Soul Destruction: Unforgivable

by Ruth Jacobs

  Nicole rushed past Shelley, causing her to teeter. Her legs knocked into a low table at the corner bend. As Shelley tried to regain her balance, Nicole grabbed hold of Tara and rammed her up against the wall in the hallway.

  “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face you evil—”

  “What the fuck are you doing? Put me down you mad bitch.”

  “You’re fucking mad.” Nicole shook Tara’s shoulders, causing her head to pound on the wall. “Why the fuck did you leave that message? I want a fucking explanation. Now.”

  “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

  “You’ve fucking hurt me, more than you’ll ever know.” Tears were falling down Nicole’s cheeks, but her grip on Tara remained, as did the hammering of her head against the wall.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tara cried.

  Nicole threw Tara down on the floor and stood towering above her. “You’ve fucking lost it, you stupid fucking crackhead. I’m done with you.” Nicole turned and walked toward the front door. Her face was a picture of sadness. Shelley had never seen Nicole so enraged. She imagined her sympathy for Tara had been diminished due to the poor timing of Tara’s accusations. And Shelley knew that as well as the pain Tara had caused with her verbal assault, Nicole would feel guilt for her own physical assault.

  “Hold on, Nic... Wait.” Shelley reached for Tara’s hand and helped her off the sullied carpet. “Get in the lounge,” she told her.

  Once Tara had vacated the hall, Shelley put her arms around Nicole and hugged her. She brushed Nicole’s blonde locks out the way and in her ear, she said, “I know what she’s done is terrible and there’s no excuse, but we need to sort this. We can’t afford to leave it this fucked up.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to that crackhead tart.”

  “She might have something to say, an—”

  “There’s nothing she can say. I’ll never forgive her for this.”

  “Well at least get an apology.”

  “I don’t care any more. It’s not gonna change anything. Nothing will change how I feel about her. Nothing.”

  “Wait for me here. We can’t leave it like this.” Shelley walked through the hall and into the lounge. The fight or flight feeling was on her. Her breath was short and she felt her ribcage vibrate with the force of her beating heart.

  What Shelley wanted to say she knew she could not. She wondered if with a soft tone the same words would be any less cutting. This was a time she did not want to hold back.

  Tara sat in the armchair and looked up at Shelley. “I didn’t—”

  “You need to shut the fuck up and listen.”

  Tara snivelled.

  “Yesterday, as you fucking well know, Nic went to her mum’s grave. Then we came here and we were talking about one of the most horrific experiences she’s gone through, bar the fucking court case she’s just had to testify in and talk about the sadistic cunts that molested her.

  “You can stop your fucking whimpering, it’s her that’s upset. She had nothing to do with you selling your fucking laptop for crack. You did it ’cos you’re a fucking crackhead, and until yesterday, I felt sorry for you but now I can see you’re just some spoilt cunt that hits out when she can’t get her own way.” Shelley’s heart was still thumping, but her anger had been laced with a sliver of pity; Tara was a wreck.

  “You don’t know what my life’s been like. You don’t know what I’ve gone through. I’ve—”

  “Remember we’ve seen how you lived, your lovely house, your family, your fucking horses. If I’d had your life, I wouldn’t be in the fucking state you are.”

  “’Cos I lived in a nice house that makes it all right does it?” Tara’s nostrils flared as she looked up. “It was a private school, well that’s all right ’cos I had a smart fucking uniform, a nice dormitory and it was fucking paid for by my parents.” Tara howled as if she’d just been notified of a loved-one’s death.

  Shelley swallowed back her tears. She squeezed in on the armchair next to Tara and held her tightly. She felt as if she might snap – the wisp that Tara had become.

  “I’m so sorry, love. I had no idea.” Nicole stood above them, her hand outstretched to Tara.

  Tara clasped Nicole’s hand in hers and pulled her onto the overcrowded chair. “It’s my fault,” Tara said. “I don’t talk about anything, nothing that matters.”

