The driver’s baseball cap sure had come in handy. Perhaps I should start wearing one more often?
“Nice move,” Emmy said. “That’ll save us a ton of work.”
Why was she being nice to me all of a sudden? I didn’t understand her.
“Where did you leave the van?” Alaric asked.
“In the car park at the airport. I wiped the steering wheel first. Someone’ll find it, probably a traffic warden.”
Three slices of pizza down, and I decided to try the macaroni and cheese. How long since I’d eaten the proper stuff and not the dried version that came in a packet? One of my good foster mothers had made it for me, but I’d only been with that family for two months before I got moved on again, everything I owned stuffed into a black plastic bag. Unwanted, like last week’s rubbish.
Oh boy, this stuff was good. There was bacon in it, which basically made it heaven on a plate.
“You should’ve become a chef,” I told Emmy, and for some reason, both she and Alaric found that hilarious. He nearly choked laughing. “What? What’s so funny?”
“The…the idea of Emmy cooking something edible.”
“Huh?”
“My housekeeper made this,” she explained. “Cooking isn’t my strong suit. If it’s not microwaved or flambéed, you’re shit out of luck, but I do have an excellent collection of takeout menus. Want me to order anything else?”
It was tempting. So tempting. But I couldn’t. “Nah, I have to get back to Lenny. I tried calling him from your mate’s phone, but he didn’t answer, and he gets into trouble if I’m not around.”
“You need a new phone? I’ll get you one.”
Without another word, she rose from her seat and vanished into the bowels of the house, leaving me to wonder if I’d dropped into an alternate universe. What had happened to grouchy Emmy, and who had spare phones lying around in their house?
“Is she for real?” I asked Alaric.
“She always used to break phones with alarming regularity, and I don’t suppose much has changed. She’ll have a stack of spares somewhere.”
“What do you mean, used to?”
“We haven’t seen much of each other for a few years.”
“Why not? Did she piss you off too?”
Alaric shook his head. “It’s a long story, and not one I’m about to tell.”
Fair enough. Everybody liked to keep their secrets, especially me. The less I told people about myself, the less shit they had to throw back in my face later on. Anyhow, it only took a couple of minutes before Emmy reappeared with a brand-new smartphone in a box. She slid it across the table in my direction.
“Here you go. It’s already charged.”
Bloody hell—it was one of the newest models, and far more expensive than I’d ever be able to buy. I didn’t tend to steal pricey phones either because I hated the feeling of guilt that came with them. I was doubly glad I hadn’t gone to Harlequin’s now. A ton of food and a new toy sure beat traipsing around for hours on aching feet.
It only took a moment to insert the SIM card from my old phone, and the moment I did, the screen lit up with a dozen text messages and missed calls. Strange. I’d never been that popular.
Before I could go through them, the phone rang again. Paulius, my housemate, and he only ever called if he wanted something. Shit. Tell me we hadn’t run out of lightbulbs again, because I hated arriving home in the pitch black.
“It’s Sky. What?”
“You need to come home. Lenny, he is not well.”
Ice prickled up my spine. “What do you mean, not well?”
“He won’t open his door, but we heard him moaning. And now he is quiet.”
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. Lenny, what have you done? He’d been vaguely coherent when Emmy loaded him into the car earlier, and he’d managed an intelligible text message, which meant whatever it was had happened recently. My guess? He’d taken something, and I dreaded to think what.
“Okay, I’m coming.” I shoved my chair back and gave the pizza one last longing look. “Gotta go, sorry. Uh, you said you’d give me money for missing work—can I get it?”
I didn’t have time to mess around with buses and Tubes. If Lenny had OD’d again, I needed to get there fast, which meant taking a taxi.
Emmy and Alaric looked at each other.
“Sky, we still have questions,” Alaric said.
“Then I’ll come back tomorrow or something. My brother’s sick.”
Emmy raised an eyebrow. “Really? He seemed okay earlier, relatively speaking. Is he hungover?”
“Nah, it’s not that.” The last thing I wanted to do was spill Lenny’s problems to two relative strangers, but I figured I owed them an explanation. “Sometimes…sometimes, he takes drugs, and he’s not always as careful as he should be.”
Another glance between them, and Emmy nodded once. “I’ll drive.”
“Huh?”
“At this time of the evening, the fastest way to your place from here is by car. I’ll drive.”
She paused for long enough to grab a green duffel bag out of a cupboard, and then the three of us were running through the house and back down the stairs to the underground garage. Alaric bleeped his SUV open, and we all piled in.
When Emmy said driving was the quickest way, she wasn’t kidding. By the time we arrived, I was hanging on to the seat belt with one hand and the grab handle with the other, muttering prayers to any god I could think of and Satan as well since the woman drove like a demon. The smell of burned rubber permeated the air as I stumbled out of the back seat on shaky legs.
Paulius was standing by Lenny’s door on the top floor when we got there.
“We tried to open it, but it’s stuck.”
Emmy and Alaric didn’t hesitate, just ran at the door together and shouldered it open. It bounced off the wall, and a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling and landed on Lenny’s motionless body. I froze for a moment, taking in the scene. He was lying on the floor in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, pale, so pale, and the little collection of items beside him revealed my worst nightmares had come true. A metal spoon. A lighter. A shoelace. A hypodermic syringe. He’d fucked up again, and big time.
An ambulance. We needed an ambulance. Thank goodness I had a new phone.
“My brother’s overdosed,” I told the 999 woman when she answered. “He needs a doctor.”
“Is it an emergency?”
“Yes, it’s a bloody emergency!”
How did Emmy and Alaric stay so calm? They knelt next to Lenny, one on each side, checking his vital signs. Please, let him be alive.
“No pulse,” Emmy said. “Is he breathing?”
Alaric’s answer was to start chest compressions as he shook his head.
Fuck. How long did ambulances take?
“Average response time in London is seven minutes,” Emmy told me. I hadn’t even realised I’d spoken out loud. “But St. Thomas’s is only a mile away, so we might get lucky. Let’s try this in the meantime.”
She opened the duffel bag, and I realised it was a first aid kit. A giant first aid kit. A quick rummage, and she drew out a syringe of her own.