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  ‘Anyway, me and Emily became an instant item, as they say, and pretty soon we had that many press camped outside my house we invited them all in for vintage Cristal and we were that pissed up and wired we told them we were engaged.

  ‘It was a lovely night that. Emily had had ‘Tommy the Tank’ tattooed round her belly button because she reckoned I shagged with all the awesome power of a Challenger Tactical Assault Vehicle (her uncle was a general), and she showed this tattoo off to all the snappers. Well, the next day her taut, muscled little tummy was on the front page of every single paper in the country, not just the Sun and the Mirror and the Star but The Times and the Telegraph and the Guardian, an’ all. Course, the Guardian tried to play it all ironic and amused like they weren’t so much doing the story as the story of the story, but they still fookin’ showed the photo, didn’t they? So what a bunch of twatty little hypocrites they are, eh?

  ‘Emily loved it. It was like she’d won an Olympic gold medal or got a Nobel Prize or whatever. She just spread them front pages on the floor and knelt among them sort of squeaking with happiness, drooling at all them photos of her belly button with my name round it looking up at her from every single one of ‘em.

  ‘Well, what was I to do? Not a difficult decision. I got behind her, hoiked up her Versace pink suede mini-skirt, thumbed the G-string from between her tanned, golden arse cheeks and gave her one from behind. Well, it were a celebration, weren’t it? We were the business. Britain’s number-one story. Two coked-up fookwits, me banging away and her giggling and moaning and preening over all them front pages of herself, which she’d got just through being posh and shagging me.

  ‘Top morning. Does it for me, I can tell you.’

  The circle of recovering alcoholics sat in stunned silence like so many open-mouthed wax dummies, tea half finished, biscuits perched on the saucers on which they had lain un-nibbled since Tommy had begun to testify.

  ‘Afterwards we rolled around on the floor for a bit and had croissants and champagne and another shedful of my charlie, and Emily sent out for more copies of the papers to give to all her mates. Then I turned her over, ripped five grand’s worth of designer daywear off her rock-hard, worked-out, emaciated little bod and banged her till she went off and puked…’

  For the first time the circle stirred.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong — she would’ve gone off and puked whether I’d been banging her or not. There was no way she was going to let herself digest those croissants, mate. Believe me, the closest a girl like that gets to having a square meal is agreeing to swallow.’

  Only Tommy could get away with that one. Somehow with Tommy it sounded cheeky.

  ‘Lovely morning. Lovely, lovely morning. Me and Emily were so happy together. But the funny thing was, even though it was obvious who the real star was between us, even though she’d jumped from third-billed spread in GQ to front-page saturation media coverage solely on the strength of letting me up her on a regular basis, she was that well bred and posh that she still acted like she was the top dog in the relationship and I was just some jolly bit of rough. She had so much confidence. They all do, those posh birds. Loud voices, officers’ accents, loads of deafening mates and a couple of great big cunty brothers in jumpers who are the only people they will defer to because they’re just ‘sarch a farking larf, right? So-o-o droll’. Let me tell you, after a month or two of having her baying in me ear’ole, love was well and truly dead. I was sick of the sight of her, and by the time the Brits rolled around I was looking for a way to dump her. That was partly why I’d given up the booze, as it happens, in order to dump Emily. I’m better at reality when I’m sober.

  ‘ ‘Oh, farking Christ, I hate the farking Brit Awards,’ she was shouting at me and the record company twats like we were in the next county. ‘They always give best newcomer to some little farking Scotsman nobody’s ever heard of and the big Americans never turn up, so they don’t usually have any really proper stars at all.’ Can you believe it? There she was, sat in a stretch with a bloke who’d sold fifteen million albums in the previous twelve months, and she’s moaning about the absence of proper stars! I mean fookin’—’ell. Well, that was it. You remember that old Paul Simon song, ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’? I love Paul Simon, me. Anyway, he says don’t agonize about it, just get out, make a plan, don’t be embarrassed, just fookin’ do it. Well, he never mentioned anything about waiting till your limo stops at traffic lights, opening the door on the bird’s side and sliding her out onto the street with your boot, but I think he would have done if it had scanned because it’s a top way of dropping a bird. Makes the point, let me tell you. ‘I even remembered to grab my bag of charlie off her as she went. Bang, into the street, right on her arse. There she was, sitting amongst the McDonald’s wrappers in a fifteen thousand quid Gucci number, which basically consisted of three small handkerchiefs connected by bootlaces. Me and the twats were pissing ourselves as the limo pulled away, let me tell you.

