Thursday 22nd August 2008 Drugs.

Friday 22nd August 2008.

Yesterday was a big day for Marty, though he may not think so. His exam results were posted at the school, but I let him down and wouldn’t lend him the money to go through and get them after I initially said that I would so he doesn’t know yet how he’s done. Regardless of whether or not he got all A’s as predicted by the school we should have been celebrating. Yesterday was closure a marker of eleven years at school and something to show for it. He told me months ago that he was going to ride into that school on his moped…but his moped is a right-off. I said I’d give him some money to go and I even asked him if he wanted to come out for a meal to celebrate but then something happened and I retracted my offer and told him that until he makes some life changes he’d get nothing at all from me.

“Oh well then, if you don’t care about my future I couldn’t care less either, lets just leave my results to rot eh?” he shot at me. This was a tad over dramatic because anybody not turning up for their results will have them sent out to them anyway. “I can’t apply for any jobs now, can I? Because when an employer asks me what exams I’ve got I don’t know. Do I? And it’s all your fault, thanks a lot mum.”

“Welcome son, it’s called loving you. And anyway, any employer worth his salt would ask why you couldn’t get your exam results today. It’s only three miles to the school. Hey, here’s a novel idea Marty, why not actually put some effort into something and walk eh?”

I did feel an odd twinge of guilt refusing him the bus fares to get to Dtown and back for his results … but then I looked at my phone and hardened again.

Yesterday morning I received a text. As you know I swapped the expensive contact phone for my old one and now have the phone that was Marty’s. Again this is going to read as made to fit, but if this was fiction it would be so predictable and I suppose an obvious next step in the story. I expect it’s taken as read that the text wasn’t from a priest thanking him for his application to join a monastery.

It read: Oright Marty (name changed of course) I have tons of speed past and will have pills on Friday. Ring me to let me know how many you wnt.

I have no idea what the word past means, maybe it’s meant to be paste but the rest of the message was crystal meth clear. What we’ve suspected is now hard fact. My son is taking more drugs than just the weed that I knew about. It has confirmed my very worst fears. He’s living in a dirty doss hole doing drugs and living with no moral conscience or responsibility.

I got straight onto the police. I’ve been speaking to the police a lot recently and felt a bit embarrassed. I could imagine the switchboard operator phoning through to the back room and telling them, “It’s that Doe woman again, wasting our time.” And I could imagine all the coppers laughing at me after Marty’s recent spate of anti-social car-ramming, “Hah, she’s got a little toe rag herself but she’s the first one to cry injustice when something’s done to them.”

I explained to the woman that I’d had the police out about my son leaving home a couple of weeks ago and that there’d been a new development. I told her about the people he’s living with and the conditions and then told her about the message on my phone, “Surely now something can be done. My son is sixteen and here’s proof that he’s taking drugs. I can give you the drug dealers number although there is no name, can’t that be traced?”

The woman was actually very sympathetic. She said that she didn’t know what would happen but that she’d logged the call and somebody would be round to see me again that night.

I spoke to Col and told him what I’d done. I explained all about the broken windows the drugs and the low-grade people that he’s living with. And then I told him that I’d phoned the police about the drug dealer.

“Oh you didn’t?”

“Of course I did. What do you expect me to do when I’ve got messages coming through from drug dealers?”

“You really haven’t thought this through, have you? What’s the first thing the dealer’s going to do when the police say that they’ve had a complaint from Marty Doe’s mum?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well first they’ll knock hell out of our Marty and then one night a van will pull up outside your house and half a dozen masked Mancunians with base ball bats will come and pay you a visit. And then, if there’s anything left to pick up of Marty he’ll get six months in prison for possession. And that’s another thing to think about. Has it occurred to you that Marty might not just be taking?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s the perfect pigeon. He might be selling as well. That’s serious stuff, mum. I told you to just leave it to me, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but that was before I knew for sure that he’s on drugs. And let’s face it Col, you say you’ll get him home but so far he’s still there, isn’t he.”

“Not for much longer.”

“Why, what are you going to do?”

“Just leave it mam. The less you know the less you can interfere.”

