Billy and Rolonde

Billy and Rolonde

Len Grant

For Rebecca

Contents Billy and Rolonde

5

Journeys with Barbara

55

Ten Years of Grieving

97

Epilogue

123

3

Billy and Rolonde 1 I’m early and it takes a while for the door to be opened. Maybe Billy is checking me out on the security camera he’s set up in his bathroom window. When the door opens he’s apologetic, he’s overslept. His flatmate stays under the covers in the bedroom they share as Billy pulls on his trainers and finds his jacket. It’s ‘pay day’ and some of the pay is going on a fix.

Heading towards the main road Billy is in talkative mood, happy to answer my questions about his addiction.

‘I spend between £20 and £40 a week on heroin – two or three hits – out of about £60 or £70 a week I get from the dole. I’m probably what they call a Girojunkie because I don’t thieve to feed my addiction any more,’ he says as we walk to the post office on the other side of the small estate. ‘But there have been plenty of times when I’d shoplift or break into an empty building and steal some scrap.’

There’s a queue of six or seven waiting outside the post office. Billy acknowledges the two men and one woman in front of us: fellow users eager to draw their weekly benefit.

I’ve put a microphone on Billy, the recorder stuffed in his inside jacket pocket, so I know what he says once he’s inside.

‘I’ll take it all out please,’ he says to the cashier as he reaches the front of the queue. ‘And can I have a £5 Vodafone top-up please? Thank you very much. Have a nice day.’

His friends come out first and ask me what I’m doing. Over the last few weeks I’ve been asking myself the same question.

‘He’s a good shoplifter,’ says one young man who is surely still a teenager.

‘What makes a good shoplifter?’ I ask before the naivety of my question dawns.

‘He doesn’t get caught.’

After the post office we walk together to the Multisaver convenience store so Billy can put some credit on his electricity card. ‘We were down to 18p last night,’ he tells me. Striding the junkie stride back towards the main road, Billy is stopped by someone asking directions. He is friendly and polite, able to point the lost motorist in the right direction. Would she ever consider he’s a heroin addict about to buy his pay-day score?

5

‘There are about ten dealers on my estate,’ he says after he’s popped into the chemist for fresh needles, ‘which is quite a lot for a small estate. If I went to town there’d be another thirty down there. Heroin is more freely available now than cannabis.

‘I’ll have to take this off now,’ he says of the microphone as he steps into a phone box to call his dealer. ‘You go ahead. I’ll see you back at the flat in five minutes.’ Without Billy I suddenly feel vulnerable walking through the estate back to his block.

On another occasion I’d see the place differently. I’d see it as normal. I’d find the strong sunlight picking out the yellow daffodils in the flower boxes vaguely uplifting. I’d notice that the tidy landings of the deck access flats look almost inviting. I’d think the bright blue name signs and the newly painted metal railings were indications that the housing trust managing these properties was making an effort.

I wonder if those two teenage girls, meandering late to school, their chattering heads locked together, really know what goes on here. Most probably they do.

But today it feels different. There’s an undercurrent of criminality and of potential violence. This morning, for me, that undercurrent has surfaced: I’ve been walking along with a man who is about to buy a bag of heroin from a dealer somewhere a few landings away, go back to his flat and inject himself. And I’m about to photograph him doing it.

I’d first met Billy a few weeks before when a friend of a friend made an introduction to a local drugs charity. This branch of the charity is based in a converted mill on the outskirts of a nearby town surrounded by low-rise housing blocks and undeveloped commercial sites, what the planners would call ‘mixed use’. A single sheet of paper taped to the inside of a window details their opening hours. There’s nothing else on the outside of the building that suggests the activities within. It’s late afternoon as I step straight into a reception area where two or three men sit on plastic chairs, talking. Two others stand by a chest-high wooden counter. The ones by the counter thrust crumpled bus tickets at the female worker on the opposite side, and sign for the £1.60 they claim for the dog-eared square of paper. ‘This one’s from 9.26am,’ she retorts, almost playfully. There are clearly regular attempts at bogus expense claiming in which all the participants know their roles.

I’ve been invited to make a presentation of my work to the users’ forum and ask if anyone is interested in participating in my latest project. I’m ushered into a large communal room with health promotion posters around the walls. A table at 8

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one end has a tea urn, cups and saucers, milk and sugar. On other occasions there might also be a plate of chocolate biscuits, but not today. The audience, the men from reception and later a couple of older women, listen to a half-hour talk about the regeneration projects I have documented in the city over the past fifteen years.

I tell them about my most recent, where I photographed and interviewed people living on a run-down council estate before its demolition. One elderly resident, Agnes, had recalled a desperate time when her estate was frequented by drug dealers. ‘I remember looking out and seeing them in front of my gate, selling their drugs,’ she’d told me. ‘I’d go out and give them a piece of my mind, but they’d always come back.’ There are some questions afterwards and one man admits that he bought heroin on that estate, and might even have been admonished by Agnes.

That was Billy.

He’s a good host. He offers me a cup of tea before he injects. I decline, reminding him that I’m just a fly on the wall, not getting in the way, not influencing anything. But, of course, that’s impossible. Billy’s flatmate and his girlfriend – who arrived when we were out – stay in the bedroom, unwilling to be included in the documentation. It’s in there that the bag – I assume it’s a bag but realise I’ve missed a shot of Billy bringing the heroin into the flat – is emptied and the paraphernalia of the preparation laid out.

Suddenly Billy is wandering around the living room with a thin syringe, half full of a brown liquid. He’s chatting the whole time, wanting me to feel comfortable in his home. He shows me photographs of his family: a group in someone’s garden; he and his brothers a year or so ago, Billy looking thin and drawn; a school photograph of him and his two brothers, from twenty years back, smiling together at the camera. ‘You better not photograph that,’ he tells me.

Perfect light pours through the large window as he settles himself on the edge of one of the two sofas. He lifts his right forearm and pushes the needle into the white skin, still talking. I’d visualised this moment ever since I first met Billy and suddenly it’s here, now. I shoot and shoot. A couple wide, then filling the frame with Billy, his arm, the needle, a couple more tight on the needle. Two minutes, 45 seconds – I timed it later from the data embedded in the digital files – and it’s over.

On our way back from the post office I’d asked Billy what I should expect after he’d injected. I had this idea of leaving him laid out on the bed or the sofa and letting myself out, dropping the keys through the letterbox.

‘It’s not a hallucinogenic drug,’ Billy had explained. ‘I’ve been taking it for that 9

long it doesn’t have that much effect on me. Maybe I’ll just be a little less hyper than normal, a bit mellow.’

And so it was. His head didn’t loll backwards nor did his eyeballs rotate in their sockets. He just offered me a cup of tea again.

