This is a story about wanting to be noticed...

This is not a pity party, and everyone has an equally valid claim to misery and depression, but it's important - to me - that I relate this part of the most influential period of my life.

At home, I could do nothing right, and was largely ignored other than as an ornament; a clothes horse; a performing animal, let out of its cage to delight the adults, as a party trick, and otherwise told to be quiet and keep out of the way.This, I think, is not unusual, but was greatly exacerbated my lack of a sibling until the age of 10, and my parents' extreme anti-social behaviour, which left me isolated in the extreme: often in very remote rural areas; far from friends and schoolmates.

At school, I could not avoid attention of the wrong kind. My parents' obsession with training me as their performing animal, for their party tricks, meant that I was either alone, or doing my routine for adults. I had no relationships with children, before school. If you want to fuck up your children and ruin their lives, it's quite easy: do everything in your power to make them different so that they don't fit in; deprive them of every opportunity to socialise; force them to act like little adults, instead of allowing them to be children - that will guarantee that they won't fit in at all at school, and they will be bullied from dawn to dusk, every. single. fucking. day.

Good manners and confidence in the company of adults did, briefly, confer an advantage in the workplace. This supposed 'maturity' was useful for making a good first impression. Employers certainly mistook me for a person who was mature beyond their years, but this was entirely superficial: a party trick learned, because it was the only way I was able to receive praise as a child - from the small amount of adult company my parents kept; those rare occasions when I was trotted out and expected to perform. However, I had no maturity at all - the social isolation, the neglect and the deprivation, was masked and hidden behind impeccable manners and precise diction; expansive vocabulary, learned from books.

As life has worn on, my age relative to my peers has become less obvious, less remarkable. Instead, those deep wounds inflicted in childhood have come to the fore. Exacerbated by extreme stress and intolerable circumstances, the socially isolated child, deprived of a social life and otherwise ill-equipped to face the world with the same skills and experience of his peers, has resurfaced. I feel as though I'm suffering the same horrors again.

In extreme circumstances, we revert to 'type'... our 'true' personality surfaces, and our mask slips.

I wonder to myself, as I write stuff which is read by thousands of people who are suffering a life-and-death crisis in their lives, whether I am flirting with infamy. Why do I not implore them to seek professional help and bombard them with crisis counselling phone numbers?

Maybe I'm evil.

[Note: I lost a few hundred words here, because of an auto-save glitch, but I can't be bothered to re-type what I wrote. I hope it still makes sense without the conclusion, as I originally wrote it]

Tags: #childhood #parents #writing #suicide

This is a story about worst-case scenarios...

I've brought you here under somewhat false pretences. Possibly you have read what I wrote on suicide methods and have decided to continue reading. Perhaps you haven't read anything I've written before, and an internet search has brought you here. Either way, I kinda lied: this is much more about why to kill yourself than how.

Why kill yourself?

Good question.

If you're reading this, then I'm sure you have your reasons. Perhaps you don't need me to explore the many reasons why, but I'm going to anyway, because you didn't need me to write about all the suicide methods in detail either, but I did and thousands of people read it every day.

It's because so many thousands are reading what I wrote about suicide methods that I felt I should follow up with something about why to kill yourself. I hope you will forgive me if you feel I have brought you here under false pretences, but anyhoo, let's begin.

Why Should You Kill Yourself?

You shouldn't.

The end.

Just kidding.

Unless we acknowledge that there are very real and valid reasons why people kill themselves, then we are gaslighting. We can't pretend that people don't commit suicide, and that those people didn't have good reasons for doing it. People don't just do stuff for no reason. To pretend like there weren't reasons - and there isn't justification - is disingenuous and unkind to those who have died, and unkind to those who are suffering suicidal thoughts.

So, excuse my jocularity. I'm quite serious. We need to talk about why you would kill yourself.

Breakup/Divorce

We've got to start somewhere, so why not with a relationship ending; a broken heart? There's little more gut-wrenchingly sad than losing the love of our lives. Many suicides will be prompted by a breakup, so we need to discuss this. I needed to start somewhere, so this is what I've chosen.

First, we need to acknowledge what love is: a combination of serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine that's released in the brain in order to foster human bonding, sex and produce children; it's a biochemical trick created by our genes, in order to get us to make more copies of the genes.

Is it sad when we get our hearts broken? Yes. Incredibly.

Is it the end of the world? Will we be sad forever? No. Get another girlfriend/boyfriend/significant-other and your heart will soon mend.

Of course, we need to acknowledge that it's absolutely terrifying - as well as a massive inconvenience - to be thrust back into the world of dating. As we get older and fatter, we feel increasingly insecure, and we fear dying alone. Of course, nobody wants to feel fat, old and desperate, fearful of dying alone. I can totally relate to the feeling that I'd rather die than suffer the agony of dating, and the knock-backs; to be thrust back into the crappy world of adolescence with all its accompanying awkwardness, uncertainty and insecurity. "Does he/she like me?" we wonder to ourselves, in seemingly eternal torment.

In my opinion, a breakup is no reason to commit suicide, because - although inconvenient and awful - it's possible to mend your heart by meeting somebody new.

Bereavement

Okay, so I didn't really cover the death of a loved one in the breakup/divorce section, so I'll cover the death of a partner in this section. The answer is pretty much the same, but I do make an exception for childhood sweethearts who've lived into old age. I'm not suggesting that everyone who's been in a super long-term relationship should be in a suicide pact, but it's understandable that after a certain age and many decades of happy marriage/civil-partnership, that life could continue with somebody new is almost unthinkable. Where to draw the line is not up to me, but I feel certain that being a geriatric widower is not how I plan on spending the last years of my life.

Am I advocating for suicide for bereaved older people? Absolutely not. I'm just saying that I can totally understand why heartbroken seniors might decide that their reason for living expired when they lost the love of their lives.

Death of a pet. Sad but no.

Death of a friend. Sad but no.

Death of a parent. Sad (most of the time) but no.

Death of a child... oh damn. Where to begin? Well, we must acknowledge that the grief would be exceptional, and the guilt no doubt. The thing which would never be uttered, but must be discussed, would be the feeling that time's run out to make another kid, mixed up with all the same fears about fertility, carrying the baby to full term, giving birth, having a healthy child etc. All those horrible emotions would have to be re-lived, with the accompanying magnifying effect of knowing how devastating it was to actually lose a child, or - god forbid - children.

It seems quite understandable to me that some horrendous combination of bereavement, such as losing your whole family in some kind of accident, would be far too much to bear. Sure, plenty of people have had tragedies in their lives, and gone on to rebuild their lives with somebody else. That's not to say that everyone can or should. I can totally understand why bereavement(s) would be a reason to commit suicide, and although I can see that many people have been able to get over the tragedy, I don't think it's right to say that suicide should never be considered.

Usual caveats apply: I don't condone or encourage suicide, but I do understand why people kill themselves, although I desperately want a zero suicide world.

Debt, Financial Ruin; Destitution etc

It feels a bit wrong to put debt on a par with the death of a child, but it's also right - debt can destroy lives just as effectively as a road traffic accident. We need to acknowledge how life-destroying debt is, because it can wreck so much more than a person's credit rating.

First, let's talk about the very real, and very devastating consequences of financial difficulties: loss of status, loss of home, loss of relationships... loss of freedom; agency. To have a bad credit rating is to become a leper - unable to buy or rent a house, buy a car, get a job. "Get a job?" you ask... yes, that's right - many jobs will check a person's credit rating and/or ask if they've ever declared bankruptcy. Bankrupts are shunned from almost all parts of society, such that they're ruined for life; unable to get a decent job and therefore shut out of every aspect of ordinary life. That's a bad deal. That's a rough gig.

Without your house, your car, your job and the other accompanying status symbols, how are you going to provide for your family? It follows that you'll be ditched by your partner and your kids; labelled as a loser. This is how people lose everything, not just their credit rating.

Debt is life-destroying.

Okay, so I'm probably laying it on a bit thick. However, this is all the stuff that is on the mind of the poor suffering individual who is struggling with debt, and has decided to commit suicide. Having been hounded by debt collectors, bailiffs and other parasites/vultures, people are driven to end their own lives rather than suffer any more stress, loss, ruin and distress. I empathise.

Although bankruptcy and financial ruin are devastating, the process of being financially destroyed is worse than being destitute. Being destitute is quite liberating. Having struggled with debts for years, being hounded by creditors and other leeches, once the bankruptcy process - or some other kind of insolvency procedure - is in motion, the creditors can't harass you anymore. You'll get an opportunity to rebuild yourself, albeit with the impediment of the black mark on your records. Plenty of people function without credit cards, car loans, mortgages and other financial instruments, and many of them are very successful. In fact, many entrepreneurs talk about their bankruptcies as badges of honour; they're proud of their failures.

I think loss of status is not to be underestimated. If you're used to having a nice house, car, and being a provider for your family, there is an incalculable amount of shame, bitterness and regret, which is almost impossible to deal with. Losing everything is not easy, and we should acknowledge how fatal it can be; how it can be the worst thing in the world to have your life fall apart. Saying stuff like "it's only money" is profoundly unhelpful, because money is such an intrinsic inseparable part of modern life. We shouldn't forget that wealth and status are the things which allow us to get an attractive partner, as well as to feel good about ourselves.

Killing yourself because of bad debt or financial problems seems like the most ridiculous thing to do, but in fact it's one of the hardest things to deal with, because it's such a taboo to talk about financial difficulties and debt. Debts are so toxic to our mental health, keeping us awake at night, and causing us untold anxiety, as we fear the domino-like collapse of our entire lives - job loss leads to defaulting on our mortgage, leads to our house being repossessed, leads to bankruptcy and destitution, as sure as night follows day.

Yes. Debt and financial difficulties cause suicides, in vast numbers. We need to acknowledge that's true. I wish it weren't true, but it is.

The solution? Be prepared to be destitute. Treat it as an adventure. Be a tramp. Enjoy the freedom of it.

