Shadows

‘You should consult a witch, Robin.’ Mhari’s laugh was more like a gurgle that dried up when men weren’t about. ‘You’re cursed. The evil eye or something.’  She’ s like that. She talks ten-to-the-dozen and all her husbands have numbers attached. I’d met them and been bridesmaid for two, but they were all an amorphous mass, apart from number 4, who tried to rape me in a cupboard and was black affronted when I screamed. Maybe I was being racist. He lasted about as long as an out-of-date banana. I sometimes wondered if Mhari ate anything. If she poured protein drinks over her peroxide hair and watered herself like a plant that wore designer gear. She was a good friend. My only friend, she kept reminding me. We went back a long way to school. She was so in love with George Michael. I had to pretend to be in love with the other Whammer, Andrew Ridgley, so she wouldn’t be jealous, in case I ran off with George. She had enough smarts to count her fingers, but she kept telling me she was a super successful beautician that done Botox, so she kept the world beautiful. There was no arguing with that or the potted plants I’d left behind.  

All my stuff was packed into boxes waiting for the removal people. But there weren’t any removal people, apart from her and me. I’d lost my job. My landlord, who said he was a friend, really, had doubled the rent overnight, and tried to hit on me, asked if I loved anal when he heard my boyfriend—fiancée number 1—admitted that he’d been having sex with other men, and I might want to get myself checked out for potential STDs. The clinic had told him to tell me that or they would have to. I’d told my landlord I’d tested positive, but we could still have sex if he wanted, but I heard he’d a wee dick, so it probably wasn’t worth our while. Wee dick’s choice. Oh, yeh, then my cat died. It wasn’t much of a companion, but it was mine when I fed it. Then my mum died. I had to remember to cry at her funeral, and I did when I remembered the cost and thought of the cat and all that wasted cat food I’d just bought.  

I didn’t want to return to Dalmuir. It was the kind of shithole I’d been escaping from all my life. But as Mhari pointed out, beggars can’t be choosers. And If I hurried, I could move into mum’s old council house before they changed the locks. I noticed as we drove over she swerved around the subject of staying with her, even though she was between marriages and had a three bedroom house in Bearsden. I’d have been willing to camp out in her double garage.  

Mum’s house was on Dumbarton Road. An old tenement, third floor, two-bedroomed flat. I pulled a black plastic back from the back seat and heard my past rattling outside as I put out down on the pavement. Mhari left the engine running and still had her seatbelt on.

‘Aren’t you going to help?’ I asked her.

She gave me the false smile and the nod. As if it pained her telling me she was royalty, ‘I would, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

I leaned over and tugged another plastic bag onto the pavement. ‘But if you help, you’ll get away quicker.’

She considered this as she licked her lips and leaned over to get a better angle of her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Sorry, Babes, but it’s just…you know?’ Mhari’s good at pausing, as if she means something.

‘Aye, Mhari, I dae know. I know you all too well.’

Something broke in one of the bags when I put it on the pavement. I knew what it was, but didn’t want to look. It was getting dark and it started battering down with rain. My clothes were in suitcases in the boot. I didn’t have a jacket and stupid shoes on.   

She tooted the horn when she left and held her arm up in the air and waved. Stupid me, waved back.

Two of the bags were good for wedging the external door in the close open. A guy squeezed past me. A white baseball cap on his head with a blue splash on Nike on the visor. He made a quiet study of me out of the side of his eyes. We were around the same age, but I felt older, much older.

‘You want a hand?’ he asked. The cuffs of his denim jacket were frayed and dirty, long arms poking out. Ripped hole in the knee, frayed denim that used to be trendy. His skin as pale as the moon. Something unwashed about him.

‘Nah,’ I replied when I was already past him, lugging three bags up the stairs. I didn’t walk like other girls, like Mhari, with a pretend bounce and fade. A look behind me to show that I did need help from a man.  

He was standing in the close smoking, when I came back down. ‘You still here?’

He spat a bit of rolled tobacco off his lower lip and squinted at me. The blue in his irises sparkled and I felt stupid caught looking. ‘Somebody’s got to keep an eye on your stuff.’

I felt like saying, well don’t. But since he wasn’t my type, and I still had Mhair’s number, and she might want him, I was mannerly. ‘Cheers mate.’

He used his foot to wedge the door open for me when I lifted the last of the bags.

‘You sure you don’t want a hand?’ he said.

‘Smoking’s no good for you.’

‘I know.’ He flicked the dout into the rain. A car backfired, or at least that’s what it sounded like, but it was probably just spoilers.

‘You take they two bags then,’ I told him.

He nodded and repeated after me, ‘These two?’ Even though there were only two bags left. He lifted them with dirt-encrusted fingernails and smiled with crooked teeth.