I don’t think things could get much worse.
Could they?
In fact, they could.
As I reach the end of our street and turn into it, I realise that Jay’s standing on the opposite side by the postbox and he’s not alone.
I duck back out of sight and drop down behind a wall.
There’s another boy with him, or more of a young man, really – about twenty or so.
Jay’s got his head hidden beneath his hood and he’s stamping his feet against the cold.
The other guy is fiddling about in his pockets. He glances about and then he passes a small white packet into Jay’s closed fist and mutters something before sloping off out of our street and leaving Jay to walk home alone.
I come back out from my wall and run to catch him up.
‘Hey,’ I pant. ‘Where’ve you been?’
Jay does a shrug that looks a bit like Bindi’s but I ignore it.
‘Shopping?’ I say. I’m not going to let on that I saw him. I want him to tell me about it unprompted.
Jay gives a small snort that may or may not be a laugh, or a cough, or a noise of disgust.
‘Yeah, little sis,’ he says. ‘Shopping. Goodwill to all men and that!’
Then he speeds up and gets home first, with me panting and puffing behind.
Spud is leaning out of Jay’s bedroom window and when she sees him coming she yells down, ‘About time! Get up here!’
He goes straight up to his bedroom and shuts the door.
I know what he’s doing up there and it’s as if the past two years haven’t happened and I’ve rewound back to the time just before he went missing and I burst into his room and first caught him doing it.
I go into my own room and lie on the bed in a haze of misery. Clumps of snow drip off my boots and melt all over the duvet but I don’t care.
I can hear Mum and Dad having some sort of argument downstairs in the kitchen and there’s no smell of cooking so it looks like we’re not getting lunch.
‘Groo,’ I mutter, but it doesn’t even touch how I’m feeling today. I must make up some new Lilah-isms. My old ones are rubbish.
Then my throat feels scratchy and I sneeze.
Oh great. I’ve caught some hideous lurgy just in time for the holidays.
‘Happy Christmas, Lilah,’ I mutter at my grey reflection in the mirror.
I stagger downstairs to join my warring parents.
There’s something I’ve noticed about Spud.
Jay’s always staring at her with this weird look on his face – part awe, part love and part fear.
He gets worried when she’s not around and paces up and down looking out of the window until her tiny frame lopes into sight.
But Spud doesn’t look at Jay that way.
In fact, she spends most of her time glaring, either at me, or at Mum and Dad.
She even made like she was going to kick Benjie once but I threw myself between them and glared at her so hard that she’s never tried to go near him since.
Spud doesn’t seem to notice Jay and he looks really hurt by that. The only time she talks to him is when she’s muttering about where her next fix is coming from and then Mum and Dad try to break it up fast by changing the conversation to something stupid like takeaways or television.
It’s as if Jay thinks that Spud is his girlfriend but she’s got other ideas.
She’s bugging me so much that I do a wicked thing.
I go through her stuff.
She hasn’t got much of it so it doesn’t take long.
There’s a horrid smelly khaki bag that she wears slung over her body in a diagonal line, presumably so that nobody can grab it off her and steal her drugs.
One day I wait until she’s in the bathroom having one of Mum’s suggested baths and I creep into the spare room and pick up the smelly bag.
Ugh.
It feels damp.
I hold my breath and rummage about inside with one hand, trying not to breathe in the odour of cigarettes and stale water and whatever else she’s got in there and I turf out old bus tickets and tiny stubs of squashed lipstick and a selection of needles and bits of old tin foil and then I find her battered mobile phone.
There’s the sound of water running in the bathroom. She’ll be a while.
I click the phone on and press the little envelope that opens the text messages.
There’s a stream of them in the inbox. All from the same person. Some bloke with the lovely name of ‘Rat’.
The very latest message has got today’s date on it. It says:
Miss U. Leave that loser and come back to London. Rx.
I feel my anger boil right up from my feet to my chest in record time.
I fling the phone back into the horrid bag and go off to my room.
I need to think.
That afternoon Mum and Dad decide to summon us to a ‘Family Conference.’
