Even the Dogs

three

They lay him away behind a shining steel door in a room as cold as stone.

We gather together in the room, sitting, standing, leaning against the wall, and we wait. For the morning. For someone to come back. For something to happen.

Waiting is one thing we’re good at, as it happens.

We’ve had a lot of practice.

We’ve got the time.

We’ve got all the time in the world.

The room is windowless and dark, tiled from ceiling to floor, with a row of heavy steel doors at one end. Each door has three tags clipped to it, with names, dates and reference numbers. The doors feel cold and hard and smooth. Two rows of fluorescent lights hang from the high ceiling on long cables and chains. A large clock sits on the end wall. The quarry-tiled floor slopes down towards a narrow gutter, and the gutter flows into a grated drain. Everything is dark. Everything is spotlessly clean.

And those days he was waiting there like that. For someone to come and find him. For someone to come and help. Just lying there, looking up at the ceiling and waiting. Or was it, what, sitting in his chair. Did it not even take that long. Lying there waiting for help and then all the waiting come to an end and his tears all wiped away or something more or less like that.

Which is something else we know about. Lying on the ground and looking up and waiting for someone to come along and help. In some kind of trouble. A turned ankle or a cracked skull or a diabetic epileptic fit or just too drunk to stand up again without some kind of a helping hand.

Which is when you’re most invisible of all. Get a good look at people’s shoes while they’re stepping around you. Like they’ll leave you there for days. Like they’ll leave you there as long as it takes.

And how many times had he been lying on his floor like that. Over the years. Waiting. The way he waited when Yvonne and Laura first left. Must have waited weeks and months before he really gave up. If he ever did. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. Remembering they were gone and thinking about what he could do to make them come back.

Weren’t nothing he could do to make them come back and he knew it.

He knew it but he couldn’t help waiting. What else could he do.

Lying in bed in the mornings, and getting up to watch television, and sitting there waiting for his wife and daughter to come home. Even tidying the flat once or twice, throwing out all the things he’d smashed up, washing the few dishes that were left, opening the windows to clear out the smell of drink so he could sit there in a state of what, like some respectability, while he waited to welcome his wife and daughter home.

Must have known they were never coming home. But he wanted them to. Jesus. Weren’t all that much to ask. He wanted the phone to ring one morning, and to pick it up and hear Yvonne asking if they could talk, if they could meet and talk and like work something out. He wanted her to pass the phone to Laura, and to hear Laura say she missed him and she wanted to come home, and to be able to say You are coming home my sweetheart, you’re coming home very soon.

He told Steve that one time. Steve didn’t say much. What could he.

And here we are. Sitting here waiting and all of this coming to mind.

Yvonne’s tense, whispering voice on the phone.

Saying stuff like I have to put me and Laura first for a change. Saying I love you but I can’t be with you no more I just can’t.

And then her mother’s voice on the phone, talking briskly, telling him he couldn’t speak to Yvonne and telling him not to call them any more.

The sound of the unanswered phone.

The sound of the television while he sat and watched it and waited for the phone to ring. The sound of one morning when he couldn’t bear waiting any more and he threw the phone against the wall, picking it up and throwing it and picking it up and throwing it until wires and circuit boards and silenced voices spilt from its broken body and were trodden into the floor.

And tidying up those pieces as well, eventually, putting them out with the rubbish, the flat a little bit emptier than before.

He could have gone there himself though.

What was he scared of.

It was a long way but it shouldn’t have been too far should it. Instead of just waiting. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. And when there was nothing left to tidy up he started drinking before he’d even got out of bed. Because was there any point waiting.

It was the drinking that had made Yvonne leave in the first place.

That’s what she said, on the phone.

And if she thought it had been bad enough that she had to get away then she should see him now. Was what he thought, then.

She should see him now.

The last things to go, as the flat kept emptying out, were the television and the washing machine. Two men from the rental shop came and collected them, and he didn’t have whatever it might have taken for an argument. Strength, heart, fucking, gumption or something. There’s nothing worth watching anyway, he joked, as they unplugged the television and carried it out of the flat without looking at him. Mind your backs lads, he said, as they eased the washing machine down the hallway, dripping water behind them and taking a chunk out of the doorframe on their way through. When they’d gone, after he’d kicked the kitchen cupboard doors from their hinges and emptied the drawers out on to the floor, he’d sat on the front step with a bottle of cider and started to feel better. And when he’d finished that bottle, and finished another, and was lying on his back on the hallway floor, he’d realised he wasn’t waiting for them to come home any more.

Which is when Steve first showed up, come to think of it.

The way these things all come to mind. When you’re sitting and waiting somewhere. In a room, like this. A waiting room like any other.

We’ve got all the time in the world to sit and wait now.

We watch the hands of the clock tick through the seconds and minutes and hours, and we wait. For someone to come and open one of those heavy doors and roll Robert out. Bring him out to us. Take him away.

We sit and we look at the featureless door. Like, what, keeping watch.

And those hours and days he was lying there like that, in the dark, in the light, in the dark again. No one passing him by but still. Someone could have done something, could they. When Laura got out of the taxi like that. What was she doing. Or Mike, or Ben. What happened in there.

Keeping watch for what though la.

Waiting for what and these things keep coming to mind.

Heather outside the flat again. When was this. Must have been Christmas Day was it. Before she knew anything was wrong. Sort of before any of us knew. Waiting outside with a bag full of cans and snap, waiting for someone to come to the door.

Didn’t usually wait long for someone to open the door so what was going on this time. Heather thought, then. She knows now, sort of. We all sort of know now.

Banging on the door, and shouting through the letterbox, and turning round to look up and down the street. Like he might have been standing out there in the cold morning light, watching her, saying her name. As if.

Banging on the door again, and the old woman with the tiger-paw slippers shuffling out of her flat and saying Excuse me but I think you’d be as well to give it a rest. I haven’t heard a thing for days. They must have gone away.

Heather ignoring her because what did she know. Robert would have said something if he was going away. He would have told her first, wouldn’t he. He would. He would have told her basically if anything was wrong.

Banging on the door again and the old woman still there. Saying If you ask me I’d say something’s probably happened. Saying I’m surprised it’s taken so long.

Heather had only talked to this woman once before. When was it. When she came and knocked on the door herself. This was a few years back. Standing there with her arms folded when Heather opened the door, going Could you keep the noise down just this once, could you please? Basically like trembling with sort of determination, backing away even while she started talking and she was right to be scared with some of the people who were hanging around the flat at that time. No one likes being told what to do, but some of that lot sort of liked it even less than most. Heather just shut the door in her face before anyone else could get to her, and the old woman probably never realised she was being done a favour did she. And now here she was giving it all Oh something’s probably happened, and hurrying back into her own flat before Heather even realised what she meant.

And that was basically the first thought she’d had that something might be wrong. Pressed up against the filthy glass but she couldn’t see a thing. Shouted Robert’s name, and called him a silly fat cunt, and banged on the door. Thought about kicking in the door or something but she didn’t think she could. Thought about climbing up on the garage roof and getting in that way, like some of them did, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. And anyway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not if she was going to find something. She thought about going and getting some help. She thought but surely, a man like that, what’s going to have happened to him. Thought she might say something anyway though, when she got down the day centre, if she saw someone. But probably by then someone would have dealt with it. And it was probably nothing. Because so what if no one answered the door, he was probably just asleep or something, they were probably all sort of asleep in there. So what was the daft cow on about. Heather thought, then.

So what if no one answered the door. Weren’t like it was always busy in there all the time.

So how was she to know, how was any of us to know.

Except Danny who found him but that was different.

For a long time it weren’t like he would have answered the door anyway. Years back. When it was just him on his own and he weren’t expecting no one. Anyone at the door would have been some kind of trouble.

But if he could have just shouted.

If Heather could have done something about it, something like, instead of just wandering down to the day centre and getting stuck in to that Christmas dinner and more or less just forgetting about it.

She remembered about it later. But she was back in her room by then and what could she do.

Mike and Ben too busy going over Jamesie to think about getting back up to the flat. And what was all that. Something about Jamesie owing Mike money, but it was Ben who went steaming in and took him out from behind. Like a what like some kind of hired hand or something. Hired fist. Steaming across the lobby in the day centre, Jamesie standing by the toilets with Maggie and Bristol John and Tommy, booted him straight in the back and then clattered him around the head on his way down. Kicking him on the floor until someone got a hold of him. Near enough laughing or something.

Don’t take much to knock Jamesie out. He’s usually halfway there already. But Ben made sure the job got done. Didn’t he just.

Everyone waiting for Christmas dinner and they could have done without that getting in the way.

Decent Christmas dinner they do there as well. All the trimmings, and a bit of drink allowed in for a change, and the place all decorated up nice. Even Maureen letting her hair down a bit with what must be her one drink of the year or something, a glass of dry sherry and suddenly everything’s hilarious. Probably a good job she saves it for Christmas. Seems like she might have a, what you call, a propensity.

Weren’t laughing about this though, fucking, Jamesie out cold and bleeding all over the floor and four or five big blokes holding Ben down.

That kid though. Ben. Fucksake. Give him a few rocks and he goes all like strength of a thousand bears and that. Does himself enough damage trying to batter his way out of trouble, running into doors and walls and taking on coppers twice his size. Makes a big impression for a small kid.

Plenty of volunteers coming in for the day, and presents for everyone, and decent food. Sausages wrapped in bacon and roast parsnips and proper horseradish sauce. Don’t often get to eat proper horseradish sauce.

They had him in handcuffs by the time Heather got there. Mike long gone by then, striding off through the markets with his long coat swinging, making out like he had some phone call to attend to or something.

And what was it anyway, what had Jamesie done this time.

Something about money but it seemed like more than that.

The way Ben went at him.

And Steve weren’t even there so that should have reminded Heather that something was up. With Robert. He never liked being around people much but he never liked missing out on food neither. So she should have thought, when she didn’t see him there.

She remembered later but she was back in her room by then. And sort of what could she do then.

When Steve was, what. While Robert was all, lying on his back and waiting. Or was it, what, sitting in his chair.

Hadn’t even known Ben that long but she knew him enough that it weren’t much of a surprise. What he did to Jamesie like that. Four or five months since she’d started seeing him about the place and he’d always had some kind of trouble on him. Sort of followed him like a dog he couldn’t get rid of. Like he didn’t know no better, like he didn’t know how to avoid it. Which he didn’t did he. First time she saw him he was tapping people up outside the train station, when everyone knew that was the worst place for getting caught out in one of them clean sweeps or whatever. Didn’t normally like getting involved but what was it there was just sort of something about him. Crossed the street and took him by the arm and said You’re better off not doing that right there sweetheart, and there was a couple of community street wardens or whatever they called them right on top near enough and he didn’t say nothing he just went off with her like meek as a lamb or something.

Wardens was for dogs, when she was a kid. Times change though don’t they.

Most people would have said mind your own business, called her all names and that. But Ben just went with her. Like he’d been waiting for someone to go with. Said thanks for the help. And the next time she saw him, down one of the day centres, he said thanks again, and remembered her name. She saw him about more and more after that. She liked him, she thought he was a smart kid, even if he didn’t know much. Thought he was a good-looking kid as well, except his face was busted up half the time.

And where did Mike go. Talking on his phone like that. Like he had somewhere to be. Where did he have to be. Like he had something to do.

Steve was with Ant, in the place they’d been fixing up above the burnt-out shop. This is what, like meanwhile or something is it. Or even the day before. Ant laying out his works on a square of cloth on the floor. Steve feeding H and combing through his hair for fleas, checking his ears, checking his paws. Ant not talking much, concentrating, and that suited Steve. Suited the two of them.

