After the Wedding.

We arrived tired and late at the hotel. Rush hour traffic on the M8. Tailbacks. Too few petrol stations and endless road blocks scoured what was left of our souls. The hotel was cheap as a second-hand suit and just as worn.

He mumbled something about changing for the wedding. But he lay on the other bed, scanning his phone. At least he took his shoes off. The secret was in his hand. So much had changed and remained the same. He wanted to be alone with his messages and glowered at me.

He ran a finger through his thinning red hair. He wore one of those ridiculous frilly shirts. A kilt with a sporran and thick woollen socks. A garter with a skean dhu. All that Braveheart tartan shite.  

He grunted. We’d passed the evolutionary married stage of talking. The adage, it happened slowly and suddenly, but that sounded too much like sex, which didn’t happen at all. Already there was that faint smell of both of us inhabiting a world too small. He gets up to smoke, opening the window and letting the darkness and the sound of traffic into our room.

I should get ready too, but lie on the other bed. Kick my shoes off and feel instant relief.

We grew up together, which is no excuse. I was something then. Or used to think so. I used to go missing. Getting up before my Da had got up for work. Setting off to the great unknown. Walking for hours, as far as I could go.

The Old Kilpatrick Hills and its muddy paths had that pull on me. I fell into the steady rhythm of walking and not thinking. I was giving the world a chance to get on without me. But it never did. My family only noticed when I slammed doors or turned the music on too loud. Bad temper. And terminal boredom. We thought it would never end.

I used to hate that I was taller than most of the boys. I got all the usual Lurch and Lofty jokes. I’d stoat around ducking under my misery.

Frank was a head smaller than me, but he used to have braw hair. He used to climb up on the garages to look over the privet hedge. Him and a few of his mates, ogling for hours. I sunbathed at the bottom of the garden. It was a suntrap. The closest we came to going on holiday, with bath towels and tap water. I wore those mirror sunglasses to look cool.

Lying face down. Summer on my back had no straps or rivers or tributaries of skin that lay unconquered. When I turned over I was sure to reach out and grasp with my fingertips extended for my bra of a towel to cover myself. Sometimes it slipped from my grasp and my adolescent breasts would perk up. They might well have seen my bum cheeks and a tuft of hair when I changed from summer and into my denims and blouse and normal clothes. I’d hear a gasp and play deaf. I swaggered in the back door and back to the comforting smell of fried food.   

Frank stubbed out the cigarette in the sink and ran the tap, leaving his mess swirling. His long nicotine-stained forefinger hooks the lower lid of his right eye. He checks to see if it’s bloodshot in the mirror. He checks the other eye and it’s as if I hear the plop as it slides into place He’s drinking too much.  

 Another one of his secrets that isn’t really a secret. He brushes his teeth and swills mouthwash and lets the water run. The sound of the water in the pipes is like a haunting

Satisfied. He grogs into the sink. Stares at me and dares me to complain.

He squints at his phone when it buzzes, and glares at me because he wants to be alone with it.  

‘Whit about dinner?’ he asks.

‘The now?’

‘Aye.’

‘But we’ll get something at the wedding. And I don’t want to spoil my appetite.’

‘Why no? It’s a wedding. Who gi’es a fuck?’

I tug on my shoes and follow him down the ill-lit stairs. We emerge into a room, criss-crossed with beams. Tapestry covered armchairs and lampshades that look as if they’ve been knitted by old women using nylon thread.

I walk into the dining room, while he goes to the bar and orders a double. I gawk at the napery and waiters setting the tables. A dark-haired and Asian man approaches cautiously and smiles with a flash of teeth as he hands me a menu. ‘Everything all right?’ he asks ‘You are with the wedding party?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘My partner is getting me a grapefruit juice.’

But when I turn towards the bar, he is gone. The waiter grips the crook of my arm to stop me from falling.

They bring me coffee and grapefruit. The room is warm and glistening. People at nearby tables fill the room with quiet voices. I don’t recognise any of the faces and my crying subsides.

‘Would you like me to call anyone?’ the waiter asks.

‘No, I have a room here. And I’ll wait until my husband returns.’

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. He waves a colleague over to stand guard while he goes to make a call.

The Old Kilpatrick Hills are not far off. I could curl into the fireplace and fall asleep. The rain continues splashing down and I love to think of the greenery and how I used to get lost and nobody noticed or seemed to care.

A piper pipes the bride in and I stare at her with bloodshot eyes and raise a withered Samaritan hand in warning at the borders of darkness. The way she stoops and skulks under herself in a white dress like a blind man with a white stick. Her husband-to-be waits for her, pale skinned, clean shaven and blank faced. He winks and smiles at me.