Groo.
We haven’t been called to one of those since before Jay went missing. In the old days the conferences used to be about silly things, like, ‘We need to put a rota in place so that you do your fair share of helping Mum keep the house tidy,’ or, ‘Your great-aunt Hilda has died and we want to discuss what to do with her caravan in Prestatyn.’ Kind of stupid things, but at the time they seemed very important and the four of us would sit round the table for ages making a mixture of silly and sensible suggestions until the conference fell apart and we’d all end up laughing.
I’m not sure there’s going to be too much laughing at this one.
Mum’s got big circles under her eyes again and Dad’s only just got back from an emergency at Morley Zoo so he’s already fraught and rushed and fed up and he somehow looks too big for our small kitchen in his Morley Zoo sweatshirt and combats.
I’m in a foul mood after my visit to Bindi. I keep seeing her cruel eyes and her smug little smile and then the odd vision of lovely Adam Carter floats past it all and I get a pang in my stomach.
I really miss Adam.
We used to have loads of fun.
But it seems like I’ve lost him, Bindi and Jay all at the same time.
Mum puts five mugs of hot chocolate on the kitchen and produces a bag of marshmallows.
I rip the bag open and scatter the mini-pillows all over my drink with enthusiasm. Then I look up and see both Jay and Spud staring at me like I’m some sad freak in a zoo. This is rich, because I’m not the one wearing a stupid woolly bobble-hat indoors. Spud never takes off her hat, I’ve noticed.
I wonder if she’s gone bald from taking drugs? I wonder if that’s possible? I’m just chewing that one over and spooning marshmallows onto my tongue when Dad raps on the table with a spoon and nearly gives me a heart attack.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Family conference time.’
I see Jay look at the kitchen door.
Dad looks at the same time. Then he gets up, produces a key I’ve never seen before in my life, and locks the kitchen door!
‘I didn’t know we had a key for the kitchen door,’ murmurs Mum.
Jay looks over at the window but Dad’s one step ahead of everything today.
‘Double-locked,’ he says. ‘Fat chance, son.’
Jay glowers down at his lap and fiddles with his dirty fingernails.
Spud just laughs. I think she’s enjoying this, from the way she’s staring round at each of us in turn and smiling.
It’s not a pretty smile. It’s a challenging one. I can really imagine Spud toughing it out on the street.
Not like Jay. He’s more fragile.
It’s beginning to make sense to me now. I can see that my big brother’s been led astray by Spud and others like her. He might pretend to be all hard, but I can see that somewhere underneath there might just be a bit of the old, soft Jay left behind.
How do we get it out, though?
‘OK,’ Dad’s saying. ‘Well, you know we’re so glad to have you back, son?’
Jay gives a brief nod and shrug
and a noise that sounds like, ‘hrmphhh.’
‘Right,’ says Dad. ‘The thing is, we hadn’t reckoned on having another, erm, person here for Christmas this year. Had we, Rachel?’
‘No,’ whispers Mum. She looks very awkward and refuses to glance in Spud’s direction. ‘I don’t know how much food to buy.’
‘That’s not the pressing issue here, Rachel,’ snaps Dad. ‘We have plenty of food. But we need to work out how the five of us are going to get through Christmas and what we can do to help Jay and Spud. Right?’
Mum nods and sniffs into a big crumpled handkerchief with an ‘M’ embroidered onto the edge of it.
‘So, I’m presuming that you do want to stay for Christmas day, Spud?’ says Dad. I notice that he stumbles a bit over the word ‘Spud’.
Spud licks a moustache of hot chocolate from her lips and gives an abrasive snort.
‘Haven’t got any better offers!’ she says. ‘S’pose it’s either that or going back to my box on the streets.’
I feel the familiar rush of heat coming up from my legs towards my head and I grip the table.
Dad comes over to stand behind me. He puts his hands on my shoulders and I can feel the warmth coming through from his big fingers.
‘Don’t rise to it, Lilah,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘Remember that other people don’t have the advantages you have in life.’