Plenty to think about on a day like that though. Fucking, Christmas Day. Can’t help it. Don’t matter where you’ve come from. Always things to remember on a day like that. Things to regret and that. Plenty ways of forgetting and all though but.

The works all laid out and lined up. Like a soldier laying out his kit. Everything present and correct.

So, what. Would things have been different if Steve had been over at Robert’s instead. He would have been normally but he hadn’t been there for a few months after that fall-out they’d had. But does that make it his fault. Robert didn’t need no one looking after him. Never asked for that.

But if someone had been there. Then.

We keep sitting here waiting and these things keep coming to mind. Waiting in the dark and these things keep coming out.

Steve was the first one to start staying at Robert’s place, come to think of it. This was when, years back. Bloody, years. Started drinking outside the post office one morning, waiting to pick up their giros, and after a while they took their drinks to Robert’s front step and watched H running around making friends with the other dogs in the street. Just sat there talking, and a while after that Steve ended up staying over on the front-room floor. Weren’t like he had anywhere else to go. Two of them sat there talking all day like it was some kind of support group, like a self-help group or something.

Like no one’s here to judge or offer advice or comment. All that. We’re just here to listen and share so who’d like to get us started.

Jesus but. Everyone sitting around going I can’t help it I take smack because my old man used to hit me or my cousin raped me or they took all my fucking kids away. Whatever they call them. Encounter groups, therapy groups, support groups. Whatever. And no one ever says I take smack because I fucking like it and it keeps me well and it keeps me fucking quiet.

Don’t criticise. Don’t interrupt each other. Nothing gets repeated outside these walls.

Things you have to sit through sometimes. When you’re just after a script or a sub or some signature you need for something or other.

Let’s just go through this form together shall we. Let’s identify your needs and your goals and when we’re done I can let you have a bed for the night. Let’s talk about your risk behaviours before we start thinking about treatment shall we.

Shall we indeed. Shall we bollocks like there’s a choice.

Who wants to open up the discussion.

Who’s got something they feel they can share.

Well, Mike, perhaps you’d like to begin, perhaps you’d like to begin by maybe thinking about when you first started having these unusual ideas. What makes you think they’re unusual pal. Well, they’re new to me, let’s put it that way, they seem unusual to me. You want to start paying more attention pal this stuff’s everywhere. Well, let’s try putting it another way, let’s perhaps say when did you first start having ideas that you realised other people considered unusual or difficult or strange. All this, on and on, the doctor or whoever he was talking in riddles and circles while the others all talked at once over the top of him and it was impossible to make any sense.

Waiting for the hour to pass so the joker would hand over the script.

Robert and Steve, back then. Sitting there in the smoke and the gloom of Robert’s empty flat. The curtains closed and the windows jammed shut and the clearing up long forgotten. Like a two-man support group or something. This was when, years back. Robert telling Steve about his wife taking off with the kid, and Steve telling him to forget about it, something like that always happens sooner or later. They’re never happy though are they mate, he said, and Robert laughed and said That’s about the fucking size of it.

Robert’s laugh, the last time we heard it, was like a ruined accordion, wheezing and guttural, reeking of damp and ash. Steve doesn’t remember it being like that when they first met, but he can’t be rightly sure. Can’t be rightly sure of much, now. There are too many gaps.

And when Laura got out of that taxi and went in through the window. Two days before Christmas. The things she said. She was, what, leaving him all over again. Or it was something else, like not leaving but just. What was it.

Is there anything further you’d like to share with the group.

Didn’t take Steve long to tell Robert he’d been in the army. Didn’t take him long to tell anyone that, as it happens. Told Ant before they’d even had their first drink together. Served in the Falklands, he said. Slept out on Mount Tumbledown a good few nights. Woke up in the rain and looked down across the sodden moorland at the tin roofs of Port Stanley, the long narrow bay, the sheep on the hill, the fishing boats in the harbour, and wondered what the point of all that was for. It was a pissing contest, he told Robert, and Maggie won, and never mind all the boys who got left down there. Near enough crying when he told Robert this, and Robert didn’t say a thing.

Ant never said much neither.

Didn’t take much for Steve to start crying, once he’d had a drink. Brimful with tears that he kept fighting back, and his dark sunken eyes would catch the light and shine. My country lied to me, he would say. Clenching his fists. The first tears spilling down the webbed red lines of his face. They told me to fight for decency and rights and the rule of law and all that bollocks and it was all over nothing, it was over sheep and grass and wind, it was a pissing contest and nothing else.

Is that right mate, Robert would say, is that right is it mate.

Ant mostly gouching out so he didn’t have much of a reply.

My country lied to me, Steve would repeat. Seemed like every time he had a story about the army he ended up with those words. My country lied to me. Like he expected any different.

First company Steve had kept for a while but it didn’t take him long to get used to it. Never would have told anyone this but one of the things he liked about being in the army to be honest was sleeping in the barracks and the camps. The sound of other men breathing in the middle of the night. Don’t mean nothing like that, just, it felt like some kind of comfort or something, in a way. Some kind of security.

First company Robert had kept for a long time as well. Since Yvonne and Laura had left.

Keep waiting to hear him breathe, now, behind that door, in the middle of the night. Used to hear him breathing all the time in the flat, his lungs creaking away under the strain. Took a lot of effort just sitting there, it sounded like. Holding up all that weight. Be a long time waiting to hear him now. We know that but we stay here anyway. With the clock, and the sinks, and the tiles on the sloping floor. Waiting for what.

Two of them used to wake up early and get straight to looking for a drink. Some days it took longer than others. Had something left over from the night before if they were lucky. But some days they were dry, and the giro hadn’t turned up, or had been spent too quick, and they owed too many people to get a quick sub anywhere. Some days it felt like they spent hours tramping around town trying to get something sorted, snapping at each other like two dogs shut up in a room. Like two men in a lifeboat or something. All that water and not a drop to drink. Jesus, the thirst, the trembling, heaving thirst. Can’t argue with a thirst like that. Can’t stop to think whether knocking over one of the old Irish blokes who drink behind the pavilion is all right or not. Only did it a couple of times. Robert got him talking, Steve clocked him round the side of the head, and they both grabbed the cans and ran. Which was them sorted for the day. Weren’t so much running as walking quicker than they usually did. What you might call scurrying or something. Fucking, scuttling. No one coming after them anyway. What would they do. Back to the flat and the two old armchairs Steve had found in a skip and not saying anything for a while until they’d made some kind of dent in that thirst. And then more or less laughing about it. And carrying on like nothing much had happened. Drinking and talking and telling tales.

Like Steve saying I was at boarding school for ten years and it weren’t no different from the army, making beds and running across fields and getting shouted at.

Like Robert saying Nine years we were married and she must have hated me for half that time and I never knew, I never fucking knew.

Like Steve talking about going to India to find his brother. Saying I’ve just got to get my passport sorted out first, shouldn’t be too complicated. And pick up these postcards I’ve got from him, they’re in a bag of stuff I’ve got in a hostel down in Cambridge. They’re saving it for me, they should be. And these postcards had an address on them, I can probably look it up on the internet or something. Once I’ve got my passport sorted out. There’s some issues to resolve first. Steve talked about going to India almost as much as he said My country lied to me. Didn’t he.

Like Robert saying You’d have thought she would have given me some fucking warning or something.

Who wants to open up the discussion.

Everyone sitting there looking at their feet or picking at their nails or stretching their arms out above their heads and leaning back to look at the ceiling. And the counsellor or whoever going You won’t find the answers up there. Facilitator. Enabler, whatever. I’m just here to enable the discussion. It’s up to you where we take things today. Why don’t we start with you, Ben?

And where was Ben. Sitting in the custody suite, still handcuffed, waiting to be processed by a custody sergeant in no mood to rush. The cells full of hangovers and black-eyes and Ben starting to jitter already. Thinking about how long it was going to take to get out, and where he could score when he did. Wondering where Mike had got to once he’d sent him in on Jamesie like that. Wondering what sort of a team that made them after all.

And the same time or near enough there was Steve, sitting on his bed, watching Ant with the spoons and the lighter and all the rest of it. A bed, more like a mattress on the floor. But better than most of the places he’d slept in. Taking off his boots and laying out his socks to dry and massaging his feet with the rough calluses of his hands. Waiting.

We can all wait. Here in this room. Sitting and standing and leaning against the wall. In this cold dark room. And it’s easier to think of him, now. His body in a bag.

We’re used to it already, what’s happened to him. What’s happened to us.

Get used to anything, after a while. The mind adapts, quicker than the body does. Even when the body can’t.

See here, where the skin has fallen away.

See, here, where the maggots have eaten his flesh.

Get used to insects though, living like this. Flies, bedbugs, maggots, lice. All sorts.

Like when that bloke at the day centre went to see the chiropodist, and warned her that he hadn’t taken his boots off for six months, and it turned out he had trench foot so bad there were things crawling around in his toes.

Jesus. Give that girl a medal.

Cut his socks off and all bits and pieces came with them, skin and rotten flesh and everything, and she never said a word.

What was his name. Didn’t see him around too much after that. Maybe he ended up behind one of the doors in here. And who would know if he did.

Steve went to see the same chiropodist once, as it happens. Sat and waited and when it was his turn he took off his boots and socks and stretched out his feet for her. One thing the army taught him was how to look after his feet, and he always made sure he had a pair of dry socks to be going on with, always aired his boots at night if he could. Some things, when you’ve been doing them every day for years, you get stuck doing them no matter how drunk you are.

Nothing wrong with these feet, the chiropodist told him, cupping one in each hand and running her thumbs along the tendons and joints. You must be doing something right, she said, smiling.

Didn’t forget that one. Things like that stick with you, even with all the gaps. Things like then she washed and dried his feet, and cut his toenails, and rubbed away the hardened lumps of skin with a pumice stone before giving him a new pair of socks and asking him to send the next one in. Most people going out of their way not to touch you all day, to not hardly brush up against you or even catch your eye or anything. And then that. Washing and drying and holding his feet, one in each hand. Things like that stick with you, on the whole. Could sit and wait all day for a thing like that.

Watching Ant stirring away at the mess in the spoon and remembering all this. Waiting.

Same with the hairdressers, when they go running their fingers through your hair. Same with the nurses, changing your dressings or taking your blood pressure or listening to the crackling in your lungs, they got to touch you with their clean soft hands and no one says nothing about it but it all helps oh Christ but it helps.

Same with having a dig. When someone else does it, and even the most cack-handed old smackhead does it slow and tender and gentle like. Like a gift. Like rubbing at your skin till the vein comes up, easing the needle in, slowly pushing home the gear. Like in a war film when someone lifts a drink to the lips of a wounded and dying soldier, cradling his head in one hand and letting the cold water trickle into the desperate mouth.

Wait all day for that.

Can’t wait another minute.

Like Ben in the cells that night, couldn’t wait but he had to. Doing his rattle. Doing his nut in. Ringing the alarm and going Please I’m sorry can you get me a doctor, can you get me a script? I just really need something to hold me until I get out, please, sergeant?

The way he talks, when he’s asking for things like that. All Excuse me, sorry, please. I’m sorry to trouble you. If I could just take a moment of your time. With this look on his face like, what, beseeching. Fucking beseeching. Wringing his hands and all that. Like he’s still a little boy, which he near enough is, which he looks like near enough. With his big brown eyes and his long eyelashes and his matted brown hair falling over his face, looking up at people and wringing his hands together like he was going for a part in a musical or something, like Pardon me sir and all that bollocks.

