Exile (19 page)

“Shan said you were in a mental hospital.”

He looked at her and his face hadn’t moved, his eyes hadn’t changed and he didn’t seem uncomfortable. He handed her the spliff again, minding his manners and sharing the joy.

“Yeah, I had a bit of a breakdown. Now, I’m not going to tell you any more,” she said quickly, “because I hate telling that story.” She took another draw and held it in, inadvertently catching his eye as she exhaled.

Under the duvet his free hand found hers and he caressed the inside of her wrist with his fingertips. “Have a laugh with me, Maureen,” he said quietly.

“I’ve been a bit low,” she said, in a small voice.

“I know,” said Vik. “I can tell.” And his fingertips hardly touched her skin as he soothed her.

Vik slid across the bed towards her and gathered her, still paralyzed and limp with sleep, pressing her face into his warm hairy chest. It was morning and she had slept right through. It took her a couple of minutes even to remember Michael. She wriggled out of his grip, threw the duvet back and sat up.

“Why are you getting up?” he asked grumpily.

“I need to get going.”

“You always need to get up in the morning. Why can’t we just lie around for a bit?”

She pulled on her dressing gown and went to the bathroom, filled the sink and thought of the weeping sore on Mark Doyle’s cheek and the Clansman pub. She threw cold water on her face and leaned heavily on the basin, her hands straddling the bowl, letting her face drip into the water. Michael was behind her, fifteen feet tall, and his hand was raised to hit her. She froze for a moment and plunged her face forward into the cold water, covering her ears. She came back up for air and he was gone. Michael would drink in the machine-gun nest pub in Ruchill. He’d drink in there and know Mark Doyle and they’d meet Ann and hurt her and Pauline dead under a tree in the warm summer with spunk drying on her back. She didn’t know Vik was behind her until his hand cupped her buttock.

“Fuck off!” She swung around, her elbow jabbing him hard in the stomach.

Vik toppled backwards, grabbing the side of the basin to stop himself falling. He sat on the bath rim, holding his side, groaning at the pain. “You total fucking cow,” he said, and hobbled out of the bathroom and down the hall, holding on to the wall to steady himself.

Maureen sat down on the toilet lid. She couldn’t go and explain. It would take four fucking days to explain. She wanted a cigarette. She held out for as long as she could. When she finally went out to the hall she found Vik fully dressed and ready to leave.

“Vikram—”

“Just fuck off.”

He stomped into the living room and found his leather jacket at the side of the settee. Maureen leaned against the door frame and found that, for the first time, she desperately didn’t want him to leave her. “I’m really sorry.”

Vik looked at her as he slipped on his jacket and pocketed his battered packet of fags. “I’ve never taken shit like this from anyone,” he said, shaking his head, making his black hair fall over his eyes. “You can’t treat people like that.”

“I got a fright—” she said.

“Forgot a fright?”

“I didn’t realize it was you—”

“Maureen, if you’re such a cripple that you don’t know who’s in the house with ye, then you don’t want to go out with me. Are ye that much of a cripple?”

Behind his head she saw the fever tower shift on the horizon and she hesitated. Vik glared at her. “This isn’t what I want for myself,” he said. “Either we’re nice to each other and we have a laugh or it’s over. Your choice.”

“That’s what I want too,” she said weakly.

He rubbed his side. “You don’t act as if that’s what you want. The world’s full of men happy to take that sort of shit from women. Go out with them, leave me alone.”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Yes, it is, you chose. But I’m not settling for less than I give out. I want more for myself.” He tried to pass her to the front door but she stepped out to block him.

“Move,” he said.

She didn’t. Vik slipped behind her, opened the front door and left without a backward glance.

Chapter 22

DISCO MONKEY

They were deep in the east end, in a sprawling grid system of gray concrete semidetached houses. Each house held four small flats and had a long, bare front garden. Built in the sixties to house the slum clearances, the houses were bordered every few blocks by broad roads, designed to make it easy for the workers to drive into town. The few cars didn’t look as if they’d make it the eight miles.

There were no cars parked outside Senga Brolly’s house. The spindly metal railings along the foot of the garden were pitted with rust and the steep garden steps were eroded and crumbling.

