Chapter 1
People are like sun-dried tomatoes. They wake up all wrinkly and feel out of place. They float aimlessly in a mixture of herbs and olive oil on the delicatessen shelf of a grocery store waiting to be picked up. In that state, they feel so useless. But as they warm up, as they find their home on a fresh baguette next to a slice of Brie and a basil leaf, they start to bloom. It is such a drastic change. One minute up on a shelf, the other in the eager hands of a grateful consumer, disappearing into a warm mouth and finding peace.
Aurora was leaning against a smudged wall at the east end of Waterloo Station just a couple heartbeats off the busy and foggy London metropolitan area. To be exact, well, measured in a direct line, it is exactly 1.3 miles from the center of London, from "Centre Point", a building situated on the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross road. Aurora remembered from the history books that Centre Point was the place where the Russians aimed all their nuclear weapons during the cold war. She would rather they had been aiming them at Waterloo Station.
Her name signified dawn in most of the Romantic languages. When She once looked it up in the Oxford dictionary, she found the following definition: Aurora borealis: Bands of light, mainly red and green, seen in the sky near the North Pole caused by electrical radiation. How ironic could names get? How could somebody like her have a name that meant light or early morning? Well, in a way, it might have been an appropriate name. After all, she got up at dawn that morning out there in the wild forest of anonymous people rolling by, looking past her, staring at the escalators, at anything but her. Yet her personality fought against this phenomena that woke people up at the crack of dawn, as she leaned against that rusty graffiti-slain wall almost everyday, watching people come and go, watching those sun-dried tomatoes at their best. At their worst.
When had she last had a good night�s sleep? When had she drenched her body in a bath so hot that it made the tops of her fingers look like they had come from a box of Sunmaid raisins? She could not remember. All she could see now were the passers-by at the station staring down at her suspiciously, as if, at any moment, she would have attacked them with a hypodermic needle and injected their lives away. When she wandered through the station, people automatically yielded. They were afraid of getting involved, afraid of pulling out their fat wallets for her to rob. They looked at her briefly and crossly, and then turned their heads away, wanting to forget that she had ever existed there before them. They had their lips pursed so tightly that not a single breath of air could have escaped their sullen mouths. They hurried to their trains and buses, to the world that was drug- and problem-free. Supposedly so. But Aurora knew better. Even in a drug haze, in the softness of the hard cushions of bliss, she was neither dumb nor oblivious. She knew that the majority of those, supposedly, better people - or the term she has grown fond of using for the ��better people��, peacocks - were carrying problems on their shoulders. They appeared before strangers as colorful and radiant, but once they got home they closed their wings and diminished in size, becoming colorless and bleak. She knew that these peacocks were going home to have an argument or a good cry or to receive an emotional or physical beating. Aurora was unable to argue or cry. Even though people could tell she was a drug abuser, she knew that she hardly ever bumped into someone other than her kind. Junkie at heart and soul, that�s what most people were, voluntary or involuntary. They just didn�t want to understand her pain because they refused to understand their own. They didn�t want to understand her need for heroin because, if they did, they would fear that it was what they needed as well. They knew that it was her only comfort, the thing that loved her back. Aurora hoped that these people who took a few leaps to avoid bumping into her had someone that loved them.
Aurora had never had a close relationship with the drink. She had enjoyed an occasional glass of Applemist or a good Chianti with her meal and, yes, she had smoked a couple of joints during her college years. But since she got married, alcohol took on a whole new meaning and so did drugs. She started to despise the drink; she gagged at just the smell of Scotch or the sound of the aluminium cap being twisted off a bottle of Beefeater Gin. But she grew fond of drugs without even knowing it. Completely unintentionally from her side. Completely intentionally from her husband�s side.
But it wasn�t her husband�s intention that she would eventually leave him and become best friends with heroin. And when Aurora and her husband, Jared, swore their vows at Kensington Borough Hall on a typically rainy day in the spring of 1989, ending up at Waterloo Station a few years later with a syringe and a hypodermic needle would have seemed presumptuous or even bizarre to her. Yet now this sweet upper-class girl was at Waterloo Station all fogged up in the hubby Heroin. So, even the upper-class Chianti-sipping society in Kensington had its demons. Or, rather, especially the upper-class Chianti-sipping society.
