I'm not me.  Not the me you wanted me to be.  I doubt if I'm the same person you met, the person you claim to have fallen in love with, the person you wanted, expected to take care of you but that's less important than the fact I never became the person you thought you could make me.  I'm not the me I want either.  Is that your fault or mine?  I'm not sure.  That doesn't matter much either.  I've never been big on blame, better I feel to find a solution and act on, save the recrimination for later.  That's what I'm doing, acting on the only possible solution I can see.

It's cold up here.  Surely at one time these waiting rooms would have had a fire or a stove to keep the waiting passengers warm.  There are stories about trainloads of people getting stuck in the snow on these lines.  Surviving for a week or more huddled round the stove in just such a waiting room, burning the furniture until help arrives.  Looking across the valley now I feel the isolation, just a few distant grey smudges on the hills indicate the homes that once belonged to shepherds.  Places to keep the lonely vigil, ranges to warm the orphan lamb, sodden clothes a place to drip their lack of light or reek suggests they are empty now waiting the summer holiday tripper or weekend Glasgow banker.  You cant see the town from here, only the orange grey smoke from the peat shows where it lies out of sight below.  It hardly deserves the label town.  Barely 20 squat grey houses huddle together either side of the road.  A pub that calls itself a Hotel though you wouldn't stay there by choice.  A shop I have never seen open but imagine would just about be able to provide you with a pint of milk and some tobacco.  I watched the silent residents use their car to travel the 100 yds from one end to the other for fear of having to walk past me, a stranger in their still world.  There is no reason anyone would want to come here.  No reason except it is the nearest train station within 60 miles, no small feat on this crowded island Britain.  This is the mainline from the Irish ferry to Glasgow.  Mainline, only line.  I sit and I shiver in a little wooden hut half way up a hill in the dullest, wettest part of Scotland I know.  I can't even bemoan the train for being late, it isn't due for another hour.  There aren't many trains, four a day if you are lucky, right now I'm more lucky than I have a right to expect.  It would have made more sense to stay in the van, a nice warm lift all the way through this dead zone to the almost civilized Ayrshire beyond.

The van had seemed, no the van had been a good idea.  Leave behind the soul abrading endless iteration of a real job and get some miles laid down.  OK so I wouldn't have my stuff but people had been telling me I had too much stuff for way too long anyway.  She was a lovely shade of pale sick yellow, orange brown acne bursting through in patches.  Much more Dormobile than Winnebago, the eighties Volkswagen lacked the class of the original VW camper.  The tiny engine appealed for fuel economy reasons and I didn't know enough to be scared of things like long hills.  When I sat behind the wheel I loved it, all I could see through the windscreen where the rolling vistas that would be open to me, gone already was the drab reality of the city.  I couldn't afford even the lowest charity case price they wanted but after handing over my stereo, my computer and my sofa I could drive her away just as soon as I came back with two and half thousand in cash.  Other people's money is the best kind when it comes to making those big errors of judgment.  I pretty much just left the contents of my flat, I took the food, the pans, clothes and towels.  Gave most of my books to my alcoholic ex neighbor, not sure if he intended to read them or burn them to heat his flat, and one sunny January morning I left the burned out cars and drug dealing children behind.  The tape player worked, a bit of Elvis Costello is good for the mood, and the world seemed to be at my feet, well the west coast of Scotland was at my feet.

Ah movement.  The little man in the orange dayglo vest just came out of his shed the other side of the line.  I bet he has heat, tea as well and porn or at least something more distracting to read than years old posters for away day trips that I doubt would live up to even the subdued tones of the copy writer.  The little man, the Station Master (do they still call them Station Masters? I doubt it) does something in the little signal box opposite me then trecks back down the platform to the far end where the crossing point is taking up position with his token as far from me as you can get while still being in the station.  Looks like he is the flying changeover sort.  When the train comes he will seamlessly swap his token for the one carried by the train before it comes to a stop.  It all seems like a good way of losing an arm to me.  I can hear the rails singing now.  Not be long till I'm back in the warm and on my way.  I like traveling but all this waiting around does my head in.  I may even be able to have a coffee on the train, well warm wet brown stuff that costs as much as coffee.  There may be some psychological gain to drinking it.  The train rumbles tiredly in.  I'm the only person getting on here, I have trouble remembering anyone ever getting on this train with me here.  Finding a seat is no problem, obviously a quiet day for fleeing loyalist terrorists and returning European drug smugglers.  The cold lights of the station are quickly left behind and outside it appears a few hours darker than it did from the platform.  There is nothing to see here that I haven't seen too many times before to even pretend interest.  I can't say I will miss the place much though I feel I will never be back.

Shouldn't you feel something?  There should be some sorrow at leaving the city of your birth, where you have lived the brief but oh so drawn out 24 years of your life.  I drove past the bus stop of warm wet passion, not the actual shelter where I lost that delicate but oh so hard to break virginity but the glass and steel replacement for it.  If they were to knock down these last few red sandstone tenements I could see the house where my mother slowed to a halt without my father to feed.  If I wanted to take the slightest of detours I could drive past the black iron gates of five years of secondary modern hell.  Across the river to the right is the oldest pub in Glasgow, many problems of the world we solved there, uncountable hairs of the dog were consumed.  Not one tear to be shed, not an ounce of remorse do I feel.  It can all go hang for all I care, I can't wait to get on the motorway and leave it all behind.  What about people?  My friends?  I probe again like a tongue in a vacant tooth looking for some sign that a nerve remains.  Ray, Angela, Clair or Clair?  I can't say I will miss them any more then they will miss me.  Mark was sorry to see me go, at least he came to say goodbye.  Helped me pack although I noticed he was cherry picking the best of the rubbish I was leaving behind.  I don't begrudge him, most of it probably came from his house in the first place.  He won't have anyone to go shopping in Maplin with anymore.  Mary.  This has nothing to do with Mary.  She is not why I am leaving, it was nearly six months ago now and I am long over her.  Mary and me could hardly be called the relationship to end all relationships anyway.  What did we manage?  Six weeks, six weeks of sex and shouting.  Now the sex was good, Mary was as warm and loving as they come and she gave good argument too.  It wasn't the shouting that finished us but the fact that she didn't want anything.  Mary was happy just to eat, sleep and shag with occasional breaks for a bit of TV.  I'm not the most ambitious person in the world but I would rather not spend the rest of my days in bed.

Glasgow Central is a dead end station.  All the trains approach from the south, across the Clyde with it's view of the towers of the Gorbals then across Argyl Street before the backs of city centre clubs and shops close in around you.  They all have to leave southbound again and even with the mess of points and tracks it can take a while to sort out a route through.  Long enough to collect your gear and get up by the doors to play the game of guess which side the platform is on.  The station itself is a faded hangover of the Victorian heyday of rail, it's expansive marble floored concourse bounded by bars, eateries and gift shops.  I don't hang around, my single bag hoisted to my shoulder I march straight through and out to the taxis.  There is a sizable queue but this is a popular rank on a Friday night and I doubt if I will have to wait long.  Mark said he would put me up for a few days until I decide what comes next.  17:28, she'll be home from work soon.  I doubt she will be surprised that I'm gone.  I don’t envisage any confusion, any calling my name, any thoughts that I have just popped out to fetch something.  She won't have to read the letter to know it's content.  I'm not running away, just owning up to what we have both known for as long as I care to remember.  I take my first deep breath of Glasgow air, it tastes crisp and clean to me.  The petrol fumes, the people, the overtones of beer and fags, these are more natural to me than the cloy of cowshit and wet greenery the countryside provides.  Only one place smells better to me than a winter evening in this city, the salt tang of the sea.

As I dropped on to the motorway I was aiming for the sea.  I thought it would be nice if I could get to the sea before I stopped, get my first brew in anger going with the door open and the spray blowing in.  In reality I was waiting for my first major breakdown.  Isn't that the way it is supposed to work?  Spend weeks planning, a day and a half packing, write the "Cape Wrath or bust" card for the back window and get less than ten miles up the road before the whole thing falls to bits at the side of the road?  I'd done more than ten miles though and, touch wood, everything was still working.  Damn, I was nearly at the bridge.  Once you cross the Erskin bridge you are nearly in the highlands.  I would be happy just making the highlands on my first day, getting clear of the Clyde Valley conurbation, leaving the overpopulous central belt over the hill if not far behind.  It's a nice view from the top of the bridge, Glasgow fills the flood plane away to the east, the west past the ribbon of people by the river lies Arran, Kintyre and the Atlantic Ocean.  Probably should pay more attention to the crosswind than the view though when your driving a less than stable and badly loaded little van.  Still I didn't dent anything but my piece of mind.  It went well that first day, I got my cup of tea by the sea though sea is an exaggeration.  I brewed up by a sea loch, looking over at the submarine base, spent my first night in the van parked up in a little layby.  I would have slept well too if I hadn't near shat myself when some idiot went flying past at three something in the morning six inches off the side of the van closely followed by the local constabulary in hot pursuit.  Perhaps I just wasn't far enough from the city yet.