  25. Estate Agency Business

  Emotionally exhausted, Shelley slept until a nightmare woke her late afternoon. Swaddled in her favourite duvet, she shuffled along the cold, black and white floor tiles in the kitchen. She poured a glass of water and took it through to the lounge. She landed herself on the sofa, then picked up one of her new, sparkling dessert spoons and began cooking up her fix.

  What she’d heard from Tara yesterday shocked her. Not that another call girl would have a past like that, most of the hookers she knew did. The shock was that Tara knew what she had gone through as a child, yet hadn’t confided in her. Was it her fault Tara had never been able to tell her? Possibly not – Tara hadn’t told Nicole either. But Shelley knew she could have been a better friend. There were things she could have done differently, things she could have said differently, and things she could have not said at all. She remembered the cruel words she’d spoken the day before.

  Guilt grew from her gut and permeated her body. Her breathing shallowed. This had to be a big hit. It would take more heroin and crack than usual to change this feeling. This feeling on top of her grief, her anger, and her fears had done more than add to them. It felt as if they’d all been amplified. The noise had to be muted.

  The speedball she’d prepared was overgenerous but essential. She needed to get to nirvana. Without a tourniquet, she squeezed her wrist and went straight for a visible vein in her hand.

  She fell back on the sofa and thought this time she might die. This was overdose territory. She lost control of her body as she convulsed. She tried to scream for help but no words came, not recognisable words. She could hear herself babbling but couldn’t tell if she was making those sounds or if they were coming from inside her head.

  When she came to, it was nine o’clock in the evening. She wasn’t sure what time she’d taken the hit but it had been light outside, she remembered that. Cautiously, she prepared another, this time using what remained in the filter from the near-lethal shot from which she’d only just recovered.

  What had been left provided an explosive high. She wondered how she’d survived the earlier hit. Though Shelley knew she was dicing with her life, she didn’t want to die. That wasn’t an absolute truth. She did want to die. She wanted it all to be over, but she didn’t want to leave her mother without any children alive. So, although inside when the pain became too much, she fantasised about taking her own life, suicide was not an option.

  Once she was able to walk, she went through to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Instead of her usual two sugars, she added honey to soothe her sandpaper throat. Her stirring was disturbed by her ringing mobile. Returning to the lounge, she hoped it was Resident Dicks All the Boxes who yesterday she’d postponed.

  “Shelley?” a man said. Confirmation it wasn’t a client.

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Len. I only just picked up your message. I’ve got that thing I owe you. Only a little but I’ll get the rest soon, I promise.”

  “I don’t need it any more.” Shelley took the phone into the kitchen. “There’s something else I want instead.”

  “Nah, no can do. Sorry, love, but I’ve got a girlfriend. I can’t—”

  “Not that, for God’s sake.” Shelley scooped out the teabag and dropped it in the sink. “I can’t talk on the phone. You need to come here.”

  “I ain’t got a car.”

  “Well get a fucking bus. You owe me big time.” Shelley returned to the lounge with her honeyed tea. With her mobile nestled between her shoulder and her ear, she gave Len her address while preparing a fix.


  Putting the mobile down on the coffee table, she looked at what remained from her stockpile of drugs. It was plain to see the stash was depleting just as rapidly as her savings that were being spent maintaining it. With her income reduced by the mess she made with the needle, she knew something had to change. Either her using would need to reduce, or she’d end up working the streets. The dilemma was beyond deliberation. She found both equally unpalatable.

  ***

  The buzzer woke Shelley at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, she untangled herself from the duvet. She staggered to the intercom and on hearing Len’s voice, she pressed the buzzer to open the main entrance.

