The city of broken dreams

More than 100 people a day vanish in Scotland. Most are found, but some disappear forever. Today, The Courier launches a three-part investigation into missing people. We look at the scale of the problem, the dangers faced by children in particular and uns

ANGELA KIRBY could only afford to attend her mother’s funeral by turning to prostitution. The heroin addict had been missing, presumed dead, for six years and her mother only found out Angela was alive a few weeks before she passed away.

“We never got to see each other again,” said Angela, from Elgin. “But we had two months of phone calls so at least we got that. And at least she knew I was alive.”

It would be difficult to find someone who has overcome more adversity than Angela (40).

Between the ages of four and 11 she was sexually and physically abused by her stepfather. At 11 she was taken into foster care and since the age of 16 has been on her own.

She drifted around Scotland for a couple of years staying with friends and relatives, and sometimes sleeping rough.

“When I was 17 I spent two weeks sleeping in North Street p u bl i c toilets in Elgin,” she said. “That was one of the worst times.

“I deliberately committed a breach of the peace to get myself arrested so I could spend a night in the cells.”

Ange la got onto a YTS scheme and trained as a welder, stripping gas turbine engines in Aberdeen. She began taking recreational drugs, however, and continued getting in trouble with the law for shoplifting and assault.

She moved to London and at 21 she fell pregnant. She stopped using drugs until she came to term, then carried on as before. A few weeks after her daughter was born she began smoking heroin. “For a few years I held it together,” she continued. “I had a job at Evans in Oxford Circus. I was a school governor at my daughter’s school.”

But Angela was smoking crack cocaine and heroin. She could not keep all the plates of her life spinning forever.

“I went to Scotland to see my mum,” she said. “When I’d last seen her she blamed me for the break-up of her marriage and said she wished she’d never had me.

“But our relationship mended when I had my daughter. It turned out she was a sh*t mum but a terrific granny.

“I was there for five days and I clucked the whole time. When I got back I couldn’t wait to get some crack. Two weeks later I started injecting heroin.”

Her life quickly fell apart. She lost her job and her home. Her daughter was taken into care and Angela was living in a bin shed and working as a prostitute to feed her addiction.

This period lasted years, and during it Angela went from missing to dead in the eyes of her family.

“There was a case of mistaken identity,” she continued. “A body was found and the police told my brother it was me. That made its way to my mum and they all thought I was dead.”

It wasn’t until six years later, in November 2004 when Angela had got on the methadone programme and stabilised her life a little, that she wrote to her mum.

Two months later, as Angela was planning a trip to Scotland, her mum was rushed to hospital. Angela spoke to her on the phone and she died later that night.

“I had to spend the night on the game to get enough money to go to the funeral,” she explained. “The bus I needed to get from Inverness was cancelled so by the time I got there the church service was over.

“I tried to pull the coffin out of the hearse. I just lost it.”

In April 2011 Angela attended a threeweek detox course and then spent three months in rehabilitation. She hasn’t touched drugs since, but her troubles weren’t over. “I was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress,” she explained. “Because of the drugs I’d never had to deal with it. The sexual and physical abuse. The prostitution. Having my daughter taken away from me. It all came crashing down on me.”

Since getting clean, Angela has volunteered as a support worker with other addicts and has been involved with shaping the drug strategy in her district of London.

Charities including Scotscare helped her get back on her feet and now she has a passport, bank account, and is going on her first foreign trip this year — to a spiritual retreat in Bosnia funded by a charity.

Her biggest regret is that her daughter has cut all contact. “I can understand why,” she said. “I let her down so many times. I just hope and pray that one day she’ll speak to me again.”

CHARITY WORKER Shona Fleming was shopping in her local super market when a homeless man asked if he could return her trolley so he could get the pound coin.

The operations manager with charity Scotscare asked the man for his story. “He’d been drinking but he wasn’t too drunk. But he began sobbing as he spoke to me,” she said.

“He pointed to a guy at the other side of the car park. He has to hand over every penny he makes and in return he gets to sleep on his couch.

“So he is entrenched homeless, an alcoholic, and being taken advantage of. Yet he’s not on any system. No one is helping him.”

According to the most recent census, there are 89,000 Scots in London and at least 340,000 of Scottish descent, but Shona believes a lot more exist under the radar — and these are the ones that need help most.

As the UK’s largest city, London is seen by many as the ideal escape from the lives they want to leave behind.

Its vast size allows people to lose themselves in the urban sprawl. Many Scots also go there in the hope of finding work.

Sadly, a lot of people who run away to London find the reality is far more like the one encountered by Shona.

London has always been a favourite destination for itinerant Scots and charities have been working to help those who fall through the cracks of society since Shakespeare started work on Macbeth.

Founded in 1603 by Scottish merchants in London, Scotscare is one of Britain’s oldest charities. Its sister charity Borderline deals with Scottish people in London who are desperately in need of help, and Scotscare takes over once they begin to stabilise their lives.

And she said that even if they do not want to be put back in touch with their families, letting relatives know they are safe can be just as important. We do get parents phoning up and saying: ‘I think my child is in London, have you seen them?’” she said.

“There was one man whose son was missing in London. There’s an organisation called Chain which logs sightings of missing people.

“We have access to their database so I was able to phone this father up every month and at least let him know his son had been seen and that he was alive.”

www.scotscare.com

Picture: Jack Mckeown. Angela Kirby.