Mark was gentle with me.  He didn't hit me with questions I wasn't ready to answer, didn't press for explanations or try to make with the heavy sympathy.  We ate some meat and drank some beer, chewed the fat about old times and his latest projects.  What can you say really to someone who trashed it all and went off the live a new life when they have to come crawling back and sleep on your couch?  I couldn't handle the couch as it turned out, what happened to good big sofas that could accommodate a six foot sleeper in comfort?  I shifted the cushions on to the floor and slept there.  My dreams were filled shouting lads and speeding cars.  I guess I wasn't used to the noise yet, it can be very very quiet in the country.

-oO0Oo-

The road past the glittering white Hotel runs straight as it can into the distance across the marshy floor of the glen.  Beyond the barely visible concrete bridge it vanishes into the brown and green of the heather covered wall that climbs obliquely to Rannoch Moor.  A smudge of yellow crawls up the thin zig zag scribed on the heather.  Cold as the day is you can almost feel the heat of anger from it's attendant multicolored train of followers.  Intermittently one or two drivers escape from the trap of on coming traffic and blast away up the road.  As the head of the line hits the hairpin it seems to pause before heading off in the opposite direction.  Nearing the top of the climb the line breaks up, gaps appear as it lengthens and trickles up and over the edge disappearing from sight, the yellow and white head remains though is quickly obscured by a puff of steam.

Damnit this thing needs an extra two gears below first, I thought I was never going to make the layby.  I hate having a queue of traffic behind me.  It's not just because I'm a kind soul who doesn't like being the cause of anyone's misery but angry driver cause horrific crashes when they just cant take any more and do something stupid.  I wouldn't have guessed this road would attract quite so many people or that they would all be in such a hurry to get somewhere.  So at a guess I just leave the poor little thing to cool down now then try and find how all that steam got out before filling it up again.  It would have been wise to familiarise my self with expected problems before I left, I would feel better if I had some confidence in being able to keep my sole form of transport and current residence in running order.

I wander over to the butty van at the edge of the parking area and get a role and sausage with my brew.  The slight haze over the glen doesn't quite hide the glint of white at the far end or the ruler drawn line of the road far below.  The tourists snap each other posing on the crenellated wall round the view point, I don't detect any accents from further away than Ayrshire, day trippers mainly.  It's nice to know that Scotland still holds some appeal for the Scots, that not everyone feels the need to hop on a plane and weekend in Spain.  Good to see that the appeal of live televised sport beamed into your living room 24 hours a day hasn't pinned everyone to the sofa every Saturday.

Up on the moor the small spatters of open water, the lochlets are iced over.  The white of the frost is gone from the vegetation, burned off by a sun that isn't as lacking in heat as it would appear.  Big patches of dusty blue white glitter either side of the road. *pah*

I see the other VW far ahead, pulled in as far as it can get in one of the blocked up stopping places.  What is it about Argyl?  Are they scared that people might actually stop and enjoy themselves?  Every potential place to pull off the road has a ditch and several large boulders to prevent you doing so.  There are miserly strips of pavement every so often complete with an over flowing litter bin and the obligatory "no overnight parking" sign.  It's hardly a indication of overt friendliness to visitors.  I'm convinced if it's not the same year as mine it's not a kick in the shirt off it.  There seems to be something very wrong about the way it's leaning away from the road.  As I draw closer I can make out the damage to the rear end, this is no small glitch like my water pipe, I doubt very much if any amount of gaffa tape is going to stick the axel back on.  I slow but to my shame my first thought is not of being any assistance but rather I hope to god it doesn't happen to me.  I pull in just in front of the crippled van but there is no one around accept my help even if I could have been of any.  It's a damn shame.

I was keen to make Oban that day, the seaside proper, and I was more than a bit jumpy now about what other mechanical failures could befall me.  I didn't push it but kept to a steady 50 across the moor, there was plenty of room on the wide straight roads for those in more of a rush to pass me by.  As the hills of the glen started to close in around me the bright sun was quickly swallowed by the cloud cover.  It was here where the road started to descend that I saw him walking.  He was hardly dressed to cross the moor on foot, a black denim jacket and jeans isn't your usual walkers choice.  He wasn't thumbing for one but some misguided sense fellowship made me stop and offer him a lift anyway.  I cleared the maps, tapes, tobacco, mints and other assorted shit from the passenger seat and shoved open the door promptly knocking him in the ditch.

"shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that" I blurted as I dragged him out of the ditch. "I was wondering if you wanted a lift, is that your van back there?"
"yea, it was" he looked at my own twin of his and smirked "I wouldn't mind a ride"
He climbed aboard and I clambered back to the driver seat. There was no traffic to pull out into though I looked twice and indicated. There may not be many other road users out here but as a matter of course they are usually flying on and spend more of their attention on the scenery than the road. "Where are you headed?" I asked "Do you want to go back for anything?"
"No no" he looked in the back, taking in the loosly loaded gear; spilled piles of clothes, clean but unpacked cooking pots, scattered books and tapes, a loosly folded sleeping bag "I don't think you have room for much more in here"
"Yep, everything I own, all my worldly goods" I was proud, I could detect no criticism in his voice. He was short and wide, if he hadn't leant up against the passenger door I would have felt cramped sharing the small cabin of the VW with him, the curly red hair suggested celtic blood, I wondered if his name would bare me out.
"Andrew by the way, Andrew Lipton" he said as thought picking up on the thought, he looked at me expecting a name in return. 
I considered lying, new start and all, new life, new name but I told him given name anyway. "Lachlan, they call me Lachie"
"they?"
"my friends, my friends call me Lachie" I snorted, like I ever had that many friends that they needed a group title. "What happened back there, to the van I mean?"
"Oh god, my own stupid fault. I was picking up some equipment from Glasgow, she's a bit of a work horse old Bessie, and I think I may have slightly over estimated her capacity or underestimated the load or something. She was right down on her haunches when I left the city and I thought I was never going to get up some of those hills. As we coasted down I guess I wasn't paying attention, too busy looking at frozen tarns. I just touched the verge and the next thing I know I'm fighting to keep us out of the ditch. We hit a massive bump and Bessie, me and everything else took off, she didn't survive the landing. I'm buggered if I can't get her fixed, I don't have any other transport and buses are a bloody rarity out here."  I hadn’t had the Volkswagen long but I felt a pang of anxiety at the thought of it being brutally ripped apart.  

I let him yak on about what he thought had gone wrong with Bessie, how the struts or the under something might have been corroded or stressed or something, how Bessie came to be called Bessie.  “The number plate was BES 251E?, Your Grandmother?  Well I never.”  He told me the tail of where he found her and how much she cost and what he had for lunch.  To tell the truth I was watching the road and the hills and the water falls.  I like tracking the path of the old roads when I drive in the highlands, here the old road is used now as the route of the West Highland Way, a long distance footpath popular amoung students and hard men up from the city.  The idea is to walk it’s entire length but most don’t do the whole lot in one go anymore.  You can catch a train or bus and do it in stages at weekends or during the holidays.  Today the path was busy, perhaps not the crowded way it would be in the summer but the cold clear sunshine had tempted enough to come and walk this relatively easy stretch with their ever so trendy vibrant yellow and red jackets, day packs and trekking boots.  I was never a big fan of this style of me too walking, truth be told I wasn’t a big fan of walking any further than the local off license but walking into the wilderness for days on end with nothing more than what you could carry or catch seemed to have more merit than this within sight of the road stuff.

“So what do you do Lachie?” Andrew suddenly enquired breaking the easy background stories he had been telling.  
“This.” I said “Drive my van, pickup stranded motorists”, “How long you been doing THIS then?” he grinned.  
I looked at my watch “Oh, not that long really, just over an hour” we both chuckle. “I left my job and fled the city a couple of days ago, I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do.”
”You left your job?” he asked “Are you loaded then?”
“Hah, loaded, good one” I laughed again “I had to call in more than a few favours just to afford my new home” I indicated our transport “I probably have enough food for a couple of weeks, cash for a few more, by then I need to be working at something.”
“So can you do anything?” I could feel the focused gaze of a genuine enquiry.
Could I do anything?  Now that was the question I probably should have asked myself a long way back down this road.

