'Cheers, Doc'

'You'll be alright with him?' Dr Dick asks Donna. 'I'll be fine,' she says. 'Then I'll leave you to it.'

She follows the doctor out into the hall and there's more muffled conversation. At one point, I think I can hear her saying, 'I'll be fine, Richard, okay? Just let me handle this.'

The front door closes with a clatter. When Donna reap- pears in the doorway, her lips are tight.

'Sorry,' I say.

'You okay?' She drains her glass, sets it on the coffee table and avoids my eye.

'I'll be okay, yeah.'

'I'll pick up your scripts.'

Donna's gone for about an hour. I know, because I watch the clock on the video until she comes back. I've made this drink last because I've had to. The bottle on the coffee table cries out for me to up-end the bugger into my glass, but I can't reach it. Donna must have left it there on purpose.

Doctor Dick. Yeah, he wasn't a doctor. He looked like one, but he didn't act like one. I'm grateful for the prescriptions, but if he's NHS, I'll eat my socks. And Donna doesn't strike me as the kind of woman who'd have private healthcare. Nah, Dr Dick is a friend of the family, maybe more. The more I think about it, the more it burns me up. I need to get out of here, but I can't bloody move, and that burns me up even more.

I really want a drink. I try to move on the couch, but the towel starts slipping. The last thing I need is to be found face down on her carpet with my arse bared. No, I can wait.

I'm not paralysed. I've just seized up. But Doctor Dick can't be sure. Christ knows what I'd do if I end up paralysed. Yeah, it worked for Ironside, but I'm not Raymond Burr. I don't have his courage. And he could walk — he was just a lazy bastard.

Shut up, Innes.

I hear the front door open and hope that it's not a burglar. 'Donna?'

'Yeah,' she says. The clinking sound of bottles. She sounds tired. I got your prescription.'

'Just take the cash out of my wallet,' I say.

'Don't worry, I will. And I know you shouldn't drink with the pills, but I want one.'

'That's fine with me.'

I drink with the pills anyway. Donna doesn't stop me. After a couple, though, I'm ready to pass out. We make it to the bedroom before I lose consciousness. And just before I go, I'm sure I can feel her hand brush my forehead. My foot twitches as the bed sinks around me. Maybe there's hope after all.

When I open my eyes, I have to blink against the daylight. I had bad dreams, violent, full of those screeching choirs and the heart-thumping fear of being recalled to Strangeways. If I slept, it was in thirty-minute stretches at most. A quick look around the room with blurred vision, and Donna's nowhere to be seen. I rub the crusted drool from the corner of my mouth and swing my legs out of bed before I realise what I've done.

Praise be and thank fuck for Doctor Richard. I'm shaky, but I can stand. Pain in my right leg, but I can limp. Which is better than wheeling myself around. I take a breather against the wardrobe, grab a dressing gown and slip it on.

'Jesus Christ.'

I look up and Donna's in the doorway. I smile at her. 'Nah, but aren't miracles grand?'

'You scared the shit out of me.’

‘Sorry.'

'You want a drink?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Noon.'

Six hours' worth of waking up and dropping out. That's the closest I've come to a good night's sleep in a long time and I still feel like I've been dragged through a rusty fence. 'And the bar's open?'

'Early doors.'

She helps me through to the living room and I ease myself onto the couch. A mournful song on the CD player, a piano and an alcoholic's voice. Donna brings me a glass and fills it from a half-empty bottle on the table. 'I washed your clothes,' she says.

I sip my drink. Sweet with no burn, another single malt. 'Thanks. I thought I'd have to chuck them.'

'You still should. How you feeling?'

'I can walk, so that's a start. Doctor Dick did wonders. How do you know him? He can't be your GP, not with that kind of service.'

'He's a friend.'

'Uh-huh. Close by the sounds of it.’

‘He's helped me in the past.’

‘What with?'

'I don't want to talk about it.'

'Okay,' I say. Another drink and there's a dribble at the bottom of the glass. I swallow it and struggle to my feet. 'Thanks again, Donna. I should be going, though. Stuff to do.'

She doesn't answer me as I limp back into the bedroom. What am I supposed to do? I can't thank her again, and I don't know what else to say to her. It's like we're trying this on for size and it fits neither of us, this relationship hanging dead around our necks. And who am I kidding? What fucking relationship? I grab my jeans off an easy chair, slump into it as I pull them on.

Thanks for picking me up, thanks for getting the doctor, thanks for the booze and the bed. Thanks for clamming up. Thanks for making me feel like a shithead because I've got other more important things on my mind.

This isn't the time to get involved, even if it was possible. Even if she didn't put up this front every time I open my mouth. Every time she looks at me, she sees what? A drunk woman picking up rough trade in a pub?

I'm pulling on my shirt when I feel her presence in the room. The clink of ice cubes in her glass gives her away.

'You didn't tell me what happened,' she says.

'You wouldn't believe it.'

I picked you up. You owe me.'

'I got knocked down by a car,' I say. 'And then they chucked me in the boot, drove me out to a lay-by and worked me over, left me for dead.'

'You know who it was?'

'Yeah.'

'So what're you going to do?’

‘I'm going to fuck them up. What else can I do?’

‘You could quit,' she says. 'Next time they might make sure you're dead before they leave you.’

‘I'm not about to do that, Donna.’

‘Why not?’

‘Difficult to explain.’

‘Try.'

I do. Start right at the beginning; fill her in so far. The job, the journey, George, Stokes, Alison, the fight, the supposed flight, the man in the black leather jacket. We take it back into the living room, and I spill the story over another couple of drinks. I let her know that these people, they're amateurs. I made plenty of mistakes, mind, and I admit that too. Trusting George, trusting Alison. Playing saviour when I should have been watching my own back.

'But I'll make up for it,' I say. 'They should have dug that fuckin' grave and dropped me in it.'

Donna sits in her chair, staring at me. Stella ambles into the room and hops up onto the arm of the chair. For a moment, I think Donna's eyes have glazed over and she's not listened to a word I said. Then she pipes up. 'So they'll have gone by now.'

'You what?'

'This Stokes guy, Alison. They'll have skipped town by now. If they know you're after them.'

'Yeah.'

'So what's the point in carrying on?' she says. 'You've got nowhere to go.’

‘I've got George.’

‘Give it up, Cal'

'I can't.' I take another drink, ice knocking my teeth. 'I can't do it. I let this go now and they've won.'

'You let this go now and you get to live, Cal. Look at yourself. You're a bloody wreck. It's only the booze that's holding you together right now. You go out there and cause trouble, you're asking for a casket.'

I check my pockets, pull out a pack of Embassy and open it up. There's not one of them that hasn't been mangled beyond repair. So I say: 'What the fuck do you care?'

It slipped out before I got a chance to think.

Donna sits back in her chair and disgust flickers across her face. 'You know what, Cal? You're right. What the fuck do I care? What the fuck do I care if you go off and get yourself killed when I could have stopped it.'