Die of Shame (12 page)

At the door of the church hall in Belsize Park, Robin was greeted by a reticent young man with bad skin who mumbled a welcome, but could not make eye contact. It was perfectly normal and Robin guessed that the woman looking at the floor when she was not dispensing hot drinks from a sagging trestle table was feeling equally awkward. Those still in their first ninety days clean or uneasy with sharing would often be allocated service posts. It left them little option but to meet people, to make contact with those who had once been where they were now.

Robin took care to say hello, to tell each of them they were doing a great job. The young man nodded and the woman’s nervous smile showed what few teeth she had left.

As soon he had taken his tea and grabbed a handful of digestives, he went and sat down towards the back of the room. It was cold and overly lit. There were perhaps forty people scattered unevenly across seven or eight rows. There was a good deal of chair-scraping which echoed around the hall and a few fragments of whispered conversation, until a woman Robin recognised stood up from her chair at the front. As secretary of the meeting, she ran through the guidelines with which he was well familiar. Shares, she said, were to be confined to those matters relating to and affecting an individual’s recovery, and the twelve-step programme of Narcotics Anonymous. Everyone was to refrain from obscenity, abusive language and personal attacks and, in line with NA traditions, there was to be no expression of opinion on outside topics. Smiling, she confirmed that this was an open group, so Robin knew that not everyone present would be an addict. There might be the concerned parents of teenagers in attendance, or the odd Channel 4 documentary maker; friends there to lend moral support or simply those who were curious to see what went on. They were warmly welcomed, though all were required to identify themselves and none would be allowed to speak.

The secretary then introduced the chosen chair for the evening and an older man stood up and said how happy he was to be there, to have the chance to share his strength and his hope. In a thin, reedy voice, he talked for twenty minutes about his own journey, choosing to focus on the first step, the most important, he said more than once, and the one which he had certainly found the toughest: the admission that he had been powerless, that his life had become unmanageable.

Robin sat back and let the words sink in and soothe him, as such words always did.

Now he had the power back.

Now he could manage everything…

He had looked up the meeting in the where-to-find booklet that was always in his pocket. It was one he had attended once or twice before, but not on this particular day of the week. Normally he went to meetings a little closer to home, but this had been an emergency and so he had sought out the venue nearest to the hospital. The place he could get to fastest as soon as his shift had ended.

It was a long time since he had needed a meeting this badly.

He could not remember feeling so discombobulated, so jumpy. A few hours before, walking back to the hospital after the meeting on South End Green, he had felt his chest pulsing beneath his coat and jacket, his heart rate elevated as much by the conversation as it was by the gradient.

He still wondered how he had come across.

It was hard to be yourself at the best of times, talking to police officers, all but impossible when that self was still… fractured; still in the process of putting itself back together. They knew how to throw people, of course; that was all part and parcel, wasn’t it? Tanner had been especially good at that, he thought and he supposed that female officers were generally better than their male counterparts when it came to the psychological stuff. He well remembered the tricks his ex-wife had played when the wheels had come off his marriage. The passive-aggressive stuff and the threats so subtle that he had half thought he was imagining them.

You’ve worked so hard to get where you are. It would be a shame to throw all that away
…
 

He had tried to appear calm, back there on that bench, to gather his thoughts when he needed to and say only what was necessary. All fine and dandy until the end, when the woman had brought up his past. His own fault for mentioning it in the first place, but being happy with who he was now meant a blanket refusal to deny who he had once been.

I don’t lie
…
 

Once the chair had finished, the secretary opened the meeting to the floor and the addicts began to speak up. They raised a hand and introduced themselves, were welcomed in that manner so parodied by sceptics and lazy comedy writers, then said whatever they had come to say.

I’m twenty-three days clean.
 

I want to get sober, but I’m scared of what I’ll be like.
 

I don’t really know why I’m here. I don’t actually have a problem.
 

Robin had heard variations on that one more times than he could remember.

After hands had been joined and the serenity prayer spoken aloud, the meeting broke up and people began to drift towards the street, most lighting cigarettes the second they were out in the fresh air. There was a good deal of hugging and chatter. Some walked away together in twos and threes, while others loitered awkwardly near the door, as though hoping to be spoken to or invited elsewhere.

The secretary laid a hand gently on Robin’s arm. ‘Not seen you here for a while,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Everything OK?’

Robin quickly assured her that everything was fine and said how much he had enjoyed the meeting. As soon as someone else joined the conversation he seized the chance to walk away.

I don’t lie
…
 

His hands were shaking. He thrust them into the pockets of his overcoat as he hurried towards his car. As soon as he had closed the door of the Audi, he reached for his phone and began searching through his list of contacts. The very least he could do was call Diana and warn her that the police would soon be knocking on her door.