I was excellent at procrastination, instead of going straight to college I had continued my summer job laying paving and turf until the weather had closed in and there just wasn’t enough work to keep us going.  I had wasted the rest of the year doing odd jobs for my landlord and signing on.  When I did get to college I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do, I did one year of chemistry, started again and tried sociology and managed to squeeze in a year of computing before they relised what I was doing and slung me out.  I did some warehouse work for a bit and had a great number as a junior manager in an off licence.  I had never been particularly good at any job and it hadn’t pained me much to leave it all behind.  Did I have any marketable skills?  Probably not, the only thing I had particularly enjoyed except my staff discount on alcohol was dig that hole and build that wall of my first summer job.

“Oh, this and that” I told Andrew “I like to think I can turn my hand to anything”
“I know the feeling” he replied “I’ve been making my way doing what’s needed for most of my life”
“Oh yes?” I was interested now.
“I’ve got a boat at the moment and during the summer I do seal trips and chartered fishing” he told me “it gets a bit tight in the winter months and I do a bit of light building and care taking, there are a lot of holiday homes around here and they need taking care of.”
“It doesn’t sound terribly demanding” I said thoughtlessly “I mean it sounds like something I could do” I was never one to stop digging when I could have a bigger hole to hide in “sorry”
“No, your right, it’s not the most demanding occupation but it gives me time to pretend to be a writer and local worthy” he smiled again “I want to be able to take paying guests in the summer, that’s what broke Bessie to be honest, I have a new cooker and some building materials to get the boat house in shape.”
“Boat House?”
“Yea I have a boat house, not in actual fact big enough for the boat but great views of the islands, not really mine either strictly speaking, it very much belongs to the bank.”
“I guess I’ve been lucky, I’ve managed to avoid any major debt except my student loans, that’s the only way I can even contemplate doing this.”
We were descending again, down the twiddly bits where the road is cut through the rock and stuck to the side of the gorge.  It looked like it would be fantastic on a nice day and even with the gloomy cloud threatening to drench them there were a lot of gawpers pulled in at the sides of the narrow road peering either down at the river or up at the hills.  “silly bastards” said Andrew “they could have stopped in the car park”
“car park?” I looked over and asked.

I noticed the movement to my right on the very limit of my vision.  I instinctively pulled away from whatever it was.  If I hadn’t tried to avoid him he would probably have made it all the way across the road, even if he hadn’t I doubt I would have hit him quite so squarely or so hard.  I had a brief frozen vision of his shocked expression; short scrubby hair, almond shaped face, thick frames on pebble lenses, dark brown eyes staring in at me like I was some terrible insect in an aquarium.  The screen crazed blocking out the pedestrian, the gorge, the hills, the clouds, everything.  I slammed on the brakes and was surprised that the van didn’t fight me.  If I skidded it was in a straight line and I didn’t hit anything else.  When I think of it now Andrew and I were very lucky, if it had panned out slightly different it would have been us at the bottom of that steep drop and we would have been inside and upside down van in the river.  It wasn’t us in the river, it was some complete stranger with no idea how to cross a Scottish road on a dull day without getting himself well and truly batted.

By the time I had pulled myself together and got out Andrew had already gone, leaving his door flapping.  A few people where leaning over the edge, pointing and shouting excitedly, I ran over and looked down.  There were five or six people climbing down the rocky ravine but I couldn’t see the guy I had hit.  I looked down the road and I could see Andrew running.  Bloody coward I thought stupidly.  An insistent beeping of a car horn re started the brain.  I jogged back to the van and as I climbed in I calmly shoved my hand through the gritty white sheet that had been my windscreen making a hole big enough to see the road.  Andrew had mentioned the car park and it was less than a hundred yards down the hill.  I pulled in and again climbed out and ran to the edge to find my victim.  The slope beyond the car park was less steep than the gorge and I could see someone, Andrew, by the edge of the river, he was kneeling and several of the brightly coloured walkers seemed to be milling about.  Shit I thought.  There was a van selling hot sandwiches and I told them to call the police “I’ve hit someone, he’s in the river, get the police, an ambulance, please” I leapt over the barrier and started to scramble down towards Andrew and the now obvious body in front of him.  I don’t know quite what I thought I could do, I wasn’t any better at first aid than I was at anything else.

“Oh no, no no no, I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him”  As I ran up beside Andrew he turned and stood up, he put his hand on my chest to stop me.  The young man I had hit was on his side, he was a sickening shade of blue grey and his foot stuck out at a strange angle.  There was no blood except the barest trickle at his nose.  Andrew was ringing wet and still breathing hard.  I couldn’t fucking believe it, I had killed some poor hapless young boy, someone on a nice day out, enjoying themselves, never dreaming that death was coming in the shape of a yellow and white rusty little van and an irresponsible lay about on his jollies.  He must have a family, I looked back up the hill to the car park, a mother, a sister, oh god no, a wife.  All I could see where the curious little faces looking down from the road.  There were sirens in the distance.  I sat down in the wet grass, I just wanted to curl up and die.

-oO0Oo-

The house was in darkness, a cold spray laden wind bustled round the eves, a loose slate lifted intermittently and dropped back on it’s neighbours with a dull clack. By the door at the side of the house a pot with a tall dried looking plant fell and scurried away into the dark, a fat fluffy tabby mewled without much hope of gaining entry on the outside ledge of the kitchen window. The wide squat house offered little resistance for the wind but still it moaned slightly as it was forced round and over. The other side of the road, beyond the narrow strip of sheep shorn grass the waves seethed through the pebbles of the beech. It wasn’t much of a wind in the scheme of things, enough to curl the tops of the sea into a white foam, enough to start the discarded bags and shore line detritus dancing and spinning. Out in the bay the navigation lights of a single boat rose and fell on the slight swell, dark moonlined clouds scudded rapidly accross the sky. Where the smooth curve of the shore was shattered by a jumble of rocks that climbed haphazardly into the hill twin cones of light angled skyward anouncing an approaching car. Inaudably they swung back and forth, now pointing out to sea, now spotting the heather covered rise behind the village, now gone and back again as the car came down the twisted road to shore level. Picking up speed on the straight road it flashed along the front of the houses scant feet from their front doors. The engine note rose and then trailed of as it shot past the last house in the row, seconds later the red embers of it's tail lights blinked out as it turned inland.

A light suddenly spilled from the kitchen window, the cat started again with it’s plaintive let me in song. A shadow fell across him and a tap was run, he padded the window sure now that he would get in and perhaps fed. Sure enough the sound of bolts being drawn were enough to tempt him away from the window and round to the door. "Come on boy, in you come" She wore a long white night gown which the wind greedily tugged at, snagging it for a moment on the split wood at the bottom off the door while the cat negotiated the legs and slippers and boots in the hall. The night dress was hauled back inside and the door pushed firmly shut, the bolts thrown again the wind curled back defeated for a moment before resuming its gentle abrasion of the house.

"Are you hungry darling?" the cat didn’t have a name, Mhairi didn’t believe in giving animals names; boy, love, honey would suffice or in less friendly moods bloody cat or you clumsy little scrote would get the message across. The cat usually knew who she was talking to, at least she assumed so, it never paid much attention no matter what she said unless he was after something like now. "What’s the matter?" She bent and ran her fingers down his back. He chirped and pushed up against her hand. "No mousses to to kill? Will the birdies not play with you tonight?" She fetched down the box of dried food and filled his dish, filling a bowl with water to accompany the cat’s meal. His purring became the loudest noise in the warm quiet kitchen. She took her time completing her own drink now that the cat's needs had been attended to.

Mhairi wasn’t sure what had woken her, from inside the thick walls of the stout little house the noise of the wind was almost imperceptible. She liked having the house to her self, alone except for the cat and her books but for some reason she couldn’t sleep more than a few brief hours alone in that bed. It wasn’t the end of the world not sleeping much, her half day at the surgery wasn’t the most physically exhausting job in the world and in all honesty sleep was a waste of good reading time. She wasn’t fussy about what she read, historical fiction, murder mystery, horror stories were her current bag, anything but the kind of drippy romance that comes in a pale pink sofback cover with some sad water colour of a wistful hunk on the front. One day she hoped to do something useful with her time. Take a degree course like her sister Morag. Not that Morag had exactly shot up the career ladder since achieving her doctorate in business management but then there wasn’t much of a ladder down at the prawn packers.

