Joe had seen Dad hurt Mum. He hadn’t just hit her, although there was plenty of that. Once he’d stamped on her feet; one-two, one-two, Dad’s booted foot coming down on her bare toes. Joe had been in the room that time. Usually though, it happened when he and the baby were in bed; Lawrence asleep in his cot, sucking his dummy raptly. He’d hear the growls, the whimpers, and then the blows. After a while he would hear the tap running in the bathroom as his mum cleaned herself up.

He couldn’t remember when it had started, but it hadn’t always been like this. He wasn’t scared for himself. Dad had never hit him. These days he couldn’t sleep until his parents came to bed—he had to be sure it was over before he could relax. Then, one night, lying awake and listening, it had become too much to ignore. It wasn’t bravery that drove him downstairs but a long-held dreadful anticipation. He had to know what would happen when he tried to stop them. He stuffed his feet into trainers, pulled on a sweatshirt over his pyjamas, and walked slowly downstairs. From the bottom of the dark stairs he could see yellow kitchen light throwing a golden rectangle down the hall to him. He entered it, walking along the light, not looking up until he stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

His mother had her hands up, trying to ward off his father’s right hand. Dad brushed aside her guard and slapped her face again and again; spit flew from her lips and her eyes were closed.

“Stop it,” Joe said, walking up to them on shaking legs. He gazed up at his dad, whose arm, frozen in mid-slap, made a truncated arc backwards, as though readying the next blow, before dropping to his side. Dad looked down at Joe. The complex griefs and furies evident in his dad’s face scared the boy more than any physical threat. There was a war under his father’s skin.

Mum said, “Oh Joe, oh Joe, oh Joe,” on a breathy rising note. It could have been, “Oh no”—it was hard to tell what her puffy lips were saying. Joe looked at her too, her hands now gripping the kitchen unit behind her. She was a whimper made flesh.

He turned slowly, feeling the invisible arc of the unstruck blow hanging over his head, and walked back through the golden rectangle, up the dark stairs and into the bedroom. Lawrence still slept. Joe sat on the bed, shaking with cold and with older, unnameable pains. Nobody came to him.

After a while he took off his shoes and got back into bed.

* * *

“So what happened with the first wife then?” asked the policewoman as they made their way down from the fifth floor flat.

“Half strangled her, then started kicking her to death. He’d have done it too, if their daughter—she’d be in her late teens now—hadn’t come in and stopped him. He’s a hell of a wife beater and brawler but it seems he never lays a finger on the kids.”

The policewoman shivered at the admiring tone in her colleague’s voice.

“So what about this Joe then?” she pursued the issue stolidly.

“It’s odd. He’s not one of our regular runaways and it’s hard to imagine who’d be stupid enough to lay hands on one of Aaron’s kids. ”The male constable paused for a second on the concrete stairs, trying to guess the outcome of this Missing Person call. “It’s bloody odd.”

* * *

* * *

“If anything’s happened to him...” Joe’s father didn’t bother to finish the sentence. The degree of cooperation he was giving was unprecedented. Not only had he let two police officers into his home, he’d also given them mugs of tea. Tate cried and the policewoman followed Sheena as she went to fetch him—it was a chance to check out the flat.

“Tell me about Joe,” the policewoman suggested, as Sheena laid Tate on the changing mat and began to strip off his sleep-suit.

“Not much to tell,” Sheena said. “Nice kid. Put it this way, I’d have left Tate with him while I ran down to the shop.” She grabbed a nappy and slid it under the baby. “I’ll tell you this though, if something’s happened to him, Dad’s gonna go mad.”

“Dad? Mr. Knapp’s your...?” The policewoman realised she’d misunderstood the whole setup, saw Sheena’s bitter amusement, and stopped, silent. There was only one way to rescue the situation. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t realise you were related, but I should have worked it out. I knew he had a grownup daughter. I shouldn’t have assumed you were his new girlfriend.”

