Confessions

Whenever the weather is bad you can guarantee someone in a state is going to walk through the door. This afternoon it’s a middle-aged woman in a hoodie, crying her eyes out and calling herself a cunt because she’s stopped taking her medication, started drinking again – even though she was on “the programme” – and now she’s done “something really stupid”.

I ask her what she’s done, bracing myself for the worst and hoping I’m not going to have to get the police involved.

“I slept with someone I shouldn’t have,” she says, scrunching up her face in shame and self-loathing, tears rolling down her cheeks. I pass her a tissue.

“That doesn’t sound so bad to me,” I tell her, “we’ve all done that.”

“Stupid,” she says, mopping her eyes, “I was so stupid. Why did I sleep with him? It was – well it wasn’t horrible, it was quite nice – but it was horrible as well. I’m such a cunt.”

“You’re being very hard on yourself. Isn’t part of the programme about forgiveness? Maybe you should be more forgiving toward yourself.”

“I’m always forgiving myself,” she says dismissively.

“Still, I thought you were going to say something much worse. It’s not like you murdered someone.”

“He has.”

“Oh.”

“He spent twenty eight years in prison. I fell in love with him. What a cunt. How could you murder someone? I couldn’t murder someone. My dad brought me up better than that.”

“Right.”

“You know what else I did? I slept with someone for ten pounds. Ten pounds. What a cunt.”

“You needed the money?”

“I needed the money. And I borrowed twenty pounds off my neighbours.”

Which sets her off again. Borrowing money from her neighbours upsetting her more than sleeping with someone for ten pounds. I hand her a second tissue and she drops the sodden wad of the first in the bin I hold up for her.

“I’m on the street and I’m looking at people walking past – and some of them are lovely – but do you now what one of them called me? They called me an addict. Fuck you. I don’t touch drugs. I’m out there all evening and I’ll get maybe twenty quid, some people are out there and they’re taking seventy.”

“But you have a place to stay now?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a place around the corner.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I just needed to offload.”

“We all need to offload, sometimes.”

“It’s horrible though, isn’t it? Why can’t I be stronger? It’s ‘cos I stopped taking my medication. And started drinking again.” She points a finger to her head and turns it in a circle, making the internationally recognised sign for stupidity.

“It’s a bad combo.”

“It’s a fucking bad combo.” She’s laughing at herself now. “I should probably just go home and go to bed.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Go home, take your meds and get some sleep. Things won’t look so bad in the morning.”

She’s back on her feet again and about to leave when she stops and turns back to me.

“I hate this fucking town. All these happy people walking around…”

“Fuck all the perfect people.”

She laughs.

“Yeah,” she says, “fuck ’em.”

She takes my arm to steady herself as I steer her out of the centre and a couple of people waiting in the foyer give me their best ‘what are you going to do?’ faces, but outside it’s stopped raining, for the time being at least.