Usually works for him but. Looks even younger than he is and people go for that. Young enough to give him a chance, they must think. Like he can still better himself or something. Pardon me sir. If you could just.

Usually works for him but not that night. Custody sergeant weren’t interested. Told him to sweat it out. Which meant he didn’t know fuck all about withdrawing. Or it meant he knew exactly all about it, and he thought Ben rattling through the night like that was some kind of what some kind of joke.

Lying on his mattress in the cell. Curling up, straightening out, standing up, sitting down. Squatting right down and lying on the floor. Can’t keep still when it’s on you like that. Can’t get comfortable. Pretty fucking hard to bear. Pretty fucking, unbearable.

And Steve lying on his mattress in that room above the burnt-out shop. Waiting for Ant to finish whatever he had to do to get the stuff ready. Still thinking about that last bust-up he’d had with Robert, and what he was going to do about it, and wondering what Robert was doing now. Remembering the first time Robert had kicked him out of the flat, after he’d crashed out in Laura’s old bedroom and pissed himself in her bed. All the wrecking Robert had done in that flat but he’d kept Laura’s room more or less intact and now Steve had gone and done that. What had he been thinking. Weren’t nothing he could do to make up for that. Kicked him out and didn’t see him again for years. What was it, years.

Nothing new about being kicked out though, as it happens. He’d been kicked out of school, and kicked out of the army, and kicked out of his parents’ house when he went to live with them after his discharge. They’d put up with him for a month, put up with him lying in bed and staring out the window and blubbing when they asked him what he was going to do with himself now, only he’d taken the drinking too far a few times and broken a few things and made a bit of a mess once or twice. So they’d changed the locks, and told him to leave, to go and get himself sorted out somewhere. Said it was for his own good. So he’d stood outside and waited for them to see sense. In the picturesque Dorset rain. Waited a day and night while he heard his mother saying maybe they should give him one more chance and his father saying No that boy has got to learn. Took four coppers to arrest him, when they turned up.

Told Robert about all this when they started drinking together. Told Ant soon after they met.

Could have been stood there for months if the police hadn’t turned up. Him and his father were both as stubborn as each other. About the only thing they had in common, more or less.

Told just about everyone that story, over the years. Makes out like he don’t like being with people, but he’s always happy to talk once he’s had a drink. Like a one-man self-help group. The fucking, what is it, the talking cure. Don’t seem to have worked as yet.

Who wants to open the discussion.

Who’s got something they feel they can share.

Like Ben, in one of those groups one time, on a court order, and without even thinking he asked the facilitator if she could facilitate his arse. Already standing up because he thought that would get him thrown out. Everyone laughing. The woman smiling and going You can sit down I don’t think we’re finished yet. Going Are you scared of saying anything serious, Ben? It’s all right to be scared if you are, but there’s no need to be. This should be a safe space. Nothing gets repeated beyond these walls.

Ben sitting down and going No mate I aint scared.

The woman sitting there smiling and going That’s great then, why don’t you get us started today? Why don’t you tell us about, I don’t know, one happy memory you can remember from your childhood?

Jesus. Where do they get these people.

Ben told them about the only foster home he ever got placed in, with some woman called Sandra who lived in a big old house by the river and who used to wait for him to get back from school with a plate of biscuits and cakes she’d been baking, and orange squash, and questions about what he’d been doing all day. That was all right, he said.

And the woman said What else do you remember about, Sandra was it, about living there?

Which was her way of trying to like facilitate some disclosure or something.

So he told her that one night he’d wet the bed, and hidden the sheets in a cupboard because he’d been scared of what she might do, and when she found them she phoned up Social Services and got him taken back to the children’s home again.

She liked that though, the facilitator. Giving it all Well done, Ben, thank you, I really appreciate your openness, I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you.

Everyone else sat there looking at their feet or looking at the clock or still counting the tiles on the ceiling. And the joke was on her because that never happened anyway, it was some other foster-kid who hid the sheets and got removed, not Ben. He was there at least another month or something.

Decent place to be as well. He wouldn’t have minded staying longer. He had a nice room in the attic, and if he stood up on a chair and looked out through the skylight he could see the river, and hear all Sandra’s friends laughing at each other’s stories. She let him stay up late with them sometimes, and they all talked to him like he weren’t even a kid at all. She drank this well strong coffee out of espresso cups, and when she let him try some once he was almost sick, and when he had a bath she used to knock on the door and come in and wash his hair, holding a flannel over his face so the shampoo didn’t go in his eyes. No one else ever done that.

Didn’t tell the group all this though. Speaking up once was enough to get a tick on the court order. Sat there waiting for it to finish while the woman went on about remembering they always had choices and not getting trapped in the past. Ben remembered that he had the choice to keep his mouth shut and wait for the end of the hour or whatever. He was good at waiting.

Things you think about. All the time in the world for waiting and these things keep coming to mind.

Like all the stories you have to tell people when you’re asking after something. When you’re in need. In need of something just to hold you for a few hours. The stories you have to come up with.

Like Mike one time when he went to the church to tap up the priest, and the priest said Sit there, son, I’ll speak to you after Mass. Leaving him sat there mumbling Hail Mary and Our Father and all that like he was a good Catholic boy fallen on hard times who only needed a quick helping hand to get himself sorted out. Priest up at the front telling two old ladies and Mike that In the same way, after supper, he took the bread and gave it to them saying take this and eat this in memory of me. Near enough looking Mike straight in the eyes when he said But we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. And then afterwards when Mike was giving him the story, telling him that he had to get back to Liverpool for a funeral, it was his da’s actually and even though he hadn’t seen the old man for years he still felt like he had to get back for one last goodbye like and he’d been supposed to be getting a lift but someone had let him down so he really badly needed the money for the train ticket and he was sure that once he’d explained to the family he’d be able to pay the money back and then some, the priest had interrupted him and said, like straight out without going around the houses or nothing, Do you believe in God, Michael? To which Mike had said without even pausing for breath I don’t know Father, do you think He believes in you? And can you lend us some money for the train or not la?

This was before he met Danny. Before Danny showed up in town one day and had his teeth knocked out when he’d hardly had a chance to say hello. Because once he started going around with Danny they had things sorted out a bit better and he didn’t have to go storytelling so much.

The number of funerals Mike’s parents had had though. It was enough to make him believe in the resurrection of the flesh and all that.

Where was it. Under the flyover. Waiting for the soup van to turn up. The usual crowd, sitting and standing in the yard where there used to be cars for sale but now there was just boarded-up arches and trees coming up through the cracks in the concrete. And Danny must have stood out straight off, because he was carrying all his stuff with him, sleeping bag and blankets and binbag and everything, and also because he went straight up to Spider and Scots Malky and started talking to them and no one who knew them would have done that. Everyone moving away a bit and turning their backs while he got taxed, and he was off out the yard before the soup van had even arrived, Einstein whimpering and limping along behind him.

Mike followed him out. No reason for him to get involved was there but he did. Caught up with him at the crossroads by the derelict pub and said Eh you all right there pal you need a hand.

Weren’t even a question and Danny didn’t disagree. Looked at him with one hand cupped over his mouth and tried to say something, coughing and stumbling, spitting blood and bits of teeth into the gutter. Mike said Eh now you, come and sit down a minute, and when he put his arm round Danny’s waist to help him to the kerb Danny pulled away and said Fuck off I aint got nothing left to nick. The words gurgling and dribbling from his bloodied mouth.

Three of them sat there a minute, the sun low through the evening and the pigeons chasing across the sky while the traffic stretched and hooted along the road overhead.

The soup van drove past, and they watched it go.

Danny wiping at his face with his hand, and Einstein licking the blood from his fingers.

You got a smoke, Danny said, and Mike rolled one up, and Danny smoked it quick enough that no one could take it off him, coughing up bloody phlegm once he’d done.

He’d left London to get away from this kind of thing, and it had followed him anyway. Weren’t nowhere safe when it came down to it.

He’d walked out early in the morning, walked right up to Brent Cross and then waited all day for a lift up the Great North Road and this was as far as he’d got and he was desperate now. Desperate to get sorted.

You know where I can score? he asked, and Mike made him a deal.

Always waiting for that.

Always working and watching and chasing around for a bag of that. Jesus but. The man-hours that go into living like this. Takes some dedication, takes some fucking, what, commitment.

Getting a bag and then finding somewhere to go to cook it up in a spoon and dig it into your arm or your leg or that mighty old femoral vein down in between your thighs. The water and the brown and the citric, waiting for it all to dissolve, holding up the flame while those tiny bubbles pop and then drawing it up through the filter and the needle into the syringe. And waiting again for the gear to cool down. Sitting with someone you’ve only just met, in a rib-roofed room with a gaping hole where the window should be, the floor littered with broken tiles and bricks, in a building you can’t remember the way out of. Tightening off the strap and waiting for the vein to come up. This bloke you’ve only just met passing you the loaded syringe. Smacking at your mottled skin and waiting for the vein to come up. Pinching and pulling and poking around and waiting for the vein to come up and then easing the needle in, drawing back a tiny bloom of blood before gently pushing the gear back home.

Wait all day for that.

Do anything for that. Fucking, anything.

Steve still waiting for Ant to sort him out like that. Don’t even know what he’s waiting for yet.

Sinking back on to the floor and Mike sitting there saying You like that then pal while he cooks up his own. That good for you, Danny boy? Saying Just so long as you stick to the deal, because if you don’t I will switch on you like you wouldn’t believe, you remember that, I’ve done it before, you know what I’m saying.

Smiling and pulling a blanket up over Danny, right over his head. Turning away, tugging down his trousers and sticking himself in the fem. Feeling better before the needle even went in. Believe that pal, only thing he’s ever found that makes him feel better like that. Nothing else can do the job, and it took him two stays in hospital to figure that one out and that was two too many. All the lies he had to tell to get out at all, all the pills they gave him to keep him well, and none of it did no good. First thing he learnt when he got in there was they didn’t want to hear about the details, they didn’t want to know about all the stuff he was overhearing and all his what they called it his unusual ideas. None of that. They asked him about it but the deal was really they wanted him to just shut up about it. Everyone on the outside and the inside wanted him to just shut up about all of it. That’s how come he was there in the first place, on account of not learning to shut up. One of the first things the other patients told him when he got in there was Stop making a fuss and learn the magic words: I feel much better now, thank you. Which he didn’t though like, not by a long stretch of the very elastic imagination he had, but he got the hang of saying it when they asked and they let him split. Totally terrified when they let him go though. Mental. So many people talking at him he couldn’t hardly hear a thing, couldn’t think straight, thought he was going to walk out in front of a bus as soon as he got out the hospital gates. Thought the like the snatch squads or something would come and get him within a day. But then he hooked up with some of the old crowd from before, and they’d got into the gear while he was inside and they told him it would help calm him down. Best prescription he’d ever had and he’d had a few. Was only when he felt that warm hollowing out inside him that he felt better, only when he felt the silence settling down inside his head that he could honestly say Now then pal I feel much better now, thank you. No one bothering him then. No one trying to tell him things and talking all at once.

I feel much much better now, thank you.

Do anything to hold on to that.

Do anything to get back to that. Keep getting back up to get back to that feeling well again. Feeling well, feeling sorted, feeling like all the, the worries have been taken away. The fears. All the emotions taken care of. That feeling of, what is it, just, like, absence, from the world. Like taking your own life away, just for a while. Like what the French call it la, the little death. And then getting up and doing it again, every time. We get up, and we do it all over again.

What else can we do.

And how long must we wait. How long have we waited already. For something to happen. For someone to come. For some fucking thing to change.

