I haven’t got a licence, but I’ve been driving since I was a kid. I’m seventeen, I should take the test but… I’ve got better things to do, I suppose.

The cottage belongs to a friend of Wendy. Wendy’s my mum. It’s a sort of holiday let, but this was April and it was a bit early in the season so it was a stroke of luck it was free that week. A whole week. Wendy used to take me there in the winter when I was a kid. At the time I’d been bored but now, when I thought about it, it was perfect. Miles from anywhere, beautiful countryside, no people, no hassle, no problems. They’d all fall in love with it. I was really looking forward to it myself. We drove along and I felt like I was taking them to another world.

We’d finished off the last of our smack before we set out, and we had just a tiny little bit, a dab, just to get us to bed that night so in the morning we could start right from scratch. Bare-brain riding, Lily called it. Riding life with nothing on…

Tar was next to me, map reading. Lily and Gemma and Sal were larking about in the back. It was a great feeling, watching Bristol slip past. Getting on to the M4 and seeing the countryside. I don’t think any of us had seen the countryside for two or three years. Fields, space with no one in it. Trees.

We were leaving everything behind. All the shit. The baby was the real magic spell and Lily was the witch who was making it. What does that make me? A magician, I suppose. It’s a bit like that. Me, a dad. With my magic wand.

Gemma and Sals were really into it. Sal had been a bit doubtful at first, but now she was as keen as anyone. It was a real chance. She and Gems were already talking about having babies themselves.

‘It’s gonna be like a farm at this rate…’ I said. And they all howled with laughter.

I dunno. I know Lils better than any of them, see. This baby. Well, it’s part of life, isn’t it? Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, babies, they just happen. But I wasn’t so sure how great it was going to be this time. I kept my mouth shut. Anyway, you never know. You never know with Lils, that much is true.

They had a few spliffs and they were sitting in the back there singing the No More Song.

The dark and the quiet were so intense. It was like standing on a hill in outer space. You couldn’t see anything but you could feel how it went on forever and ever all around you…

‘It must be as dark as this all the way to the next star,’ said Tar. Yeah. It was so dark the dark was like, filling it all up, as if it had been poured in. And there was nothing going on. No noise. If you held your breath there was nothing. That was so amazing after being in Bristol for all those years, because in Bristol you can always hear the cars buzzing away or the noise of people doing things. There was no one doing anything within twenty miles of here.

I thought, Tomorrow I’m going to be able to do anything. I think we all felt like that.

Inside was smaller than I remembered. This tiny sitting room and two bedrooms and the kitchen sort of tacked on the back. The toilet was an outside one. That part of Wales is like that – timeless. It was cold, it was colder inside than it was outside. There were a few logs left in the basket by the fire and me and Tar went out and got some more. We took it in turns chopping logs while the girls made some tea and got the stuff out of the car and tidied up a bit.

Every time we swung the axe – thup, into the wood – you could hear the echo come back a few seconds later.

I said, ‘It’s the mountains.’ We peered into the darkness. We shone the light out down the hill but we couldn’t see a thing. It was too far off.

I said, ‘They’re out there somewhere.’

He said, ‘Standing around watching us.’

I said, ‘Nah, they don’t take any notice of us.’

He said, ‘Do you think they’re friendly?’

I said, ‘Yeah, definitely friendly.’

Whole mountains without a light on them. There were stars out, it was quite a clear night but there was no moon. We turned off the lamp and stood on the wet grass waiting for our eyes to acclimatise. But it was so dark they never did. We used the gaps in the sky where there were no stars to try and work out where the mountains were, but we couldn’t really do it. Those mountains had really hidden themselves well.

‘What do you think of it?’ I said.

‘I could live here,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘You’d get bored. It used to drive me mad when I was a kid.’

‘No, no. I really love it here.’

I said, ‘Be honest, you didn’t think much of this idea, did you?’

We were standing next to each other. I could just make him out. This ghostly voice.

He said, ‘I didn’t think anyone really wanted to.’

I waited.

‘But I think now… maybe we can do it.’ I could feel him looking at me. It was funny – I couldn’t see a thing but I could feel him. ‘What about you?’ he asked. I laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. Well, we gotta, haven’t we? For Lils.’

Personally I was determined to have a real go at it. I had a little package in my pocket no one knew about, and I almost thought about throwing it away, but I didn’t want to muck things up. I’m lousy at that coming down bit. I’m all right after that but I do need something to let me come down slowly. You have to find the best way of going about it. That little packet was right for me.

We stood for a while breathing big long breaths of air. It was cold and pure, you could feel it falling down into your chest. You could feel it inside you, doing you good. Then we went in to light the fire.

