Andy McNab - Dark winter

I took a deep breath. 'What did you say about me?'

Another shrug. 'You know, looking after me, sending me to Josh because you were busy. Palming me off because of work. That kinda thing.'

'You know me and Josh thought it was the best thing for you…'

She cocked her head. 'Stability, right? That really worked. Why was it so long before you came and saw me?'

'We have weekends and stuff. It was just that Josh and I felt you needed to settle down, and me just appearing out of the blue every so often would go and mess that up.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'Vronnie's parents fight all the time, but at least her dad hasn't totally abandoned her. He turns up every weekend and takes her out. He's never missed a weekend – and he's a drunk.'

She concentrated on dipping a fry into the little ketchup pot. I started to speak to the top of her head as the rest of the quarter-pounder was shoved into the front of it. 'You know my work keeps me away a lot. I was doing the best I could.'

She took her lips away from the burger but didn't look up. 'But, hey, that's history now, isn't it? I'm here, you're here, and we're going to go and get things sorted out, right?'

'That's right.'

She looked up and wiped the grease from her mouth with the napkin. 'So your next question is going to be, why did I try them in the first place?'

I had to agree.

'OK, well, Vronnie and I were discussing drugs that time, I asked her for the list of what she'd done and she gave me the usual – alcohol, pot, ecstasy, all that stuff. And then she said she took Vicodin to stay chilled. One of her friends told her that she could crush it up and snort it. I asked her what it was like, and she said, "Hey, why don't we try it? Let's go to the restroom."

'Vronnie had a film-canister thing and a little flip-out mirror, and she started to do two lines. She crushes the pills at home and keeps them in the film canister.' Kelly flipped the top of her straw. 'She even had one of these in her bag. Anyway, she took a line and handed the straw to me.'

It was clear from the way Kelly was babbling that she liked talking about this. It worried me, but I still wasn't going to show it. 'What did it feel like?'

'There was, like, this real stinging in my nose and throat and it really hurt, but only for a few seconds. Then it kicked in and my head felt like it was floating. It felt like a balloon, floating right away from all the bad stuff around me. I was happy and it felt amazing, even in my fingers and toes. Then all the colours got brighter and sounds were, like, deeper. And that's how we went off to class, chilled.' She giggled. 'Hillbilly heroin, that's what they call it. It's not like I'm addicted or anything, but that's what Dr Hughes and I were talking about today.'

She stood up, felt around in her coat pocket and headed for the toilets, as if to give me time to consider my answer.

She was away for ten minutes, and by the time she came out I was waiting by the door. We got back into the car and headed for Bromley, with the strong smell of toothpaste and mouthwash in the air.

London Friday 9 May, 08:30 hrs

Kelly was still in bed when I tiptoed in and dumped my sleeping bag next to the rest of my stuff. I was sleeping on the settee but had to be up before eight. Dr Hughes's receptionist had called last night to arrange for us to talk this morning. She'd promised to give me some sort of indication of where we went from here, and what conclusions she'd come to after their first meeting.

Carmen and Jimmy were munching their muesli and toast in the kitchen, so I excused myself and went and sat outside in the front garden with a brew. My cell rang exactly on time. 'Good morning, Mr Stone.' Her tone was very no-nonsense: she obviously had a lot more calls to make after this one. 'I have two questions for you. The burn on Kelly's right index finger. Can you tell me how she got that?'

'She said it happened at school, something in the science class.'

'Is she eating normally?'

'Like a horse.' I hesitated. 'Listen, she's told me about the Vicodin.'

'She has? That's good. Were you alarmed?'

'Should I be? I put on my happy face when she was talking about it, but it did worry me. I guess it conjured up images of drug-dealers outside the school gates, but I really don't know anything about the stuff.'

'Vicodin is an opiate, with the same active ingredient as heroin and codeine, and can lead to a serious dependency. We can go into it in detail when I see you. In fact, if she's already talking to you about it, perhaps you could come in together?

'Mr Stone, I fear she may also be bulimic. The acid burn on her finger could very well be from her own gastric juices. I suspect she pushes it down her throat to make herself vomit, and it's rubbing against her teeth. It's a common problem with girls of her age, but not a complication we'd welcome in Kelly's case.'

I suddenly felt pretty fucking stupid. 'She's always brushing her teeth and using mouthwash strips like they were going out of fashion.'

'I see. Has she started her periods yet?'

'Last year.' Josh had found some tampons in her schoolbag and Kelly had felt very grown-up about the whole thing.

'Do you know if she's still having them?'

'No, I'm not very…' I wondered where this was going.

'Please don't worry, I may be asking you more of these sorts of questions as we go along. It's just that when bulimia becomes extreme, women stop menstruating.'

'You say it's quite common?' I was starting to feel like a complete idiot. This girl didn't need me and the God Squad on her team, she needed her mum.

'As many as one in five girls of her age. It starts as a way to control weight and then it develops a life of its own. Again, it's an addiction. Bingeing and purging are the addictive behaviour. Yes, of her own admission she has the drug dependency, but she hasn't admitted to the bulimia. I just wanted you to know that because we might have a long and rather rocky road ahead.'

As I was listening to this, I got the signal for an incoming call. I ignored it and raised my voice as it kept bleeping. 'It must be a good thing that she's opening up to me, don't you think?'

'Yes, of course. But we can't discount the possibility she's doing it because she's angry with you. She might want to shock and punish you.'

'Then why would she hide it? Wouldn't she go to town and hit me with bulimia as well?'

'Possibly. I just wanted to warn you, though, that it could be a long time before there is light at the end of this particular tunnel. She'll need all the support you can possibly give her.'

'Where do we go from here?'

'There are a number of concerns. There's the dependency, and in some ways that's the most urgent. It's more immediately life-threatening.'

'Life-threatening?' My heart sank. What the fuck was going on here?

'That's the worst-case scenario, but it cannot be discounted. Opioid painkillers are dangerous because they are so seductive. They work by throwing up roadblocks all along the pain pathway from the nerve endings in the skin through the spinal cord to the brain, where they open the floodgates for the chemical dopamine, which triggers sensations of well-being.'

'Chilled?'

'Exactly. The dopamine effectively rewires the brain, so it becomes accustomed to those benign feelings. When an addicted person stops taking the drug, the body craves the dopamine again.

'If Kelly takes Vicodin over a long period of time, she will become mentally and physically dependent on it, and may find the drug no longer works at the prescribed dosage. At that point a dependent user will increase dosage until the effect is felt once more. At the moment Kelly's mostly just being bad-tempered and withdrawn, with noticeable mood swings. If the dependency is allowed to grow, she can expect blurred vision, hallucinations and severe confusion. Even if she does not decide to experiment with other drugs to achieve the required effect, this can lead to overdose, liver failure, convulsions, coma and, in some cases, death.'