Free Humber Boy B by Ruth Dugdall

a book: The Face of Evil . She turned away from her desk and put her hands in her lap to show she had no pen. She wasn’t making notes.
    “I feel scared when I’m out of the flat. But I still went to McDonald’s. I helped a woman find the correct money.”
    Cate nodded, smiled, “That’s a great start. If you can manage the queues at McDonald’s I’d say nothing could beat you. Personally, that place brings me out in hives.” She paused. “But you haven’t spoken with anyone, no-one knows?”
    “Course not.” He looked angry, and she reminded herself that he had kept his secret for years. “I’m not stupid.” He pulled a ragged piece of skin from his thumb with his teeth. “I know I can’t tell anyone who I really am. I said goodbye to family.”
    “I’m afraid that was necessary,” Cate said, though she could hardly imagine how tough it must be. She hadn’t seen her father and sister in many years and knew how painful this sometimes felt, but at least she had Amelia. To have to say goodbye to everyone, to everything you’d ever known, and at such a young age, she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
    “If anyone finds out you’d have to move me,” Ben stated in a flat passionless voice. “It’d be a lot of work.”
    “It’s not about that, Ben. You could be hurt,” Cate said, carefully. “Most people talk about Humber Boy B as evil. You’re a demon to them. There’s a Facebook page set up purely with the intention of tracking you. No-one can know who you really are. You’re Ben now. This is it, your chance to begin again.”
    They looked at each other for a long moment and Cate felt his desperation. She was Ben’s hope for a normal life, his guide in this new start.
    “Okay, Ben. We’ve got you a place to live. Now we need to move on to step two, a job.”
    Over lunch in the staff room, Cate made her announcement, gnawing on a piece of celery as she told Paul, “I’ve got Ben a work placement. Something to use his skills.”
    Paul gaped at her, reached up with one hand and closed his mouth in a mocking gesture of disbelief. “You’re utilising his skills in throwing people off bridges? Where is this job, Go Ape?”
    “Funny.” She finished her salad and closed her plastic lunch box, one of Amelia’s old ones with Hello Kitty smiling on the lid. Cate cocked her head to one side to look at her friend. “But I’m really determined to help him.”
    “Cate, this isn’t the eighties, you can’t just ‘help him’. Whatever would the parole board say? You need to address that boy’s offending.”
    “I know that, and we’ll get to it, but I need to work differently with Ben. He’s just a kid.”
    “You’ve worked with teenagers before.”
    “Not teenagers who’ve never been to the cinema, who don’t know how to open a tin of beans.”
    Paul squirted a fish-shaped carton of soya sauce onto his M&S sushi, took his mini chopsticks and tucked in. “So,” he said, chewing on raw tuna, “where’s the placement?”
    “I’ve spoken with the Community Punishment team, been through all their contacts. Ben fancied something with animals, so I found the next best thing and got him a placement at the aquarium.”
    Paul poked a chopstick into the fish. “Oh, nice. I’ve always fancied working with animals myself. Oh, wait… I do! And so do you, Cate. Remember?”
    “Thing is Paul, he’s not. I know as far as Facebook or The Mail are concerned he’s evil, but he’s just a messed-up kid. At least if the vigilantes are looking for a monster with two horns they won’t find our boy.”
    “He’s not ‘our boy’. He’s a convicted killer. Now go and see if anyone left some birthday cake in the fridge, Cate, and start focusing on that.”

16
    Ben
    At the aquarium a man is seated behind the desk, he’s an old bloke with glasses and not much hair on his head but a bunch of it coming out of his ears. He reminds me of my old primary school teacher, Mr Palmer, so I think he’s going