“S’all right,” muttered Sheena. “He’s only here temporary like. My ex—Tate’s dad—was being a bit of a problem, but he’s stopped now my dad’s here. ”

The policewoman nodded. What else was there to do? Cautioning Sheena against taking the law into her own hands was hardly likely to help, particularly when her half-brother had just gone missing.

“So where do you think Joe is?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not like him. I know everybody always says that but Joe’s like me, a homebody, he’d not roam, I’m sure of that.” Sheena fastened the poppers on Tate’s clean dungarees and picked him up. “I can’t say that I feel good about it, you know? Joe’s not a survivor.” She looked up at the policewoman. “He’s not like Dad, if that’s what you’re asking.”

* * *

With Dad gone and Mum not hitting him anymore, Joe thought he might be able to sleep again, but he couldn’t. Every night he lay awake, listening to Lawrence’s breathing and baby farts. There was something wrong with Lawrence. Joe hadn’t been sure before he started going to Sheena’s, but he was now. Tate was younger but could say lots of words and walk across the room. Lawrence could only say Ma, Da, Joe, and juice, and he still crawled everywhere. Most days, when he came home from school, Lawrence was in the playpen, watching cartoons through the bars. Joe would lift him out and sit him on his lap. As long as he had his dummy, the baby was content. He was heavy and he would soon make Joe’s legs go numb, then pins and needles would come. Joe made himself not move and the pains went away after a while. Lawrence never moved. He sat where you put him, self-centred and mute.

Joe didn’t know what to do. He needed new trainers. He’d been telling Mum for weeks, but it was a long time since she’d been further from the flat than the little Alldays supermarket just across the road. He thought about saving up the pound she gave him each day to buy lunch, but when it came to it, he was usually too hungry not to eat. Today, he’d kept the pound nearly all the way home, walking past the news agents and mini-markets where only two kids were allowed in at a time and you had to leave your schoolbag by the door. At the top of the hill was a garage and the garage had a coffee machine. He could smell the hot steaminess of coffee for a long way before he got level with it—it was too much to bear. He went in and grabbed a packet of crisps; it didn’t matter which, they all tasted the same, and then stood next to the coffee machine, deciding between cappuccino and latte. He took four packets of sugar and put them in his pocket, then poured two more into the coffee when it had finished frothing out of the nozzle. He needed two hands to carry the cup and he could never get the lid on properly, so he just rested it on top of the cup and held the crisp packet in his teeth until he got to the counter. The man on duty snapped the lid on the coffee, saying, “onepoundtwentynine” as one big word.

That had used up today’s pound and some of what he’d saved from yesterday.

He carried the coffee carefully outside and put it on the ground while he tucked the crisps into his bag. He turned towards the playing fields—he wanted to sit and savour his coffee without being distracted by Mum and Lawrence. As he hobbled along, the too-small trainers snatching at his toes with vicious nips, he poured the sugar through the little hole in the lid. By the time he got to the tennis court the sugar would be dissolved. He loved coffee, but Mum only drank tea.

He set down the cup on the edge of the tennis court, then pulled the crisps from his bag. He hadn’t really planned to come this far and even if he ran back home, he’d be late, and Mum would be upset. He coveted a mobile phone for times like this, but knew he wouldn’t get one. He couldn’t even get new shoes. He couldn’t run home either, in these. He sipped the coffee, eyes closed. There must be things he could do. He could tell Dad about the shoes, but Dad hadn’t been to the flat since the day he’d left. Joe didn’t want to give him any reason to raise that arm again. He kept telling Mum, but she didn’t seem to take it in anymore. He’d tried opening her purse several times, but she never carried more than a couple of pounds in it. He’d skipped school one afternoon and tried the Oxfam shop on Trinity Road, but they’d had nothing in his size and the woman in there had given him long, narrow looks. She knew he should have been in school. He hadn’t dared do it again.

