Junk - Melvin Burgess [102]
‘He’s gonna be a footy fan, I reckon.’
And she leaned back in her chair and slapped her big tum and pushed up her big tits and said, ‘And it’s all yours, boy… it’s all yours. You come out clean and it’s all there waiting for you.’
Like I say, I keep my head down and my nose clean. I just think… it’s all there. All I’ve got to do is time.
Chapter Thirty
Gemma
SO WHAT’S SO INTERESTING ‘BOUT YOU-O WHERE’S THE DAMAGE, WHERE’S THE FUN?
THINK OF ALL THE THINGS WE DONE BUT WE’LL NEVER DO ‘EM NO MORE-O O NEVER DO NO MORE-O
Lurky
I’m in my sitting room writing this.
It’s a windy day, the house is draughty. I’ve got the gas fire on full and I can see the flames move when the wind gusts outside. When I look out nothing’s moving, even though the wind is so strong. In Bristol I could always see the trees swaying in the wind. I can see the sea from here. I mean, I could if it wasn’t so dark. The waves must be lashing up full of foam. I can’t see it but I can smell it, even in the house.
Bloody Minely again. I like being near the sea, though.
The baby’s on the settee. She’s not asleep, I just fed her. She has this toy my mum gave her – you wind it up and it plays a tune and casts pretty lights on the ceiling for her to watch. It’s dim in here; I’m probably doing my eyes in writing this. I can hear her cooing at the pretty lights. Her name’s Oona and I love her to bits. She saved my life, really.
Tar’s in bed, asleep.
He came this afternoon. They let him out at seven this morning. I was going to pick him up in the car, but it’s miles and miles to Meadowfield and he said no, because they give them a pass for the train. So I met him at the station at Gravenham instead.
It was great, it was great. He was pale and grey from being locked up so long, but he was his old self – Tar, my Tar. He was shy. He got off the train and stood there with his little bag smiling at me as I walked up the station towards him. Then he saw Oona and he smiled even more. You could almost hear the skin stretching at the sides of his mouth.
I was going to do the ol’ ‘Wow! you’re the greatest, wow wow wow!’ trick on him that I did when I went to Bristol that time, but I thought better of it. I was talking to Sally on the phone. She’s off junk now, she’s on a methadone script but I don’t know if she’ll hold out. And she said, ‘Don’t come on too strong, remember he’s been inside.’ My mum said the same thing. So I didn’t go mad, I just ran up and I gave him a big, long, slow, hard hug. I squeezed him so hard, and I buried my face in his neck and then I went, ‘Whooo!’ I couldn’t help it, I felt so glad. Then I gave him the baby. And he was beaming away like… like Tar on a good day, holding his baby girl.
Ah, Tar. And he was clean. He’d been off junk for over a month before he went inside on a methadone script, and he was off that in Meadowfield, so he was as clean as a whistle. And I was so pleased to see him.
I had a bit of a party back at the house for him. None of the old crowd – I didn’t want any of that. I invited Richard and Vonny, that’s all – and a few old school-friends and some people I’ve met since. Nice food, loads to drink, a bit of hash going round. Music. We had an hour or two at home just to get him acclimatised, then people started turning up. Everyone was making a fuss of him. He was like – like Sally said – you know, you’ve spent all that time without ever opening a door, being locked up all the time, the screws watching you, all those hard cases, and then suddenly there you are, you can go where you want and do what you want and it’s all a bit of a shock.
Richard was funny. He had a T-shirt on with a dandelion on it he’d had screened from one of Tar’s pictures, and those green boots Tar’d painted flowers on all that time ago – all cracked and faded now.
‘How was the holiday camp?’ he said, and he beamed at the door over Tar’s shoulder.
It felt good. There were some of