I’d put the tape recorder in front of Billy on a previous visit and, as eloquently as a newsreader, he’d told me about himself.

‘I was seven when my mum loaded me and my two younger brothers into a friend’s car and drove us to a halfway house.

‘In my eyes my mum was a bit of an angel. She was a proud woman who instilled a decent set of morals into the three of us. She could have taken all the benefits on offer but she worked at whatever job was going. For four or five years we were in and out of battered wives’ hostels. Life improved when she met another fella, an ex-policeman.

‘By the age of thirteen I was getting into trouble at school. Nothing too serious, graffiti in the toilets, that sort of thing. My mum decided I needed an outside interest so she took me off to the army cadets. It was the best thing she could have done for me. I loved it. I was there until I was fifteen years and eight months, and then I signed up for the army. I’d wanted to go into the Royal Military Police but didn’t make it so joined the Catering Corps instead.

‘Unfortunately I was experimenting with cannabis at the time and someone told on me. Army law isn’t the same as civilian law and if you have drugs in your urine, which I did, it’s regarded as possession, so I was given 28 days in the guardroom and then kicked out. I was devastated because I really wanted to be in the army, learn a trade, see a bit of the world.

‘My stepfather was very anti-drugs – said he’d kill me if he found I was using – so I was afraid to go home. I went instead to stay with a friend. His mum was a recovering addict and she’d just been sent to jail for buying heroin for a young lad, who’d died after using it. So I was staying in their house while she was in prison but she’d also let a dealer move in, in return for taking drugs to her in prison.

Now, I was a 17-year-old lad and this bloke was in his early 30s, and he was taking advantage of me a bit. I was the one on the mountain bike, dropping off the drugs and being paid in drugs, so by my eighteenth birthday I was a fully-fledged heroin addict. Apart from when my mum was dying, I’ve been on drugs all my adult life.

‘She had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer with a high cure rate – it’s only supposed to kill five out of 100 people – but unfortunately it killed my mum after fourteen months.

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‘When I heard my mum had cancer I wasn’t using that much and had accumulated quite a few possessions but then I sold everything, bought loads of drugs, and went on a big binge. After that I decided to come off the heroin. I didn’t want to put pressure on my mum and my brothers while she was ill.

‘The illness brought us all together. I wasn’t entirely drug-free, I was taking tablets and smoking cannabis on a daily basis but I was off the heroin during her illness, and for another eighteen months after she’d died. My mum was always the most important person in my life and I thought I’d coped quite well with it. But there was no support for me then.

‘I was using benzodiazepines, diazepam – Valium – and temazepam, and used to buy the tablets off the same people dealing heroin. I went back on it once, but vowed I wouldn’t do it again. Then two days later, I thought I’d have another dig and then leave it. Before I knew it, I was back on it. Since then I’ve been a using heroin addict, but now I’m down to three times a week from three times a day.

‘I’m ready to get off it. I’m in the right frame of mind. Partly it’s maturity and partly it’s because I’m getting sick of it all. And now I have the support.

I’m accessing the ADS service [the drugs charity], going to the user forum and doing all the courses. They are helping me a lot. I haven’t had that sort of support before.’

Billy is confident he will get the funding he needs for an expensive detoxification and rehabilitation programme. Most of his ‘associates’ attending the support service are doing so because their court orders compel them, but Billy is attending voluntarily which, he hopes, will demonstrate his commitment. ‘I’m not a timewaster,’ he says, ‘I do want to get off drugs.’

2 He’s at Asda when I call him. He’s on his way to a church hall on the other side of town for a free meal. I ask to tag along. I park at the supermarket and we stride together through the underpass and the shopping centre, around the bus station, across the inner ring road by the station and up a street flanked with terraced houses.

It’s been more than three months since I photographed him last, injecting.

Since then he’s seen less of his girlfriend and asked his lodger, Stuart, to move out.

All positive steps on his journey to get clean. ‘She was using more than me. There’s no way I’d ever get off it if we were still together.’

13

Stuart has got himself a girlfriend. ‘I told him she could stay a couple of nights a week. But it ended up she was there more often than not and I was the one sleeping on the sofa… and it’s my flat!’ Stuart’s now in a hostel. ‘I prefer it on my own to be honest.’

Billy hasn’t had any money for a couple of days. ‘If I didn’t have this meal,’ he says as we approach the church hall, ‘I wouldn’t eat at all today. Yesterday all I had was two chocolate bars.’

About twelve tables are laid out in the hall. We choose an empty one and are almost immediately joined by Joanne, a volunteer ‘listener’. She’s a member of the church and has been helping out with these lunches for nine years. ‘It was intended for older people on their own, those who wouldn’t normally see anyone all day. It’d be somewhere to come and have a hot meal and a chat. But over the years we’ve had more homeless people and addicts, which is fine by us… we’re here for anyone who needs us.’

Joanne clearly likes Billy. He’s courteous, sociable and they share a mutual interest in books. While they’re discussing thrillers he pulls out a Stephen King novel from his bag. ‘I can get three of these for a pound at that charity shop near the station,’ he says. I ask him why he doesn’t use the library and get them for free. ‘I’d end up paying thousands of pounds in unpaid fines if I showed up there again,’ he laughs.

The place has filled up. Every seat on every table is occupied. I’m introduced to Jean, one of the organisers, carrying plates of food and drink, and I ask if I can take photographs. I always seem to be asking permission to take photographs. She says I can as long as everyone in the picture agrees. Joanne and Les, an older man on our table, say it’s OK but there are no shots of the whole hall because I don’t want to have to explain myself to fifty or so diners.

By the time we leave, we’ve had sausages (they’re from Marks and Spencer, Joanne tells us), mushy peas and onion gravy, followed by mince pie and custard, and several cups of tea. I push some money into Jean’s hand before we go.

We take the same route back to the car park, Billy calling out to friends on the street as we go. It’s pay day tomorrow so I assume he’s got nothing left at home until then. ‘Can I get you a few things, just to see you through?’ I ask as we approach the big supermarket. ‘If you’d like to,’ he says. ‘If it makes you feel better.’

When BBC foreign correspondents reach a famine-inflicted African village and film the plight of starving children too weak to brush the flies from their own eyes, do they not pass some of their food and clean water onto their subjects before climbing back into their 4×4s? Does it make them any less of a journalist?

Does it make them feel better?

15

I grab a green plastic basket and stride down the centre aisle towards teas and coffees. Billy chooses ‘Value’ coffee for 38p. I reach for some tea bags.

‘No, no. Coffee’s fine,’ he says, not wanting to push his luck.

‘Long life or fresh milk?’ I don’t remember whether he’s got a fridge or not.

‘I’ll take fresh if that’s all right.’ 42p.

