4. 5 Anthony's story

MY CRIMINAL CAREER (PART 5)

(Continued from previous posts.)

It seemed that Paul and Anthony had become curious about what Ian was getting up to and, during half-term they tailed him and made an interesting discovery. They followed him to a house in a road just round the corner from their own home and saw him being let in by a man whom Paul recognised as the same person that Ian had been meeting in cafés and on street corners.

Wanting a piece of the action, they went up to the door and rang the bell. When there was no answer they banged on the door and shouted Ian’s name through the letter box. Eventually the man, who told them his name was Colin, opened the door and allowed them in. He told them to stop the noise or the neighbours might tell his mother and then he’d be in trouble with her for bringing his friends home while she was out. The boys knew all about getting into trouble with their mother so they promised to be quiet.

Colin took them upstairs to his bedroom, which, according to Anthony was an Aladdin’s cave of exciting things. There was a dart board and a pinball machine and Colin taught them all sorts of card games. They had a whale of a time and only went home when Colin told them that his mum would be back soon and she would be angry if she found them there. He made them promise not to tell anyone about coming there in case it got back to his mother.

They went back every day for the rest of the half-term holiday, but after that Anthony couldn’t go because he couldn’t bunk off from his Primary School as easily as Ian seemed to do at secondary school. He told Richard that he thought that Paul had started going round to Colin’s after school – and even leaving early in order to do so – but he wasn’t sure about that. He was pretty confident, however, that Ian was still going round to Colin’s house almost every day.

Well, you can imagine the sorts of things that were going through our minds by that stage …

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