Those heady days when they were first in love, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She’d tried the birth control pill but the side effects, the bloated feeling, the tension and PMT were dreadful. At the family planning clinic they said she could use a different brand or the Dutch cap but she thought that was just too messy, and she didn’t want to stop each time and put it in, so eventually she opted for a coil. It would allow her to be spontaneous, just as the pill had, to respond whenever he reached for her.
She passed her exams, just, and made it through to the second year and she’d moved into a room in Don’s shared house. It was a way of living together without upsetting their parents.
Don was right, medical school had not got any easier, but the painkillers sorted out her headaches and she was sleeping better, she was less anxious. Sometimes it was still hard to concentrate but she didn’t get all in a state about it. They were both working flat out but there were always uppers available if they needed a kickstart for a party at the end of a long week.
Don had the constitution of an ox, no matter how much he drank or what he took, he’d wolf down a full English breakfast and coffee and aspirin and be ready for anything. Norma couldn’t stomach food on those mornings, she would take more tablets and drink some water and do her best to sleep the day away. If she did try and face the world she felt queasy and shaken as though some terrible thing had happened and she was partly to blame. It fuelled her anxiety so it was best to hide away. She would emerge at teatime, finally ready for a plate of macaroni cheese or liver and onions or whatever Don had thrown together. Usually Norma cooked, her mother had taught her, though it was important to make things she could do quickly with the burden of work still so heavy. And they could only afford cheap cuts. Don had a full grant, Norma’s parents gave her a modest allowance and they tried to live within their means.
Don was very protective of her. When one of the other housemates, a boy from Liverpool, referred to her as ‘the Duchess’ on account of her accent and the fact that her family were comfortably off, Don had said, ‘Her name is Norma.’ And his tone was so cold and firm that Robbie, who could be quite argumentative, simply held up his hands and muttered, ‘Fine by me, kiddo.’
There was a photograph she remembered from that time. Don’s 21st. Most people celebrated their 18th by that time and Don had done, at home, but he wanted to celebrate this time, just with friends. They had a house party. Someone’s girlfriend took a photo early on. Robbie made some punch, which had Norma squiffy after one glass. The housemates posed in the back garden, Norma in the centre, Don and Robbie either side of her and the other two girls on either edge. Norma looked like a doll next to Don, pale even though it was summertime. She never could take the sun, went red and peeled if she tried to. Her hair was silver blonde, her head reached his chest. She sometimes wondered if Don’s desire to support and defend her came from the fact that she was so petite. If he had been shorter or she’d been taller or less slender would he still have treated her like that? Or would he have done that for anyone he loved?
And now – where was he now? How could he just leave her like this? How would she survive? Norma felt despicable, the shame hot in her guts because when the police told her he was dead, her first thought was not for Don – she didn’t think about what might have happened to him or if he had suffered – but for herself. What it meant for her. She was so selfish. But how would she cope without him? It was impossible. She pushed the thought away and went in search of solace. Something medicinal, she thought, tears standing in her eyes, for the shock.
For the shock.
Chapter 8
It had all seemed to happen so quickly, she thought, as Adele went over and over the sequence of events during the day after the inquest: Marcie changing from a goofy twelve-year-old who liked baking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and hanging around the Arndale Centre with her mates from school, to a sulky, withdrawn girl who was out all hours and bunking off.
It was Howard who first called it. Adele thought it was teenage rebellion (and maybe that was part of it) and that after a few months of back-chat and door slamming and sleepless nights for Adele, Marcie would re-emerge but as soon as money started disappearing from his wallet and Adele’s purse Howard realized. ‘She’s using it for drugs,’ he said.
‘No way. She’d never touch them, she doesn’t even smoke,’ said Adele, who couldn’t kick her own fifteen-a-day habit. ‘You’re wrong.’
They’d confronted Marcie who had sworn on her grandma’s grave that she’d never touched any drugs or taken any money and had flounced out of the house.
Adele was wild with anxiety. She looked up help lines and advice services, all the while thinking maybe Howard was mistaken. Then the police came round. Marcie had been caught breaking into a car.
It was all downhill after that.
Those endless nights, lying awake, Adele kept imagining her hurt or being hurt, nodding off in some filthy rat hole or freezing to death in a shop doorway. Some nights they’d go out looking for her, driving around, a blanket and a thermos for her in the back.
They found her a couple of times and persuaded her to come home. And the next time Marcie left, something else would be missing, jewellery, mobile phone, DVDs – anything portable she could sell.
The hardest thing was Marcie’s point blank refusal to talk about what was happening, to admit that was a problem, to accept that she was an addict. Smelling dirty and with her face all spots and scabs, she’d eat sugar by the spoonful, half a bag at a time. She was skin and bone in a few short months. There was sometimes a moment when Adele caught sight of the girl beneath all this, a glint of mischief in her gaze, but most of the time the habit seemed to swallow Marcie whole.
Adele was frantic to help but could see no way. If she’d had more money she could’ve paid for the stuff herself, rationing it out, so at least the stealing and lying and run-ins with the police wouldn’t happen.
The spectre of prostitution hovered close by. Adele didn’t know if Marcie was already embroiled in that but knew that it came with the territory. Prostitution, AIDS, homelessness, overdoses.
Don’t give them money, that was what all the charities said, money will go straight to the addiction. It doesn’t help. Not the answer.
‘What’s it like?’ Adele asked her one evening. Marcie was getting jittery. Adele could see it in the way her eyes swung about, the muscles jumping under her skin. ‘What does it feel like, the heroin?’
Marcie waited a moment, mouth open, finding the words, then said, ‘Heaven.’ And a look of lust and longing filled her eyes.
‘What it does to you, what it’s doing…’
Marcie shivered and scratched her neck. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said.
‘Maybe not,’ Adele said, her voice rising, ‘but what I do get is that you can’t carry on like this, babe. It’ll kill you. Don’t go out,’ she had begged later, ‘I’ll sit up with you.’
The next time Howard had seen Marcie on his way home from work, begging. The building was in a row that had been waiting years for redevelopment. Boards over the windows, grass in the guttering, pigeons on the roof. The place was freezing cold, the stones glistening damp, a smell of wet earth and human mess. Marcie was filthy, dirt ingrained in her hands, pin thin arms livid with sores and needle marks.
Adele had thought that was the lowest point. To see Marcie had started injecting now, that the high couldn’t come fast enough or go deep enough.
They had brought her home, stuck her in the shower, given her clean clothes, fed her Coco Pops and toast and drinking chocolate. Adele slept with her purse under the pillow. Twelve hours later Marcie had gone again.