Injury, Sickness and Disability

Chronic illness, chronic pain and other lifelong conditions - such as diabetes and kidney failure - have a devastatingly detrimental effect on our quality of life, and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest. However, we are notoriously bad at estimating how bad it's going to be. For example, people with type one diabetes, who are insulin dependent and who must closely monitor their blood sugar, are able to adapt and report far higher quality of life than their initially pessimistic outlook. However, people who require dialysis because of kidney failure, often vastly underestimate how badly their quality of life is going to be affected.

Many people would say that they would want their life support to be switched off if they were paralysed - quadriplegic - but there are well documented cases of people reversing the decision in their advanced directive such that they have indicated that they wanted to be kept alive by machines, most famously by a man who was only able to blink in order to communicate.

However, we must be realistic. In the vast majority of cases, people who are suffering incredibly awful lives, because of chronic pain and other suffering, who've had their reasons to live snatched away by some cruel twist of fate, which has rendered them incapable of ever enjoying a minimum quality of life, are absolutely entitled to reserve their right to die. I must make it absolutely clear: I am pro-euthanasia.

Another thing I must make clear is that I'm well aware that there are very many people who live full and happy lives, despite sickness and/or disability. I am absolutely not an ableist who believes that only the able bodied have a reason to live, and everybody else is somehow less worthy of life and happiness. I am absolutely not saying that - for example - being unable to walk is always a reason to commit suicide.

Nothing could be more personal than weighing up the pros and cons of our own unique situation, and arriving at a decision of whether it is better to be dead or alive. I can't make that decision for anybody, but we should definitely consider that it is very difficult to face a life which promises nothing other than pain and suffering, and regret, sadness and resentment, that we are no longer able to enjoy the things which we used to, in the past.

Everything Else

There are an infinite number of reasons why we might kill ourselves, which might include things such as martyrdom, infamy, to hurt people and other motivations. Suicide can be weaponised, and it often is, especially by marginalised, oppressed and otherwise powerless people.

A completely exhaustive exploration of all the reasons why we might commit suicide is beyond the scope of this essay, although I feel as though I have made a decent attempt.

* * *

As always, I must remind readers that my personal stance is that suicide is understandable but absolutely undesirable in all but the compassionate circumstances, where it is intended to give relief to a person whose life is unbearable; unliveable; intolerable.

We must distinguish the temporary - the acute - from the permanent; the chronic. We must avoid permanent solutions to temporary problems, although I am aware that agony can feel eternal when we are in the grips of it. I am very sorry that people are suffering and I wish they weren't.

This essay is intended as something thought-provoking, and as an open and honest discussion-starter, so that people who feel that they can't talk about their anguish and pain - that suicide is the only option available to them - might feel as though it's OK to talk about the things which are bothering them.

If you choose suicide, I won't judge you or tell you that you're wrong, but I hope that you think about everything, and choose to live in the end... although of course you might decide - based on your personal pros and cons - that life will never be tolerable and pleasant ever again, which is very sad but I understand that people need relief from their torment.

I do not encourage, endorse or recommend suicide.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about a dawning realisation...

Moments of clarity elude me. My life consists of a long string of crises, with each moment demanding my full and undivided attention, such that I'm unable to reflect upon the bigger picture and see the error of my ways. Very occasionally I am able to contemplate the way I've behaved in the past with some objectivity; some insight. As I emerge from a fog of alcohol, tranquillisers, sedatives, sleeping pills and mind-numbing painkillers, I'm assaulted with an onslaught of memories from the years of instability which I've lived through recently. My flashbacks and dawning realisation about the things I've said and done while in the grips of insanity, cause me to wince and gasp aloud. I yell at myself: "what the hell were you thinking?". I cringe in embarrassment.

To say that I'm thinking more clearly today would be unwise, unless I've learned nothing from the mistakes of the past. Every time I think I'm regaining my grip on sanity, it seems that I'm mistaken. All I can do is keep my mouth shut and try to remain humble. I seem highly prone to overconfidence; delusions of grandeur. The world has fought hard to subdue me and keep me in my place; to grind me under its heel. The world has won. I'm not going to make any significant contribution to humanity. I'm nothing; a nobody.

"You've done more in one day than X did the whole time they were here" a colleague said to me yesterday. It's hard to not take that grain of salt and get carried away. It's hard not to believe that I've pulled off another amazing feat of resurrection from the ashes. It's hard to reconcile the journey I've been on and the things which should have dealt me a death-blow with my recovery. It's hard to be humble and ordinary when I know that I'm unique amongst my peers in having been through things which are not only career-ending, but also life-ending too in many cases. It's hard to not believe my own bullshit, when I successfully blag my way back into my old life and seemingly pick up where I left off, except I know I've done it against the odds - with significant additional adversity. All the fuel for the fire of delusions of grandeur is there aplenty.

What happened to my peers? Of those who didn't descend into the depths of mental illness, addiction, homelessness, destitution, bankruptcy and other life-destroying things, have they fared any better than I have?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and, as expected, the outcome of our lives was very much dictated by the pre-existing socioeconomic conditions we were born into. Briefly I joined the ranks of a group destined for greatness, but as soon as the storm clouds gathered it seemed obvious that I would be driven to run for cover. I've ended up with ostensibly the same outcome as my school-friends. Arguably, it's all the more remarkable that I've been able to maintain a high standard of living and remain highly employable, despite the incredibly averse events of my recent life, but it's no reason to believe I'm special or different.

When I think about the setbacks I've inflicted upon myself, I'm saddened. How much have I damaged my brain? How badly have my future prospects been harmed by my years in the wilderness? How can an old dog be expected to learn new tricks, when that old dog is also sick and senile?

I've started to become racked with self doubt.

I see that friends have been consistent throughout their lives in the furtherment of their education and pursuit of knowledge. I see that friends have stayed abreast of current affairs and are well-read; well-schooled in matters of relevance to today's society. On the other hand I have large gaps in my life when I was subdued by mental illness, acrimonious divorce, addiction, homelessness and near-bankruptcy. Entire years of my life have been written off and I have few experiences and memories which would be relevant and useful in civilised society. My considerable head-start in life has been swapped for a considerable disadvantage.

I struggle to remember that I'm no longer 3 or 4 years younger than any of my colleagues who've reached a similar point in their career. I struggle to remember that I'm no longer an exceptional rising young talent. I struggle to remember that I've squandered all those years of advantage and I'm now playing catch-up.

If I shut my mouth and just listen my day-to-day existence is quite a lot more enjoyable than it was when I was a younger man. When I was younger I was frustratingly held back by dimwitted dinosaurs. Now it's me who is the dimwitted dinosaur playing catch up. It's fun to be learning, of course, which is making this period of my career much more enjoyable and much less frustrating, but I forget that I'm no longer a young prodigious talent - instead I'm out of date and out of touch. I have nothing particularly valuable to offer anymore.

I'm very fortunate that I'm working with some super-smart people. I'm now feeling the benefits of being older, which I always begrudged those who were given more power and authority simply because of their age. People defer to me when they really shouldn't, because my years of experience don't tell the whole story - nobody knows that for the best part of 5 years I was no use to anybody.

5 years!

Yes, I need to acknowledge how long it's been that I've been going backwards, not forwards.

Of course, I'm wily enough to have made sure that I do enough work for prestigious organisations every year that my spotless CV is kept immaculate, but in reality I completely stalled and ceased all personal development. Of course I gained a great deal of knowledge and experience in the areas of mental health, addiction, financial problems, homelessness and suchlike, but those things are not useful in civilised middle-class wealthy society. Everything I've learned in my many off-piste years has been at the expense of the prime opportunity to transform myself from an ambitious young man into a very successful rich person. My momentum has been enough to carry me through events which would destroy most people, but that's the only thing that's presently exceptional about me; I'm otherwise completely average and humdrum now.

Perhaps I was always destined for mediocrity, but we'll never know. What we can say for certain is that I've done significant damage to my physical and mental health with a lifestyle that completely threw caution to the wind; an utter refusal to compromise or comply. I've taken things to the very most extreme point of survivability, and it should be unsurprising that there has been some irreversible damage.

Talking about the irreversible damage to my brain is the subject for another blog post, and not something I'm delving into right now, suffice to say that traumatic brain injuries are not 100% recoverable and cause permanent personality changes and suchlike. The brain is an incredible organ and its plasticity means that a person can re-learn how to function in ways that are an excellent imitation of who and what they used to be, but damage has been done and it would be foolish to think that it'd be possible to return to how things were before.

I rely a very great deal on what can only be described as 'muscle memory' for my survival. When I attempt to make quick judgements and shoot from the hip I'm very successful in areas which were my bread and butter for my whole career, but my judgement and decisions are terrible when I wander into new and unfamiliar areas. Working in an office full of developers on a huge software project, I'm in my element and nobody would think that I'm out of place; nobody would suspect that I've had a chequered recent past. However, when I'm put into an environment where there's an element of bluffing and blagging, I'm no longer credible or able to be convincing in the same way as when I was a younger man - I veer worryingly towards stupid and outlandish thoughts, actions and statements, which I cringe with embarrassment about later when the pressure is off and I'm able to reflect objectively.

I always used to pride myself on my ability to blag and bluff, but now my overconfidence is way beyond my abilities to pull it off. I'm pleased that I'm still able to learn new things and get up to speed very quickly, but I'm also upset that I'm behind and I'll never catch up, and my bluffs and blags just make me look stupid and ignorant. I used to pride myself on proving myself capable of proving the snickering, sneering and doubting critics wrong. Now I'm full of nothing but embarrassment and shame from all the moments when I've said something which later turned out to be stupid.

If you want to think of me as a stupid man you could examine the recent years of insanity with the benefit of hindsight and re-imagine that period as if I was making a series of well-considered decisions, without bias or the influence of circumstances, and conclude that it could only be due to stupidity that I ended up in the dire situations that I did.

It's kinda hard to defend myself from anybody who wants to label me as stupid.

It strikes me that there are a lot of people who're queuing up to take turns calling me stupi. There are very many who would like to see me flipping burgers or stacking supermarket shelves. Those jobs are important, of course, but I don't understand the appeal of underestimating the useful function of a person; diminishing their utility and value in society. Why are some so-called friends so keen to label me as stupid and useless; worthless?

