“Whoa.” Billy whistled. “Ain’t you got your bitter boots on? Tell ya what you need, son, and I’m not in the business of bossing folk around—”
“Liar.”
“Shut it.” Billy ruffled Jamie’s already disastrous hair. “What you need is a change of scenery. You look like you’ve been indoors for weeks.”
“I have, but I’ve been working. I took the job at the big house.”
“Yeah? How you finding that?”
Jamie shrugged. “I like it.”
“But? What’s the matter? The boss an arsehole, is he?”
“No, no... it’s not that. Marc’s, uh, good to me. I love working at his house.”
“Then what is it? Scared of fucking it up?”
“Something like that.” Billy’s theory made sense—Marc and Jamie’s job in his house came together. If he messed up one, he’d likely lose the other, and both were Jamie’s lifeline to the real world. The thin thread tying him to the straight and narrow.
Billy sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him. “You’re not the first to get wobbly when things go right. We’re all fighting life and pain, but for us, one bad decision can derail years of a decent recovery. It’s about mindfulness, son. You have to learn to recognise when your addiction is talking louder than it should be, even if it don’t feel relevant.”
Mindfulness—Jamie hated the word with a passion. “This where you tell me to take up yoga?”
“If it helps, sure, but what I’m trying to say is that you’ve just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Take each day one at a time, and listen to what’s in here”—Billy tapped Jamie’s chest—“when it’s telling you to have a little faith.”
Jamie closed his eyes and tilted his face to the drizzling sky. He wanted to chuck derision at Billy and walk away, but the cynical snort stuck in his throat. “I’m hooking up with the bloke I work for.”
“Well that complicates things. Is that why he offered you the job?”
“Nah.” Jamie shook his head. “I wondered that too, but he’s not like that. He’s a good person.”
“So are you.”
“Am I?”
“I reckon so, but it’s a bad idea to have your entire recovery invested in someone else. You thought about looking for another job?”
“I’ll have to soon enough. It’s a temporary gig anyway, and I’ll be done in a week or so.”
Billy said nothing for a moment and plucked Jamie’s fag box from his open coat pocket and pinched a smoke. “I might know a place that could use you. You’re a chef, ain’t ya?”
“Hardly. I ran a canteen in California for a while, but it was cooking big vats of the same shit day after day, not fine dining. Any idiot could’ve done it.”
Billy grunted. “Just as well, ’cause it won’t take the brains of Britain to do what I’ve got in mind, but you might get a lot from it. Got nothing on right now, you say?”
“Free as a bird, mate,” Jamie said warily. “Not sending me down the mines, are you?”
“Worse. I’m taking you down the WI, or at least, the next best thing.”
“What?”
“You heard. Up you get.”
Jamie had spent too many years being told what to do—by johns, pimps... even Zac when he hadn’t had the patience to deal with Jamie’s shit—but curiosity got the better of his desire to tell Billy to piss off. He rose from the bench and followed Billy back across the road.
Billy fetched a set of keys from inside the community centre and directed Jamie to a battered white van. “Hop in.”
“Where are we going?”