I didn’t think it was possible to worry more than I’d already been doing but now I had more to worry about than ‘just’ Marty’s well being. It was me who wanted Col to get involved. What did I expect him to do? Wave a magic wand to get Marty home? Col didn’t want to get involved. He has his family to think about and his job is on licence. He is not allowed to be involved in any form of violence at all; one ‘incident’ and he’ll be stripped of his licenses. I pulled him into this and you can’t release a tiger from its pen and then cry if somebody gets bitten. There’s no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner and in this case the same cliché can be carried over to kids and parents.

It’s all just a horrible mess. I’m so annoyed with Marty we’re all doing so well except him. Everything is neat and tidy and orderly until Marty decides to go off the rails again and then it’s just mass upheaval and worry.

What I didn’t find out until today was that Last night Col put his plan into operation. He took his van and sped off. Jack, my ex husband had been watching him closely expecting something to happen. He already had a couple of Col’s mates on stand-by. Jack followed Col and rang his mates to meet him there. They already knew where he was headed. Col went first to the petrol station and filled a can with petrol. Later he said that he had no intention of burning the house down and would only have used it as a threat.

He drove to the house and Jack and two of Cols mates intercepted him at the top of the street. For two hours they talked Col down and stopped him using violence to get Marty out of there. I’m his mother and all I’d done was thought about one son and inadvertently encouraged Col. I know my son, if his head had gone he’d have gone in there and would have taken on the entire estate if he’d had to. Would he have burned somebody’s house to the ground? … Yes, if he had the red rage on him and if he felt justified. I think he would. Thank God for his dad who only has one son to worry about and for his good mates. Eventually, guess who saved the day? My ex husband went and had a ‘quiet word’ with Marty. I haven’t seen Marty in tears for four years but apparently five minutes with Jack and he was howling like a baby. Jack left him to ‘think on it’. Now don’t get me wrong there is no love lost at all between my ex husband and myself. I despise the man and the feelings mutual but I think he has a soft spot for Marty who he sees as some extension of his family. I knew nothing about any of this.

That night at eleven o’clock I gave up on the police coming and figured that I’d just been logged out as a time waster. Because I’m worried about Bali who still isn’t eating much since Tan’s death I wanted to assist feed her some rats and some crit care. She is eating but not as much as I’d like and I just want to give her a top up every few days so that she doesn’t lose weight. I’d kept the animals in all night on the strength of the police coming but I decided to let out the hard-core lizards that were still awake and let Benji the rat out.

At half eleven there was a knock at the door. A nice young copper came in. He was kind and sympathetic. He was still keen and wet behind the ears, but again he told me that there’s nothing they could do. What amused me later was the tub of crit care that I’d been feeding Bali from. I’d made up a small solution in a coffee jar lid and this had dried and left a residue of white powder around the rim of the lid. The syringe that I used to feed hr was also still sitting in the lid on the coffee table. Sally was sitting amidst a mass of cigarette papers rolling me a boatload of cigs and after me complaining about the dirty conditions that Marty was living in I had a whopping great piece of vermin in the form of Benji climbing on the arm of my sofa. It didn’t look good and didn’t even occur to me until after the policeman had left.

I couldn’t understand why, with this new turn of events, nothing could be done to help me.

“But I literally have the drug dealers number on my phone.”

“Do you really think a street-wise dealer is going to use his number with chavvy young sprogs? This is no dealer; it’s somebody way down the chain who’s knocking a few pills out for pocket money. He’s of no interest to us. Your son would just say that it was a prank call (exactly to the word what he did say) we can only intervene when we actually catch people with drugs on them.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had actual evidence of a real crime being committed and they didn’t want to know. There was no point getting tetchy with the cop, he was only doing his job and he was very nice but I’m seriously of the opinion that people really can do pretty much anything they like in this town and nothing will be done because it involves picking up a pen and writing a report. Does this free crime rule apply to every citizen? I’m a bit short of money; if I do something illegal to get some will a blind eye be turned?

Hey folks I know where I can get drugs, if anybody wants some I’ll take a cut and sort you out, it’s okay because unless we’re actually caught with them nothing can be done. There, does that make me a dealer with intent?