Naturally, I've expelled toxic people from my life, but I do need to be aware that the truth probably lies somewhere in-between the extremes. As I've said, I'm very very good at doing the kind of work I've been doing for 21+ years as my full-time career, despite a few years hiatus, but I must admit that I struggle in areas which haven't been my daily bread and butter - I can be a fish out of water, at times. Is it stupidity? It's certainly stupidity if I'm not self-aware and able to have the insight to see that I'm very flawed and damaged in some areas.

I function effectively with a highly simplified life, but I feel very stupid in arenas where most others flourish. Most others flounder where I flourish though, so at least I have an anchor point - I can point to a successful career where I'm thriving and functioning seemingly without consequences for my off-piste years.

Of course I want to have a social life and a relationship with a girl. Of course I want to have friends and do normal stuff, but at the moment I'm just doing the things which keep me in the game: working and earning money. Later when I'm rich again, I can be as eccentric and weird as I like. For now, I have to hide my eccentricity by keeping my mouth shut.

I'm sure I've been made a bit stupid by my brain-melting activities of recent years, but I'm not sure it's wholly accurate to characterise me as completely stupid and dimwitted. It's probably a dumb idea to write me off as stupid, because I've made a lifelong habit of proving people wrong.

It's useful to think of myself as stupid as an antidote to overconfidence and delusions of grandeur, which are quite naturally stoked by my remarkable recovery. Perhaps it's even useful to force myself to think of my recovery as unremarkable, despite evidence to the contrary. I should definitely be as humble as possible, especially during the fragile period when I'm getting back on my feet.

For every remarkable achievement and person we revere, we have to ask ourselves how did they cross over from mediocrity and ordinary averageness, to becoming notable? One has to ask, do many of our airhead celebrities even know how stupid they are? It seems like ignorance of our own stupidity is a prerequisite for success.

I write as if I'm already famous. I can't see any point in behaving differently. Yes, I might die as a ridiculed nobody whose writing goes unnoticed and death is unwept. So what? Fine... a stupid egotistical nobody wrote and published a million words... so what?

I have no idea how I'm going to reflect on things in years to come, but that I'm able to reflect at all hints at the fact that my moments of madness are not characteristic of complete and utter stupidity. Perhaps I'm protesting too much. Only time will tell.

Tags: #writing #homeless #career #brain #bipolar #fame #infamy #socialmedia

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

30. Wish You Were Here

Leaving Exeter on a dual carriageway, Lara, Colin and Matthew zoomed along at 70 miles per hour. The countryside was fairly flat and uninteresting with roadside scenery flying past them at high speed until they turned off and joined the main road going East. The dual carriageway went North from that junction, towards Somerset and they were headed into the heart of rural Devonshire. The terrain grew hilly and their progress was slowed by trucks and tractors, crawling up the steep hills. There were few places to overtake.

The motorway journey to Bristol and down to Exeter had been bland and monotonous, with little to look at other than the bright blue signs displaying the distances to major towns and cities on the route. Now, the road they were driving on passed through small towns, villages and hamlets. There were pretty country houses and inviting pubs, fields full of cattle, rivers, as well as the exciting twists and turns of the road as it traced the contours of the hills and valleys. Lara found she was working through nearly all the gears in her gearbox and having to use her brakes as the car climbed, descended and tackled sharp corners.

Emerging from a thickly wooded area where the ancient trees leaned over the road from both sides - making it almost dark enough to require headlights - the woodland thinned out and a large flood plain opened up.

"We're not far away now" Matthew said.

A sign said they were crossing the River Harmyn as they went over a bridge. Soon, they started to gently climb out of the valley bottom, curving right in a long sweeping corner that they could not see around because of the slope of the hill. They drove past a petrol station and a few other buildings. There was a small shop that doubled as a post office, a pub and a small garage forecourt selling second hand cars. Beyond the roadside hamlet there was thick woodland and the road continued up for several miles before it plateaued at the top.

"OK, turn right here" said Matthew.

"Where?" asked Lara. She could see nothing but a ditch, thick hedgerow and trees beyond.

"Slow down."

She slowed the car.

"OK. Here."

A tiny single track lane revealed itself. Although it was tarmacked, it was in a poor state of repair. They reached a crossroads with some faded road markings indicating Lara had to give way. There were no signs.

"Straight over."

The road dipped down and all they could see was tall hedge on either side. Occasionally they would pass a gate into a field. There was no other traffic on this quiet country lane. They reached another crossroads.

"OK, go left."

The road dropped sharply and then started to climb gently. At the top of the hill the road forked.

"Stay left."

The road now traced the side of a valley, dropping away to their left and descending into murky darkness at the bottom. Across on the other side of the valley were fields and woodland. They drove through areas of thick trees where their view was obscured. There was a long right hand bend.

"OK. Take this right."

"Where?" Lara asked again.

"Up that track."

The road was slightly muddy with tyre marks and a gravel track forked off to the right. The track led up into a forest with two dark brown grooves worn deep by vehicles in the grey stone chippings. Weeds sprouted out of the middle of the track. Lara stopped on the tarmac for a moment, engaged first gear and drove into the forest.

Passing through a wooden gate that was open, the track went uphill and then plateaued in an area where huge piles of logs had been stacked up.

"OK, go right here."

"Up there?" Lara asked.

"Yep." said Matthew, pointing up a steep side track that was covered with dead leaves and twigs. It looked muddy and slippery.

"Will we make it in this car?"

"You'll be fine. Just try not to spin the wheels."

"Do you mind driving the last bit? I doubt you're going to get in trouble for driving without insurance here" Lara said.

Matthew drove them up to the end of the track. The forest and the tracks all looked the same. It was like a maze. A maze of trees.

"We're here" he said at last.

Colin got out of the back of the car and stretched his legs, looking around in all directions.

"We have to scramble up here. I did say to bring sensible footwear" said Matthew, leading the way up to the top of the ridge. Following him through the trees, Lara and Colin forced their way through the undergrowth and into the clearing.

"Why didn't you say it was a caravan?" Colin asked.

"Well, it's not like you can drive it anywhere. It hasn't got any wheels and you couldn't get a car up here."

"How do you think it got here?"

"I thought that the foresters might have craned it in from the track below. Neil reckoned that a farmer brought it through the fields the other side on an tractor trailer, when the forest was being planted up here."

"There are fields the other side?"

"Yeah, behind us. The other side of the hill from where we parked. Just rolling fields for miles and miles."

Colin went to open the caravan door.

"Hold up there a second" Matthew said, putting his hand out to stop him. "Look at that" he said, pointing to something above the door. Attempting to peel a square of dirt-covered duct tape off, he found that it was stuck fast. "That's funny" he said.

"What is?"

"Well, Neil and me used to stick duct tape over the door frame like that at the end of every winter so we'd know if anybody had been using the caravan, but it won't come off."

"Let's have a look" Colin said, pulling hard on the tape. The top part ripped off leaving two lines of the sticky underside on the door and the frame above. "It looks like somebody glued the tape on. Why would they do that?" he asked.

"Well, I guess the dirt makes it look like the tape has been there for a long time, but we have no way of knowing how long it's been glued there for."

Matthew opened the door and stepped inside.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"Come in. Have a look."

Matthew stood by the bedroom doorway. Lara and Colin stood by the dining room table.

"What? What is it?" Lara asked.

"Well, it's nothing like I remember it" Matthew replied.

The dark maroon carpet had been replaced with slate grey lino. The pink floral cushions had been re-upholstered in white fabric with a navy blue stripe. The dining room table and the kitchenette storage units had been painted a glossy duck-egg blue. The whole interior had been painted white and the walls and ceilings were smooth: the textured wallpaper was gone. Stepping into the bedroom, the bed was neatly made with bright bedclothes. Everything smelled clean and fresh.

Lara reached for the bathroom door handle.

"I'm not sure if you want to look in there" said Matthew.

Inside, the chemical toilet had been replaced by a comode. Underneath the wooden toilet seat, there was a clean empty bucket. Hanging from the ceiling in the shower was another bucket with holes in the bottom.

"A shower!" Matthew chuckled with surprise. "Well, a primitive one anyway."

"How do you heat the water?" Lara asked.

"You don't" Matthew replied.

There was a hiss as Colin turned one of the knobs on the two-ring gas cooker. "I guess you just heat it up on the stove?" he said, with a raised eyebrow.

"This is not like it used to be. It was a shithole. It used to keep us dry and that's about all".

The skylight and the windows on the side of the caravan opposite the door had been cleaned and it was bright inside, lit by daylight. Colin flicked a lightswitch and the lights came on.

"No way!"

Matthew was absolutely gobsmacked. Lara and Colin didn't know what to make of it, having no idea what it was like before.

Upon closer inspection, a gas bottle, a leisure battery, a small solar panel, rain collection and water filtration systems had been installed. The original gas and 12 volt electric installation of the caravan operated as normal.

The trio started opening cupboards and cubby holes. There were plates, mugs, glasses, cutlery, pots, pans and other kitchen utensils. In one cupboard there was some tinned food. There were no personal effects anywhere. Closing the exterior door, there was a cork-board behind it.

"What's this?" Colin asked.

"I don't know. Looks like... postcards" Matthew replied.

Pinned to the cork-board were bright glossy pictures of the Great Wall of China, Terracotta Army, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Taking one down, Colin looked at the back.

"They're postcards all right" he said, handing the one he was holding to Lara.

She gasped.

Mr Romet Kukk

POSTE RESTANTE

Post Office, 12 High Street

Harminster

DEVON, EX27 9LR

UNITED KINGDOM

There was nothing else on the postcard except for the name and address.

THE END.

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

29. The Imposter

The doorbell rang and Neil went to greet some more guests. It was Russ and Katie.

"Hey guys. Come in, come in" Neil beckoned the couple inside. "We're all in the garden."

