POSTCODE EXX

By Adenike Akintade

A spaceship! A bumble bee! It's all happening in 2011 in the regeneration of London's East End, an area listed as E20, or for some of us in the know, as POSTCODE EXX.

Time waits for no man and the 2012 Olympic games will soon entertain the world. However, in the time leading up to and during the six-week summer holidays, a grou

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adenike Akintade
• Release date: May 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781802279948

Adenike Akintade

I am of Nigerian heritage and i was fostered in the 1960's. My childhood was a blast it was fall of excitement and adventure with camping holidays at the seaside and many exciting educational trips out and about. My three daughters have inspired me to write my book and i wanted to also share my story with the world.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Ocean

Ocean had returned home from a house party at 3 o’clock in the morning. It had been a rough night out for her and she had been involved in a fight with three girls outside a club in London. Unfortunately for the girls, they had come out the worse for wear. One of the girls had ripped out some of Ocean’s miniature dreadlocks. After the incident, her scalp was sore and oozing from the unexpected departure of the locks. The area of hair loss had now begun to form tiny red pimples, and, to add to her embarrassment, the hair loss was at the hairline, right in the middle where it was visible for all to see. As Ocean looked at herself in the mirror on her wardrobe door, she angrily said, Damn, out loud then, before she jumped into bed, she consoled herself that it would grow back.

Just as Ocean was about to close her eyes, she was disturbed by the sound of heavy banging on the front door. Police! Open up!’’ said a policeman as he hit the farm door with his clenched fist. Ocean’s father, who had also been rudely disturbed from his sleep by the repeated unnecessary banging upon the barn door, sat up in his bed and said, What do they want at this hour of the morning?!’’ As he sleepily got out of bed, he tried to put his left arm into the right armhole of his dressing gown without realising what he was doing. Fudge cake!’’ said Ocean’s father as he continued to curse, pulling off the dressing gown and throwing it down onto his bedroom floor. He then looked at his wife who was still sleeping peacefully in their bed and said, Penelope, wake up, my love. We have an unwelcome guest at the door." He walked reluctantly across to answer the door. When Ocean’s name was mentioned loudly by the policeman, asking about her whereabouts for the past 24 hours, she knew that it was time for her to make a discreet exit from the building. Ocean quickly jumped out of bed, pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of trainers, grabbed her coat and her handbag and made her hurried escape through the bathroom window. She slowly walked across the tiles of the extension roof to the gutter. She hesitated for a few seconds slipped on a loose tile then nose-dived off the roof into the thorny depths of a very prickly rose bush that broke her fall. However, there was no time for her to be concerned about any injuries inflicted by the rose bush. Ocean made a very quick recovery from her fall and ran as fast as she could away from the scene. Then, without looking back at the farm, Ocean disappeared into the darkness of the night.

When Ocean reached the bus stop at the A12 Colchester Road, she stopped and began to pant for breath. Through the eerie mist, she could barely make out the farm, which was perched on the top of the hill. The last thing she had heard as she leapt out of the bathroom window was a policeman saying that they wanted her to escort them to the local police station for questioning.

She took a bus to Romford, where she waited outside the train station before the first trains to Stratford came into operation. Ocean was fully aware that she could not venture back to her parents’ farm now that the police had been there. She now had to put plan B into action, which was for her to spend some time with a friend at East Village. There, she could blend in and be absorbed into the melting pot of cultural occupants that perhaps only London had to offer. As she lay down in bed in the comfort of a one-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor of a meticulous luxury dwelling, Ocean dozed off for a little longer than she had anticipated.

