Twenty years ago Jane Pugh was told she had an incurable kidney disease that kills 75 per cent of sufferers by their mid-forties
MY SORDID secret is out and it’s a big relief. The shame and guilt have been a burden. The neighbours caught me at it, my boyfriend said (the hot evidence was found dangling from their azaleas), and thought he should know that I’ve been having a bit on the side.
Not a torrid affair. No, far more dangerous and sinful. After two years as a committed non-smoker I was suddenly gripped by the need for nicotine. I don’t know where the urge came from, it just crept up and bit me like a rabid Jack Russell. Before I knew it I was in the paper shop, whispering for a packet of ten and then slithering across the road, looking for a place to hide. Lighting up, I prayed for it to taste revolting. After two years surely I’d be sick? Instead I loved it and hated myself at the same time.
Becoming a non-smoker was one of my most significant achievements. For 20 years I came up with the usual feeble reasons for why I couldn’t possibly give up: too stressed; I’d get fat; sex without a post-coital, are you kidding? And then, just in the nick of time, I got lucky. I quit the day after the neurologist told me I had a brain aneurysm. On top of my other diseases, I knew I had run out of excuses.
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The fags went in the bin and after a week of being a total bitch, where everyone (especially Mavis the cat) was the enemy, nicotine replacement therapy saved me. An inhaler, with its bulbous tip, has all the charm of a suppository, but it satisfies the need that smokers have to occupy their hands and to suck on something. I felt free. I wasn’t nauseatingly self-righteous, but life tasted a whole lot better. No more guilt, bad breath or rummaging around in ashtrays to rescue cigarette butts when I’d run out, sucking with all my might to extract the last remnants of nicotine.
Being a smoker was never in my game plan — like falling into quicksand, I got trapped — although perhaps I could cop out and blame my parents for polluting the family home. Certainly the tendencies surfaced early on and as a young girl I was seduced by images of hip people smoking menthol cigarettes. I would sneak off and sit in my dad’s Jag, amid the pungent aroma of eau de fags and leather, and rotate the wheel back and forth while sucking seductively on an HB pencil, pretending to be hugely famous. No one in particular, just loved and adored the world over.
As a teenager I bitterly rejected the idea of smoking — mainly because everyone else was doing it — but finally I got hooked. Until I quit and pledged to never, ever smoke again because I had no choice. Faced with major surgery and a painful relationship break-up, this was the best time to stop. I figured that if I could give up a 20-a-day, 20-year-old habit when I was stressed, I had it licked. And I had — I kicked the habit and could never envisage doing it again. I had always been baffled when people like my good friend Ann, who once quit for seven years, started again. Surely once you get over the initial agony, you’re cured? Easy peasy.
That’s how it was until recently when, out of the blue, I started to drool when I saw people smoking. Soon cigarettes were everywhere — walking down the street, jumping out from behind bushes. There was no question of starting again. No way. My aneurysm would rupture. And I’d only just escaped developing an anus mouth (those horrible lines around the lips that smokers get from too much puckering up). But the harder I fought, the more obsessed I became.
After the first time I squirted my entire body with perfume, sucked extra-strong mints to erase any evidence and hid the fags in my knicker drawer. I was consumed with self-loathing. But I still wanted more. Realising that I’d got away with it, I got daring and took to hiding on the balcony with my crumpled packet of ten.
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That’s when I got caught. Thinking I heard someone coming, I threw away a whole lit fag and watched with horror as it floated into next door’s garden and proceeded to burn a hole in their blooms. “The neighbours have complained,” my boyfriend said later. “They ask that you stop throwing missiles at them.”
As I burst into tears and confessed all, he laughed. Martin, who has a nose for offending smells, had followed the trail of smoke and put out the burning bush. The neighbours were on holiday. “If you need something to suck on, take this,” he said, and stuck a new nicotine inhaler into my gaping gob. The battle rages on.
The polycystic kidney disease charity is at www.pkdcharity.co.uk, or call 01388 665004
jane.pugh@thetimes.co.uk