There’s too much bread to choose from. Billy leads the way to the reduced shelves, wanting to save me some money, and chooses an out-of-date large wholemeal for 49p. ‘I’ve already got some spread,’ he says.

Next it’s sugar, 84p, and eggs. I choose a box of large free-range for £1.52 before he can find the cheapest. It feels uncomfortable, shopping for this 31-year-old.

Like a parent shopping for their student son before term starts, knowing they would normally buy the inexpensive brands but wanting to treat them, wanting to splash out a little. I should have just given him the money and waited outside.

‘Come on, spend about a tenner,’ I insist.

‘Is it OK if I get some tobacco? It’s only a couple of quid.’

‘Yes, sure.’

We take our purchases to the tobacco counter and get a box of Amber Leaf.

Total of six items: £6.18. I guess Billy would regard it as a good day today: a free lunch and a bag of groceries.

3 ‘I’ll be back in touch in September,’ I tell Billy on the phone before we leave on our family camping holiday.

‘I might already be in detox by then,’ he replies, ‘depends when the funding comes through.’

Amongst the pile of junk, there’s a letter waiting for me when I get back. Handwritten envelopes are such a rarity that it’s the first thing I open. It takes a few seconds before I realise who it’s from.

Dear Len, Sorry I haven’t been in contact. As you can no doubt see by the address I am in Detox. It was short notice and I didn’t have the money to ring. If you would like to visit me here then that would be good, however there is a slight drawback. Until I reach day 15 I’m not allowed to leave the unit, and 18

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photographic equipment isn’t allowed to be used on the unit. However you could visit to talk before day 15 and after day 15 if you wanted to visit we can leave the unit and you could take any photos you want. I don’t know if that is suitable for you. I am doing quite well, I’m now on day 4 so I’ve had a chance to settle in. If you do decide to visit you don’t have to book in, just turn up during visiting hours. I have listed you as one of my visitors as only people listed in advance can come. Visit hours are Mon–Fri 1–2pm, 6–8pm (not on Weds evenings), Sat–Sun 1–4pm 6–8.30pm.

Wednesday nights is Narcotics Anonymous which is why there are no visits weds evening but weds dinner is same as weekdays. So Len, I must admit a visit would be appreciated but it may not yield fruit for your project, only you know if its worth it but already I feel healthier, I’m eating 3 squares a day and no drugs apart from methadone which is being reduced starting tomorrow so I will start to be a bit poorly but obviously 3 1/2 weeks of medium grade suffering is a small price to pay to get my life back. Also if you bring an unobtrusive camera we may be able to sneak a few shots in my room as long as nobody else’s privacy is interfered with anyway I hope you and you family are well. If you are unable to visit please could you write and let me know.

Yours Billy I’m excited. Billy is actually keen for me to visit him and despite having a list of things to catch up with after the holiday, I decide to visit him the following day.

I could write back and tell him, he’d get the letter in the morning and at least he’d know I was coming that lunchtime. I could telephone the unit and let them know.

Instead I decide just to turn up.

There’s been a hospital on this site for more than a century and a half and it’s always had something to do with mental health. The old asylum – and it was called an ‘asylum’ until the 1920s and even a ‘lunatic asylum’ before that – was knocked down more than ten years ago. Now a Tesco Extra shares the original site with a dozen or so separate buildings providing mental health services for the local NHS Trust. Neuropsychological assessments, art therapy, psycho-social interventions and cognitive behavioural therapy are administered to depression sufferers, schizophrenics, psychotics and substance misusers in characterless, single-storey buildings with innocuous-sounding names like the Redwood Ward, Fraser House and the Hascombe Unit.

Billy is in Crossley Unit. Once buzzed in I offer to leave my cameraphone with 19

the reception staff, as the sign on the outside door demands. I could have sneaked in my Lumix as Billy had suggested – I’d taken my tape recorder in without any problem – but, if discovered, it would be my last visit.

Billy takes me on a tour. The lounge, with its leaflet rack and information posters, is more like a waiting room. One poster, above the TV, declares ‘No Drug Talk’. A hatch connects the lounge to the kitchen and a door leads into the conservatory with more chairs and a table football game. He tells me there are plans to refurbish the unit, spend ‘millions’ on it, and it needs it. The ‘inmates’, as they call themselves, can smoke in the small yard outside the conservatory.

When it rains umbrellas advertising a smoking cessation helpline are on hand and, although they could easily climb the wooden fence surrounding the yard, any unauthorised absence would mean they’d be discharged. They have to want to be here.

Billy’s ‘cell’ is at the end of a short corridor. He unlocks the door and ushers me in. A bed, a bedside table, a wardrobe with his five shirts and one pair of trousers, a half-full chest of drawers. Billy has given up his flat, left some of his more treasured possessions with his brother, and come to detox with what was left, which is not much at all. He wants this to be a one-way journey. I put the recorder on his bedside table and he starts to talk.

‘Last Thursday I came in. They count that as Day One, so I’m actually on Day Seven, although I’ve been in for six and a half days in reality. They’ve only just started reducing my methodone today. Until now I’ve been stabilised on the 70 mil [millilitres] I normally get.’

‘What were you on before you came in?’

‘Legally I was on 70 mil of methodone. Illegally I was on about twenty quid’s worth of gear, once or twice a week. It was ADS [the drugs charity] who helped get me down to that. I think I would have gone under without ADS. I was also taking 20 or 30 milligrams of diazepam – Valium as you’d know it – every day.

So in here they’ve been giving me 15 milligrams of that as well. Also, once a week, I’d be taking 250 milligrams of Valium – 25 tablets – which is an awful lot.’

‘25 tablets in one sitting? Wouldn’t that kill you?’

‘Well no, believe it or not, it’s very hard to overdose on just benzos. If you mix them with drink or heroin, then you’d be at a much bigger risk. An associate of mine was buying diazepam by the thousand-tablet tub. It worked out at 15p per tablet for him, against a street price of £1 a tablet. So he’d sell them to me in batches of 50, at 50 pence each. I’d keep 25 and sell the other 25 at a quid each. So the ones I sold paid for the ones I used. This was happening at least once a week 20

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because I’d started cutting down on the heroin, and the quality of heroin at the moment is very, very poor.

‘When you’re on benzos you feel invisible, or as tough as nails, but you really have no idea what you’re doing. On one occasion I woke up the following morning in a police cell, on a blue mattress on the floor, in case I swallowed my tongue.

I had no idea why I was there. There was a charge sheet resting on my chest telling me I’d been charged with the theft of a £2.99 Walt Disney baby’s cap. I didn’t even know anyone with a baby! You just do ridiculous things.’

Billy explains that after the staff have stabilised a patient, they progressively reduce the dosage of whatever drug – or legal alternative – they had been taking on the ‘out’.