Like Laura’s keyworker giving it all Change is something you need to do for yourself, Laura. You can’t wait until someone else does it for you. All those sessions she had with him, going through assessment forms and working out goals and all that. I want to go to rehab, she said, first time she got an appointment with him, but he kept giving it all No but it’s not as simple as that, Laura. It’s not like you can get in a taxi to rehab and then come back in six months’ time all cleaned up. Going on about how it was a process. Going We should start by looking at harm minimisation, we should talk about your immediate needs, we should think about getting you on to a script.

All that stuff on the assessment forms. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very comfortable or ten very uncomfortable with my level of drug use. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very optimistic or ten very pessimistic about my life in the future. All that. Talking about triggers and associations, talking about risk behaviours, talking about histories and plans for the future and trying to make sure she came along to the next appointment. Saying things like Laura, if I can get you to make yourself a cup of tea when you wake up in the morning then we’re halfway there, if we can find some space in your head for things apart from drugs then we’re making progress. Asking about what her interests had been before she’d had a habit.

Waiting for the appointments sometimes she felt like she was just one of his pet projects, like he was only pleased she was getting anywhere because then he could mark her up on his monitoring forms and make a big song and dance about her to the project funders. But sometimes it seemed like he was actually bothered and that was something new. He kept going on about how he knew where she was coming from, he’d been there himself, and if he could get clean and get out then so could she. Giving it all There’s no such thing as a hopeless case now, Laura, I mean you should have seen me. Laughing but she didn’t get the joke. But anyway she mostly kept going to the appointments. He’d said it would be a long wait for a place in rehab and it was something to do in the meantime.

Told Danny all this one time and here he is telling us now.

Doing our time in these waiting rooms. These rooms all the same as each other. A clock on the wall, hard metal chairs, a stack of old magazines, a box of toys in one corner. And always someone losing it and banging their fists against the toughened glass and shouting at the staff who just sit a bit further back and wait for Security.

Benefits office, housing office, doctor’s surgery, probation. Sit there waiting for your number to come up, and you get used to it after a while. It’s dry and it’s warm and that’s a start. That’s something. As good a place to sit as any other and we’ve got the time to spare. Haven’t we just. All the time in the world. Nothing much better to do. Is that right.

Those signs saying Our staff are entitled to work without fear of violence or abuse.

Those signs saying Anyone spitting at a member of staff will be prosecuted.

The clock ticking round and the hard metal chairs.

The clock ticking round and Robert cold on his steel bed behind that door.

Some baby crying again, and some girl begging it to just please be quiet.

And there’s Mike and Danny in the benefits office, waiting to sort out Danny’s giro so they could split it. Mike sitting there telling him all what’s what. Going Them two you met yesterday, Spider and Scots Malky, you’re best off steering well clear, they’re both a bit mental and everyone’s scared of them. Even the busies like. They’re all right so long as you keep your distance although you’ve probably learned your lesson now anyway but all I’m saying is next time we’re there or we see them you want to stand clear la, you know what I’m saying?

Saying all this with his hand over his mouth, learning over to mutter and spit in Danny’s ear, his eyes scanning the room the whole time.

Because of the cameras, Danny boy. Can’t be too careful la. Cameras everywhere and you never know who they’re looking for. They can see what you’re saying if you’re not careful, that’s why you’re best off talking behind your hand, they’ve got lip-readers and special software and that, it’s like all automatic and everything and they’re keeping a record of it all. Trust me Danny boy, I know what I’m talking about, they’re keeping a record of it all. Danny nodding, and saying nothing, and wiping the spit from his ear.

There’s a camera in here, even now, peering down at the sealed doors, while we sit and stand and lie on the cold stone floor and wait for the morning to come. For his comfort and security these images are being recorded.

Mike still talking and spitting into Danny’s ear while they wait for the giro.

They’ll be putting tags on us next la, they’ll be strapping tags with listening devices on them round our ankles and then there’ll be nowhere to hide, you know what I’m saying? Like them chips they put in dogs’ necks, you know, like, what’s her name, Einstein, she’s probably got one without you even knowing, they’ll be using that to track you and no doubt.

And then Danny’s number being called, and Danny up at the little window and talking through the hole in the glass. Name, date of birth, national insurance number. Address, previous address, place of birth. Always the same. Don’t matter who it is, the police or the doctors or the benefits, they’ve all got forms to fill and they all want to know the same thing. And none of them ever happy with you saying I don’t know.

But what does it say on your birth certificate?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Like they can’t hear you and they keep going on, looking at the computer screen like the answers might just pop up at them. Asking you the same questions all over again: What does it say on your records? Where were you born? What are your parents’ names?

Jesus. You’d think they’d have training about that sort of thing.

Like what the French call it la. The little death.

And then what happens is sometimes there’s not even a room to wait in is there. Sometimes it’s just a long corridor with a line of chairs leading all the way down it, with people in suits like swishing up and down and making out they’re not looking at you or trying to guess what your business is. What your problem is.

Like at the courts. All these different courts spread through the building, and you find your way through the maze by following the trail of grey metal chairs against the walls. Another place where we know how to sit and wait. Don’t we all. Been there enough.

Like Heather. This is a long time ago now. A lifetime ago.

Sitting outside the Family Court or whatever they called it then. Waiting to be called in, a bag of clothes tucked under the chair. Books. Toys. A long row of chairs and no one else waiting. Could have stood up and left and it wouldn’t have made no difference. Could still be waiting there now and it would have been just the same. Sort of feels like she is still waiting there now.

The door behind her opening and closing and a clerk or someone coming out with an armful of papers and her shoes clicking away down the corridor. Ignoring Heather because who was she anyway.

Dressed as smartly as she could but she still looked out of place. She wanted to, most days, it was sort of the point, all the jewellery and the tattoos and the layers of torn-up clothes, but that day she’d known it would have helped if she’d just looked sort of normal and standard and capable. Capable being what they were talking about in there.

The doors opening and closing. The sunlight in the foyer at the end of the dark corridor. Felt like a schoolgirl outside the headteacher’s office, swinging her legs. The metal chair cold against her skin. Her hair sticking to her forehead where she’d tried to wet her fringe down over the tattoo. Because she’d known that wouldn’t help, the tattoo.

Her hair all hot down the back of her neck, and she lifts a handful up away from her head, hoping for a breeze to blow down the corridor and cool her skin. But there’s nothing. No movement, no sound, and so she opens her hand and lets her hair fall and every time she does this again for the rest of her life she’ll be back in this moment, this waiting in the long corridor for a door to open and her name to be called. She’s waiting there now, her hair still falling from her hand against her hot red neck.

I can wait, she says.

Don’t mind me. I’ve got time on my hands.

We’ve all got time on our hands, now.

But if he could have just shouted. If he could have got to a phone. And if Penny could have barked and howled and hurled herself against the door.

And look at him now.

All these gaps. All this waiting. All these things coming back into view.

Like Robert, all the waiting he did. Waiting for Yvonne to get in touch after all, to say Come on, Robert, it’s been a while now, shall we have another go.

Must have known she never would.

But if she found him in that state. If anyone found him in that state. It had been too long. He wasn’t waiting any more. But how old would Laura be now, he kept thinking, then. All those years. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Asking questions all over again and maybe she’d come and find him one day. But if she found him in that state.

Here’s something Steve, he said one morning, the three of them barely awake. This was later, when Heather was stopping there as well. When was this. The noise of H and Penny scrambling around in the hallway. Here’s something Steve, I’ll tell you what. This is important.

Boxes of latex gloves on shelves along the wall.

Disposable aprons.

The tag on the door. A date, a time, a reference number. A space where his name should be.

Too many gaps.

Too many, fucking, known unknowns.

That man who went to the chiropodist with the maggots in his feet, what was his name, where did he go. Is he here now.

The man in the wheelchair who can hardly move it but won’t let no one push, crying out with each turn of the wheels. What’s his name.

Yvonne. Where is she, even now.

Laura.

That man in the wheelchair, we know him but we don’t even know his name. Plenty of stories about him though. Like he’s rich as fuck, for one. Got a big house out on the tops that he inherited years back but he couldn’t never bear to live there. Like he’s going to leave it to some animal charity when he kicks it, some dogs’ home or something. Like he reckons they deserve it the most. Like it’s arthritis that’s crippling him and they could do plenty about it but he won’t let them get him in the hospital. All stories but so who knows what’s really true and he keeps dragging himself all over town.

We sit and we stand and we lean against the wall. We lie on the cold stone floor and we wait for the morning. The clock ticking round towards the windowless dawn.

Spent a lot of time on the cold stone floor of the underpass, waiting. Danny did. Before they bricked up the underpasses and filled them in. Sat on a blanket with another one round his shoulders. Before they banned the charities from giving out blankets, before some council leader started going on about cleaning up the streets and calling it respect, some cunt watching too many films and giving it all like Some kind of rain’s going to come and wash all the crap off the streets but in the meantime a blanket ban and some asbos will have to do. Sat there with Einstein curled up in his lap. Eyes down and cup held out. Very humble, very fucking what is it, penitent. Mike keeping watch at one end of the underpass. Counting and recounting the money, how much they had now and how much more they needed before they could pick up their blankets and hurry on over to the flats to score. Always starting to hurt by the time the last coin hit the cup, and as soon as it landed they were up and moving off, folding the blankets as they went, taking the steps out of the underpass two and three at a time, Mike already up ahead at the phonebox putting in their order, Danny striding past him, Einstein not needing to be told to keep up, the two of them hurrying off down the street like Olympic walkers, or more like Special Olympics walkers the state of them, their loose-soled trainers flapping as they limped along the pavement and Mike explaining where the delivery would be. No point rushing because when they got there they always had to wait. But they couldn’t help it. Always waiting longer than they’d been told, longer than they wanted, longer than they could bear but they had to, while Mike paced around and chatted on his phone. Watching every car that slowed down, every kid on a mountain bike, anyone who caught their eye who might be bringing what they needed. Deliver us what we need would you la. Three or four times a day, standing and waiting. Deliver us from, whatever, this fucking sickness.

Like Danny at the phonebox by the Miller’s Arms where we saw him last. Waiting there still, in the dark, with the evening’s trains rattling past and the door to the pub slamming open and shut somewhere behind him. Shivering and moaning and Einstein curling round and round his ankles, as if that could make him feel better, as if that could help at all, as if anything but what he was waiting for could help or can help him now.

 Do you think He believes in you.

I could just really do with something to hold me until I get out, is there anything you can do.

Pardon me for asking but if you could just, fucking.

And it was Danny doing more or less all the begging out of those two. I’m not being funny and that but I’ve not really got the temperament, Mike said, when they talked about it. Weren’t much of a discussion. I’ve not got the patience la, he said. People can be funny when you’re sat there like that, and I switch a bit easy, you know what I mean, I like lash out and that and it causes more trouble than it’s worth. I tend to misinterpret people’s faces Danny, that’s my problem, that’s one of my problems, I tend to see the worst in them pal and then it all kicks off. So like it’s best all round if you do the sitting and I’ll keep lookout and plus once we’ve got the cash I’ll take care of the scoring is that cool with you?

Muttering all this into Danny’s ear like it was a question but it weren’t really a question at all. Things weren’t like that. Were they. Mike was the one with the plan. That’s how it was right from when they first hooked up, when Danny’s first giro ran out and they had to leave the old warehouse and head out for more cash. Mike telling him the plan all the way there, stooping while they walked and spitting it into Danny’s ear.

