Taken. Jacqui Rose

pimps and the gangsters hanging out on the corner of Wardour Street and the small time crooks and drug dealers in the numerous side alleyways, and Alfie had loved every moment of it.

      It was worlds away from the East End, where each street seemed to Alfie to be made up of drab grey houses, the smell of poverty lingering on every corner.

      ‘I’m going to get myself a club here when I grow up. That one there is the one I’ll buy.’

      He was twelve years old when he’d pointed out the club painted black with the silver double doors and the silver lettering on the sign. His father had looked at him with so much scorn on his face Alfie had wondered how it’d all managed to fit on.

      ‘You’ve more chance in going to the moon. You’ll come to nothing, you little bastard.’

      ‘Then I’ll be in good bleedin’ company won’t I?’

      Alfie had got a battering from his father leaving him with a broken rib and a long walk to the Whitechapel hospital. Even with all the pain, Alfie had thought it’d been worth it; he’d got to tell the old fucker the truth.

      On the day Alfie turned twenty-three he’d bought the club with the black sign and silver lettering in Old Compton Street. He’d dragged his alcoholic father from his filthy Mile End council flat into his car, hauling him out at the other end and depositing him in front of the silver double doors of the newly bought club which was to be the start of Alfie’s empire.

      ‘There you miserable fucker; have a look at that. That’s mine, every fucking last brick of it. Now try telling me I’ll come to nothing.’

      The scorn hadn’t changed on his father’s face but the fear was new, and Alfie had enjoyed seeing it.

      As Alfie continued to stare at his father he watched the fear turn into a sneer. ‘I don’t care if you’ve got bleedin’ money pouring out of yer fucking arse, it won’t change the fact yer a useless little prick; as useless as a third sleeve on me fucking vest.’

      Alfie had kicked his father in the head, sending him reeling backwards into the path of passersby. He’d continued the attack; stamping on his father’s ribs, twisting his foot on his face and hearing the breaking of cartilage in the nose of the man who’d beaten and humiliated him, and laughed as he’d come home drunk and forced Alfie to get on his hands and knees whilst he urinated on him.

      It wasn’t until a tall black man with dreadlocks had pulled him off his father that the assault had stopped, leaving Alfie Senior in a pool of blood, covering his face in agony. Alfie had felt the tears rolling down his face, partly from anger, partly for his mother, but mainly for himself.

      Some years later, Alfie had been doing some business off the Mile End Road, when he’d seen an old tramp outside the Nag’s Head pub. He’d been about to put his hand in his pocket to hand him a pony – feeling flush after winning on the dogs – but when he’d looked again at the tramp, underneath the heavily unshaven face, the long straggly hair, he’d seen the familiar grey eyes, the cold blank stare, and he knew it was his father. They’d locked eyes for a moment, neither of them saying a word, staring at each other with steely hatred, then Alfie had turned away and walked back to his car.

      He’d sat there for countless hours, his head filled with painful memories, but as the sun had begun to rise over the grey houses of the East End, he’d put his keys into the ignition and driven away; away from his past and away from his pain. Alfie Jennings never laid eyes on his father again.

      Alfie didn’t know why he loved this street so much – after all it was full of nancy boys and tourists and he wasn’t partial to either – but it was where he felt at home. Over time Alfie had secured other properties in London; flats in Docklands, shops in East Ham, and he’d bought a large eight-bedroom family home in Essex for his wife Janine and his daughter Emmie, but it was always this street he came back to, although he never allowed his family to come. At home he was Alfie the husband, Alfie the father; but here in his own apartment he was just Alfie the man.

      Although Janine hadn’t been to the flat it hadn’t been for want of trying; she never missed an opportunity to nag his earhole off to ask to stay. ‘Why can’t we come up West with you, Alfie? It’d make a nice change for me. Oh come on Alf, what do you say?’

      His wife had looked at him over the large breakfast table with egg yolk spilling down her chin. He wondered what had ever possessed him to marry her. When he’d first met her she was a tiny pretty thing who found it hard to say boo to a sparrow, let alone a goose. Fast forward twenty-two years and she’d morphed into something unrecognisable; a fat nagging moaning bitch of a wife who’d too much to say about everything.

      One thing Alfie had never done was raise a hand to her; he wasn’t sure why, because he’d no problem using violence on anyone else, whether it was a mouth full of knuckles to a man who owed him money or a slap round the face to a brass who’d given him too much cheek: as long as it wasn’t his family it didn’t matter.

      The thought had crossed his mind that the reason he didn’t hit Janine – though god knows every time he was with her more than an hour, he longed to put his fist in her mouth – was because he’d watched his own father beat the shit out of his mother on a daily basis.

      Living with Alfie Senior had eventually become too much for Annabel Jennings, and Alfie had come home from school one day to discover her lifeless body in the outhouse at the bottom of the garden, lying in a pool of blood, still clutching the garden shears she’d used to stab herself in the neck with.

      Alfie had sat with his mother until the next morning holding her cold hand, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying silently; hoping a miracle would bring her back to life.

      As soon as his father had come home and the doctor had been called, Alfie had gone out and battered senseless the first kid he’d come across.

      Alfie couldn’t remember how many diets his wife had been on and none of them ever seemed to work; if anything, with each coming year she’d got bigger, though ironically, her tits, the part of her body he’d been most drawn to, were the one part of her body that’d lost weight. Now they were sagging, empty sacks and when she lay on her back in bed, they’d hang over each side of her body, almost touching the mattress.

      ‘Why don’t you touch me any more?’ Janine would complain. ‘I bet you’ve got some skinny tart up Soho and that’s why you don’t want me to come up.’

      Most of the time Alfie was able to convince his wife there was no one else and his lack of sexual interest in her was down to tiredness, but sometimes words didn’t cut it, and he was forced to show her with actions. Shagging his wife was like shagging the Mersey Tunnel Alfie thought – large, cold and passionless.

      When he did fuck her, he always struggled just to get semi-erect, which Alfie thought said a lot about his wife; even with the oldest and ugliest of old brasses he’d no problem getting a boner, but Janine Jennings, with her big fat mouth and her just as big fat pussy, had a flaccid effect on his poor penis.

      Alfie had kept the black sign of the club for nostalgia and as a reminder not to allow himself to fail. The fear of failure was a legacy from his father who had constantly told him he’d never make it; that he’d amount to nothing. So each day when he went into the club and put the key in the imposing door, it was his vindication to himself he’d proved those words wrong.

      He’d had the club since he was twenty-three and had given it a facelift, renaming it Annabel’s Whispers, though everyone called it Whispers Comedy Club or Whispers for short; but to Alfie it would always be Annabel’s Whispers – named after his gently spoken mother. Having her name there was a way of keeping his mother alive to him – it was important to Alfie because he couldn’t remember her face any longer, causing him to feel a deep sense of shame and sadness. When he tried to remember, all he could see was the blood, and all he could hear were his childhood screams.

      Whispers had evolved over time and it’d become useful for his other businesses. It was a place where he could hold his meetings with the biggest faces in London, a place he stored the countless