The patient doesn’t know how much drug is being administered, it’s called ‘blind titration’, he says, so they have no preconception of how they should be feeling.

‘With the diazepam, it’s very hard for them to do it without me knowing because I know the colours of all the different milligram tablets. With methodone, they mix it with fruit juice and it goes a horrible, gunky-looking colour.

‘The methodone from the chemist is a thick, very sweet liquid. There’s two types: sugar-free and the one with sugar. I always thought that heroin addicts and methodone users had bad teeth because of the sugar in the methodone, but I’ve recently discovered that all opiates inhibit saliva production, you know, the first line of defence against decay. There’s nothing to kill off the bacteria. So, although I’ve been getting the sugar-free type, I’ve still got bad teeth. Someone told me this joke the other week: What do you get if you put ten smackheads in a room together? A full set of teeth!’

Billy seems pretty calm to me. I’d had in mind some serious ‘cold turkey’ symptoms. Maybe a gruesome couple of weeks with him tossing and turning in his bed, sweating profusely, with his mind taking him to places he’d rather not go.

Actually some of this was yet to come.

This detoxification programme takes four weeks, at the end of which Billy will no longer be taking methodone, his legal substitute for heroin. A nonopiate painkiller, Lofexidine, and a non-addictive sleeping tablet, Zopiclone, are administered as the methodone dose is reduced.

‘The worst thing during withdrawal is lack of sleep. It doesn’t half baffle your head. I’ve had temporary psychosis from lack of sleep. So yeah, for me, that’s the worst part of it. Pain, you know, everyone has to suffer, don’t they?

‘During the night you’d be exhausted but restless, your legs thrashing around and you just can’t get comfy. We call it “riding a bike” or “doing a marathon” because that’s just what it feels like.

21

‘The physical symptoms are pain in your joints, usually your legs, you get the runs, stomach cramps, sweats, alternating really hot and then really cold, like hot flushes. Your nose runs, your eyes run. Actually, the symptoms, apart from the lack of sleep, aren’t much different from bad flu, it just lasts a lot longer. I’m touching wood that it isn’t going to be that bad for me. I’m trying to keep positive because I know that will make it easier.’

To keep in touch with the ‘out’ Billy has been writing letters.

‘I’ve been writing to a lot of people,’ he says. ‘I bought six stamps and used them all in one day. I wrote to my worker and some clients in ADS, and I know they’ll read my letter out to the rest of the group. They asked me to keep in contact, let them know how I was doing. I’ve been writing to my real mate Robert – I’ve known him since we were twelve – we were at school together. When you do drugs you have lots of ‘associates’, but no true friends. We’re all out for what we can get. Robert doesn’t do drugs, he’s a real friend.’

‘Since I got your letter… I was going to ask… I was wondering whether you’d be interested in writing a diary of your time in here?’ I’d brought one of my blank Muji notebooks along, hoping he’d be up for it.

‘Yes, excellent idea. It’s one of the things they recommend actually. Well not here exactly but at ADS they suggested writing a diary: when you get cravings, what triggers them, that sort of thing. Then you can look back and it’s easier to see a pattern. But, yes, a diary would be an excellent idea.’

After we’ve chatted I return to the reception where the staff are surprised I’m still here. Visitors are only allowed for an hour at lunchtimes and I’ve been here nearly two. I ask who I should talk to about getting permission to photograph Billy while he’s on the unit.

The manager is new this week. She’s come over from alcohol. I’m invited into her small, square office where I explain again what I’m doing. It’s reaffirming having to describe the project out loud to someone you’ve only just met. My explanation sounds plausible. I come across as quietly confident and she looks as if she gets it. But then, inevitably, it’s not her decision. She will have to relay my request to a higher authority. And, even though I only want to photograph Billy, on his own, in his room, and even though Billy himself has said it’s OK, they still have a responsibility for his confidentiality as he is in their care.

But whose decision is this? Billy is very keen for me to follow his progress from user to non-user. He sees it as an incentive, another reason not to fail. We are collaborating on a story which should help give a greater understanding of a life dependent on opiates, the relentless cycle of addiction, crime and self-loathing.

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How does anyone know what’s going on out there unless there are case studies, newspaper features, magazine articles, books, TV documentaries, all produced, I guess, by someone like me? How are our opinions formed and policies devised if no one has an understanding of the realities? I say I’ll telephone the next day to hear their decision, but I’m not optimistic.

Already I’m thinking of alternative ways to portray his treatment without him actually in the picture. Maybe I could photograph his possessions. A shirt, or a book, or a toothbrush set out on a white background, all the images on one doublepage spread in the book to show just how much Billy has given up to take this next step. I imagine working away in his room, my photographic lights bouncing off the low ceiling, a makeshift studio with Billy as my assistant, passing me one item after the other while one of his support workers sits in the corner, making sure I don’t take a sneaky shot of Billy himself.

Or maybe I could photograph all the medication he’s been given during his time on the ward. I could take close-ups of the Lofexidine, the Bascopam, the Zopiclone.

Before I get the chance to call the unit, a communications officer from the Trust calls me and says, yes, I can photograph Billy in his room.

I wasn’t expecting that.

4 Billy has just graduated today. He has finished Part One of the detox programme and now moves into a different part of the unit to complete Part Two. This morning he changed bedrooms. I knock on his door as he’s setting out his few possessions. Photographs and letters are already Blu-tacked onto the wall. The communications officer has accompanied me from reception and, after some awkward introductions, says he’ll leave me to it.

This is the big picture: Billy coming off drugs. It’s probably the only time I’ll be able to photograph him in detox, my one chance. Before this picture he was a drug user, after it he’ll be clean. This is the transition, the bit in the middle. Suddenly I’m a bit freaked out. After all the time I’ve spent negotiating my way to this door, I haven’t considered what sort of image I want once I’ve stepped inside. What am I trying to say here? Is it wide or tight? Is it ambient or a bit of bounced flash?

Posed or natural? I decide it’s wide – this is what I’ve bought that 28mm for – and of course it’s ambient like everything else I’ve shot so far. It’ll mean a high ISO 26

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but I’m going to make all my images artificially ‘grainy’ afterwards so the ‘noise’ doesn’t matter. As Billy is already making up his new bed, I decide I’ll photograph him doing that. I can’t see him sitting or standing still for very long. Two sheets, a blanket and a pillowcase and I shoot like crazy, trying to ask him some pertinent questions at the same time.

‘Yeah, I’m doing well,’ he says, straightening the bottom sheet. ‘Down to six mil now from the 70 I was taking before I started. That’s less than 10%. Tomorrow it’ll be four mil… Thursday, two mil… Friday, drug free. No longer a slave. Well not a slave to that shite, anyway. So, yeah, I’m feeling pretty positive. It’s not been as rough as I expected.

