Disraeli Avenue. Caroline Smailes

Mr and Mrs North

      Green front door

      Green garage door

      Red car

      DFT 678T

       Martin North leaves home

      I was the first lad from Disraeli Avenue to get into uni. There’d been this lad Paul Hodgson who used to live at Number 2, he went on to study law but they’d moved out of the road by then. So I’m saying that he doesn’t count.

      Getting into Liverpool Uni was fucking huge. I managed two As and a B at A level and my mam was beyond happy. She was right chuffed and painted my results on a white sheet, then hung it from the front room window. It was a right sunny day and all the neighbours slowed down to look at what me mam had painted on the sheet. I told me mam that it didn’t really make much sense. So she got another sheet, asked is how to spell university and then wrote ‘Wor bairn Martin is ganin to university’ in fuck off huge red letters. She was practically dancing around the house. I’ve made me mam so proud.

      Mam, Dad and me Nana North gave is a lift to Liverpool last week. The car was packed with everything I’d need. Pans, a kettle and a load of food. Me Nana North had baked is pies and scones and stuff. They all wanted to give is a right good start. My going to uni is the most major thing in me mam’s life and I have to try me hardest not to fuck it all up.

      I’m sharing a flat with two other lads, Ginger Matt and Charlie. They’re sound lads. We’re right in the centre of Liverpool, just off Mount Pleasant, around the corner from the Everyman Theatre. It’s sound being right central. We can walk everywhere and don’t have to bother with the last bus or with hailing a taxi. Charlie’s a private school lad. He’s right posh and his dad’s mates with Jeffrey Archer. He’s studying French and Spanish. Ginger Matt’s a Manc and so fucking sound. He’s writing a novel and studying English Lit. They’re both a bit off their heads. Charlie has a never-ending supply of pot and is determined to roll the longest joint he can. He reckons he’s going to get in the Guinness Book of Records with it. We’re out every night and I’m spending me money far too fast. The Guild’s a laugh and there are thousands of fit lasses wearing hardly any clothes. I’ve shagged two lasses already and I’ve only been here a week.

      Early this morning, I reckon it was just after two. We’d left the Casa before closing and were having a few tins in the kitchen. The kitchen has massive windows and looks out onto Oxford Road. Charlie managed to pull a lass by shouting out to her from the window. The silly tart came up and let him shag her before he chucked her out. We were laughing about that, so I reckon it must have been about three when we heard screams. Charlie was first to see and ran straight out the flat. He’d had first aid training and even though he must have been stoned, he seemed to know what to do. Ginger Matt had some lass straddling him on one of the kitchen chairs. He was on a promise. I stood at the window and saw her lying, curled up on the road and there were already a few people screeching around her.

      The taxi driver was out of his car and was looking down on her. I could see that he wasn’t right. He was lighting a fag when he puked all over his shoes. Charlie was on the floor giving the lass mouth to mouth. I could only catch glimpses of him through gaps in the crowd. Another lad, who I kinda recognised from downstairs, was in the phone box, must have been calling for help.

      Charlie came back up to the flat with the lass’s blood all over his face and T-shirt. He told us that she was dead and then he went and got himself washed.

      It turned out that her name was Laura. Well that’s what a copper said when he came to get statements from us all a bit ago. She was a fresher and studying English Lit, must have been in the same lectures as Ginger Matt. She was pissed after a night in the Casa. She’d been in the phone box calling her boyfriend who was still back home somewhere in Wales. The copper said that she’d been giving the lad shit. The last thing that she’d said to him was ‘fuck off’. Then she’d staggered out from the phone box and straight onto the road. He told us that she’d died on impact, and although Charlie had done his best, well there was nothing that he could have done to save the lass.

      And now it’s pissing it down outside. The cars are going up and down the road, over her blood and it’s as if nothing’s happened. I reckon there’ll be flowers by the side of the road at some point and a few people will come and stare at the spot. And maybe that’s a good thing, because at least if there are flowers people will wonder and ask questions and the poor lass won’t have died without anyone noticing. She was eighteen years old and she died after saying ‘fuck off’. I’m not going in to uni today. None of us are. We’re all going out to the Guild to get pissed. I was going to phone me mam and tell her about Laura, but I don’t want her to worry about is. I guess what I’m learning is that life’s too fucking short and that I shouldn’t waste any of it.

       Number 2

       Mrs Hodgson and Paul

      Yellow front door

      Yellow garage door

      Red car

      GYS 606S

       The making of Paul Hodgson’s legend

      Mam and Sam had met through a dating agency. It’d been advertised in the local Guardian free paper and we’d had a laugh about it. My nana was the one who made my mam fill out the form, because she reckoned that my mam needed a man about the house. My mam had been to see Mrs Curtis from Number 20 for a tarot reading, she was holding out for a ginger bloke, on a horse in a field full of pumpkins. My nana told mam that she was holding out for a pile of crap and that she had to make her own future, that no one got anything by sitting on their arse waiting for the world to come to them. So Mam got the form and, although we took the piss out of her, she filled it out and sent it back with a postal order for £15 (meet your ideal man within six months or get another six months free).

      Sam was Mam’s first date. He had no kids and was divorced, because his first wife had shagged his best mate. Sam’s a decent bloke. He’s a teacher at the local college, earns pretty good money and treats my mam like a princess. Nana likes him and I do too. I can’t really fault him as a person, but his dress sense is shit.

      We moved in with him three months after Mam met him. He lives on the new estate, in a canny posh detached house with three proper big bedrooms. Mam was a bit stressed about leaving Disraeli Avenue. It was more to do with her independence than anything else and I think that my dad leaving all those years ago made it difficult for her to let go. My nana helped out and gave her a good talking to and then we moved in with Sam. We’d been here just over five weeks when my dad turned up.

      Legend has it that my dad left us when I was a toddler. I can’t remember much about him. The story goes that he’d been on jury service when he’d met a lass called Sky Thursday. Two weeks after the end of the jury service, after he’d eaten a plate of egg and chips, my dad had packed his bags, taken a pint of milk and pissed off.

      That was the last we heard from him.

      My dad didn’t bother with us and I’m not too sure how that’s supposed to make me feel. He was too busy shagging Sky fucking Thursday, selling crystals from a stall in Coastend indoor market and being a dad to the three kids that he’d had with Sky fucking Thursday. He didn’t give my mam any money for me and he never bothered with my birthdays or with Christmas.

      I used to care.

      Of course I fucking used to care. My dad abandoned me and then went on to be a dad to three other kids. I’d see Karen Johnson with her dad and Jude Williams with hers and I’d feel like shit. I didn’t know what I’d done to make my dad hate me, but he must have. My mam’s been great and my nana made