It was only polite.

Neither had felt like cooking, so they ate at a small Chinese place on Hammersmith Grove. It was walkable, as well as being a damn sight cheaper than somewhere in the West End, and – though Tanner had tired of pointing out that there was probably a very good reason – they could always get a table.

Susan scattered slivers of spring onion into a pancake and reached for the last few pieces of the crispy duck they had been sharing. ‘Paul Murphy was back on form again today.’

‘Oh good. It’s been ages.’

‘Well, he was absent for a lot of the time.’

‘Oh. That’s a worry, isn’t it?’

‘Are you kidding? Never seen the staff room so happy.’

Susan taught at a primary school in Chiswick and the boy in question had been the subject of many of her favourite stories over the past couple of years. Most of them were hilarious, or had at least become so in the telling, though Tanner was convinced that the boy’s often bizarre behaviour hinted at a home life that was anything but happy.

‘He exploded in the bogs,’ Susan said.

‘
What
?’

‘Well, as good as.’ She took a bite of her pancake, and chewed fast, keen to tell the story. ‘So, nobody can find Paul after lunch. Everyone’s looking and they finally find him in the toilets and it’s like he’s… exploded. I’m not kidding; there’s shit everywhere.’

Tanner grimaced. ‘Come on, Sue, not while we’re eating.’

Susan grinned. ‘I swear, it was like a dirty protest. So we called his mum… have I told you about Paul’s mum?’

‘The one who looks like a boxer.’

‘A very bad boxer. Anyway, so she comes steaming in half an hour later and he’s still there sitting on the floor because nobody wants to try and clean him up… she marches into the toilets, takes one look at him and says, “Fuck’s sake, Paul, I told you fourteen peaches was too many.”’

Tanner thought how good it felt to laugh. She had enjoyed the occasional bit of banter with Dipak Chall and one or two others over the past few days, but there had not been much cause for hilarity, not like this. Susan could always do that. It was one of the reasons Tanner loved her partner so much.

‘Fourteen peaches!’ Susan said and they laughed some more.

The waiter arrived to clear the starter away. When he had gathered up the plates and bowls he asked if they needed any more beers. Tanner said she was fine as she was, while Susan quickly downed the last of her Tsingtao and ordered another.

‘I was at South End Green today.’

‘At where?’

Tanner explained where it was, told Susan about the fountain she had never noticed before and the quotations on the ground around it. ‘My murder case,’ she said. ‘The woman in Victoria.’

‘Did you read any of those books when you were a kid?’ Susan smiled as the waiter returned and put down her beer. ‘Murders in vicarages and what have you.’

For the second time in one day, Tanner said that she didn’t.

‘I used to like the Secret Seven,’ Susan said. ‘The Famous Five and all that. I was always convinced that George was one of ours.’

‘I was talking to a doctor,’ Tanner said. ‘That’s why I was there. He was in a kind of support group with my victim.’

‘What kind of group?’

‘Just a general… therapy kind of thing.’ Despite the fact that the only other occupied table was on the other side of the restaurant, Tanner leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘He told me he’d been taking drugs while he was still performing operations.’

Susan nodded, took a few pieces of cucumber. ‘High functioning,’ she said. ‘That’s what they call it.’ She took a swig of beer. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘What?’

‘Drugs. Never have. Couple of puffs of dope when I was in the sixth form and that was me done.’

Tanner nodded. This wasn’t anything she didn’t know, hadn’t heard before, but it was fine. Two people who had been together as long as they had were bound to start repeating themselves. Sometimes it was probably because they had simply run out of things to say, but often it was about reintroducing themselves. Replanting a flag. Each reminding the other that they had an opinion on something other than whether the kettle needed descaling and whose turn it was to take the rubbish out; views about one issue or another that still counted for something.

‘Never seen the point,’ Susan said.

‘I know.’ Tanner wondered how many times she had told Susan just what she thought about arming the police or capital punishment or the dangers of the internet. Then she thought about the things she had never told her.

‘People make a choice, don’t they?’

Tanner nodded again.

‘I do that line of coke or I don’t. I take that tablet or I don’t, whatever. I know people talk about it being genetic or being about family and environment, but at the end of the day, they choose to do it.’

‘Like which skirt should I wear today? Like whether I want salt and pepper squid or sizzling beef?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Maybe it’s the only choice some people have.’

‘What, like your druggy doctor? Operating on people while he’s off his tits?’

‘Some people,’ Tanner said.

Like a young woman who finally made a choice to get clean; to reclaim her life. Only for someone to take it from her.

