back of the settee and sat forward on the edge of the seat, hands clasped in her lap. I couldn’t see her face now. ‘I think that’s just about the most hurtful thing anyone’s ever said to me.’ There was the slightest tremor in her voice.
I had a sick, hollow feeling inside me. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, and yet it was a kind of payback for all those years of frustrated teenage fantasy when she had taken pleasure, or so I thought, in exploiting my weakness. And I wondered suddenly if it had all simply been a figment of my own imagination.
‘No one knows me,’ she said. ‘Not really.’
‘Whistler thought he did. He told me once you were really insecure. And trying to be something you weren’t.’
She turned surprised eyes on me, then. And I saw the tracks of silent tears shining on her cheeks. But I still didn’t know whether to trust them. ‘Whistler said that?’
‘He was in love with you, Mairead. Probably still is. I always figured that’s why he never came to Glasgow. Removing himself from the source of the pain.’
A distant look washed momentarily across her face, then she focused on me again. ‘Take me home, Fin. Please.’
I don’t think anyone noticed us leaving. But I saw Mairead’s backward glance through open French windows into the conservatory, where Roddy was frolicking naked in the pool with Caitlin. I didn’t much care about how the others got home. They could all afford to get taxis by now. And I was feeling bad about what I’d said to Mairead. It’s one thing to think it, quite another to say it out loud and carelessly inflict pain.
We drove in silence through the dark, overhead lights reflecting in wet streets, passing in an endless succession through tenemental south-side suburbia and on to Paisley Road West. Mairead had bought a penthouse flat in a restored Victorian drapery warehouse built into the triangle of a junction between two roads. On the apex of the triangle, at its most easterly point, stood the sculpture of a golden angel that looked back towards the city. The apartment block was called the Angel Building, and I had always thought that Mairead could not have lived anywhere more apposite.
She didn’t bother turning on any lights in the flat. Windows all along each side of it let in the city nightlight, casting deep shadows around the sitting room. At the opposite end from an open-plan kitchen a door led through to her bedroom.
‘I’ll just get changed,’ she said. ‘Help yourself to something to drink.’ Her heels clicked across polished wood floors, and she pushed the door open. Beyond the bed, from a large, arched window facing east, I could see the city spread out below. But I didn’t move. Wasn’t interested in a drink. She turned back, silhouetted against the city behind her, and stood looking at me in the dark for what felt like an inordinate length of time. Then she raised her hand to slip the straps from each of her shoulders, and her black dress fell to the floor in a whisper of silk. She was completely naked.
I felt a constriction in my throat, and all the pent-up desires of my teenage years returned to flood my senses. Here she was, the object of all those fantasies, standing naked in front of me, offering herself in a way that no woman has offered herself to me before or since. By the time I reached her I had already stripped off my T-shirt. I was out of my jeans in seconds, and sharing her nakedness just moments later. We stood, inches apart, looking at each other, both listening to the other breathing in the dark. I knew that the moment I touched her there would be no going back. It would be like opening a floodgate, and I was destined to drown in her.
I cupped my hand around the back of her head and felt the soft bristle of her hair, the shape of her skull, and drew her towards me. From the first touch of our lips I was lost. Our bodies came together, and I felt my passion press hard against her belly as we fell backwards in slow motion on to the bed. Her body so white, framed against the black satin sheets stretched tightly across the mattress. At long last she was mine. But, as always, it was on her terms.
It lasted for more than three months. A relationship based on sex. There were no candlelit dinners or romantic moments. No holding hands or declarations of undying love. Just lust.
We made love at her place, in my bedsit, in the back of the van. In countless hotel rooms. And I never lost my appetite for her. I never stopped wanting her. Nor she me, apparently.
I understood that, really, we were just using each other. She as a means of getting back at Roddy, of flaunting me in his face, hoping to make him jealous. Although, in truth, I think she enjoyed our sexual dalliance as much as I did. For my part, I was only interested in the sex. I never really liked her, but in a strange way became addicted to her. When I wasn’t with her, I found myself missing her. We never spoke much, but in a sense I think that’s what I liked the most. She made no emotional demands on me. There were no moods or fits of jealousy, no requirement to say things I didn’t mean. It was, perhaps, the most sexually fulfilling but undemanding relationship I have ever had.
And so I took it badly when she ended us one night, suddenly and without warning.
We were supposed to be going to a party and had agreed to meet in the bar of the Cul de Sac in Ashton Lane, in Glasgow’s west end. Mairead had said she would meet me at seven. By 8.30 I was still waiting and was on my third pint. The place was crowded, and I could see people milling about in the lane below. There were several restaurants, bars and a cinema in the old cobbled street, and one of the restaurants on the far side had put out tables so that its patrons could enjoy the fine midsummer weather and take advantage of the light nights.
At first I wasn’t worried. Mairead was prone to bouts of lateness, when she decided five minutes before going out that she really had to have a shower. At least she didn’t have to spend hours on her hair, but the make-up could take half an hour. She was very conscious of her appearance or, as she liked to say, her image. Mairead had a mobile phone, and I would have called her. But I couldn’t afford one myself, so that wasn’t an option. I was about to leave and drive over to the Angel Building when I saw her pushing her way through the drinkers towards me. As usual she was turning heads.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘what happened?’ I went to kiss her cheek but she averted her head in a strangely abrupt movement. I knew at once what was coming.
She moved closer, lowering her voice, and her eyes. ‘Fin, I’m sorry. It’s over.’
I waited until she looked up to meet my eye. ‘Why?’
There was something like exasperation in her voice. ‘You knew it wasn’t for ever, Fin. We both knew that.’
I nodded. ‘We did. But I’d still like to know why.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no point. Explanations aren’t going to make either of us feel any better about it.’ She suddenly took my face in both of her hands, an intensity in her eyes that I couldn’t remember ever seeing there before, and she kissed me so softly, and with such tenderness, that I might almost have believed she really did feel something for me. ‘I’m so sorry, Fin.’
And she was gone. In those few moments everything I had been and known these last months came to an end. The dream was over. There was no hiding any more. I turned back to the bar and finished my pint.
Outside the air was cool, but soft on the skin. I walked in a daze through the west end, heading instinctively for the party that Mairead and I had been going to. It was in a block of red sandstone flats in Hyndland. I knew I didn’t want to go home. It was far easier to be lonely in a crowd. I would never have believed that breaking up with Mairead could be this painful. The thought that I would never kiss her again, or touch her breasts, or feel her legs wrapped around my back was almost more than I could bear. All I wanted to do was get drunk.
The party was already jumping by the time I got there. I said hi to a few familiar faces, and heard someone ask where Mairead was. I didn’t answer. I found myself a soft seat in a dark corner with a six-pack at my side and sprung open the first can.
The music was deafening, and people were dancing. The girl nearest me stepped back over someone’s handbag and promptly sat down in my lap. A pretty girl with short black hair.
She’d been drinking. She giggled. ‘Ooops. Sorry.’
Maybe there was something about her that reminded me of Mairead. I’m not sure now what it was, but I smiled. ‘Be my guest,’ I said.
She tipped her head and gave me a curious look. ‘Are you at uni?’
‘I am.’
‘I thought I’d seen you somewhere. What year?’
‘Second.’
‘I’m in first.’