It had crossed Mhairi’s mind at one time that she might start a family. While he had been here it was almost taken as read. Once he had a proper job, once they finished the house, when she was ready they would have a couple of little ones. Send them to the little one room school at the end of the row of cottages. Be just like all the other young couples here but some how Mhairi could never quite see it. She had never been ready. She couldn’t imagine having something alive inside her let alone picture how it would come out. Christ Morag couldn’t laugh without having to change her knickers and her youngest was 9 this year. Pelvic floor exercises she had chided, I’m doing it, I’m doing it Morag had assured her. You could hardly check could you. 

She tried to picture herself with a pushchair taking her child down to Scot's. Bundled up in her red sweater, bright colour against the washed out little white cotages. Good, but she couldn't see the baby. Perhaps in Scot's buying nappies and jars of carrot and pea baby mush? Oh no, no it wasn't her. She could be feeding the child now she supposed, curled up in the huge armchair by the Aga. Could you read while feeding them? She didn't know. How would it look? Babies always looked so ugly, their squashed fat faces all screwed up ready to scream at any moment. The screams, she remembered the screams of George, her neffew. How could she have a child? She couldn't even baby sit for the children of her one and only sister, they scared her. What if it wanted something? What if they need feeding? What if they break something? She didn't even like talking to them, why couldn't they talk like real people. No children where not her bag at all. Lachlan had liked them, liked Morag and David, liked their children. While she had drank wine and gossiped with her sister they had played outside, some game that involved running around and whooping. He had gently picked George up when he fell, cleaned the dirt and blood from his hands with the tail of his shirt. Yuck, how could he, germ ridden little noise makers. Even when she wasn't visiting her sister Lachlan would be down there, he had helped build the tree house. It was so high that tree house, Mhairi had been convinced someone was going to break their neck but Morag had told her not to be so silly. She could believe now looking back that Lachlan had got on better with children than he did with adults.

She picked up her book and huddled further down into the arm chair. She was fairly sure what was going to happen next. She knew that the Indian spirit trapped in the school was going to consume another pupil and that more through chance than good reasearch the hero would find some ancient indian lore than would destroy or more likely banish said spirit. If only her life would follow such a simple plan. She wondered if he would call in the morning. She wondered if she would answer if he did. Tomorrow she would get out of the house, away from the phone. Perhaps she was doing what she was expected to. Perhaps it was time to break out of that. The cat mewled to be let back out into the night.

-oO0Oo-

"So what do you want for breakfast?"
"Gnuuth" I felt like shit, warmed up shit but never the less, shit. "Coffee." The only thing worse than an honest hangover is  feeling all the usual symptoms without having had the drunken lead up.  OK, so I'd had a couple of beers the night before but nothing that would justify the way I felt now.  My head throbbed and I was alternatly too hot and too cold.  Mark fussed around the surprisingly spacious kitchen.  Mark's flat was in a typical south side tenament block, pale yellow sandstone on the outside with and impressive four story bay frontage.  Inside what had been home to three families had been colated into one modern flat.  The kitchen ocupied one complete self contained home.  Behind where I sat was the bid alchove, perhaps seven foot by five, set back off the main room it would have contained the house's only bed and probably a press, a cupboard above.  The range, cooking and heating in one solid fuel lump had obviously long ago been ripped out and now cheap fitted kitchen units lined both walls to the tall rear facing window.  The tall cielings lent the room an air of spaciousness.  An oak table reclaimed from a tailors, the brass rule set in one edge was tarnished and blackened, ocupied the centre of the room and here I sat incapable of making my own coffee.  Mark fussed with the filter machine before persauding it to comence with the gurgling and popping that meant my cafiene dose was on it's way.
"C'mon, I have sausge, eggs, bacon" he said "if you want to pop down stars the paper shop has morning rolls."
"yea, right" I mumbled "pop down stairs, that'll be right"  I wasn't popping anywhere.  "first some coffee, then I'll think about it"  He put something under the grill anyway.

"What are you going to do about the rest of your stuff?" Mark asked as he cleared a pile of magazines off of the seat accross the table from me.
"Stuff?"
"CDs, books, shite.  you must have some thing in that house"
"I haven't thought about it to be honest" I told him "I suppose there are some records and she has all my paperwork, bank statements and things"  I hadn't given it a lot of thought, just packed a bag of clothes and ran.  It had seemed more important to leave, to get as far away from her as quickly as I could.  I couldn't see much value in what I had left behind.
"It doesn't matter, it's only things.  I have left more behind me than some music and books.
"Well if you need to put it somewhere I've got the lockup"

**********futz*

I had exhausted my plan.  The last week or so I spent shutting down my life.  I hadn't had time to hand in my notice but I warned them I wouldn't be in on Monday.  I had closed out my account and taken what little cash was left after I had fronted up for rent and bills through to the end of the month.  I had deleted all my mail and stuff from Mhairi's computer, I had felt like doing a job on it, clearing all the caches, deleting all trace that I had ever used it but I resisted.  The idea was to leave gracefully not make it look like I had never existed, that would have just been petty.  I didn't have room for all my clothes but I took enough that with access to laundry I wouldn't run out.  I envisaged job interviews so took a suit.  Again I left what I wasn't taking hanging in the wardrobe rather than leave it painfully empty. I had looked around our house but couldn't see anything that held much personal meaning for me.  I took *something*, Mhairi's but I doubted she would miss it.  I wondered if I would ever see her again, would I want to ever see her again.  I would miss the kids, Morag's kids, but doubted if they would even notice I had gone.  I looked round the kitchen, the aga, the copper bottomed pans, the framed rural prints, the warm wood of surfaces, it wasn't realy my style.  None of it was me, it had always been Mhairi's house from the day we moved in.  I pulled the door tight behind me, locked it and posted the key back through.  I wondered if the note said enough.  Would she understand?  Would she know it wasn't her, it was me?  Too late now.  I walked away hoping I would get a lift from a stranger.  I didn't want to have to explain myself to anyone.  Just get to Glasgow, that's all I had to do.

"Thanks"  Mark put a coffee in front off me and leant against the cooker.
"Do you want to call her? Mhairi I mean.  You can use the phone in the front room."
"No.  No I don't think so.  I dont have anything worth saying to her.  It's over, finished with.  She doesn't owe me anything and I doubt if I have anything she wants."  I couldn't imagine that conversation at all, what could I say? Sorry?  Mark waited, drank his coffee.
"I couldn't stand being in the same room as her anymore.  It wasn't anything particular, more like everything she did iritated me.  Everytime she opened her mouth I could feel myself flinching.  I used to dread her coming home.  I would hide in the bath with the door locked."
"I didn't know it had got so bad.  You sounded down on the phone a few times but I figured it was just, you know, stuff.  Did you talk to her?"
"I tried.  She couldn't see what was happening.  She thought things between us where OK.  She claimed she was happy the way it was.  I couldn't explain it to her.  What could I say?  I don't like you anymore?"
"Heh, it would have been a start."
"I even tried to start a fight, I thought if we fought it would at least be an emotion.  I never realised not fighting could be a relationship problem.  She would just look at me with those ice blue eyes and tell me to have it my way and stick her nose back in a book."  I finished my coffee and stood up.  

The flat looked out over a neat back court, modern bin shelters in colour matched yellow psudo stone served as a goal for three young lads.  Their blue short sleeved shirts declared their alegance and lent them an air of profesionalism that their lack of skill with the ball denied.  Football is a national obsesion with my fellow countrymen but as in so many things we fail so excell at it.  Directly accross from me a couple raged silently thinking themsleves unseen.  Living out their own kitchen sink drama at their own kitchen sink.

