I Escaped, But Only Just - Part 17:  The Start Of Real Danger

The first sign of trouble came with the ringing of the front doorbell halfway through a Saturday afternoon.  A couple of girls stood there, aged around sixteen or seventeen.  
 
‘Yes, hello?’ I said, frowning.
 
‘Hi,’ one of them said. ‘We're Jane and Wendy, friends of Nicky’s.’
 
Their names sounded familiar. Nicky attended the Jewish Youth Club on the corner of the street, but wasn’t Jewish himself.
 
‘Do you want to come for a cup of tea?’ Jane said.
 
A flicker of unease. A girl with long ginger hair looking out at me through the front window of her house whenever I walked past.
 
I started to make an excuse, but Wendy interrupted with, ‘Oh, come for a cup of tea with us.  You’ll like it.  And Nicky might drop by in a bit.’
 
‘Yeah, okay then,’ I said, thinking that it was at least something to do on a Saturday afternoon. I accompanied the girls down the room to a house.
 
I started to edge away from the gate. The house.  I’d noticed this house before, hadn’t I?  Rock music blares from a car radio on the street close to our house one Saturday morning. I pass two men sitting in a car smoking cigarettes outside a house further down and I hurry on towards the main road, aware of a feelings of disquiet.
 
Wendy was smiling. ‘We’re here now.’
 
I glanced back once, then followed them down an untidy pathway to an old property. We passed through a narrow hallway. Inside, the kitchen looked dark. A group of men sat around a table with cans of beer and cigarettes.  
 
‘Well, hello,’ they jeered.
 
I tried to leave, but the two girls had positioned themselves in front of the kitchen door.  
 
‘You’re stuck with us,’ one of the men said. The others laughed.  
 
The man who’d spoken got up and threw beer at me.  Another man stood up and kicked me.  
 
‘Get him!  Put his head down the bog.’
 
Two of them grabbed me around the waist and dragged me into a ground floor bathroom where they pushed my head down the toilet and flushed the chain.  
 
‘I'm going to the police,’ I said when they took me back to the kitchen.
 
‘Why?’ one of them said. ‘What have we done to you?’  
 
The rest of them sniggered.  
 
‘This is kidnap.’  
 
‘No, it isn’t.’
 
‘Hey, are you gay?’ one of them said.  
 
‘No.’
 
‘Do you think I'm good looking?’ he said.
 
I didn’t answer.  
 
‘Am I good looking?’
 
‘Well, no.’
 
‘You think I'm ugly. You bastard,’ he said, directing a kick at me.
 
‘No,’ I said, panicking. ‘You’re not ugly.’
 
‘In that case, you're gay then,’ he said, with an air of triumph.  
 
It was happening all over again, just like before. Except this time, it would be much worse.  
 
***
There was hardly ever any letup to the tension, either at home or in the surrounding area.  A month or two after the incident in the house, the gang of men associated with the house stormed the Jewish Youth Club, cut off the power supply and strutted around the building, led by Nicky. By then, the building was in disarray and only a few people continued to attend each work, so no one phoned the police. The man who’d called me gay wandered down a flight of steps to the table tennis room in the dark, stopping a few yards away when he noticed me near the emergency lighting. Our eyes locked and he raised a fist in a warning gesture before going into the games room. I started avoiding certain streets after that.
 
But even then, I couldn’t have imagined how deadly events would turn.