button and the wire gate pushed open. “Gordon’s in the back. Let Uncle Jerry put these things away and I’ll be through for a spraff. Tell Gordon tae put the kettle on.”
No matter how short Gordon cropped his hair, you could still tell he was ginger. That summer he was supposed to be learning the retail trade from Jerry, but I found him slouched in an armchair, trying to ignore Jason. Jason was kneeling on a large square cushion, punching it. He pulled a corner to his contorted face and head-butted it. “Stitch: like fuckin that.” It was a demonstration of what he’d done to someone, or what he was going to do to someone, or what he would do if he ever met someone—if, just supposing, those fucking Gallagher twats came in here trying to act hard, giving it, “Alright ahr kid, let’s fuckin ave it,” then Jason would be like, “Right you English cunts,” and he’d leather them, get on top of Liam and smack his nose so it went back into his brain. Stitch: like fucking that. He stopped and looked at me. “Fuck are you lookin at?”
“Alright Jason.”
“Naw. Ah’m fuckin no.”
“Jerry says you’re tae put the kettle on, by the way.”
“Dinnae fuckin ignore me, ya tube.”
Gordon shuffled to the kettle.
“You’re a fuckin wide-o, by the way, goin aboot sayin ye can have me and aw this.”
“...”
Jason ran across the floor and bored his forehead into mine. “Fuck are ye smilin at?” We stood head to head and you could hear his leather jacket creak.
“Anybody else wantin tea?” asked Gordon.
“Aye, ah’ll take one. Fuck sake, Wayne. Nae need tae get aw humpty; ah wis only huvin a laugh wi ye.”
As I smiled and tried to laugh, Gordon opened the door to the toilet cubicle and a cloud of smell floated across the back room—a stench of shit that wore lemon air freshener like earrings. “What’s that stink?” said Jason. “Were ye that feart ye shat yer keks, Wayne?” Jerry had permanent diarrhoea, something to do with the drugs he took for his HIV, and sometimes we’d hear rasping, splattering excretions, that were violent and thrashing like a fight in a swimming pool.
Gordon turned the tap. The pipes groaned and the trickle clattered the metal wash basin. “You huvin tea, Wayne?”
“Nah, no thanks,” I said, sitting on Jerry’s footstool.
Jason crossed the room to spit in the sink. He dredged for more phlegm, spat again, dredged again. He was always dredging for phlegm and spitting clear saliva. It was like someone had put something horrible inside him and he couldn’t get it out. After a minute, he slumped into the armchair and rested his feet on my lap. I shook them off. “Dick,” he said, kicking my shin, but he didn’t put his feet back. “No danger ah’m sittin aboot here aw day, by the way.”
The backroom was a grim place to spend a sunny afternoon: it had one small barred window and a bare light bulb and cracks crawled across the dark corners of its ceiling. The shelves were cluttered with broken electrics and equipment for examining or repairing jewellery. There were a few books and some yellowing copies of the Daily Mail. We had long ago decided that all the excitement happened in Jerry’s office, where we weren’t allowed. In Jerry’s office, deals were concluded with international art thieves, or so we liked to think.
“Is that kettle boiled?” called Jerry (Jason jumped out of the armchair). “Ahhh, there we go. Aye.” Jerry sat down, sighing in chorus with the chair. “So Wayne, have you and Deanne patched things up yet?” He noticed something in the Daily Mail and lost interest in his own question.
“Aye and no. No and aye. I seen her, but just to get my Bonkers CD. You ken how it is; we’ve just grown apart. We’ll definitely stay friends.”
“Aye” said Jerry. “I told her, Wayne. I said no lass of mine’s gonnae marry a wop. You know? I said the bastard will change sides in the time it takes ye tae walk up the aisle. Abscond wi the minister or something.”
“Did you get it?” asked Gordon.
“What?”
“The CD.”
“Aye, well. No. He broke it.”
“I told her, an Eyetie’s only a bit better than a nigger.”
“Who?”
“Fuckin Giorgio.”
“Fenian bastard,” said Jason.
“How?” said Gordon.
“Well, I was talking to Deanne and he was hanging about like a bad smell. So I was like, ‘Look mate, make yourself useful: nip upstairs and get my CD.’ When he brings it down, it’s broken. So I’m like, ‘What the fuck’s with this?’ He’s all like, ‘Oh I don’t know anything about it.’ And I’m just like, ‘You’re fuckin sad mate.’ Then he starts going radio, so I’m like, ‘Let’s fucking go.’ And he slams the door, bolts it, and starts shouting through the letterbox that he’s gonnae get a posse to kick my head in.”
“Aye?” said Gordon, not totally convinced by this version of events.
“That’s oot ae order,” said Jason. “That prick thinks he runs this toon.”
“And he’s been treatin Deanne like shite. I’ve heard he’s goin aboot callin her a whore and that.”
“Fuckin Brussels,” said Jerry, shaking his head at the paper.
I remember us on Giorgio’s street: three long shadows like something from a western. I remember us at his door. Gordon and Jason are hiding against the wall. Gordon is patting a pudgy palm with a knuckle of medallion rings, and Jason is holding a hammer. I chap the letterbox. “Dae it fuckin properly,” says Jason. He spits on the path and rattles the flap as hard as he can.
An internal door opens. A television audience applauds. The lock clunks. Giorgio stands in a white Yves Saint Laurent shirt. “Whadda fuck? Whad’I fuckin tell you, ah?” Jason leaps from behind the door and cracks Giorgio’s thigh with the hammer. He thumps the hammer into his ribs—like he’s chopping a tree. Giorgio falls into the hallway and Jason jumps on him, punching his face, again and again. Giorgio’s head is whiplashing, bouncing off the ground, and Deanne’s running down the stairs with her nightgown open.
5
I didn’t see Deanne until November 1997, by which time she had given birth to a small golem-like creature. She called it David and spoke to it as if it were a person. Sometimes she paraded it, as though the pram was an open-topped bus and the creature was the Scottish Cup. “Is he no just gorgeous?”
“Aye,” I said, wondering how such a thing could have happened in so brief a time. A few years later, when Gordon told me Deanne was dead, I had the same reaction. “I saw her in town only last Monday!” I said, like I was amazed the Grim Reaper hadn’t been carrying her shopping.
Deanne had found Giorgio in bed with a sixteen-year-old hairdresser from Stirling and had immediately forgiven Gordon and me. The one time I mentioned Jason, she shrugged and said “That’s in the past.” Meanwhile, I’d met Kit at work. Kit, with her blonde pigtails and pale face, had started working at Benny’s in March ’97. When you live in a small town, everyone is the friend of someone you know; the local papers are full of tales of serendipity, of long lost brothers who lived next door to each other and men who found their mother in law’s wallet on the High Street; we all live like celebrities, worrying who will recognise us if we go to the shops in old clothes. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that Kit and Deanne had grown up on the same street, and had, at one time, been best friends. Kit knew that Deanne and I had slept together, but was satisfied that all that was in the past. Time had