I’m part of a tribe. We live behind the windows and doors. Sometimes we go out in the streets, quick enough to shop or to visit each other. In this part of town, in the houses and the flats, one above the other, side by side, there are many tribes. Shop assistants, clerks, office workers, that sort of thing. The Asians, running their shops or keeping their homes; the West Indians, the Irish, the Poles, the people who like this and do that – all tribes, mixed together and jumbled up. Going about their lives, rubbing shoulders, doing deals.

I don’t have much to do with the rest of them. I only see them. I have my own life to live.

I had Richard round here the other day to say goodbye. He’s going on a trip to South-East Asia. Thailand, Bali, then on to Australia. He wanted me to go with him. I laughed. What with? I don’t have any money.

‘I’ll lend you some,’ he said.

I just shook my head.

I impress myself sometimes. He thinks I’m worth offering a thousand quid to and I don’t do anything. I get on with my life, I do my business. I don’t try. And he still thinks I’m worth giving a thousand to. I know he said lend, but we both know I’d never get round to giving it back, no matter how good my intentions were.

I knew what was behind it, of course. He thought if I went with him I might leave the smack alone. He used to come round regularly to nag me.

‘It’ll kill you. It is killing you. You’re really boring these days,’ he told me.

I said, ‘So are you.’

He just shook his head.

‘I don’t have to go running off to Asia to keep myself interesting, Richard,’ I told him.

‘I hope you find it just as interesting being dead as you have being alive,’ he told me.

That’s the trouble with most people. They want to live forever. When you turn round to them and tell them that you’re just living your life and if that means you’ll be dead in three years, that’s okay by you, they hate that. There’s no answer to that. If you don’t mind not reaching twenty there’s no argument against heroin, is there?

You have to face facts. There was this thing with Alan and Helen, this really spooky thing. I was just getting to know them quite well. I can’t remember where I met them, but they used to turn up at our place to score. Then they got into a bit of dealing. He was the handsomest bloke I ever met. He was dark and all hairy. Hairy chest, black hair on his arms. He had to shave twice a day. Well, he never did, of course, but if he wanted to keep clean shaven he had to. He had beautiful eyes, like liquid gold, and those even, good-looking sort of features. He could have been a model, except maybe he was even a bit too pretty. People used to sit staring at him. I used to myself. Then if he caught you looking, he’d fling back his head and put out his arms into this model-man pose.

He was a laugh. He always played up to it, posing like a model in the magazines. He had this really silly shirt, with a picture of a dragon on the front of it, all picked out in tiny little fairy lights. Sometimes if it was getting dark he’d turn the shirt on and sit there with his head flung back, like Erik the Viking, and this stupid shirt flashing on and off.

Helen was a frizzy blonde, quite pretty, with a turned-up little nose. She was from Birmingham, I think. She was quite lively. I didn’t really know why she was with Alan, because he was a bit thick. I think she just thought she had it made because he was so good looking, and he made quite a lot of money dealing.

Anyway, Rob had some sort of a deal with them, for some stuff. There was a shortage on. Me and Gems had a little bit but we didn’t want to share it because it was all we had, it was just a tiny little bit. It happened like this. They were out of town organising this stuff, and they rang Rob in the evening to tell him it was sorted and he could come and get his. He went round straight away to their place and the light was on, but he couldn’t get an answer. He banged on the door and shouted up… nothing. They were in Brook Road, just round the corner. He didn’t want to make too much fuss. It’s bad manners, you know, to make a fuss outside a dealer’s house, so he came back to wait at home.

‘They only rang me up half an hour ago and they never said they were going anywhere. I told them I was coming round,’ he said. He looked awful, sitting there chewing away at the skin round his nails.

‘Maybe they got busted,’ said Lily. She was sitting on the floor with her arms round her legs all wrapped up in a cardigan. They were both really going through it. I really felt for them. Yuk. It’s like, every little thing that happens is too much. It almost hurts sometimes, even when someone’s just saying hello.

He hung around for half an hour and then went back; same thing, no answer. We were getting a bit worried by this time. Alan and Helen never went anywhere. If they said they’d be in, they were in. Everyone was thinking the same thing. You see, it wasn’t all that likely they’d been busted because the police’d still have been round there half an hour after they rang up. On the other hand… well, we all knew people OD. You heard about it. But…

Rob was getting paranoid because he was scared to go round in case they had been busted and the place was being watched. I went and walked past to have a look for him but I didn’t dare knock. When I got back Lily was getting really pissy, blaming Rob and getting on at me and Gems just because we had some and they didn’t. She wanted someone to go round and bust in. There was a window open at the back, but it was up on the first floor; it would have meant shinning up the drainpipe.

‘You do it, Tar, you’re all right,’ said Rob.

‘No way, it’s your stuff.’

‘You’re all right, how’d you like to go breaking into someone’s place when you’re coming down?’

We started squabbling until Lily suddenly lost her temper.

‘Just bloody someone go round and sort it out, okay?’ she screamed, and she started walking round the place kicking things. She was getting really wound up. She started punching the doors and making a mess of her hands. So Rob and I looked at each other, and we decided to go together.

We didn’t have to climb in the window in the end. Gemma remembered that this other friend of ours who lived a few doors down from Alan and Helen had a key in case they got locked out. He didn’t want to give it to us at first, but once we’d explained to him, he handed it over.

‘You can come in with us if you’d like to make sure it’s all straight,’ said Rob. But funnily enough, the guy didn’t want to.

Rob said, ‘Are you okay?’ and I thought at first he was talking to me but he wasn’t. We both knew at once. They were blue. Then I saw the needles in their arms.