"What about you Mark?" I ask with my back to him "How's Sam doing with her course?"
"She's enjoying it though why anyone would want to come to Glasgow to study I never quite understood"
"Yea right" I grinned. "I have no idea what would make her want to come to Glasgow."
"What?  You mean you would go half way round the world because you thought you might be in love?"
"No." I lied "Half way accross Scotland maybe" Truth was I could see my self going to any lengths for the merest chance of that often claimed and rarely felt emotion.  It was worth the risk, if there was any risk.  I couldn't think of anything more sad than the thought of missing that conection because of purely practical considerations like distance or language.
"When does she get back?" I enquired.  I hadn't seen her for five years and she'd been with Mark for at least two. I'd been surprised that she came back at all, never mind coming back to be with Mark.  I would have thought Scotland was the last place on earth she would want to be.
"She only went out last week, she won't be here for christmas but we are going to spend New Year together, they start back on the 5th"
"Do they do Christmas over there?"
"Oh yes, in a nice tacky way, the same as here realy.  It's funny but New Year seems to be the big one there as well"
"Never all it's cracked up to be New Year, I can't be arsed with it"  

Christmas, I would miss my Christmas.  I had enjoyed setteling in to my own traditions for the festive period.  I liked having a big fresh tree to drop needles all over the carpet.  Our baubles and ornaments where as far from tastefull and coordinated as you would want to get, every year I would buy a few more and break a few old ones.  Mhairi and I would buy the biggest ham we could cook and a goose fresh from the farm.  In the morning we would walk along the shore weather permiting before starting in on cooking for everyone.  Mid afternoon Morag and David would show up with the kids, they would open the few presents that Santa had accidentaly left under our tree and David and I would drink ourselves into a contented stupor while the children used us as trampolines and punch bags.  It was nice having children around for Christmas day but nicer still to wave them off home at the end of the day.  Mhari and I would curl up in our rarely used living room nursing our sore bellies and burn chestnuts on the fire, it would have been unwise to end up with something edible so it was lucky we never did.  New Year would see me in bed before 10 though Mhairi would usualy stay up and read till the bells.  In younger days I had tried to do the whole hogmanay thing.  Dancing in a club, George square for the bells, snogging complete strangers.  Without exception I had ended up walking home in the cold feeling disapointed and deflated.

"What's next" Mark enquired
"Well I supose I had better try and find myself a job and somewhere to live" I didn't see a major problem with this.  It wasn't that I had desirable skills or an organised career I just wasn't fussy.  I would take what I could get, do what needed to be done.  I didn't want to be forced into the position of signing on again, I hadn't had to sponge of the state for some time and didn't feel like jumping through those particular hoops.
"I've got some installs happening at the moment" Mark was did comercial and industrial electrical work, mainly contract stuff, obstensively self employed.
"Labour for you?" I had worked with him before and he was the skilled man, I was the gopher "I'd be honoured.  I don't want charity though"
"Hah, charity.  It's either you or someone other mug.  Personaly I'd rather you had the money than one of the usual wasters I get.  Come on, I'll show you"  He picked up his fags and lighter.  "I have some fans and ducting coming on Monday, I'm going to need at least one other pair of hands to get it started"
I got my jacket and we headed out to the van.

It hadn't been my intention to atatch my self to Mark so firmly but I was grateful he was there to kick me in the right direction.  Someone with a better plan might have already had a job lined up, somewhere to sleep that didn't involve taking the furnature appart each night.  I realy would have to get some distance before Sam came back, I doubted that she would be particularly pleased to see me.  She would be polite, in her own way but her face was incapable of guile.  I could see the hard edge of resentment in those deep brown eyes, a hurt pucker forming in that perfect little mouth.  We hadn't parted on the best of terms, another person I had no reasonable expectation of ever crossing paths with again.  She was everything Mhairi wasn't; frightened as Mhairi was confidant, soft and needy as Mhairi was hard and independant.  Sam had got up and come looking, traveling thousands of miles to a strange country to find the answers she needed.  I knew Mhairi was unlikely to go as far as the phone, she would sit and wait for me to come back and tell her or she would do without.  I could never clear my account with Sam, I would forver feel guilt when I thought of what she had lost.  Mhiari and I had been the mutual support society.  She had been there when I needed someone to be there but she had her own needs.  We filled the gaps in each others lives without ever becoming the next big thing.  As far as I could see it was debt paid and if we had gone on much longer it would have swung back the other way.  I knew she had met other people, if I hadn't been there perhaps she would have found someone else, fallen in love, been carried away on that thrilling, painfull wave of energy and excitement.  Perhaps she would have found the worship and adoration I was sure she wanted but I could never find it in my heart to give her.  I couldn't even kiss her without feeling I was kissing my sister, not that I had a sister but the feelings I had were familial rather than pasionate.

I sat in the van as Mark disapeared inside.  The wind blowing accross the marked out but unstarted plots rocked Transit gently on it's springs.  This little huddle of buildings sat in the corner of what looked like it would be a large estate of light industry and business to business outlets.  The big doors started to roll up.  Mark grew from his feet to his grin inch by inch then the daylight spilled into the cavernous space beyond.  I climbed down and wandered into the unit.  "I'll leave the door up to give us more light.  I took down most of the tubes last week so I could start getting the services up in the cieling."  The unit was still one big contiguous empty room.  Still palleted in the far corner where what seemed to be the parts for the mezanines, waiting to be erected and give structure to the offices and workspaces that would fill the unit.  Mark scurried around pointing out potential problems, tracing lines of ducting, identifying areas for me.  I gazed at the empty canvas letting my mind fill it with with people and machinery, seeing the posabilities build themselves from the raw material lying around to form a fully functional whole.  I could see the busy activity of this small corner spreading out accross the grid outside.  Cars and trucks would flow along those roads, lives would be lived, fortunes would be made.  Another pocket of jobs and money would grow to fill out this gap in the urban sprawl.  I couldn't see my role in this, couldn't find the first step that would lead us through the job.  Mark could.  That was why I was the lacky and he the gaffer.  I was good at being the cog, I had never excelled at all this planing and delegating lark.  We hung out for an hour or so, checking that we had what we needed, dividing up the jobs according to ability.  I would do the lifting and carting leaving mark free do use his skills on the detail.  He looked at his watch "The Sun's over the yard arm" he said "lets go and get some refreshment."

It started to rain as they walked down to the pub.  The darkening sky folded in on the city, the slick streets reflected the monochrome of the yellow streetlamps.  Inside the damp smell of wet people and beer was comforting and familiar.  They found a corner out of site of the band if not out of earshot.  Band was an exageration, it was open mike and wannabe musicos crowded round the low stage awaiting their turn, they aplauded with enthusiasm their freinds and strangers alike.  By the bar an ageing hippie held court, putting the world to right.  It seemed there wasn't a problem or an issue that couldn't be wiped away with just the right amount of cooperation.  No football, no religion the sign behind the bar admonished.  They were interchangeable as far as I could see and both just an excuse for thoughtless tribalism.  You where allways one or the other in this city, Rangers or Celtic, a Hun or a Tim.  I was neither, I hadn't been rased to it and had little or no interest in footbal or being part of a tribe.  If I had an alegance it was by choice and could be changed or ignored at my convienience.  We talked of beer and horses, not meaning to but steering clear of plans and recriminations.  I pictured Mhairi alone in the house by the sea.  I recalled another house by the sea, hardly deserving of the term, another void waiting to be filled with life and function.

-oO0Oo-

[cut]"Shit" Something clattered to the floor in the dark of the loft.  "Sorry about the state of the place" a dim yellow light flooded the space as Andrew found the switch.  Half constructed kitchen carcses crowded the area by the door, stacked against the wall where the fronts still wrapped in their plastic.  A half empty packet of crisps lay on a pile of cardboard boxes.  The bones of all the walls divided up the large open space but lacking their plaster board skin they created a confused almost escher like apeareance.  "I want to get the wiring in for the plugs and stuff before I finish off the walls, I've only got one bed, do you have a sleeping bag?"
"In the van" I muttered.  I looked around the half started house, I couldn't imagine living like this, I would have to get the van fixed up.[/cut]

The door opened off the top of the external stone staircase.  Within lay the kitchen area of what had once been the boathouse loft.  Andrew flicked the switch and the overhaed flouresant flickered into life.  "shit it's cold" he muttered "I'll light the stove"  He disapeared through the doorway beyond and I heard his footsteps recede, sharp on the boards of the floor.  Half completed carcasses lined three walls of the room yet to have either their doors or tops fitted.  A large gap directly oposite the doorway where I stood presumably waited for the cooker in that still lay in the back of Andrew's van somewhere on Rannoch Moor.  A formica topped table stood in the center of the room it's surface scared from many years use, by the look of it as a saw bench.  "There should be a bottle of something in that box Lachie, fetch it through will you?" Andrew called from the other room.  On the table where several boxes of groceries, I raked through them till I located a bottle of Grouse.  There were no glasses that I could see in the half completed kitchen.  Hesitantly I walked through the door that Andrew had used moment earlier.  Beyond was a short coridore leeading to the front of the boathouse.  the walls lacked any substance, only the new pine timber frame had been erected.  Here and there wires hung down from above where I could make out the timbers of the roof.  I counted three small bedrooms and a bathroom layed out in the main space of the loft each with it's own skylight window let into the roof.  The room at the front of the house had been lined with plaster board, a warm light spilled into the construction site from its door frame.  Andrew already seemed to have a considerable amount of flame as he added split logs to the small cast iron stove in the large living area.  The light came from a mixed batch of table lamps placed on ill matched items of furnature.  The end wall of the house had large french windows let into it and beyond I could imagine a balchony though it was too dark to make out.