‘I know you think I’m unsympathetic,’ Susan said.

Forty minutes later they handed over credit cards, splitting things straight down the middle, same as always. They left enough change for a tip and each took a fortune cookie, to take the taste of the MSG away as much as anything. The stickiness on the teeth, the slick coating on the roof of the mouth.

Tanner’s fingers pushed through the brittle, yellowish crescent as Susan read out her motto. Something about a long-awaited opportunity, a lucky number. Even as Tanner was unfolding her own thin slip of paper, she was thinking about a motto she had seen elsewhere, hand-drawn in felt-tip pen behind dirty glass. Bold and brightly coloured; fringed by stars and smiley faces.

We are only as sick as our secrets.
 

To Tony’s experienced eye, the body language and the enthusiasm of the responses around the circle when he asks the usual question suggest that everyone has genuinely had a pretty good week. Or that, at least, nobody has had a bad one. He looks once more at Chris to be sure; gets a roll of the eyes and a confirmatory nod.

‘Excellent,’ he says. He straightens the notepad on his lap, rolls the biro between his fingers.

‘Me and Diana had lunch,’ Caroline says.

‘I have lunch every day.’ Chris looks for someone willing to play along. ‘Breakfast as well, sometimes. I’m a nutcase, me.’

‘We had lunch together. At Diana’s house.’ Caroline looks at Tony. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘I told you it was.’ Diana sounds a little irritated that she was not believed, that the younger woman is insisting on checking. Or perhaps she just thinks that Caroline is sucking up to Tony.

‘Of course,’ Tony says.

‘As long as we don’t sleep together, right?’

‘Is that likely?’ Chris leans forward. ‘Only I know people who’d pay good money to come along and film that. You know, for people with specialised tastes.’

‘Don’t start,’ Heather says.

Caroline smiles. ‘Water off a duck’s back.’

‘That’s a lot of water,’ Chris says.

Tony raises a finger, waits for silence, then looks at Caroline again. ‘This group is all about learning that we’re not alone, that others have been through what we have. Are still going through it. Interaction is a really important part of that process and if it carries on outside this circle, so much the better.’

Caroline says, ‘Great,’ and smiles at Diana.

‘As long as it doesn’t lead to the development of smaller groups within the larger one.’ Tony lets that sink in. ‘That’s important, too. Cliques are never a good idea.’

‘Me and Chris met up as well,’ Heather says. ‘Well, you know we sometimes do.’

Tony nods. ‘Right, and that’s absolutely fine, but the same thing applies.’

‘I bet our lunch wasn’t quite as swanky as yours though.’ Chris looks to his left and waits for Diana to look back at him. ‘Suckling pig, was it? Roast swan?’

‘We had salad,’ Caroline says.

Diana turns sharply to look at her. ‘I was trying to… cater.’

‘I know. I didn’t mean it to sound…’ Caroline reddens. ‘It was lovely.’

When Chris has finished giggling, he nods across at Robin. ‘What about you? Nobody want to have lunch with you, then?’

‘I rarely have time to socialise,’ Robin says. ‘I work.’

‘I work too,’ Caroline says. ‘Anyway, we had lunch on Saturday.’

‘Tell us about your job,’ Tony says. ‘If you want.’

‘Nothing to tell.’ Caroline shrugs. ‘Supermarket.’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Heather says.

‘Never said there was.’

‘I was sacked from a supermarket.’

‘What for?’

‘Nicking stuff.’ Heather shakes her head. ‘They make it so easy.’

‘Can’t have been that easy or you wouldn’t have got caught.’ Caroline laughs and Heather laughs along with her.

‘Old habits,’ Tony says. He sits forward. ‘We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? Many of us have stolen or worse to feed our addiction, and even when we’re in recovery the urge to do those things can still linger.’

‘Sometimes I wish I’d got caught,’ Robin says. Tony turns to him. ‘Because I had access to whatever I needed, I never had to steal, or anything else. It was too easy to feed the addiction, basically. Anaesthetists don’t even have to write prescriptions, they can just order up a bit more of this drug, a bit more of that one, no questions asked.’ He smiles, but there’s no joy in it. ‘Possibly another reason why they have the highest suicide rate in the medical profession. Anyway, I’m just saying that perhaps if I’d been forced to break the law and been caught… if I’d gone to prison even… I might have got clean a lot sooner than I did.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Tony says.

Robin nods. ‘A wake-up call sort of thing.’

Chris barks out a dry laugh. ‘If you think there’s no drugs in prison, you’re an idiot.’

‘Chris.’ Tony looks at him; a warning.

