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  Andy raised his eyes in compliance and Rab was just about to move over when he felt an arm on his shoulder. — They didnae tell ays that they lit schemies in here, the huge figure grinned at him. Rab was six foot but he felt like a midget beside this giant of a man. He was all muscle, with not an ounce of fat on him.

  — Fuckin hell, Lexo, how ye daein man? Rab smiled.

  — No bad. Come ower n huv a gless ay champagne, Lexo said, gesturing into the corner where Rab spied a poncy-looking cunt and two women, one twenties, one thirties. — These twats are fae this TV production company. Thir daein a documentary oan casuals n they signed ays up as a technical adviser.

  Rab clocked with approval the yellow Paul and Shark yachting jacket Lexo sported. It was one of those reversible numbers, which came in handy in the old days for identification purposes. He remembered Conrad Donaldson QC’s performances back in the day: — You say one of the accused wore a red jacket, then it was black. This while another had a black jacket which miraculously turned blue. You admit you had been drinking alcohol. Did you take any other intoxicating substance that afternoon?

  The prosecution would object and it would be sustained, but the damage had been done. Lexo and Ghostie always insisted that the boys that went with them were well turned out. He remembered them sending two renowned game-scrapers home, simply because they were wearing Tommy Hilfiger (‘Schemie Hilfiger’) tops and jeans. — Ah’d rather be done than dress like that, Ghostie had stated. — Ye need standards. That’s awright if yir fae somewhaire like Dundee.

  Lexo had more or less gone legit since his pal Ghostie’s demise at the hands of the polis. — Ye gaun tae Easter Road the morn? Rab asked.

  — Naw, ah’ve no been doon fir ages, Lexo shook his head.

  Birrell nodded thoughtfully. These days you were more likely to find some of the old crew in the Fringe Club than at Easter Road.

  Rab and Andy had a drink from the flutes, then excused themselves. Lexo had business to attend to and was already zoning them out of the company after he’d made the show of introducing them. Through having shared a room with his elder brother Billy for years, Rab understood the attention span of the hard cunt better than most. They gave, they took, on their own terms. Forcing them to engage through pushy conversation only irritated them. Rab Birrell was also finding it a bit nauseating the way the TV people were hanging on Lexo’s every word and getting visibly aroused at his anecdotes, selectively crafted to portray him as a great leader who pulled off spectacular swedging victories against all odds. As Rab and Andy took their leave, Lexo said, — Tell yir brar ah’m askin fir um.

  Rab could guess Lexo’s comments to the eager media types now. It would be something along the lines of: Aye, that’s Rab Birrell, no a bad cunt. Used tae fancy ehsel as a casual for a couple ay seasons, but eh wisnae a top boy. Bright cunt, at college now, or so they say. Ehs brother Billy’s a different story though. Used tae be a good boxer . . .

  Billy was always a different story. Rab was thinking about the envelope that his brother had given him, a few days before, at the family home. It contained two Fringe Club memberships, two cinema tickets and five hundred quid. He looked down to see and feel the wad, making a substantial bulge in his Levi’s pockets.

  — Ah dinnae need this, Rab had responded, without attempting to hand it back.

  Billy waved him away, then raised his hands. — Take it. Enjoy the Festival. Students dinnae huv it easy, he added. Sandra nodded in agreement. Wullie was plugged into his PC, surfing the Internet. He spent most of his time checking out websites on the computer Billy had bought them. The Internet and cooking had become his twin obsessions since his retirement.

  — C’moan Rab, it’s nowt tae me. Ah widnae dae it if ah couldnae afford it, Billy implored. And Billy wasn’t being flash, well maybe a bit, but mainly he was just being Billy. He was looking after the people close to him simply because he could, and that was that. But Rab saw the expression of cloying indulgence on his mother’s face, and wondered why this couldn’t have been done privately, just the two of them. As he pocketed the envelope with a restrained, lame-sounding, — Cheers, he thought how strange it was that your brother could be your hero and nemesis at the same time.

  Billy would be relaxed in a place like this, every bit as in his element as Lexo was now. Rab wasn’t at ease though. He thought it might be a good idea to head over to Stewart’s or Rutherford’s. They would probably be full of Festival types slumming it, he considered.