"I have some glasses somewhere" he said as he closed the little door of the stove "soon be nice and toasty."  He blew the dust from a red wine glass and handed it to me.  "What do you think then?  It'll be finished by the summer, it better be, I've already taken bookings" He looked me in the eye for the first time since we had got out of my van.  "Oh come on Lachie, you couldn't have missed him"  He took the bottle from my limp grip "it could have happend to anyone, that is anyone would have hit him"
"I did...It happened to me."  I could see the open enquiring look the tourist had given me just before he disapeared behind the crazed glass.  I wanted to go back.  I wished I had never bought the bloody van.  I wanted to burn it.  I have no idea how I managed to drive it all the way here.  I had wanted Andrew to drive, couldn't bring myself to sit back in the driver's seat even.  I was a liability, not safe to be behind a wheel.  Andrew had told me not to be so bloody stupid, that it was like falling off a horse, the best thing to do was climb straight back on.  He refused to drive, and the police had gone.  There was no other way to get out of Glen Coe and as Andrew had pointed out we couldn't stand around there in the cold all night and I couldn't sleep in the van without a windscreen.  I had crawled it up that road, queues of traffic forming behind me then streaming past sounding their horns in anger had made me more and more uptight.  It had taken what seemed like forver before Andrew pointed down the right and we had crunched off the road into his stoney yard in the dark.  We parked it nose in in the wide doorway of one of the sheds.  It would get damp but it wouldn't get wet.

The whiskey caught in my throat.  I wasn't a big drinker of Scotch, I liked sipping the odd single malt but this blended stuff was beyond me, still it served a purpose.  I could feel it wrming me from the inside.  Doing a better job of cutting through the cold than stove was.  "It'll warm up once it gets into it's stride" Andrew told me.  I was gratefull to him for doing this.  He could have left me after the accident.  He seemed to know both police officers that had attended the emergency call as well as the mountain rescue guys.  It was them who had shown up first.  I imagined they must have already been in the area, I couldn't see that they would call out the mountain rescue for a car accident but then what did I know.  I never felt so foreign in my own country as I had then, I couldn't to be honest even understand what they were saying to me.  The big blue landrover had pulled into the car park while the police were still far down the glen.  Four of them had run down the hill towards us carrying bags and a complicated looking stretcher.  They ignored me and talked to Andrew.  he filled them in describing first how he had pulled the man from the river, what he had checked, how he had moved him, how the poor sod was still breathing but hadn't shown any sign of consiousness.  Two of the others fussed around the man, the boy on the ground while one started climbing back towards the Landrover.  Several times Andrew and the others said something to me but gave up when they were met by my blank uncomprehending stare.  I sat in the wet grass looking at his curled form lying there in the mud.  Andrew had climbed back up the hill when the police arrived but I had stayed down here.  I stared at him as if by sheer act of will I could keep him alive, give him back his animation, make him wake up and walk out.  I replayed the scene in my mind.  Change down, turn into the corner, see the tourists, look at Andrew, LOOK AT THE ROAD, LOOK AT THE ROAD, THE FUCKING ROAD YOU STUPID BASTARD.  My inner naration screamed in my head.  Where the hell did I learn to drive by looking at my pasenger.  I lost concentration and now look what I've gone and done.  I didn't hear the helicopter, didn't notice it it until the downdraft started to pluck at my clothes.  I realised they had lifted him and strapped him into the frame of the stretcher, everyone was looking up.  I looked up only to have the air blind me with tears.  The Helicopter didn't land, couldn't I suppose, the steep sides of the gorge where more gentle here but there wasn't a level spot till much further down.  Once the stretcher had been brought aboard and the chop of the blades was diminishing in the distance I started to feel cold.  I looked back up the hill to where I had left the van, Andrew and a flat capped police officer where picking their way carefully down towards me, I went to meet them.

"Take your pick Lachie" Andrew indicated the three large couches that occupied most of the floor space.  "You'll be staying for a while I imagine.  We will be able to do something about your van tomorrow but you'll be more comfortable in here.  I take it you have a sleeping bag?  Do you want me to get it?"  he disapeared out through the curtain strung accross the doorway without waiting for me to answer.  Without his offer of a place to stay I don't quite know where I would have been.  The police had made me blow into one of their infernal machines, just routine they had explained.  They had asked me how fast I had been going, did the van have an MOT, do I normaly wear glasses or contact lenses, a rash of stupid inconsequential questions.  They didn't ask me if I had looked away at the vital moment.  They wanted my address, I didn't have one to give them.  Mark was getting my redirected mail but I didn't live there.  No fixed abode did not seem to please them, they asked if I was a traveler, suspicion coloured their attitudes.  No, I tried to explain, I just didn't have anywhere to live right now, I was on Holiday.  It didn't make a lot of sense even to me when I said it.  Andrew said something to him.  They had a brief conversation before he put his hand on my shoulder and told me I would be staying with him.  I didn't realy understand but I was grateful, I had felt like I was about to be arrested, flung in some highland jail until they finished their enquiries.  I hadn't planned to get involved with the police when I set out on my discover Scotland trip.  They left us there.  There were still people around but none of them seemd very keen to talk to us.  I wondered if there was anyone left who had seen what happened or if the shift had changed several times in the car park while I was down the hill with...with what?  With my victim.

There was a clink as the full cup of coffee was placed down against an empty wine glass.  It had taken a few moments to play through to where I was.  I was lying in my sleeping bag in Andrew's house.  I had killed someone, well not killed just mashed the beyond any hope of function.  I had gathered that he would be taken to Fort William and the local constablulary would be in touch with me here.  I wanted to see him.  As I followed that line through I remembered that I had no windscreen in my van and that Andrew didn't have transport either.  Back in Glasgow this wouldn't have posed a major problem, they had buses, they had trains.  You could get around without a car, it might take some time but it could be done.  I didn't know much about the highlands but I was fairly confident that busses where of the one per day variety.  If you were going to go somewhere you had better have somewhere to stay when you got there.  Being in a hurry was anathma.  Andrew came back in and sat down to put his boots on.

"Come on then, we'd better get our arses in gear if we're gonna get these vans sorted."  He seemed way too cheery to be entirely sane, what was it, nine o'clock?  Yuck.  I got up and pulled on yesterdays clothes.  I had more clean gear in the van but it could wait.  I caught my first sight in daylight of the view from the window.  Beyond the small timber balchony the hills of Mull where silouetted in shades of darkest blue.  Even through the light misting of rain it looked impressive.  I finished my coffee and drank it in.  This was part of what I had been looking for.  To see the sea, see the hills, to open my front door to this every morning I would go a long, long way.  All my life I had looked out my window into someone elses, if I could see them then they could see me.  I wanted to be alone, away from the scruitiny of people I didn't know.  Andrew had disapeared, probably outside, I went to look.  In the daylight the construction site that made up most of the house looked worse than it had in the dark.  I couldn't see how he was going to finish it before the summer.

We took most of my things out of the van and piled them in one of the incomplete bedrooms.  As I had thought they were damp but I didn't think anything was damaged.  Andrew knew owner of a local garage, he figured they would be able to replace the windscreen and it wasn't that far away.  We considered trying to patch up the gaping hole with plastic sheeting but it wouldn't realy have alowed me to see where I was going.  We decided to wear more clothes and put up with it.  The garage was small but busy, several cars waited their turn outside.  As we drew up a large man in a dirty red overall walked over.  He grinned at the pair of us shivering and wet in the Volkswagon.  "Problems lads?" I climbed out and explained what had happened.  "Aye well, they're bloody daft at any time.  You should see it round here in the summer, bloody crawling with them"  He didn't have a screen for a Volkswagon but he would ask around.  If he couldn't get one loacly he would have to get it sent up from Glasgow.  That might take a day or so.  I could leave it here in the meantime, they would patch it up with something to stop the rain getting in any more than it had already.  Andrew talked to him about his own problems and they arranged to take the big recovery truck up the glen and bring his van back.  The garage didn't have anything they could lend us so we had to walk back along the road to Andrew's yard.  It wasn't quite raining, more the thick drenching mist that makes you feel like you're walking theough a cloud. I was wet already so it wasn't the end of the world but I was disapointed that it had closed off my view of the hills.

