must have hoovered it up with a note. She didn’t like that. The spoon was the mark of a lady. Sad addicts used notes. She tried to think who else had been there so that she could blame it on them but she had been alone for days and days.
Angry and disappointed at her lapse in manners, she wiggled off the orange chest, the heels of her pumps landing on the wooden deck with an emphatic clack-click. All sense of danger was lost now that she had promised herself relief and been denied it. She walked quickly along to the door and pulled it open without even listening for cars or people outside, her heart skipping a beat when she realized what she had done. She paused and heard exactly nothing. The water lapped against the shore outside. Wind ruffled the trees. Stupid.
Hurrying and breathless, heart racing, Kate scuffled sideways down the steep incline to her car parked at the water’s edge. She fitted the keys in and opened the boot in a single, graceful motion. She smiled down at it.
The bag of coke was as big and full and welcoming as a freshly plumped pillow.
Working carefully, her hands suddenly steady as a surgeon’s, she unpeeled the tape from the top seam of the bag and dipped her snuffbox into it, scooping, overfilling it so that the gritty powder spilled over the sides. She was being anxious and greedy about it. That was very sad addict. She poured a third of the powder back into the pillow and snapped the snuffbox shut again, reapplying the tape to the open wound, smoothing the edges down. She couldn’t stand the thought of the pillow coming open during a drive and her not knowing until it was all blowing out of the back and gone.
He had left a lot of tools in there, heavy-duty things for heavy work. She wondered what he needed such things for and why he needed to hide them in her car before the familiar trap door shut in her head. He did a lot of odd things. Men who made money like he did couldn’t go about explaining themselves all the time, silly girl. None of my business.
She shut the boot, holding her snuffbox tightly as she tiptoed back up the muddy slope and along to the boathouse. She sat the snuffbox on the orange box and opened it, pulling the spoon out of the little compartment on the side, scooping a single portion for one nostril and breathing it in like powdered oxygen.
Her head rolled back on her slim neck, her eyes tickled. The first spoon took the edge off the world, restarted her heart so that she could hear it pounding and nothing else. The second spoon would give her the buzz and bring the noises and colors of the world alive again, but she lingered between the cold of the deep water and the ragged heat of the dry shore for a moment, thinking of nothing, remembering nothing, imagining herself nowhere but here, present in the moment and content to be there.
She didn’t even need to open her eyes to fill the second spoon and find it with her nostril. The cocaine fired her up, making the blood too warm, lubricating it so that her brain slipped its moorings and slid sideways, crashing into the wall of her skull. She collapsed onto her side, her blond hair fanning out around her head, her legs bent and to the side, perfectly parallel with one another in a symmetry she would have found pleasing. A trickle of dark blood ran from her left nostril, crossing a white cheek and disappearing into her yellow hair.
II
The sun had been down a long time and the night had plummeted into a bitter, bone-cracking cold. No one lingered in the streets or bared any part of themselves to the elements that weren’t essential for navigation. Orange-lit taxis were hunting for fares in the city center, crawling past bus stops and slowing to tempt the few walkers. It was early evening and everyone in Glasgow had decided to stay indoors.
The station at Partick Marine would have been one of the stops they called at on their rounds anyway, trawling all the city police stations for the latest stories, so Paddy told
Angry and disappointed at her lapse in manners, she wiggled off the orange chest, the heels of her pumps landing on the wooden deck with an emphatic clack-click. All sense of danger was lost now that she had promised herself relief and been denied it. She walked quickly along to the door and pulled it open without even listening for cars or people outside, her heart skipping a beat when she realized what she had done. She paused and heard exactly nothing. The water lapped against the shore outside. Wind ruffled the trees. Stupid.
Hurrying and breathless, heart racing, Kate scuffled sideways down the steep incline to her car parked at the water’s edge. She fitted the keys in and opened the boot in a single, graceful motion. She smiled down at it.
The bag of coke was as big and full and welcoming as a freshly plumped pillow.
Working carefully, her hands suddenly steady as a surgeon’s, she unpeeled the tape from the top seam of the bag and dipped her snuffbox into it, scooping, overfilling it so that the gritty powder spilled over the sides. She was being anxious and greedy about it. That was very sad addict. She poured a third of the powder back into the pillow and snapped the snuffbox shut again, reapplying the tape to the open wound, smoothing the edges down. She couldn’t stand the thought of the pillow coming open during a drive and her not knowing until it was all blowing out of the back and gone.
He had left a lot of tools in there, heavy-duty things for heavy work. She wondered what he needed such things for and why he needed to hide them in her car before the familiar trap door shut in her head. He did a lot of odd things. Men who made money like he did couldn’t go about explaining themselves all the time, silly girl. None of my business.
She shut the boot, holding her snuffbox tightly as she tiptoed back up the muddy slope and along to the boathouse. She sat the snuffbox on the orange box and opened it, pulling the spoon out of the little compartment on the side, scooping a single portion for one nostril and breathing it in like powdered oxygen.
Her head rolled back on her slim neck, her eyes tickled. The first spoon took the edge off the world, restarted her heart so that she could hear it pounding and nothing else. The second spoon would give her the buzz and bring the noises and colors of the world alive again, but she lingered between the cold of the deep water and the ragged heat of the dry shore for a moment, thinking of nothing, remembering nothing, imagining herself nowhere but here, present in the moment and content to be there.
She didn’t even need to open her eyes to fill the second spoon and find it with her nostril. The cocaine fired her up, making the blood too warm, lubricating it so that her brain slipped its moorings and slid sideways, crashing into the wall of her skull. She collapsed onto her side, her blond hair fanning out around her head, her legs bent and to the side, perfectly parallel with one another in a symmetry she would have found pleasing. A trickle of dark blood ran from her left nostril, crossing a white cheek and disappearing into her yellow hair.
II
The sun had been down a long time and the night had plummeted into a bitter, bone-cracking cold. No one lingered in the streets or bared any part of themselves to the elements that weren’t essential for navigation. Orange-lit taxis were hunting for fares in the city center, crawling past bus stops and slowing to tempt the few walkers. It was early evening and everyone in Glasgow had decided to stay indoors.
The station at Partick Marine would have been one of the stops they called at on their rounds anyway, trawling all the city police stations for the latest stories, so Paddy told
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