You’d never have believed it. I didn’t to start off. When she first turned up on the beach I thought I wasn’t going to like her. It was Saturday night. We’d built a big fire opposite the old factory sheds about half a mile out of town. It was a good big fire. We’d found a huge lump of wood, part of an old boat. Me and Kenny dragged it up the beach. It was tarred and it had copper nails in it. The copper turned the fire green. It was magic.

Gemma was wild about it. She gets so excited by things – that’s one of the things I like about her. She was excited by the fire, by meeting us for the first time, by the sound of the sea in the dark, by the night…

Minely’s the most awful dump. No one’s got any time for the locals. You wander round in your own town feeling like an outsider and then… you find this bunch of people your own age sitting half a mile out of town by this magic fire drinking and smoking and doing their own thing. I remember when I discovered the beach life. It’s great.

She was beautiful but she was going on and on, rattling away about how wonderful this was, and how wonderful that was. She was getting drunk and stoned, and I thought, Doesn’t she ever get tired of her own voice?

But I stayed and she stayed and in the end there were only about five or six of us left.

That’s the time I usually went home. The later it got, the more people got paired off until in the end, if you were sitting there on your own, you turned into a gooseberry. I usually tried to leave before that happened, but that night, I was there and Gemma was there and all the others were paired off, and I thought, Oh, no…

Because in that situation I always feel as though I ought to try and make a move but I didn’t dare. And I didn’t want to just go and leave because everyone would know I was scared to talk to her. You’d have to be a lot more sure of yourself than I am to pull a girl like her.

She came and sat next to me and started talking…

There were these long silences. I was anxious she’d be fed up but she didn’t seem to mind. Then she started asking me about myself… and I told her about home and Mum and Dad. I felt like… stupid, you know? Because everyone knows about my problems and here I was talking about them to this beautiful girl. I thought she must just be dead bored by it. But she kept asking me about things in a quiet voice, not like the voice she used when she was hooting and yelling earlier. I told her everything. Everything – too much. I kept looking at her, thinking, Why are you asking all these questions? What have you got to do with me?

Then she started talking to someone else and I thought, Oh well… and the next thing I knew I could feel her fingers tickling my hand. I couldn’t believe it, I thought it was some mistake. We held hands. Then I picked up all my courage and I put my arm round her waist and she leaned into me. And I just smiled. I was so pleased. I couldn’t kiss her, I was smiling so much.

‘Ow!’ she said, when I banged her mouth with my teeth.

I told her, ‘I’m so happy.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Good.’

I’d been feeling pretty down – being away from home, being on my own. Now I felt great. I wanted to make that moment last as long as I could. Like in a film – you know how they play a song or some music and a particular feeling stretches out – like that. I should have been in a boat floating down the river or in a hot-air balloon with someone playing a guitar, but there I was in the middle of this tatty old Bristol street and I knew that any second something’d happen and I’d be feeling dreadful again. I had to do something.

Then I thought, I’ll go for a walk in the park… Yeah. There’d be toddlers on the roundabouts, people walking their dogs. It was late spring. The daffodils were still out, there were trees in bloom. People would be feeding the ducks and the pigeons. I could have an ice cream. I had my Walkman with me so I could even have some music if I wanted.

I could feel that moment lifting up, ready to jump into the air…

I put my hand in my pocket. I don’t know why. I had a quid. And I thought, Shit! because I’d already left it too late and I could feel that good feeling going down the drain already.

The thing was, if I spent my money on ice cream I’d have to go into town and beg in the pedestrian precinct – the Dust Bowl, they call it – so I could get something to eat that night. And begging is so grim. There’s no way you can do it nicely. You just put your head down between your knees and you hold your hand out and try to pretend it’s not happening.

It was so stupid. As if I had to have money to feel good about Gemma coming to see me! I knew it was going to happen, I knew there was just too much shit about to let me feel good for more than a second. The moment gathered itself up and jumped up into the air… and I was left on the ground watching it go…

And then I noticed the dandelions.