I wondered about man I had run down.  I didn't even know his name.  Did he have a family?  Friends?  What was he doing here, was he realy a tourist at this time of year or did he live localy?  I knew nothing.  I couldn't even begin to surmise.  What were they doing to him now, at the hospital?  I had to find out but I was scared at what they might tell me.  What if he was dead?  They would have phoned me, they knew Andrew's number, they would have phoned us and told us last night.  Perhaps they had phoned, before we got back there.  I had stopped someone's life and I didn't feel right about continuing with my own until he recovered.

They recovered Andrew's van, Bessie, later that day.  Archie from the garage came round with the cooker, a sink, a stack of wood, some cable and numerous light fittings.  I could see that might have overloaded the little VW, especialy if it was still fitted out as a camper.  I twould be a couple of days before they could get me a screen for my van unless of course we wanted to use the one from Andrew's.  Although things didn't sound particularly good for Bettie, major damage to the chassis, I told Archie I could wait until the screen arrived from Glasgow.  Andrew tried to say it would be OK, that I could have his screen, I insisted they left it in Bessie.  I supose it would have made no diference either way, she wasn't going anywhere but I felt I had caused enough disruption and chaos since coming north.  The police phoned eventualy but Andrew took the call while I fretted in the other room trying not to listen to what was being said.  His name was Junpei, Hanabusa Junpei, a Japanese student.  They had found his hire car still parked up by the side of the road.  The police in Fort William were fairly sure that he had some family and they were trying to get in contact with them.  Junpei was still unconsious, in a stable but critical condition and they were going to keep him in The Belford for now.  I wondered if they would let me see him, I doubted it and in reality what good would it do either of us if they did.  I resolved to go up there anyway as soon as I was mobile again.

That afternoon and the next day Andrew made sure I didn't get time to sit around and feel sorry for myself.  He made me give him a hand stringing the cables for the lights and sockets in the upstairs bedrooms.  We hauled the new stove up the outside staircase and dumped it in the kitchen.  It had a dent in the side which Andrew said was due to his almost accident but I thought it was more likely that Archie had done it getting the cooker in the back of his pickup.  We stacked the wood and other materials in the lower floor of the boatshed.  Downstairs it still looked like a building designed to hold and launch boats.  A pair of rails ran nearly the full length of the one big room and out under the double doors at the front.  Two wooden dingies lay upside down behind this door and various strange items of chandelry were hung from the walls and sitting in boxes near by.  Further back in the boat house neatly stacked piles of plaster board and wooden battons waited to be used in the refurbishment going on upstairs.  The idea was eventualy to use most of this floor as a further self contained residence and still maintain some storage to be shared by the house.  Outside surrounding the small yard where a couple of open fronted outbuildings and an enclosed shed.  I thought it would be pretty impressive when it was finished.  When my van was ready Andrew persauded them to drive it round and drop it off.  I decided it was probably too late to drive all the way to Fort William so I spent the rest of the evening sorting and packing my stuff back into the van.  With a bit of luck it wouldn't be long before this Junpei would be better and the police would let me go.  It wasn't that I didn't like staying at Andrew's but I didn't feel comfortable being forced to stay put.

In the morning I drove back to the bridge and headed north.  The rain clouds had cleared and the day was bright and cold.  Looking back up Loch Leven I could see the Pap, beyond that lay Glen Coe where all this had started to go wrong.  I din't have the first idea why I was going.  It seemed important to make the effort, to take responsablity for my own actions.  I supose it was all just an excersise in salving my own guilt.  I wanted to see with my own eyes that someone was taking care of him, making him better, fixing him up.  I wanted there to be something I could do for him, some way I could start making it better.

The road followed a long twisting route round the crenellated coastline before turning in along the straight sided Loch Linnie.  Long before Fort William proper I started passing houses on the side of the road furthest from the shore.  Unlike the villages and crofts I had passed earlier their clean modern aspects jarred with the soft green of the hills.  Unnaturaly neat manicured lawms and imaculate gravel drives fronted a mess of diferent styles.  Almost without fail they each displayed a sign advertising them as a guest house.  By the time I reach the sign anouncing the town the houses form an unbroken ribon down one side of the road.  Having recieved directions from Andrew I follow the waters edge round the town proper, there are some boats that appear to be fishing boats on the loch it'self but there seems to be little ctivity on the water.  The traffic is far from busy and it is fairly easy to locate the hospital.  I park up and gaze through the window of the van at the building where I imagine he lies.  I find myself appealing to some higher power, a god I have never truly believed in.  I hope, to something, that Junpei will be alright.  The name seems alien but I can't deny the frail human truth of his face that I can still see now through the replacement windscreen.  I take a deep breath and get out of the van.  I might as well get this done rather than sit here eating my self up about it.

-oO0Oo-

Mhairi pulled her fleece up around her ears.  The wind from the sea blew cold and wet, seeping through her clothes and chilling her legs and arms.  She hurried along the front towrds the surgery.  Hellen was ready to leave by the time she got there, coat on, bag in hand.  Itching to run.  "Mrs Wilkinson cancelled her three o'clock and two more phoned in for the open surgery.  I wrote in in the book though.  See you tomorrow."  She, slaming the door twice before it caught on the latch.  "Yea, bye then Hellen" Mhairi muttered to her self.  There were four people in the waiting room, reading the months out of date Reader's Digests and Farmer's Weeklies.  She removed her fleece and drapped it over the back of the chair.  As usual Hellen had cleared the decks before she got there, she was a good egg Hellen.  They had emplyed a junior fresh out of school over the summer.  The idea had been for the Junior to cope with the filing, make cups of tea for everyone and pick up after the patients around the waiting room.  The Surgery had begun to resemble a war zone.  She got under everyone's feet and caused more mess than she ever managed to clean up.  There had been patient files all over the small desk, no one had been entirely confident that people's samples hadn't been mixed up, Mhairi had considered running a book on when they would have to tell some hairy old farmer that he was three months pregnant.  It had taken till October before all the filing was right again.  If they were going to have another Junior next summer then Mhairi would take an extended holiday.  Hell she would go back and work the summer in the prawn packers for the summer if it wasnt for the fact that it too would be full of kids either killing time till university was ready for them and they could make their escape or coming to terms with the fact that they might never have a better job, fretting over faithless boyfriends and missed periods.

The surgery had started life as a two room cottage like most of the other houses down the street.  At some point a loft conversion had added two more rooms upstairs, now used mainly for storage.  The small garden ad been eaten by a large single story extension that now housed the Doctors office, an examining room, the nurses room and a ver basic kitchen.  The nurse covered a large area encompasing sveral local Doctors but ran her surgery here about once a week.  Mhairi had little or no interest in what went on behind those doors, her job was to answer the phone.  She wrote up the apointments in a ledger, made sure that the relevant patient files where available to the doctor for whomever he had to see during her shift, put it all back in the rank of filing cabinates in her office.  She provided Dr Ross with numerous cups of tea and generaly kept the place looking nice.  She hardly noticed who had what, who in the area was about to bear another mewling brat, who recovered, who died.  Unlike Hellen she wasn't interested in the gossip and prattle that seemed to saturate every aspect of life in the village.  She was quite happy to do her job, lock up and go home to...well she could go home to her cat anyway.  This place was a major improvement over working in the packing plant.  There you got cold and wet, the water penetrated your gloves, got under your coverall.  Then there was the smell, it didn't seem to smell that bad while you worked, perhaps it was the chilled environment, perhaps constantly working just distracted you.  Once you got outside though, got home and warmed up, there was nothing quite so unapealing as the smell of stale seafood.  Lachie had always smelled of it.  He had worked in the factory right up until he had left, she made him shower before she would even kiss him hello.  You had to work an eight and a half hour shift plus overtime down there to make what she made here in four.  Not that she was pulling in a great wage or anything but it was enough to pay the rent and the bills.  She had enough to feed the cat and to run to the odd luxury like a book every now and again.  Without moving out of the area or hitting just the right combination of good qualifications and fantastic luck there wasn't realy anyway of doing much more than survive financialy but Mhairi was happy with that.

