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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Taylor Edison and Jane Smith 2017
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Source ISBN: 9780008148027
Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008216627
Version: 2016-12-20
Contents
If Diyan couldn’t give me a lift to somewhere I wanted to go, he used to give me money for the bus. One evening, I had popped home to Mum’s to get a change of clothes and was sitting on a bus heading back into town when I took a dislike to some girl and started staring at her. I thought I was so hard. But really I was being incredibly stupid. When I got off the bus, I decided to have the ‘last word’ and slammed my fist into the window right beside where the girl was sitting. Although it gave her a very satisfying fright, the glass didn’t break, of course. But one of my knuckles did.
I have always been wary of going to the doctor, so when I got to Diyan’s flat, he bandaged my hand for me, then rooted around in his first-aid box and found me something to take for the pain. In fact, Diyan was a bit of a hypochondriac, so his first-aid box was the size of a suitcase and contained what, for anyone else, would have been more than a lifetime’s supply of bandages, tablets, ointments and any other odds and ends that he might ever conceivably need.
I used to laugh at him about it, but it was actually quite fortunate for me, because I was accident prone, particularly during the periods when I was drinking heavily. I have broken toes – on two separate occasions – by kicking walls when I was in a bad mood. I have fallen down stairs and broken my wrist, which Diyan also bandaged up for me but which never set properly and is still misshapen and sometimes painful. And one night, when I was very drunk and making a cup of tea in Diyan’s little kitchenette, I dropped the kettle and spilled boiling water all over my feet.
He never said anything when I came home damaged and dejected. He simply examined my latest injury, dug around in his first-aid box, administered whatever pills and potions were required, and then put me to bed to sleep it off. Remarkably, the boiling water didn’t leave any scars on my feet, and I came through most of the other incidents relatively unscathed too – certainly a good deal better than I would have done without Diyan’s help. In fact, I don’t know whether I would have survived those three years without him.
During the last couple of years I was with Diyan, I was spending time with Saleem too. Because his flat was in the same house and they both worked at the same place, Diyan often gave him a lift in the mornings. But they didn’t actually like each other and didn’t ever socialise together. When they were working different shifts, I used to hang out in Saleem’s room sometimes, getting stoned, while Diyan was still at work. I wasn’t sleeping with Saleem. I was past my sell-by-date as far as he was concerned and he had other girls he was pimping for by that time, ‘new’ girls between the ages of 14 and 17, who were more easily cajoled and coerced.
Saleem