Senga’s nose was flattened and her teeth were framed with black decay like stained-glass windows. Her hairdo was twenty years too young for her face: midnight black with a stern fringe, pulled back into a ponytail around the crown with the bulk of it hanging down, hair-sprayed firmly at the sides to hang like a heavy curtain over her chewed-up ears. She was so quiet she was almost a voluntary mute. She signaled rather than spoke, and stared resolutely at the floor whatever they asked her. She was pals with Ann, wasn’t she? Nod.

Did they talk a lot? Nod. Did she know where Ann went when she left the shelter? Shrug. Did Ann show her an envelope? Shrug. They showed her the Polaroid: did she know this man? Shrug. A couple of times Maureen thought she saw the beginnings of a sly smile but Senga caught herself.

Leslie asked the questions, leaving Maureen alone, haunted with thoughts of Vik. She wanted a nice boyfriend; she wanted kindness and respect and decency. She didn’t want to spend her life with people she was suited to, she wanted to be with people like him. A spark of honor told her she should let him go if she genuinely cared about his happiness, but she didn’t want to. Senga was nodding again but even that response seemed to be fading away. But she did talk to Ann, didn’t she? Nod. Did Ann talk about her kids a lot? Shrug. Any kid in particular? Shrug. Maureen excused herself and Senga managed to direct her to the loo without saying more than two words. “Right,” she murmured, gesturing with her hands. “Left.”

The bathroom was furnished in burgundy plastic with indelible toothpaste stains on the bowl and bleach burns inside the loo. Maureen washed her hands and dried them on a crunchy gray hand towel. When she got back to the living room Leslie and Senga were on their feet. Leslie pulled her in for a hug and Senga stood awkward and rigid, letting Leslie be affectionate on her. “We’re off, then,” said Leslie, letting go. “Thanks, wee hen.”

Senga smiled shyly at the floor and saw them to the door. The garden steps were so crumbly that they had to walk down them sideways.

“She never shuts up,” said Maureen, when they reached the pavement. “Did ye get anything out of her?”

“Yeah,” said Leslie. “She’s quite talkative on a one to one.”

Maureen looked skeptical. “Really?” She glanced back up the steep path to the gray house. Senga was standing half behind the curtain, peeking out of the shadows, looking like a skull in a wig. She lifted her hand. Maureen waved back.

“Yeah. She says they were close,” said Leslie, “but Ann fell out with her and left a few days later. She said they didn’t have an argument. They were just looking at the paper one day and Ann recognized a picture of a guy, said she knew him. Senga said she knew the woman with him — she’d been at school with her — and Ann went funny with her after that. I asked her about the card and she said anyone could have sent it. She says everyone knows where the shelter houses are.”

Maureen pulled on her helmet. “That’s shite.”

“I know,” said Leslie, looking back up to the house and waving. “I don’t know why she’d say that.”

“Who were the couple in the paper?”

“Neil Hutton and his girlfriend. She says he was up for dealing,” said Leslie, doing up the strap on her helmet, “and she was with him at the court.”

“How would Ann get to know a drug dealer? She didn’t get into drugs, did she?”

Leslie looked out of her helmet, a strip of eyes blinking slowly like Maureen’s memory of Douglas. “Naw, she was a drinker. She might know him from the scheme in Finneston. Anyway, Senga says the woman works at Fraser’s in the makeup department.”

“We could go and ask Liam about it,” said Maureen. “He’ll know the guy if he’s a dealer.”

“Can we go and see the woman first?”

“Are you asking me to visit a two-hundred-square-foot makeup counter?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I accept that invitation.”

The entire lower floor of the Victorian galleria was given over to the business of makeup and perfume. Fraudulent women in white coats stood sentry by their counters, chatting to one another and picking their nails, ignoring the ugly, rain-sodden customers who wandered by cooing at the price tags. The shop was five stories high, with the different departments spread around a series of wooden balconies. A glass ceiling opened up the floors to natural sunlight, a benefit ignored by subsequent store designers who had inserted dazzling track lighting everywhere. The makeup was on the ground floor, a vast bazaar a-glitter with tatty perfume promotions and giant photographs of airbrushed teenagers.