He thought about the craft knives at school—they were just thin plastic handles with even skinnier blades in them. Half the blades were dull and chipped, so they tore the paper when you tried to cut it, but if you got a new one, it was like a wonderful insect in your hand. It was slim and sharp and as yellow as—yellow. Joe struggled to think of something the same colour as those handles, but he couldn’t. A new craft knife was the yellowest thing he’d ever seen. Perhaps, next time they did art, he could get one of the new knives and use it to slice open the tops of his trainers so that his toes could poke through. He imagined it and giggled.

He slurped the last of the coffee, thick with syrupy sugar grains. It was time to go home. But he didn’t. He sat there, propped up on his school bag and ate his crisps slowly. Still he didn’t go home. He was content with sitting, listening to the crows, and feeling his toes throb. He’d thought about running away before, but he’d never thought about just not going home. Now it seemed like an option. Staying here.

* * *

The policewoman stood, frustrated, in the middle of the housing estate. “There’s just nothing to work with, no reason for him to have disappeared like this. What makes a nice kid like Joe just vanish? It’s normally the parents, you know that.”

Her colleague shrugged. “Yeah, but not this time. Aaron’s a bastard to women but he loves his kids. Who knows? The lad’s probably got some crazy idea in his head and run off to see the world. All we can hope is that he comes back soon. It’s getting dark. Ten to one he’ll be home by tea-time.”

* * *

Joe saw the car pull up on the far side of the tennis court and the man walk towards him. Joe sat still, but the crows flew away. The man hunched down beside him. After a while he said, “You look cold.” It wasn’t a question, so Joe didn’t bother to answer. He was cold, but the cold had a kind of restfulness to it that was good. He thought he could probably sleep here, for a while at least. The stranger gazed at the broken tarmac of the tennis court and then at the sinking sun. “Would you like to go for a ride?” he asked. Joe shrugged. “We could go to the Little Chef on the motorway, get some pancakes and coffee. What do you think?”

Joe shrugged again. “I’m tired,” he said.

“You can sleep in the car. It’s very comfortable.”

Joe looked at him. “I can’t sleep at home,” he said.

“Well, give it a try then, in the car?” suggested the man. Joe nodded.

“And my feet hurt,” Joe confided, jutting his chin towards the trainers.

“The great thing about a car,” said the man, “is you don’t need your shoes on, because you’re not walking.”

Joe nodded again. There was logic to this. He stood up, wincing a little at the pain in his toes, and shouldered his bag. He started to walk towards the car. He noticed that the man stood too, and he watched him walk a few paces. Then the man bent down swiftly to gather up the coffee cup, crisp packet, and a few odd scraps of paper that were on the ground nearby.

Joe stood by the car, waiting for the man to unlock it. He put his bag in the back seat, noticing that the driver put the litter in the boot. The car was cool and dark. Joe lay back in the passenger seat, kicked off his shoes, and stretched his cramped toes into the darkness of the foot well.

“What’s your name?” asked the man.

“Joe.”

“Come on then, Joe, let’s see if you can fall asleep in here.” He put the car in gear and drove gently down the road. They joined the motorway slip-road and eased carefully out to join the traffic. Even with his eyes closed, Joe could feel the candyfloss colour of the motorway lights moving across his face.

“For six years we lived in Tooting, South London. I got to know many children who were trying to live adult lives from young ages, often through no fault of their families: Somali children with parents traumatised by war, Muslim refugee children who were interpreters for their parents, and children like my protagonist here who are exhausted by the process of living in an inner city and who will take risks that seem crazy to outsiders, just for some peace and quiet. This fiction is a composite, but several of the things that happen in this story are true events that I had to deal with as the governor of an inner city school. When kids go missing, the public outcry often conceals concrete problems that might have helped keep them safe if there had been any will to address the issues of their lives. I wanted to write about children I knew and the daily circumstances they faced.”