It was a beautifully warm Saturday in May: the first really good barbecue weather of the year. The garden was well maintained: bright pink and purple azalea, camelia and lilac flowers were in full bloom on mature shrubs that filled the borders. The freshly mown lawn smelt of grass cuttings. The extension at the back of the house didn't leave a lot of outside space, but it was still large enough for a social gathering. In one corner there was a patio which was filled with smoke as the charcoal had recently been lit and was getting up to temperature. The guests moved around trying to avoid the smoke as the wind changed direction.

"Red, white, beer, soft drink?" Neil asked.

"Can I have a white wine spritzer, please Neil?" asked Katie.

"Certainly. Anything for you my dear" Neil replied flirtily. "And for you, Russ?"

"I'll get a beer."

"Beers are in the bucket of ice right there. Opener's on the table. Katie, I'll be back with your drink in a minute" said Neil, disappearing into the kitchen.

There was a fine spread of food on a table set up in the garden. Potato salad had green flecks of chopped chives mixed through the buttery yellow new potatoes. Greek salad was full of bright white crumbled feta cheese, jet black olives and juicy red tomatoes. Mixed bean and pasta salad completed the vegetarian fare. There was enough salad to feed a small army and very little would actually get eaten. Everybody would take a few scoops of each dish to decorate their plate with, but copious amounts of bread and meat were about to be consumed.

"Here you go" said Neil, presenting Katie with her drink. "Barbecue's lit. I'll put the burgers on once the coals are hot" he said loudly to the group. A cheer went up from a couple of slightly tipsy men.

"What are you going to do about that shed, Neil? It's rickety as hell" asked Russ.

"I'm glad you asked that, thanks Russ" said Lara from the kitchen doorway with a smirk on her face.

"Oh you're back are you?" Neil said sarcastically.

From a plastic carrier bag, Lara deposited napkins, paper plates, paper cups and two bottles of Prosecco on the table.

"I've already had a go at trying to tackle that blasted shed. Problem is, a lot of those cheap sheds you get from garden centres come with big panels that we can't carry through the house easily" Neil explained to Russ.

"I heard you already knocked it down once."

"That's not exactly true. We just filled it up with a bit too much stuff" Neil replied, shooting a sideways glance at Lara. She was fiddling with a bottle cork. There was a pop and people cheered. Neil was grateful for the diversion as Lara filled paper cups with a thimbleful of fizzy wine.

"What's the occasion?" somebody asked.

"Oh, I don't know. First day of summer... almost" Lara replied, distributing the drinks.

Neil went to check on the barbecue. It was a shiny black enamelled one with a huge lid. The coals had stopped smoking and turned a little grey with ash. There was no flame but there was a lot of heat. He spread the coals out, put the grill over them and went into the kitchen. He returned with a large oval metal plate covered with plump home-made burger patties. The meat quickly started to drip juice and fat onto the coals, making them sizzle and delicious cooking smells filled the air.

Lara fetched out a serving dish piled high with burger buns and placed it next to a selection of assorted condiment bottles.

"Who wants cheese on their burger?" she asked.

Having tallied the numbers, Neil flipped the patties, which were now nicely char-grilled on one side. He placed sliced cheese on most of the burgers so that it would melt on the hot meat. Placing the lid back on the barbecue gave everything an authentic charcoal smoked taste.

Exchanging the subtlest of glances with Lara, Neil indicated that it was time to serve up the main event.

"Right, everybody grab a plate and a burger bun" Lara yelled.

The guests, who had enjoyed many such a gathering before, now swarmed around the table and passed ketchup, mayonnaise, salad leaves, relish and other things around amongst themselves, while some of the hungrier ones took their place eagerly at the barbecue. Neil deposited burgers into buns as people clustered around him and his giant stainless steel tongs.

With most people happily enjoying a burger, Neil now covered the grill with a variety of sausages. Pork and apple, leek, chilli and onion. Cumberland, Lincolnshire and chipolatas joined a smörgåsbord of traditional and flavoured sausages. Content that the best British barbecue sausages are burnt black on the outside, he could now relax and enjoy a bite to eat himself.

"You're still thin as a rake considering the way you eat, Neil" said his friend Adam.

"Mmmm" Neil responded with a mouthful of food, his hands dripping with burger juice.

"Still, you're looking a lot healthier than last time I saw you. You were wasting away."

"Mmmm mmmm" Neil nodded in agreement, chewing. He reached for a napkin. "How's work?" he asked, swallowing.

"Oh same as ever. Same shit, different day. You?"

"Pays the bills. Can't grumble" replied Neil.

"Last time we spoke you said you were thinking about trying something new. Retraining even. Changed your mind?" Adam asked.

"I was thinking about it. Been doing the same thing since I left college. I'm just grateful to have a job and be working at the moment. You read about a lot of layoffs, you know?"

"You can't worry about that too much though. Life's too short. The gaffer says you've been working every bit of overtime you can get. Make sure you look after yourself, right?"

"Right. It's hard though, isn't it? You get used to the extra money, then you don't want to give it up."

"Sure, but you've got a lovely house. Just don't over-stretch yourself. Don't wanna burn out." Adam cautioned light-heartedly.

"Yep. You're right. I've been feeling pretty down lately. Thought about going see the doctor for the first time in ages. So hard to get time off when your diary's full of client site visits."

The barbecue progressed from sausages to chicken and finally finished with bananas and chocolate wrapped in foil, baked in the hot ash of the coals. The nights were getting longer but it was still cold as soon as the sun was gone and some guests started to make their excuses and leave. A few of the men had moved to the lounge while the ladies were sipping wine in the dining room.

"I've completed this one" Neil was saying, flashing the box of a computer game.

"No way. That's supposed to be really hard."

"I know. I'm not really into computer games, but I really got into that one. Took me weeks."

"Weeks?"

"Well, I don't get to play that often."

"Nah, me either. Bit bored of computer games to be honest."

"I got this one. The sequel. It's impossible. Can't get into it at all" said Neil, showing round another box.

"I hate that whole Duty and Honour franchise" said Adam. "Stupid shoot-em-up. Let's play that go-karting game."

They set up a 4-player computer game while Neil fetched more beer from the kitchen.

"I don't know if it's going to happen again, but I just have to trust that it won't" Neil could hear Lara saying as he passed the dining room. The ladies cooed with sympathy. "Everybody has a blip at some stage in their life."

Back in the lounge, Adam was skinning up a joint. "Outside, yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah, please. No smoking inside the house" Neil replied.

"You coming?"

"Nah. You know I don't like weed."

"Just the white powder, eh?" Adam joked, poking his nose with a bent finger and sniffing.

"That was just that one time at Barry's and she doesn't know" replied Neil in a hushed tone, conspiratorially.

"Gave you the confidence to chat her up though, didn't it?" Adam winked.

"Enough said already. Fuck off and smoke your joint. And make sure the neighbours aren't in the garden before you spark up."

Some time after midnight the remaining house guests departed en masse. Lara and Neil spent a bit of time gathering glasses and bottles into the kitchen and putting the worst of the rubbish into big black plastic refuse sacks, before retiring to bed.

"Do you remember what we were like when we met?" Lara asked, lying next to him with the bedside light still on.

"Yeah. Why?"

"You were so... different."

"When? Then?"

"No, not really. Now. Things seem so different now."

"In a bad way?" Neil asked.

"No. I don't think so" Lara replied, turning off the light.

The room span slightly from the amount of alcohol he had consumed and he was tired. He fell asleep almost immediately. Lately, he'd been drinking more and more. Without going to bed drunk, he would lie awake feeling depressed. Suicidal thoughts were creeping in.

He really didn't want to trouble Lara with his worries. He was struggling to get up in the mornings, but he really needed his job to pay the mortgage and they thought highly of him at work. He'd barely taken a day off sick since he'd started and he knew his bosses were pleased with his performance.

Why was he so tired all the time? Sure, he enjoyed entertaining guests from time to time - especially when there was alcohol - but the rest of the time he struggled to find the motivation to do anything. It was so damn frustrating to not have his usual levels of energy and enthusiasm. He didn't seem to be enjoying life very much anymore.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

28. Anonymity

When Neil's work, the crisis team, the police and Colin first called Lara, she was shocked and worried. As time wore on, she became exhausted by the ups and downs of Neil's mental health. When Neil had disappeared, she compulsively checked her phone for any missed calls or messages, desperate for any news. Months later, the nervous energy dissipated and she became emotionally distant and withdrawn; numbed.

Lara had a voicemail and few missed calls on her mobile phone when she finished her shift. It was Neil's parents' home number. She listened to the message.

"Hi Lara, it's Colin here. I appreciate you're probably at work but phone me when you get a chance. Also, see if you can take the weekend off. You might want to come away on a trip."

Spying Anne going to her locker, Lara walked over to her.

"Can we swap shifts this weekend?" she asked, in a hushed tone.

"What the hell, Lara? You were supposed to be coming out with us on Saturday night."

"I know, but it sounds like something important's come up."

"Important how? Is this about Neil? You know how upset you were last time you got mixed up in trying to find him. You only had the memorial service a few weeks ago. Try to take your mind off everything for a while."

"It's not like that, Anne. Neil's dad sounded... different this time. I think he's made a big breakthrough."

"Well find out and let me know. It's going to take a lot to convince me though. I think it's a bad idea."

Sat in her car in the hospital car park, Lara phoned Neil's parents' house. His mum answered.

"Oh hello, dear. I expect you want to speak to Colin, don't you?"

"Yes. I'm returning his call. He left a message."

"The phone has been going crazy this week. Since the service, quite a few of Neil's old friends have been in contact. We met some of them at the service, but it seems there was something in the news and... well, I'll let Colin explain. Here he is."

"Hi, Lara?"

"Yes, Hi Colin."

"Great. Did you meet Neil's friend Anthony at the memorial service?"

"No, I don't remember meeting him, but there were a lot of people there."

"Well, he phoned us up a week later and said he'd seen something in a local newspaper. Said he didn't want to mention it because it was probably nothing."

"Umm, OK."

"Well, he posted us a newspaper clipping. It's a grainy black and white photograph of a man in a hospital bed, but I'll be damned if it isn't a dead ringer for Neil."

"But it isn't Neil?"

"Well, the newspaper says it's an Eastern European man who's lost his memory. He seems to have forgotten how to speak."

