Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Meaning he’d gone back to check.
“We grew up in a deprived area of our town. Parents weren’t educated, they didn’t know how to educate us, and we fucked around. I pretended like I wasn’t smart and that I hated school, and I followed a gang of lads around that liked to get into trouble.” He leaned forward now. “Some of these lads were from pretty shitty backgrounds. One of them, our so-called leader, if you like, Darren Menzies … his dad had been out of the picture since he was a baby, and we all knew his mum’s boyfriend was beating the shit out of him and his mum. I was the only one who knew he was doing other horrific things to him. That was a very angry young man. Darren was cruel because of it. I used to let him get away with terrible shit. We got into it with each other a few times, once when he tried to torture a dog we’d found.”
My hand flew to my mouth in horror as North continued grimly. “I took the beating of a lifetime, but I saved the dog.”
“Wow.” It seemed like a life so far removed from my own, I was almost ashamed.
“Anyway, we were fighting more and more as his destructiveness escalated. Until Gil MacDonald.”
“Who is Gil MacDonald?”
North looked into my eyes, and even in the dim light, I saw his pain. “The homeless man the media dragged up from the grave.”
Without thinking, I crossed the room and took the armchair opposite him. “What really happened?”
North scrubbed a weary hand over his face. I didn’t think he was going to tell me, but when he dropped his hand, he spoke. “We were messing around one evening. It was just after dinnertime. We came across Gil in his sleeping bag behind an express supermarket. Darren taunted him, agitating him, and Gil shouted foul things back. So Darren started beating on him and screaming at the rest of us to get in there. The other lads … it was like he turned them into animals.” Anguish darkened North’s expression. His voice turned hoarse, his accent thickening, as he continued, “I tried. I yelled at them tae get off him. When that didnae work, I pulled Darren off him and we fought long enough for Gil tae run away. But the wee shits chased after him, and I chased after them. They chased him right intae traffic and he was killed.”
It was unimaginable to me he’d witnessed something like that as a child. Just a child. What an event to carry the weight of for so long. I’d never been angrier at the media for dragging it up and twisting the story. “God, North. I am so sorry you went through that.”
“Nothing compared to the terror that man must have felt running from a bunch of wee pricks.”
I heard it. The guilt. He still blamed himself, even though he’d tried to stop it. “What happened after?”
“Darren threatened us all tae stay quiet. I didnae. It didnae matter, anyway. Witnesses saw us chase him intae traffic. We were all arrested.”
“But you weren’t charged.” I knew that from the newspaper articles.
“There was CCTV behind the supermarket. They saw me trying tae stop it.”
“Oh my God.”
“The lads were done for manslaughter and sent tae Young Offenders. Our version of juvie. Which is in Falkirk. So those who had parents didnae have tae travel far tae see their boys.”
“Your accent slips when you talk about home,” I whispered.
North raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t home. My home was with my parents.”
“Right.” Heartache filled me.
“Don’t look at me like that. Things got better,” he promised, and I noted his accent had smoothed again now that he was aware of it. “It motivated me. What happened to Gil fired me up. Because I knew that if I stayed there, I’d end up in prison at some point. As it was, another boy killed Darren before he ever got out. One of the other lads got out and was put away a few years later for aggravated assault. The other two got jobs, seemed to settle down a bit. But they’re just scraping by like their parents did. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. They’d be so fucking ashamed if I didn’t try to find the life I wanted.”
I stared at North, seeing him in a whole new light. There was a lot of depth to this man, and I was ashamed of assuming so much about him. More curious than I knew was good for me, I pressed, “What happened to you after they went to juvie?”
“In exchange for my witness statement at court, social services agreed to move me out of Falkirk for my protection. They placed me in a village near Edinburgh with a couple who only fostered three kids at a time. Emma and Nick were nice. Wary of me at first, I think, but then once I showed them I was willing to work hard, to improve, they were very generous with their time and money.” He smiled softly, and I felt another wild flutter in my belly that I attempted to ignore. “I tried to pay off their house for them when I got my first big check, but they were having none of it.”