We all had our little dab and a bit to drink that night – not much, a couple of cans of Special Brew, because the last thing you want when you’re coming down is to wake up with a hangover.

Tar and Gemma were already up, outside, drinking coffee. They called me to come and see and I went out.

It was tremendous. This soft, cool, clear air and now you could see it all, miles and miles of it, mountains and hills and forest. There was a buzzard circling about. Little birds hopped about in the firs nearby. No one said anything. We just stared and sipped our drinks. Then I went to get Lily up and she sat on a pile of logs and we all just looked and looked. It was like soaking something up. I felt I could soak it up forever and never be full.

Lils patted her stomach. ‘This is all for you, yeah,’ she said. We all laughed and I thought, Lucky little git.

We did the big breakfast, bacon and eggs and that, then we went for a walk. We were all still feeling a little run down, like you do at the beginning. Sals said in Bristol by this time, she’d be feeling shitty, but out here it was okay. It was this feeling that the air was so good we couldn’t feel bad at all. Which was a bit of a mistake, really, looking back.

We walked down this track, downhill. It soon ran into woods, big tall trees, quite a lot of light coming through. We saw squirrels and birds. It was nice. Then there was this walk up the hill and that did us all in – none of us had walked more than down the road for years, I suppose. Then we went down another hill and this time we were in a plantation, little trees all packed in together.

That wasn’t so good. It was man-made. It was dark, they pack those trees so close together. We carried on.

It was the woods, I suppose. It was all dead – dead little trees all packed in neat little rows, like a tree factory. Nothing growing underneath and nothing in between as if these baby trees were poisoning the ground.

Actually, I was all right. I’d had a little dab out of my packet earlier – you know, just wetted the end of my finger and stuck it in, not enough to get a hit. Just enough to keep the heebie jeebies away. I didn’t even notice the others, but I was thinking maybe I hadn’t done enough and I ought to slip off and do a bit more when Lily suddenly said,

‘Fuck this. Fuck this!’

We all jumped. Right out there in the middle of nowhere. She was standing there with her foot up to the ankle in this rut full of water. She was livid. She was only wearing these black felt shoes she wears all the time, not really what you go for a country walk in. I had a look round and I could see everyone was looking shifty and jaded and I thought, O-oh.

Lily turned round and stomped back up the hill towards the cottage. We’d been planning this really long walk over the hills and dales to get the toxins out of our systems. I could have carried on a bit, but you could see at a glance that the others had had it.

We didn’t talk much on the way back, but I did have a chat with Sally. She didn’t seem too bad either and I had an idea maybe she’d had a dab an’ all. I was going to ask her, but it was a bit risky. About halfway home Gemma suddenly turned round and she said, ‘God, I didn’t expect to feel this bad, this is awful…’

Me and Sals just laughed. It was funny – what did she expect? None of them was expecting it. Me, like I say, I’d taken precautions. But when Lils looked at me I stopped laughing because, shit, she really did look awful. Clammy. She’d been doing a lot lately. Well, let’s be honest, we all have. I’d have given her a dab as well, but they’d all been making such a big thing about getting right off it once and for all and I didn’t want to make it worse for her. You know, you build yourself up to do something and then you fail – it doesn’t help, does it? Besides, there was the baby. That was why we were all there, right? Not just for Lily. For the baby. And it was my baby too.

‘It’ll be easier tomorrow,’ I said. Lils gave me this dirty look, and I thought, I wonder if she knows?

Tar and Lily were having the worst time. Sal and Gemma were sitting together bolstering one another. Gems was saying, ‘I don’t care how bad I feel, I’m not going to crack.’ She’s strong. She meant it. She and Sal they’re two tough ladies.

Lils wouldn’t talk about it. ‘Yeah, I’m all right, you worry about your own head,’ she said. But she wouldn’t look any of us in the eye.

As for Tar, he was looking very fishy. I think the joints were a mistake for him. Tar’s one of those people who don’t take to hash so well. He started to get that anxious look he used to have, and he was going for little walks on his own, which made Lily ask him if he had a little stash of his own, which he denied. I’m fairly sure he didn’t actually, because he was a mess. He started talking about getting some booze.

‘You’d only get a hangover, and then what about tomorrow?’ asked Gemma.

‘I need it, I need it, Gems, you don’t understand,’ he said.

