Free The Full Legacy by Jane Retzig Page A

go.
    Then I spoilt it all by almost tripping over myself as I bolted out of the shop.
     

 
Luke
     
    The ‘Mainline Drugs Project’ was located in the basement of a dilapidated Regency house at the end of a street not far from Kings Cross Station.
    I think I’d pissed off the young woman on reception by coming crashing in just five minutes before the end of their teatime drop-in session. She was a skinny little waif with a Motorhead T-shirt and a look of Chrissie Hynde. She straightened a stack of leaflets about heroin with grim determination and studiously avoided looking at me.
    ‘We’re just about to close,’ she said, flatly.
    ‘Well, actually...’ It’s hard talking to someone who won’t look at you.
    ‘It’s okay Jac. She’s a friend.’
    Thank goodness for that! I turned gratefully at the sound of Luke’s voice. He’d emerged from a warren of offices to my left and stood now, with his head on one side and a concerned look on his face that made me wonder if I looked as bad as I felt.
    ‘You look like shit!’ he said, confirming that one. ‘Come through to my office. I’ll get the kettle on....’ He touched my arm briefly to guide me ahead of him, then called back over his shoulder to his colleague.... ‘You might as well get off Jac. No point hanging around now. Everybody else has gone. Just put the latch on. See you in the morning....’
    ‘Jeez!’ he muttered as soon as we were safely in his room. ‘That girl has got such an attitude problem.’ He rubbed his hand impatiently through his thick gingery blonde hair. ‘She knows half the junkies in London though. This place wouldn’t function without her.... Anyway, enough of my woes. Let me get you a drink. I’ve got tea, coffee, some herbal weirdness called Barley Cup that Jon swears by. Or do you fancy something stronger? I’ve got a bottle of half decent Malt in the filing cabinet for when it all gets too much.’
    Alcohol was tempting, but I didn’t think my stomach would take it.
    ‘I’ll have a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘Thank you. And thanks for being here. I needed to see a friendly face today.’
    I sat down in a stained blue bucket chair and looked around me as Luke filled the kettle at a sink in the corner. I’d never actually been here before. It was a fairly large room with a cheap veneer desk, a couple of filing cabinets and shelves stacked with box files. There were a couple of framed Mapplethorpe prints on the wall - Patti Smith - white shirt, black tie, looking really cute and knowing it; and one of the less risqué self portraits of the photographer with open necked shirt and slicked back, slightly thinning hair. The grimy window sill had a dying Busy Lizzie looking yearningly out onto the wall of the stairwell at the back of the building. The beige cord carpet was scuffed charcoal grey where clients had trekked dirt in from the pavement outside. And the room reeked of cigarette smoke, unwashed clothes and a very faint, but unmistakeable hint of vomit. I wondered how Luke worked there.
    ‘I know,’ he said, with a little grimace, reading my mind. He shared a tea bag between two mugs of boiling water and slopped in milk from the tiny fridge under the worktop beside the sink. ‘Not exactly Buckingham Palace, is it? Anyway...’ He handed me my mug and pulled a chair round to sit opposite me, holding me in the intense gaze of his pale blue eyes. ‘What the hell’s going on with you ?’
     
    It was a relief to talk to someone who knew the problem.
     
    About fifteen years ago, when we were all at college together, someone brought a Ouija board to a Gay Soc Christmas party. My first instinct, after everything that had happened with my father, was to make my excuses and leave. But that wasn’t Corinne’s style, and I wanted her to think I was cool, so I didn’t. Come to think of it, that was pretty much the way of things with me and Corinne. She was an adrenaline junkie and I constantly overrode my better judgment to