  ‘I looked back at her and waved. Brixton High Street, five in the afternoon, almost naked. The only white face I could see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone looking so scared. That’s what charlie does to you, empowers you to be an arsehole, makes you think kicking girls out of cars because you don’t like their accents is funny…I wish I could pinpoint the moment in my life when I turned into such a complete cont.’

  Suddenly there were tears in Tommy’s eyes. The circle of faces were amazed. They were used to raw emotion in their meetings, but this had come so suddenly.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just the booze seeping out through me tearducts…Anyway, that’s when I had my first drink. Like I say, I’d still been doing the coke, so it wasn’t as if I was properly dry. I’d just started me detox programme with booze because booze makes you fat whereas coke helps you slim. But, bollocks, I wanted a drink. I needed a drink. The record company blokes were all cacking themselves about what a great bloke I was for kicking a coked-up, half-naked girl out of a car in the middle of south London, and not for the first time in my life I realized that if I didn’t get drunk quite quickly I might notice that I was a sad, arrogant, bullying bastard.

  ‘I stopped the car at the next off licence and got a crate of Special Brew and six Kangaroo’s Arse Method Champenois, which was all they had. Well, you’re not going to get vintage Cristal in the Brixton Londis, are you?

  Then I went and sat in the front with the driver. I didn’t even give the three twats from the record company any of my booze. I just left them behind the glass and went and sat up front, just me, the driver and of course my old mate charlie. By the time we got to the Arena I was well and truly on one and I’d also decided that what I did to Emily was a top move and she’d deserved it and she’d be all right anyway.

  ‘I like Australian wines.’

  A HOUSE IN CHORLTONCUM-HARDY

  Billy was ten, Kylie was nine. By rights, they should never have been left alone, but Billy’s mum was a single parent and she had to go to work. The children were in the care of Billy’s seventeen year-old sister Michelle, and she had gone out for milk and coffee. Besides which, Michelle was sick to death of Billy and Kylie and she felt that the five-minute walk to the shops might restore her sanity and thus prevent her from throwing one or both of them out of the window.

  Billy and Kylie went upstairs to Michelle’s bedroom, which they knew was strictly out of bounds, and lay on the bed together beneath the Eminem posters. They practised kissing until fits of the giggles made further experiment impossible and then Billy showed Kylie Michelle’s condoms, which he earnestly explained were a ‘contradiction device’.

  ‘So Mish doesn’t get up the duff,’ he added, ‘although she says fat chance of that anyway, which means she hasn’t got a boyfriend at the moment.’

  Kylie had recently agreed to be Billy’s girlfriend, and Billy had been hoping on the strength of this that Kylie might take her knickers off and show him her bits. Disappointingly, Kylie demurred, but offered instead to
show him her knickers. This she did and Billy stared for quite a while, which he enjoyed, although he didn’t know why. Kylie declined the offer to see Billy’s pants and the conversation moved on. Billy said that he knew where Michelle hid her special things — her cigarettes and sometimes some money. Billy suggested that they look to see what they could find. Kylie, who was harbouring a major craving for a Honeycomb Wispa, agreed. Besides, if there was no money they could at least have a smoke.

  Billy pulled out the drawer of Michelle’s bedside table to reveal the space behind. They found no money but they did find a small decorative box in which were six tablets, each embossed with a bird. They both knew that it was dangerous to put pills in their mouths, but they were bored and these little pills didn’t look like medicine. It seemed more than likely that they were sweets.