They had asked for her at several counters and Maureen noticed the counter women tipping Maxine off, catching her eye and pointing them out. They weren’t hard to spot: Maureen’s coat looked expensive but she was wearing her battered boots and her curly hair could never be tidied anyway. Leslie’s leathers and dirty hair would be chic in a biker bar but in the glittery galleria she looked as seemly as a dead toenail in a pair of strappy sandals.

Maxine was hard-faced, with thin lips and a determined chin. She was dressed in a powder pink two-piece suit and stood behind a counter piled high with black and gold boxes. Between her and the shelves at the back was a white leatherette chair with an arm attachment bearing a selection of samples. She wore far too much makeup, which, although skillfully applied, made her look like a burn victim who was covering up very well. Her short blond hair had been tortured into a big puff at the back and smeared into a parting at the fringe, held firm on either side of her face with diamante clips like ornamental staples. She was well practiced at not letting on. She slid across the floor to them, apparently innocent of their interest in her. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” said Leslie, leaning through the access gap in the counter. “We’re here to ask you some questions. I think you know a friend of ours?”

Maxine looked wary. “Look,” she said, under her breath, her accent dropping two social strata, her eyes watching behind them, “I’m at my work here. Leave us alone, will ye?”

“In a minute.” Leslie smiled, certain she had the upper hand. “Our friend was called Ann Harris. Maybe ye’d know her from this.” She produced the photocopy from her jacket and showed it to her.

Maxine kept her eyes on the horizon, watching for someone. She took the time to glance at the picture but something about it caught her eye and she looked back. “God,” she said, staring at the photo.

“D’ye know her?” asked Maureen, muscling in through the narrow gap, standing in front of Leslie.

“What’s that on her lip?” Maxine pointed at the picture and cringed. “Fuck.”

“How do ye know her?” said Leslie.

Maxine roused herself and looked at Leslie angrily. “I never said I did know her, did I?”

But Maxine did know her. She looked at them, challenging them to contradict her. Maureen took out the Polaroid of wee John and the big man in the camel-hair coat. “What about this guy — d’ye know him?”

But Maxine was looking over Maureen’s shoulder into the body of the shop. “The manager’s in,” she said, out of the side of her mouth. “I cannae just chat — one of yees’ll need tae sit down.”

Leslie pushed Maureen into the white chair and she found herself staring straight into a halogen spotlight embedded on the underside of a shelf. Maxine tipped back the seat with a foot pedal and followed the manager out of the corner of her eye, watching him float around the shop floor. She tucked a couple of tissues into Maureen’s collar to protect her coat and began to move her hands over Maureen’s face. “The manager in here’s a right prick,” she said, tracing lines over Maureen’s eyes and lips, drawing circles on her cheeks. “That lassie you’re looking for, I don’t know her.”

Maureen decided not to push it. “D’ye know the guy in the Polaroid?” she asked, trying to sit up.

Maxine’s thin lips atrophied with annoyance. “Sit back,” she said.

Maureen did as she was told and Maxine pulled out a white bottle from under the counter. She began rubbing oily cream on Maureen’s forehead and cheeks, wiping it off with tissues as she leaned over Maureen and muttered aggressively, “Get me intae trouble here and I’ll lose the place, right?”

Maureen was afraid to have Maxine near her eyes.

A pockmarked young man in a dark suit leaned across the counter. He was about twenty, the same age as Maxine. “Hello, ladies,” he said, his accent a twanging Edinburgh slur. “Are you having a makeover?”

“Yeah,” said Leslie.

“Are you enjoying that experience?”

“Yeah,” said Maureen. “Very much.”

“Good girl, Maxine, good girl.”

He stood up and sauntered off, watching left and right, playing with the fist of keys at his belt.

“What an arsehole,” said Leslie.

Maxine sighed. “I could have him killed, ye know.” She said it casually as she wiped the cream from Maureen’s neck. Maureen and Leslie were too frightened to ask her what she meant.

“Where do ye learn to do this?” asked Maureen, her eyes straining against the bright light above her. “You’re very good.”

“They send ye on a course for a week and ye learn all the secrets.”

“Is it a good job?”

“It’s a good job for me,” said Maxine. “I’m expecting again and I can come and go. There’s always these jobs if you’re reliable.”

“Oh,” said Leslie. “Are ye expecting? Congratulations.”

For some reason Maxine had taken very much against Leslie.