  Before he arrived at her door, she scuttled into the bathroom. She appraised her appearance in the mirror. There’d been no reason to adorn her face with make-up yesterday, so she didn’t have panda eyes to tackle. Because she didn’t have the time to brush her teeth, she smeared on toothpaste using her finger. She swallowed down the surplus and gagged as it stuck in her throat that had been delivering an odour as foul tasting into her mouth, and felt as dry, as she suspected Marianne’s retired, fallow fanny would.

  “So you came then?” she said, tripping over her stray boots in the hall.

  “Said I would, didn’t I?”

  “That was yesterday.” Shelley stumbled backwards from the door and into the lounge.

  “It was the middle of the night, love.” Len pulled out a chair and sat down at the circular dining table.

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” Shelley felt a shooting pain in her temple. Her legs wobbled and she held onto the chair to keep herself erect.

  “I’ll do the tea,” he said. “What’s up with you? You look awful.”

  “I just get a bit dizzy sometimes.” Shelley smiled, still bent over the back of the chair. “I probably need a hit.”

  “That usually does the trick.” His thin lips widened. Shelley noticed that he’d sacked the beard that had been masquerading as designer stubble. His eyes were a racing-car green and he was handsome, unconventionally. The greasiness was gone from his mousy hair, which today looked soft and with his jacket on, he looked like he had a good build, although Shelley knew he didn’t.

  ***

  While she was making her fix in the lounge, she watched him from behind as he made the tea in the kitchen. She didn’t think he could be deemed in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act – his face would have been a fair defence.

  “How do you know I take two sugars?” Shelley asked as she sipped her perfectly sweetened tea.

  “I know, love. We all do. Something to do with the gear.” He sat down next to her on the sofa. He took a long, black wallet from a pocket in his leather jacket and opened the zip. Inside the wallet were his works, all neatly stored under elasticated hoops. “I took a spoon out your kitchen. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “You can share mine. There’s always shitloads left in my filters.”

  “Nah, love, I can’t. No offence, but I dunno what you’ve got.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Does he know I’m a hooker?

  “Nothing bad. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “It’s not only you. I’ve got Hep C and I don’t wanna give it to you.”

  “I’m not gonna get it. We’re not having sex.”

  “Back up. Back up,” Len said, bowing with his hands. “I mean catch it off the spoon.”

  Shelley looked at him nonplussed.

  “Don’t you know you can catch stuff sharing spoons?” His voice became quieter. “My mate’s dying of AIDS. I’ve been lucky to get away with Hep C.” He added heroin and citric and then the water before lighting the underside of the spoon.

  Shelley considered the number of spoons she’d shared over the past three years. “I haven’t got anything. I know I haven’t. I get tested all the time,” she said defensively, remembering she needed to get her throat seen to. Then she realised admitting to being regularly tested might lead him to a conclusion she didn’t want him to reach.

  Len took the belt off his jeans. He wrapped the leather strap around his bicep then put one end between his teeth. While he was tapping for a vein in an area Shelley deemed too high up his arm, she couldn’t find a viable vein on her own. They were either concealed by lumps or had collapsed. She looked at her hands instead. Where was the map of blue veins?

  “Your arms are a right mess. You need to be careful those lumps don’t turn into abscesses.”

  “That’s never happened. It’s just a pain. I can’t see what I’m doing with double vision,” she said. It hit her that as she was not speedballing alone, someone else would see her drug-induced cross-eyes.

  “Come ’ere.” Len removed the belt from his teeth. It unravelled around his arm before falling to the floor. He took Shelley’s hand on his lap, and with his ‘L-U-C-K’ and ‘F-A-T-E’ fingers, he examined her arm.

  “You need to give that one a rest, make sure it don’t get infected.” He switched arms and repeated the process. Tapping on a vein, he said, “I can get this one for you. Do you want me to do it?”

  “Please, yeah,” Shelley replied.

  He took the belt and wound it around her arm, halfway between her wrist and her elbow. Then he took her syringe and expertly administered her fix.