They were on the grass verges along the road. It was a solid mass of yellow, bright, golden yellow. I’d been standing there thinking about daffodils somewhere else and all the time here were the dandelions – wild dandelions, not put there for me to look at but there because they wanted to be there. All along the grubby street it was ablaze with yellow and everyone was walking up and down without even noticing them.

I must have walked past them a dozen times. I walk about without seeing, sometimes.

I know it sounds stupid, but it was like the flowers had come out for Gemma.

I stood there for a bit and I felt like I was soaking up that colour. I love yellow. It’s the colour of sunlight. When all this is over and I get myself sorted out, I want to go to art college. I want to be a painter or a designer. I really think I’m good enough.

I stood there staring at it, and I had an idea for a painting. A dandelion – just one huge bright dandelion. The background was all black and the dandelion was all the bright yellows and oranges, every petal a long yellow triangle. It would be a big painting. I was going to do it and put it on the wall of the squat for Gemma when she came.

And that big happy moment came swooping down, and I reached up a hand and caught hold of it and off I went. I picked a big bunch of dandelions and went off back to the squat. I felt great again.

The first couple of nights I slept out in doorways. The very first night I tried to go to sleep in my bag in the doorway of a small supermarket but it was too cold. I ended up wandering about all night. Towards morning I saw people crowded together in a subway, all wrapped up in cardboard boxes, and I thought, That’s how you do it! And I wandered about some more till I found some cardboard in stacks outside a shop waiting for the binmen. I wrapped myself up in that, and that was better. But you still keep waking up all night. You never seem to get a decent night’s sleep on the street.

I slept like that for a couple of nights, but I didn’t like it on the street. The thing is, you’re in public. People can see you all the time, even when you’re asleep. Sometimes at night you wake up and the police are shining a torch into your face. I hated that – the thought of people examining you while you’re asleep, all those strangers. I began to feel like something in a zoo. So when I found this row of derry houses, I thought, Right. This is gonna be home.

I found a little room with a door still on it. The first night I kept getting woken up by people banging in. It was pitch black so they couldn’t see me till I called out. It happened about five times that night. I was really scared the first few times, but after a bit I realised it was just people looking for a place to sleep. I shouted out, ‘It’s taken,’ and they left.

The next day I made up a little sign: ‘Do Not Disturb.’ And I wrote, ‘Property of Hotel d’Erelict’ in little letters underneath.

Everyone had to find their way about with matches or a torch, so they all saw my sign and I never got bothered after that. Just a couple of times some drunks came charging in without seeing my notice. Sometimes they thought it was so funny they’d wake me up.

‘Will you leave your boots outside for cleaning?’ someone yelled. And, ‘Will Sir be requiring his breakfast in bed?’ That sort of thing. That was okay.

It was out of the open but it was a right mess in there. People had dumped binbags full of rubbish, waste paper, old clothes, even rubble. I slept on top of it for a few nights. I suppose I was feeling depressed. I was thinking a lot about my mum.

Then I thought, Get on with it.

First of all I scooped all the rubbish into binbags and carried it out round the back. I pinched the binbags from someone’s dustbin. I found a broken broom in a skip and gave it a good brush down. It was still a tip, but at least it was a brushed tip.

Since then I’d been collecting bits and pieces – a few wooden crates, a bit of carpet someone chucked out. I couldn’t make it too nice because someone would have nicked stuff or wrecked it. But I’d tried to make it mine. That’s why I was so pleased when I had this idea for a picture. I’d wanted to do a picture. I’d brought my pencils with me but I hadn’t got round to it yet, and now I had this great idea for Gemma.

It was about two miles back to the squat. On the way I had to go past Joe Scholl’s tobacconist. I thought I’d go in and have a Twix. Have a treat. I completely forgot about the begging. You do. You just forget, you buy a bar of chocolate and then you think, Oh, no…

Joe Scholl’s a nice man. He’d given me a few quid a couple of times in the past few days. I think he gave quite a bit of money to the people on the street.

‘You look full of the joys today, David,’ he said, eyeing my dandelions over the counter.