And that was when Steve started seeing them around the place. Sitting outside the wet centre waiting for it to open, reading a book or talking to the others waiting there as well, and it seemed like every other time he looked up he’d see Danny and Mike rushing past one way or the other. Mike chatting into his phone and Danny pulling that dog along behind him. Skinny buggers the both of them, needle-thin, all hands and arms and tripping over their feet, Mike always striding out with Danny tagging along behind, Danny squinting ahead of him like he was venturing into a long dark tunnel or something. Looked like people with a lot of business to attend to. Looked like they were in what you might call a high-stress occupation. Was what Steve thought, then.

There’s a patch in the underpass we’ll try first off, over by the bus station, big crowd from the offices coming through, should get enough for the first bag of the day. This is Mike, with his plan. Then we’ll get you signed up at the Issue, they barred me a while back for like a misunderstanding, you know what I’m saying, but you’ll be all right and they give new boys the best patches so with a bit of joy that’ll be enough for bag number two. Then if you’re any good at lifting we’ll go through Boots and get some blades and batteries and that and sell them on at the King’s Head, maybe tap up a few more people on the way back to the flats and we’ll have enough for a third bag which’ll hold us through until it’s time for the coming-out-of-work crowd so we’ll get back down the underpass and we’ll be sorted in no time la. Then we’ll think about finding somewhere to sleep. Full-time job living like this and then some. Takes a lot of dedication. Takes a lot of planning. Got to have a plan Danny boy, got to have a plan. Stick with me and you’ll be all right. I’ve got the plans. Got them all up here.

Tapping at his head and tugging Danny’s sleeve to guide him through the crowds by the bus station, the two of them clearing a path, Mike with his long black coat swinging around his knees, Danny with his mouth still swollen and red from the lamping he’d taken the week before.

Two of them made a pair sometimes, striding through the streets with Danny hauling a load of blankets and dragging his dog along, and Mike chatting away on his phone, giving it all No you listen to me pal youse all listen to me. Like he was talking to his agent or his stockbroker or something.

Takes a lot of fucking, what, commitment and that.

Steve spent a lot of time at the wet centre when he started drinking again. Waiting. Easy place to be when he needed to get out of the rain, and no one bothered him. Didn’t have to talk to anyone unless he wanted to. And he didn’t want to after the year he’d had. This was when, long time ago now. Ten years or something. Who knows. After he’d gone dry for a time, a big mistake he was more than making up for now. Which put him in good company but he didn’t go there for the company did he. Went there for the food, the dry clothes, the chance to get out of the weather. He was what you might call between residences, meaning he had no bastard place to stay, but he’d learnt enough survival skills in the army to know that you make use of whatever resources are available to you at any given time. And the wet centre was a resource and a half and no mistake. Even if he had to wait outside half the morning for the place to open.

That dog though, what a state. Danny told him about it one time, said it was how come he’d left London in the first place. Some dealer smashed her back leg with an iron bar on account of Danny owing him money, and he thought it was best not to wait and see what might happen next. Keep trying to get to the PDSA to get it looked at, he said. But I don’t want no one taking her off me. Else what would I do then.

Some people are never comfortable just sitting there like that though. When they’re sat waiting for the same thing, at the doctor’s or the housing or wherever. Think they have to break the silence. But not Steve. He could sit and wait in silence all day if he had to. Something he’d learnt on manoeuvres. Patience. Sat outside the wet centre though and someone would always crack on about the weather or the police or asylum seekers and Steve would just give them a look and go back to whatever he was reading. That was enough, mostly. That and H growling at them. Weren’t even a growl hardly, just this noise in the back of his throat that you knew would get much worse than a growl if you didn’t stop whatever it was you were doing. He was good for things like that. Mean-looking stump of a dog, white-faced and black-eyed with a flattened nose, not exactly what you’d call playful or affectionate even with Steve but at least he kept people out of the way. Which was what Steve wanted, mostly.

But one time Heather turned up, and crouched in front of H and scratched his chin and he didn’t make a sound. And Steve looked up, and Heather said You look like you could do with a drink. Made him laugh. Felt like he hadn’t laughed in a long while. Felt like a start.

Knew Heather from around but hadn’t spoken to her before. Hard to miss though. Big woman, with layers and layers of clothes and long knotted hair that she kept changing the colour of, and a whole bunch of tattoos including a tattoo of an eye in the middle of her forehead. Which was what people mostly noticed first. Was hard to miss.

So I can keep an extra eye out for trouble, she said, when people asked her why she’d had it done. There’s sort of always trouble to look out for.

They started drinking together, Steve and Heather, and they got talking, and she asked him about H. He said he’d had him about twelve or thirteen years, since he was a puppy, and that was more or less how long he’d been out on the streets. Been through a lot together, he said, and Heather finished a can and said Haven’t we all sweetheart.

She said it sounded like they’d been on the scene for about the same time. Said she’d been in a band before that, they’d done a lot of touring and it had been going well but things hadn’t worked out. Musical differences, she said, rolling up her sleeve and showing him the state of her arm. All the marks from what the needles had done. Plus this other stuff, these rows of raised pink scars all up and down her arm. Helps to distract you sometimes, sort of keeps you from doing other things or thinking about other things.

She asked him where he was stopping and he said Nowhere much, and a while later, when they were leaving the wet centre, leaning out into the night like they were walking into a storm, holding each other up and slipping on the dry ground, she said I’m stopping with this bloke up the way, he don’t like going out but he’s a decent bloke so he won’t mind if you stop there for a bit as well. And when he got there he was too drunk to be surprised that it was Robert’s flat they were falling into.

It all comes round again, in the end.

Robert didn’t look surprised to see him. It had been years though hadn’t it. Maybe it took them a moment to recognise each other. If they even did. How long had it been. It had been years. It was hard to remember. There were too many. Could have been seven or eight or nine years, could have been two or three. Too many, gaps.

Didn’t say much when Steve said hello. He’d got himself a dog as well by then, Penny, and all three of them watched Penny and H sniffing around each other for a minute, like Little and Large, growling and snapping and then calming down. H sniffing around for crumbs on the floor. Steve sat on the floor because there was only the one chair by then. Heather fell over in the corner and closed her eyes, and just before she fell asleep she said Eh now you two I’m still watching you two now. Meaning with her third eye, with that faded blue and green tattoo.

Told the same joke most nights from what Steve could tell. Weren’t even that funny. Gave him the creeps.

Weren’t quite true when Heather said she’d been in a band. Was more like she’d been with a band. Or like they’d been with her.

When they woke up in the morning, the three of them, with H and Penny barking in the hallway and banging against the door to be let out, Robert looked over at Steve and pushed his hat up out of his eyes and said What was your name again mate? Don’t I know you from somewhere?

These, gaps.

Here’s something, he said. I’ll tell you what. This is important.

Steve waited all day for Robert to remember who he was, and then he forgot about it. It had been a long time ago. They’d both, what was it, they’d both moved on since then. Although Robert hadn’t moved far, about two or three feet by the look of it, and Steve was still drinking, was drinking again, and still going around the same places. But still, things had happened in the meantime. Steve had been away, for one. He’d been dry, and he’d been away, and he’d come back and he wasn’t dry any more. Robert had put on weight, had more or less doubled in size it looked like, like he must have stayed put in that chair the whole time since Steve had seen him. Like he’d run out of the energy or something.

Robert had seen Laura, it turned out. That was something else. Just turned up at the door one night. With a backpack and a tie-dye headscarf and some story about hating her mum and never wanting to go home. She hates me too, she’d said, I know she does, she don’t want me around no more, she can’t be bothered, she’s all bloody wrapped up with Paul and she aint got time for me no more, she’s always bloody moaning about what I do all the time, staying out late and going over my mate’s and smoking and all that bollocks, she’s such a bloody hypocrite I bloody well hate her.

Said all that to Heather. Standing in the darkened kitchen with her backpack at her feet, glancing through to the lounge where her dad and two other men lay slumped on the floor, and eventually she said Like are they all right or what?

Heather had been drunk when Laura had arrived. But not as drunk as the others, and not so drunk that she didn’t ask who was there before she answered the door. Says she knew it was Laura as soon as she saw her. Even though she didn’t look all that much like him, then. She’d done her best to look older and rougher but she hadn’t done enough. She’d ripped her jeans, and scuffed her boots, and pierced her nose. But so what. Her fingernails were still clean, her hair was tied back, her skin was pink and soft and unmarked by bruises or scars or tattoos. She’d brushed her teeth that morning, and every morning and evening before that. Didn’t have any missing from what Heather could see.

Reckon she thought she’d come to the wrong flat when she saw me stood there, Heather said, when she told Steve about it. State of me. Bless her though, she was all geared up for this grand reunion and her old man was crashed out cold on the floor. Must have been a bit disappointing.

Who you calling disappointing? Robert asked, and Heather looked at him, and the three of them tore into laughter.

Robert’s laugh the loudest of all, the wheeze and whistle of it filling the room.

Laura in the kitchen telling Heather how much her mum hated her, the only light coming from the orange streetlamps in the carpark outside, her face shadowed and urgent and her eyes beginning to shine, and when she’d finished Heather said How old are you now love?

She put her hands in her back pockets and said I’m fifteen, have you got any fags?

Laura rolling a cigarette with Heather’s tobacco, her long white fingers fumbling with the thin paper and once she’d licked it shut those same clean fingers picking the strands of tobacco from her tongue. Looking around for an ashtray. Heather pointing out all the fag-ends lying trodden into the floor, and saying I wouldn’t bother sweetheart it’s too late for that.

He waited years for them to come back, and when one of them did he was too drunk to see it.

Should have told her to go home right then. But she wouldn’t have listened. Fifteen and on the road for the first time, she wouldn’t have listened to no one.

The clock ticking round and the echo of it scraping through the floor. The light fittings cold and dark.

She woke early. The next morning this was. Laura woke early, and she waited. She’d waited long enough. She sat up in the corner of the room with her arms folded around her knees, and she looked at the old home she could barely remember. She could have changed her mind then. Could have stood and packed away her sleeping bag and walked back out the door while her dad and all those other people were sleeping. She near enough did. She should have done, should she. But she didn’t want to prove her mum right. She wanted to see what would happen. She wanted some breakfast, and she’d already run out of money.

He woke up, and saw her looking at him. It was confusing. Who was it. Thought it was Yvonne for a minute, looking as young as when they’d first met, come back to set things straight. And then he realised. It gave him something like a pain in the chest, a pain which near enough swelled and sucked in air as he looked at her and realised just what he’d missed and just how much he’d failed, at this precise fucking moment, to be what she wanted him to be. He had no idea what to say. She looked at him.

He got the rest of us up and told us to leave. That was something. Never told us to leave before so we knew something was up. All of us looking at her like, what, sullenly or something. Grumbling and muttering while we went off outside. Peered through the filthy dark glass of the front door but we couldn’t see nothing or hear nothing and we had better things to get off and do. See it all clearly now.

Hello Dad, she said, finally, and it seemed like such a lame thing to say that she laughed. He didn’t know what to do. He stood in the doorway to the hall. He smiled, awkwardly, and it looked like someone squinting against the early morning light.

He took his hat off and rolled it into his hands, squeezing it.

He said, Look at you.

What.

When did.

Does your mum know you’re here?

She shook her head. He turned and walked into the kitchen, hesitated, came back into the lounge, walked through to what had once been the main bedroom.

Did you sleep all right? he asked, coming back into the room.

Yeah, she said. Suppose.

He kept moving from room to room, picking things up, putting them down again, like he thought he should be busy or something. Like he thought there were things he’d forgotten to do. He stood in the kitchen for a long time, out of breath, his hands pressing against the sides of his head, wanting a drink but suddenly for the first time in years not wanting to want a drink. He had no idea what to do. Neither of them did.