  Billy and Kylie ate three pills each.

  When Michelle found them writhing on the floor of her bedroom she saw the empty pill-box and knew exactly what had happened. Grabbing the children in turn, she forced her fingers into their mouths in an effort to make them sick. Then she rushed to the fridge and brought milk, thinking in her panic that it might help. As the children began to lose consciousness she called her mother at work, who told her to call for an ambulance.

  Later Michelle was to admit that as much as fifteen minutes might have passed between the discovery of the stricken children and her calling the emergency services.

  THE PAGET HOUSEHOLD, DALSTON

  When Peter came out of the bathroom he could see from his wife’s expression that it was bad news.

  ‘Peter, we couldn’t have picked a worse day if we’d spent our lives planning it.’ Angela handed him the sheaf of newspapers brought by her daughter Cathy from her paper round. Cathy was aware of what her father was intending to do that day and her heart had sunk when she’d seen the front pages. Two small children — a ten-year-old and a nine-year-old — had died after taking ecstasy tablets.

  Peter glanced from headline to headline. Angela had already read them all. ‘It’s clear that it was a terrible accident. These kids found big sister’s little party stash and ate it. They might have necked a bottle of cream sherry or rat bait, but it’s being spun as if the poor girl forced the bloody things down their throats. The mother, too. It’s like she’d left the children in the care of a Yardie gang.’

  Cathy Paget called from the living room. The police van the sister and mum were taken away in was stoned by an angry mob. It’s on Sky every five minutes.’

  The newspapers were almost unanimous in their interpretation of the tragedy. This was no accident. E killed these children. The people who took E killed them, and the people who dealt E killed them. Ecstasy was an instrument of child murder and those who apologized for it were apologists for infanticide.

  Peter bit his lip. Not a good day to raise the subject of drug legalization in Parliament. The achingly cute photographs of the dead children stared at him from the front page of every paper. Innocent victims of evil drug-takers.

  Cathy emerged from the living room. ‘They’re going to kill you, Dad. Every report, and I mean every single report on your speech is going to be accompanied by the photos of those kids. They’re going to say that you’re proposing a Private Member’s Bill to kill children.’

  ‘Thanks, darling. That makes me feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘She’s right, Pete,’ said Angela. ‘You don’t have to do this thing if you don’t want to.’

  They went into the sitting room and watched Sky News for a while. The footage of the mob trying to get at Michelle and her mother while they were taken in for questioning was horrible to watch.

  ‘She’s just lost her son,’ Angela said, with tears in her eyes. ‘Oh my God, people are terrible, aren’t they?’

  Every now and then the footage was punctuated with shots of Peter, the commentator reminding the viewer that the MP for Dalston North West intended that day to introduce a bill proposing the legalization of drugs.

  ‘Pretty poor timing,’ one anchor remarked.

  ‘Tasteless and insensitive would be better descriptions, I think,’ her colleague replied.

  It was much the same spin on all the channels. The general feeling was that this new and terrible tragedy must surely now bring the legalizers to their senses.

  ‘Do you want me to drop it?’ Peter asked his wife.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she replied.

  ‘Thought not,’ said Peter. ‘Sod them. This tragedy has got nothing whatsoever to do with my bill. Nothing. Like you say, Angela, it could have been booze or cleaning fluids. How many kids have died through alcohol this week? Beaten by drunk parents, run down by drink-drivers, poisoned on fucking Alcopops? Where are their pictures? Why aren’t they on the front page?’

  ‘Dad. They’re going to kill you.’

  THE HILTON HOTEL, BANGKOK

  Sonia had finally found a television station that met with her satisfaction. There were plenty in English but they were mainly American and she had soon got bored with the unfamiliar cartoons and sitcoms and the weather reports from Arkansas. BBC News 24 had been worse: some dreary report about an English MP who wanted to legalize drugs. Sonia had smiled at that at least. Lucky for her he hadn’t managed it yet. There’d have been no free holiday in Thailand for her if he had. She’d still be stuck in Birmingham.