Rob looked at me. Then he went into the room and started creeping about opening drawers and looking on the shelves.

I went up close to have a look. I touched him on the arm and he was quite cold. Behind me Rob was rushing about, faster and faster. I think he was freaked out but I didn’t mind so much as him. They looked just like themselves but they weren’t moving. Alan was still gorgeous. She’d gone a bit thin lately, it didn’t suit her. So had he but it made him look even nicer if anything. I wanted to kiss her on the cheek because I knew she couldn’t wake up. It was like the Sleeping Beauty.

It was all so realistic. I kept waiting for him to move, and then for her to move and then for him to move, but they never did. I touched his cheek again. I thought of cold meat.

‘Bloody get away from them and help me!’ hissed Rob. We started pulling stuff out of the drawers and running about. He found it in the end – two bagsful, it must have been not far off an ounce.

That was a lot of junk. It was more than I’d ever seen.

‘It’s probably dead pure as well,’ said Rob, nodding at Alan and Helen. We giggled… you know, dead pure.

‘What shall we do with it?’

‘Well they’re not going to need it.’

I felt like we were stealing it even though they were both dead. I had this feeling they were waiting, that they were trying to trick us into stealing their stuff. I looked at them and shook the little bag at them as if to say, Is it all right? Then I noticed little details I’d missed the first time, like the sticky under their noses and in their eyes. Then I saw a fly walking across his face and I just flipped. I yelled and ran. Rob ran after me. We were down those stairs and out of the house in seconds.

Once we got the stuff back home we were all scared stiff of using it. Then someone heard the police give a warning on the radio to all the junkies that there was some extra-strong stuff about that was killing people. You get used to taking your usual hit, see, and so people were ODing. Wow! We had a party for Alan and Helen. That bag lasted for ages. It took the police a week to get round there and knock the door down.

I do it when I’m alone. It’s private. I don’t know why I do it, they’ve got nothing to do with me any more. Just to see if she’s all right, or what they’re up to, or just checking that they’re still there. Or maybe I do it because I want to show myself that I can take it. I can deal with her these days. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I can.

I’m usually walking down the road and I decide to do it just like that. I just walk into the phone box and pick up the phone and dial and there she is. Suddenly. Like she was at my elbow the whole time but I never saw her, all these months.

She has this way of answering the phone. She drawls. Maybe it’s the booze, but I think she’s watching herself in the mirror above the sofa in the lounge where the phone is, and she’s thinking how cool she looks with her fag in her hand and her lipstick smeared off her lips and her dress hanging off her shoulder. Really – she thinks she looks cool. She’s lost her whole personality to that poison and she thinks it makes her look cool.

‘Heeeeeeeellllooo,’ she says, like she’s on a film. My heart starts going like a fire engine.

‘Hi, Mum.’

And straight away, she changes. I can feel her moving quickly, I can hear her put her drink down and sit up. Then there’s this pause. She’s waiting for me, letting me dangle. She used to scare the shit out of me like that. These days, I let her dangle, too. I wait for her to speak.

Off she goes. Am I all right, how dare I not get in touch before, do I need help, how much she’s missing me, do I have somewhere to stay? How she keeps hearing about kids sleeping out on the streets and she prays every night it isn’t me.

What god would possibly want to listen to her?

‘No, Mum, I’ve got it sorted out, thanks.’

‘But, darling, is there anything you need?’

‘I was just ringing up to see how you were. You haven’t left him, then?’

‘He’s your father, David.’ Pause. ‘Darling, tell me about it.’

Pause.

‘Tell you about what?’

‘Everything.’

For a minute I start getting confused. Then I hear her drink clinking on her teeth, and I think, Oh, yeah. I know what’s she’s up to.

It’s pathetic, really. She only has this one trick and she plays it over and over again. And yet she nearly gets me with it still. It’s the same thing – dangling, you see. Asks you some twisted question, or makes these remarks which aren’t quite right. And you get nervous and then more nervous and then more and more nervous with the long silences, so you end up babbling away and all you can hear is her sucking her fag or sipping her drink, so you end up saying anything, promising her anything on earth, just to get her to acknowledge you.

And then when you’re just about begging her to say something, to say anything, she launches a rocket at you. Like, ‘He beats me up, darling…’ Or, ‘I think I might have cancer.’ Or, ‘I want to leave him but I have to have someone to help me…’

So when I hear her teeth clinking on the glass and her sucking her fag and waiting for me to start falling at her feet, I just keep quiet and then I say, ‘I haven’t got anything to tell you.’

She says, ‘David,’ in an injured voice. Then she gives me the rocket anyway. ‘He’s been beating me again.’

Maybe. Maybe not. I just keep my mouth shut and let her have a taste of what she tried on me. And it works, too, that’s the amazing thing. She starts blabbing and blabbing and blabbing and then the blabbing turns to blubbing.

‘I can’t help you, Mum. You have to help yourself. You have to leave Dad and pack in the booze. No one can help you until you do that. Can’t you see that, Mum? I tell you what,’ I say, ‘I’ll come back if you do that.’

Of course I know she never will.

Sometimes my dad’s there. He takes the phone.

‘David? David? Are you all right, David?’

I haven’t got anything to say to him. I just breathe down the phone, ‘Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,’ very softly but loud enough for him to hear. Just like I used to hear her breathe when she was letting me dangle and breathing out her fag smoke.

‘David, is this some sort of joke?’

I listen a bit more, but I really have got nothing to say to my dad. So I put the phone down, carry on my way. I don’t know if I’ll bother doing it again.

I always think that, but I always do.