What He Left Behind

Twenty Seven

"This was the night I moved to Los Angeles," Rena tells me, pointing to another picture in the scrapbook, "I'd arrived at LAX about an hour before and it was so late and I had no money and nowhere to live, so I just walked around and explored the city."

"Then where did you go?" I ask.

"I went to a soup kitchen the next morning. By this point I was having pretty bad withdrawals and I was absolutely dying for a fix. I knew I needed to find some help because I was terrified of hurting the baby, so a woman at the soup kitchen pointed me in the direction of a drop-in centre. That's how I met Julie. I told her my story, about how I was pregnant and really determined to do the right thing. She talked me through my options and managed to get me onto a program and she got me access to Suboxone to help with the detox. She also explained how she ran a hostel for recovering addicts, just outside of the city. Usually the free programs are virtually impossible to get into. But I was lucky."

"Because you were pregnant?"

"And because she could see that my withdrawals were excruciating. Heroin was what I was hooked on, and the withdrawals begin after about twelve hours but they hit their peak at 3-4 days. I begged her; I told her how I want this baby happy and healthy more than I've ever wanted anything in my life, and that I was willing to go through anything to achieve that. Quitting heroin is hell anyway but being pregnant aswell as the fact the love of my life had just died, my prospects were pretty dire. So she took a chance on me," Rena explains, before flipping to the next page and pointing to a picture of her with a forty-something year old woman with long dark hair and a beaming smile.

"That's Julie. She was so good to me. She's good to everyone really, but she got on with me very well. She liked that I was so determined to stay off the drugs and get my life back on track and bring up the baby right. I loved my time at the hostel, despite the obvious. They looked after me so well; I had regular counselling, drug replacement therapy, and they even referred me to a support group for single moms. That's where I met these two," she continues, pointing to another picture. It's of Rena and two other women of a similar age, all of them sporting baby bumps. One has a small face and a cropped pixie cut and the other has dark hair almost as long as Rena's. The three of them are sat side by side on the floor of an apartment, laughing and holding up various baby toys and supplies.

"That one's Alice," she says, pointing to the one with the pixie cut, "And that's Lorelle who Jacob stayed with last night. They're my best friends and my lifelines. They both had difficult pasts of their own but we supported each other through everything. They were both with me at Jacob's birth and I was with them through the birth of their children. Obviously I didn't used to be particularly affluent and they're not either, so we needed to go back to work as soon as possible after the birth. Childminders and nurseries are so expensive, so we started operating a DIY day-care, whereby we look after each other's kids whenever the others are at work. It works out so well. God knows what I'd have done without them because back when I was at the hostel, I'd never have been able to afford childcare."

"So how did you get to move here?" I ask.

"Through some insane twist of fate," she asserts, "A few weeks after I'd moved into the hostel, I was settled and my body was beginning to adapt to being heroin-free. I decided I needed to start earning. Living in a hostel and having no qualifications whatsoever, I couldn't apply for jobs in the conventional way. But luckily, I'd made a few contacts. Obviously I had Lorelle and Alice, and I knew people through the hostel and the drop-in centre, and the support group. I'm quite chatty I guess and I talk to everyone I meet, so that helped me establish a lot of connections. With their help, I picked up whatever work I could. I'd serve breakfasts in cafés and wait tables in restaurants and pull pints in bars. I also had access to social security. I saved every penny I could and through a mutual friend, I met this guy called Stephen who's the photographer I said about. Photography's always been my passion and my dream and I knew that, whilst I had to put Jacob first, it didn't mean I should miss out doing what I've always wanted to do. Besides, I knew that the hours I was working and the money I was earning wouldn't cut it long term. Photography's difficult to get into though as you probably know, especially without any qualifications or practical experience. But thankfully I knew how to sweet talk people, so I persuaded Stephen to let me come along to weddings with him once a week and act as a second photographer, unpaid of course, but that was okay because I just wanted to get experience." She shows me pictures of her with Stephen and her with various members of wedding parties, and I realise just how good she is at making friends wherever she goes. I've never met someone who's so chatty and amiable, and with such a way with everyone.