Die of Shame

by Mark Billingham

  ‘I’ve got some biscuits somewhere,’ Diana says.

  ‘I’m sure you were exactly the same, once upon a time. You used to work, didn’t you?’

  Diana nods, and now, with the kettle grumbling behind her, she is looking over at the knives. Japanese, expensive, razor sharp. In a tall earthenware jar beside the toaster, the meat tenderiser pokes its head above a tangle of utensils, and in the drawer beneath a set of hand-forged, stainless-steel kebab skewers sits in a wooden case. The handle of each is unique: a delicate twist of metal topped with a different semi-precious gem.

  Garnet, amber, bloodstone.

  ‘I like to think I’m a bit of a feminist,’ the girl says. ‘You know? So trust me, the last thing I want is to be kept by a man.’

  It would be ironic, Diana thinks. Those lovely skewers. Fitting though, really.

  They were a wedding present.

  … THEN

  ‘This is swanky,’ Heather says.

  ‘Not really.’ Tony looks around. ‘It’s actually a bit tatty if you look closely. Mind you, that’s why I like it.’ The lounge area is all but empty. A couple of men in suits eating lunch at a table near the fireplace, another reading the newspaper in a large, leather armchair. ‘None of those tossers with arty glasses and hipster beards, doing movie deals or whatever. Talking about recording contracts.’

  ‘Must cost a bit, though.’

  Tony shrugs. ‘Not really.’ In fact, it’s one of the older and more exclusive clubs in the heart of Soho, whose ‘tattiness’ is artfully cultivated. Annual membership is more than a thousand pounds a year, but a well-known actor Tony worked with a few years before has blagged him a hefty discount. He often drops into the place to chill or drink coffee when he’s in town. He meets prospective clients in there sometimes, a fellow therapist now and again. A month or so before, he’d had lunch with the rock star’s manager in the dining room upstairs, to discuss his role on the forthcoming tour and to negotiate his fee.

  ‘I love it,’ Heather says. ‘Thanks for bringing me, and thanks for…’ She nods towards the empty plates on the table in front of them. They’d both made short work of the club’s signature Welsh rarebit, two cappuccinos each and carrot cake. ‘I’m stuffed.’

  ‘No worries,’ Tony says. ‘Now… listen. You’ve heard me bang on about boundaries often enough, and that’s because they’re important. Yes?’

  When Tony leans forward, Heather does the same thing and now she nods, to show that she’s taking what Tony is saying very seriously.

  ‘That’s why I wouldn’t usually do this, OK? Be here with someone I’m actually treating. The only reason I’ve made an exception is because I meant what I said on the phone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why would I joke about something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Heather says. ‘I just thought maybe you were being nice. Like coming to the party.’

  ‘That was different.’ Tony leans closer to her. ‘Look, you can learn the various techniques, the different approaches and so on, but basic empathy is there or it isn’t and nobody can become a decent therapist without it. That’s what I see in you every week and that’s why I suggested it might be something you should think about.’

  Heather laughs, nervous. She picks up the knife and fork that are already lying straight on her empty plate and lays them down again. Nudges them into line. ‘You seriously think I could do it?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Tony shakes his head, like she’s being silly. ‘It’s not just me, all right? I know at least half a dozen therapists who work in the same area I do who are former addicts themselves. I was in rehab with one of them and he’s supposed to be pretty good. When you’ve been there and gone through recovery it gives you real insight about the best way to help others. I mean, that’s common sense, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so, but don’t you need all sorts of qualifications?’

  ‘Of course, and I’m not saying it’s easy and that there isn’t a shedload of hard work and reading, because there is. But don’t pretend you’re too stupid to do it because that’s a cop-out, and even if you do think you are, I can promise you that you’re not. You can do it if you want to, I honestly believe that.’

  Heather sits back. Her suede jacket is folded across the arm of her chair and she runs a palm along the length of one sleeve. She smiles. ‘So, did you decide to do it when you were in rehab?’

  ‘That’s when I started thinking about it, yeah. Me and my friend Greg.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go back into music?’

  Tony laughs, or sounds as though he’s laughing. ‘It was that world that got me into all the trouble to begin with,’ he says. ‘Why would I ever want to go back?’

  ‘Shame,’ Heather says. ‘You were really great. I found some of your stuff on the internet.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Don’t you miss it? Even a bit?’

  ‘I don’t miss what it turned me into.’

  Heather nods, then looks away and starts to hum a tune. She sings a few words quietly, just a phrase or two she can remember, then looks back at him. ‘That one was my favourite,’ she says.

  ‘It’s embarrassing…’

  ‘I mean it. It’s fantastic.’

  Tony watches her fingers flutter at the sleeve of her jacket again, as though it’s a comfort blanket. ‘You’ve got a nice voice,’ he says. ‘Forget what I said about therapy – maybe you should be a singer.’

  Heather stares at him for a few seconds, serious again, as though uncertain if he’s mocking her. ‘Did you mean what you said about helping me?’

  ‘If you decide to train, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m stupid, but sometimes I don’t have a lot of confidence, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘I know you don’t have a lot of time or anything.’