  Somewhere Near the

  Blue Mountains, New South

  Wales, Australia

  Tuesday 7.38 pm

  I want this to be over. You take too much because you want to feel or see something different, but only for a short time. I can’t take this because I’ve got to the point that I’m not learning anything through it. It’s just another fuckin struggle. What the fuck is staying awake for days and days meant to teach me? Like when we were kids in the summer and we would spin and spin in front of the flats until we had some daft trippy blackout and then we’d lie panting, sick and dizzy on the grass. The grown-ups, sittin out in the sun, would tell us to stop. They knew we were only fucking ourselves up and that no higher consciousness awaited. There was a time when I thought that they were trying to stop us from gaining entry into a secret world, but now I know that they just couldn’t be bothered cleaning up after all those sick, puking little cunts.

  But I’m doing it again, lying to myself in the name of oblivion. I want to see and feel less, rather than more, that’s why I’m off my tits. Bottom line: I’m fucking up and for no apparent reason.

  ssssssssssHHOOOOMMMMmmm

  It’s hitting me hard now, all the trips and pills I swallowed. All the powders I took up my fucked-up hooter.

  wwwhhhhhOOOOSSSSShhhhh

  I cry out to hear my voice reverberate across the Blue Mountains, but I can’t even see the other fuckers and I’m right in the middle of them. I can’t see the dense, lush foliage, which surrounds the clearing we’re dancing in. No, I cry, but I can’t hear my voice, nor can anybody else, what with the relentless throb of the bass, and I feel the contents of my guts separate from me and the soft ground rushes up to my face.

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  Wednesday 11.14 am

  Post Mother, Post Alec

  Terry was having problems. Big problems. He had always had a woman to look after him. Now his mother had left. His mother, gone the way of his wife. And she had remained friends with his ex, for the sake of her grandson Jason, or so the auld boot always claimed. But she had probably talked all this over with Lucy, the two of them conspiring against him, backed up by that big twat Lucy had got together with. He’d never been serious about that relationship, if he was honest to himself. It was just a ride off a smart-looking bird who knew how to dress on a night out. It lasted a year, which was about a year longer than it would have had the kid not come along. Vivian was different. She was a wee gem and he’d treated her like shite. The only long-term girlfriend he’d had. Three years. Loved her, but treated her like shite and she always forgave him. Loved and respected her enough to realise that he was damaged goods: to leave her, let her move on. After that night on the bridge he went off the rails. Naw, he was never on the fucking rails, what was he on aboot?

  There had been other, episodic, short-term cohabitations. A series of women had occasionally moved him in, only to realise that the problems which led to their use of Valium, Prozac and other tranquillisers paled into insignificance beside this new status quo. In his mind’s eye, their faces melded into one vague, disapproving pout. In no time at all they would clean up and kick him out, back to his mother’s. But now his own mother had gone. Terry considered the ramifications of this. To all intents and purposes he had been abandoned. His own mother. What was it about women? What was their problem? But Terry wasn’t quite abandoned. The phone rang and it was his buddy Post Alec.

  — Terry . . . Alec croaked dryly into the receiver. Terry knew Alec well
enough to recognise a formidable hangover. Admittedly, this didn’t require great powers of deduction as Alec only operated in two basic modes: pished and hungover. In fact, Alec’s continuing existence on the planet over the last five years constituted a major setback for the sciences of physiology and medicine. Alec had acquired the nickname ‘Post’ due to a short period of legitimate employment with the Royal Mail.

  — Awright Alec. The four hoarsemen ay the apocalypse oan yir fuckin back again mate, aye?

  — Ah wish thir wis jist the four ay the cunts, Alec moaned. — Ma heid’s nippin. Listen Terry, ah need a wee hand wi a joab. Legit likes, he added almost apologetically.

  — Fuck off, Terry said incredulously, — when did you ivir dae anything legit in yir puff, ya chancin auld cunt?

  — Gen up, Alec protested, — meet ays doon Ryrie’s in half an ooir.

  Terry went to get changed. Climbing the stairs he headed into his bedroom, taking stock of the house as he went. He’d have to maintain this tenancy, not just a drag, but a major hassle. Still, the auld girl might come to her senses.

