What You Don't Know

by David Belbin

  ‘I forgot you were coming. I was in bed.’

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Took the day off. You remember what it’s like. Get hammered at the weekend. Struggle into school on Monday because you don’t want people to know you have a hangover, then go under big time because your system’s so run down.’

  ‘I remember it well,’ Nick said, though his school teaching days seemed to belong to another lifetime. ‘This might make you feel better. Indian home cooking.’

  He held up the brown paper bag. Nancy dipped her whole head into it and inhaled like someone snorting a line.

  ‘Smells wonderful. Come in.’

  Her place was bigger, funkier than he’d been expecting. One wall was painted purple. A lava lamp stood on the mantle over an art-deco-style fireplace. The thick, off-white shagpile carpet had seen better days.

  ‘I’ve got red wine,’ she said. ‘Or beer. I prefer beer with Indian. You?’

  ‘Great.’ He cleared an ashtray and magazines from a glass table then went for plates. She really had forgotten that he was coming. And he’d thought she was gagging for it.

  ‘I didn’t know I was hungry until I smelled this,’ she said. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’

  They shared a large bottle of Pilsner Urquell. Nancy ate hungrily at first, then slowed down to occasional mouthfuls, between which she gossiped about teachers, some of whom he remembered, most of whom were after his day, none of whom he was interested in. She didn’t ask about his new job but, when she’d given up on the meal, passed him an old Golden Virginia tin, its bright green borders battered and scratched.

  ‘Skin one up, would you? Helps my head.’

  The big lump of hash was so fresh it didn’t need warming. He crumbled plenty into a three-paper spliff. Probably from Carl. Musicians always got good dope. Nick took a couple of hits before passing it to her.

  ‘Are you sure you should be having that, Mr Drugs Counsellor?’

  ‘No more than you should, Ms School Teacher.’

  ‘It’s good for my migraine,’ she said, before taking a deep pull, holding it in for a few seconds. ‘I have some strong medication, but it takes a day to kick in. Dope softens the edges, makes me sleepy in a nice way.’

  Nick felt his stone coming on. It was quality stuff, much headier than the hash he got from Joe, yet not brutally strong.

  ‘Why don’t you choose some sounds?’ she said.

  A CD tower, half concealed by a tall rubber plant, stood beside an old hi-fi.

  Nick looked at her albums. ‘Which of these are yours?’

  ‘All of them,’ Nancy said. ‘Let a bloke move in his music, he thinks he’s in control.’

  There was a lot of techno, some jazz, nothing more mainstream than the Chemical Brothers. No Britpop. He had missed the rise of Britpop while he was inside, although his brother had introduced him to Pulp, who were from Sheffield, their hometown, and he played their last two albums a lot.

  ‘Old school taste. I’m impressed.’ Nick put on Kind of Blue.

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit with me?’ Nancy said. She pushed herself up on the sofa so that there was room for him to sit upright with her head rested against his. He stroked her hair.

  ‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘You thought you were up for a celebratory shag, didn’t you?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ he admitted, as she passed back the joint.

  ‘I’m not sure what Carl would think about that. You’ve got someone too, haven’t you? A bloke like you’s always got someone.’

  Someone ought to do a thesis on the way that strong dope acted as a truth drug, Nick thought. ‘There was someone, for a while,’ he said. Despite the truth drug, he decided not to go into specifics about Polly, or about how he’d tried to rekindle his relationship with Sarah. ‘But it’s over. Completely.’

  ‘I really like you,’ Nancy said. ‘I’ve had the biggest crush on you since … well, since I met you, really. But I don’t want to ruin things after we’ve waited so long. Let’s wait. It’s cruel to dump someone just before Christmas. We can be each other’s new year resolution. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds very good.’

  Soon, she fell asleep. Would Nancy remember what they’d agreed? Did stoned conversations count? He wanted her tonight, wanted her something rotten. But he could wait. By the end of this month, he could be in a situation better than he’d dared imagine when he was inside. A respectable job, a girlfriend with a profession. A worthwhile life.