‘Sorry. Just saying… it’s rife inside, mate.
Rife
. People go into prison clean as a whistle and come out as major league junkies.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ Robin says. ‘It wasn’t a good example.’ He stares at Chris. ‘Have you been in prison?’

Chris looks at his feet, the toes of his training shoes tapping out a rhythm. ‘I know, all right?’

The group falls silent for a while. They shift in their chairs and watch the day continue to dim outside the conservatory windows. Tony takes the opportunity to scribble a few notes. Heather stands up and takes off her jacket. As she is hanging it carefully across the back of her chair, Tony looks across. He sees no sign of a mark on either sleeve. When Heather sits down she catches him looking and smiles. It looks like embarrassment, but Tony can see that she’s pleased at the acknowledgement of their private conversation; this moment between them.

‘I want to go back to talking about shame,’ Tony says. ‘The resolution of the shame in our pasts as part of the recovery process. As part of redefining ourselves.’ He looks around the circle. ‘Everyone still OK with that?’

‘Absolutely,’ Diana says.

Robin nods. ‘I found it hugely helpful.’

Tony looks at Chris. Chris stretches his legs out and says, ‘Yeah, whatever. I said my piece about this last week.’

‘Say it again if you like,’ Tony says.

‘Not much point if everyone else is up for it.’

‘We never do anything if it makes any member of the group uncomfortable.’

Chris waves away Tony’s concerns. ‘Whatever. Don’t look at me though. All I’m saying.’

Opposite him, Heather begins to make chicken noises, quiet at first, then growing in volume. Chris puffs out his cheeks as though supremely bored and gives her the finger.

Tony stifles a smile. ‘Nobody has volunteered to… lead things off tonight, but I don’t think that’s any bad thing, as it happens. Preparing something often leads to a certain amount of… self-censorship, which is never very helpful. With this particular part of the process, I’m wondering if being thrown in the deep end might actually pay dividends.’ He looks around the circle again then extends a hand towards Caroline.

‘Oh, God,’ she says.

Tony holds up both hands. ‘No problem if you’d rather not, but if that’s the case, I think it might be useful to talk about why you don’t want to.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to, but I really haven’t got anything to say.’ She looks at Robin, then Diana. ‘Just so I’m clear, you’re not talking about being ashamed of who we are now, right? What we’ve done…’

Tony shakes his head. ‘Something more deep-seated than that. Something that we did, or perhaps something was done to us, that may well have been what led to the addictive behaviour in the first place.’

‘And it’s not always immediate,’ Robin says. ‘It can take years for that behaviour to surface.’

‘You running this now?’ Chris asks.

‘No, he isn’t,’ Tony says. ‘But what Robin says is bang on. Just think about his own story, what happened to him when he was a child.’

Caroline nods, understanding. She takes a deep breath, then shakes her head. ‘There’s nothing. Sorry.’

‘Really?’ Chris narrows his eyes and studies her. ‘You seriously telling us that you never strangled the neighbour’s cat or murdered your parents? Seriously?’

Caroline ignores him, keeps looking at Tony. ‘I swear. I’ve been thinking about this since last week and I just can’t think of anything. There’s nothing I’m ashamed of, honestly. Is that… weird? I mean, is that not normal?’

‘It’s fine,’ Tony says.

‘Fine,’ Diana says.

Heather leans towards her. ‘And you’ve got nothing to be sorry about, either.’

Caroline looks relieved. ‘You can ask someone else if you want to, but there is something I’d quite like to talk about, if that’s OK.’ She looks to Tony. He nods. ‘I mean I know Chris was taking the mickey, saying that painkillers aren’t really a proper addiction, you know… not hardcore, or whatever. Thing is, he’s basically right. I took them and the pain went away, sometimes, but they didn’t get me high or anything. So I wanted to ask the others what that was like. Well, maybe not Diana… obviously I know what being pissed is like.’

‘I didn’t get pissed,’ Diana says, quickly. ‘That was the problem. I told you that on your first night.’

‘OK, sorry. Everyone else, then. When you take heroin. What does it do,
exactly? How does it make you feel? I’m sitting here with you all every week and you’re talking about these things and I’ve genuinely got no idea. I mean, is that… all right?’

Tony sits back. Robin appears to be thinking about it. Heather and Chris exchange a look.

‘It’s fucking fantastic,’ Chris says, eventually. ‘I’m not going to lie. It’s the best feeling in the world. Why else would you do it?’

‘Ignore him,’ Heather says. ‘He’s talking crap and he knows he is.’ She has been looking hard at Chris, but now she turns to Caroline. ‘Yeah, it’s good to begin with, but in the end you’re not using to feel great. You’re using to stop feeling shit.’

