The World According to Bob: The further adventures of one man and his street-wise cat (7 page)

I was shattered by 10pm and fell asleep in front of the television. When I woke up I saw something that made me wish I owned a video camera. I would have made a small fortune on those television shows that feature cute animal clips.

Bob and Princess were both splayed out on the carpet, snoozing quietly. When I’d left them they were at opposite ends of the room, with Bob near his favourite spot by the radiator and Princess near the door. While I’d been sleeping, Princess had clearly sought out the warmth of the radiator and slid alongside Bob. Her head was now barely a foot from Bob’s nose. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have guessed that they were lifelong pals. I locked the front door, switched off the lights and headed off to bed leaving them there. I didn’t hear a peep from either of them until the following morning when I was woken up by the sound of barking.

It took me a moment to remember that I had a dog in the house.

‘What’s wrong, Princess?’ I said, still half asleep.

They say that some animals can sense their owners are nearby. My best friend Belle sometimes stayed at the flat with us and she had told me that Bob often sensed when I was coming home. Several times he had jumped up on the window sill in the kitchen looking anxiously down to the street below minutes before I arrived at the front door. Princess clearly had the same gift because a couple of moments later I heard the buzzer. It was Titch.

From the look of his unshaven and rather bleary face, he had slept rough, which, knowing Titch, was quite possible.

‘Really sorry to leave you in the lurch last night but something came up,’ he said, apologetically. I didn’t bother asking what it was. I’d had nights like that myself, far too many of them.

I made another cup of tea and stuck some bread in the toaster. He looked like he could do with something warm inside him.

Bob was lying next to the radiator, with Princess curled up a couple of feet away, his eyes once more fixed on his new friend. The expression on Titch’s face was priceless. He was dumbstruck.

‘Look at those two, they get on like a house on fire now,’ I smiled.

‘I can see it, but I can’t quite believe it,’ he said, grinning widely.

Titch wasn’t a man to miss an opportunity.

‘So would you mind looking after her again if I’m in the lurch?’ he asked, munching on his toast.

‘Why not?’ I said.

Chapter 5

The Ghost on the Stairs

The rain had been relentless for days, transforming the streets of London into miniature paddling pools. Bob and I were regularly returning home soaked to the skin, so today I’d given up and headed home early.

I arrived back at the flats around mid-afternoon desperate to get out of my wet clothes and let Bob warm himself by the radiator.

The lift in my building was erratic at the best of times. After a few minutes repeatedly pressing the button for it to come down from the fifth floor, I realised it was out of order once more.

‘Brilliant,’ I muttered to myself. ‘It’s the long walk up again I’m afraid Bob.’

He looked at me forlornly.

‘Come on then,’ I said, dipping my shoulder down so that he could climb on board.

We were just beginning the final couple of flights of stairs, from the fourth to the fifth floor, when I noticed a figure in the shadows on the landing above us.

‘Hold on here for a second, Bob,’ I said, placing him down on the steps and heading up on my own.

Moving in closer I could see that it was a man and he was leaning against the wall. He was hunched over with his trousers partially dropped down and there was something metallic in his hand. I knew instantly what he was doing.

In the past, the flats had been notorious as a haunt for drug users and dealers. Addicts would find their way in and use the staircase and hallways to smoke crack and marijuana or inject themselves with heroin like this guy was doing. In the years since I’d moved in, the police had improved the situation dramatically, but we’d still occasionally see young kids dealing in the stairwell on the ground floor. It was nowhere near as bad as a previous sheltered housing project I’d lived in, over in Dalston, which was over-run with crack addicts. But it was still distressing, especially for the families who lived in the flats. No one wants their children arriving home from school to find a junkie shooting up on the staircase outside their home.

For me, of course, it was a reminder of the past I was desperate to put behind me. I continued to struggle with my addiction; I always would. That, unfortunately, was the nature of the beast. But, since teaming up with Bob, I’d made the breakthrough and was on the way to complete recovery. After weaning myself off heroin and then methadone, I’d been prescribed a drug called subutex, a milder medication that was slowly but surely reducing my drug dependency. The counsellor at my drug dependency unit had likened this final part of my recovery to landing an aeroplane: I would slowly drop back down to earth. I’d been on subutex for several months now. The landing gear was down and I could see the lights of the runway in front of me. The descent was going according to plan, I was almost back on solid ground.

I could do without seeing this
, I said to myself.

I saw that the guy was in his mid-forties with a short, crew-cut hairstyle. He was wearing a black coat, t-shirt and jeans and a pair of scruffy trainers. Fortunately he wasn’t aggressive. In fact he was quite the opposite. He was really apologetic, which was pretty unusual. Selflessness isn’t really a strong suit in heroin addicts.

‘Sorry, mate, I’ll get out of your way,’ he said in a thick East End accent, taking his ‘works’ out of his leg and pulling up his trousers. I could tell that he’d finished injecting. His eyes had that tell-tale glazed look.

I decided to let him go first. I knew better than to completely trust an addict. I wanted to keep him ahead of me where I could see him.

He was pretty unsteady on his feet and stumbled up the short flight of stairs to the landing on the fifth floor, through the doors and into the hallway heading for the lift.

