Bank Statements

Chapter 87 - Lady B and Me

11, June 2013

THE MOM:

Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that Alex, sans heroin, has been miraculously transformed into Mister Pollyanna, I should mention that just prior to The Great Room Clean, there was a Big Blow Up when I’d gone in there to do a final laundry grab and got distracted by a couple of dead cereal bowls and some empty glasses, plastic designer water bottles, empty packs of cigarettes, throat lozenges, Nytol and Subutex boxes, which I figured the guests didn’t need to see staring at them from the bookcase, and then, well, started over at the desk, as you do, separating loose change from loose tobacco, cigarette papers, old train tickets, a sock, and so on, then noticed envelopes sticking out untidily from under the DVD player and also from under the TV so dragged them out to stack neatly and that’s when Alex came in and went over-the-top demented, always a bad sign.

GUILT is how this translates.

He told me sharply that he was going to clean his room, that I should leave, please, just get out! Which of course led me to believe he had something to hide in there, which made my legs a little weak, so mentioned this, at which point his father walks in to see what the raised tones are all about and, just in passing, in a “Here, take these, my hands are full” sort of way, I hand DK those envelopes I’d been aligning, having seen they were addressed to him, not Alex, and that they were bank statements. Which, is seems, is what Alex was worried about.

I knew what they were, they were old credit card statements from last year, when Alex was using, and which he’d grabbed from the mail and hidden before we could open them and discover how much he’d been fleecing us. We did find out, needless to say [see earlier chapters], so these statements were old hat, and no big deal, if you can call your son stealing about £8,000 from you no big deal, but what I mean is we’ve been through all this, the shock, the recriminations, the abject apologies. We have moved on. So I didn’t really see why Alex was so furious, I wasn’t about to rub his nose in it, I was just tidying.

Den, on the other hand, was possibly inclined in this direction, possibly due to the fact that he’d just spent weeks tearing his office apart going half crazy looking for these statements and, with the VAT accountant breathing down his neck with a hundred and one questions about stuff DK can never answer at the best of times i.e. “What was the £24.53 to J.M. Services on July 15^th?” etc, finally had to call the bank and order copies sent. And now here these original statements were, in his very hands, having been living quite happily under a TV for a year (why hadn’t Alex just thrown the buggers in the garbage?? I would have) and the very sight of which was guaranteed to make Den blow his stack. Something that Alex had anticipated happening, correctly.

So. There was a fairly unpleasant hour of recriminations and short fuses before apologies set in all round and we all went happily back to cooking and cleaning and scrubbing until the place sparkled. And the guests arrived with two dogs, which along with ours, tracked muddy prints everywhere, as well as something unpleasant that came from either a wood pigeon or themselves (dogs, not guests).

Tomorrow we three Kings fly to Norway for a family reunion. I want Alex to meet his relatives, maybe do a little bonding with his generation.

Packing and prep all proceeding according to plan, slight hiccup yesterday when CRI counselour had not, as requested, sent Alex’s “holiday prescription notification” to the pharmacy to allow them to hand over a week’s worth of Subutex, without which Alex cannot travel, and this was cause for an upset stomach (his) and much nail biting and pacing around the garden but all came right in the end, just as The Mom said it would.

I don’t recall being as much of a worry wart as he is, ever, and don’t know if this is typical of addicts or he gets it from DK’s mother who was a real “What Iffer”. If we invited her to our place say for Christmas, maybe thirty miles away, she started fretting about July about possible traffic on the North Circular and never let up until she was safely home again at New Years.

Herrings and Munch Museum here we come, pockets full of Subutex.