  Giving the flat a quick survey, Terry considered that the replacement windaes the council had put in had made a big difference. It was a lot warmer and a lot quieter now. Mind you, there was still a damp patch which kept coming through under the windae sill; they’d been out a couple of times and done some work on it, but the cunt kept coming back. It reminded Terry of Alec. He had to admit that the place needed redecorating. His room was a state. The poster of the lassie tennis player scratching her arse, and the one of the nude which traces Freud’s profile, ‘what’s on a man’s mind’. There was the one of Debbie Harry circa the late seventies, early eighties and Madonna a few years later. He had one of All Saints now. They were rides. The Spice Girls, they were just like the birds you could meet in Lord Tom’s or any meat market on Lothian Road. You wanted the classy, unapproachable type of birds on your wall. Terry only bought dirty mags when an unapproachable star posed nude.

  The Balmoral

  The thin young woman looked tense and pale as she sat cross-legged on the bed of the hotel room, taking a break from reading a magazine to light a cigarette. She looked up, vaguely distracted, and blew a smoke ring as she contemplated her surroundings. It was just another room. Rising to look out of the window she saw a castle on a hill towering above her. Although that was unusual enough, it still didn’t impress. To her, the view from the window had assumed the same dulled and flattened aspect of one of the pictures on the wall. — Another city, she mused.

  There was a rhythmic, intimate knock on the door and a chunkily built man came in. He had a crew-cut and wore a pair of silver-rimmed glasses.

  — You okay, honey? he enquired.

  — I guess.

  — We should phone Taylor and go to dinner.

  — I’m nat hungry.

  She seemed so small on that massive bed, the man thought, focusing on her bare arms. There was no meat on them and just contemplating its absence made his own abundant flesh quiver. Her face was a skull with plastic-like skin stretched over it. As she reached over and flicked her cigarette ash into the bedside ashtray he thought about the time he’d fucked her, just the once, all those years ago. She had seemed distracted and didn’t get there. He could arouse no passion in her and after the event he felt like a sad charity case who’d been given a handout. A goddamn insult, but his own fault for trying to mix business and pleasure, not that there had been much of the latter.

  It had all started around that time, this bullshit eating disorder. Franklin paused tensely for a second, knowing that he was about to go through the same scene he had gone through so many times before and to an absolutely futile end.

  — Look Kathryn, you know what the doctor said. You gotta eat. Otherwise you are dead . . . he halted, omitting the term ‘meat’. It didn’t seem appropriate.

  She briefly glanced up at him, before averting her empty gaze. In a certain light her countenance was already a death’s-head mask. Franklin felt resignation’s familiar ebb. — I’m gonna call room-service . . . He picked up the phone and ordered a club sandwich and a pot of coffee.

  — I thought that you and Taylor were eating out, Kathryn said.

  — This is for you, he told her, trying to overlay the aggravation in his voice with a coat of lulling appeasement, and failing completely.

  — Don’t want it.

  — Try, baby, will you? Please? Try for me, he begged, pointing to himself.

  But Kathryn Joyner was miles away. She scarcely noticed her longtime friend and manager Mitchell Franklin Delaney Jr. leaving the room.

  Cocks Oot fir the Lassies

  — Cocks oot fir the lassies, Lisa shouted at the two young studenty guys who made their way past them down the train. One of the boys got a beamer, but the other smiled back at them. Angie and Shelagh sniggered as their victims moved into the next carriage. Charlene, younger than the other three, who were in their mid-twenties, forced a tight smile. They were always joking about ‘Wee Charlene’ and how they were a corrupting influence on her. Charlene considered that that three would be a corrupting influence on anybody.

  — Thir jist fuckin wee laddies, Angie said, shaking her head and tossing back a mop of brown curls. Her huge, round face, caked in make-up, her big hands with the implausibly long red-and-yellow nail extensions she’d got done in Ibiza. She made Charlene feel like a kid, and sometimes she just wanted to burrow into the security of those huge breasts which seemed to precede her friend’s entrance into a room by about ten minutes.

  Lisa stood up as Angie and Shelagh started a drum roll. — Yir no chasin they wee fuckers ur ye? Yir a fuckin Stoat, hen, Shelagh scoffed.