Bob had trotted up the final flight of stairs behind me on the end of his lead. I just wanted to get him inside to safety so headed for the door of our flat. I had just put the key in the door and let Bob in when I heard a loud groan. I turned round and saw the guy collapse. He just suddenly went down like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground with a smack.

‘Mate, are you all right?’ I said, running over to him. He clearly wasn’t.

I could see immediately that he was in a really bad way. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

‘Oh God, he’s OD’d!’ I said to myself, recognising the symptoms of an overdose.

Fortunately, I had my cheap Nokia mobile on me. I called 999 and asked for an emergency ambulance. The lady on the other end of the line took my address but then told me it was going to take at least ten minutes.

‘Can you describe his condition to me?’ she asked, her voice calm and professional.

‘He’s unconscious and he’s not breathing,’ I said. ‘And his skin is changing colour.’

‘OK, sounds like his heart has stopped. I’m going to ask you to give him CPR. Do you know what that is?’ the lady said.

‘Yes, I do. But you will have to talk me through it really carefully.’

She got me to turn the guy on his side and to check that his airwaves were clear. I then had to turn him on to his back so that I could apply compression to his chest to try to jump start his heart. Then I had to breathe into his mouth to try to get him to respond.

Within moments I was pressing down on his chest with both hands, counting as I did so. When I got to thirty I stopped to see if there was any change in his condition.

The lady from the emergency services was still on the line.

‘Any response?’ she asked.

‘No. Nothing. He’s not breathing,’ I said. ‘I’ll try again.’

I carried on like this for what must have been several minutes, pressing his chest furiously in short bursts then breathing into his mouth. Looking back on it later, I was surprised at how calm I felt. I realise now that it was one of those situations where the brain goes into a different mode. The emotional reality of what was happening wasn’t registering in my mind at all. Instead, I was just focussing on the physical side of things, trying to get this guy to breathe again. Despite my best efforts, however, his condition remained the same.

At one point he started making a gurgling, snoring sound. I’d heard about the ‘death rattle’ a person makes as they draw their last breath. I didn’t want to think it, but I feared that’s what I was hearing here.

After what seemed like an age, I heard the buzzer of my door going so ran over to my flat.

‘Ambulance service,’ a voice said. I hit the buzzer and told them to come up. Thankfully our flaky lift was now working again, so they arrived on the fifth floor within seconds. They threw down their bags and immediately produced a CPR kit with paddles to conduct electric shocks. They then cut open his t-shirt.

‘Stand back, Sir,’ one of them said. ‘We can take it from here.’

For the next five or so minutes they kept working feverishly to get him moving. But his body was lying there, limp and lifeless. By now the shock was kicking in and I was standing by the doorway, shaking.

Eventually, one of the ambulance men slumped over and turned to the other one: ‘No. He’s gone,’ he said. Slowly and really reluctantly they draped a silver blanket over him and put away their gear.

It was as if I had been struck by a lightning bolt. I was absolutely pole-axed. The ambulance guys asked me if I was all right.

‘Just need to go inside and sit down for a second I think,’ I told them.

Bob had been inside the flat throughout the drama but had now appeared in the doorway, perhaps sensing that I was upset.

‘Come on, mate, let’s get you inside,’ I said, picking him up. For some reason I didn’t want him to see the body lying there. He’d seen similar scenes on the streets of central London, but I just felt protective of him.

A few minutes later I got a knock on the door. The police and some paramedics had arrived in the hallway and a young constable was standing in my doorway.

‘I gather you were the person who found him and called 999,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I’d gathered myself together a little bit by now, but I was still feeling shaken.

‘You did the right thing. I don’t think there was much more you could have done for him,’ the PC said, reassuringly.

I described how I’d found him on the staircase and seen him go down.

‘It seemed to affect him really quickly,’ I said.

I told them that I was a recovering addict which, I think, allayed any suspicions they might have had about me somehow being involved with this guy. They knew what addicts were like, as indeed did I. At the end of the day all they care about is themselves. They are so selfish would literally sell their own grandmother or watch their girlfriend die. If an addict had discovered another addict who had overdosed in this way they would have done two things; empty the poor sod’s pockets of cash, relieve him of any jewellery and then run away – fast. They might call an ambulance but they wouldn’t have wanted to get involved.

The policemen also seemed to know about the flats and its dodgy past. They were pretty understanding.

‘OK, Mr Bowen, that’s all I need for now, it’s unlikely we will need a further statement for the inquest, but we will keep your details on file in case we need to speak to you again,’ the PC told me.

We chatted for another moment or two. He told me that they had found some ID on the guy and also some medication which had his name and address on it. It turned out he was on day release from a psychiatric ward.

By the time I saw the officer back out into the hallway, the scene had been completely cleared. It was as if nothing had happened. It was as quiet as a grave in the flats. No one else seemed to be around at this time of the day.

In the quiet I suddenly felt myself being overwhelmed by what I’d just seen. I couldn’t hold back my emotions any longer. Back inside the flat, I just burst into floods of tears. I called Belle on my mobile and asked her to come over that night. I needed to talk to someone.