Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
How do you give someone a smack overdose anyway? I imagined the possible scenarios: Charlie slipping a loaded syringe out of her bag, plunging it into Karen’s arm; hiding in her flat when she was asleep and slipping the needle into her skin; holding a gun to her head and instructing her to inject herself. None of these scenes, especially the one involving the gun, seemed realistic. They were like snatches from noir films, with Charlie in the role of the deadly femme fatale. Maybe Karen really was into drugs. Thinking about it, it did fit with her experimental, hedonistic persona. She had told me on many occasions that she was willing to try anything once, that she believed in having as many interesting experiences as possible before she died. Karen had seemed ill and pale the last time I’d seen her; her tardiness in paying my invoice was uncharacteristic. If she had been addicted to heroin, and Charlie had somehow found out, all she would have to do would be to turn up with a narcotic peace offering, some extra-pure gear that Karen couldn’t cope with.
The light-headed sensation was returning, like there were huge, rubbery bubbles floating in my skull. Could I picture Charlie doing those things? I’d already been through this once, had shared my fears with the group the night before, and convinced myself it was ridiculous. Charlie was lovely. Warm, generous, kind, nurturing, sensitive. Almost everything she had done for me had been sweet and selfless, the actions of a woman in love. She had a strong moral core too: she loathed exploitation, as I had seen when she’d discovered I had a cleaner; she cried if she saw someone being bullied on TV; she refused to watch films or programmes in which children were hurt because it affected her too much. She had told me she worked for the NHS, when she could have made more money accepting contracts to work for private companies, because she believed in the cause.
‘They helped my mum when she had cancer,’ she told me. ‘For a while, I wanted to be a nurse or a doctor, but I wasn’t cut out for medicine in the end. Hence project management.’
The Charlie I knew and loved was a good person.