  9

  Sarah struggled to stay awake during parts of the debate. She had slept badly the night before. She usually managed seven solid hours, but today’s vote kept playing on her mind. She was a decisive person, painstakingly so. Trouble was, she’d known for some time what she had to do.

  And she hated it.

  The secretary of state was marooned on the front bench of the government side of the chamber. Not a single member of the cabinet sat alongside her to offer support. The prime minister was nowhere to be seen. The rebels had put forward an amendment to restore the single parent benefits. A Lancashire MP said what Sarah would have liked to say.

  ‘It has been turned into an insane loyalty test in which my colleagues are being invited to support the government, when they know in their hearts that what the government is doing is wrong. That grieves me, because I want the Labour government to succeed.’

  The debate lasted several hours. The division bell for the vote on the amendment to Clause 70 didn’t sound until twenty to eleven. Sarah entered the ‘no’ lobby with Steve Carter.

  ‘This is the worst night since I got into parliament,’ he told her.

  ‘I’ve thought about abstaining,’ she replied.

  ‘We’ve all thought about abstaining, but it’s no different to voting “yea”. We’ve got to bathe our hands in blood up to the elbows, show loyalty.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sarah admitted. The principled thing would be to vote for the amendment. The sensible thing would have been what her boss suggested – organizing a series of prison visits that kept her well away from the Commons and gave her an excuse not to vote in person. But by doing that she would be effectively backing the government. By abstaining she would be asking to be sacked. This vote, she told herself, had little to do with single mothers like the ones who had harangued her at Stoneywood Library a few days ago. It was a hard lesson in politics for the new boys and girls. If Sarah deliberately failed the loyalty test, she would lose all the opportunities to do good that came with her ministerial job. And she would consign herself to a career on the back benches.

  ‘Come on,’ Sarah told Steve. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Ali Blythe was heading in the same direction as them, shoulders hunched. What had changed her mind? Tories cheered the Labour members who walked into the ‘no’ lobby, their heads low. It was the first time that Sarah had seen the opposition look happy since they lost the general election.

  The Lib Dems voted with the Labour rebels and the Tories with the government. Forty-seven Labour MPs voted against their own government. Not as many as had signed the early-day motion protesting the benefit cut, but a huge rebellion nonetheless. The amendment was lost by 457 to 107. Abstentions were not recorded.

  Kingston Bell was about to be in the news. He was due to speak at a conference organized by the Independent. So he had called an after-hours meeting to talk through how the Power Project should present itself. This was the first time that Nick had seen the whole staff together in one room. All eight of them. King asked everyone but Chantelle to speak. Crip was laconic, his words trailing off senselessly. Leonard muttered something about reducing a habit being better than failing to abstain. The others all managed to find something relevant to say about what they were doing. Nick spoke last.

  ‘I’ve been working in liaison with the safe sex clinic on George Street, handing out condoms, talking about STDs and intravenous drug use. Most of these kids claim not to be bothered by selling
their bodies on the street, but the risk of catching HIV puts the fear into them.’

  King frowned. ‘I’m not sure that’s our scene.’

  ‘It’s all part of the same problem. At the least, fear of AIDS is a first step towards them realizing that shooting smack is a problem.’

  ‘Smack’s not at the top of my agenda,’ King said. ‘You were the big dope grower. Give me arguments about why legalizing dope is good news.’

  ‘When did you last hear of a schoolkid selling his body to buy grass?’

  ‘But all these kids, you ask them, first thing they tried was dope.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Nick argued. ‘And when they found out that smoking dope was fun, and safe, better and cheaper than booze, they thought, What other drugs are the adults lying about? I think I’ll try E. Hey, that’s fine too. So what’s wrong with crack and smack? Oh, I seem to need an awful lot of this. I don’t seem to have anything else on my mind except where I can get the money for more …’

  ‘Cannabis is only a gateway drug because it’s illegal,’ King summed up. ‘Decriminalize it, and kids are safer. I can’t be that explicit, but if I spell out the situation and let people draw their own conclusions, the message might be even more effective. Any other thoughts? Okay, meeting over.’