  She had finally found a pop channel with a half-hour special on the lead-up to the Brit Awards. Tommy Hanson, the people’s pop star, was of course expected to clean up as he had done the year before. Could it really be only four years since he had emerged victorious from Pop Hero with the biggest popular majority in the show’s history? Sonia had voted for him eight times.

  It was as Tommy sang to Sonia via the Asian Star Cable Network that her employers came to transact their business. Sonia was nervous but pleased to see them.

  Excited.

  One big, bad, mad-for-it Brummie bird.

  ‘I’ve never been in a Hilton Hotel before. Noice, in’t it? Didn’t know they ‘ad them in Bangkok, it’s just loik England, in’t it? Top tune, this. Tommy ‘anson, I love ‘im I do, ‘e’s dead lush. Let me be the tattoo on your thigh. Brilliant. I’ve bought loads of CDs while I’ve been here, they only cost about three American dollars each, which is two quid. Two quid for a CD! I mean, that’s mental that is, that is just stupid. I got three copies of everything so that’s Christmas sorted. Eminem, Dido, Slipknot for mates, U2 for me mum and of course loads of Tommy. I’m going to see ‘im in concert at the NEC in Birbingham next month. Have yow ever been to Birbingham, or is it just your mate in England?’

  The Brummie babble stopped for a moment. The man’s briefcase was open on the coffee table. It contained only one item.

  ‘Jesus Chroist! I can’t swallow that! It’s loik a bag of sodding flour!’

  The man explained that they would lubricate the condom with vegetable oil. Sonia wondered if it might be possible to divide the load into two lots, but the man had made his preparations and wanted to stick to them. He was anxious to be about his business.

  ‘Oh, screw it, all roight, that’s what I’m ‘ere for. You’re sure this thing won’t burst? I mean it’d kill me, wouldn’t it? I read that if the condom bursts yow wroithe around in agony for about foive minutes then youm dead, bang, just loik that…’

  Suddenly the reality of why she was in Bangkok at all was lying on the coffee table in front of her. A sinister shiny white sausage, a pale, evil-looking slug. Swallowing it was a terrifying prospect, but Sonia reminded herself that she was no crybaby, she was a tough, up-for-anything, Brummie bird and she wasn’t going to let some drug-pushing foreigner see that she was scared.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s get it swallowed. Down’t blame moi if I puke. Give us one of them Courvoisiers out of the mini-bar to wash it down.’

  THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER

  No, Madam Speaker, I will not withdraw! Nor will I apologize. The terrible, terrible tragedy reported in this morning
’s papers is entirely irrelevant to the issues that I have come today to put before the house. Except in this one point! It has been established that the poor older sister Michelle, whose drugs were taken by her younger sibling and friend, waited twenty minutes before calling for an ambulance. Were those twenty minutes crucial? They might have been. I don’t know but I can certainly imagine why the girl hesitated. She hesitated because she was terrified. She knew that calling an ambulance must inevitably mean her arrest and her disgrace. So this seventeen-year-old girl, faced with the appalling circumstance that her little brother and his friend were dying because of her, panicked, Madam Speaker. She panicked and in order to avoid the consequences of what had happened she attempted to remedy the situation herself, with tragic results. I suggest to you, madam, that had this girl’s pills been legal she would have called for help twenty minutes sooner than she did. What’s more, the pills would most probably not have been hidden away; they’d have been on display but out of reach, in much the way that alcohol is arranged in most homes.’

  Peter Paget was sweating visibly, but he was in control, nervous certainly, but in control. And hugely exhilarated. This was his moment, the moment for which he had been waiting all of his life. Fifteen years of rejection and petty frustration might just be about to blossom into glorious and celebrated political maturity. Peter Paget had gone into politics in order to improve people’s lives, and he had of course very quickly discovered that this was not generally considered to be the business of government. But today, on this one day, on his day, he was going to make a difference.