The grey weight of clouds hanging over this place look like they're holding enough water to wash the concrete high street right out to sea. Imagine, every `Debenhams' and `Wants Secondhand Store' and `Ivor Dewdney Pasties', tumbling out on the dark tide, leaving behind a trail of cut-price goods and pastry crusts on the sea floor.

We're sat in the corner of the second floor of a big multi-storey car park, in Plymouth. Me and Lauren have found a place in between the wall and a Volkswagen to sit down and chew some pills. It's definitely raining now.

Lauren's mum has got cancer. That's how we got the morphine pills. The nurse brings them, but Lauren's mum doesn't take them because she likesa clear head. I suppose her mum is going to die of cancer, although Lauren's never said as much. Lauren doesn't talk very much. She is a sweet, sad girl.

`Six each yeh?' she asks, smiling like cum on!

`Yeh' I say, sort of worried that they won't sit well with the wine she's already had, but I know that she doesn't care. We've been looking forward to this day for a while. 

They're little butterscotch coloured pills, and they taste bitter as hell. After I've chewed them up well to ensure that they dissolve in my stomach ASAP, I swallow them back. 

Since Lauren moved to Elburton, which is just outside Plymouth, she has to catch a bus to the bus station like me, to get to art college. Every morning I scuff down the tunnel, past the tramp in the snorkel mac rolling fags under the close scrutiny of his pigeon friends. Lauren is always sat there, with her back to me, waiting. We've got this ritual now, of going to the bus driver's cafe at the far end of the bus station, for a cup of tea before college. The husband and wife that run the cafe think we're going out. We're regulars there. Its a dive, but I love being around the people that go there: those people, in dirty overcoats and shell-suits, smoking ciggies and eating fried bread; dirty jokes and wandering fingers - those people own the scummy streets at that time in the morning. 

Once, a man in the cafe saw Lauren smoking a roll up. We always sit in the same corner. He threw her a nearly full packet of Red Band 100s. He thought she needed them, and he fancied her. She was really embarrassed, because she's got this thing about only weird men fancying her, and she thinks roll-ups are best anyway, so she gave them back. He said, 'Ulright m'darlin', but you know where oi ahm'. I think he ended up just as red as her.

When I first knew Lauren, I smoked Red Band. I gave them up when I pulled one apart, and found it was made of fucking great big chips of tobacco, like miniature logs.

There is big leaks in the roof of the bus station cafe. They've been there for months, and when you sit there drinking tea, you can see about four different lots of drips falling down out of the corner of your eye. They fall into old ice cream tubs.

Me and Lauren while away the time till the pills kick in, by reciting bits from our favourite film, which at the moment is `Sid and Nancy'. Even though we both know that Sid Vicious was a cunt, we both like him; think he's funny. I like his front, the way he spits out words. I think Lauren understands his hedonist point of view - that he was self destructive in looking for pleasure. She wouldn't think of hurting anyone else though. Sid was once going to stab a guy in his sleep because he wanted his motorcycle boots. Its quite funny I suppose. He was a shit.

`My fingers feel tingly' I say. I don't feel so cold anymore. Lauren just rolls her head around and smiles gently in agreement. 

I am really into drugs. It's not that I really want to get fucked, I just want to be somewhere else. I used to like taking speed, but it doesn't take you anywhere does it? It makes now really important, and it's a really precarious high: any minute you could take a dive into a juddering depression. That's the way I feel about it anyway.

I like painkillers a lot more. I used to take them at school. I had a triple lesson of Physics each week, and in the break time beforehand I'd swallow down a handful of my dad's back pain pills with a can of Irn-Bru. You just get real relaxed and friendly and chatty, and you couldn't give a shit about anything apart from being around people.

I'm feeling like that now. I feel real comfy. Some blokes have just come through the door to find their car, and they're coming this way. 

'Shall we go?' I ask, without much conviction. Lauren gets up and puts her red fluffy purse in the pocket of her brown fluffy coat. She keeps her tobacco and Rizlas in there, so you see it a lot, that red purse. It's exactly the same colour as her hair - a rich, wild red. Lauren's hair comes down to her chin. Her skin is china white, her lips are dark, and her eyelids are always pure black. I have never seen Lauren without her black eyeshadow. It's just part of her face, and I love it. I'm really glad to be around her, as we glide down the grey steps, out onto the shiny wet pavement. It's about 3 in the afternoon, but it's really dark. It's cool though, it's cool. Art college can wait till tomorrow. 

The streetlamps are on. I feel quite sentimental, like life is sad and brilliant. I got new shoes two days ago, which look good now they're getting wet. They're green suede sneakers.

I run across the road in front of a taxi, and reach the far pavement victorious. Lauren's still on the other side. She smiles again. Lauren's got eyes like some kind of animal that only eats vegetables and never backstabs anyone to its mates. She is vegetarian actually, but she hardly ever eats anything. Her hands shake really badly if she holds them out straight. `That's bad news', I say, but she doesn't care. I'm always offering to buy her food. I hope she hasn't got an eating disorder. 

