Stonemouth

But I’m being honest with myself, and my chances of getting this fascinating, instructive point across are fairly minimal in my present, pleasant state of advanced inebriation. I’ll just make a note to myself in my brain’s on-board Notes app to tell him this at some other juncture, when I’m sober.

Ha ha. Like that’s going to happen.

‘The smart are forced to pay for the stupidities of the fuckwits!’

‘Boo,’ I say, trying to be supportive.

Ferg looks at me. ‘You’re completely fucking wasted, aren’t you?’

I nod. ‘Pletely,’ I agree.

But then I have had a lot to drink, and some blow, and I vaguely recall knocking back a pill of some sort earlier. So I have every right to be completely fucking wasted. I would have considerable cause for complaint were I in any other state than completely fucking wasted. Questions would need to be asked, heads metaphorically roll and possibly refunds offered for goods purchased in good faith, were I not.

Ferg has probably had more than I have, and he still seems relatively together, but then that’s his problem. I should, at this point, probably remind him again that he drinks too much, and that not being completely fucking wasted by now, given what we’ve put away, is positively unhealthy, and a cause for some concern. But I’m not sure I’m entirely capable of articulating something so relatively complicated. And, to be fair, he may have heard this before.

‘… with these fair hands, Mr Gilmour,’ a girl with short black hair and laughing eyes is saying to me. I may have dozed off for a second there. She looks very young: late high-school age. But still: ‘Mr Gilmour’? Fair, bonny face, short hair a chap might want to ruffle his hand through. ‘But it wasn’t me. Not the ones that — the famous ones!’ I think that’s what she’s saying. ‘Just so’s you know.’ Music’s very loud. ‘Talk anybody into anything, that girl.’ Then she disappears.

And she’s back again! No, my mistake; it’s the delightful Haley. Here she is before me. Holding what looks like my jacket. Well, that is forward. Still, what a persistent girl. You have to admire that.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I start to tell her, waving one hand in what I hope looks like a sad, regretful and yet still respectful manner, while remaining expressive of the hope that this is only No for now, and might not mean No for ever, depending on how things work out elsewhere.

She thrusts my jacket into my hands and leans her lovely head right down to mine. ‘Your taxi’s here!’ she yells.

I stare at her, dumbfounded. I ordered a taxi?

Then she and Ferg are helping me up and taking me downstairs and putting me in the back of a taxi and I’m saying hello to the driver because I know him from school, I think, and Ferg gets in beside me and Haley kisses me on the cheek and then we’re at Mum and Dad’s front door, and next thing I know I’m standing in the front hall and Ferg’s on the step outside and I’m saying, ‘Well, thanks for coming,’ and Ferg’s shaking his head and retreating and saying something about idiots before getting back into the waiting taxi and the front door closes and leaves me standing in the front hall in the darkness.

Tea and bed, I think.

I wake up with my head on the kitchen table, a full, cold mug of tea by my head, a small pool of drool on the table surface wetting my cheek and a grey dawn hazing the window panes.

I head upstairs for more sleep in a room and bed still familiar even after five years away.

Home.

SATURDAY

5

She drove me to the station. That night, that warm night when it all went sour, when the world collapsed around me, five years back; still, despite it all, it was her.

‘Is there anything I can say?’

‘Stewart, no. Just be quiet. It’s not far. Do you have everything?’

‘I don’t know. How can I know?’

‘Well, if you don’t, I’m sure your mum and—’

‘What are we doing?’ I shake my head. There is a hastily filled bag on my lap, one of those long bags with two handles my dad would call a grip. I clutch it to my chest. ‘What have I done? What the fuck—’

‘Stewart, stop. There’s no point.’

I look at her, tears in my eyes. ‘Doesn’t matter that there’s no point,’ I tell her. ‘Sometimes—’

Suddenly she stabs at my seat-belt release button, throwing the buckle past me, clunking loud off the door window. ‘Duck,’ she says urgently. ‘Right down.’

‘What?’ I say, but I’m already ducking, pressing my chest into the badly packed bag, then quickly pulling it out to the side, getting in the way of her hand as she grasps the gear lever, stuffing the bag into the footwell and ducking down further, my chest against my thighs, my chin on my knees. ‘It’s them, isn’t it?’ I wheeze. Something’s thrown over me — her jacket, I can tell, just from the smell of her perfume on it. The orange streetlight glow dims to almost nothing. I’m shaking. I can feel myself shaking.

‘Hnn,’ she says, and her voice is turned-away quiet, not-facing-me quiet, as her window whines down. The sound of outside comes in: traffic and engine and just that late-night urban rumble and buzz.

‘Whit you doin?’