‘I was pretty wound-up yesterday but that was more to do with other people.

Some new inmates came in on the other side who were making me angry, messing about between themselves and expecting me to be the referee. But I’m not here to help any other fucker, I’m here to help myself. ’Scuse my French. I managed to get it out of my system with a bit of violent-sounding music and some exercise.

‘I’ve been waking up quite early – about five – with painful stomach cramps, but they’re not that bad. On the outside I felt pretty helpless, more alone, but this time I’ve got the support of my family and the people in here. They’re pretty good people actually. When I got here, everyone made me feel really relaxed and if I’ve got any worries I can go and speak to them. Mostly they’re really approachable.

‘But the worst may still be to come. It’s bad when you go from two mil to nothing. They call it “peaking” and it can be a bit rough for a few days. After that I’ll be fine. The only way is up really.’

The pillowcase is on, the bed is made, and I have 56 digital files on my card.

Bursts of shots, some from the waist or at arm’s length, a shotgun rather than a sniper. Less considered than film, more instinctive, and thank God for the threeinch LCD screen.

Billy accompanies me back to the office. Between them Gustav Klimt and Anne Geddes fail to uplift the bleak corridor. ‘I’d like you to call me by my real name from now on Len, if you don’t mind.’ I’m confused at first. I thought he preferred his nickname, his street name. But, of course, this is a new start and he’s putting it all behind him, except, perhaps, for the tattoo that spells out his (old) name across the back of his right hand.

So the next time I see Billy, he’s drug-free and called Rolonde.

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5 He’s been off the methadone for four days now and within a week what’s left in his system will have gone. Slave no more. The ‘peaking’ he was worried about didn’t really materialise, although the stomach cramps continued. And since I saw him last, with the pillowcases, he’s been allowed out of the unit on his own, but only for 45 minutes at a time. The staff check him when he comes back: a breathalyser for alcohol and a blood test for everything else. He’s had his hair cut, and for the first time in years, he’s paid a professional to do it. He’s got new glasses; his previous pair were broken during an unspecified incident on the ‘out’. He looks good, really good, and I can’t help feeling pleased for him.

This lunchtime he’s negotiated an extended pass, so we have an hour and a half for a celebratory meal at TFI Friday’s near the main road. He lights a roll-up as soon as we’re outside and, to save time, we drive the couple of hundred yards to the restaurant. Camera on shoulder, tape recorder in my pocket, we’re led to a table with a good view of Tesco’s car park.

Two 12 oz rib-eye steaks each with fresh vegetables and Friday’s fries. The sauce is a problem. We can choose between Bourbon Peppercorn, Wild Mushroom, Jack Daniel’s Glaze or Lively Burgundy. Like an Olympic athlete, conscious of the constituents of an innocuous nasal spray before a dope test, Rolonde checks with the waitress before ordering. ‘Is there really any alcohol in the peppercorn sauce?’

We’re assured we’ll be safe but ask again when we order the Sorbet Martini for dessert.

I’m having trouble with his name. For months now I’ve known Rolonde as Billy and it seems to fit. The nickname came years ago when he shared his surname with a popular character from a comedy drama on the local radio. His friends called him Billy and it stuck. I guess it was easier than having to explain Rolonde.

‘It’s not pronounced Rolondé,’ he tells me, ‘it’s just Roland.’

6 ‘I’ve started dreaming again,’ he says. ‘When you’re using you don’t dream, or at least you don’t remember your dreams, and now I’ve started dreaming again.

I hadn’t noticed there was something missing until I had them again. One night I had a very vivid dream that I was actually taking drugs which was a bit weird.

It’s as if it’s still hanging on there in my subconscious.’

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He’s coming out today, his detox is complete. His few possessions don’t take long to pack. Soon Rolonde has a few bags and boxes ready by his bedroom door. I ask him what he knows of the next stage, what he can expect from the rehabilitation.

I’m not surprised that he’s read up on it and knows he will be embarking on some 12-step approach as the basis for his therapy. ‘I know what the twelve steps are but I don’t necessarily agree with them. There’s one about giving yourself up to a higher power – God – which for me is a sticking point. How can I do that if I’m not sure I believe in God? Someone said you don’t have to think of the higher power as being the guy with the white beard who wrote the Bible, you could think of someone else. So, anyway, I think I’m going to be thinking of my mum when it comes to that.’

Each week in rehab will cost about £400, which, in Rolonde’s case, is being paid for by the Social Services department of his local council. Although expensive it’s cheaper than prison. The Home Office website states that putting someone through a rehabilitation programme is nine times more cost-effective than their journey through the criminal justice system.

A few months ago I heard of a government proposal that benefit payments to drug users should be stopped unless they admitted their addiction and adhered to a drug rehabilitation programme. I remember asking Rolonde, or Billy as he was then, what he thought: ‘Well if they weren’t getting benefits they’d all be doing more shoplifting to feed their habit, wouldn’t they?’

It’s clear you have to be emotionally ready to tackle your addiction. Rolonde had tried on his own before but had no support and, although off heroin, he was still drinking and using other drugs. He knew he wasn’t ready to give it all up.

Now, for the first time in twenty years, he is completely clean and about to enter what could be the most challenging nine months of his life.

Holgate House is Rolonde’s choice of rehabilitation centre. He and his NHS drug support worker, who is about to pick him up from the Crossley Unit, visited a couple of potential centres a few months ago. Although he wasn’t fully aware then of all the prohibitions, he’d opted for this relatively small residential centre in the Lancashire countryside.

I’ve done my own research on Holgate House. The latest report from the Commission for Social Care Inspection is available to download. What comes across in the report is a place where the residents feel safe and secure and are well supported by the staff in their commitment to come off drugs or alcohol, or both.

The inspector suggests that some of the bedrooms could be repainted and some carpets replaced, to ‘provide maximum comfort’.

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I set off ahead of Rolonde and his support worker. I’m soon on the orbital motorway, and then off again, heading north. Within twenty minutes ‘A’ roads give way to minor roads, red brick gives way to stone. At-risk post offices are overlooked by Victorian follies and silent wind turbines. I drive out of the county and then back in. Steve Wright has long gone, my feeble radio unable to follow his frequency. The presenter on the local station quizzes a woman caller about the household chore she despises the most. She can’t decide between cleaning the toilet and ironing. It starts to rain.

At the end of a country lane large lorries thunder past as I hit a main road running through a small village. I’m nearly there, I take a left and then a right and park up to use the public toilet next to a cattle market. A man and his wife have also stopped; they’ve bought ice creams from the nearby van and he is now taking photographs of the sheep in their pens, about to be auctioned. The image of this man, juggling his dripping cone and compact camera, with a backdrop of bleating mutton, is too surreal to miss. A dozen Martin Parr images flash through my mind as I try and manoeuvre myself into a position that gives the impression that I, too, am only interested in the sheep.

