Angel Boy Read Free Page A

gonna learn you!’ And they all laughed.
    Leonard let out the loudest wail in the world, and his legs finally gave way: his legs, and his consciousness. In a heap on the ground, he didn’t hear the final words. ‘You been sold to us by Big Fat Chance, pretty little smart boy!’

    Stephen Boameh was getting cross in his small hotel room up-country in Bonwire. He’d let his mobile phone run down, and the weak call he’d managed to get through received a ‘call failed’ message as if the line was busy – and Stephen Boameh’s home phone line was never busy, except when he was there, or ringing in.
    Who was on the line? Doctor? Hospital? The hotel wanting to tell him about some new job? While his mobile phone charged, he lay on his bed and watched a football match on a blinky television screen; but his mind wouldn’t settle. He was finished with work for the day. The car had diesel in the tank, oil in the engine, air in the tyres, and water and screen wash all ready for the morning. But if anyone had asked him the score in the match playing up there on a bracket near the ceiling, he couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t even have said which teams they were.
    That morning at the hotel, a photographer and her husband from Scotland had asked about hiring a car to go north. Euros, pounds or American dollars make visitors seem like millionaires in Ghana. So Mr and Mrs Paterson had hired Stephen and his car to take them north to the Kente weaving villages, where the woman wanted to photograph the patterns and the process. This was why Stephen kept his car bright and shiny. With his holdall in the boothe was ready for however many days and nights he might be away. Nana and Leonard understood this. It was his job. The one certain thing, though, was that Stephen would phone every night to talk to Leonard. He never missed. He might be early, he might be late, but some time before Leonard went to sleep he always heard his father’s voice.
    Tonight was going to be one of those late times. Stephen never used expensive hotel phones, so tonight he had to wait until his mobile charged. But Leonard was on holiday, so a late call wouldn’t be the problem it would be in term time.
    He fretted, though. He fretted.

    These street kids were too poor for drugs. Cheap drink was what they went to sleep on, if they could get it – and tonight they couldn’t. While two of them held Leonard down on a stuffed-outmattress, the others scavenged the rubbish tip for food. And when they came back with stale bread, and chicken bones with meagre meat still on them, they shared what there was between them. They were an outlaw band, but disciplined in their own hard way.
    Terrified, Leonard took nothing – he would have thrown up. His body was numbed with the loss of all hope. His eyes stared emptily, his mouth dried out. What those boys had said!
No more Dad! No more Nana! No more home!
He shivered and cringed, wept and snivelled, as he tried to imagine what they planned to do with him.
    He’d heard about the sort of things people did. It was men with girls, mostly, but it could be with boys. He blanked it from his mind. He just had to watch every move, listen to everything that was said, make himself as small as possible – and run if he could.
    Except that the mammy and the uncle were holding him down, with no chance of evengetting up. And they were looking at him with eyes like killer wolves.

    Stephen Boameh shot off the bed and cracked his head when his mobile phone rang. The call was from his mother, Leonard’s nana. Her voice was high and shrill.
    â€˜Stephen – you didn’t take Leonard with you?’ she screeched down the phone. ‘Is that boy with you?’
    â€˜No! Why?
What?
’ Stephen kicked his feet free from the mosquito net.
    â€˜He’s not come in! He went out this morning some time when I was cleaning, and he’s not come