Weasel's Return (A weasel excerpt).

So my name is Graeme Sunningham, and I've lost the lot
Mary Staunton dropped in today. She comes round once a week, and I know it's part of her job, her duty, but I'd call her a friend now, there is a rapport, and I look forward to her visits. She got me the job too, or she made the connection and put in a good word. But they seemed to like me, and it keeps me busy. I'll go in later.
It's a programme, and I am grateful to have one.
It has been difficult with the family, especially with Alan. Mary Staunton said it may take years, but there's definitely been some progress.
Alan's mother has been fantastic. I never knew how much I had hurt her, I had never given it any thought.
I couldn't. But I can now. I would love to make up for lost time.
Yes, it may take years.
My wristwatch beeps to remind me to take my first pills of the day. It is best to take them before I walk out of the flat; as I said at the drop-in, it's like putting on armour
Even so, I can still feel last night's dose; the night pills leave my joints stiff and my actions somewhat robotic come the morning. It eases off through the day, but never completely goes. These ones will keep me on the level though.

The weeks dissolved into a smudge of working, sleeping, and smiling pleasantries. Time ticking by, me ticking over.
There were more meetings with workers, then two-way meetings, and then, when Jeanne felt strong enough and I could be trusted, there was a three-way meeting, and Alan cried. And we all cried, and I went back to my room and cried for time lost and damage done.
And on into the next day, and the next ticking-by.
I sat on the toilet, and looked at the sink, and there was the bottle. Half-full.
When had I stopped taking them? When had I re-adjusted?
And I walked the same walk to work and they smiled and I smiled. And I walked back.
Sometimes it was sunny, and sometimes grey. Not cold, or warm, just indifferent.

It had rained again in the night, the kerb was littered with fish-like silvery puddles, left out to dry.
Out to work. Home again.
The window in the toilet window, it was still cracked. It looked somehow different, its pattern more complex. Radiating. Under the sink, a spider's web replicated the pattern in perfect detail.
One, two.
I looked out through the window and there in the clouds was the third: concentric circles spiralling over the sky, whispy lines drifting back to the centre, then back out again. A maze in the sky.
Back to work.
The one big road I took every day grew longer, brighter and barer. I stood out, walking a scratchy walk across its barren surface.
One morning I couldn't face the drag. I headed into the side-roads. They didn't run straight, but splayed out into a tangle of streets, tall walls and houses - big, small, old, new, all tumbled together. I soon lost direction, and wandered in.
It grew quieter, further off the well-worn, only the crinkly-dry leaves scratching the pavement, where the walls faced up to the slabs with their corrugated doors and breezeblock windows. This was never seen in these days of perfect construction; perhaps it was theme-park dereliction.
Bit it felt unfeigned; I felt an affinity. There may be a place for me here.

There was a figure on the corner. Something about its size and shape resonated with me, but all the time I walked towards it I couldn't place just what it was.
I recognized its size, its shape, the way it moved. It dragged up some remnant of memory. I was close, I knew it in my head, but couldn't place it in time or space.
He knew me. He was looking at me and smiling. He had been waiting for me.
We were face to face.
"Hello Sunny.
Then I got it.
"Flea.
"It's Philip now, he grinned. "But I'll be Flea if you want. If it's easier. Give it time.
"Flea¦Philip.
"Philip. Philip to Flea, and back again. I might turn back into Flea soon. He grinned, and he looked like the old Flea.
"I might turn back into Sunny.
"What are you now, then?
I knew as soon as he asked, "No, I am Sunny. How've you been?
"I'm good.
"What you doing here Flea?
"It's still Philip. Flea soon. I'm doing the same old same old.
"Which is?
"Which is? Which is? He changed, all unexpected, and was at me, poking a finger in my chest and looking up at me with an unmistakably Flea-like sneer.
"The same old, old-old thing, that's what. Back down the back-doubles, over the wall, into the dirt and the what's underneath and the more than this, and the glittery words and the smell of an angel under your feet.
Remember?
You were there, Mr Sunny-whatever-your-name-is. I saw you and you saw me and we saw what we saw.
He grabbed my hand, tugged me down to goblin level: "It never went away, he whispered, "only we went away. We let them take us, turn us round. But she never went away. We never stayed to find out why she wanted us, and now she lies there pale as a brass on a double-shift, but I'm telling you Sunny - for that's you alright - she never went away.
"It was a sickness, I said, trying to pull away, shaken by this sudden turn for the strange in my life, "we were sick.
"Yeah. Come on. I'll show you sickness.
He pulled me along to the front of the first house and with his free hand he yanked up a corner of the corrugated iron.
"Just like old times, he said, "except we're going in, but my memories were now of years-back things, childhood, family, collapse. And yet, the smell of the old, and the cold musty air from the gap Flea had torn, lifting the lid on the beautiful dirty, stirred long-left dusty corners.
Flea took me through the rip, through the dark, past mould-spotted rose-patterned wallpaper, seep-ridden with Sunday get-togethers, the stains of growing up, falling out, deaths and births. Then down the passage through the still hanging frosted-glass door, past yellow kitchen cupboards, once banged and rattled on Friday night arguments, and out the back door to stand on the step and take in the mess of weeds and discard, the chunks of white concrete laced with black stones, small nests of bricks still glued together.
And just over this space were similar houses, and there was a hole in their united front, a hole where a door had been. A way in.