What a frame of mind to arrive in! Knocking on a door on New Year’s Eve feeling old and alone. He forced an uneasy grin and knocked again. The music within was already fairly loud, so he couldn’t be that early. When Andy opened the front door, he was still laughing at something. To Mark he looked the picture of carefree youth in his check shirt, his cowboy outfit. It was very nearly an uncharitable pang of irritation that Mark tried to squash at the sight of his host. Andy looked as though he hadn’t a care in the world. But at least he looked pleased to see Mark.
“Thank God for someone sensible!’ Andy gabbled, shooing him into the hallway. It was still festooned with Christmas decorations, and a fresh load of balloons and streamers and holly hacked in armfuls from the Burn. Number sixteen was done up like a grotto and Mark’s heart began to warm to the idea of a party. Coloured tissue paper covered all the lights and the air was scented with mulled wine and pizza. Andy was saying, “So far we’ve had that mad Nesta, old Elsie from the corner, getting pissed already, and us. Nesta’s brought her kids and she’s feeding them all the finger buffet. Give us your coat.”
He led Mark into the living room, showing him off to the others like a prize. “Where’s Penny?” asked Mark, and Andy explained that she was upstairs hurriedly repairing herself before the rest of the party arrived. Some of her student friends, who had managed to return for one night, were conscientiously milling and making conversation with the neighbours. As Mark was introduced, Andy went to answer the back door to Fran and Frank and their four kids. Dirty Sheila and Simon came in behind, with their son and depressed daughter. Andy wondered who told them all they could bring their kids. He looked at Nesta, who was forcing her dozy-looking daughters to eat more of the nibbles. She waved a corner of sausage roll under the nose of the baby in her arms. Andy thought that kid looked like a Martian. It was thin and pinched-looking. Nesta never took it out of the pram. The poor bairn lay on its front all the time and craned its neck like a tortoise. In its mother’s arms for once, the baby’s head was inclined backwards almost ninety degrees.
Andy looked across the living room as it started to fill up, and saw that Penny’s student friends were staring at Mark. They had never seen him this close up before. Marsha, Sven, Alan and now Adele gathered around him and Mark let them, chatting politely, saying no, his daughter was actually with his ex-wife the night, and no, he hadn’t come with anyone else, not even his mother-in-law, who was still one of his best friends. The house-mates and the neighbours seemed familiar with the sketchy outlines of his life. They knew he had been left alone over Christmas, poor Mark. They think they know everyone’s business, Andy thought, and then, when they get that bit closer, when they get a glimpse of the full picture, then they see that it’s different to what they expected. Duller or more complicated or more exciting than ever they thought. And who was prepared to go that far? To see the full picture of someone’s life? Andy surprised himself, thinking this lucidly and bitterly so early in the night, only a few drinks down the line. There were hours yet to get disgusted about how committed people could or couldn’t be.
And, like the others, Andy was staring at Mark’s tattoos. Mark made no bones about them and, last summer, he had taken up jogging round and round the estate. Two circuits was a mile, he’d cheerfully tell anyone as he went streaking past, a blur of green and blue in his skimpy shorts and sleeveless T-shirt. He was the colours of a bad laser copy, parading himself at speed, thudding round the intricate streets. The neighbours would look up and think, There goes that tattooed feller with no shame.
But when you got close up — and this was the effect they were getting now — you saw all the fine detailing. Eyes painted on eyes, digits and letters, tarot symbols, fabulous horned and feathered beasts, fragments of clockwork and cartography, of texts and petals and microscopic creatures. No wonder they stared. Mark just seemed to drink in their regard and talked, talked easily. Andy was forming the opinion that the man was full of himself. He had these tattoos just to make a show of himself. That was fair enough: Andy wouldn’t and couldn’t find fault with that. But he instinctively distrusted anyone shamelessly extrovert. Now Mark was calling over and asking Nesta how she was, and Fran, and Elsie. Elsie needed no encouragement. Suddenly she was by their sides, the gin glass tilted to her mouth as she spoke, as if she was scared of someone taking it. Her pigtails waggled as she spoke.
“Hey, Mark, you’d better watch out!” She smiled. “Frank’s here.”
They looked over at Fran’s tubby, ginger husband. He was unloading a carrier bag of tinnies and talking to their bairns.
“So?”
“Last I heard, he was still after you.” Mark tutted.
“After you for what?” asked Andy, intrigued despite himself. He knew that Elsie made things up just to stir up trouble for others and interest for herself, but something in the way she disclosed things made you ask, “And what next? What else,