Five minutes later I am parked up waiting for their arrival. I photograph possessions unloaded from the boot of the car and Rolonde as he crosses the threshold. All clichés of storytelling I know, but they are all I have. They stand in the vestibule area waiting to announce their arrival and are eventually ushered into the lounge where they wait again – Rolonde admitting to getting a little nervous by now – before Marlene arrives with the admission forms.

I first met Marlene a few weeks ago when I came up to introduce myself and ask permission to photograph the next step of Rolonde’s journey. We talked in a small, windowless interview room, somewhere quiet where I explained again about my project. She liked it and said they’d be happy to help. Her husband, son and daughter all work here but it is Marlene, you can tell, who is like a mother to all the residents. She’s tall, still attractive, with loads of unruly hair and not averse, I’m sure, to giving a grown man a hug.

At that first meeting I was given a tour and couldn’t help thinking Rolonde was going to like it here. From the near-overpowering odour of gloss paint, it was clear the redecoration programme the inspector suggested was in progress. I was shown the wooden-beamed lounge – where we are all now seated – with its largescreen TV, stacks of DVDs and videos and three enormous red sofas. The décor, tidiness, and lack of any personal items reminded me of any number of show houses I’d photographed in regenerated areas.

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There’s paperwork to do before the NHS worker can leave. It’s as though they are signing over a criminal from the courts to the prison: ‘There you go, he’s now your responsibility’.

Rolonde is left to complete a number of forms himself about his family and lifestyle. When it comes to filling in details about his father he doesn’t know how old he is, or his occupation, or whether or not he has an alcohol or drug problem.

‘Why do they want to know how many times my mother was married?’ he asks out loud.

What plans do you have for the future? Hopefully study social care/drug work [he writes].

On the next page there are questions about lifestyle. For the sake of my tape recorder, he reads out the questions and his answers to them.

‘Do you believe you are dependent on drugs? I’m not dependent but I am addicted to them. What kind of alcohol do you drink? Baileys, or whatever the cheaper version is. It’s about 17%. What kind of drugs do you take? Heroin, benzodiazepines. How old were you when you first used alcohol? 11/12. Drugs?

12. Have you had problems with home?… Yes… work?…Yes… Police?... Yes… socially?... Yes.’ Next there are a list of medical or psychological conditions. Have you ever experienced any of the following: seizures, blackouts, morning use, hallucinations, shakes, DTs, isolative use, cravings, hiding, changing patterns, changing substances?

He ticks them all apart from the shakes and the DTs. He continues: ‘Would you describe your drinking as daily, periodic or binge?

Binge. I normally binge with benzos. Have you had any periods of being totally chemical-free? Only up to the age of 11!’ he jokes, but doesn’t write it down.

‘You’ve got to have a joke haven’t you? Have you ever been admitted into hospital for alcohol, drug or psychiatric problems? Yes. For what? OD, but I can’t remember when it was.’

Marlene comes back in as he’s reading out the next question. ‘Have you ever been incarcerated? Yes. When? Multiple times.’

‘What’s your best guess?’ she asks.

‘Less than ten, about six or seven. Where? Bindley, Stoke Heath, Strangeways, Glen Parva – that’s near Leicester – Risley. I can’t remember the exact dates.’

I’d talked to Rolonde in our very first interview about his criminal record and he was characteristically candid about his time inside. ‘I’ve had sixty-odd charges made against me and for someone who’s thirty-one that is pretty diabolical, especially as I never had any record before I was nineteen. I’ve clocked up a couple 39

of burglaries, eight or nine obtaining by deception, some public order offences, about forty thefts, but no violence, nothing like that. It’s all been drug-related.

Every crime has been committed to feed my habit.

‘Apart from two occasions, I’ve been guilty of what I’ve been accused of – often caught red-handed or nearly red-handed – and I’ve pleaded guilty. Jail doesn’t bother me,’ he’d said, ‘it’s an occupational hazard. As far as I’m concerned jail has been a bit like a health farm for me. I’ve been in about seven times and the longest I’ve done is four months. Sometimes it’s only been for a three-week lie-down.’

His ‘three-week lie-down’ has been Rolonde’s way of coming off heroin from time to time when things having been getting out of hand. It would be a self-administered detox with no professional support and no long-term strategy. Real cold turkey. ‘I’d get arrested for something small and I’d say I had no fixed address – although I had – so they couldn’t bail me, they’d have to remand me for three weeks. Coming off heroin takes a week of pain and then a week or so of disrupted sleep and then you’re all right, you feel fine. I wasn’t sent down in those circumstances so after three weeks I’d come out and I’d be clean. But because I hadn’t changed my lifestyle and everything on the outside was the same, I’d end up back on it after a couple of weeks.’

‘The last time was for four months,’ he is now telling Marlene, ‘for theft and obtaining by deception.’

Now there is a list of illicit drugs and he is asked to identify which he has used.

He ticks most of them.

‘Have you ever mixed alcohol and drugs?’ asks Marlene.

‘Yes.’ ‘If you could only ever use one drug, what would it be and why?’

‘Heroin, because it’s an emotional anaesthetic.’

‘Have you ever been involved in verbal abuse?’

‘What, people doing it to me or me doing it to other people?’

‘You doing it to other people.’

‘I’m sure I must have done, yes.’

Marlene reads Rolonde the Holgate House rules which he has to sign.

‘How have you got on with your detox, Rolonde?’ This isn’t an official question.

‘Quite well I think. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too hard. I feel about 90% now.’

‘You look well. Have you started to eat?’

‘Yeah. Not so much in the mornings but I do eat at dinner times and tea times.

I eat quite a lot for a thin person.’

‘Can you tell me why you think you’ve come here?’ She’s back to reading from the questionnaire.

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‘To deal with my baggage and emotional problems… to get to the root of why I feel the need to do self-destructive things like take heroin and that.’

‘That’s good. Well done. What problems do you think you are presenting to me today, to be here?’

‘Would it not be addiction...?’

‘Yes.’ ‘…and self-destructive behaviour?’

‘And your strengths? What do you think your strengths are?’

‘Quite articulate. I like to think I am pretty considerate, positive.’

Marlene writes all this on her form. ‘So the situation is: you’ve completed your detox, and you are funded by Social Services… do you know how long you are here for?’

‘Nine months apparently.’

‘Nine months, with a review in three months. Are you on any medication?’

‘No, I’ve been on those drinks when I first went into detox because I was quite malnourished.’

