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and rituals to observe; frequently, in her ignorance, she would step across some invisible line, or would fail to respond in the appropriate manner to some request or insult. Her fellow inmates were tough, older women, in prison for a variety of infringements ranging from drugs and prostitution to crimes of larceny, fraud and violence, and they didn’t take kindly to some rich kid, so obviously naïve and out of her depth as Cissy was. She, herself, was terrified the whole time, understanding little of the hard Glaswegian street dialect thewomen used, in spite of her time with Dougie. She tried, as much as possible, to make herself invisible and adopted a mouse-like demeanour in her attempts to stay out of trouble at all costs.

     
    She did learn a few useful tricks, though. And when, after six months, she was transferred to Holloway Prison in North London, she knew far more about what to expect, viewing the move as a chance to make a positive new beginning. This period saw the birth of her street-urchin persona, as she determinedly wiped out all traces of her former privileged identity, replacing them with the voluble and chirpy manner of an East-End barrow boy, like I said, straight out of Dickens. She learned how to ingratiate herself with others, how to kowtow to, and flatter, those further up the prison hierarchy; she cut her shoulder-length blond hair and adopted a look that could either be seen as asexual or Punk; she learned how to develop friendships and loyalties, and how to exploit them to her advantage during difficult or dangerous moments. Most of all, she began to regain her confidence as she found her place in the prison system, attracting her own circle of admirers and devotees in what was almost a mirror image of her social aspirations before the bust. If it was not exactly a time of great joy for her then at least it was bearable, and by the end of her sentence she had so thoroughly obliterated all traces of her former self that it could be quite reasonably argued this former self no longer existed. Her mother, at any rate, certainly agreed with this point of view, totally disowning Cissy when she tried to make contact with her.
    • • •
     
    After this night of caresses and fond reminiscences, I didn’t see Cissy again for a couple of years — at least not beyond the occasional chance meeting in the street, or in a club. I had my own problems to deal with, such as where to find the enormousamounts of money I needed each day just in order to feel normal, and the heroin simply wasn’t working like it used to in the old days. My marriage had broken up, largely because of my endearing inability to think about the future in any terms other than where the next fix was coming from, and I had lost most of my friends, either through neglect or out-and-out sleazy, unreliable, low-life behaviour.
    When my wife left, my initial reaction was to go into a tailspin of self-destructive, almost masochistic proportions, a drugs and sex binge that had the desired effect of largely obliterating all sense and feeling. All, that is, except for the spiral of barely controlled panic I’d experience on waking alone in a stranger’s bed, dopesick and broke, seeing clearly the entire stomach-turning hopelessness of my situation spread out before me in the vivid, garish colours of a nightmare. At such times, the cruel reality of my predicament was almost too much to bear, and I would lie there as if paralysed, breaking out in a cold, clammy sweat as I suffered an anxiety attack of epic proportions. I could see no future, no escape from this cycle of obsession and dependency; while thinking about the past, and what I had lost, only increased the fear, adding a sprinkling of self-pity and disgust to an already potent brew of sickness and black despair. The only thing that could motivate me at such times, and stir me from this malaise of physical and mental paralysis, was the onset of real sickness with the concomitant