Ocean’s mother had been discriminated against and was physically assaulted by racists whilst she was on holiday, cruising in a narrow boat along the Norfolk Broads. Ocean’s foster mum and dad had rescued her after the assault. They had also been there on holiday. The rape was not reported to the police because Ocean’s mother was an illegal immigrant. Fortunately for Ocean’s mother, the foster parents supported her by allowing her to stay with them at their farm. When Ocean’s mother realised that she was pregnant, she became withdrawn and spiralled into a depression. Apparently, when Ocean was three months old, her mother whispered Ocean’s name before collapsing onto the floor where she closed her eyes and she peacefully slipped away. Ocean’s foster parents buried Ocean’s mother in the corner of the farm in the strawberry field. Her foster parents even named a strawberry after her mother in remembrance of her short life with them. As the years passed and Ocean prospered, she began to realise that her foster parents were probably the funkiest to have ever lived in Essex. She was proud of them and she loved them both very dearly and they, in return, loved her boundlessly and encouraged Ocean to always be true to herself.

During that period before her mother died, every other night, Ocean’s foster parents would occasionally hear the squeals made by the chickens coming from an adjacent building across the farmyard. There were always foxes lurking around the farm throughout the day, who would cunningly try to blend into the hedgerows that surrounded the fields and wait for the opportunity to feast on the chickens when they believed that the pathway was clear. During the night, you could hear the hungry shrieks of foxes which would unsettle and put fear into every living thing. After each fatal cry, there was a cold silence; a silence which predicted that they had gone in for the kill and that death was hanging in the night air. Then harmoniously, after the chill of silence was the sound of birds tweeting in the woods and beyond until the morning light brought the reassurance of another night being over.

After Ocean’s biological mother died, her foster mum and dad considered themselves to be very lucky to have a baby in their lives, because they were childless and had tried to adopt for years without success. They went through the legal process of becoming Ocean’s legal guardians and, after eighteen months of an intimidating but very necessary period of acceptance, they finally succeeded. Ocean was aware that she was different from other children and her foster parents managed her world unconditionally well. Her foster parents found it amusing when they told their close friends that Ocean had mysteriously acquired a carnal instinct. This left some of their friends, who were not romantic at heart, feeling that the foster parents’ enthusiasm for their daughter’s welfare was exasperating and ridiculous. Yet, for those of their friends who believed in happily ever after, Ocean’s foster parents’ exciting fairy tale was captivating because their own lives were lacking adventure.

Her mum and dad had done a fantastic job of protecting her identity and Ocean was grateful for everything that they had done for her. However, for some reason, just recently, she had become curious about her biological parents and decided to do a Google search on her family history, but to no avail. A week before Ocean had decided to do the search on her family history, she was in the attic and discovered a diary which was hidden behind a large wardrobe. She knew the diary did not belong to her foster mother because she did not recognise the writing, however, as Ocean continued to search and feel her way to the back of the wardrobe, she came across a square metal biscuit tin. The biscuit tin was lodged indiscriminately at the back of the wardrobe and it made the wood bulge out. Ocean retrieved the biscuit tin from its hiding place and opened the lid so that she could reveal its booty. It contained photographs of a black baby girl who resembled Ocean. The discovery made Ocean accidentally drop the photographs onto the attic floor. One of the photographs had fallen into a crack in the dusty wooden flooring of the attic and had managed to wedge itself down between the floorboards. As Ocean walked away from the floorboard, it felt loose underneath her right foot. She knelt down, bent forward towards the edge of the floorboard and managed to put her fingers into the space, gently prising the board up from its position on the floor. There, she revealed the hidden secrets that perhaps her foster parents had kept from her all her life.

There were so many unopened letters addressed to Ocean that she did not know where to begin. She anxiously started to put the envelopes of each letter into the order in which it had been posted. Whilst Ocean was busily sorting out the envelopes, a photograph of a woman fell from her hand onto the wooden flooring. As Ocean bent over to pick up the photograph, which had fallen face down, she noticed that there was writing on the back. Ocean flipped over the photograph to reveal a picture of a woman. The photograph was a picture of Ocean’s mother, which had been taken in 2002 when she was forty years old. As Ocean stood motionless and unable to move from her position in the attic, something extraordinary came over her and she began to shake violently. Never in her life had she experienced such rage and uncontrollable shaking throughout her body before. It