First time in years.

She listened to him moving around in the kitchen, and thought again about just getting up and leaving. She could write. They could talk on the phone, if he could get hold of a phone. If he could have got to the phone. Perhaps it was too sudden like this. What had she been thinking.

He drifted back into the room and smiled again, and she noticed how wrecked his teeth were. Half of them were missing altogether, and the rest were cracked, chipped, ground down to stumps, stained black and brown and yellow. It made him look like some kind of street urchin or something. When he tried to smile. It made him look younger, oddly, his great round unblinking face watching her, helplessly. She watched him back.

If I’d known you were coming I’d have tidied up a bit, he said, gesturing around the room and realising before he had a chance to laugh that it wasn’t funny. He sat down again, and reached for a drink.

This is, what. When was this. Long time now.

Penny appeared, struggling out from under a pile of clothes in the corner, a scrap of patchy brown hair with torn ears and a tail the size of Robert’s thumb. She moved across the room like a rabbit, hesitant, almost hopping, stopping to sniff the floor and the air and anything that got in her way. Laura picked her up, holding her in one hand and scratching the top of her head, tickling her ears. Robert watched them both. She’s called Penny, he said. Laura’s smile disappeared, and she put Penny down again. She wiped her hands on her jeans, and folded her arms.

So, how have you been, Dad? she said, her voice brittle with disappointment. How are things? He rested the almost empty can on the floor and looked at her, steadily. Things are going okay thank you Laura, he said. Things are going fine. How about you? How about your mum?

She was gone again by the time Heather got back that afternoon, and Robert didn’t say much about what had happened or where he thought she’d gone. He didn’t say much at all. Give my regards to your mother. What did you expect. If I’d known you were coming.

All the waiting come to an end and his tears all wiped away or something more or less like that.

Things we don’t want to remember but we do.

Can’t block none of it out no more. Not now we’re here, like this.

Like what Ben did that time. When there was that bloke on the leisure-centre steps eating a bag of chips, and some woman going on at him. Who was he. Could have been anyone. Don’t matter now. And this woman giving it all You should have told me where you were, you should have fucking told me. Kept turning away like she’d finished and then turning back to have another go. The bloke just shaking his head and talking all quietly, like he was making an effort to be polite, making an effort to be like reconciliatory or something.

Mike and Danny and Ben all waiting for a delivery by the phoneboxes over the road. Ben going How come you don’t use your mobile Mike, how come we have to get to a phonebox, and Mike looking at him going Aint got no credit pal aint never got no credit.

The woman saying her piece and stamping off down the road, and the bloke calling after her, going Fucking get back here now, the woman telling him to fuck off and the bloke jumping up from the steps, throwing down his chips and chasing her down the road and then this big flock of pigeons swooping down out of nowhere and laying in to the chips, their heads bobbing in and out of the bag and the whole gang of them squabbling over every last greasy scrap.

And then Ben. Fuck. Steaming across the road and into them and they all clapped back up into the air except one slow old bird whose head was too deep in the bag and weren’t paying attention, and Ben booted it across the pavement and crack into the steps where the bloke had been sitting, grabbed it by the wings and swung it over his head and cracked it against the steps again.

Danny and Mike looking at each other. Thinking what was he on, what was this, what was going on. Ben crouching over the pigeon doing, what, something they couldn’t see, something slow and deliberate and they called over to him but he ignored them. And when he stood up he had half the pigeon in each hand. He’d torn it in two and was holding the bits up like a trophy and grinning all over like it was a joke, and Einstein was barking and snapping and running up and down the road. Danny and Mike didn’t say a thing, except when Ben came back over to them Danny told him to fuck off. All blood on his hands and shit. Mike still muttering about it when the kid on the bike turned up with the gear. Tell you what though pal that’s not normal, there’s no way that’s normal.

The cold dark tiles and the deep sinks along the wall. The clock ticking round. The labels on the drawers, names and dates and times. The gloves on the shelves. Hundreds of pairs of gloves, chalk-dry and flabby in their boxes.

Jesus. The whole lot of us here in a circle around him. We need like a facilitator or something. Is there anything you’d like to share with the group. How does that make you feel. What does that make you want to do. How do you think the other people felt in that situation.

Take your time. We can wait. We’ve got all the time we need.

Even Steve got himself mixed up with one of those groups. This was, what, ten years back, longer than that. Don’t matter now. Turned out he was taking it one day at a time before he hardly even knew what was happening. Ended up going dry for a year almost. This was a while back, now.

Didn’t seem to be any harm going dry just for a day, and that woman seemed impressed. What was her name. Marianne. Michelle. Marie, Marie. Worked in the charity shop attached to the project and kept encouraging him to go back to the group. I’m really impressed, Steve. Really. I’m proud of you. All that.

Didn’t seem any harm going dry for the day and sitting in that group while the rest of them shared whatever it was they wanted to share and he just sat there and kept his mouth shut.

No harm except it was a bloody nightmare, the sweats and the shakes and the screaming bloody headaches but even they dropped off after a while.

One day at a time, and to be honest it was nice when that Marie in the shop said I am impressed. And then saying Do you want to come and work in the shop sometimes, Steve, it’ll give you something to do. Weren’t really a proper job to be fair, he didn’t get paid and all he had to do was mooch around in the back room sorting donations and packing boxes and nipping out into the yard every five minutes for a smoke. Marie nipping out too when the shop was quiet. And one thing leads to another and he’s telling her all about his time in the army. The Falklands, and Northern Ireland, and the so-called easy posts in Germany and Cyprus and the rest. She asked him what happened to his hand, the way it was all curled up like that, and he said Ah now Marie that would be telling.

Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the group. Well, no there isn’t as a matter of fact. If I told you half this stuff you’d have nightmares for a month, or you’d think I was lying and you’d kick me out. Was about all he ever said in that group. My country lied to me and I’d rather not go into it all. I’d rather not share all that with the group, if you don’t mind, he said.

But nipping out to the yard for a smoke, and Marie sitting there on a stack of milk-crates, it seemed like it was all right to tell her. And she didn’t think he was lying or at least she didn’t say so. And one thing leads to another and she starts on about this charity road-trip. The shop had packed up a truck full of kids’ stuff the year before and sent it off to some Romanian orphanage, and this year they were thinking of doing the same only sending it to Bosnia instead.

Bloody Bosnia.

Toys and books and clothes and medical supplies and a whole load of other stuff all packed into the back of a truck, and all they needed now was some crazy bastard to drive it into a war-zone.

Would you happen to know of any crazy bastards? she asked him. With that way she had of looking at him. Out of the corner of her eye. With a smile hiding round the corner of her mouth.

Well as a matter of fact Marie I believe I do, he said.

Weren’t exactly a war-zone anyway, where they were going. He looked into it a bit, read the news reports, studied the maps. The fighting had finished, if you could call it fighting, what had happened. That was why they were going, there was stuff the people needed there, now the fighting was finished. The kids especially. Loaded up a whole truck full of stuff and then him and some bloke called Patrick set off one morning with maps and phrase books and cigarettes and cash, and the address of a guide to contact when they got there. Couple of photographers watching them go, and Marie waving him off and going Come back safe. Long time since someone had said Come back safe. Weren’t sure if they ever had. Worth it all just to hear that. Was it.

All this waiting though. Still.

Waiting outside the night shelter for them to open the doors. Hanging around for hours to make sure you get your place. Waiting at the walk-in centre to get something sorted, and getting referred on to somewhere else so you can wait a little bit more. Waiting for the chemist to open to get the daily script. Waiting to score when it seems like no cunt can get hold of it, the way it was before Christmas, all of us loading up on jellies and benzos to keep the rattles off. Too much to handle if you score on top of all that and you’re not careful. But careful aint really the point.

Waiting in the corridors at the courthouse for your case to be called. Waiting in the cells. Ben waiting in the cells for three days over Christmas, rattling to fuck in that concrete cube and racing for his dig when they finally let him go.

Or like Sammy, waiting for whatever it is he’s waiting for when he sits in his usual spot by the benches on the corner of Barford Street. Waiting for his beard to grow. Waiting for someone to stop and talk and pass the time of day. Sammy’s been growing that beard since he came down from Glasgow, if anyone’s interested, which no cunt is. Had a few how you say problems and that up there. Connected with woman troubles and money troubles and anyway aren’t they always what’s it the same thing just about all the same. Had to come south and change the old appearance but that’s years back now. And that’s a fact. And now there’s this trouble with the eyes, if anyone’s interested. Which no cunt is. Can’t see a fucking thing and it hurts like nothing else and if you’re waiting for some cunt to take an interest you’ll be waiting a long time.

Waiting by the phonebox for some kid on a bike to turn up with the gear. Like Danny there by the phonebox still, the trains rattling past, counting his money and counting it again and striding round in long desperate circles through the ragged grass.

Waiting in the corridors. Like Heather did. And she told them, when they finally called her in, that they should give her a chance, that they should be the ones to wait. I’ll get myself together, she said. I’ll get myself together and I’ll come back, I know I’m not ready now but I’ll get things sorted out. You wait. And the woman said Heather, it’s not a question of waiting. This is a permanent order, do you understand what that means? And Heather said No, you wait, I’ll get it together. I’ll get myself a solicitor. I’ll get it overturned. I’ll never give up hope. I’ll go to the what do you call it the ombudsman.

When was this. Long time ago now. Years. Don’t seem like it. Jesus it don’t seem like it.

She told them to pass that on for her. That she would never give up hope and neither should they. The woman said Heather, please. It’s not a question of waiting. It’s not a question of hope. This is permanent and irrevocable. Do you understand what that means, the woman said. Like anyone could understand that. Like anyone could sort of get their heads round that. The bloke shuffling all his papers together and going I really don’t think there’s anything else we can do here, I think that’s us done. People slipping out of the room and not looking at her, and the woman going Heather, is there anything else we can get you.

Too right there is love, too fucking right.

Her hair falling hotly down the back of her neck, gathered in a handful held away from her head, hoping for a breeze to blow down and cool her skin. But there’s nothing. No movement. No sound. Waiting in the long corridor for a door to open and her name to be called.

Waiting here now for all our names to be called.

Mike. Heather. Danny. Ben. Steve. Ant. Here we all are now.

Present and correct.

Waiting at the checkpoint for the policeman to give him back his passport. On that empty road in the Bosnian hills somewhere. If he was even a policeman. The valley falling away to one side. Gorse bushes and stunted pine trees and the smell of sunbaked rock. Patrick jigging his legs up and down and Steve telling him to calm down and shut up and calm down. The guide sitting between them silently, his eyes lowered. The two policemen talking together by the side of the road, kicking loose stones away down the hillside, flicking through the pages of his passport one more time and glancing up at him. One of them making a big show of patting his pockets before stepping over to the truck and calling up through the window. Cigarettes? My friend, cigarettes? The heat in that cab, the windows wound right down but no breeze blowing through and the sweat streaming down them all. Reaching under his seat for another packet of cigarettes and tossing them down to the policeman. If he was a policeman.

And talking to the others in the cracked gloom of Robert’s flat. Listen to this though I’ll tell you something. This was when. Not long ago. Years after it happened. Raising his voice against the music racket going off in the kitchen. Mike and some other kid going out into the hallway and not listening at all. Robert only half looking at him and Heather saying Go on Stevo I’m listening. Bristol John shouting on about someone nicking his lighter, going Where’s me bastard lighter now then. The front door banging open and closed, open and closed. A smell like pear drops coming from the kitchen, and Ben charging in and out of the room, Bristol John saying It’s all right I was fucking sitting on it weren’t I, and Heather saying Go on Stevo I’m waiting, I’m listening.

