Flesh Wounds (3 page)

Jasmine loved just sitting inside these grand old auditoria. In her head she could hear Dot Prowis, her old lecturer at the Scottish Academy of Theatre and Dance, expounding with typical gusto on how ‘any space can be a theatre, and a theatre can be any space’, but Jasmine’s idea of what a theatre should look like had been hardwired in toddlerhood, and this was it. It wasn’t just the pros-arch (thrust optional) that defined a proper theatre, but the presence of at least one circle, and the more the better.

The Alhambra’s stretched back from the balcony in row upon curving row of tip-up cushioned seats, saggy in the stuffing and infused with the fags and farts of close to a hundred years. Jasmine was in the fifth row, the steep rake affording almost as good a view over the rail as the first. She took in the painted plasterwork, the angels flanking the wings, and a part of her was transported to the place all such theatres took her: her mother’s side.

It would have been her mum’s birthday tomorrow. This was another reason she felt apprehensive about being out here alone, exposed, and yet also a reason she knew she ought not to go home either, stuck in the flat with nothing to distract her.

Someone had once told her that the pain and the sadness would come in waves. In the early stages, those waves would engulf her, crash against her so relentlessly that she might feel she could not possibly survive. However, as time went on the intervals would become longer, the waves a little smaller. Gradually it would get easier, but the waves would never stop coming.

This had proven true, but there were no guarantees, no absolutes. Now and again one of those waves would be higher than her head, though she was getting better at anticipating when. The anniversary, Christmas and birthdays – her mum’s and her own – were always going to be difficult, but sometimes it was the unexpected trigger that was the worst: the element that came at her sideways when her gaze was fixed ahead. The lead-up to these painful dates had proven harder than the days themselves, but so far on this occasion she was holding it together; feeling quite robust, in fact.

I’m okay, she told herself.

A girl of about fourteen shuffled along the row in front, accompanied by a bearded bloke in a Big Country T-shirt, presumably her dad playing chaperone. Jasmine resisted a twinge of self-consciousness as she looked around, feeling conspicuously the only person sitting unaccompanied. For all anyone knew, her friend was away at the toilet, or getting drinks.

More pertinently, nobody would be looking at her anyway, she reminded herself. It was an unfortunate side-effect of spying on people for a living that she could occasionally fall prey to an irrational paranoia about what unseen eyes might be trained upon her. Shaking this off, for a wee change she asked herself what anyone might see if they did happen to look at her right then, and decided to her surprise that she liked the answer.

She recalled a line in
Shirley Valentine
, one of her mum’s favourite movies, which they used to watch together when the weather got them down, because it was like going on a ninety-minute holiday.

‘I think I’m all right,’ Shirley said. ‘I think if I saw myself, I’d say: “That woman’s okay.”’

I’m
okay, Jasmine told herself.

She’d had a good day at work.

She’d had a lot of good days at work, in fact. Over the past year or so she had become a great deal more accepting that this was what she did now; this was who she was. It was changing her. She had stopped thinking of herself as tragic, afflicted by circumstance and buffeted by the fates. She was good at what she did, and consequently Sharp Investigations was doing quite well, thank you. Certainly any evening spent in the company of her college friends still trying to eke out careers in the arts these days afforded her a different perspective from the previous one of having her nose pressed against the sweet-shop window.

It wasn’t just the fact that they were permanently skint; the things that seemed so shatteringly important to them were beginning to strike her as petty and insubstantial, and she was becoming decreasingly shy of saying as much. She recalled with mischievous pride an exchange she had over dinner at her friend Michelle’s place, where Michelle’s flatmate and fellow dancer Gareth was unloading at quite unnecessary length about a review of a show he’d performed in at the Fringe.

‘You’re exposed up there: you lay yourself completely bare, utterly vulnerable. So when you read something like this you feel violated. These people know what they’re doing: they aim to wound you. They want to see you bleed.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Jasmine had said, perhaps one glass too many of vino bringing forth veritas. ‘Man up, it’s only a review.’

