Junk - Melvin Burgess [84]
Gemma’s sworn she’ll be clean while I’m inside. We were both off it for nearly two weeks before I came in here – well, nearly off – cut down. We want to have babies and they’re going to be clean babies. Lily was still jacking up when she was pregnant. She always used to go on about being a good mother and so did everyone around her. But how can you be a good mother on smack? And jacking up when she was breast feeding. I’ve seen her. All the veins in her arms and behind her knees have gone where she’s poked around with the needle so much, so she injects into the veins between her breasts. I’ve seen her sitting with the baby on the breast poking about to find a vein.
‘Nice fat veins when your tits are big and milky,’ she said. And no one said a word.
That’s junk. You think, if you don’t say the truth, the truth somehow doesn’t exist. You fool yourself. If anyone suggested to Lily she was doing a bad thing to her baby she’d go mad. But she knows.
Smack makes it all distant. It doesn’t matter, it’s not real any more.
But it is.
Gemma says that if we can’t give it up together this time, we’ll have to split up. She’d do it, too. That’s why it’s so important that I succeed this time.
Gemma’s been so strong. She’s given up the parlour, she’s given up heroin. That’s really hard because I’ve had a hell of a job in here, but she’s still out there with Lily and Rob and Sal and the rest of them. She writes me twice a week. Actually, she’s honest about it, she cracks up every now and then. I can understand that. I value the honesty more than anything else. When I come out we’re going to move away from Bristol, get our own place. I’ll have been clean for a month, she’ll have only been taking a little. I know she can do it because she doesn’t tell lies, like I did. I always made out I was taking practically nothing. I even believed it, even when I was doing it two, three, four times a day for weeks and weeks.
The first thing that happened when I came in here, they got all the new intake together and told us what was what. There were about ten of us sitting around in armchairs waiting, and this lanky-looking bloke – I thought he was one of us at first – suddenly started talking.
‘No one’s keeping you here. Any time you feel you’ve had enough, there’s the door.’ He nodded at the large green exit sign in the corner. ‘But while you do stay here, no drugs of any kind are allowed. Not even aspirin.’
We all laughed nervously. He smiled.
‘Not even hash,’ he added, as if that was the ultimate in mildness. ‘I like a smoke and if I have to go without it, so can you.’
Everyone shifted around in their seats and laughed more easily.
‘If anyone is caught with drugs of any kind, you’re out. No questions, no arguments – the door. That goes for me too. So. Anyone who doesn’t feel that they can do it, you’d be better to go now. Really. Go now and you can come back another time. Wait until you get caught – you’ve blown it forever. If you get caught taking drugs here, you’ll never come back again.’
And a couple of people actually got up and walked out. I was tempted myself but – it was a choice between that and a young offender institution.
Then came the bad bit – withdrawal, cold turkey. I never had it so bad. I suppose the truth is I always had a little bit here and there to help me through, or methadone, or something. It was awful. I nearly cracked. I would have done, if I was on my own. I was sitting in my chair moaning, I felt so bad, and everyone was saying, ‘Come on, Tar, you can do it, just another few days and you’ll be clean.’ But all I wanted was smack. In the end I told them I couldn’t go through with it and I asked them to fetch one of the counsellors to tell them I wanted to leave.
It was the lanky guy – Steve. He sat and watched me for a bit; and then he said, ‘Do you want something to help you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t give you heroin, but I have some methadone for severe cases. I can get you a prescription.’ He held out a key. ‘This