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Authors: Irvine Welsh
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up nothing but a steady flow of paggers and vendettas past. This is no place for him to be conflicted. He hunches into a bus shelter and pulls out the Tesco phone, trying to punch in Melanie’s cell number through the use of antiquated, multi-function keys. Rage rises in his chest, and he tries to breathe slowly, as with the activity of his big fingers and the jumping display on the liquid crystal, the shifting hieroglyphics slowly take shape as her number. Present with him in the bus shelter: a dead pigeon, a discarded kebab (which looks in better shape than the deceased bird) and two empty tins of Tennent’sSuper Lager, one stacked neatly on top of the other. Euphoria rises in Franco as Melanie’s full number, with the US +1 dialling code is completed in its entirety.
Then the phone dies. It just switches itself off.
Franco presses the buttons feverishly. Nothing. It has perished. He looks at it in searing fury, thinks about crushing it under his heel. Instead he boots the cans down the pavement and stuffs the phone back into his pocket.
Breathe. One, two, three.
The rain has whipped up and beats on the back of the bus shelter, as Franco briefly succumbs to a phantom memory, warm and good, but never completely dancing out of his mind’s shadow to reveal itself fully. A girl’s hand touching his, her hair grazing his face, her scent in his nostrils. Did things like that happen to him, before Melanie? Surely yes. But he can’t allow it; can’t permit this place to be anything other than what he’s made it. Then the drumming eases off as the wind drops and the rain peters out, back into a thin drizzle.
The stair is easily found. At one time he’d made fairly advanced plans to fire-bomb the house next door, which was occupied by Cha Morrison, his old nemesis. It astonishes him now to think that he cared enough about this guy to consider doing that. What great crime had Morrison committed against him, or he against Morrison? Nothing whatsoever sprang to mind. It had all been talk, which had then ramped up, becoming a bizarre sequence of threat and counter-threat. Otherwise there was zero basis for their rivalry. They had jointly manufactured this conflict to give their lives drama, imagining it into brutal reality.
He goes into the neighbouring stair and realises that of the six flats, he can’t recall which one is occupied by June. He has no idea what name she will be using. There is no sign of ‘Chisholm’, her maiden name, or, to his relief, ‘Begbie’, which she’d taken to calling herself, and had registered Sean and Michael’s births under, although she and Franco had never married. No door suggests great wealth, so he opts for the one that gives the strongest impression of teeming squalor. It is painted black, some of which has spilled onto the frame, and it looks battered, with a Sellotaped, yellowing piece of paper, indicating that a J. McNAUGHTON resides there. He taps on the door and, sure enough, June answers.
Even since he’d last briefly seen her at his mother’s funeral, surprisingly obese, June has massively expanded. It’s impossible to square this version with the thin, brittle one of his memory. She looks at him, and, for an excruciating second, seems as if she is going to hug him. Her lips quiver, and her eyes implore. But then she turns abruptly, and heads inside. Assailed by the smell of cats and old, congealed deep-fried fat and, most of all, stale tobacco, he follows her into the flat.
Franco finds it hard to believe that he is facing her. She has sat opposite him in a faded floral-pattern armchair, part of a suite that is way too big for the cramped council flat. He can barely fathom how small the homes are. The room seems to conspicuously flaunt poverty.
— The game’s no straight, aye, she says, obviously doped up on antidepressants. Her eyes seem dulled and set far back into a now-bulbous head, which was once little more than a skull.
— Aye, he agrees, as a wary boy of
Then the phone dies. It just switches itself off.
Franco presses the buttons feverishly. Nothing. It has perished. He looks at it in searing fury, thinks about crushing it under his heel. Instead he boots the cans down the pavement and stuffs the phone back into his pocket.
Breathe. One, two, three.
The rain has whipped up and beats on the back of the bus shelter, as Franco briefly succumbs to a phantom memory, warm and good, but never completely dancing out of his mind’s shadow to reveal itself fully. A girl’s hand touching his, her hair grazing his face, her scent in his nostrils. Did things like that happen to him, before Melanie? Surely yes. But he can’t allow it; can’t permit this place to be anything other than what he’s made it. Then the drumming eases off as the wind drops and the rain peters out, back into a thin drizzle.
The stair is easily found. At one time he’d made fairly advanced plans to fire-bomb the house next door, which was occupied by Cha Morrison, his old nemesis. It astonishes him now to think that he cared enough about this guy to consider doing that. What great crime had Morrison committed against him, or he against Morrison? Nothing whatsoever sprang to mind. It had all been talk, which had then ramped up, becoming a bizarre sequence of threat and counter-threat. Otherwise there was zero basis for their rivalry. They had jointly manufactured this conflict to give their lives drama, imagining it into brutal reality.
He goes into the neighbouring stair and realises that of the six flats, he can’t recall which one is occupied by June. He has no idea what name she will be using. There is no sign of ‘Chisholm’, her maiden name, or, to his relief, ‘Begbie’, which she’d taken to calling herself, and had registered Sean and Michael’s births under, although she and Franco had never married. No door suggests great wealth, so he opts for the one that gives the strongest impression of teeming squalor. It is painted black, some of which has spilled onto the frame, and it looks battered, with a Sellotaped, yellowing piece of paper, indicating that a J. McNAUGHTON resides there. He taps on the door and, sure enough, June answers.
Even since he’d last briefly seen her at his mother’s funeral, surprisingly obese, June has massively expanded. It’s impossible to square this version with the thin, brittle one of his memory. She looks at him, and, for an excruciating second, seems as if she is going to hug him. Her lips quiver, and her eyes implore. But then she turns abruptly, and heads inside. Assailed by the smell of cats and old, congealed deep-fried fat and, most of all, stale tobacco, he follows her into the flat.
Franco finds it hard to believe that he is facing her. She has sat opposite him in a faded floral-pattern armchair, part of a suite that is way too big for the cramped council flat. He can barely fathom how small the homes are. The room seems to conspicuously flaunt poverty.
— The game’s no straight, aye, she says, obviously doped up on antidepressants. Her eyes seem dulled and set far back into a now-bulbous head, which was once little more than a skull.
— Aye, he agrees, as a wary boy of
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