  Nick went back to his tiny office, pleased to have had some impact on his boss. For himself, he would like to see cannabis decriminalized. It was the only drug he couldn’t do without. He hadn’t missed alcohol while he’d been in prison. He’d had no cravings for cocaine, even though he’d been using heavily before his arrest. But when he’d had to pack in smoking dope for two years, after failing that drugs test, it had been purgatory. He’d missed the stuff every day.

  10

  On Friday, Sarah checked the Independent to see whether coverage of the single parent benefits revolt had died down. It had. The top headline was CONFERENCE CALLS FOR CHANGE IN THE LAW ON CANNABIS.

  Sarah read the piece. The conference was organized by the newspaper covering it, which undercut their making it the lead story. Sarah agreed that everyone should have the right to make their own decisions about drugs, as long as they did not harm others. The way she saw it, the idea that cannabis was a gateway drug was unprovable. What was indisputable, but never mentioned, was the tax a government could collect from cannabis if sale of the drug was legalized.

  Legalizing cannabis was too controversial an area for her to get stuck into publicly. Her involvement with the Power Project was risky enough. Already she had received warnings from constituents she bumped into, with the most unlikely stories, from I’ve heard that the workers there go with prostitutes instead of helping them to I’ve seen one of the workers smoking a joint at a gig. Can’t you sack him? The stories, Sarah was pretty sure, were all about the project’s predecessor, the Crack Action Team. If she’d realized just how much shit would still be clinging to that fiasco, she’d have avoided the Power Project by a mile.

  Sarah’s local party’s monthly general committee meetings were held on the last Friday evening of the month. She would have to account for supporting the government on the single parent benefit cut. Lessons had been learned, the whips had assured the MPs who had reluctantly supported the government. There would be more consultation in future and the poor would be protected.

  After tonight’s meeting, she had nothing much in her diary beyond Christmas socials and photo ops. Back at home, with an hour before her first appointment at the constituency office, she decided to put up her cards. An MP, even the most unpopular ones, got more Christmas cards than she could keep track of. Since she’d become a member of the government, Sarah’s tally had more than doubled. The work-related ones she kept in her office, with a handful of the more important – Tony and Cherie, her boss – on display. At home, on the walls of her flat in the Park, she kept the personal ones, from friends and relatives. This number had halved during her time in Nottingham. She started to arrange them, first on a sideboard, then the edges of bookshelves. It didn’t take long.

  What did the paucity of cards say about her? Friendships were hard to maintain when you were an MP. Her family was a small one. Dad was dead. No boyfriend – which, at least, meant no pseudo in-laws to keep sweet. Dan, her ex, hadn’t sent a card. A year ago, they were living together. Nick had sent one (she hadn’t reciprocated, unless Hugh had added him to the constituents’ pile, which she signed on autopilot). She’d ducked the call when he’d rung to thank her for helping him with the Power Project job. Hearing Nick’s voice could still do funny things to her.

  One of the personal cards was from Paul Morris, with a note suggesting a meal. She was tempted. She enjoyed his company. The chief constable had also sent her a card. It bore no family greeting, but had the address and numbers for his new flat, with a note saying that he moved in on the third of January and would love to take her for a meal when she was free. This meant he was about to leave his wife. Sarah liked Eric, but he was newly single. For him, the stakes were high. Too high for her to get involved. She picked up Nick’s card, reread the note inside:

  Called you to say thanks. Be great if you had time for a Christmas drink but understand if you can’t. Lots of luck for 98.

  She could call him. She was lonely and nobody was watching. Not the press, the party or even her constituents. Sarah Bone, junior minister, wasn’t all that important. She could invite her ex round for a drink. The news wouldn’t appear on anyone else’s radar. A Christmas truce.

