Saturday 8th July
At first everyone thought Harriet was terribly hip and cool, maybe this was that famous University chic that they all imagined, but pretty soon they were all bored with her too. Where she used to be scintillating, she was now blasé, where she had once dazzled, now the glare of her unrepentant belittling self-centred smile turned everything to a dull blur. And at last Jane confronted her about it, and as Harriet recounted her little druggy experiments, as she told her how she got the stuff, how she mostly smoked it, as she revelled in her alter-ego, Jane was sickened. Almost straightaway she knew it was over; whatever they’d once had was blown apart by this habit. Heroin had obviously replaced everything in her affections, especially Jane. She knew that unless she joined her in her drugged-up state she would never have her again, but something stopped her; miserable as she was, constantly hurting herself, constantly needing to hurt herself, she knew she couldn’t go down that route.
Maybe she had found her own heroin in the private bleeding rituals she was indulging in; maybe that was her very own drug. Whichever reason stopped her, that same reason also stopped her from saving Harriet, because despite her own attempts at rationing herself, at limiting her excesses; it was becoming obvious, at least to Jane, that she was beginning to crave it, that classic junkie desperation was beginning to overtake her at times. Jane didn’t think she ever did it at home, during the weekends she was at home with the family, she can only remember her being pissed at everyone, she can never recall her being ecstatic during those weekends at all.
* * *
Phil was becoming worried about Harriet, where he never had before. Harriet was always so confident, so aware of herself, so much older than her years that he had never needed to worry about her before. He knew that she had her spats with June, some bad chemistry between them he supposed, but Harriet and he got on so well he just put it down to women never being happy with life. June never seemed satisfied with anything Phil did for her, the house, the car, the freedom of not having to worry about money. God knows he was doing enough of that myself, so he could not understand why she was never really happy.
And now he had Harriet mooching around the house, pulling faces and swearing all the time. Some weekends he was mightily glad when she went back to University. She had this remarkable facility for spreading her misery around the house, even Jane was moody most of the time Harriet was home. And money, the girl was always after him for money. He had had to manage on his grant and wouldn’t have dreamed of asking his father for a penny, not that he would have thought it appropriate to give him any he was sure. So why was Phil such a soft touch?
It was now becoming a habit that as he was carrying Harriet’s weekend case to the station for her, she would slip her arm in his, lean in close and whisper ‘You couldn’t lend me tenner, could you Dad? I’m really skint.’ And he, like the mug he felt he was, already had a note folded in the palm of his hand ready slip to her. As long as June didn’t see, that was his biggest concern; stupidly he never asked himself what she kept needing money for.
* * *
Life was beginning to close in on Harriet; she thought she could handle it all, her studies, her drinking, which like her doing stuff was getting out of hand, and the wretched visits back home, where she was expected to behave as if Stowmarket was somehow the centre, rather than, as she knew only too well, the arsehole of the Universe. Jane was moping around, and was really quite censorial when she told her about the junk she was doing. What had happened to the girl, she used to be up for anything a year ago, thought Harriet. She felt her mother never stopped moaning at her, what with her precious ‘at your age, we never dreamed of staying out so late,’ and her ‘Harriet, mind your language, please, Jane is listening.’ As if Jane hadn’t heard a few shits and buggers, she was sixteen after all, and it wasn’t as if she saying f… or c…. all the time – by Harriet’s standards, she was really quite restrained.
The only one who seemed to understand her was her Dad, he’d been to Uni in his time, so he must have understood some of the pressures, and he always came across with a bit of cash if she asked him nicely. But Harriet just couldn’t hack the workload, why had she chosen History, of all subjects. She wasn’t remotely interested in History. Somehow she wasn’t interested in anything she could think of. She knew that she had better start pulling her socks up; she was getting poor comments from her tutors, and was always late with any assignments. At least no-one seemed to mind if she missed lectures, because, as Harriet stated, they were boring as fuck.
Money was slipping through her fingers like water – she never seemed to have enough. Jim was getting shitty about giving her stuff for free, so she kept ending up having to buy it, which was a real drag. And Harriet had no-one to help her, for the first time in her life she was feeling alone, but as if she really needed a friend to help her too, maybe to knock a bit of sense into her, or just to listen. She hardly knew the girls on her course, and the few she got to know in the hall of residence were all so prim and proper she just had no connection with them.
She realized that she missed Jane, but even she was pissed at her, especially about the drugs, it was like Jane was turning against her too. If Harriet suggested going out for a drink Jane would more often say she was busy with some homework or something, when once she would have gone everywhere with her. Harriet needed a change of scene really. Maybe she should just jack in Uni, she reasoned, before she got kicked out, and head for London. Maybe University had been a mistake, maybe she should have just headed for London, that was where it was all happening, not here in dead and alive Leeds.