Chapter two
Aurora had grown up in an abusive upper-class home. She had developed a habit of throwing up during her early �teens and was officially diagnosed with bulimia by her doctor on her 14th birthday. In the early �80s in an upper-class home, any mention of a disease was like a foul word. And especially a mental illness-related disease. Her parents had been more concerned about the unfamiliar term than the illness itself, and were convinced that it was just a phase their daughter was going through and surely she would get over it. A good portion of force-feeding and a couple of months of grounding were most likely do the trick, her as-little-fuss-as-possible parents had thought. The family doctor had suggested group therapy, but that had been out of the question. The fear of their neighbors finding out had made them turn this offer away and try to handle the alleged problem themselves. So, her misusing habits had started under her parents� roof, where child abuse was just something that was part of a good upbringing and the sexual abuse something that her father was certain Aurora would outgrow and forget. Even before Aurora had married Jared, her soon-to-be lesser half had recognized Aurora�s abusive tendencies. It might have been the reason why he decided to marry this upper-class woman. She would not be too demanding as long as her need for whatever she might be craving for would be fulfilled. And she had happened to have a very nice pedigree that would fit nicely into the superficial conversations with his upper-class acquaintances. He had never felt remorse for the fact that he intentionally jumped on her weaknesses after Aurora had said �I do�. He had never loved her to start with. He had only found her a good deal, a good fa�ade. So, from the early days on, he had regularly drugged her by putting sedatives into her food or drinks. The reason for his action had been that he didn�t want her to leave him. He had wanted her to need him and to be there for him when he had the need to relieve himself sexually, or to attend a dinner party with his partners. But Jared had not anticipated that Aurora would become so addicted. For months, Aurora had thought that she had the �flu as she had been feeling sick all the time. Unfortunately, she had realized too late that Jared had been deliberately drugging her. By that time, her need for the drug was so dire that she was willing to do just about anything to get hold of morphine to feel at ease. She had done her best to please her husband and practically waited on him, just to get the daily dosage. The first time he had introduced her to heroin was on their first wedding anniversary. By now he had officially accused her of misusing drugs, nevertheless supplied her with a stack of hypodermic needles - and heroin. This was when the problems had really started, and, of course, this was also the time she had gotten pregnant. That she had a drug problem was one thing, but her getting pregnant was a huge inconvenience, particularly since Jared had no intention of taking care of a drooling and shitting infant while Aurora happily stared at the stars only she could see.
Before her marriage, Aurora had been drug free, well, almost drug free (she never acknowledged joints, pot, marijuana, grass, hemp whatever you like to call it, a branch in the tree of drugs). She had never actually seen hard drugs on campus, although her roommate, Susan, occasionally stumbled in with dilated pupils that were most likely caused by something stronger than marijuana or booze. Later on, after graduation, when Aurora and Susan had been sharing their thoughts over a bottle of Chardonnay and an ultimate cheese collection in Hyde Park, Susan told her that she had used amphetamine a couple of times and tried cocaine once. She had really liked cocaine. Her cheeks had changed color as she had eagerly explained how while on cocaine she had felt capable of flying and how she had multiple orgasms when making love to a man she sincerely mistook for Mel Gibson. (Nice.) Of course, it had dawned on her in the morning that she was actually lying in bed staring at the hairy back of Manny, the local Long Horn pub's bartender, with his half-gone hair sticking out in different directions.
�And from the smell of his breath, the word �floss� was obviously not part of his vocabulary� Susan had giggled while putting her index finger in her throat and making a gagging sound.
So Susan had decided to leave the experimenting with cocaine at that. She never, however, quite forgot the great effect it had on her. She had tossed her thick curly hair back and raised the wine glass in her hand, and, with her mouth full of cheese, said "Cheers to Mel Gibson and all the look-alikes who gave me pleasures I might never experience again�.
�Hear hear� Aurora had replied triumphantly, although with mild curiosity about the possibility of multiple orgasms. She would have been pleased to experienced just one.
After college, a year after their rendezvous, Susan had started working for the fashion magazine SHE and had replaced amphetamine and grass with Dom Perignon. There was plenty of champagne around at the daily VIP parties she was invited to. Susan had always been interested in fashion and writing, so, for her, the job was a dream come true. Her extremely sharp eye for fashion, and expressive abilities that would have probably convinced even the British Prime Minister, won her a good position at the magazine. She had started off as a Junior Editor and was promoted to Senior Editor just a year later. So the pay was good and her working life bubbled nicely. But her social life had been lacking character since she had graduated from college. There were plenty of men around. In fact, she was an attractive woman with sparkling eyes and a dazzling smile. It was just that she always fell for the wrong kind, the kind that ended up hurting her, the kind that did not want a commitment. So, she became a non-commitment kind of a woman with flings here and there.