  Before she had a chance to change her mind, Sarah picked up the phone. The number for Nick’s Alfreton Road place was still in her address book. Once, she had stood outside his first-floor flat, not daring to ring the bell. Now she dialled the number and listened to the phone ring twice. It went to machine. Of course, he would be at work. She listened to Nick’s recorded message, relished his warm, intelligent voice, with its faint Yorkshire tones, then hung up.

  Nick lit a cigarette. He’d got his first month’s pay and returned to Marlboro Reds after six years of roll-ups. He was already smoking too many of them. Three weeks into his new job, he had run out of things to do. The office was quiet. Reception was staffed, but nobody came in. There was no sign above the door outside, only a handwritten note announcing that this was the Power Project. Could he clear off at three on a Friday afternoon? He had been to a public meeting the night before, made notes about crime in the Meadows, so could argue time off in lieu. He felt embarrassed to ask. Not that King was in at the moment. He hadn’t appeared since yesterday’s cannabis conference.

  Nick got to work every morning at ten. He would come earlier, but Chantelle, the receptionist, couldn’t be guaranteed to open up before then and he didn’t have his own keys. The others tended to arrive around midday. Nick’s room was barely two metres square. It had a computer with no printer or internet connection. If he wanted to write a letter and print it off he had to put the file onto a disc and take it through to Chantelle, who might get around to it by the end of the day.

  Nick’s official title was ‘Drugs Worker’, but he didn’t have many drug users to work with. Not one person had made an actual appointment to see him – not this week, or the one before. Nobody had offered him any courses to go on, or suggested contacts for him to make. Yesterday he’d seen a couple of kids from the Meadows. He’d had to seek them out at an arcade haunted by crack dealers.

  The Power Project was sometimes busy. In the afternoon, there were often people hanging around, waiting to see Kingston, or wanting to hang out with one of Nick’s co-workers, Lester, Helen, Crip, Leonard and Satnam. Nick, by contrast, didn’t have friends who showed up. He didn’t have many friends, full stop. He’d hoped to get on with his co-workers, but they seemed to view him with suspicion. Nick wasn’t sure whether this was because of his past, or because they knew of his connection with Sarah and her position on the project’s management board.

  On day one, King had told Nick to be ‘proactive’ about his work. Proactive was a new buzz word, which meant tha
t Nick must find ways to create work for himself. An obvious route was to speak in assemblies at local schools, but he was reluctant to face that demon. Nick had resigned from his teaching job before his case went to court. He had never been put on List 99, which held the names of every person forbidden to work in a state school. Even so, these days, people who worked with young people had to have a criminal records check. Most schools would not welcome a convicted cocaine dealer and cannabis grower.

  The only way Nick could think of to get around the issue would be if he made confessing his own transgressions part of the pitch. He didn’t want to do that. Not because it would be humiliating, which it would, but because the Power Project was for people who had a drugs problem and Nick didn’t have a problem. Schools didn’t want such honesty. They wanted headlines in black and white. Illegal drugs had to be wrong, always.

  The front desk was empty. Stepping into the street, Nick heard Chantelle’s loud, dirty laugh. The receptionist had an additional brief. She was meant to engage with the Afro-Caribbean teens, the street girls especially. Chantelle didn’t seem far from either her own teens or her clients’ lifestyle. The way she was leaning into a four-by-four with heavily shaded windscreens, parked on double yellow lines, was suggestive to say the least. A familiar voice boomed from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Yo! Nick, come over here.’

  Chantelle span round and flashed Nick an insincere grin.

  ‘Getting away early for the weekend?’ Nick’s boss asked.

  ‘I was at a community forum meeting in the Meadows last night, so I thought I’d take a couple of hours off in lieu,’ Nick explained, bashfully. ‘Have we got a team meeting next week?’ he added.

  King laughed. ‘A meeting in the week before Christmas? Take it easy. Have a good one, yeah?’