Graham Hurley - Cut to Black

If you've never been there, never had this feeling, it's impossible to describe it. Like I said, a sacrament." His chin went down on his chest and his whole body began to shudder.

Eadie glanced up at J-J, who stepped back from the camera, meaning to offer Daniel some kind of privacy, but Eadie caught him by the arm.

She signed, "We haven't finished." She turned back to the student.

"Daniel? You're OK to carry on?"

He nodded slowly. He looked bewildered.

"Is it time yet?"

"Time for what?"

"Time for the guys… You know…" He nodded, pleading, towards the street.

"No, not quite yet. Soon, Daniel, but not quite yet. You really think heroin is a friend? The way you're feeling now?"

"That's not smack. Smack makes that better."

"How much better?"

"That's a stupid question. Feel what I feel and you'd know."

"But I'm not feeling what you feel, Daniel. That's why I want you to talk about it."

He stared at her, his hands crabbing along the arms of the chair.

"This is hard," he mumbled at last. "You can't believe how hard this is."

"I know, Daniel. Just try."

"I don't know what you want."

"I want you to talk about now, about the state you're in, about the way you feel. Can you do that for me?" Eadie was leaning forward.

"Daniel?"

The eyes had strayed towards the window again and J-J suddenly sensed where this interview was going. Heroin really was Daniel's friend. As his life had closed around him, taking him prisoner, it was the one thing, the one sensation, the one constant, on which he could depend.

Take heroin away, and there'd be nothing left.

"I used to think I could stop." The voice was barely a whisper. "But I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to. Sarah says I'm crazy. She may be right but that's not the point, is it? Maybe I like being crazy."

"And feeling like shit?"

"Yes, but shit happens, everyone knows that. Shit happens and then everything is OK again. You know why? Because I get to shoot up.

That's all I want to do just now. Go into that kitchen and shoot up."

"And the next time?"

"I'll do it again. And the time after that. I'll do it forever and then I'll die. Hey…" He forced a smile. "Nice thought."

"Dying?"

"Doing it forever."

His hand went to his mouth. He sat absolutely still for a moment or two, then jack-knifed forward in the chair and began to retch.

Instinctively, J-J panned the camera slowly down, following a thin green thread of vomit onto the patterned carpet. Glassy-eyed, Daniel wiped his mouth and tried to apologise. Eadie had spotted a box of tissues. She leaned across, mopping up the vomit, stealing a glance at the camera to make sure J-J was still taping.

From the entry phone on the wall in the hall came a single ring, then two more. Daniel was on his feet, heading out of the room. Seconds later, Eadie heard the door open and the sound of footsteps as he ran for the stairs.

"You got it all?" she signed.

J-J nodded. He knew exactly what was going to happen next and he knew as well that he wanted no part of it. Watching someone in this kind of pain had begun to disgust him.

"Ready?" Eadie signed that she wanted the camera off the tripod.

Shoulder-mounted, J-J could follow the action wherever it led.

J-J shook his head. You do it.

"You're serious?" Eadie stared at him a moment, then abandoned the soiled tissue and began to un clamp the camera. By the time Daniel reappeared, she'd wedged herself in a corner of the room, the shot nicely framed on the open door. J-J retreated to the window. In the street below, a red Cavalier was disappearing in the direction of Southsea. He watched until it rounded a distant corner. For once, he was glad he was deaf.

"Just ignore me, Daniel. Pretend I'm not here."

Eadie had followed Daniel into the kitchen. The student was fumbling with one of the wraps. In the background stood the kettle he'd just plugged in. He tore at the Sellotape and began to empty the contents of the wrap into the waiting spoon. In the viewfinder the heroin was dirty brown, the colour of dried mud. From a plastic Jiffy container came a squirt or two of lemon juice, beginning to dissolve the powder.

Daniel tested the kettle with the back of his hand, then decanted a little of the water into the bowl of the spoon before propping the handle on a box of matches. Next, in close-up, came the belt. He wound it round his upper arm, leaving it loosely secured while he stirred the concoction with the end of a match. Moments later, he uncapped the syringe with his teeth and drew swampy liquid into the barrel. A biro lay beside the spoon. He slipped the biro beneath the belt he'd wrapped round his arm and began to twist. A vein appeared, a tiny blue snake amongst the yellowing bruises below his elbow. Trapping the tourniquet against his ribcage, he prodded the vein with the flat of his thumb, then retrieved the syringe and laid the needle against his flesh before working it slowly in.

A single drop of blood formed. There was a brief moment of absolute silence and then, as Eadie slowly panned the camera up to Daniel's face, there came a sound that was to stay with her for days to come. It began as a gasp and expired as a sigh. It spoke of surprise, of delight, of relief, of immense satisfaction, and she caught the clatter of the falling biro as she swung round with the camera, following Daniel out of the kitchen. He still had the syringe in his arm, empty now, and he began to sway and stumble as he made his way to bed.

His bedroom was next to the bathroom. The single bed was unmade, a flower-patterned duvet in a heap on the floor, and Eadie paused in the open doorway, the shot perfectly framed, as Daniel, still fully clothed, climbed into bed. He looked like a drunk, every movement slowed to half speed, a man easing himself through an ocean of sweetness. He struggled briefly upright and leaned out of the bed, plucking at the duvet, missing, plucking again, then finally dragged half of it off the floor. Flat on his back again, his eyes were closed. Eadie's finger found the zoom control and the shot slowly tightened. By the time his face filled the viewfinder, Daniel Kelly was smiling.

Faraday sat on a bollard on the quay side overlooking the harbour, waiting for Willard's Jaguar to appear. The rain had stopped now and the sky was beginning to clear from the west. Evenings like this, mid March, the sunsets could be spectacular, shafts of livid sunshine slanting across the city, and he thought of Eadie Sykes out on the balconette, toasting the view with her first glass of Cotes du Rhone.

Recently, watching her with J-J, he'd concluded that she'd become the mother his son had never had. She'd built a real kinship with the boy.

She'd become his mentor, his pathfinder, his guide. She was teaching him all she knew. She stuck by him in difficult situations. And all of that, in Faraday's view, probably added up to motherhood. Janna had died when J-J was barely a couple of months old. Only now, twenty-three years later, had he discovered a woman he could rely on.

Rely on? Faraday shook his head. Relationships, as he knew to his own cost, could be brutal. A woman called Marta had made him happier than he'd ever been in his life. Losing her had taken him to places so dark he shuddered to remember them.

J-J, too, had tasted this kind of despair. His guileless passion for life, the unconditional trust he put in virtual strangers, exposed him to all kinds of risks and a year-long relationship with a French social worker had nearly broken his heart. But his son had somehow emerged from this encounter more or less intact and was still hungry for the next of life's little tests whereas Faraday was increasingly aware of his own vulnerability.

Eadie Sykes had blown into his life with the force of a gale. He loved her gutsiness, her candour, her absolute refusal to compromise. She surprised him constantly, and he loved that as well. But, unlike J-J, he was always alert for the unforeseen twist. In ways he was ashamed to admit, he almost expected betrayal.