Free Evil Relations by David Smith with Carol Ann Lee

would give me a bag of sweets to take to school and often she’d hand me a two-shilling piece, which was a lot of money in those days. I’d spend it on fags in the school tuck shop, where they used to split packets of cigarettes – you’d buy only what you needed or could afford. It sounds shocking now, smoking from such a young age, but kids then were brought up in a smoker’s world.
Everybody
smoked.’
    He pauses, remembering. ‘When I wasn’t smoking, I was scrapping. One fight stands out from that last year: me and a boy called Tony Jackson were caught knocking lumps out of each other on the cricket field. The teachers broke it up on the understanding that we’d take part in an “organised” fight against each other, after school. Word went round – anyone who wanted to watch could do. All the kids turned up, of course, and stood around this makeshift ring in the middle of the playground, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight.” One of the teachers stepped forward to act as referee and I was completely dumbfounded when he strapped a pair of boxing gloves on me.
Boxing gloves
! I’d never worn them before in my life. It was like putting clown shoes on a long-distance runner – a real handicap. Tony Jackson was twice my size anyway, and I wanted to gouge my nails into him, pull his hair and stick my fingers in his eyes. That, to me, was fighting. But Jackson was used to boxing, so he threw me all over the place that afternoon and was declared the winner in front of the whole school. I was gutted, but it didn’t take me long to bounce back.’
    Sticking with his seditious mood, David set his mind resolutely against preparing for his 11-plus exam. Aware that he was expected to pass English with flying colours, he ignored the set questions and scribbled down the lyrics of a Ray Charles song instead, then turned over the paper and waited impatiently for the bell to ring. ‘I didn’t want to push myself or yield to anybody’s expectations of me,’ he admits with a shrug. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with all that. Obviously I realise now just how stupid my attitude was, but aged 11 I saw things from another angle entirely. I upset my English teacher by deliberately fouling up my exams. He knew what I was capable of because he’d read the compositions in my exercise books. But the bottom line was I didn’t give a damn.’
    There was a particularly harrowing element in his home life that he couldn’t articulate to anyone. Miss Jones’ nephew occasionally stayed overnight, sharing David’s bed. He abused David while the 11-year-old boy lay there terrified and silent, eyes tightly shut, pretending to be asleep. David told no one about the abuse and pushed it to the darkest recesses of his mind. He found unexpected solace in a place far beyond Gorton: ‘I had some good friends back then – Roy and Dennis Cummings, and an older boy called Walter King who I got to know through our mutual love of comics. One afternoon, Roy and Dennis suggested that we should all go camping at Alderley Edge. I’d never been there before, but it soon became a favourite spot for all of us. We had to go by train, but we never paid – we’d sneak on and then jump off before the conductor caught up with us. At Alderley Edge there were woods and water, we’d climb trees, swing on ropes and build fires. I broke my collarbone after falling off a rope-swing and had to travel back on the train in agony. But I also used to go to Alderley Edge by myself and that’s when I found the cave . . . it was my secret hideaway. I’d swim and paddle on my own there. It was somewhere to feel happy, far away from the misery of Gorton.’
    Despite finding an escape route, David’s behaviour spiralled out of control and he ended up in serious trouble, harming someone to whom he’d been close. He and one of the Cummings boys had come to blows and when Dennis Cummings pitched in to defend his younger brother, David retaliated with a knife.
    ‘It was a