Stonemouth

Not from a quick fling or just a snog from ten or even five years ago — she really would have been far too young — but from a burst of confused conversation from just three nights past. I was very drunk and stoned but I recall she said something about it not being her fault, not these hands, not the famous photographs, and that ‘that girl’ could talk anybody into anything. That was why she was looking at me the way she was, when we were sitting round the table earlier. She must have seen that I’d forgotten about what she said to me at that back-to-whoever’s party on Friday night.

Relief. She was relieved I’d forgotten.

Except now I’ve remembered.

Ellie and I walk back into the half-emptied room where people are still talking, milling, eating and drinking — though there are a lot more cups of tea and coffee around now than before — but the table where the cute girl was sitting has been abandoned and I can’t see her or her friends anywhere.

There’s no seating plan to consult. I leave Ellie talking to an old Academy pal and tell her I won’t be long. There’s enough of a gossip quorum left in the room. Stonemouth being the size it is, it takes all of five minutes of just asking around to find out who the people at the table were and who the cute girl with the black hair is.

I even get her phone number. I take another walk outside.

‘Tasha?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Stewart Gilmour. We were talking earlier?’

‘Oh. Yeah. Hello again. Thought you didn’t remember me.’

‘Yeah, we were talking on Friday night, too, weren’t we?’

‘Well, yeah. Just…yeah.’

‘Tasha, you were saying something about how it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fair hands that took those photos, you know?’

‘Yeah. That. Thought you’d forgotten?’

‘Well, I almost did. I take it you were one of the kids who had the digital cameras, at Lauren McLaughley and Drew Linton’s wedding, would that be right?’

‘Well, yah, obviously. Listen.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘I sort of spoke out of turn, you know? Didn’t mean to. I had, like, a couple of drinks? So, it’s not something—’

‘Well, I just wanted to ask—’

‘No, no, I don’t think I can—’

‘Well, look, could we perhaps meet up and—’

‘No. No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Sorry. Look, I have to go now.’

‘Tasha, just wait a second, please. You said somebody put you up to it, that she could talk anybody into anything. That was Grier, wasn’t it? You gave the camera to Grier, or let her take it from you, is that right?’

‘Uh…Gotta go now, bye.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I say quietly to an unresponsive phone.

I think the sheer weight of my own culpability — entirely deserved and duly acknowledged — might have blinded me to just how useful an only slightly guilty conscience, or two, can be.

I rejoin Ellie at the bar. She appears to have Ferg in tow, which is just as well, as he’s listing.

‘Gilmour,’ he says, eyes widening when he sees me, ‘you’ll do. This demented harridan refuses to escort me off the premises for the purposes of smoking.’

‘You need escorting, Ferg?’ I ask.

‘Trifle unsteady. Nothing a fag, a puff and a stiffener won’t sort. Excuse my entendres. We’re all going off to Mike Mac’s for a dip. You coming? Going to take me outside? Answer the second question first, to quote dear old Groucho.’

‘Yeah, I’ll take you outside,’ I tell him, holding him by the elbow as El lets go his other arm. I look at Ellie as Ferg sorts his feet out. ‘Mike Mac’s? Really? A “dip”?’

Ellie shrugs. She reaches up, undoes a couple of buttons on her blouse and pulls the material aside, revealing what must be the top of a light-blue swimming costume. ‘As it happens,’ she says, ‘I’ve come prepared.’

‘You were going beach swimming, weren’t you?’ I say, smiling at her.

‘Uh-huh.’ She redoes up one of the buttons. ‘Still might.’

‘Are you two quite finished wittering?’ Ferg says, breathing on me. ‘There’s a filter tip to be sucked on here.’

‘Come on,’ I tell him.

‘See you outside,’ El says. I nod.

‘I’m not really that drunk,’ Ferg confides as we pass through the lobby and he tries to work out which way up to hold the packet of Silk Cut so he can extract one. ‘But I’m definitely heading that way. I think I need some medicinal cocaine. That’ll sober me up.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Thanks,’ he says as we hit the open air and the hotel steps. Amazingly, there are no fellow puffers congregated. ‘Just prop me up here and I’ll wait while you score. Unless you’ve got some on you now, have you? Have you?’

‘No, Ferg.’

‘Well, just prop me up here and I’ll wait while you score. Oops.’

‘So you said.’ I pick up his lighter and give it back to him. He fumbles with it, drops it again.

‘What’s it?’ he says. ‘Gravity’s gone capricious again, fuck it.’

‘Let me,’ I tell him. I pull the fag out of his mouth, put it back in the right way round and put the flame to the end, shielding it from the breeze. ‘Ferg, you have to draw in air as I do this? Or it doesn’t work?’

‘Hmm? Oh, yes.’

Between us, finally, we get the cigarette lit and I stick the lighter into his breast pocket.

‘Well,’ he says, flapping one hand. ‘Don’t delay!’