‘Of course it’s only a review
to you
,’ Gareth retorted. ‘You’ve never had one, so you wouldn’t know. You’d need to have been up there on a stage to understand what I’m talking about.’

There had been a time when this might have crushed Jasmine, to have her former aspirations thrown back in her face. That time was over.

‘Well, Gareth, you’ve got me there. But look at it from my point of view: once you’ve been shot at a couple of times, by somebody who is not aiming to wound, it kind of makes it hard to see what’s so violating about some wee wank at the
Scotsman
only giving you two stars.’

She was developing – some might say cultivating – a reputation for being spiky and a little unsympathetic, and she had stopped worrying about whether this meant she was wounded and embittered. Instead she had decided to wear bitch and see how it fitted. It wasn’t an everyday garment, but like the leather jacket she had on for the gig it felt just right now and again, when the context called for it.

She was okay. She was definitely okay.

Then she saw a ghost.

The support had finished and the seats began to fill up more while the road crew got busy dismantling their kit. People returned from the bar bearing pints in plastic tumblers, while others, arriving in time for the headliners, scanned the rows for a free spot, the seating being unreserved. Jasmine felt a growing buzz as the roadies made the final preparations: taping set-lists, draping towels, checking pedals.

She watched a guy and a girl make their way along the row two in front, apologising cheerfully to the people having to stand up to let them past. They were around her age, both wearing T-shirts bearing the band’s name, though not identical garments. They didn’t look up as they progressed, only at the people they were shifting and occasionally at the stage, so they didn’t see Jasmine, meaning she had no way of knowing whether the guy recognised her, but she definitely knew him. Having realised he was familiar, it took her a few moments of mentally thumbing through images until she could find a background against which he fitted, but when she got there it froze her.

His name was Scott, or possibly Sam. She didn’t quite remember that part, but she remembered that he had still been in fifth year at school, although looked older. She could remember which school (Glasgow Academy); she could remember the drainpipe jeans and Diesel-logo belt he’d been wearing; and she remembered how he kissed. It had been soft and slow, each kiss all there was and all he wanted: no wandering hands, no impatiently thrusting tongue.

The reason the context took a while to come up was because it was so close to her current one. She had danced and chatted and eventually snogged with him the last time she’d seen Twin Atlantic play.

It had been just before her mum got the diagnosis.

They’d traded numbers and he’d phoned, leaving messages. She never called back.

The lights went down and the Queen track playing on the PA was silenced, replaced by a sudden upsurge of excited screams. The band took the stage rather modestly, walking to their instruments with quiet purpose, almost as though conscious they hadn’t earned these cheers yet.

An electric guitar picked out its first notes with delicate precision, rousing more screams of recognition, then Sam McTrusty raised his head to the mike and began to sing.

‘
Yes, I was drunk…
’

It was her favourite song, one that always moved her, and the one she had most been hoping they’d play. Right then, though, it was more than moving her. She felt it wash over her. Felt a wave wash over her. Felt herself go under.

There was something intangible about watching a band play live, some quality that could not be recreated on any format, so that the most perfect recording, reproduced on the most sophisticated equipment, would never be more than a shadow on the cave wall. Despite having listened to both albums hundreds of times, it was as though she hadn’t truly heard Twin Atlantic since that other gig, and it connected her to that time in a way she just wasn’t ready for.

The ghost was herself, the person she had been that night.

And as the music played, the ghost possessed her. Suddenly she could see through that girl’s eyes again, see everything she had back then, everything she imagined was still before her.

Everything she was about to lose.

This wave was swamping her, rushing in over her head. She was drowning.

She couldn’t be here. She had to get out.

Jasmine shuffled along the row, her petite frame allowing her to squeeze past without asking people to stand up. She kept her head down, face angled towards the stage so that no one could see it.

We never want strangers to see we are crying. Why is that? She didn’t know. All she did know was that she was so very, very much alone.

