Love in London the Complete Trilogy by Carrie Elks

Author:Carrie Elks [Elks, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carrie Elks

Chapter 16

On Tuesdays at the clinic I run a group session for parents of addicts. Dragging our chairs into a makeshift circle, the eight of us sit down, and I take a moment to look at each one of them. The longest-serving member is Jackie Clack. She’s been coming to these meetings for five years, ever since she found her son injecting himself in their downstairs bathroom. Though Seth’s fallen on and off the wagon more times than a drunken cowboy, Jackie has remained consistent throughout that time.

She’s like everybody’s grandma. When a new member joins, she takes them under her wings, coddling them, telling them that though things may not ever get better, they will definitely become more bearable.

Next to Jackie is Peter Stanhope. He’s only been with us a few weeks. His daughter, Kate, is a meth addict and her two children have been taken into foster care. Every time Pete comes to a meeting he shows us their photos, holding them with a shaking hand, telling us that this week he hopes he’ll get to see them.

The saddest member of all is Carla Dean. She’s not that much older than me, though the furrowed lines that have made a home across her brow make her look at least a decade more advanced than she is. She had her only son—Connor—at the age of seventeen. He’s now fifteen and addicted to smack. She hasn’t seen him for three months; the last she heard, he was seen in a drug den in Wandsworth. Since then, she’s been walking the streets every night, questioning the homeless, searching for a sign of him.

It’s as if the streets have swallowed him whole. It never fails to amaze me how a fifteen-year-old can disappear into thin air. In this day and age, it’s still possible to lose a child.

“I thought I saw him last week,” Carla tells us. She won’t catch any of our eyes, and simply stares down at the floor. From my position opposite her, I can see the grey roots of her hair have grown in, giving her a pale white stripe across her parting line. “But it wasn’t him. It was some kid with bleached blond hair. I tried to get him to come home with me for a decent meal but he told me to fuck off.” She wrings her hands nervously together. “I told him that his mum must be worried sick, as I am. But he told me his mum chucked him out.” Finally, she looks up. “I mean, who would do that? Throw their kid out?”

“I threw Kate out when I found out about her drugs,” Pete says, with a thin smile. “Fat lot of good that did. She shacked up with her deadbeat boyfriend instead. The one who got her hooked in the first place.”

“You did what you thought was right.” Jackie pats his hand. “None of this is your fault.”

There’s silence for a minute, and I turn my attention on our newest member. Laurence Baines is fifty-something and a headmaster of an up-and-coming school in East London.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.