those houses just have to watch. Do they like