Aurora had last heard from Susan two years before when she called her in the middle of the night and cried on the phone with drunken sobs, telling her that her favorite model boyfriend had left her for a rich 60-year-old widow. This had not come as a surprise to Aurora since such things happened to Susan all the time. She always had a crush on a shallow man who only cared about casual sex and were practically combing their pubic hair into place after the business was finished. So, even if Aurora had been slightly convinced that something was terribly wrong with Susan, she was sure that the boyfriend that just dumped her had little to do with the real pain she was dealing with at that time. They had never shared their deepest secrets with one another. Their friendship had been warm and close, yet they both stepped back when it got too intense on the conversation front. Neither of them had been ready to discuss the things that kept them awake at night and sent cold shivers down their spines every now and then. For Aurora, it was more now than then.
Jared (later renamed Jerk) had been furious about the phone calls that woke him up in the middle of the night and had told Aurora never to talk with Susan again. He had made her one of the special smoothies that put her right out that night and hoped that she would wake up not remembering her pain-in-the-ass friend Susan.
Every time Jared emerged in Aurora�s thoughts now, she hoped that he was miles away from her. The thought of him always made every single hair on her body stand on end and she always did her best to shake the terrible sight of her husband out of her head.
The friendship between Susan and Aurora had started to deteriorate when Jared had made her hang up on Susan when she had called again the following night. It had broken her heart having to do so, but she knew all too well that she was never able to argue with Jared. She would not be able to receive the special drinks anymore. She still remembered the desperation in Susan�s voice when Jared breathed the smell of Scotch down Aurora�s neck and hung the phone up for her. That was when she started to get physically sick from the smell of booze. (Of course, later on, she realized that her being pregnant might have had something to do with it, as well).
Once Aurora had experimented with heroin, with the help of her husband, she grew curious about other drugs as well. When he was working, the diligent housewife was not allowed to work, despite her good education at the University of London. Instead, after finishing the household chores, she had spent a lot of sober moments at the Kensington Library. She had read about different kinds of drugs and remembered Susan�s praise of cocaine and the extremely high price of it. The short description in her favorite dictionary, the good old Oxford, had stated: Heroin: a drug made from Morphine, used in medicine to cause sleep or relieve pain, or by drug addicts.
Cocaine: a drug which some people take illegally for pleasure and may become addicted to. Doctors sometimes use it as an anaesthetic.
Addiction? Drug addicts? Well, at least she did not have a problem, she chuckled.
Aurora had not jumped straight into the world of heroin without trying something less addictive. By the time she had received her first shot of the liquid wonderwork, she had been well acquainted with the originator of heroin, morphine. It had not been hard to see what wonders heroin did for her. It had created a completely new world in front of her eyes and quickly peeled off all the pain and anguish she had been through. She wanted to see butterflies land on the apple tree in front of her. She wanted to walk in a green meadow early in the morning where she could feel the morning mist beneath her toes. She wanted to pick cherries from the cherry tree in the garden and feel the bitter taste of the cherries slowly turn sweet and smooth in her mouth. Most of all, she wanted to sit on the porch looking at the calm bay before her and listen to the gentle hum of the wind mixed with the distant song of a cuckoo. She could do that with heroin.
Aurora still felt physically fit but it did not help to fight her confused and enraged mind, craving more drugs every day. However, with strong willpower, she was able to sit in the library and skim through the literature on drugs and articles on microfilms. She was able to find enough information on the drugs to convince her that she wanted a long-term relationship with hip-hip-hurrah heroin. The First Aid course she had taken in college when she had thought about doing some voluntary work in South America helped her to use the needle. Of course, Jared was also able to give a hand in the early days, but she had known that she wanted to get out of the relationship sooner or later (rather sooner) and, therefore, was very self-contained. So she was well off when it came to injecting herself. Most importantly, she did not want to share her friend. She wanted to do it by herself and make sure that she got the best possible effect.
