school photos 29

Lying on top of the blankets on my bed I flicked through a wash-stained copy of The Reader’s Digest I’d found—and never thought I’d read—in the bottom drawer of my bedside cabinet. I took a shine to a story about some old guy that took his son fishing. A voice was calling to them.  With the sticky-warmth of the ward I must have dozed off because in my dream I was the boy’s son fishing in a free-flowing river—something I’d never done in real life. My dad had gone missing.  His voice hailed me from over the next crag. I followed the dip of the stream and climbed up a steep embankment, but no matter how quickly I ran the wavering voice stayed the same distance away. Midges rained in on me.  Something flicked at my ears and my eyes flickered open. The book had fallen to the side of the bed. Janine’s face, her halo of hair, crowed above me. She giggled. ‘Caught you,’ she said, and poked a bony finger into my chest.

I’d stashed the pills I’d been given by the nursing staff, wrapped them in toilet roll inside an old sock, and stashed in among my grotty shirts. But I wasn’t sure whether to give them to her because she’d been a pain in the arse with my mum. Something about her childish laugh though, her bright eyes and lips, the way she was stroking through the stretched cloth of my Y-fronts, made my mind insides tumble like a fruit machine and all the answers and questions came up YES, YES, YES.

Afterwards, when our breathing was shallow, we’d dropped off for a bit and snuggled up face to face on the single bed, I told her I loved her. Her eyes searched mine for what seemed the longest time.

‘Good.’ She turned to face the rain playing outside on the window and I spooned into her back. Her tone was noncommittal, as if I’d handed her a piece of timber she’d been looking for and not those pills which she’d already gobbled down. ‘I’m going out later to pick up my Giro. You fancy coming with me?’

‘Whit-do-you-mean?’

‘I said I’m going out to pick up my Giro.’

Sliding my arm under the mattress from underneath her pliable body and wiggling my bum backwards so I could sit up, I answered in an exasperated way.

‘Ah know whit you mean, but you’re no’ talkin’ sense.’

She snorted, which might have been a laugh. ‘That’s why I’m in here.’ Sighing, she flung her legs out and sat up on the edge of the bed. Her bra was on the floor and knickers puddled almost under the bed at her feet. Dressed she seemed taller and less frail. ‘You want to come or not?’ Her voice was harsh.

‘Aye.’

‘Well then.’ Her ankle danced  the twist as she pushed her toes into one shoe, then the other. ‘It’s not any problem for me to leave. I can come and go as I please. But getting you out when you’re not settled is a different kettle of fish.’

‘That’s whit Ah meant.’

‘We’d need to arrange a member of staff to go with us. And that’s not easy. Cause they’re all lazy bastards.’

‘Some of them are alright.’ I felt suddenly beneficent towards them, rolling over to my side of the bed and making a patchwork of dressing, pulling on whatever clothes that were nearest at hand.

Her look suggested that some of them weren’t alright. None of them were alright as I’d put it.  ‘We’ll need to work it so we get the right one. It’s easier saying no than yes. And when it goes in the book it’s like a precedent in case law. If you’re allowed to go out for a walk one day, you’ll be allowed out on others. At first a member of staff will always be with you, but they’re so lazy that soon they’ll be waving you through the door without any bother.’

‘Jesus. You make it seem as if Ah’ll be here forever.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She patted down her pockets for her cigarettes. ‘I’ll need to get a light.’ A fag was stuck to her bottom lip as she edged towards the door.  

‘Hing on a minute. How are you going to get a member of staff to go along with you?’  

She took the fag out of her mouth to answer, her arm dropped and she rubbed it between index finger and thumb as if the friction would set it alight. ‘Easy-peasy, I’ll just agree to give them a blow job.’

‘You cannae do that!’

‘Well,’ her head tilted a little to the side as she considered it. ‘Obviously, I couldn’t give The Poof a blow job.’ Her eyebrows shot up making a joke out of it. Her hair framed a smirking face, suggesting that this was my main chance. And she continued in the same light- hearted way. ‘I don’t do fat people, or the old fossils, so that rules out the female staff.’ The same tightening of the jaw and smiley face played easily onto her next line, ‘that doesn’t leave much to work with’.

She made it seem like a game of Buckaroo.  She stood waiting for me to say something, her presence taunting me.

‘Yes or No?’

My body drooped down in defeat, but I raised my head and met her eyes. ‘No.’ I shook my head to emphasise the point and my voice grew more confident. ‘Never.’ Like her I found myself adopting a dramatic tone. ‘Ah’d rather die in here.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She stuck the cigarette back in her mouth, forgetting she didn’t have a light for it.

Something about her actions struck a chord, brought back a memory.  But I didn’t know the right way to put it. ‘Those fags. Jocky gave you them. Didn’t he? Every time Ah look up, he’s always hinging about you.’

‘You’re such a child,’ she spat. ‘Of course he’s hanging about me. He works here. He’s always hanging about you too. You played pool with him all day yesterday. I don’t go around accusing you of giving him blow jobs.’ She pulled the door open. ‘Fuck off,’ was her parting shot.