So then this policeman blows a big cloud of smoke up into the air and says Where you want go? Which he knew already. He’d asked them twice, he’d seen their documents and everything. It was just part of the power game. The games you play when you’re holding the cards. When you’re holding the guns. Just like when we were in Northern Ireland. It’s all the bloody same. Patrick still jigging his leg up and down and the two of them running with sweat and the guide still not saying a thing. And the policeman says You open the truck, you show me what you have. Please, you show us now. So then all three of them climb down and open the doors of this hired white truck. On this hot afternoon in the middle of Bosnia. What were they doing in bloody Bosnia. The two policemen looking through the pallets of blankets, the cases of medical supplies, the shoeboxes donated by the shop’s customers who’d filled each one with a handful of games and toys. Pencils, crayons, notebooks, tennis balls, gloves, chocolate bars, action figures, wind-up cars and finger puppets and yo-yos and balls of string. A snow-globe of Big Ben with a red London bus which vanished in a swirl of snow flakes when Steve held it up and shook it for the policeman’s benefit. Like, There you go boss, are you happy now. All the work it had taken to get this lot together, to hire the truck and pay for the fuel and drive all the way over there, and now these two jokers were tearing into it all, emptying out the boxes, helping themselves to a few of the things that took their fancy, toys and crayons and balloons. For their own children it must have been, Steve thought. And then they climb out, and Patrick shuts the door, and the policemen give them back their passports. And then they all just stand there. The guide isn’t saying anything. He’s shaking. Just, bloody, shaking. There’s no other traffic on the road. It’s not even a road, it’s just a line of gravel and crushed rock winding up round the hill, and somewhere over the hill is this place they’re trying to get to. So then the policeman says.

Heather hardly even awake and Steve still telling the story. Bristol John looking up suddenly and going What’s that fucking smell. What the fuck is that fucking smell now. Standing up and patting his trousers and touching the lino and going Oh fuck it I’m wet, looking down at Heather and going Heather you stupid cow, what you done? Heather looking up at him, and looking down at herself, and people coming in from the kitchen to see what’s going on. Cheering, laughing. Heather pulling herself to her feet, falling down, getting up again. Going Oh fuck now look what I’ve gone and done. Going I thought I already went for a piss, I thought I didn’t need to go again. Looking at Steve and going My cunt lied to me. Cracking and wheezing with laughter, and going I didn’t think I needed to go for a piss but my cunt lied to me. Everyone shouting with laughter.

What were they even doing in bloody Bosnia.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the group. Take your time. We can wait. Perhaps you’d like to explore some of the emotions generated by this episode. Or perhaps you’d like to keep your mouth shut and your arms folded until the time’s up and you can get your script. Keep your eyes on the clock. And the stone tiles. And the deep stainless-steel sinks.

I don’t know Father, do you think He believes in you.

Mike waiting in a room with one of those therapy blokes or doctors one time. Exploring the issues and all that. Going I wouldn’t mind it that much though la, that’s not the problem. Straight up, I don’t think I’d even have mental-health problems in the first place if the voices were just a bit nicer to me, you know what I’m saying?

Waiting for the gear to cool in the syringe, and peeling back your clothes to find the vein. Stroking the skin on your arms, running cold steady fingers down the pulsing cords of your neck. Easing your trousers down and spreading your legs to find the bruised and scabbing entry-wounds along your fem. There, or there, or there. Hushed and holding your breath.

Waiting to feel the gear hit home, those long seconds between sticking in the pin and the gear doing what it does to your body and your brain and whatever else, your, fucking, soul. Waiting for all that pain to just get taken away. Wiped away, washed away. Or waiting for the meth to seep into you and get rid of that rattling for a few hours more, get rid of all the things that come up on you with the sickness. To hold you for the few hours while you work on getting sorted again. To keep the troubles away. The fucking troubles. The things that come to mind when you’d rather they didn’t come to mind, certain things. Certain things which if you’re not careful they all come pouring out the same way your guts come pouring out when you get sick, when you go too long without getting sorted. Comes pouring out of you. When you’d rather it didn’t. When you’d rather none of it came to mind.

Waiting outside the chemist’s all them mornings, Mike and Danny and Heather and Laura and Bristol John, Stevie, Maggie, Ben, necking our little paper cups of meth, draining the thick green syrup and licking our lips and Mike going Eh now if it weren’t for this stuff there’d be a what’s it called, a like uprising or insurrection or something you know what I’m saying.

It’s the opium of the masses is what it is pal.

Steve wasn’t bothered but he waited a while before he talked to Heather again. Bang out of line what she said and there was no call for it. Waited a while before he went round there or he talked to her again. Didn’t bother him. But it was one reason why he weren’t there for the Christmas dinner with the others. Plus it was something else. Waiting for Ant, for what Ant was cooking up.

Sausages wrapped in bacon and roast parsnips and proper horseradish sauce. Don’t sort of get to eat proper horseradish sauce that often. Steve would have loved it. So why didn’t Heather notice when he wasn’t there. Or did she. Always been there before.

Robert would have loved it but he’d never been there for years. Never left his flat for years had he. Too scared of something. Of what. Of having his flat repossessed while he was gone was it. Thought as long as he stayed put they couldn’t do nothing. Said it was all he had left and he’d fight anyone for it.

They never even tried though did they but. Must have been getting enough housing off him or something. Or must have just forgot or lost his file down the back of the desk or something.

And all the presents they gave out at the Christmas dinner, all the decorations. All the volunteers down there and it all just makes Boxing Day even worse.

Jesus. Boxing Day. One day of the year makes you miss a family no matter what. Cold and quiet outside, everywhere closed, quiet like a fucking grave. And all the lights on in the houses. And all the houses full of people sleeping it off in armchairs with plates of leftovers spread around the room and their families close by all around them. The day centre all closed up and you realise the day before was just pretend, just another fucking pantomime.

Round about then that Steve hooked up with Ant. After that business with Heather. Found him on the wasteground behind the day centre when they were all waiting for it to open one morning, helped him out and they ended up both sorting a new place to stay.

And then Ant sorted him out in turn. When Robert was waiting for someone to come back and find him that’s where he was, watching Ant cooking up something new.

That’s where we all were, when it comes down to it.

Except Laura. Where was she. In the back of that taxi and going where. Going to rehab, Danny says. Out to the country.

Fucking, ombudsman.

The doctor or whoever going Mike, perhaps when you feel the need to communicate with these voices.

That poster they always have up at these therapy places, going For all its drudgery and fucking sham this is still a whatever.

This huge stretch of wasteground covered in weeds and flowers and trees and piles of rubble. Like a bloody nature reserve or something, birds and butterflies and all that and when you’re out in the middle of it you can’t hardly hear the traffic. Good place to go drinking. Steve walking through there for a piss one morning and near enough fell over this lad just lying there looking up at the sky. This was Ant. Steve asked him if he was all right down there, and the lad nodded, and Steve said Right then and went off for his piss. Hadn’t even finished when Ant goes Actually can you help us out though marra?

And what about the rest of us, when Robert was lying there waiting for help. Or when he, what was it. Like Ben. When he got out of the cells and he could have gone straight up there could he. But he was looking for Mike. He was looking for anyone. Looking for some way of scoring as quick as he could, fucking rattling and cramping all over, running doubled-up through the streets like he was ducking for cover. Where was Laura then, when he wanted to find her. Wanted some company. Always looking for company. But there weren’t no one around, it seemed like. When he got out of the cells. This was, what, day after Boxing Day it must have been, or the day after that. No one around. Like some kind of ghost-town and that. Reminded him of something, reminded him of that time he got back from school and the people who ran the children’s home had like done one and there was just these social workers there going Ah, now, Benjamin, the thing is there’s a small problem here. A few issues. What were they called. Bradshaw. Mark and Susie. Call me Mark. They’d taken loads of stuff out of everyone’s rooms while they were at school and fucked off to Spain or Portugal or somewhere. Call me Mark, call me Susie. Fucked off because it turned out some other kids who’d been there before had been talking about what had supposedly happened to them, some kind of interfering and all that. And these social workers had taken them all off to a bunch of other children’s homes, asking them all these questions, going Don’t worry now if there’s anything you need to talk to us about. Going Did they ever make you feel uncomfortable, Benjamin, did they ever ask you to, all that.

Got out the cells and there weren’t no one around. But he found a dealer he knew, got himself a bag, got himself off down the carpark basement which was the closest place he could find to cook up and he was pretty fucking desperate by then.

And how long had Ant been lying on his back in that wasteground, waiting for someone to come by and help. All night it must have been. Spent the evening drinking with some kids he didn’t know, and when he woke up they’d all gone and they’d taken his crutches with them. Couldn’t get far without them. Couldn’t get nowhere but. So he’d stayed where he was, and waited. He’d done it before like. What else could he do. Watched the stars going out above him, the sky going purple as the night drained away out of it, the sun breaking into the morning from somewhere in the corner of his eye. Weeds and flowers coming into focus, dew forming on petals and leaves. A spider stringing up a web between two thistle stems. Moths and bees spilling out into the day. Weren’t all that bad a place to have spent the night. Bit cold though but. Bit boring after a while.

And then there was Steve, looking down at him, the glare of the sun behind his head and his knob already poking out of his trousers. Great big-bellied sod with his ruined hand hanging by his side and his eyes all screwed up with drink and confusion.

Like some kind of saviour but.

The two of them hobbling out of there, Ant’s arm around Steve’s shoulder and Steve’s arm around Ant’s waist and Ant hopping along the trodden-down path. Looking like brothers in arms or some bollocks like that. Talking all the way to the day centre. Looking like a couple of kids in a three-legged race. I did have a peg-leg but would you credit I managed to lose it, Ant said. He was on the waiting list for another one but he was going to have to go back to his home town for it and it was taking him a while to deal with a few like situations. Like someone nicking his crutches the night before, for one.

His empty trouser leg hanging and swinging like a long wet rag.

Soon found out they’d both been in the army. Ant had only done a couple of years but that was good enough for Steve. Hadn’t even been out long. Went to Afghanistan, he said, Helmand. Came back without firing a shot.

The clock on the wall pointing almost to morning now and our waiting coming to an end. Robert somewhere behind those doors. Boxes of gloves on shelves along the wall. Deep stainless-steel sinks. Voices somewhere in the building, laughter, doors opening and closing. Someone saying We’ll be bringing that big one through this morning. All of us here, standing or sitting or leaning against the wall, still waiting. It’s something we know how to do. Something we’ve had the practice at. We’ve got the time. All the time in the world.

Steve waited a few weeks before asking Ant what had happened to his leg. Waited until they’d sorted out a new place to stay, got it cleaned up and settled in. Told him about Port Stanley again, and about going to Bosnia although he left out all the stuff about what was her name, Maria, Martina, Marie. Marie. Got to the bit where the policeman shut the doors of the truck again, and gave them back their passports, and said So, now, where you want go?

Ant cooking up a big spoonful of gear while Steve told the story, and Steve watching carefully to see what he did. The spoon, the filter, the water, the citric, the handful of wrapped needles and syringes. More complicated than I thought, he said, and Ant only nodded, concentrating.

So we told him the name of the town again, Steve said, and this policeman just shook his head. Just like that. Looked off down the valley and shook his head. And he goes, No, no. You do not go there. You can not.