  “Thank you,” she croaked, lying back on the sofa. Her eyelids half-closed and she felt every part of her body hum – internally and externally. It felt as though the nastiness she housed was being buzzed out of her. She knew what she had put in was nasty too, but it was a different form and one she had invited.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Len back in his position with the belt around his upper arm. He pierced his skin with the needle and then he was lying back on the couch with her. For a while, there was silence but Shelley didn’t feel it was awkward. Even if she had, she couldn’t have filled it, not with words.

  “Do you want some crack in there?” Shelley asked as they took their second cup of tea, which again had been made by Len.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, love, but why are you being so nice? You don’t even know me and I owe you a monkey?”

  “I need to ask you a little favour, that’s all.” Shelley took her empty syringe, drew up some water from the tumbler on the coffee table and dropped it onto her spoon. “So are you having some crack or not?”

  “If the lady doth insist.” He grinned and scratched his hairless chin. “So, how come you got all this dosh then? You got a sugar daddy or did you marry some rich cunt?”

  “I’ve got a good job. That’s what I want to talk to you about actually.” Shelley removed a rock from the cluster on the clingfilm and deposited it on his side of the table. “I run an estate agency and I’m trying to close this deal, but the couple want to see more houses in the area before making an offer on the house I’m trying to sell them. I need to show them some properties so they can see what the market has to offer in their price range.”

  “Lardy dardy, hark at you,” Len said, looking at the spoon in which he was pulverising the crack with his plunger.

  “I’d like to show them yours.” Shelley smiled at him, using her eyes as well as her mouth because she knew that came across as more authentic.

  “That’s not a little favour. I’m not selling my gaff?”

  “I’m not gonna sell it. I’m just gonna show it,” Shelley replied, trying to hide her irritation behind a reassuring tone.

  26. The Meet

  After an early evening visit to her aunt, Shelley returned to her car. She drove father along Queens Grove then onto Queens Terrace. Parking up a few yards past a low block of flats, she prepared a shot.

  Having transferred the junk into her body via a vein on her wrist, she sat back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes. This is too much responsibility. Trying to look after herself was hard enough, but she had her mother to take care of, Aunt Elsie to check up on, and now she had to stop a serial rapist.

  Cramming this much into
one day was draining. She preferred leaving her flat as seldom as possible, so in order to spend the weekend at home, she’d arranged all of her plans for today – Monday. But she knew this couldn’t go on. There was so much to put in place this week. She’d need to be out another two or three times at least. The crack would have to be reduced, or cut out, or she’d never make it.

  In her weakened state, she feared toppling her wall of lies. Keeping track of the various stories she told was hard, problematic when drugs were added, and at its most complex when drugs were combined with her two lives on the same day.

  Perhaps it appeared even more challenging because she’d been disheartened on seeing her mother on Friday. When she’d arrived at the maisonette around lunchtime, the curtains were drawn and her mother was still in bed. She was despondent every time Shelley tried to engage her in conversation. She ate little of the toasted sandwich Shelley made for her and watching her favourite film – It’s a Wonderful Life – didn’t yield the smile it usually did. The progress Rita had been making evaporated, and it had happened so suddenly, like a death, as if Shelley had dreamt it. Now everything had returned as it was before, possibly worse.

  When she’d left her aunt’s house earlier, Elsie was stressed and Shelley felt responsible. She’d told Shelley she needed more help with Rita, that with her own commitments and work, she couldn’t visit more than three times a week. Shelley suggested increasing her visits, which had slipped from daily to weekly, and recently from weekly to fortnightly, but Elsie said she’d find another way, that she didn’t want Shelley’s life taken over by her mother. But there was no other way – Shelley knew that. And her failure as a daughter and the guilt she experienced from the storytelling of her imaginary life was gnawing at her conscience.

  It was her own fault that her visits had slipped. The blame didn’t lie at the door of her fictitious demanding boss at Foxtons. She was a poor excuse for a daughter. She was undeserving of the pride her aunt showed for her.