"How do they know he's from Eastern Europe?" Lara asked.

"He had an ID card in his wallet. He's from Estonia and he's called Romet Kukk. Did you speak to Matthew at the service?" Colin asked.

"No, why?"

"Well, Matthew knows Anthony. They were all at school together. Matthew phoned up and asked about Neil's disappearance. He reckons he knows somewhere Neil might have been staying."

"Staying?"

"Yeah, like a secret den from when they were kids."

"Where's this?"

"Well, the hospital is in Exeter in Devon. The den is in the same county."

"Sounds like we'd better go down there and see what we can find out."

"Good. That's exactly what I was thinking."

The memorial service had stirred up a lot of emotions and it had been very upsetting to finally let go of Neil. Friends, colleagues and family members had spoken about his life, which was moving. However, Lara had already been to the funeral of an ex-boyfriend. She was tough and she had emotionally shielded herself to some extent. Lara's parents and brothers had helped her move out when Neil was getting seriously unwell and she'd kept things at arms length as best as she could. She couldn't possibly imagine that this doppelganger would be her missing financée. She had no idea what use it would be, going to a place that Neil and Matthew used to visit years ago. It all seemed too co-incidental.

Leaving messages with the local newspaper and the hospital, nobody had been able to answer any of their queries. Lara left early on Saturday morning to pick Colin up, then the pair continued to Bristol to pick Matthew up. They drove straight to the hospital.

"Hi, we're here to see Romet Kukk. Can you tell us which ward he's on, please?" Lara asked.

"Friends or family?" the receptionist asked.

"We're family."

"Are you listed as next of kin."

"I don't think so."

"Does the patient know you're coming? Are they expecting a visit?"

"No."

The receptionist's expression was icy cold. Lara casually flashed her NHS security pass, pretending to rummage for something in her handbag.

"Let me just check where they are. Kukk was it? Mister or missus?"

"Mister." said Lara, relieved that the receptionist was going to help them.

"Oh. It says here they're not at the hospital anymore."

"Discharged? Transferred?"

"The system doesn't say."

"Which ward was he staying on?"

"The system doesn't say. I'm not allowed to see information like that. I'm sorry, that's all I know."

"That's alright. You've been really helpful, thanks." said Lara.

Spying an unmanned reception desk, Lara could see a phone number for the hospital's main switchboard on a piece of paper. She punched the number into her mobile phone but didn't dial it. Grabbing Colin, who was lingering nearby, they went back into the car park where Matthew was waiting with the car. Lara got inside and phoned the switchboard.

"Hi, can you page the bleep holder for psychiatric liaison, please?"

"Sure, no problem" the operator said.

After a few minutes wait, the operator came back.

"Connecting you now."

There was a click on the phone line.

"Psych liaison" a different voice said.

"Hi, my name's Doctor Sutton from UCLH. I was trying to find out who'd been dealing with a patient of ours at your hospital. Name of Romet Kukk" said Lara, lying.

"Yep, I was handling the case with a couple of my colleagues. Piers Cowley. How can I help?"

"Well, to be honest, we were wondering where he was. He doesn't seem to have been referred back to us."

"Yes, that's right. He wasn't discharged. He just disappeared."

"Disappeared? When?"

"About a week ago. Look, can I phone you back in about half an hour. What's your extension at the hospital?"

"Can I give you my mobile number?"

"I'd really rather phone you back on your extension if we're going to discuss the case notes in more detail. What was the number?"

"I'm in a bad signal area, we might get cut off. It's 1-3-5..." Lara hung up. "Shit."

"What's wrong?" Colin asked.

"I think he just rumbled me."

"Did you find anything out?"

"That patient isn't at the hospital anymore. Romet Kukk disappeared."

"OK, Matthew. You'd better show us where this den of yours is" Colin said.

"It's about an hour's drive from here" said Matthew.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

27. The Syringe

"FRL-V4" was an act of desperation. He had exhausted every prescription drug that he could buy from overseas. He then tried every research chemical that he could find. The Internet revealed a world of "psychonauts" conducting drug experimentation on themselves. He felt like a human guinea pig anyway, having had a cocktail of different medications prescribed to him by his doctors, all of which had terrible side effects. He was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

When he received his first delivery from Frog Eye Wares, he assumed they had accurately weighed out half a gram: 500 milligrams. He poured out the contents of a small plastic bag labelled "TOXIC: NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" onto a dinner plate. Then he divided the pile of powder into two equal piles of 250 milligrams each. He divided one of those piles in two, which he assumed must approximately weigh 125 milligrams. Scooping up one small pile of powder, he transferred it to a second dinner plate. Then, he made five lines of powder, each of the same length and width. All of this was done by eye. By his estimation, a single line weighed 25 milligrams.

Taking a rolled up bank note, he snorted half a line up his right nostril. This was the first time he'd insufflated something since the one and only time he'd tried cocaine, at a house party 8 years earlier. The cocaine gave him a feeling of numbness in-between his eyes and down the back of his throat. He could taste a drip from his nasal cavity, but it was not unpleasant and the numbness spread around his mouth in his saliva a little. The "FRL-V4" powder made his eyes water with pain. There was an extremely bitter taste and the smell of solvents filled his nose.

His face flushed, his pulse raced, he needed a bowel movement. In the bathroom, dropping his trousers, he noticed his penis had shrunk as if it was freezing cold. Washing his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. His pupils were gigantic and jet black; he was sweating. Panicking slightly that he had taken too much of the drug, he rinsed his nose out with some cold water and tried to spit out the residue that seemed to coat the back of his throat.

He'd spent the day feeling productive. He had cleaned the house and had then started playing a computer game until he noticed that it had got dark. Then, he started to feel a sense of panic. 9 hours had elapsed since he had taken the drug and he worried that the effects weren't wearing off. He looked at his watch; then he looked at his watch again. Time was passing incredibly slowly. He started to stare at the face of his watch; the second hand was barely moving. He could feel his heartbeat starting to race. He started to feel like he couldn't breathe; as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the air and he couldn't catch his breath.

That was when he decided to snort the other half of the line.

He'd done a lot of research on the Internet and he knew that some of the drugs he was likely to encounter were "fiendishly" addictive. Most of the negative things that he read seemed to be associated with people having long sleepless binges. It seemed logical to him that the thing to do was to avoid "re-dosing". He would limit himself to a fixed daily dose and that way he would avoid the dreadful binges and the path to addiction that he had read about. However, he hadn't been able to calm down and was feeling really awful. He half considered going to hospital, but instead, he decided to double down.

Snorting with his left nostril, the pain brought tears to his eyes again. Soon, he felt a lot better. The panic attack subsided.

He hadn't eaten all day and he thought he should try and force some food down. Making himself a sandwich, it seemed incredibly dry. He hardly had any saliva to swallow. Everything tasted really strange and unpalatable. He had absolutely no appetite. Realising he'd hardly drunk anything, he gulped down some orange juice, which was pleasant enough. His stomach hurt and he retched a little, but the nausea quickly passed.

The night passed with more computer games and he was surprised to see morning light. Trying to avoid looking at his watch for as long as possible, he knew that there was panic rising in him again. What was he going to do? He hadn't slept in 24 hours. This was quickly turning into a binge. He decided to snort another half a line, to get through the day and then sleep at his normal bedtime that night.

The passage of time was so much accelerated during the segments where he was under the influence of the drug that, whatever he was doing, he found that he was still doing it hours and hours later. He wasn't normally a big fan of computer games, but he had almost completed the one he had been playing. On the pretence of completing the game, he snorted another half a line.

Feeling a little sleepy in the small hours of the morning, he decided to doze. He slept and then suddenly awoke feeling hyper alert. He was acutely aware of the sound of his own breathing, his heart beating, every noise in and outside the house. He could hear the ticking of his watch and time had slowed almost to a crawl. His pulse raced and he was terrified that he was going to have a heart attack. He lay perfectly still on the sofa and tried to calm himself down, controlling his breathing. He fought rising panic for what felt like an agonisingly long period of time before deciding that he had to distract himself. He decided to go out for a walk.

It was a bright morning, still quiet before the commuter rush. He turned left out of his front door and walked 50 metres before deciding that there would be too many people on the main road. He headed the other way, past his house and got halfway down his road before he panicked that he was getting too far away from home if he needed to hide himself away or wait for an ambulance. He walked slowly back at first and then worried that his neighbours were probably watching his strange behaviour, so he hurried back home. Inside, he paced around downstairs, unable to settle himself.

Sitting down at the dining room table, he started to scribble a note explaining what he had done. Screwing up that piece of paper, he started to write down all the medications he had taken without a prescription: dates and dosages. Grabbing more sheets of paper, he wrote a whole set of notes, explaining every doctor's appointment, outpatient visit and inpatient admission that he could remember, along with diagnoses and medications he had been prescribed. On a final sheet of paper he explained that he had bought a research chemical called "FRL-V4" from the internet, but he didn't know what the active ingredient was. He wrote that he feared he had overdosed, damaged his heart or had some kind of allergic reaction. He wrote: "I've had an unplanned binge and I think I'm getting addicted."

Neil knew the idea that you could become addicted the first time you ever tried a drug was ridiculous. There was no such thing as something that was instantly addictive. However, he knew that he'd jettisoned his plan to only take a fixed known dosage and never to binge. He knew that he wanted to take more of the drug, but he also didn't want to take any more because it obviously caused him to have massive panic attacks.

At some point while he was writing, he had calmed down. He now felt quite good; he was flooded with a sense of relief. The feelings of dread and the near-certainty that he was going to die - or at the very least be rushed off to hospital - had dissipated and he spent the afternoon having a shower and eating a little. His appetite and tiredness returned that evening and he slept for nearly 14 uninterrupted hours. When he awoke he felt mostly normal, hungry and a little depressed. However, the drug played on his mind more than he was comfortable admitting to himself.

Having had such a scary experience with the panic attacks, he wanted to flush the remaining powder he had left. Strangely, the memories that stuck in his mind most clearly were how much relief he felt when the panic attacks were finally over, as well as the relief he felt from the panic when he snorted another half a line. Fatefully, he did not flush the powder.

