Sweet

SWEET

Also by Julie Burchill

SUGAR RUSH

Shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize

Praise for
Sugar Rush

‘A fabulous story of sexual fascination – guilt-free, intoxicating and delicious. Sugar herself is a marvellous creation – promiscuous, immoral, manipulative, terrifying and oddly likeable. I only wish I’d known her when I was her age . . .’

Melvin Burgess

‘It’s a high-speed, toxic slice of teen life, an emotional melting pot, a story that’s so evocative you can smell the perfume, taste the vodka, hear the soundtrack’

Graham Marks

‘Irresistibly witty’

Bookseller

‘Julie Burchill writes in a very honest and beautiful way as she talks about things I have thought about but never read before’

Sally, aged 17, Manchester

‘This is the kind of book that makes you look at life differently . . . Read it!’

Teen Titles

Sugar Rush
has been made into a major TV series for Channel 4.

SWEET

Julie Burchill

YOUNG PICADOR

First published 2007 by Young Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

This electronic edition published 2007 by Young Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-47148-0 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47149-7 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-47150-3 in Microsoft Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47151-0 in Mobipocket format

Copyright © Julie Burchill 2007

The right of Julie Burchill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

Thank you to Tom Gross, Ben Green, Noel Williams and the Barnabus Fund for their help in explaining to me the terrible plight of Christians in Pakistan.

Also thanks to Robert Caskie for being a firm pair of hands, Chilli Pete for his advice about chillis, Amy Raphael for her advice about babies, Chas Newkey-Burden for the names on the Pride floats and Sara Lawrence for fun in the sun and general debauchery.

This book is dedicated to its editor, Harriet Wilson – without whom it would be precisely 35 pages long.

1

When I got out of jail with a heroin habit and a fat arse, I really thought that things could only get better. Then I found out that my husband, Mark, the minger, had only run off and taken the baby with him! Not to mention my iPod. I mean, I can have another baby – but it took me two years to put my proper soundtrack together.

So I did what I’ve done since I was thirteen, whenever I needed to think about stuff – lifted a half-bottle of vodka, rolled a giant spliff and took it down to the beach. I was born in Brighton and I’ve lived here all my life, and sometimes it gets on my tits, but I’ve never got over the fact that you can sit on the beach and look at the sea all for free; doesn’t matter how much money you earn, you get the same view.

I grew up way back from the seafront on the Ravendene Estate, in this totally pants tower block, whereas the rich Londoners who’ve been taking over this place for the past ten years now all buy themselves a cushy little sea view from their big white houses. But as I said, once you’re down here on the beach, all that changes; you’re all equal. For once.

After a bit I found a pen in my bag and made a list of things for and against me on the inside of an old Tampax tube.

AGAINST

Fat arse

Heroin habit

No money

Mark and baby gone

FOR

Total goddess from arse up

Heroin habit only sniffing, not shooting, so easily lost

Still only 17

Mark and baby gone

I thought then ‘Dyke’ and my pen hovered over both lists but in the end I didn’t know if that was for or against, so I called it a day. Besides, how did I know I was one? I could’ve just had a soft spot – for that posh little cow Kim Lewis. My Kizza. Now swept away by her doting parents to a place where me and my evil ways would never find and corrupt her again, apparently. We’d see about that!

See, the way I look at it, me and Kim could have had one sweet life together, what with my brains and her looks. Or was it the other way around? I can never make my mind up, and I guess that when that happens, when you aren’t sure who’s got what, that’s when you’re really cooking. Anyway, plenty more fish under the bridge and all that; it’s not like Brighton wasn’t heaving with fit girls to perve over and steal off, if it came to that. And as for blokes, well we KNOW that they can’t resist a little Sugar. So at the end of the day, it was prob’ly best not to decide yet if I was a dyke or not, but just to keep my options open, as it were.

I was getting well cold sitting on the beach, so I trudged back up the shingle and got the bus home to Ravendene. The bus smelt like a dinosaur had squeezed its way in and then pissed for the first time in years. It was a far cry from my glory days with Kimmy, tapping her mum’s credit card and getting cabs everywhere!