Her mother was gone. She had no father, no boyfriend, and tonight, no friends at all.

She was not okay.

She managed to hide her tears until she reached the stairs, where she failed to stem the outpouring of huge, blubbing, abject, snottery and undignified sobs. She grabbed a banister for support, fearing she would collapse if she didn’t have something to hang on to.

‘You all right there wee yin?’ said a voice.

She couldn’t see properly for tears. It took a moment to focus once she had wiped her eyes.

It was Ned Untrusty. Christ, had he followed her up to the circle?

She wanted to tell him to go away, but she could hardly answer ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

A dozen sarcastic replies failed to reach her tongue. She felt so weak and insubstantial that he could have mopped her up and wrung her out into a bucket.

She could hear other voices now, and became aware that house staff were gathering to enquire and assist.

‘She just needs some air, I think,’ said Ned. ‘Mon outside for a second.’

He put a hand on her shoulder and she let him lead her because she knew that it would make the staff back off, and avoid turning this into a circus.

He had a Glasgow accent, which surprised her, as she had assumed he would be a local.

She felt humiliated by having to accept his help, but she couldn’t say why. Was it because she’d caught him staring and subconsciously rejected him? Or would she have felt humiliated at this point, having to accept the assistance of any stranger? Her desire to settle for him over a clucking assembly of staff indicated the latter.

He held the door for her and escorted her out onto the pavement. The air did help. As soon as she stepped outside she felt an outrush of pressure, a dissipation of everything that had besieged her.

‘Let me get you a wee drink,’ he said.

‘No, I’m okay.’

‘Just some water,’ he insisted. ‘And maybe a hanky, eh?’

Close up she realised he was younger than she had assumed: maybe eighteen or nineteen. The age was right, but little else about him seemed to fit a Twin Atlantic concert. It was easier to picture him stopped at the lights in a souped-up Peugeot, moronic dance beats thumping through the rolled-down windows.

She didn’t want to be fussed over, didn’t want to be in any way indebted to this chancer, but at least it would get her a moment alone while he went. She sniffed and nodded.

He returned after a few minutes bearing a bottle of still water and some napkins.

‘There you go.’

She accepted the water numbly with one hand and took the proffered napkins in the other.

As she mumbled her thanks she felt gratitude tinged with surprise at his solicitude. Disloyal as it felt to admit it, it was her mum’s fault. She had always been wary of guys who looked like they might be fly men or hardcases, especially if they had Glasgow accents. Growing up in Edinburgh, Jasmine had come to imagine the city along the motorway as being like some lawless frontier outpost, an impression her mother did little to dispel by never, ever going there.

She dabbed at her face, grateful she had decided against mascara. The tears had stopped, the sense of being engulfed lifted, like she had come up for air.

She took a few gulps of water, feeling a light breeze on her face and a pulse of bass in her body as the music throbbed from inside the theatre.

‘That better?’ her unlikely Samaritan asked. ‘You okay?’

He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t asked her what was wrong, for which she was grateful. He seemed a little distracted now though, perhaps impatient to get back to the show.

‘I’ll be fine now, thanks,’ she told him, but he made no move to return inside.

‘I think I’ll go to the Ladies, give my face a splash,’ she said.

It was somewhere he couldn’t follow her, a good way of breaking the connection. She just hoped he wouldn’t be hovering outside the loos, waiting for her when she came out. ‘Thanks,’ she added, by way of hinting that he was dismissed.

‘Nae bother. Look after yourself,’ he replied, remaining where he was.

‘You not coming in?’ she asked, trying to keep the relief from her voice.

‘Gaunny spark up, seeing I’m out here anyway. You want one?’

She declined and went back inside.

After her visit to the loo she returned to the circle and took a seat near the end of a row, where she didn’t need to disturb anyone to get past. Down and to her left she could see the guy she’d snogged, nodding to the beat. She didn’t experience anything weird this time, from seeing him or the band. The spell was broken. She could just enjoy the music.