Ant looked at him, holding the syringe up to the light and tapping the barrel as he eased a single drop of liquid from the needle’s eye.

And then, Steve said, then this policeman goes No. You do not go. There is nothing for you there. There, even the dogs are dead. Ant shuffled across the floor, rolled up Steve’s sleeve, and looped a belt around his arm. Steve watched him. Even the bloody dogs, he said, shaking his head.

Ant looked up at him, stroking the pale skin on Steve’s inner elbow, and pressed the needle against the thin blue line of his vein, and just before he pushed it in Steve said, like to distract himself, What about you mate? What happened to your leg? Ant smiled, and slowly pushed the plunger down, and Steve didn’t say any more.

Didn’t have to wait long to find out what all the fuss was about. Like being wrapped up warmer and warmer and warmer. Like being cocooned in blankets and silk. Like more than any of these things. Like being held.

We stand, and we sit, and we lean against the wall. We wait. What else can we do. We look at the clock, and we see its hands stretch towards the morning. We hear footsteps, and the jangle of keys. The door is unlocked and opened, and the lights are turned on, and the room fills with people.

Ant knows about waiting though but. We see him now, we look and we see him now, waiting for help, bleeding into the silenced ground, lying in a field beside a road with the plants flattened beneath him as if he’d fallen from the sky. None of the pain he would have expected. Not yet. None of the screaming and panic and flailing around for something to be done. Only this whispering numbness, this stunned state in which it takes him a moment to understand where he is. To understand that some homemade bomb has thrown their Land Rover into the air, has blown another hole in the road, has probably killed one or more of his mates and done who knows what to him. Lifted him from the surface of the earth and hurled him down into this field of waist-high stalks. The flower heads looking down at him where he lies, waiting. For someone to come. For some sensation to come seeping back into his body. The tips of his fingers, the ends of his toes. The blue sky. The poppies. The nodding poppy heads. The smell of smoke, and burning, and hot, baked earth. The sounds coming back with a rush, like he was being lifted from water. Gunfire, and shouts, and heavy bootsteps across the dry soil. Faces over him, helmeted faces, and bodies dangling with equipment, and then hands upon him, searching him, cutting away his clothes, touching his face. Hands which come away from his body covered in blood. Gloved hands. Voices telling him he’s going to be okay. Voices telling him they’re going to get him out of there. Voices asking where the bloody helicopter is, where the hell those bastards are now. Someone saying they were giving him a shot of morphine to keep him going until the helicopter arrived. And everything then okay but. The fading away of the gunfire, and of everything else.

The many hands holding him tight and holding him warm and holding him safe above the good dark earth. We see the poppy heads, nodding and bowing in the breeze. We see the farmers coming to inspect their crops, walking slowly through the planted lines, treading on fallen petals, checking the curling crowns of the ripening pods. We see the farmers returning in the mid-afternoon to score shallow wounds in each pod and let the milk-white sap seep out into the warming sun, and harden and cool until the farmers come back and scrape blisters of blackened gum into tin cans dangling from their necks. As he lies there watching, waiting but. We see the gum scooped out of the tin cans and wrapped in leaves and laid out to dry in the sun, and pressed into dung-like lumps which are sold for good money to men who come rattling into the valley in old Russian saloons with loose floor panels which open up to swallow the merchandise and go clattering away again into the hills. The sound of the helicopters in the distance. The cars grinding over the mountain passes and turning off the road by an old hill-trail, the men slinging the black opium lumps into bags across their shoulders and walking a few miles to a pair of old iron shacks beneath an overhanging rock, where boys stripped to the waist are tending fires and oil-drums and squatting over fat sack-cloth bundles which ooze dark stains into the earth. We see the banked fires beneath the oil-drums burning all through the night, the boys stirring the mixture and scooping out twigs and soil and leaves. Other boys hoisting bags of fertiliser into the drums, stirring it up and straining the mixture through rice sacks and into vast cooking pots placed over other, smaller fires. More chemicals, more straining and pressing and stirring, as dawn lights up the horizon and an oily dark gunge is spread out to dry in the rising sun. Strange light falling through the fields. Golden light. Faces set against the sky and the sound of a helicopter somewhere and a voice saying Hang in there, pal, you’ll be all right. Boys’ voices chattering on in some language like Afghanistani or whatever it is, boiling up a kettle of tea and chewing on handfuls of bread, pressing the coffee-coloured powder into brick-shaped blocks the size of those pocket-dictionaries the officers use when they’re out in the villages winning hearts and minds. Or maybe the size of those fat satellite phones they use for calling down airstrikes but.

The poppy heads swaying suddenly in a strong breeze, pressing themselves flat to the ground as if ducking for cover, and the helicopter suddenly dropping out of the sky. Like a what like a fucking like a black mother goose but. What were they even doing in bloody Helmand. And all the warm hands lifting him through the air, over the field, into the belly of the mother, and the mother lifting high over the landscape, over the fields and the mountains and the roads and trails which wind almost invisibly through the valleys and passes, over the rock-sheltered pair of shacks where the bare-chested boys are bundling up dozens of paper-bound powder bricks and loading them on to dust-coloured mules who wait patiently in the midday heat before setting off in long ambling trains through the hills. And the mules keep walking steadily for days, guided by young boys who run and scramble alongside, waving sticks and shouting high-pitched commands which vanish into specks of sound no bigger than the distant birds of prey which spiral high above them, following the shape of sunlight and shadow across the valley each morning until a small group of canvas-draped shacks comes into sight around the last corner and a man ducks out through a low doorway, pulling a scarf down from his mouth and welcoming the boys, offering them tea, shaking their hands like men and already moving towards the mules to untether their loads. Behind him, inside the shacks, other men are crouched over pots and pestles and fires, pounding the pressed bricks back into dust and mixing the dust with vinegar, heating it over low fires before adding water and charcoal and washing soda, cooling and reheating and steaming the solution, passing it through filters and steambaths and pipes until finally a bright white powder begins to form in the bottom of a broad flat pan, and is carefully warmed and scraped and lifted out on to sheets of paper to dry. And by the time the powder is poured into clear plastic bags and weighed and sealed, the boys and their light-footed mules are halfway home, their pockets fat with money and their talk full of what they will do with it, the things they will buy their families and the savings they will put towards a scrap of land on which to grow poppies of their own, while somewhere overhead Ant still lies in the belly of the helicopter as it clatters over the landscape, angry and low, its shadow rising and falling as he looks up at the faces around him and feels the warm embrace of the morphine flooding through his broken body while men with headscarves and rifles and rucksacks full of heroin scramble over the hidden mountain passes which cross the border into Iran, making their way down to the roads where convoys of Toyota pickups are waiting to race across the plains towards the city, tensed for battle against the government soldiers who are waiting for them, soldiers who are now checking their weapons and sipping mint tea, listening to the evening’s briefing, watching the sun dip behind the mountains and wondering again why they would sacrifice their lives to interrupt this unstoppable flow of wealth passing through their land on its way to the marketplaces and backrooms of the city, to be packed and weighed and repacked and sold on to other traders, other smugglers, other men with weapons and suitcases and armoured cars who will take the cargo on through the fields and deserts towards the west, to the Turkish border and far beyond, while they stay here and watch the sun dip behind the mountains, and listen to the evening’s briefing, and watch through night-vision binoculars as shimmering Toyota pickups come racing towards them from out of the moss-green fearful dark.

The same darkness from which the helicopter drops down into Camp Bastion, resting lightly on the ground for a moment while the many hands carry Ant out into the warm dusty air and across the concrete, the helicopter already falling away into the sky overhead as he’s taken through to a spotless operating theatre where the scrubbed-up surgeons are waiting with forceps and scissors and an electrical saw. And as they pour more drugs in through the hole in his arm, pushing him over the edge into a deep dark painless sleep, he sees, in a single whirling moment, what we all can see: this strange journey the seeping poppy gum takes across continents, from an Afghan field to an English city street, carried by mules and men and pickup trucks, through shacks and labs and mountain passes, across borders, through hotel rooms and teashops and dark-windowed cars, stuffed into bags and suitcases and petrol tanks, coffee jars, coal sacks, butcher’s vans, freight containers, arseholes and vaginas and crudely stitched wounds, forced in and out of desperate bodies, glued in under wigs and false beards and fake-pregnant bellies, squeezing into Europe through the narrow gateway of Istanbul and on through the transit routes of Kosovo and Macedonia and Bosnia, bloody Bosnia, shipments bought and sold by men with dark glasses at café tables looking over the sea, suitcases of money changing hands in backrooms and bathrooms, arguments settled by fists and knives and boys with borrowed pistols buzzing past on scooters, the cargo gathering weight and value and bloody narrative as it hurtles on through Italy and Germany and Holland and Belgium and France. And as Ant rumbles his way home in the hold of a Hercules, his leg cut down to a bandaged stump, he flies over an English Channel across which the heroin shipments are pouring, in fishing boats and yachts and speeding cruisers, in light aircraft, in the distended stomachs of human mules pacing uncomfortably up and down the decks of passenger ferries, in the backs of container lorries bringing the stuff in by the tonne to be driven on to warehouses and safehouses across the country, weighed and cut and bagged again on kitchen tables and workshop benches, sold on and split and sold on again, broken down into smaller and smaller batches until a bald-headed man in a baggy tracksuit gets out of a BMW on the Milton Estate, jogs up the concrete stairs of a towerblock to the ninth floor, knocks twice on the steel door, and walks in past a young man in a baseball cap who nods and closes the door behind him. And a few minutes later a boy in a grey hooded top comes out of the same stairwell carrying a bike, and rides off down the hill towards the railway sidings, down past the police station and the hospital, over the canal and under the motorway and around the roundabout to the Miller’s Arms and the phoneboxes where Danny still waits, tutting at the damp ragged note Danny hands him and circling around on his bike before flicking a bag into the long grass and pedalling away up the hill, looking once over his shoulder to see Danny scrabbling across the ground for the gear and shutting himself in the phonebox with Einstein still jumping around outside, laying out his works on the crooked metal shelf and trying to keep his sweating shaking hands even a little bit still while he cooks up a fix in a blackened spoon, too much, holding his breath as he jabs the needle into the filter and draws up the coffee-coloured juice, too much, he knows it’s too much or he thinks it might be but so what he wants to make sure, so what he doesn’t care, pulling down his soiled trousers without waiting for it to cool and poking a new hole through the scabbing wound over his fem pushing in deeper in and feeling for the vein feeling for the blood feeling the pain the good pain that means he’ll be well soon that all shall be well and he draws back the syringe a little to see the blood from the vein to be sure he’s got the right place but there’s nothing there there’s nothing there he moves the needle he takes it out and puts it in and takes it out and puts it in and there’s nothing there so he pulls it right out and wipes it clean on his sleeve and turns to the window and uses the dark night as a mirror to focus in on his neck he clenches his jaw to make the veins stand out he chooses a vein and watches closely in the darkly lit glass and pushes the needle in to a good new vein a clean vein the blood billowing back into the syringe and he eases the plunger down down down and feels the gear charging through his body’s borders around his bloodstream through his heart and his lungs and his brain and it feels good good good he feels well again he feels whole again he feels sorted at last he feels what he feels warm and clean and wrapped up in silk and tissue and cotton wool he feels the way he felt when he first began he leans his face against the cold dark glass and looks out at the city at the lights at the passing cars the passing trains the orange-bellied clouds and the black star-pierced sky a flock of pigeons silhouetted against the neon walls of the shopping centre in the valley and he drops the needle to the floor and presses his hands to the cold glass and slides to the floor and curls up on the floor all this shall pass and he waits for all this to pass.