He managed to delay almost a week before he took the drug again. Addiction did not become a daily habit. He seemed unable to snort half a line and then put up with the panic attacks. His binges would last two or three days, until the panic would be accompanied by enough sleep deprivation to bring sleep. As he got more and more tired, he would sleep through the worst of the comedown. In a way, he was functional, because he would eat and sleep to catch up in-between his binges. However, he knew that his life now revolved around taking drugs and addiction had taken hold.

Taking to the Internet to research the unknown chemical that had its hooks in him, he discovered a thread of discussion where people were speculating what the active ingredients in "FRL-V4" were. There seemed to be consensus that it had to contain one of the most feared and notorious 'designer' drugs. Searching online, there were no shortage of horror stories about this chemical, nicknamed "Peony". News stories reported one man had chewed off a tramp's face and a Dot Com billionaire had murdered his girlfriend, while under the influence.

Unwittingly, he was committing the names of these chemicals and where they came from - Chinese laboratories - to memory, while he struggled with addiction and also tried to find information about some less harmful substitute that would help him escape his predicament.

To obtain the pure chemical form of "Peony" would be incredibly dangerous, because it was so potent, but he could try to substitute it with similar drugs that were less addictive and caused fewer side effects. It would take a couple of weeks for deliveries from China to reach him. In the meantime, his addiction raged and he started to go on binges lasting four or five days.

When his weighing scales and the first of his Chinese orders were delivered, things did not improve. He was exhausted and sloppy with his measurements. He had become used to estimating his doses by eye. Snorting a big line of "FRL-V4" and a medium sized one did not make much difference. The difference between 5 milligrams and 10 milligrams of something that was 99% pure made a huge difference. His binges started to last for over a week, because he would be kept awake for days at a time when he snorted a single line of the potent chemicals.

Feeling his life was totally out of control and it would not be long before an overdose meant death or hospitalisation, Neil decided that he was a lost cause. The idea of running away to the caravan started to obsess him. He wanted to spare Lara and his family the distress of finding him dead from his addiction.

He had promised himself that he would never cross one line with his addiction: he would never inject drugs. It was a strange thing to have decided, but everything he'd read suggested that injecting drug users were generally in their death throes. However, he had taken a syringe with him to the caravan.

By dissolving chemicals in half a litre of water, he had an exactly one milligram of drug per millilitre of water. Sucking up the chemical solution into a syringe, he could measure a dose quite accurately without his weighing scales. He didn't even need a hypodermic needle: he could simply swallow the liquid. His stomach acid would destroy about 50% of the chemical, but half of it would reach his bloodstream.

Desperate for something to drink, Neil now reached for a glass bottle that he had dissolved drugs into. The water had reacted with the chemical and seemed to have destroyed it. He took a couple of big glugs from the bottle.

Without any means of measuring the weight of his doses accurately, Neil had been playing Russian Roulette with his life. A small dose could have no effect at all and a large dose would leave him with stimulant psychosis for days, as well as putting incredible strain on his heart. It was miraculous that he had survived so long.

In a state of drug-induced insanity, every bit of powder in the caravan had been consumed, accidentally spilled or destroyed. Neil had been clean for a few days, but he was in such a damaged state that he hadn't had the energy to limp to his van or to the country lane where he might be discovered by a passing driver.

Now, he felt a sharpness return to his mind. His injuries hurt less. His back and joints didn't seem to ache so badly. He felt his limbs start to get lighter. The water had reduced the potency of the drug, but it hadn't destroyed it altogether. Neil was able to sit up and move around. He felt like he could get to the van.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

26. Descent

She could hear the car crawl to a slow and follow her at walking pace. She had grown accustomed to the sensation of being stalked, stared at. She could feel a pair of eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. With the subtlest of movements she looked out of the corner of her eye at the road. She didn't recognise the vehicle or the driver. There seemed to be somebody in the passenger seat too. The car drew level with her and the passenger wound down their window. She glimpsed short hair full of styling gel, a white tracksuit and prepared herself for unwelcome sexual advances from a dimwitted numbskull.

"Hey!" came a surprisingly hushed call.

"Psst!"

This was not how things usually went. Normally lecherous creeps would lead with their best line, full of false flattery and often beer-induced bravado.

"Hey you!"

It was irritating, but a different and more measured approach from what she was used to. She was sure that as soon as she even acknowledged their existence, they would launch their full chat-up offensive. This was just the preamble.

"Hey!"

She was sure that their patience would quickly evaporate and she would be loudly cursed as a "stuck up bitch" and the car would roar off into the distance with its loud exhaust and bass-heavy music thumping out from their souped-up boy-racer chariot.

"Nah, she doesn't want to know" said the passenger. It looked as though he was addressing somebody in the back seat. Lara risked another glance backwards and sure enough, there was another passenger, slumped low with their coat pulled up high around their face as if they were trying to hide.

"He says he knows you" the passenger tried again.

"Who?" asked Lara, now looking in through the car window and surveying the scene, while keeping walking.

"Sam" said the passenger, pointing his thumb at the back seat. "He's sick. He needs some help getting into his flat."

"Why can't you do it?"

"We're just giving him a lift home. We've got to be somewhere else, pronto. We ain't got time."

"Some friends, you are." Lara mocked.

"Look, just help make sure he gets in OK, can you? We could just dump him nearby, but there's no telling if he'll get into his place on his own in the state he's in."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's just had too much to drink."

"That's a really shitty thing to do to your friend. To just dump him like that."

"He's not exactly a friend. We hang out, but it's not like that. We're doing him a big favour driving him home."

"Yeah, BIG favour" said Lara sarcastically.

She couldn't help herself peering in the back windows at Sam. He was very dimly aware of what was going on. His head drooped and his eyes were closed, but he wasn't asleep. He didn't look boisterously drunk or like he was going to throw up. He was just intoxicated.

"Alright how far away is it?"

"Just down in the town centre. Jump in."

Sam was reasonably well co-ordinated and not slurring his words. He didn't even smell of alcohol. He could walk and talk without staggering, but he kept slipping into a catatonic state. His sentences would tail off and he would be half-asleep on his feet. As long as she kept repeatedly reminding him where they were and what they were doing, she could coax him towards his front door.

"Come on, Sam. Nearly home!"

"What? Eh? Oh" he said, as he seemed to remember what he was doing and take a few more steps, opening his eyes a fraction. He leant on the front door, dozing.

"Get your keys out, Sam. We're at your flat. This is where you live, right?"

"Yeah, uh. Right" he fumbled in his pockets and unsteadily directed his key at the lock.

With the door flung wide open, Sam made a bee line for his day bed and collapsed on it face down, before rolling into a slightly more comfortable position. Lara was still stood at the threshold, gazing into the large loft apartment, taking it all in.

"OK, I'm going to close this door and go home now."

"Don't go. I need you" Sam said, holding up a hand and beckoning her in.

Lara took a few steps towards the day bed.

"What do you need me here for? You're home now."

Sam patted the bed next to him. Lara didn't get the sense that he was trying to get her to sleep with him, but that he wanted her to sit. She sat awkwardly on the edge of the futon.

"You're home safe now. You can go to sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up."

Sam now opened his eyes much wider and tried to look at her. There was a kind of fear that played across his face.

"You can't let me sleep. I'll die" he said.

"What are you talking about."

"If I fall asleep, I'll stop breathing."

"If that's true it sounds like you need an ambulance."

"No!"

"Why not? What's wrong?"

"Overdose." he said, with the effort of his honest admission seemingly causing him to slump. He relaxed. His face was tranquil. Lara leant over him. He was breathing, but very shallow.

"I'm going to go phone 999. You need to go to hospital" Lara stood up and walked towards the door.

"Nooo! Stay with me" Sam called out, reaching towards her from where he lay. She hesitated at the door and looked back. "I'll be OK soon. Just stay with me a little while."

Babysitting him while he fought through a near-fatal overdose, Lara was torn. She could see his lips getting slightly purple as she fought to keep him conscious enough to keep breathing. In waves, he would get so relaxed and comatose that he would sleep peacefully and could barely be roused. She would be close to running for help. Then, he would come round a little, gasping for air and she would plead for him to stay alert and keep breathing. She knew instinctively that in the time it took her to go away, find a phone and give the address, he could very easily slip away. It took little more than an hour before he started to come round, but it felt far longer.

The experience shook them both and Sam said that he never wanted to risk dying like that again. At first, he was resolute that he needed to quit heroin and that the close call was the wake-up call he needed. He was so grateful to Lara for keeping him alive and for avoiding a hospitalisation. Then, he explained that his body would start to go into a painful withdrawal and he would feel like he "needed" his next fix. Quitting wasn't so easy and he'd need to wean himself off. Would she help him?

He genuinely meant everything he said.

In reality, Lara became his regular babysitter, so that Sam could shoot up big doses of heroin, knowing that there was somebody there to keep him safe if he overdosed. At first, Lara didn't know it. She felt that she was helping him to get cleaned up and off the dope, but after months going round to his apartment almost daily, it was clear he wasn't giving up any time soon.

She adored his tortured soul and his fascinating life. She loved their asexual relationship, which still had a kind of comfortable intimacy. Sam's first love was heroin, but Lara didn't mind being his mistress. She felt like she could make a difference.

Eventually they quarrelled. He had no intention of ever quitting, she said. He did, but it was hard, he explained. He said he'd try harder, but he started to be more secretive. He hid his habit and Lara knew it.

"You'll always keep using if I stay with you" were the last words she ever said to him. He didn't even reply. His eyes were filled with tears, but he knew the truth. Perhaps he would quit one day, but that wasn't the path that their relationship had followed. He used and she was there to keep him safe. That was the way it had been since day one and that was the way it was always going to stay.

She'd gone back to the apartment on the pretence of picking up some things she'd left there, but really she was checking up on him. Making sure that he was OK. He was so alone. His mum had left when he was little and his dad had died leaving him the inheritance that paid for his apartment and his drug habit, but he had no real friends: only drug dealers and addicts hoping to mooch off him. He was no fool, so he didn't indulge the parasites. He had nobody.

