Chapter 13
Leo
I tiptoe into my room and close the door, bag of frozen peas in hand.
I eat one.
Breakfast.
I eat a few more. The way the cold bursts onto my tongue is heaven. A bit bitty though. I spit. Green dribble runs down my chin.
If they find out about last night, I’m fucked.
I know that I slept in a bush, because I woke up in it.
This was actually the right thing to do.
I couldn’t be seen like that inside the halfway house.
That was good thinking. I would congratulate my last-night’s brain, but I don’t think it really deserves it.
Because I’m remembering more things now.
I remember losing all the ice, and not having any G.
Sam and his weird little mate not letting me in.
I remember Brick and his fucking brick. I remember the smell of a car, vanilla air-freshener and brand-new leather.
A woman. Scared. The bush. It stank. I’m pretty sure someone had thrown up in it before I made it my bed.
I came inside about seven, on the change of shift, which was also correct because no one saw.
I’m telling myself no one saw.
Pepper spray? Jesus. At least I still have my phone, and I can see now, even though it stings like sand has been whipped into my eyes from a windy day on a shitty British beach.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror above the sink in my room, the image clear as day. My face is distorted, like a Picasso. But it wasn’t done by Picasso. It was done by a man named Brick.
He tried his best, didn’t he? Fuck me. Swelling has gone down a little though.
I found the peas in the freezer in the communal kitchen.
I can feel them going soft as I clench the bag in my sweaty palm.
My face isn’t as fat, but it is red. I have some make up that I keep for bruises and stuff, but I’m pretty sure it’ll just get congealed in the cuts.
My face isn’t the thing that hurts, not really.
In moments like this, of which there are many, the anxiety is what gets me.
I feel like pulling my insides out through my throat.
It tries to eat me alive. It’s trying now.
Wants to throttle me with its spindly witch fingers, as it digs its claws so deeply into my skin that I keep scratching my neck.
It wants to pull me down into the sink and hold me under.
It says things, too, sometimes. Aren’t you ready? It’s nice and quiet under the surface.
Is it possible to throw yourself up? I stick my fingers down my throat.
I don’t come up.
I retch though, and it hurts my head, a deep and sharp throb emanating out from the centre of my mangled, idiotic brain. There is a remedy. And no, it’s not meditation.
I have two cans left, hidden somewhere in a bag by a tree near the bus stop, which I’ll get later.
But for now I’ve got to pull it together without my medicine.
I scramble in my pocket for the snapped ciggy I had yesterday, gathering up as much of the tobacco bits as I can find – clumped into the creases of my pocket – pour them into a rizla, roll it and open the window.
I light the end and half of it disintegrates with the flame, but I have enough for a few drags.
This isn’t gonna be an easy one to get out of. There are rules here, see.
Any fuckery, and you’re out, and I can’t be out.
I need to come up with some excuse, pronto.
I’ll butter up the staff, make them believe me.
I was on my way back from the cinema. Someone attacked me.
They can’t disagree with that. Just need to pull on their heartstrings.
I tried running, but I was too tired – too weak – from the detox.
I’m good at that bit. Manipulation. But it’s the breathalyser I’m worried about. They do it randomly.
‘Leo?’
‘Hey!’
Here she is, the morning nurse doing the register, like I’m back at school. They do this every morning, to check we are in, to check we are dressed and looking after our personal hygiene, to check we are sober, to check we are following our treatment plans.
‘Yeah?’ I shout back through the door, chucking the fag butt out the window, wafting the air around me, trying to draw some of the fresh stuff inside, only to really disperse the smoke more into the room.
‘Night shift said you didn’t come in before curfew.’ It’s Kerry. I like Kerry, she doesn’t give me grief. Just gives me my meds and leaves me to it. Doesn’t try to have any meaningful therapeutic interaction bollocks, like some of the others do.
‘Huh? I texted them.’
‘No, you didn’t.’ She’s good though. Good at her job. Which is one thing I don’t like about her.
‘Shit, sorry – I meant to’ I close the window and resort to hoping for the best. She won’t come in until I say she can.
‘You’ll be breathalysed today. You know the rules.’
Fuck. ‘Sure.’
‘You going to a meeting?’
‘Course.’
‘Good. Do you want your meds now, or after breakfast?’