  ‘If you’re prepared to commit to it, yeah, I’ll do what I can. I promise.’

  A waiter steps across to ask if they’ve finished, then begins to clear the empty plates and cups. As he’s walking away, Tony steals a glance at his watch and Heather sees him. She says, ‘Do you need to get off?’

  Tony says that he doesn’t, that actually there isn’t anywhere else he needs to be for the rest of the day. ‘What about you?’ he asks. ‘You got any plans?’

  She laughs, puts on an affected accent. ‘Well, I’ll have to consult my diary, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Heather laughs again.

  ‘So, what do you reckon then?’ Tony looks at her. ‘You fancy going somewhere else?’

  … THEN

  In a noisy Thai restaurant on Chiswick High Road, Robin nods at the man opposite him, half listening; sitting at a large round table with six or seven others from the meeting, waiting for the mixed starter to arrive.

  Each of the meetings Robin attends has its own post-session ritual. These people always come to the same restaurant and order the same starter to share, while those at a different weekly meeting in Camden go to a café that serves a full English breakfast twenty-four hours a day. On Monday nights, of course, after Tony’s group recovery session, it’s the Red Lion in Muswell Hill.

  Just a few days now, until Robin will get his chance to confront Heather.

  The man sitting opposite says something. Robin leans forward because he can’t hear properly.

  ‘It was good tonight,’ the man says again.

  Robin says, ‘I needed it.’

  The man reaches across to lay a hand on Robin’s arm. ‘You need to stay strong.’

  At the meeting, Robin had stood up and talked about what was happening to him in another group. The threat from one of them to expose his history with addiction; the danger of losing his job if he refused to comply. Almost everyone who spoke after he had finished had expressed their disgust and sympathy and had urged him to stand up to his blackmailer.

  A blackmailer who had now sent a second demand.

  ‘Y
ou’ve come too far to lose everything,’ one had said.

  ‘Fuck the scumbag, whoever he is.’

  ‘Addiction is nothing to be ashamed of.’

  They were right, Robin knows that, and their support is like oxygen. Whether the blackmailer calls his bluff and goes to the police or Robin reports what is happening himself, he will, in all likelihood lose his job, but so what? Yes, it will be tough financially, but he has learned how to tighten his belt before. He survived the pasting he took during the divorce, so he tells himself that he can do it again. He has a little money put away and he is only a few years from retirement anyway, so what does it really matter?

  And the truth is, he is ready to stop.

  He is tired.

  Physically, he has been feeling his age for a while and his exercise-free lifestyle is not exactly designed to slow that process down. His arthritis is getting worse by the day. He seems increasingly prone to infections and both eyesight and hearing are deteriorating alarmingly fast.

  The creeping failure of precious mental faculties, though, are, for him, far harder to live with than dodgy knees.

  He knows ex-addicts a lot younger than he is, whose brains are so scrambled that they can barely remember their own names any more, and up until recently, he had thought he had got away with it. Now, memories are starting to scatter; the synaptic connections sporadic, like an unreliable phone signal. The remembrance of certain events he had thought were safely filed away for ever have become like the disconnected fragments of a dream.

  Much of his time at university, a holiday in France with his ex-wife, treasured moments shared with his son.

  He had talked about Peter too, at the meeting.

  The waste and the blame.

  The stupid, senseless death that had never been paid for.

  ‘Finally,’ says the man opposite.

  Robin looks up as the food arrives and is laid down, and the volume of conversation drops a little as people dig in.

  Within a few minutes of starting to eat, Robin can feel the heat spreading through him, but he has eaten here often enough to know that it is not the spring rolls or the spicy Thai fishcakes that are causing the sweat to prickle on his back or the blood to rise to his neck.

  The validation he is getting from those all around him is firing him up, he is sure of it, allowing free rein to a powerful anger he has been struggling to keep in check. That has not surfaced again since that evening in the Red Lion with Chris.

  Back when he thought Chris deserved to be the target of it.

  No, he will not let… whoever is responsible for these threats get away with it. They must not be allowed to get away with it.

  Losing his job or, worse, being struck off, is simply unacceptable. His professional reputation has been hard earned and he will not sacrifice it. As far as the money goes, who the hell does he think he is trying to kid? The nice cosy pension will go as well as the salary and it is simply idiotic to think he can easily recover from a financial hit like that. It’s bad enough living the way he does now, like some student in that poky flat. He will not take a step down from there.

  His mind is racing as he eats, as he nods along and pretends to pay attention to the chat around him.

  Perhaps the answer is a counter-threat. All he needs to do is find something that his blackmailer would prefer to keep secret. If it is Heather, he doesn’t doubt that there will be something there to find. There has to be a solution that doesn’t involve… the kind of thing Chris accused him of, that he believes him to be capable of.

  People cannot threaten and harass with impunity. They cannot behave in such a way and not accept that there will be consequences.

  ‘You all right, Robin?’

  He looks up at the man who is now pointing and grinning at him from across the table.

  ‘Looks like you’ve eaten a chilli, mate.’

  Such things have to be paid for.

