Junk - Melvin Burgess [70]
And all it takes is one little needle and Lady Heroin makes you feel… mmmmm. The days when you could say what Lily said – they were long gone.
I was gobsmacked. It never occurred to me she might want a baby. I mean, apart from the junk, well, it could be anyone’s.
Lily gave Sal this look. She looked… And Sal was sitting on the bed still and she started to get up because it looked as though Lils was going to land one on her…
Then Lily just turned round and walked out of the room.
It was awful.
Sal sat back down and lit up a fag. I just stood there. I said, ‘Let’s have one.’ She gave me a fag and I paced up and down the room smoking, trying to get calm. Sal took a few more drags then she said, ‘I think I better go.’
I said, ‘Don’t go, don’t go, it’ll be all right, it’ll be all right.’ She’d gone white; she had a temper almost as bad as Lil’s. She didn’t run around screaming but she was just as bad. Next door, Lils put some music on – ‘Lurkying About’ – feel-good music, our theme tune. The music was filling up the house; the feel-good wasn’t coming in through the bedroom door yet, but I could just imagine Lily jiving around the front room, getting herself back.
I said, ‘See? She’ll be okay.’
The track was about halfway through when the door opens and Lily comes back in. She was jiving about, glancing up at me and Sal, but jiving about like she was in her own space. She was singing along. ‘Lurkying, lurkying, lurkying about…’
She fiddled with some stuff on her dressing table. She started to smile her big Lily smile… then she came over and sat on the bed and put her arms around Sal.
‘Okay, Sal? Okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m okay.’
‘All right, Sal, mates again. Soul sisters…’
‘Yeah, soul sisters, eh?’ Although Sal didn’t exactly sound convinced.
Lily got up and started walking up and down in the space between the bed and the wall. ‘There’s gonna be a baby, right? It’s a fact. That’s just all there is to it. Right… a baby. Right? Think about it. I’m gonna be a mother. Everything’s gotta change. Right? Like Sal says, I can’t do junk if I’m a mother. See? I can’t. You can’t come round here smacked up when I’m gonna be a mother. See…?’
I said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ just to keep things cool, really, at that point.
‘There’s gonna be a baby, Sal, I’m gonna have a baby. I’m gonna be a mother and you’re gonna be its mother and so’s Gemma and we’re all gonna get clean and live the real life…’
She looked at us, just willing us to think like her. She said, ‘You’re not gonna come round here junked up, you’re not gonna give me smack when I’m pregnant…’
‘No, right, no,’ I said. Even Sally was nodding now.
‘See?’ Lils was grinning from ear to ear. And I began to feel it.
‘Everything’s gotta change. You don’t do smack when there’s babies. It was good but now it’s on to something else…’
I began to see what she was on about. We started talking. It turned out she’s over a month gone already. We’ll have a baby in the house for Christmas.
A baby.
It means you have to live another life…
You can see it, can’t you? Lily can’t be on smack while she’s got a little baby growing inside her. That wouldn’t be fair. And it’s not fair on her to do it all on her own. So, we’re all going to pack it in together, just like we’ve done everything together ever since we met. Out of solidarity to Lily. Out of solidarity to the baby.
That’s how it happened. The change. Because it all started making sense. After about a couple of days no one could talk about anything else.
Lily and Rob had already started making plans. He was gonna get a job and we were all going to move off the City Road, where, let’s face it, it’s pretty squalid. And Lil was coming off the game and she was gonna grow veg in the