There are lots of questions and forms to fill in and sign. Rolonde doesn’t seem at all fazed by this. He’s been in and out of different institutions for years and has no doubt been through this procedure many times. The staff here need to get to know all about him so they can tailor his treatment accordingly. As well as the personal and lifestyle details, and his drug history, there are the bureaucratic formalities to complete.

‘The National Drug Treatment Monitoring System, which is part of the NHS, require us to enter data onto their database about the length of our clients’ stay in rehab. We do not disclose any personal details. Are you happy to give your consent to that?’

‘Yes.’ ‘That’s another signature there then. It’s so they can do their statistics and see how long people stay in rehab and the outcomes.’

There is a big debate about these figures. It seems that the Monitoring System are happy to bang the drum about how many addicts are enrolled on a drug treatment programme but are less forthcoming about how many come out the other end. One commentator has put the figure as low as 3.6 per cent for addicts being discharged drug-free, although the authorities strongly reject his calculations.

‘Now, this is a risk assessment for the CSCI [Commission for Social Care Inspection]. We have windows that open more than 100 millimetres. We’ve just got to ask you whether you are at risk of jumping out of the window?’

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‘No,’ says Rolonde.

‘This next one is for COSHH, for controlling substances that you might use around the house. COSHH stands for the control of substances hazardous to health.’

‘Like cleaning products?’

‘Exactly. It says: Holgate House feels that this service user is able to use these cleaning agents without causing harm to themselves or to others. This is a list of the products we use: Fairy Liquid, washing-up liquid; Trust, an anti-bacterial household cleaner; Morrison’s shower cleaner, Morrison’s bathroom cleaner, Morrison’s kitchen cleaner, citrus; Morrison’s toilet cleaner, pine; Morrison’s carpet freshener, vanilla blossom. All cleaning agents are controlled by COSHH legislation. Holgate House feels that this service user understands the danger of swallowing or getting a liquid into their eyes and must report this to a member of staff straight away if that happens.

So, of course, we are making sure you are not going to be spraying it into anybody’s eyes, and we just need to ask you that you wouldn’t do that to another human being, and you wouldn’t do it to yourself.’

‘No.’ After the forms Marlene leads Rolonde upstairs to show him his room. He is sharing an L-shaped bedroom with another client, John, who will be his mentor.

John has the part of the L nearest the window, Rolonde is nearest the door. There’s a small safe, like the ones in hotel rooms, on his chest of drawers.

Marlene pulls on a pair of rubber gloves as she inspects the possessions Rolonde heaps on the single bed. She flicks through the pages of each book and peers into his wash bag.

‘Aerosols aren’t allowed. Shaving gel is OK,’ she says.

‘What about my razor?’ he asks.

‘You’ve no self-harm issues, have you?’

‘No.’ ‘That’s fine.’

‘Will I be able to do weights while I’m here? Is there a gym I could go to?’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ says Marlene. ‘The reason for that is people can use exercise to change the way they feel, rather than dealing with their emotions directly.’

‘Yes, I can understand that definitely.’

‘The most we do is walks.’

‘Would there be any problem with me doing press-ups?’

‘No, a lot of them do. But if we thought it was getting an obsession then we’d have to…’

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‘Yes, I can understand that.’

The unpacking is interrupted by a request from the rest of the clients – who are just about to complete the day’s group session – for Rolonde to join them for a formal welcome. As he makes his way down the narrow staircase I say my goodbyes and leave him to begin his nine-month rehabilitation.

As I drive back towards the main road, I speculate how it will be for Rolonde.

The regime is very strict, probably stricter than he was imagining. Music isn’t permitted; he’s not allowed to do regular exercise and certificate 18 films are out.

He can’t leave the house unsupervised for the first twelve weeks. All very different from the lifestyle he was leading when we first met.

7 Within three weeks I’m back. I’ve been given permission to call on Friday lunchtimes, after the formal group sessions have concluded for the week. As I arrive everyone is clearing their soup dishes from the dining room. Rolonde comes outside to sit by the table-tennis table, have a roll-up, and talk into my microphone. He tells me that he’s already on a warning for breaking the rules.

‘They caught me listening to music,’ he says, ‘and they’ve taken my stereo off me. I tried to fly under the radar for a while, but they caught me in the end.’

At Holgate House, music, like exercise, is considered a distraction from actually dealing with the bigger issues. Unfortunately for Rolonde, these are just the things that he finds helpful to deal with his stress.

‘For me it’s a way of controlling my moods,’ he says. ‘If I’m in a bad mood, I can lift my mood with music; if I’m feeling aggressive I can get it out of my system by exercising to music.’

I’m intrigued to know what goes on here, what Rolonde and his fellow addicts do all day. I feel he is more distant from me while he’s here and I’m struggling with ways of continuing his story. I ask him to take me through a typical day.

‘I get up between half six and seven,’ he begins. ‘The first session isn’t until eight so I could stay in bed until ten to if I wanted. But I’ve got used to waking up early, my eyes just seem to ping open before seven. So I go down and have a cigarette, make a brew, have another cigarette, have some toast or cereal.

‘At eight o’clock we go in the group room and read from a book called Just for Today. We pass the book round and each of us reads the passage for that day. At first I thought that was a bit repetitive, but it means we all get the message. This 46

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morning it was about getting your own house in order before you start criticising other people. After that we have this serenity prayer, you’ve probably heard it: “God grant me the serenity to accept things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”’

Rolonde and his fellow addicts are working through a 12-step approach that has been the basis of a recovery programme for addiction and compulsion since 1939. It’s a rigid, structured technique that seems to work. He’d mentioned when he was in detox that there was a religious element to it. ‘Some people have troubling swallowing the “God” thing,’ he’d said.

He continues the rundown of the daily schedule: ‘Then we all hug each other and say, “Have a nice day,” which sounds weird, doesn’t it? But it’s kind of nice.

Then we have a brew and go back in at nine o’clock and do the feelings diaries from the day before. At the end of each day we’re supposed to write these diaries to help us keep track of our emotions. So, we’d all be in a circle and I’d say, “Hello my name is Rolonde, I’m an addict,” it always starts like that, “Yesterday I was feeling… this, that and the other.” We go around the circle talking about how each of us was feeling that day. Then we have some group time led by a peer leader – we take it in turns – where we all get to bitch about who’s not done the washing up or who’s eaten whose yoghurt. Then we’ll have another break and it just goes on like that.’

‘So you’re all in that room all day?’ I ask. I’ve seen the room, it’s quite small for a dozen or so emotionally charged addicts, each grappling with life’s issues.

‘Sometimes you’ll have a one-to-one,’ explains Rolonde, ‘I’ve got one later. But yes, you’re in there from eight until about one, then lunch, then back in until about half-past four. When I’m in there, I’m often clock-watching, itching to get out, but then, when I’m out, I can’t wait to get back in because I know I’m making some progress.’