Getting hold of the drug was a problem at first. Jared never revealed his sources. But she remembered Susan telling her that all you needed to do was to hang around in the wrong part of town and whatever you wanted would fall straight into your lap. When Aurora visited the wrong part of town for the first time, somewhere in the East End�s deserted alleys, it seemed almost like something out of the movies to her. Homeless people were lying on the corners trying to cover themselves with newspapers. All she could see were ragged clothes peaking from underneath the shredded Times and a set of sad, listless eyes staring at nothingness. Close to the people lying against the cold stone buildings had been a group of homeless nobodies crouching down around the fire. For some reason, Aurora envied the people sharing the small fire set on a rubbish dump on the damp concrete where they warmed themselves, talking and holding each other. The smoke that caught Aurora�s nose resembled that of paper and plastic. The smell from the fire felt much friendlier than the smell of the fireplace in the town house, because that always reminded her of Jared and the Cognac he had stirred around with his fingers cupped over the wide part of his genuine crystal Cognac glass. The hand that had had a woman�s scent on it. A scent that did not belonged to Aurora. Even though the homeless had nothing, they were a team by the fire that night. Tomorrow they would compete for a slice of bread or a penny that some passer-by would carelessly toss at them. Jared and Aurora were never a team. She was his happy-go-lucky puppy washing other women�s lipstick out of his shirt collars so he�d have a clean and crisp shirt to wear the next day. At that moment, Aurora had had a strong sensation of not having done anything really daring in her whole life. She had not been allowed to. She had not allowed herself to.
It is exactly seventy-five days and four hours from the accident. It is exactly seventy-five days and four hours since she has talked to Tommy, talked to her unborn son with her sweet but numb voice. She wants to love so much; she is worth the feelings of need and attachment.
Jared doesn�t think so.
He did not agree with her then nor does he agree with her now. Where is he? Aurora could not have cared less as the doors in the right hand corner opened and a police officer with a long rubber baton hanging lazily at his side walked in. It was time to get moving, Aurora thought, as the policeman�s firm, self-confident steps moved closer and closer. His leather boots squeaked against the linoleum floor as he drew nearer to Aurora. Aurora felt a pang of guilt rush through her, a feeling she had last felt a couple of minutes ago when she had tightened a tourniquet around her upper arm and shot the sweet liquid into her body and mind. The liquid that took the pain away. She stopped leaning and stood erect, ready to run out of the station (not as if she had committed some ultimate crime) but just to avoid the officer�s accusing eyes and, worst of all, look of disapproval. She thought of the small stash of heroin stacked away deep in her pocket and prayed that he would walk past her. He did, although it felt as if he were walking right through her. It was lucky that somebody behind her was more confused, higher on drugs, than she currently was. She looked over her shoulder at the officer, and the drug addict, whose name she did not want to know, and continued to lean against the almost comfortable, yet tangled, jungle of spray paint.
Aurora had been living on and off shelters for the past few months, getting used to a lifestyle completely different from her previous one. Jared had hold of the trust fund her parents had left for her and she knew that she would never see that money again. She felt at ease leaving it under a watchful eye of a prominent lawyer, but that was probably the most unintelligent move she had ever made. But she would rather had him keep the money than see him again and try to get it back. Aurora didn�t miss the warm bed that became colder and colder over the years (actually, she later found out that it had never been warm at all), or the empty swing in the front yard she blankly stared at from the kitchen window while preparing herb chicken with saut�ed onions and tossed salad for her husband. But she missed the lonely hours at the house, when Jared worked late and she was able to relax with a good book on the porch and swing back and forth in the wooden swing that the previous owner of the house had left behind. Aurora used to imagine her own child swinging in it one day, holding onto its thick ropes and yelling in delight when it swung at full speed.
The station felt more like home than any of the dirty unfriendly shelters filled with curious people constantly pushing and poking her. True, the station had its share of problems, but at least she did not have to share hers with anyone. At the shelters there was always somebody tapping her shoulder, pulling at her now tarnished cornflower blue cardigan, staring at her with curious eyes, wanting to know more than she could ever share with anyone. Didn�t people ever realize that she did not want to share? She didn�t want to share her thoughts or her fears. Nothing. Never. Because she had a friend to share them with. She had heroine.
Aurora felt the drug starting to work on her body and mind. It washed over her like a massive wave crashing against sharp rocks. At first it was pure bliss, but the horror was yet to come. She could handle this kind of horror though. What she could not handle was the horror that caught her by the throat 74 days and four hours ago. The horror caused by heroin took the real horror away, and it was all worth it. She became the drug.