‘Like being taught manners,’ I say, before I can stop myself.
Jay swears under his breath.
Dad groans and Mum buries her face in her hands.
‘Don’t you start, Lilah,’ says Dad. ‘I mean it. This is not helping one little bit.’
I take another slow deep breath and try to avoid looking at Spud with her horrible little smirk and jiggling arms and legs. I’ve noticed she can never keep still for more than about one second. She’s always fiddling about with something or buzzing with some horrible fake energy.
‘Spud is Jay’s girlfriend,’ continues Dad. ‘And although we are not in any way pleased about the idea of drugs coming into this house, we are prepared to let her stay here for a few days with various conditions put in place.’
Uh-oh. I know what Dad’s conditions are like – harsh.
Jay knows as well, judging by his sour expression and the way he too is jigging his legs up and down.
‘Ooh, conditions!’ says Spud in her horrid drawling voice. ‘Goody!’
I look at her pale, pretty face and her thin chin and glaring blue eyes and for a moment I wonder how good it would feel to get up and smack her, but then I think of all the work Dad has done on taming me this year, so I try to do what he’s suggested and not rise to it. At least, not yet.
‘So,’ Dad says. ‘The first condition is that you do not bring any more drugs at all into my house – either of you. Got it?’
Spud laughs and looks at Jay, but to give him credit he’s flushing red.
‘I’ve stopped,’ he mutters. ‘Honestly. I have.’
I stare at him in disbelief. Yeah, right.
‘That’s as may be,’ says Dad. ‘But you will both see Dr Cunningham before Christmas when she comes to the house and I will ask her to sort out some appropriate treatment for you both. Agreed?’
To my surprise, Jay nods.
But Spud’s got up now.
‘Open the door,’ she says. ‘I need to get out and get my fix. This is doing my head in.’
Dad draws himself up to his full height. I almost expect him to roar like Lazarus or Samson, his big cats at the zoo.
‘Well in that case,’ he says, ‘you are not welcome back in my house. You walk out now, you’re not coming back in. End of.’
Dad is terrifying when he’s like this, but Spud is still sneering at him and rattling at the door handle.
‘I’d sit down again if I were you,’ I say. It’s the first time I’ve directly addressed a sentence to Spud since she got here.
Her eyes light up like they’re on fire.
‘I wondered when little sis would start interfering,’ she says. ‘It’s all your fault that Jay ran away in the first place, isn’t it? If you hadn’t dobbed him in to your parents he’d never have had to start sleeping rough!’
She’s standing by my chair now. I can smell her horrible odour of sweat and stale tobacco and something else, something I don’t even want to think about.
I stand up so that I can look straight into her eyes.
‘I’m not scared of you,’ I say. ‘You’re not part of this family and you never will be. Jay only likes you because you can get him drugs. And you’re just using him so that you can have a roof over your head here. I know all about your other boyfriend.’
I hadn’t planned to use my new bit of information so soon, but she’s pushed me to it.
Her smile fades a bit at that and I see in a flash that she’s come to rely on Jay needing her and she’s never really thought about what might happen if that need goes away.
‘You little bitch,’ she says. ‘Jay was right about you.’
I look over at Jay. He’s got tears in his eyes but he looks up at me and shakes his head and in that moment I see that Spud is a troublemaker and a liar and that Jay hasn’t been bad-mouthing me at all.
Dad has decided to intervene before a fight breaks out. He unlocks the kitchen door and holds it open for Spud to leave.
‘You don’t come back here unless you’re prepared to seek medical help,’ he reminds her.
Spud spits.
It misses Dad and lands on the floor.
‘That’s nice,’ I say, before I can stop myself.
She pushes past me – hard. Then slams out of the house.
Jay goes upstairs, soundless as a tiny mouse.
His bedroom door shuts and there’s no sound of music.
Mum pushes past me in tears and screams, ‘A happy sodding Christmas this is!’ as she goes upstairs.
Dad sighs and shakes his head at me.