When I got home there was no sign of my mum or my dead-beat brother, Jesus, aka JJ, just the gruesome twosome, my minging little sisters She-Ra and Evil-Lyn, whinging on about something; I shoved them out the way and barged straight into Mum’s bedroom, where I knew she’d be, sitting on her bed surrounded by all our old baby clothes, bawling her eyes out. I perched on the side of the bed and looked at her sympathetically.

‘It’s not gonna happen, you know, Ma,’ I said.

‘Give it time,’ she sniffed.

‘You’re, what are you, thirty-eight?’

‘I’m thirty-five! I had you when I was eighteen. I thought it was best to wait – see a bit of life first.’

I laughed – hollowly, I hoped. The silly cow wasn’t being funny, anyway she didn’t mean to be. ‘Whatever . . . don’t you think you’re clocking on a bit to have another brat?’

‘I want to hold a tiny body in my arms just one more time,’ she says.

‘What d’you want a new brat for? What about those two freaks out there?’

‘Oh, they’re all grown up now—’

‘– they’re TEN! –’

‘– AND they’ve got red hair. I’ve got you and Jesus, with your lovely black hair – I’d like to try for a little blonde, like me.’

‘Then shag an albino!’ I got up off the bed and slammed out. I don’t know, it pissed me off to hear Susie talking about babies as if they were handbags – it got me thinking about Renata. My little Ren. Now resident somewhere out there in the wide blue yonder with her nonce of a father.

Everyone I loved had gone, fucked off, left me. Kim, Mark, Ren. And here I was, stuck in an out-of-season seaside town. As I said, things could only get better. Of course, I could’ve packed up and gone to London that very night. But think about it. A gorgeous chick like me, penniless, all alone in the big city – I’d be shooting up and kneeling down before you could say ‘Pretty Woman With A Crack Habit’.

A job – that was what I had to get. Get a job, get some money together, get the hell out of Dodge – where I would forever be the bad guy/slaggy girl – and find Ren, or myself, or some easy mark I could live off. Go abroad maybe – I could see myself living the good life, chasing the sun. Sitting on a balcony somewhere, feet up, glass in hand, no worries. Sweet.

Funny how things change. A year ago I really thought I was happy. After my mad, bad time with Kim I’d had a MAJOR moment of weakness for tall, dark, delicious Mark and somehow we’d ended up married and with Ren to show for it. So there I was all tucked up cosy with hubby and daughter. Then one night me and him had a row about the average life expectancy of an Alsatian dog, and before I knew it I was down Lost Vegas getting off with this well-fit guy. A few alcopops later and we’re doing it on the beach – then his mate turns up. Well, a girl needs time to prepare for these things, I always think. So I grabbed my empty bottle, halved it and stuck it in. Should of seen the blood. So I panicked, called Kizza, she comes running with her slaggy mum’s credit card and before you can say ‘Rug muncher’ we’re having a right old roll-around in this lush penthouse at the top of this posh London hotel. Sweet, it was. Morning after, coppers at the door, handcuffs on, bye-bye, Kim, hello clinker.

And you know, though I’m not advocating breaking a bottle in half and sticking it in some random guy forcing himself on you and being put in the clinker for the best part of year, it was certainly a bit of a wake-up call. It makes you decide whether you’re gonna sink or swim – or even worse, tread water in the shallow end all your life. And what I wanted was to make a big splash. Or at least make a living. Or at least live – not just survive.

Well, the way I looked at it, I’d tried being wild – didn’t work. Tried settling down – ditto. The thing I hadn’t tried was being a sensible single girl – sorry,
woman
– making her way in the world. Sort of like
Sex and the City
, but without the sex. Or the city, really, no matter what Brighton calls itself. It’s just a town – a town that’s up itself, with good shops and clubs, but a town all the same.

So, not so much sex in the city as toil in the town, at least till the offer I couldn’t refuse came along. But doing what? It’s not like I was exactly overqualified. If only they gave out degrees in shoplifting or shooting pool, I’d be a Bachelor of Kiss-My-Ass! The job situation in Brighton isn’t exactly a streets-paved-with-gold scenario either. Bastard seaside towns – either packed with tourists and not an inch on the beach or a drink in a club to be had without waiting an hour, or quiet as the grave and pissing down.