Desperate Measures - страница 13

It was Howard who first called it. Adele thought it was teenage rebellion (and maybe that was part of it) and that after a few months of back-chat and door slamming and sleepless nights for Adele, Marcie would re-emerge but as soon as money started disappearing from his wallet and Adele’s purse Howard realized. ‘She’s using it for drugs,’ he said.

‘No way. She’d never touch them, she doesn’t even smoke,’ said Adele, who couldn’t kick her own fifteen-a-day habit. ‘You’re wrong.’

They’d confronted Marcie who had sworn on her grandma’s grave that she’d never touched any drugs or taken any money and had flounced out of the house.

Adele was wild with anxiety. She looked up help lines and advice services, all the while thinking maybe Howard was mistaken. Then the police came round. Marcie had been caught breaking into a car.

It was all downhill after that.

Those endless nights, lying awake, Adele kept imagining her hurt or being hurt, nodding off in some filthy rat hole or freezing to death in a shop doorway. Some nights they’d go out looking for her, driving around, a blanket and a thermos for her in the back.

They found her a couple of times and persuaded her to come home. And the next time Marcie left, something else would be missing, jewellery, mobile phone, DVDs – anything portable she could sell.

The hardest thing was Marcie’s point blank refusal to talk about what was happening, to admit that was a problem, to accept that she was an addict. Smelling dirty and with her face all spots and scabs, she’d eat sugar by the spoonful, half a bag at a time. She was skin and bone in a few short months. There was sometimes a moment when Adele caught sight of the girl beneath all this, a glint of mischief in her gaze, but most of the time the habit seemed to swallow Marcie whole.

Adele was frantic to help but could see no way. If she’d had more money she could’ve paid for the stuff herself, rationing it out, so at least the stealing and lying and run-ins with the police wouldn’t happen.

The spectre of prostitution hovered close by. Adele didn’t know if Marcie was already embroiled in that but knew that it came with the territory. Prostitution, AIDS, homelessness, overdoses.

Don’t give them money, that was what all the charities said, money will go straight to the addiction. It doesn’t help. Not the answer.

‘What’s it like?’ Adele asked her one evening. Marcie was getting jittery. Adele could see it in the way her eyes swung about, the muscles jumping under her skin. ‘What does it feel like, the heroin?’

Marcie waited a moment, mouth open, finding the words, then said, ‘Heaven.’ And a look of lust and longing filled her eyes.

‘What it does to you, what it’s doing…’

Marcie shivered and scratched her neck. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Maybe not,’ Adele said, her voice rising, ‘but what I do get is that you can’t carry on like this, babe. It’ll kill you. Don’t go out,’ she had begged later, ‘I’ll sit up with you.’

The next time Howard had seen Marcie on his way home from work, begging. The building was in a row that had been waiting years for redevelopment. Boards over the windows, grass in the guttering, pigeons on the roof. The place was freezing cold, the stones glistening damp, a smell of wet earth and human mess. Marcie was filthy, dirt ingrained in her hands, pin thin arms livid with sores and needle marks.

Adele had thought that was the lowest point. To see Marcie had started injecting now, that the high couldn’t come fast enough or go deep enough.

They had brought her home, stuck her in the shower, given her clean clothes, fed her Coco Pops and toast and drinking chocolate. Adele slept with her purse under the pillow. Twelve hours later Marcie had gone again.

The turning point had been an intervention from a drug abuse officer who worked with the neighbourhood policing team. Marcie had been arrested again and was facing possible charges which could lead to a custodial sentence. The officer, Sandra Gull, was working with a small group of offenders with substance abuse issues to try and get them on the rehab route. Faced with the choice, Marcie agreed to try the scheme. The day Marcie went to the surgery to see Dr Halliwell about the methadone replacement programme, Adele felt as though the sun had returned after a long, dark, winter. Hope replaced dread. Sandra was having excellent results with the programme and lives were being saved. Adele felt hopeful, at least for those first few weeks before it all went so very wrong.