‘You can’t make coming down feel good, you just have to go through it,’ Sally told him. By this time, Sal and me were smirking a bit at one another when one of us said something like that. It was, like, I know you know and you know I know but neither of us is going to say anything. Lils had the cramps by now, so did Gemma. Tar didn’t get the cramps so much, but pretty soon he started throwing up. Whereas me and Sal… well, I was moaning about how foul I felt and so was she. But… well…

Finally, it must have been about four o’clock in the afternoon, Tar said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m going to hitch in and get some booze.’

I said, ‘I’ll give you a lift.’ There was a village nearby but they didn’t sell anything. The nearest offie was a good five miles away and anyway, Tar was only sixteen. They might refuse to serve him.

He didn’t want a lift at first. He said he wanted to go on his own. But of course once it was established he was going, everyone wanted something to drink, so I ended up driving him in anyway.

Well. We got there all right, bought some cider and beer. Then he said, ‘I’m going to walk back.’

I just looked at him.

‘No, I want to.’

‘Five miles, Tar.’

‘I just want to clear my head.’

I thought, Oh yeah. I didn’t say what I was thinking, but we were both thinking it. I watched him in the mirror as I drove off. He stood there watching my back but he didn’t move until I was out of sight.

She just looked at me and said, ‘Gimmee.’

I spread my hands. ‘What do you mean, Lils?’

‘Don’t muck me around, I know what’s going on. Now just give me mine, I want mine, all right…?’

I fished around in my pocket. ‘What about the baby?’ I said.

‘Don’t give me that crap, you want me to get like Gemma? Yeah, that’ll do the baby a whole lotta good. Right, yeah…’ She snatched the package off me and then pulled a piece of silver foil out of her pocket.

‘I only had a dab,’ I said.

‘Yeah, how many? You haven’t been coming down at all…’

She wasn’t that angry. I reckon she was pleased really, because if I hadn’t brought any, where’d she be then?

Don’t get it wrong. We weren’t getting back on it but… going away and just expecting to drop it was a bit unrealistic. You have to do these things bit by bit.

We didn’t have any needles, we had to have a chase. Then we lay on the bed and listened to Gemma having a bad time. Sal was joining in but she wasn’t so convincing. Lils had already guessed that she had some; they’d had an argument about it while I was away. They were really making a racket, moaning and groaning. After a bit we started to giggle. I mean, poor old Gemma was falling to pieces, Sal was making a fuss to keep her company, but in fact she was just like me and Lils, and all it took was a little dab I had in my pocket and Gems’d be as right as rain… No, but I know it wasn’t funny, it feels awful. But, you know…?

Well. It went on till, I dunno, ten o’clock? Gemma was getting really agitated because Tar wasn’t back. The village was only about five miles down the road and he’d been gone over five hours.

‘Something’s happened to him, he’s done something silly,’ said Gemma. She thought he’d topped himself or something! I tried not to look at Lily but I couldn’t help it. We both started snorting and laughing. It was no use, I couldn’t keep a straight face with Lily looking at me like that. Gems didn’t seem to notice that all the rest of us were okay. And as for Tar…

It was just so obvious. Tar didn’t have to kill himself. If he was that desperate there was a much easier way. Not that I’d fancy hitching all the way back to Bristol. He wasn’t exactly wearing his woollies and overcoat. Come to that, I don’t think he even owned one.

Poor old Gems, she was so worried about him. Her stomach cramps were really bad and… it was getting silly. Then Sals started on at us because we were laughing about it.

We had to spill the beans. Lils got cross and she said, ‘Look, Gemma, it’s obvious…’ and she told her that Tar had certainly hitched back home for more smack.

That was the worst bit. Gemma was furious. She wouldn’t have it at first. She more or less accused Lily of lying, and that’s a bad thing to do. They started shouting and that’s when Gems clicked that Lily and I had some.

And then there was a real major row.

‘But what about your baby?’ said Gemma. ‘You just don’t care, do you? You’re doing that to your baby…’

I thought, O-oh. I cleared off quick into the next room because you can tell Lily anything, but don’t tell her she’s doing her baby any harm…

It was horrendous. They were screaming and yelling. Sal was quite pissed up by this time and she was having a go as well, which was a bit unfair because she was all right. I sat on the bed next door and listened. They were really digging up the dirt on one another. Finally Gemma came barging into our room in tears. Gemma’s no good at that sort of thing, she starts crying. Sals and Lils’ll carry on forever. We could hear them screaming at each other and Gemma said, ‘Give me some, just… give me, will you?’

I pulled the packet out. I was getting a bit worried because there wasn’t much left but I couldn’t say no, could I? She calmed down. Lils came in a bit later. She said, ‘Are you all right now, Gems?’

‘I’d have done it if just one of you bastards had hung out with me,’ said Gems. And the whole thing started off again. I thought, This is no fun.