  Shelagh, tall and gangling, with short, spiky, peroxide-blonde hair, so thin and fine, just like the rest of her. Ate and drank like a fish and still had a coathanger-skinny frame. Swore and cursed and drank the most mad-for-it laddies right under the table. Angie didn’t like the way the rest of them could eat and drink anything, while she just had to look at a packet of crisps for it to register on the scales.

  — Am ah fuck, Lisa said, but with a sly nod, — jist gaun fir a smoke in the bogs, and she moved away in exaggerated movements, parodying a catwalk model. She glanced briefly back at her pals for a reaction, marvelling at their Mediterranean tans, just how good they made you look and feel. It was worth the skin-cancer risk, worth spending middle-age looking like a dried-out old prune. Later would take care of later.

  Angie winked at Charlene. — Aye, gaun tae apply the lip-gloss mair like it, she shouted at Lisa’s back. Turning to Shelagh and Charlene she asked, — Ye reckon that dirty cow’s away tae make some waves fir the wee man in the boat?

  — Aye, it’ll be a long time before she comes back doon tae earth fae Ibiza. Filthy tart, Shelagh laughed.

  Charlene felt a little ache in her chest at the thought of it all coming to an end. Not so much finishing the holiday, or even going back to work: there would be plenty of stories to tell to make that bearable for a bit. It was just the fact of them not being together every day. She’d miss that, miss them. Especially Lisa. The funny thing was that Charlene had known her for ages. They’d worked together at the Transport Department in the Civil Service. Lisa never really talked to her then, and Charlene supposed that she was a bit too young and uncool for her. But then Lisa had packed it in and headed off to India. It was only since she’d got back to Edinburgh last year, when Charlene had teamed up with Angie and Shelagh, Lisa’s old mates, that they’d become pals. Charlene thought that Lisa might have difficulty in accepting her. The reverse happened, and they rapidly became close friends. Lisa was some machine, awright. — Aye, she wis sayin that she wants tae go oot the night, cause the Festival’s oan, Charlene said.

  — Fuck that, ah’m gaun tae ma bed, Shelagh said, picking a crumb of sleep from the corner of her eye.

  — Alone? Angie teased.

  — Too right. Ah’ve hud enough. Some ay us huv goat a normal fanny between
oor legs, hen, no the fuckin Mersey Tunnel. If that Leonardo DiCaprio came roond tae mines wi five grammes ay charlie, two boatils ay Bicardi n said, ‘Let’s go tae bed, baby’, ah’d jist turn roond n say, ‘Some other time, pal.’

  Charlene watched in morbid fascination as Shelagh rolled and flicked away the crumb, trying not to be too turned off by her pal’s antics. She cursed herself for being so squeamish. Ibiza with that mob was no place for the faint-hearted, and at times she’d found it all too much.

  The scoreline had said it all: 8, 6, 5 and 1.

  The one was Charlene, of course. There had been another two, where she hadn’t gone all the way, one of them being a lot better than the tense and jagged occasion when she had. Charlene hated one-night stands, even on holiday.

  That guy, he’d sweated and slobbered all over her, then crashed out as soon as he’d shot his load into the condom he’d complained about having to wear. She’d been drunk, but as soon as he’d started she wished she’d been drunker still.

  In the morning he got dressed early and said, — See you later, Charlotte.

  Even the guy she’d had the petting session with, he had called her Arlene, and had left a pile of sick on the floor of her bedroom in the chalet. That was the one who eventually got all nasty and called her peculiar, for not wanting to shag him.

  San Antonio had been no place for the faint-hearted.

  Now she was going home to her mother’s.

  Angie had lost one of her large hooped earrings, and Charlene thought that she should mention it, but it was Angie who spoke first. — Aye, ah’ve hud it wi cock n aw. But no Leez. She’ll no be gaun tae her bed, well, no oan her tod anywey. What’s she like?

  — She’s some machine. Shagging that boy fae Tranent in the bogs comin back oan the plane. Tranent! Ye go aw the wey thaire n dae that wi somebody fae Tranent! Charlene said, aghast. Then she shuddered. The whole point of going there was to fuck somebody. And she’d had one crap encounter. And now they were going to talk about it.