The rain is warm on my face. I close my eyes and lift my face up, letting it run down around my cheeks.

We end up in the Theatre Royal cafe, which has little round tables, mostly occupied by middle aged women on a break from shopping. There's nothing on in the theatre, so there's no-one stroking their chin and discussing plots, sets and method acting.

The shopaholics are giving us suspicious sideways glances. It might be because we're the only ones smoking in this larvly green clean pristine place, even though smoking is allowed. Or it might be because of Lauren's red hair, which always gets looks.

Anyway, the coffee's not bad, Lauren seems happy and I feel a quiet sense of comfort and love from my toes to my eyes. It's really subtle, morphine, in pills I mean. Ha ha. I guess it's not so subtle if you tie yourself off and shoot your arm full of it. I wouldn't know though.

Smoking fags doesn't feel the same, like I can't feel the smoke in my throat: it doesn't kick at all. It's nice to blow smoke around now that I've finished my coffee. Me and Lauren can just sit with each other and not have to say anything. Most of the time I gabble on though. 

A really fit woman is walking past, outside. She's got a proper raincoat, with the tie around the middle, in dark blue. It comes down halfway to her knees, and her long brown legs are bare from there, down to her black platforms with big silver buckles. She's got bleach blonde, chin length hair that is throwing all kinds of twisted, dead-tree-branch shapes in the wind. Her face is turned down from the rain, into the collar of her raincoat, but I can see that I like her nose. I really go for a distinctive nose. Hers is quite Roman. She's got a sharp look to her, like she dishes out slaps a lot, before spinning on her heels and leaving the room. I appreciate that. 

I don't feel predatory towards her, like I do often when I'm straight. Not that I am much of a predator when I'm straight. I can do the eyes bit, like a tiger waiting to pounce. Thing is I never pounce. If I was a tiger, I'd die of starvation. Not that women are like food or anything. I mean, I would be happy for certain women to predatorise me. Hunt me I mean. 

`I have to go to the toilet' I say. Lauren just smiles. I stand up and feel as if its so easy to walk that I must be doing something wrong. No, I'm sure I'm not walking in some warped way. I open some glass doors, and light as a smile, I stretch up two flights of steps, into the queer artificial light of the blokes bogs. There's no-one here. I try to piss, but nothing comes out. Instead I look in the mirror, and I don't really see myself in any great detail, just this satisfying sketch of me in pink, yellow and blue, for skin, hair and jumper. I feel safe and warm, and I have the desire to do a few loose-limbed shuffles around the toilet. Uh-huh. Ah-yeh. 

We're at the bus station, sat on the same bench she sits on in the morning. There's reflections of fruit machine lights: bent lozenges in orange and green, dancing on the glass of the clock face. The clock hangs up high, on the roof of the station.
I give Lauren a kiss on the cheek when my bus comes. It's the number 96. I feel bad that Lauren waited for me in the morning on her own, and now she has to wait for her bus. 

`It feels cool, doesn't it still?' I say

`Yeh, nice' she says, bringing her shoulders nearly up to her ears and smiling like a cat.

`See you tomorrow Lauren'

`Bye bye' she says sweetly.

It's the bus with the big high seats, that seal you off from everyone else; you have your own compartment. I always sit on the top deck, on the right hand side. I don't know why.

Rolling out of Plymouth, I'm absorbed by the warm glow of the passing streetlights and cars. The bus feels like an escape machine, gearing up to jet
us the fuck out of Problemtown, UK. We're moving. No-one can catch us.

Vicky is over there, kneeling up on her seat to talk to her friend Helen in the seat behind. I'm sure she's seen me, but we don't talk to each other anymore. I got off with her once, down by the river in the little village where I live. She'd turned up at the pub where I work, for someone's party, and we knew each other from the bus. She was really giggly. Nothing happened apart from that. We never went out or anything, because it wasn't happening. We were on good terms until one day I heard her talking about hippies. I said 'I hate hippies', spitting out the words like Sid Vicious would have. It was just for effect really. It certainly had an effect. She went nuts, demanding to know why, coming across the aisle of the bus on the attack.

Because of all this, I think I should write her a letter. Where is my pen.

Dear Vicky,

Alright? Sorry for what I said about hippies. 
I was just being stupid, which is one of my most practised skills.
Hope everything is cool

Love Bob

After folding it, it stayed in my hot palm for about three stops. I took it over when the least people might notice. She looked embarrassed; she's only sixteen. I didn't stay around, I wanted to get back to my seat. The bus went over a bump. My face is giving off serious red heat. My hands could melt fishing holes in a polar ice cap. The morphine is making me radiate. Vicky kneels up and puts her hand over the headrest. She smiles and mouths 'thankyou', cocking her head a bit with it. 

I roll up my jacket and place it between my head and the window, which is vibrating with the engine. Closing my eyes, everything is a passing shade of perfect. Dim voices from the seats ahead merge with the gentle, amorphous female whisper in my head, as I drift into sleep.