31 Falkner Street (16)

Paddy was working 10am until 7pm, and I was working 2pm until 8pm. I was up and dressed at the same time as him, by 9am, and felt wrong-footed by having got up and ready for the day rather than lie in bed until having to get up and showered ready for my shift. We decided to go for a coffee before Paddy had to go into work, and I felt happy as we marched along, gloved hand in gloved hand. The air felt cold and fresh. The scenery surrounding our stroll was familiar, old billboards, cracked cobbles, the usual graffiti and refuge, bright front doors and drainpipes, homeless people curled up against the same wall as always, some gouging out. We didn’t see a single person until we reached the hospital, only traffic. No-one from our area was getting up for work. The students weren’t motivated enough to go to their early morning lectures.

We sat in the hospital with our coffees, because we couldn’t afford Starbucks or Costa. We could have made a cup of tea or coffee at home and drank it there and not spent anything, but this at least was an outing together and time spent away from the house not breathing in rot. I thought that other people sitting in the hospital would assume that we had come to visit a sick friend or relative. Then I felt mean and intrusive.

Paddy walked to his work, which was in the town centre, and I retraced our steps back to the house, still ignoring the scenery which hadn’t changed. I thought about how cold it must be overnight for homeless people, and about what they did if their sleeping bag got wet. I supposed they just had to still sleep in it. I wondered if you would feel cold if you had just used heroin or if you would just feel lovely and as if you were wrapped in a big fluffy cloud, as it had been described to me previously. What made people try heroin for the first time in the first place.

Kath’s front door was open as I walked past her house, and Jo was standing in it, blocking the entire view into the living room. She greeted me enthusiastically and told me to come in. They had been sitting on the sofa watching the music channels. Jo and Kath were keen to tell me how they had sorted themselves out lately by making sure that they got up in the mornings and prepared a breakfast for themselves. It made me feel angry that this was their impression of sorting their life out, and that they were clearly proud of this achievement. As they talked about their fry up, I thought to myself that my taxes had paid for that meal, whilst I had been nursing my 50p coffee and planned on having my 60p tin of soup for lunch in work. Jo always had nice food, she didn’t get smart price or tesco value stuff. Even the vodka she bought was a good brand. And she didn’t seem to have a second thought when she ordered take-aways, and would get starters too, spring rolls and seaweed.

I told Jo and Kath that I was in work at 2pm and could stay for a cup of tea. I explained that I was a bit short of cash lately, what with trying to finish my course and working too. This was my far-too-subtle way of telling them that I disapproved of their lifestyle and especially the fact that they weren’t honest about it by claiming that they were too ill to work. They weren’t too ill to stay at hotels, and to go to clubs in the evenings. But as Jo had told me before in a sombre tone of voice ‘Kath has mental depression’ and also, her knees clicked when she stood. And of course, Jo had asthma.

My touching on money worries prompted Jo and Kath to start talking about theirs. Namely, Ella. Apparently, Ella owed Diane roughly £500. I wasn’t sure exactly how they had worked it out, but I think it was that whilst Ella had been living with Kath, Kath had been the one getting the housing benefit payments to cover the rent and so Ella had been her tenant and owed her that money in rent. Jo said that she was waiting for Ella to walk down the street because she had already forewarned Ella that she would break both her legs. Jo then sat at the one seater couch next to the window and glanced sharply out of the window each time somebody passed, as if she were about to spring from her seat and kill Ella with a hammer whilst snarling and dribbling. Jo and Kath said that they had seen Ella the other day talking to Nadine from across the road and that Jo would have killed her, but Kath had stopped her. I told them both that I doubted, then, that Ella would just suddenly be prancing down the street chatting to all the neighbours. They said that she would because she was a cheeky bitch. To be fair to Ella, even if she did owe out some money, she hadn’t really been given a chance to exactly set up a repayment plan because she had literally been handed a couple of bin bags with her clothes in and told to fuck off and not come back to the street again. I hadn’t been there when this happened, but I could still have told the pair of them that they were out of order and I didn’t, I just thought it.

At least now Jo wasn’t in a mood with me for not going to her house for Christmas day and drinking with her. That had been the one issue I wouldn’t budge on. Christmas was a merry, pleasant, innocent day to me, and always a time spent with my family with proper food and presents and a fire on somewhere. Jo had wanted me and Paddy to get to hers for 7am, have a bacon butty, swap presents and then ‘get on it’. She had been very angry when I had been vague with my response. But now she had been invited to Kath’s parents for the day, who loved her. So now Paddy had been granted leave to come with me to my mums.