‘Do you feel as if you are making progress?’

‘For me, all this is about being honest with myself and with other people.

In the past I’ve kept it all here.’ He thumps his chest. ‘If I can be honest then I’ll be making progress.’

‘You’ve really got to buy into this whole thing, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I like to think I don’t swallow it all, hook, line and sinker. I’m taking what I need from it.’

‘But don’t you have to take it all, if it’s going to work?’

‘I guess so, but I don’t want to lose my individuality.’

To complete the daily schedule, Rolonde recounts the likely evening activities.

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‘We start cooking at about five,’ he says. ‘If it’s not your turn to cook, then there are chores to do, hoovering, or whatever. The meal is at six and after that it’s free time. Sometimes I do bits of work on the assignments they set for us, but most of them just watch telly. There’s an Xbox in the group room, but I’ve got to be careful I don’t play on it too much or they’ll think I’m becoming obsessive.’

While we’re talking Rolonde greets people as they come and go from behind the building, past the table-tennis table. Some are from the day-care group, graduates from the residential programme who come back to Holgate House for another three or six months of the same. He explains that his nine-month rehabilitation, if he continues through the whole process, will be split into six months here and another three as an ‘out-patient’, a ‘day boarder’.

‘There’s a house that these people rent in a town nearby. If I play my cards right, I’ll be in there for the last part of my rehab.’ Although he doesn’t need to be worrying about these practicalities now, it has been recommended that he doesn’t go back to his old neighbourhood once his programme has finished. Recovery among his previous ‘associates’ would be a bad idea.

I am unable to photograph much of what Rolonde is experiencing here at Holgate House, but I do get the chance to accompany him and the rest of the dozen or so clients on their Friday afternoon supervised walk. It’s a quick circular march along a country lane to the desolate village post office – ‘Seen that tin of salmon on its own shelf? It’s been there fuckin’ ages’ – along the main road’s narrow pavement, past the cattle market, to the petrol station which, with its wellstocked mini-supermarket, has clearly stolen the post office’s trade. ‘They hate us in here,’ someone says, ‘always suspicious we’re nicking things. Can’t wait for us to leave.’

8 Christmas comes and goes before I get the chance to speak with Rolonde again.

It’s another Friday lunchtime, and he and another client are cooking as I arrive.

Lunch is mushrooms and spinach in a white sauce, on toast. Rolonde is on toast duty: a dozen white slices at a time under the grill, turning them quickly before his culinary partner needs to stir the sauce on the hob above. Rolonde distributes the warm toast among the waiting plates, two or three slices to each as the sauce is ladled out. There’s some hilarity as another client enters sporting a new T-shirt, arrived in the post today, with I  REHAB printed across his chest, but even this 48

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fails to put Rolonde and his partner off their stride as the plates are distributed to the hungry diners. I sit and talk as they eat: my lunch had been an expensive ham salad sandwich from the petrol station on the A56, the crumbs still on the driver’s seat.

Afterwards, as others fulfil their clearing-up obligations, Rolonde and I step outside and sit by the table-tennis table.

‘It’s been a lot colder than it is today,’ he says, expertly rolling a thin cigarette, inserting a filter at one end and pinching the excess tobacco off the other. ‘I don’t sit here for very long now, I smoke a fag and then I’m back inside.’

I am amazed at the change in Rolonde. Not only has he put on weight – he’s muscular now, as if he’s been working out – but he appears more relaxed, more at peace with himself.

‘Yeah, early on I was looking at this more like a prison sentence, something to get through. But now I can feel the benefits of it… I can see it’s doing me some good. I’m more accepting of what’s going on here. I’ve seen it work in other people, so I’m thinking to myself, what am I resisting for? That might sound like they’re trying to force something on me but really they’re not. They’re offering me something and it’s up to me whether or not I take it, and I’ve decided to take it.

I’ve come to realise it’s not just about getting off drugs, it’s about staying off them and learning to deal with life’s problems.’

‘That sounds brilliant,’ I say, rather too enthusiastically.

‘Yeah, I think so. I have the odd little struggle, but that’s to be expected. I’m getting to understand things more clearly now,’ he says, cryptically. I probe gently.

‘Mostly it’s about my mum dying and about my stepdad. There are things I thought I’d dealt with but realise I hadn’t. Now I’m dealing with those issues from the past.’

One of the reasons I haven’t seen Rolonde for a few weeks is that I’ve been busy on one of my commissioned projects. I’ve been under a fair bit of pressure and, typically for me, I’ve haven’t coped well with the stress. I share this with Rolonde, offering something of myself.

‘I bought a book on CBT,’ I tell him. ‘It’s been really useful and probably it’s the same sort of stuff you’re doing here: looking at the triggers; examining how you interpret particular thoughts and emotions.’

‘I don’t understand much about Cognitive Behavioural Theory,’ says Rolonde, although clearly enough to know what the abbreviation stands for.

‘It’s just common sense, really… written down.’

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Rolonde is nearly four months into his rehabilitation at Holgate House and has just finished Step Three of his 12-step programme. This step is about turning your will and your life over to God. ‘But you don’t believe in God,’ I remind him.

‘Well, I’m still dubious but, believe it or not, I’ve started praying. I don’t go to church or anything like that, but there’s got to be something out there, hasn’t there? I haven’t stayed alive this long just by luck.’

‘And what’s Step Four?’

‘We have to make a “fearless and moral inventory” of ourselves. We have to write down all our character defects – which for me would be arrogance, selfishness, that sort of thing – and then list all the things we’ve done wrong. The step after that is starting to make amends for these wrongs, if you can.’

‘How does that work?’

‘Well, if you can make amends without harming yourself or another person then that’s what you should do. For instance, you wouldn’t go to a shop and tell them that you’ve stolen from them, because that’d get you arrested, but, say you’d stolen from a church, you could go in and make a donation to that church and that wouldn’t get you into any more trouble. For that step, I’m going to write some letters to various people, apologising for the way I’ve treated them.’

I visit Rolonde once more before he finishes the residential part of his rehabilitation. It’s another Friday afternoon and, as he is now trusted, he’s allowed out for a few hours unaccompanied. From a telephone conversation earlier in the week, I know he and a fellow client are planning to go swimming, and so I have brought my costume and towel so I can tag along.

‘We’re not allowed to come with you,’ Rolonde says, when I arrive. He sees that I’m confused; I thought we’d cleared this on the phone. ‘No, we can go swimming together,’ he explains, ‘but you’re not allowed to take us in your car.’

The swimming pool is in the nearby town and although it will only take me ten minutes to drive, Rolonde and his friend have to walk up the lane to the main road and wait for the appropriate bus. I do some shopping at the local supermarket and then sit in the leisure centre and wait.

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