But she felt ashamed even thinking it after Freddie had talked to her about his time with heroin. The woman she’d been before would never have sunk to this level, but the woman she was now was desperate. She justified it to herself constantly: it was a drug she’d had before, just something to take the edge off. A few to tide her over. Just for a week, perhaps. Because she had to face her future and do something about getting a job. Buying prescription meds was not the same as being a proper addict, was it?
Walking into the pub, she spotted a woman sitting alone with a glass of something that looked like fizzy orange but might have been heavily spiked with alcohol, playing on her phone.
Glory had ombré hair – dark brown roots and blonde tips – but it wasn’t the ombré of expensive salons. More the ombré of someone who didn’t care what the world thought of her hairstyle or didn’t have money to waste when she could use it on pharmaceuticals.
Nervously, Callie approached her.
‘Glory?’
The woman had looked up at her suspiciously. Then the suspicion went and she broke into a smile. Not a nice smile, either.
‘You’re that woman, aren’t you? The one whose husband’s done a runner with all the money.’
‘Yes,’ said Callie flatly, ‘that’s who I am. The woman whose husband has done a runner.’ Callie sank into the seat opposite and kept her voice really low this time. ‘I thought you might be able to help me with getting something I need?’
‘Like what?’ said Glory, raising her eyebrow.
‘Xanax. I don’t know any doctors around here and ...’
Glory looked at her, then looked down to see Callie’s hand shaking.
‘I might know someone who could,’ she said cautiously.
She watched Callie’s shaking hand again for a moment. Assessing.
‘An hour. Back of the pub. Have cash on you. Don’t bring anyone with you. If you’re messing with me, don’t. I know you, know your ma’s house.’
‘OK,’ said Callie, scared at the implied threat.
She got to her feet quickly and almost ran out of the pub. She must have been mad. How could she even think of doing this? Even if they were drugs that doctors prescribed, she was still buying them illegally. That was a criminal offence.
And it meant dealing with a woman who scared her.
But she couldn’t cope on her own, couldn’t afford to pay a doctor anymore and was out of options. Under her current financial and legal cloud, she would never qualify for the medical card that would entitle her to free medical care, so she would have to shell out cash for a local doctor. And with no income, that wasn’t an option.
She spent the next half an hour going around in circles in her mind, torturing herself with the thought of what she was about to do. Then she went home, slipped in the back door and took forty of her precious euros from her stash. She hadn’t asked how much the drugs would cost, but this was the most she could spend.
When the time was nearly up, Callie walked slowly towards the pub, hating herself. No. She was not going to do this. She would not sink this low. And then she thought about how she’d run out of tablets a few days ago, how it had stressed her, and how sometimes being able to take one was the only thing that got her through the day.
When the panic came, she felt the calmness as the drug hit her system and she could relax just that little bit. That’s all she wanted – to be able to cope.
She met Glory at the back of the pub, her heart rate seriously elevated.
Glory was sitting on a wrecked old pub chair beside the bins and slowly smoking a rolled-up cigarette. Callie smelled hash, which she didn’t think she’d smelled so close up since she’d gone out with Ricky all those years ago.
‘Fifty quid for ten since you’re a first-time customer,’ said Glory, getting straight down to business.
‘What?’ said Callie, shocked. ‘They’re not that expensive.’
‘Not if you are buying them in the pharmacy.’ Glory’s smile was cold. ‘But you’re buying them from Glory’s Pharmacy, so the price is different.’
‘I only have forty euros.’
‘Fine. You can have eight.’
Callie handed over her valuable cash.
Glory, in a very skilled move, found her roll-ups pack and seemed to be messing with cigarette papers to the outside eye. But Callie could see her using a small razor blade to cut off part of a card of bubble-packaged tablets.
