On one of her grandparents’ wooden folding chairs that she’d brought with her, Shelley sat in Len’s front room. She prepared a shot while listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. The music soothed her, diminishing the usual urgency for a hit. Less haste, she hoped, would result in greater accuracy when it came to getting her vein, which in turn would lead to cleaner arms – if she could keep it up. And if she could, it would increase her earning potential, therefore enabling her to keep up with her habit.
“Eww!” Shelley flinched, then lifted her foot, realising it was rested on a dirty, discarded sock. “You need to clean up in here,” she told Len as he darted out of the lounge.
“I’m sorry, love. I’ll be right back,” he called.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Shelley yelled, as Len hurled a second tomato at her trainer. “Stop! That hurts,” she cried, after her foot was hit with a potato.
“It’s okay. I think I got it.”
“You fucking did get it.” Shelley tossed the prepared syringe into her cream handbag and stomped across the room to where Len was standing, holding a plastic container of mouldy-looking vegetables. “And you can buy me another pair, you idiot,” she said, stabbing the air below with her finger. “These are TNs. Do you know how hard it is to get Nike TNs in the UK? They only sell them in Foot Locker.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been after that bastard for ages.”
“Just pick it up like a normal person and put it in the wash.”
“Put it in the wash? Are you tripping?” Len raised his eyebrows. “I’m taking it out with the rubbish.” He walked over to the wooden chair and bent down by the brown sock. From the back pocket of his jeans, he took a shiny, silver fork and held it over the sock.
“Just pick up, for God’s sake. I wanna have my hit.”
“I can’t do it. They make me feel sick.” Len’s hand hovered in the air, holding the fork above the crusty sock.
“It’s your sock. Just do it.”
He cocked his head to the side, and looked across the room at Shelley. “Come over here, love.”
“Holy fuck!” Shelley leapt on top of the vomit and fur-coated armchair. “Get it out! For fuck’s sake, get it out!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” Len prodded the rat’s body with the fork.
“Not like that. It might not be dead.”
“It’s not moving. Look, it’s dead.” He flicked the rat with the fork, rolling it over one-hundred and eighty degrees so that it was lying on its back, face up to the ceiling.
Shelley screeched as she watched the fork coming into contact with the rat’s swollen stomach. “Stop! Its insides will explode everywhere if you do it like that. Get a bag.”
“When I’ve picked it up I’ll put it in a bag, but I’m not touching it.” He rolled the rat back over on its stomach. “I can’t do it with it looking at me like that.”
“Get a bag and pick it up like a poo.” Shelley explained the concept of an inside out bag for scooping up dog shit and Len dealt with the rat without the fork.
When he returned to the lounge, he knelt on the floor next to the Kenwood hi-fi and fast-forwarded through the tracks on the Simon and Garfunkel CD.
Shelley retrieved her pre-prepared syringe from her handbag and held it upright, flicking out the air bubbles. There was only heroin present in the syringe; she was saving the crack for when she got home.
This second time entrusting Len to score had gone far better than the first, notwithstanding the rodent intrusion. She’d insisted no money would change hands until the drugs were in her possession and he kept to his word. In fact, she wondered if he’d given her more than the three-hundred pounds worth she’d paid for.
As she pulled Len’s belt around her arm, The Boxer played. She listened to Len sing the words. Once she’d injected her fix, she leant back on her chair, gouching out. She could still hear him singing. She sensed vulnerability in his voice, as if he had conviction in those words.
The next time her eyes were open, there was a mug of tea on a lopsided table in front of her. As he wasn’t in the room, she took the opportunity to carry out a thorough inspection of the mug. There were no marks on it at all; no stains around the rim, nor did it have any chips. Maybe it was new, she wondered, sipping her tea.
Taking the mug with her, she went over to the front window and looked out. Len was in the garden, tidying up, and from what she could see, he’d made a good start. About half of the clutter was gone.
She checked the time on her phone – 5.07 p.m. Around two hours had passed since her hit. After lighting a cigarette, she meandered out of the house.
“I’m so sorry. I must’ve fallen asleep.” Shelley raised the clean mug to her lips.
“You were dead to the world, love.” Len picked up a white chest of drawers and leant it against his shoulder. “I’m sorry about ratty. You all right to help now?”
“Are you replacing my TNs?”
“I’ll give ’em a clean. They’ll come up good.”
Shelley shook her head. “What do you need me to do?”
“Can you lift these?” Len pointed to the pots of paint that were stacked like a shop display pyramid.
Shelley lifted one and, as it wasn’t too heavy, she took another in her other hand then followed Len into the house. They walked through to the lounge, and out of the damaged patio doors. In the back garden, a pile was accumulating, reminiscent of that which had previously been in the front.
“My neighbours are gonna love me.” Len inserted a cigarette into the side of his self-satisfied smile.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Shelley grinned.
When they returned to the front of the house, the old lady from next-door was walking down her front garden towards the street. As Shelley went to collect the next load of paint pots, the lady walked past Len’s garden and tutted in their direction.
“What now? You fucking interfering old biddy!” Len hollered after her.
“That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?” Shelley said, expecting the tut was due to her getting back with her boyfriend – as she had assumed Len was – as opposed to disapproval over the clearance of the front garden.
“You don’t know what I have to put up with from that one. Bloody curtain-twitcher. She’s always up in my business.”
“She’s an old lady,” Shelley informed him, as if he might not have noticed for himself. Although she liked the lady, it worried her how much of an interest she might take in her business. A quidnunc next door was the last thing she needed.