  … THEN

  Chris must have said something or made a noise; a low moan or a grunt of frustration, something. The boy, sitting shirtless on the floor, turns from the vast screen on which Nazi zombies are being ruthlessly dispatched and says, ‘Calm down, for fuck’s sake. He’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘It’s been hours.’

  ‘It’s been twenty minutes.’

  ‘Look at you.’ The boy turns back to his game. Woody, whose contact details Chris had wiped from his phone a long time ago because he was told to. Whose number it had taken him many hours to track down the night before, when the idea had first taken hold and quickly become something stronger.

  When the niggle had become a need.

  Walking and walking, waiting for Woody to call back, and all the while the memory of so many similar moments flooding his mind with all the things that would inevitably follow. The need to get high again. The urgency to find the money and all the things he will do to get it, so that he can get high again after that, and again, and on and on. The bed he will be refused at the hostel and the tiredness and the cold streets. The look of disgust he will get from others and from that thing with eyes dead as buttons and see-through skin when he stares into a mirror.

  That was then, before the itch became something he knew he would have to tear into hard, and now he’s sitting on this ratty sofa, his belly drum-tight, rubbing then scraping at his arms and his nails aren’t long enough and the flesh feels like chickenskin.

  ‘Have that, you fucker,’ Woody shouts at the screen.

  Chris thinks he’s been in this room before, but he’s not sure. He wonders if Woody’s redecorated, then laughs because it’s such a stupid idea.

  ‘What?’ Woody turns round again.

  Chris shakes his head, gets up and begins to walk around the room, from wall to wall.

  Woody laughs. ‘Same as you always were.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gagging for it.’

  And Chris isn’t sure if it’s Woody saying that or Heather and the noise of the explosions and gunfire from Woody’s game is deafening, so he tells Woody to turn it down because they might not hear the doorbell. Woody swears and tells him that he hasn’t missed this shit. He says that the other side of Chris’s face is going to get messed up if he doesn’t put a sock in it, but the instant he nudges the volume of his game down the bell goes; screams.

  ‘Fucking told you,’ Chris says, running for the door. ‘Christ knows how long he’s been out there…’

  The two of them are scrabbling for the cash as they open the door and, in the minute or so the whole business takes, the only word the dealer utters is ‘Nice’, when he sees what level Woody is at in his game.

  As soon as the dealer is gone and the door is closed, the two of them retreat to opposite sides of the room.

  Animals with meat to protect.

  Now, it’s just the ritual, and the sense-memory of pain – the cramp in his stomach, the stinging on his skin – miraculously vanishes as he takes out the spoon; the lighter and the cigarette filter and the vinegar to help the mix.

  Didn’t Heather say something about this, a few Mondays back?

  Fucking Heather. He remembers saying her name as he’d walked and walked the night before. Shouting it out loud and making a woman who was passing jump back into the road.

  Being scared of showing who you really are is what leads to all the lying.

  Is it, Heather? Fucking is it?

  The syrupy smell as the brown liquid bubbles in the spoon makes him forget every single one of those stupid… consequences. The hostel and the money and the looks of disgust. They do not matter any more and he is certain they never really did, because now there are other thoughts that need to be wiped away.

  Bunk beds and bedtime stories. A locked bathroom door and his guts running out of him like water.

  The blood blossoms in the syringe and when he pushes, and pulls and pushes, it’s instant. A murmur, and then the roar of it coming and a surge of sweet who-gives-a-shit that is over him like a wave.

&nbs
p; ‘Yeah,’ Woody says, hoarse and slow, from a long way away.

  And Chris is already in that wonderful place, where he doesn’t have to think or pretend, to feel anything.

  Somewhere he’s perfectly alone and empty.

  … THEN

  There’s not a great deal of light in the small alleyway, though business is still brisk on Gerrard Street; in the restaurants and supermarkets of Chinatown, from whose back doors and greasy windows the smell seeps like smoke. Roasting meat, fish and hoisin sauce.

  The stink that will linger in their clothes for days.

  Tony says, ‘I want to get high with you.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I won’t… but right now, I feel like I really want to.’ Tony pushes his tongue back into Heather’s mouth, his fingers a little further inside her knickers.

  The metal fire exit clatters when Heather leans back against it. They freeze, just for a second, as something skitters behind one of the bins a few feet away. Tony’s left hand is moving slowly inside Heather’s bra, the fingers of his right still working as he tries to ease the material of her jeans away. Heather’s palm moves up and down the length of his erection and she stops only when her fingers flutter to feel for the zip.

  ‘This is pretty fucking close though,’ Tony says.

  They kiss again, hard and wet, then stop to suck in a fast breath, their faces pressed together. ‘To what?’ Heather asks.

  ‘To being high. To not… Jesus…’

  There are voices from the street just thirty feet away, shouting and laughter, but still the sounds the two of them make seem loud; lips pushed against ears inside the dimly lit doorway. Tony’s low moan. Heather saying, ‘There’, and the high gasp that follows.

  Tony adjusts his stance, spreading his legs so that Heather can take his cock out, and as soon as she has she lets go of it to push her jeans down across her skinny hips.

  ‘We could go somewhere,’ she says.

  Tony takes her hand and puts it back, moves it for her.