‘Why do you always have to lose it, Lilah?’ he says. ‘We could have tried to sort this all out. But no – you have to interfere. I’m ashamed of you.’
Then he too goes away, leaving me sitting at the kitchen table with my life in tatters around me.
School breaks up for Christmas and although Adam catches my eye and gives me a half-smile, we don’t get to talk to one another at all. It’s difficult with Bindi following him about and giving me hard stares, so I give up even trying and I sit through the school Christmas lunch of watery turkey slices and freezing cold tangerines without speaking one word to anybody.
I feel about as lonely as I’ve ever felt.
On the fifth day of my so-called holidays I’m lying up on my bed with Benjie squashing my chest, and I’m trying not to cry for the millionth time and wishing that I could ring Adam and hear his lovely gravelly voice. I’ve taken out my anger diary and looked at it but I can’t seem to find the right words to express everything I’m feeling so I put it back under my pillow and carry on lying there. Then I hear the doorbell ring and the sound of Dr Cunningham’s voice, so Dad’s obviously stuck to his word about getting her over and I hear her say, ‘Well, it is Christmas eve,’ in a rather pointed way and I sigh and bury my head back in the pillow until Mum comes back and taps on my door and says, ‘Lilah? We need you to come down, love.’
It’s the first time she’s called me ‘love’, even though she said she forgave me the day after our argument, so I creep downstairs and before I go into the lounge to see Dr Cunningham, Mum gives me a brief hug and wipes my eyes with her big embroidered handkerchief and I say, ‘Yuk!’ which makes her smile, and we go in together.
To my total surprise, Jay’s sitting there . . . with Spud.
‘Oh,’ I say, before I can stop myself. ‘You’re back.’
Spud snorts in her sarcastic way but Jay says, ‘Yeah. I went and got her,’ which surprises me even more, so I just say, ‘Oh,’ again and go and sit near to the gas fire because I’m freezing.
Dr Cunningham is wear
ing jeans and a jumper, which is quite unusual. She sees me looking and says, ‘I’m supposed to be on leave, but your father did say it was urgent.’
Mum pours Dr Cunningham a cup of tea with her trembling hand and makes to pour one for Spud but Spud says, ‘Tea? That’s an old person’s drink!’ so instead Mum creeps back to her chair and folds into it without another word.
‘So,’ starts Dr Cunningham. ‘I gather that you’d like some help with drug dependency?’
Jay and Spud go all fidgety and start staring out of the window when she says this so Dad takes over.
‘Yes, please,’ he says. ‘What’s the procedure?’
‘Well,’ says Dr Cunningham. ‘I can’t provide that sort of help myself. There are specialist counsellors who will be able to directly address the issues your son and his, erm, friend, are struggling with. And I can refer you to a methadone clinic where Jay will get help breaking his addiction step by step, if that sounds all right?’
‘My name’s Spud,’ says Spud. ‘And I’m not his “friend”. I’m his girlfriend.’
Jay coughs and I give a loud snort.
Dr Cunningham gives Spud a penetrating glare over the top of pink-rimmed specs for a moment.
‘Quite,’ is all she says, but it’s enough to have me start at last to like Dr Cunningham. She looks a lot more human in her jeans and jumper with her hair in a messy ponytail than she does when she comes round all dolled up in suits and flowery blouses.
‘Biscuit?’ I say, jumping up to offer Dr Cunningham the last chocolate digestive. I only do this because Spud’s been eyeing it up for the last five minutes.
‘Thank you, Lilah,’ says Dr Cunningham. ‘I am actually on a carb-free diet – but as it’s Christmas!’
She takes a delicate bite of the biscuit and I enjoy the cross look on Spud’s spotty face.
‘Lovely,’ says the doctor. Then she fills in about three hundred forms, gets Mum and Dad to sign them and stands up, brushing digestive crumbs off her dark-blue designer jeans.
‘I can carry on doing your family therapy sessions after Christmas as per usual,’ she says as she’s leaving, ‘if you still feel the need for them?’
Lilah May's Manic Days Page 7