Cleaning Up by Tania Glyde

Author:Tania Glyde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2008-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

this unusual woman

The next day a friend rings me, early in the morning, and tells me to put the telly on because there’s been a car crash in Paris involving Princess Diana. I am barely awake but I dive in like one lost in the desert, into the pool of wondering, the endless shift of newsreaders inviting each other to speculate, over and over again, about what has happened and what is going to happen. Hand in my mouth, I barely move from the television all day.

Days pass, and I lean into the public mourning as if into a soft grassy mountainside. I am so tired. I go to see the flowers. Piled up and glinting in the sun, the metallic pinks and blues and yellows make this corner of London look like a street scene in India. A friend tells me that his coke man stopped taking calls for twenty-four hours, ‘out of respect for Diana,’ – his voicemail intoned, pausing for the comma – ‘Princess of Wales’.

A few weeks later, Mick’s manager and I go to see Dr Junk, as Mick has rapidly returned to heroin. His manager tries to shush me while I tell Dr Junk about all the things that happened, my voice rising, and how stressful it was, and the effect it had on me. Dr Junk looks at me from in front of the shiny gold disc and tells me that I have been ‘too stoical’.

Hindsight tells me that in seeking out men with substance problems, I have been looking for some cover, so that I can quietly get on with my own intoxication. Who would ever take me for a drug addict, or an alcoholic? If you surround yourself with people with worse habits than you, and who are notorious for them, you will always seem like the Normal One. I am with Mick for another two years.

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