"DURRINGTON!!" His mother's shriek rattled the ill-fitting windows, letting in blasts of freezing air. "DURRINGTON! Get down here NOW if not sooner!!" He rolled off the lumpy hay-filled sack which sufficed as a mattress onto the dirt floor. A hand slapped him round the face.

"Durrington, for Pete's sake man! Stop bloomin' screaming mate. You've woke us all up!"

"Sorry, Alik. Dreamt mum was hollering at me to get up."

"Nah, mate," said Alik, "you was yelling at youself to get up."

"Ah, sorry....'mate'. It's the mattress and cold...reminds me of when I was a tot." The others gave him a funny look. 'Oh, dear,' thought Durrington.'It's started again.'

It's happened before, and no doubt would happen again. Living rough wasn't easy, especially if you had tendencies to relive situations you had been in before when in similar conditions...while you slept. No, life wasn't easy for Durrington. Wherever he went, he had to build up his defences against what happened while he was there, in that situation, in those weather conditions, with those people, because if he didn't, it would repeat on him like garlic mushrooms.

From a safe distance the others watched him cradling his head in his hands.

"God," said ALik to Jemima, "he's worst than that last guy you dragged up like a sack of pots."

"Alik," she replied, "he's new, he don't fit in, and he's trying. He's like us..."

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