Double fuck. The Antabuse will actually make me vomit – it’ll only be bile – and then she’ll know.
It makes you chuck up when there’s alcohol in your system and there is no way around it.
I came off the Librium two weeks ago at the detox place, so that one’s done, but there are others: thiamine shit, folic acid shit, shit to make my abscess better, shit to help the cravings, shit to help me shit, and then the pills for my head.
Mirtazapine. Citalopram. Fluoxetine. Can’t remember which one I’m on now.
At least no antipsychotics this time. Those ones made my dick shrivel up like a sad little leech.
The doctor at the detox broke my dick to fix my head.
I said they’re linked. My dick and my happiness.
‘Kerry?’
‘Yes, Leo.’
‘I was attacked last night.’
In the pause that happens outside the door, I know she’s either shaking her head or rubbing her eyes. At least she can. ‘For God’s sake, Leo. Let me take a look.’
See? She doesn’t question me. Not yet.
‘OK.’
I quickly scrub my tongue with hand soap, so she isn’t greeted by the smell of booze.
When I unlock the door, the smell I am greeted with is the one from the weird brown carpet lining the corridor, which hangs somewhere between boiled cabbage and utter hopelessness.
It hits me before her reaction to my face does.
She raises her eyebrows, eyes wide. I can tell she thinks it looks bad.
‘I see’ is all she says.
‘Nah, it’s fine.’
‘Fine?’ Her gaze lingers over my face. She’s trying to see if I’m pissed or high. ‘You look like a crime scene, Leo. I’ll get the first aid box. You might need to go to the hospital.’
‘Wait—’
But she’s gone.
I don’t think she’ll breathalyse me, not yet.
I can work my magic. Convince her. This has worked before.
Yeah, sure, typically with the older male nurses – and I don’t mean to stereotype but it’s an actual fact that most of them are gay – who will wink and say: Well, listen.
Kerry knows I’m gay, but I still think she fancies me.
It’s the idea isn’t it. Someone rotten and rough.
Someone who needs you. And I have been told beneath the chaos there is something going on for me.
Dunno if it’s in my looks right now, but when the charm is really cooking, it distorts people’s view of you. I’ve learnt that a lot.
I step back into my room and wait. It’s tiny in here.
I’m not complaining. Halfway houses are typically scummy as hell and bad, but this time they gave me a dorm of my own.
They said it was because I’m high risk with other people: easily influenced and easily aggravated.
I read that in a report once, which felt like a bit of a contradiction, but it’s true that both of those things live inside me.
I can’t deal with other people. I hate them and need them simultaneously.
But trying to stay dry right next to someone else who is trying to stay dry is the worst of the worst. I had this room-mate once in a sober house – can’t remember when – but he actually was making money by selling mouthwash to the rest of us.
Can’t believe I relapsed off fucking Listerine.
But when you haven’t had alcohol for over two weeks, you can smell it through the mint.
I necked the whole bottle, and he battered me, and then I ended up somewhere south of the river with nothing to my name but fresh breath.
I preferred the streets for a bit. I lived like that for a few months, and it was actually quite cushty.
I found a good shop to sit outside of where the customers had a social conscience.
I’d bat my sad little eyes, and some days make enough for everything.
Drugs, scran, hostel: the entire triple threat.
Getting here has taken time. It’s taken a long time, and I have done well, they told me last week at the detox. I did well there, and I wanted to get sober. You want it this time, don’t you? they kept saying. We can see that. We want to help you. But you have to do your part.
I was trying.
We empathise with everything you have gone through.
I’m very much aware I am not a special case, but something about the way they look at me does make me feel good.
They like having people like me that they can talk about in the office, chatting about all the terrible shit that’s happened, looking through history notes, wanting to be the one who says the thing that changes my life.
I can picture it: when they go home to their families.
There’s this one patient – God, I hope he makes it.
I feel like I made a breakthrough with him today. He’s only twenty-two.
Kinda gross that I like to think they’re doing that. But I think they are.
I heard from one of the other ‘residents’ that it costs something like three hundred quid a night to be here. Not for us to pay. It’s public money or whatever, and I’m not moaning but I’m pretty sure I could get a night in a hotel on the Strand for cheaper. I did suggest that once.