Slack lives matter

Two mornings at the hospital, training sessions under suffocating mouth and nose masks which provoke the very face scratching that we are to avoid. We are issued with gaily coloured lanyards; I wonder when they'll turn black. To my relief, we are told that we won't be involved in inserting the needles into the patients' veins. I stand around as it's explained to me, all meaningless. I mean, having a value. I don't care about it.

We are told the job might not be full time. That might be handy, if I can work out how much I could get on Universal Credit. I don't want to work at all, really.

I ring Hayley, but disturb her as she is going to bed, at half past nine in the morning. Later, she dances up to me in the street, shouldering her tits and switching her miniskirted arse. She hands over the the fifty pounds I lent her a fortnight ago. I stop in surprise. Back at hers, the table is dotted with lumps of crack of varying sizes. Wasn't expecting Harry though. Face control to look pleased to see him.

Harry doesn't last long and goes off to deal with some commerce. Hayley starts on a recitation of some injustice in the division of the drug that will form the chronic leitmotiv of the ensuing hours. She's endlessly generous with me though, pipe after pipe of the grey clouds going gratis into my brain.

There's a phone call which snaps Hayley into action. She has been trying to persuade her dealer to come out to the woods for a "bike ride". She washes and half-dries her hair, changes her miniskirt, applies mascara, and puts her long brown boots on.

He's an amusing, voluble Irishman, who possesses that welcome trait in a drug dealer, of not hanging around. "Love you lots! Ring me!" she says, following him out.

"Do you think he fancies me?" We're suddenly at the school disco, but on crack and speed. I hadn't noticed anything, but I tell her that she's very fit and no man's going to turn her down if she showed an interest in him.

She rakes her hair. One splayed frond curves across her cheek and under her chin, the greater mass a corrugated approximation of a bob. She's back-lit against the window. We swap first time masturbation stories. She says that Harry filmed her masturbating from a tiny camera inside the telly. "You're heading for the loony bin you are."

I don't want to go, but I am aware of Cath's yanking leash, like Flo greeting Andy Capp. "I think we're stuck with each other now, don't you?" I say. "For life," she says.

A green light paints the pavement. A tiny cafe, converted tonight to a party venue. Six people were dancing inside, two more outside. "You're the family I never had," she texts, as I'm at the bus stop. A black man comes to the shelter and stands outside it. I'm a bit nervous, wishing he would sit in the shelter with me.

The following day, we're all down the park, and Hayley is one boring stream of complaints against Harry, who is doing his best, fetching Doritos and cider and reduced price sandwiches from Tesco. "He keeps saying he loves me. Means fuck all. You can love your cat."

I wish he could have stood up then, to give her a good verbal bollocking, followed later by an equally good rodding over the settee, instead of using that reasoning voice of a soft-cocked vicar that she finds so irritating.