‘Yeah. My girlfriend’s coming to stay,’ I told him. I think I only went in there so I could tell someone the news.

‘Hence the bouquet, eh?’ he said, nodding at the dandelions.

‘Yeah,’ I laughed. I took a Twix bar and dug in my pocket for the money. He didn’t laugh, but then he never did. He always kept his face completely straight, except his eyebrows were permanently up in the air. You hardly ever saw him move his face, even when he was cracking you up with laughter. Deadpan.

‘That’s good news then.’ He didn’t take my money. He just looked at me. ‘Leaving her folks like you did, is she?’ he wanted to know.

I looked at him. ‘Yeah…’

‘How old is she, then, David?’

I didn’t dare tell him how old she really was. I said, ‘Sixteen.’ That’s how old I’d told him I was. I started eating the Twix to hide my embarrassment.

‘Nice.’ He stood there with his hands hanging by his sides watching me. ‘Where you putting her up, then?’ I was beginning to feel miserable again. ‘Honeymoon suite in the Hotel Derry?’

‘Yeah…’ I put the money back in my pocket.

‘Thank you, Skolly, for the free Twix bar.’

‘Oh! Yeah… I’m really sorry. I was thinking…’

‘That’s all right. Not a nice place for a young lady, though, is it, David?’

I just hadn’t thought. He was right! Albany Road was all right for me but not for Gemma. You get all sorts in there – tramps, alcoholics, junkies. Most of them are all right but some of them… Once or twice I’ve seen the alkies with women with them, but you never see any young women in there. The girls all sleep out in doorways, in public…

I never thought why.

‘Here…’ I held out the money again, but he waved it away.

‘Don’t be daft.’

I was about to put it back in my pocket but then I had second thoughts. ‘No, take it. Or I won’t be able to keep coming in.’

‘Ah…’

‘You’ll think I’m begging.’

‘A time and a place for everything, eh, David? I take your point.’ He leaned across and took my money. ‘I’ll give it back to you later on, okay?’

I laughed. He was so funny. His face was funny. He was quite fat and bald, and he always looked as if you’d just given him a mildly unpleasant surprise, as if you’d told him the price of chocolate had just gone up or something.

‘Life is a complicated business,’ he said. Another customer came in and he turned to them. I nodded and started for the door, but he called out, ‘Hang on a minute…’

I stood and waited while he sold a newspaper. I felt dreadful again. I hadn’t thought. I was being selfish. I couldn’t ask Gemma to come and live like this with me!

‘She’s not coming to stay. She’s just visiting,’ I began when the customer left.

‘What you doing tonight?’

‘Well, nothing…’

‘Be here at six o’clock. I’ve got someone to see. We might be able to sort something out for you.’

‘Really?’

‘I’ve gotta see someone, all right? You be here at six. I might just tell you to clear off home.’

‘Thanks, Mr Scholl!’

‘Mr Scholl.’ He rolled his eyes briefly. ‘Skolly.’

‘Thanks, Skolly.’

‘Go on, piss off.’

My mum.

I’d made myself this promise not to ring up for a whole month. The trouble was, I kept thinking I’d feel better if I spoke to her; but I knew it wasn’t true. I’d left her a note when I went but that was ages ago. It was Gemma’s idea not to ring her for a bit. She said my mum’d just make me feel really bad, maybe she’d even talk me into coming back. But things were going so well I was thinking maybe I could cope with it. I’d only been away a couple of weeks, but it was the longest I’d ever been away from her.

I knew I shouldn’t ring. Gemma was right. You don’t know my mum, she can make you do anything. I’m more scared of her than I am of Dad, really.

In the end I thought, See what happens tonight with Mr Scholl. I mean, if he got me sorted out with somewhere to live, everything would be okay and I could think about getting in touch with Mum. If not, well, that’d be different. That’d be a disaster. I’d have to ring up Gemma and tell her not to come. Because Skolly was right. You couldn’t ask Gemma to come and live in a place like Albany Road.