The carpet used to be red. It’s now stained to a wilted brown and speckled with the tramp of a thousand dirty footsteps. I stepped along the hall, moving around a puddle of spit that lay in my path; a freshly expectorated addition to the degraded decor. There was a stand of day lilies on the landing, a weirdly alive feature in this drab hotel that had become a rooming house, which seemed closer to death than life. In that context the flowers seemed somehow funereal.

There was some sense of faded grandeur though, some remnants of history in the murky green tiles in the bathroom and the delicate hue of the few remaining stained glass windows. Both were now covered with a deep layer of grime and the place stank of piss, alcohol and homelessness (an acrid mix of sweat and unbrushed teeth, with a discerning note of rot). I was here to visit Angel.

She had decided she wanted to be interviewed for the project and I’d come (cameras stashed in my backpack) to talk to her in a tiny room inhabited by four people, herself an eighteen year old hooker and three much older men. The two I met seemed friendly enough. All crammed in to one shared space. Rooming houses are a prescribed level of homelessness, something that had once seemed a bit illogical to me. But here in a room only slightly bigger than my bedroom I understood why. A bed shared (or a spot on a floor) does not a home equate.

Only Angel didn’t just want to be interviewed. Angel wanted to show me how to shoot up. Specifically she wanted to walk me through the process of her shooting up. I agreed (though I can’t yet work out if it was because of self interest or an unwillingness not to dictate what the participants can and can’t photograph). Addressing the camera with a wave and a chirpy ‘Hi Gem’, she proceeded to take me through each step. It was only the second time I’d ever seen anyone shoot up. The gripping fear of the first time was missing. I was so focused on photographing I didn’t even get a jab of adrenaline. I guess I’m a better voyeur now.

After she had done it, in between nodding off and shaking herself awake, she started talking me through her life; her contorted and horrifying life. As we talked something she said ticked over and over in my head, the tantalising string of a loose end. Begging. I got it! I’d met her in the street months ago. I’d come out of a wine bar into the cold Melbourne night and she asked me for change. I gave her what I had in my pocket and she asked if she could give me a hug. I laughed as she hugged me and thanked me profusely, it was a sweet gesture and I was amused by her earnestness.

I was just about to interrupt and see if she remembered too when she suddenly announced she was going to be sick and vomited, loudly, into the water closet in the corner (a cupboard comprising a sink and tap). Between retches she told me that I could record the violent spews too if I wanted. The spewing, she reckoned, was a result of not letting her body go to sleep after the hit. It looked to me like the result of a body that could not sustain the level of drug use. She came back from her stoned reverie and started to panic about her next hit.

Suddenly desperate, she hurried me outside, puking in several bins along the way, past the modest cheer of the street Christmas party. We walked to Grey Street together so she could make her rent money back (which she’d spent on the drugs). ‘I need to show them I’m reliable’, she said seriously (them meaning the men she shared her room with). I didn’t laugh at her earnestness this time. Everything seemed a bit more grim, a bit more real, after visiting that faded hotel that stank of poverty and destitution.