‘Very different things,’ Robin says.

‘I don’t think I ever used because I wanted to feel great.’

‘You mean like you see in films?’ Caroline asks. ‘When they’re throwing themselves around and screaming?’

‘That’s always such bollocks,’ Heather says. ‘Cold turkey isn’t nice, but they always overdo it on TV and stuff. I’m talking about how you feel every day, when you need to score.’

‘What’s that like then?’

‘You’re a bit… spacey, you know? You wake up and it’s like you’ve got the runs or something, but you haven’t, because heroin makes you constipated. Then it’s like you’re
very
awake and you just feel like you’ve got flu.’ She rubs her arm, remembering. ‘You’ve got goosepimples and you feel too hot, or too cold, and whatever you do you can’t get comfortable. It’s like your skin doesn’t fit.’

‘Greasy,’ Robin says. ‘Your skin feels greasy.’

Heather is still rubbing her arm. Chris is watching her.

‘So, what’s it feel like when you finally get it? When you shoot up?’ Caroline puts the last two words in inverted commas, like she feels silly saying the phrase out loud.

‘Weird thing is,’ Heather says, ‘all those symptoms go when you’re about to fix. Just like that. Just knowing it’s coming, you know? And the whole business is like this… ritual that you need. Spoons and candles and all of it.’ She laughs, shakes her head. ‘When I was on methadone they used to give me pills, but I’d crush them up just so I could use a needle. A dirty needle was better than popping a pill. Like I was addicted to the works as much as anything else.

‘Then you do it, and it’s… instant.’ She snaps her fingers. ‘The taste in the back of your throat, and the glow. This warm glow.’

Robin nods. ‘Like those kids on the Ready Brek commercial. Remember?’

‘What taste?’ Caroline asks.

Heather thinks for a few seconds, then shakes her head. ‘Can’t describe it. It’s… heroin.’ She cocks her head slowly right, then left, as though she’s working out a stiffness in her neck. She says, ‘What you said before, about the painkillers?’

‘What?’

‘It’s no different, not really. Exactly the same thing applies to smack, or whatever else you’re using.’ Her eyes slide away from Caroline’s. ‘You take it and the pain goes away.’

‘And you’re the king of the world,’ Chris says.

‘Until you’re not.’

Robin nods, knowingly. ‘King of the world, piece of shit.’ He looks at Caroline. ‘It’s something we say a lot. It’s what junkies are, what they feel like most of the time. Always the two extremes.’

‘What are you now?’ Caroline asks.

‘I’m a piece of the world,’ Robin says.

Chris throws his arms wide. ‘And I’m the King of Shit.’

As had happened the previous week, as often happens whenever part of the session has drifted into heavy territory, they spend the rest of the time swapping stories. Tony is happy with the shape of such sessions. The dissipation of any tensions that might have built up, the reassertion of the group as a unit before they go their separate ways for another week.

He listens as Robin tells them about a junior doctor who snorted coke off the belly of a coma patient and Heather talks about an old friend of hers, a woman smaller than she was who had once stolen a dumper truck and driven it into a chemist’s in the middle of the night.

Tony keeps a careful eye on his watch and, with five minutes to go, he raises a finger. ‘Now, before we call it a night, Heather has something she wants to give everyone.’

‘Is it an STD?’ Chris asks.

Even Robin and Diana can’t help but laugh, but Heather ignores them. She takes a large envelope from her bag, then stands up and moves around the circle, passing out the personalised invitations.

Diana says, ‘A party. That’s fantastic.’

Heather hands Tony his invitation last. ‘Not really a party. I mean it’ll probably just be us. I wanted to celebrate with the group, you know.’

Chris pretends to fight back tears. ‘That’s beautiful.’

‘Well, count me in,’ Robin says.

Caroline tells Heather how nice the invitations are. She says she would love to come and asks if there’s anything she can do to help.

‘Not sure I can make it,’ Chris says. ‘I might be washing my hair.
X Factor
might be on.’

‘And I might cut your balls off,’ Heather says.

Diana says, ‘Are you coming, Tony?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ Tony looks at Heather for a moment or two, then addresses the group. ‘Not really ethical, you know? But I think it’s a great idea.’

‘Course he can’t,’ Robin says. ‘Professional distance.’

‘Right,’ Chris says.

‘Yeah, but it’s her birthday,’ Caroline says. ‘What if one of your patients invited you to a party? You could go, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes, probably, but it’s not the same. There isn’t a relationship, as such. I don’t anaesthetise the same patient every week.’

‘I bet you weren’t always so sure.’ Chris is reaching for the small rucksack beneath his chair, the time almost up.