‘What the hell are you doing!’ I screamed, charging over to Jason and slapping him across the face as hard as I could.
I must have knocked him into the middle of next week I hit him that hard, and then I pegged it down the street with tears streaming down my cheeks.
‘Come back! I can explain everything! It’s not what you think!
Jason chased after me, screaming and shouting and swearing blind he wasn’t on heroin.
‘Look at me,’ he said when he caught up with me outside my mam’s house. ‘Do I look like I’m on heroin? You’ve got it all wrong, Cheryl.’
He certainly didn’t look out of control, not like he had done when he took cocaine. His pupils weren’t huge and he wasn’t being aggressive or talking rubbish.
‘What about the silver foil and that smackhead in the shop?’
‘The foil belongs to him, and you’re right, I shouldn’t have him in the shop. But honest to God, I’m not on it, Cheryl. What do you take me for? I swear to you, I’m not taking heroin.’
‘Look me in the eye and say that again,’ I said to him, and he did, over and over again.
‘I swear I’m not on heroin. You have to believe me. I’m not like that. I’m not stupid. I’ve seen what it does to people. I only smoke weed. Come on, Cheryl, don’t do this.’
I was too young and naïve to realise it at the time, but Jason was an extremely good liar. In the months to come he would pull every trick in the book to disappear and take drugs, always coming up with a more elaborate excuse.
Sometimes he’d pick a fight with me about absolutely nothing, and then go missing for four days because of what I’d said or done. Whenever he did one of his disappearing acts I’d be beside myself with worry, not knowing where the hell he was or even if he was alive or dead. We didn’t have mobile phones, and I literally had to sit tight and wait for him to come back. I’d get so worried I could barely sleep or eat, and I’d survive on cups of tea and the odd McDonald’s.
‘Have you calmed down now?’ he’d ask when he finally came home, pretending he’d had to get away from me because we’d had a row.
‘Where have you been?’ I’d cry.
‘For God’s sake, Cheryl! Why are you starting on me again?’
It was like that all the time. I should have just walked away, but I’d already had one bad relationship and I wanted to believe this one was different. I was determined not to let it fail, however much Jason pushed me. It seems ridiculous now, but at the time it was almost like the worse it got, the more I fought to make it work.
For instance, one night Jason and I stayed the night at my mam’s house and when we got into bed he suddenly started kicking the blankets off, really violently. Then I noticed his nipples were unnaturally hard, like plastic, and he had these absolutely massive goosebumps over his whole body.
I didn’t know what was happening but I was sure his behaviour had to be linked to hard drugs. I should have just kicked him out and ended the relationship there and then, but instead we had another massive fight that ended up with my mam phoning Jason’s brother to come to the house to help.
‘I’m sure he’s using heroin,’ I told his brother.
‘She’s crazy,’ Jason replied, though he was shivering and sweating and twitching now. ‘I only smoke weed. She’s been depressed. She’s a nutcase. She’s been on pills. Don’t listen to her. I’m going home.’
He messed with my head so much I didn’t know what to believe, even though I look back now and think it was so obvious he was cold turkeying that night, as he hadn’t had his fix of heroin and was experiencing withdrawal symptoms.
Another time, I got back to the flat to find I was locked out and Jason wouldn’t let me in. I took off my shoe and put the window through, because I was desperate to get inside and stop him taking drugs. Jason picked up a shard of the broken glass, and when I ran back to my mam’s screaming he followed me with it. I was terrified. My mam was in the bath, and she got out when she heard my screams.
‘I was bringing this to show you what she’s done,’ Jason said to my mam, waving the glass in front of her. ‘I don’t know why she’s behaving like this. She’s crackers.’
Even when I walked into our flat in broad daylight one time and found two guys sitting on our bed, trying to hide a big roll of foil under their feet, Jason denied he was on heroin. I went crazy, clonking all three of them over the head with the foil roll before hitting out at Jason with my fists.
We’d had plenty of fights before but, although I’d slapped him in the shop, that was the first time I’d actually punched him. I shocked myself. I didn’t even know who I was any more. I just didn’t recognise myself.
‘You’ve got users in my flat,’ I screamed. ‘You’ve told me lie after lie after lie and now you’re rubbin’ me face in it!’
Jason threw me out of the flat. This relationship was killing me, but still something inside made me determined to keep fighting for him. I’d seen so many people turn their backs on addicts, and I just believed I had it in me to be able to get us both out of this dark, dingy hole we’d sunk into.
‘Cheryl! What just happened?’
It was Dolly’s daughter, and she couldn’t believe she’d just seen Jason behaving aggressively towards me, or that I was even in a situation like this.
‘Cheryl, what’s going on?’ she said.
Dolly’s daughter knew me as a skinny little thing who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, not someone who would be fighting with her boyfriend in the street. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. It’s nothing serious.’
I was too proud to tell any of my friends what was really going on, and nobody knew how bad things really were or how aggressive and unpredictable Jason’s behaviour could be.
Not long after that incident, Jason’s drug-taking took me to a whole new level of terror.
‘Open up now or we’ll take your kneecaps off!’
It was the middle of the night when I woke up to hear that threat being growled through the walls. I thought I was having a nightmare at first because it sounded like something out of a scary film, but when I sat bolt upright in bed I knew it was very real. There were two men hammering on the door of our flat, and I started shaking from head to foot and asking Jason what the hell was happening.
‘Keep quiet,’ Jason hissed. ‘They’ll think we’re not in.’
The banging and shouting went on for ages and the walls of the flat were so thin I could feel our whole bedroom shaking. I was so scared I could hardly breathe, and I wanted to throw up.
‘How come we’ve got crazy men knockin’ on the door, threatening to hurt you, if you’re not involved in drugs?’ I said when I eventually got my breath back, after the men gave up and went away.
‘How the hell do I know? They must have got the wrong address.’
The lies were pathetic, but Jason was very clever. By now I had seen him many times with his head hanging and no pupils in his eyes, which is what heroin does, but I had still never caught him actually smoking it. Whenever he’d been wasted like that he’d always tell me I was crazy to think he was on heroin. ‘I’ve had a few joints,’ he’d say. ‘Just chill out. What’s wrong with you?’
I’d stopped smoking weed myself by now because I didn’t know if it was making me paranoid or not, and I knew I had to be normal so I could work out what the hell the truth was with Jason.
One morning, not long after the crazy men had been to the door, I woke up with a very clear head and had an incredibly powerful