Lara knew right away that it was different from the other overdoses that she'd witnessed. There was no life left in his body. He'd been dead for some time.

Poor little rich boy. He had a kind of infamy amongst the local drug users, with many plotting to rob and cheat him out of money. He was even known to the police as a tragic addict: a dead man walking.

By the time she had left him, she was prepared for the worst. Or at least, she thought she was. Of course his death was more traumatic than she could ever have imagined, but she knew that the burden of his life was more responsibility than she should ever have been asked to shoulder. She could forgive herself, but always wondered if things could have turned out differently.

Neil's behaviour was completely different. He seemed in control, even though he was unhappy. It was Neil's desperate wish to be happy and productive again that made him so different from Sam. The addiction that she'd known had no end to it. Without a doubt, Sam would take heroin forever, given an unlimited supply and no consequences. Neil was different. He only ever took his pills begrudgingly and always talked about "recovery". His mental health problems were just a blip, in his eyes. Medication was a means to an end: like a plaster cast on a broken limb, helping it heal.

It seemed unthinkable to Lara, the idea that Neil had lost control and was slumped somewhere, dead from an overdose. She'd known so many years of him being steady and dependable. She'd seen him go through depression and psychotic episodes. However, he didn't seem to be hiding a drug habit and it seemed unimaginable that he could have been consumed by an addiction so quickly that she would never have seen it creeping up. The evidence suggested that somebody flicked a switch and her fiancée went insane. It was impossible to know somebody so well and for them to hide a whole other side of their personality. She knew what addicts were like when they hid their habits.

She confronted Colin.

"You're not telling me everything."

He sighed. "What you don't know can't hurt you."

"If there's stuff you've found out, I want to know."

"I think we just need to let Neil go and keep our best memories of him intact."

"What do you know?" asked Lara, now looking horrified.

"It's a lot worse than we thought" replied Colin with a grim expression.

"I really do want to know absolutely everything."

"He was taking some highly addictive drugs. I'm sure he's gone now. We should probably talk about some kind of memorial service."

"I guessed as much. I've been reading about those legal highs and they're nasty. Not many deaths though."

"Yes, but he was getting some really dangerous ones direct from China at 99% purity. I'm almost certain he overdosed."

"How do you know?"

"I found some traces at the house. I'm so sorry, Lara. I've been waiting and hoping that the body will be found, so we can grieve properly, you know?" said Colin, his eyes pricking with tears.

"You're a good man, Colin. I don't blame you for not telling me" replied Lara, hugging him.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

25. The Scales

The crisis team - part of the community mental health team - social services and the police had all been quite helpful when Neil had originally gone missing. The police had quickly discovered that Neil had left his phone, wallet and passport behind. All the services were very concerned about Neil's welfare and had attempted to establish his last known movements as well as searching for him. Because Neil was considered a vulnerable person at risk of suicide, there had been a lot of initial effort, focus and attention on helping Lara, Colin and the family to make sure he was found safe and well.

With all avenues exhausted, there was little more that any of the services could do unless new information emerged. Lara and Colin were main points of contact, liaising with a police detective who was in charge of the ongoing - but parked - investigation.

Frustrated with a lack of progress, two highly regarded private investigators were contacted by Colin. After initial discussions they decided that there was insufficient evidence for them to be able to pursue the case. The truth was that nobody really wanted to touch the case, because of the number of government bodies already involved: National Health Service, mental health services, the police and social services.

Colin had eventually taken matters in to his own hands and gone to the house to look for more clues, when he found the transactions that had led him to the ongoing prosecution of the businesswoman and her associates. Once he'd found the names of the defendants, it was a simple case of searching the register of directors and finding the trading address of their company in the public records.

Now, he was back at the house once again. He regretted involving Lara so closely, but she wanted to play an active role and had discovered vital information that he himself - a grey-haired man in his sixties - would have been unlikely to have been able to extract from anybody embroiled in the court case.

Colin had sounded out friends - retired police officers, solicitors and even a judge - about bringing their own case to court. "Not a hope in hell" were the exact words of one former Justice of the Peace. His sentiments were pretty much echoed by everybody else Colin consulted informally.

"Imagine if a person was selling rat poison as heroin" said Bill, the retired judge. "Now, if that person was to sell rat poison in place of sugar, they might be convicted of murder or manslaughter. But as soon as they sell it as heroin, they'll be convicted for supply of a controlled substance, even though rat poison is not illegal to sell per se."

"But that's insane! Surely the charge of murder should take precedence over the charge of supplying a controlled substance" protested Colin.

"Well, it's about the buyer. If the buyer thought they were buying heroin, then nobody really cares whether that junkie dies. The seller will be convicted as a drug dealer, not a murderer."

"So the law really doesn't care whether you sell a junkie sugar, caffeine, heroin or rat poison?" asked Colin.

"Yep."

"What if the buyer didn't know what they were getting?"

"What did they actually buy?" Bill asked.

"A controlled substance."

"What was it sold as?"

"A chemical for laboratory research."

"There's no chance it could have been confused for a foodstuff? Was it marked as hazardous? Unfit for human consumption?"

"Yeah. It's not like it was sold as sugar or anything" Colin replied.

"Well then, the only conviction you could possibly get would be for supply of a controlled substance."

To make matters worse, everybody advised Colin not to mention the drug use to the police. One whiff of drug abuse and the case would be filed in a dustbin marked 'lost cause junkie'.

Back at the house searching for more clues, he looked high and low before finally he decided to search the attic. Boxes of Christmas decorations and long-neglected exercise equipment, the attic contained very little else except for a disused hot water cylinder and a galvanised metal cold water tank. There was a chipboard lid on the tank and Colin noticed that it was an inch or so out of place, overhanging on one corner. Lifting the lid, there was a green plastic box floating inside with a black plastic handle.

In the kitchen, Colin towelled off the green box so it was clean and dry and took it through to the dining room. Unclasping the two black plastic latches, the lid was stuck tight until the airtight and dust proof seal released the pressure. Inside the box was grey foam to protect the delicate instrument contained within: a laboratory-grade weighing scale.

Normal kitchen scales might tell you the weight of something in grams, but not very accurately. If you needed to weigh 10 grams - approximately the same as a one pound coin - then your kitchen scales would be woefully inadequate. Even fine balance scales with small weights would struggle to weigh anything lighter than a gram. Some digital scales could weigh one tenth of a gram with reasonable accuracy: 0.1g. The scales that Colin had found could weigh at a sub-milligram accuracy. Less than 0.001 grams. Even breathing on the instrument or standing too near the table on a wooden floor would cause measurement fluctuations, so there was a special stand, cover and calibration weights to ensure the readings were accurate. The "quick reference" instruction manual inside the case was a hefty pamphlet.

There were some spatulas and a metal dish inside the green box. A tiny amount of light brownish powder residue was visible on the foam that held the dish and the spatulas. There was also a very small plastic resealable bag which was almost empty except for the tiniest residue of powder in the corners.

Colin spent the whole next day searching the Internet and phoning testing facilities, before he finally located a laboratory that would be able to swab and test the tiny traces of drugs that he had found. Using gas chromatography mass spectrometry, the lab was able to then search the 'signature' of the chemical compounds and to find a match in their database.

After sending the scales by courier to the lab in the Netherlands, it took 3 weeks before he got the results emailed to him. There was no conclusive match, but there were several compounds that were 97% similar to chemicals that were held in their database. He had been warned that a 99% match was the highest that he could expect anyway, so it was a good start.

Searching the Internet, he found detailed online encyclopedia entries for two chemicals, as well as a brief summary of a third. The compounds were stimulants from three different families of drugs. Two had been developed and patented in the 1950's and 1960's, but had never been marketed to the public because of serious side effects. Colin found a shorter acronym form of the full chemical name of each of the three compounds and started to search the Internet for more information.

Quickly, Colin was immersed in a world of online discussion forums. Thousands of Internet users from around the globe were talking about their experiences of self-experimentation with chemical compounds that had been abandoned by pharmaceutical companies or not even patented. Some of the chemicals had only been thought of as theoretically possible, but a laboratory somewhere in the world was cooking up these drugs for people to buy and try on themselves.

He couldn't read any more. What he saw was immediately horrifying. Hundreds of stories of addiction and horrible psychotic episodes, health damage and hospitalisations. Internet users were swapping stories about how awful these chemicals were and that they were the most addictive drugs they'd ever tried. Many lamented the day they ever first experimented. One message stood out as clearly as the obvious warning to never take these substances: accurate measurement was the difference between desired effects and overdose.

Perhaps Neil had two sets of scales, but one set alone was worth almost £1,000. If he had overdosed at home, surely he would have been found there along with his scales?

From what Colin had read, a powerful dose of those drugs was just 0.005 grams. If Neil had half a gram delivered from China, that would be 100 doses. The effects would last well over 12 hours. That meant Neil would have been on a nonstop drug binge for 50 days with just one free sample, assuming he was measuring accurately.

He felt sick. His son had got mixed up with something so dangerous that it had overwhelmed him and taken his life in the blink of an eye. There was no way to sugar coat this. Was there even any point in telling Lara and the family that Neil had been completely consumed by addiction and stimulant psychosis? In less than 6 weeks these powerful Chinese drugs caused him to flee his home to his final resting place.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

24. Jailbird

Her little car was buffeted by strong winds as she drove up the busy motorway towards Manchester. Steely grey skies drizzled just enough rain that her windscreen wipers juddered annoyingly as they swept the few droplets of water away. Huge lorries overtook each other, filling the inside two lanes. Lorries were speed limited to 60 miles per hour, but there would be 1 or 2% difference between the fastest and the slowest. Motorists sat in an endless miserable queue of traffic in the outside lane, travelling only marginally faster. The sheer number of vehicles meant it was bumper to bumper all the way from the Midlands to the North of England.

Night brought an orange glow: illumination from the lights above. Headlights reflected in the puddles and off every vehicle. Heavy goods vehicles threw up huge plumes of blinding spray, with the red lights of the driver in front as the only point of reference to keep on the road. Lara was in a trancelike state, just following in procession, watching out for brake lights as traffic ground to a halt.

Reaching the junction she needed, Lara pulled off the motorway and into the service area. A sign directed traffic to the right for fuel, straight on for refreshments and left for a hotel. She turned left. The car park was filled with shiny new fleet rental vehicles used by sales representatives and other businessmen and women who travelled all over the country, touting their wares. Row after row of medium-sized family cars from respected German manufacturers, in sensible colours: black, silver, grey and navy blue. Some had suit jackets hanging in the back, ready for business in the morning.

Parking her cheap French car that was nearly 10 years old, it looked worse than ever now that the spray from the long drive had given the white paint a thick coating of dirt up the sides. You could hardly read her back numberplate and her hands got covered with filth when she opened and closed the boot to get her overnight bag out.

After checking in to the hotel and finding her way to her room, she looked at herself in the mirror. She wouldn't need to do much to pretend to be exhausted and in a bit of a state tomorrow. Rounding off a long drive, the rooms had paper thin walls: a man snored loudly on one side while a woman made over-enthusiastic unconvincing sex noises on the other. She would have thought that it was somebody watching porn on TV except she could hear the bed thudding into the wall.

Dropping her key-card at the reception desk in the morning, there was no need for her to check out. The bland chain of traveller's hotels had no room service, minibar or other services for their guests. There was no bill to settle as she'd paid for her stay in advance.

Tired, hungry, stressed, without make-up: she was looking perfect for the day's goal.

Punching an address into her sat-nav, she was directed to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Greater Manchester, near a large satellite town. Many large corrugated metal sheds were spread over an area of several square miles, served by a warren of private roads. This was one of the largest warehousing and distribution hubs in the UK, handling stock for many national retailers as well as much smaller businesses too.

Lara knew precisely where she was going, having consulted a map of the estate at the entrance, but she left her car and continued on foot. She passed several bus stops and made a mental note of their route numbers and the bus company that provided the service. The large estate was divided into several different parts, with side roads allowing access to the units that subdivided the enormous sheds. Each unit had its own loading bay and a door into the reception and office areas.

Finding the unit she was looking for, the loading bay was deserted but there was a light on in reception. The red LED on a keypad showed the door was locked and there was an entryphone. A dog-eared piece of paper in the window of said: "Post/courier: *81#". Lara typed it into the keypad. The LED flashed green and the door lock buzzed. She stepped inside and there was a 'beep-bop' electronic noise.

She approached the unmanned reception desk. Part of the desk could be lifted up to get behind it and through to a short corridor with 3 doors. The door at the far end was open, but she couldn't see any further inside. One of the other doors opened and a man stepped out. He closed the door behind himself and walked up to the desk, looking quizzical.

"Can I help you? We weren't expecting anybody today." he said.

"Yes, I'm hoping you can help me. I've travelled a long way." Lara replied.

"Oh? Where have you come from?"

"London."

"You must have set off very early."

"I stayed in a hostel in Manchester last night and then got the first bus out to the estate this morning" she lied.

"You must be very keen to see us about something."

"Yeah, it's about an order."

"An order? We haven't sold anything for months."

"I know. That's why I'm here."

"Look. I'm very sorry but we've ceased trading. We haven't even got any stock any more. I'm just here doing some administrative work."

"My boyfriend and I are desperate. We've been going through hell since you shut down."

"You do know why we shut down, right?" the man asked.

"I heard something."

"What do you want?"

"I want to buy FRL." Lara replied

"That was a special order item." the man said, his eyes narrowing.

"Randy! I'll take it from here" said a female voice at the end of the corridor. A woman came from the left hand side of the open doorway, stirring a spoon in a mug. She walked down the corridor and set her drink down on the front desk, lifting up the part to allow access.

"Follow me, my love." the woman said, giving Randy a long look as she walked past him and down the corridor. She turned left into a kitchen with a metal sink, water-cooler and a round table with 3 chairs around it. "Take a seat" she said, gathering a few papers that were on the table and putting them upside down under a blue notebook. "I'm Pauline. Who are you?" the woman asked.

"My name's Lara."

"Lara what?"

"Lara Sutton."

"Do I know you?"

"You might know my boyfriend's name. He bought from you regularly."

"What do you want?" Pauline asked, firing off quick blunt questions with a blank impassive expression.

"FRL."

"You know all my stock has been seized. It's all been tested. My solicitor has got a copy of the results. You've got everything you need. What more do you want?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Look. I need to speak to my solicitor. I've already been co-operative and everything is in my statements. I think it's time for you to leave."

"You think I'm a policewoman?" Lara asked, shocked.

"Or a journalist. I don't know. Either way, I'd like you to leave."

"Look you fucking bitch. My boyfriend's dead, OK. He's fucking dead. I want to know what the fuck FRL is and where you were getting it from." Lara yelled, anger suddenly surging up from deep inside. Her eyes blazed with rage and she stood up so fast that the chair she had been sitting on crashed over backwards. Randy leapt out of the office and stuck his head around the corner.

"It's OK, Randy" said Pauline. "Sit down and be quiet" she said with a smile curling up at the corners of her mouth. She looked like a predator toying with its prey.

Lara slowly pulled the other chair round the table without breaking eye contact, scraping the legs noisily across the concrete floor. She sat down and folded her arms, glaring ferociously back at Pauline.

"You're really clueless, aren't you?" Pauline asked rhetorically, chuckling to herself. "Is your boyfriend really dead?"

"You don't seem to care."

"That's not true. Everything we ever sold was marked 'not for human consumption' with a big skull and crossbones, but yet I'm probably going to end up in jail."

"Yes, but it will be for conspiracy to supply a controlled substance, not for manslaughter."

"Oh, so you do know something" Pauline feigned a shocked face.

"All I know are the charges brought against you. I don't know what FRL is or where you were getting it from."

"Ha!" Pauline suddenly laughed. "Nobody knows what FRL is. That's the fucking point. Do you want to know the little joke we had in the warehouse?"

"Tell me" Lara said, gritting her teeth. She desperately wanted to punch this woman in the face but she knew that she had to bottle her feelings or else she wouldn't get a single bit more information until the trial.

"Fuck Real Life. That's the joke. Do you know what the V part is?"

"No."

"Version. Whenever we used up a batch, we'd make up another lot using whatever we had in stock. A cocktail. We didn't know what we were selling any more than the junkies knew what they were buying."

"So you knew you were selling to addicts? You knew people were taking the drugs you were selling?"

"If an addict's not buying from us they're buying from a street corner or direct from China. I'm just a middleman. Supply and demand" said Pauline matter of factly.

"Your drugs killed my boyfriend."

"You don't know that though, do you? Be honest."

Lara's eyes betrayed her. She broke her stare for a fraction of a second and Pauline saw a flicker of doubt cross Lara's face.

"He stopped ordering from you 6 weeks before he disappeared."

"How much was he taking?" Pauline asked.

"I don't know. He was spending £25 each time."

"Different things cost different amounts. I don't remember all the prices of everything we sold."

"I've got an invoice here" said Lara, producing a photocopy with Neil's name and address redacted.

"Half a gram." Pauline said.

"Where does it say that?"

"Right there. 0.5g. That's 0.5 grams."

"Enough to kill him."

"I couldn't say. I'm not a doctor. But it's not enough to last a junkie for 6 weeks."

"He could have quit and relapsed."

"Well if he did, he didn't get his drugs from me. By your own admission he hadn't bought anything from us for 6 weeks when he disappeared. When did he die? What drugs did he have in his bloodstream when he died?"

"You'll find out when you're put on trial, murderer!" Lara spat. "I bet you've never had to look your victims in the eye, you heartless bitch."

Pauline sat calmly with icy coldness, looking at Lara, considering her.

"If your junkie boyfriend bought drugs directly from China, as I suspect he did, cutting out the middleman, then he would have been getting 99% purity."

"What do you mean?"

"We would add an excipient to the products we sold, to bulk it out. If your boyfriend was buying half a gram from us, that would be the same as buying 5 grams direct from China."

"So you're saying what you can get from China is 10 times stronger than what you sold?"

"At least. The Chinese chemists are always coming up with new stronger drugs too. He could have ended up with something a hundred times stronger than anything we were selling. A completely novel compound unknown to anybody here in the UK. He was a human guinea pig. If he only wanted half a gram, the Chinese labs would send him a free sample of their latest creation to get him hooked."

"You disgust me" Lara said, her eyes filling with tears. Her head swam with all this new information and she was overwhelmed. She didn't know who to be angry with, who to blame. It was all too much to process.

She'd had thoughts that she wanted to hurt Pauline, or at least scream abuse at her. She wanted her to know how much damage she'd done. She wanted justice. Lara couldn't think about that at that moment. She stumbled to her feet and out of the warehouse. Outside she sucked in gasps of cold air, hyperventilating.

The unit opposite was a garage and had its loading bay door open. Two cars were lifted up on inspection stands and were being worked on by mechanics. A man in dirty overalls came over.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

Lara looked at him but couldn't quite hold herself steady enough to speak.

"Do you need an ambulance?"

"No. I'll be OK. I just need to get away from here" she said, starting to walk off in the direction of where she parked.

The mechanic went back to the workshop, taking off his oil-stained gloves. A moment later, he emerged from the garage driving a car.

"Do you need a lift?" he called through the passenger window.

Lara stopped walking and thought about it for a moment.

"My car isn't far. Just by the entrance to the estate."

"Jump in anyway. It'll save you 5 minutes walk."

There was a moment of silence as they pulled away. The mechanic was sat on a clear plastic bag that protected the driver's seat. He kept his eyes on the road.

"What was that all about?" he asked as they pulled up behind Lara's car.

Lara looked at him, but she didn't reply.

"I work opposite. I've seen the police in there quite a few times, pulling out loads of stuff bagged and tagged as evidence. Everybody on the estate knows they're scumbag drug dealers. There are housing estates in Manchester where they beat the living shit out of any heroin dealers they catch. These 'legal high' places selling on the Internet seem to be getting away with murder."

"You're not wrong about that. Thanks for the lift." said Lara.

Next chapter...