It was dark by the time she finished.  Dr Ross washed up and drove back accross the hill to his wife and family.  She wasn't sure how old he realy was but she doubted he was younger than fifty.  Mhairi wondered how much longer he would keep the practice, he didn't have an assistant to hand over to.  Perhaps he would sell up to someone new, perhaps the surgery would just close when he retired and everyone would have to drive that little bit further to find someone to listen to their gripes and hand out the pills.  The wind had dropped to nothing and the moon added it's white light to the harsh yellow of the street lamps.  The alarm stopped it's frantic get out quick bleeping as she turned the key in the lock and headed back towards her own nice warm house.  It was too late to catch the shop now, she had enough cat food and could drink tea without milk until tomorrow.  The only alternative would be to take the car down the Newton Stewart road to the garage but she could never remember how late it stayed open or what night it closed early, Mhairi was convinced they opened and closed on a whim.  It wasn't worth the hassle of driving all the way into town and with petrol that would be an expensive pint of mil to say the least.  Two lads loitered by the call box with one bike between them.  Could be the Dixon kids but she wasn't sure.  She had long ago lost touch with who all the children belonged to.  She remembered when she and her friends had hung around that self same call box, playing dare games, hiding in the dark, Jason O'Neil had stuck his hand up her jersey, she had knocked him on his behind and threatened to tell his mother.  Now it was Jason's daughter that wasn't allowed to be out there with the Dixon kids after dark.  Her father was only too aware of the dangers.

The cat snaked around her heels as she searched for her house keys.  He dunted her with his head and chirped.  "oh yea, I'm sure you are starving.  I've seen you with those poor wee mouses.  What happened to presents for you Mum?"  Her house looked identical to the sugery from the front, two dormer windows marking the bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and living room filling the orgional two downstairs rooms.  Her extension was tiny containing only a small bathroom and a place for boots and shoes.  She had never been any sort of gardener, the patch behind the house was home only to long unkempt grass, now scrubby, yellow and flattend, and one bent and twisted tree.  It was an apple tree and produced blossom every spring but it's fruit was consistantly withered and hard, inedible, not fit even for pigs.  She cleared them with everthing else that died or fell in the garden into a pile in the corner that she liked to pretend was compost.  The cat loved the long grass and the interesting things it hid.  She opened the vents on the cooker, riddled it through and added some anthracite.  She yelled at the cat to get out from under her feet as she carried the hot ash out to the tin bucket by the back door.  It was the only thing she was known to shout at him for, risking a hot coal dropping on his head by loving his mum altogether too actively.

She filled the kettle and put it on the stove fetching down the cups and fullfilling her own tea making ritual.  A tea bag for me, one sugar and a tea bag for...it wasn't that she missed Lachie.  She didn't miss anything about him.  He had soaked the bathroom, dirtied her towels, left dishes and cups to steep in cold greasy water in the sink, started reading a hundred books and left them dogged and broken unfinished all over the house.  He lacked the ability to sit at peace, pacing and wandering through the small house.  Silence had driven him to distraction and he had the radio on whatever he was doing.  He would go out and stand in the garden smoking a joint leaving every door between him and her standing open for maximum draft.  He would prattle on about the girls at work and whatever their latest intregue, expecting a respose at least once per paragraph.  Lachie had driven her to complete distraction and there where few places to run but she couldn't quite come to terms with him not being here.  She rinsed the sugar from his cup and left it to dry on the otherwise empty draining board.

Lachie hadn't called, hadn't felt any need to get in touch, to tell her why.  Just that stupid over written note.  What the hell was it supposed to mean, I'm not me, who the hell did he think he was then?  No.  She refused to get angry with him.  He had got off his arse and done sothing she doubted she would ever have.  She wouldn't have left him, she couldn't have thrown him out either no matter how irratating he had become, it wasn't in her nature.  Her parents where still very much in love after nearly 40 years.  Everyone goes through rough patches darling, her mother had told her.  You should think about starting a family, Lachlan seems realy good with little ones, he'll make a wonderful father.  She didn't want a wonderfull father, she had one of those.  She wanted a quiet life and Lachlan sure as hell wasn't that.

She had first seen him dressed in bright orange waterproofs wearing a stupid little food prep hat.  Tall and well built, obvious even under shapeless coverall.  He had sharp features slightly softened with a few days growth of beard, handsom in a cliched way.  He didn't seem to know it though, there was no confidence to be seen in his manner, he lacked the strut that even the shortest most repulsive young farmers seemed to have.  He didn't say much either, didn't hit on any of the young girls working the line though they whisteled and joshed him.  Mhairi probably wouldn't have looked twice if it hadn't been for his eyes.  Almost as dark as his jet hair their downturned corners spoke saddness and loss to her.  He had the kind of face you wanted to help, one look and you would have given him your last farthing.  She hadn't talked to him then, not for a month or more but she had dreamed those eyes.  She had fallen into them so deep that she doubted she would ever have got out on her own.  By the time they ended up stacking the freezer together that day she felt like she had never wanted anyone so much in her life to that point.

That first day hadn't realy lived up to her expectations, in fact the whole week was a bit of a let down.  The freezer wasn't the best place to talk and lugging boxes around didn't make for the most relaxed mood but Lachlan hadn't been what you would call talkative anyway.  She did find out his name and that he was as she had heard living out of a camper van, this didn't make him some kind of new age traveler though as he had his van on a Caravan Club site complete with toilets, showers and mains electricity.  She felt there might be something there but he was holding it back.  He avoided anything to do with his past and even his present seemed to consist of work, eat, sleep and work again.  Mhairi tired of the one word answers and put his reticence down to lack of wit.  She filed him under pretty vacant and would probably have happily ignored him if it hadn't been for her sister Morag.

Morag worked in the office at the factory, it was her who had persauded Mhairi to take the job.  She had been gratefull, she realy had.  Somewhere along the line Morag had befriended Lachlan.  Lachlan seemed to be having an on and off relationship with one of Morag's friends and had definately joined her group.  Mhairi was four years younger than Morag and though she loved her sister dearly you couldn't really claim they socialised except in the usual sterile family way.  She would see Morag when she came back to the house, they took shopping trips to Ayr in Morag's car, Mhairi  would hide at Morag's house when things got a bit too much at her Mum's house but not what you would call conteporaries.  She still remembered some of Mroag's friends from school, they had had treated Mhairi with the distain you reserve for your friend's baby sister.  She had found them anoying.  Many of the people she had hung around with went off to college and university, only a few ever came back to live localy.

Mhairi had given university a shot.  Her parents had expected her to be the successfull one, they had been happy to fund her accomodation in Glasgow and had quickly come to terms with the fact that she wouldn't be coming back to the family home.  She had lasted eight months.  The course, Art History, had been uninspiring and deeply impractical.  She hadn't got much from the assumed social aspect of going to study in the big city, she had never been big on the drinking herself into a stupor and waking up with some foppish youth scene anyway.  She found living in the city was a noisy, smelly, uncomfortable existance and her last few months had been spent almost exclusivly in her tiny bedsit avoiding going to class and only traveling as far as the corner shop to stock up on coffee and milk.  Mum and Dad had seemed suspiciously keen on her sticking it out, they had offered to help her fund better accomodation, had suggested changing courses, even changing university but eventualy they had relented and Mhairi had come back to live in her old bedroom, in her own house.  She was certain that her parents had put Morag up to getting her the job with the Prwn Packers but she couldn't realy blame them for expecting her to pay her way.  She did however resent the fact that they assumed she might meet a nice lad, get married and start breeding.  Just like her big sister.  She was unapoligetic, it just wasn't in the plan.  Not that she had a plan but she was certain that should she discover one then a cowed husband and screaming kids wouldn't feature in it.

She had always disliked Hazel, Morag's best friend and Lachlans sometimes girlfriend.  It had been Hazel, while they had all been at the High School that had found her diary and made public certain choice passages.  The contents of her diary hadn't stayed amoungst just Morag's friends but had been elaborated on and expanded as they made their way round the suddenly small school.  It was the first time she had ever been the focus of such concentrated attention and it was just about as unpleasent as she could imagine.  She doubted if it had been a big episode in Hazel's life but given half an opportunity Mhairi would have happily pushed her down the stairs.  Hazel didn't work at the factory and the situation never realy arose but it was a comforting fantasy.  She felt the bile rising when she saw Hazel trying flat caps on Lachlan's head at the cattle show, she was certain the sentiment was false.  A week or two later at her Nephew George's birthday party barbeque Hazel was obviously showing him off.  While he talked whiskey and loft conversions with Dave, Hazel held court with Morag's objectionable gaggle of cronies.  Lachlan had that imense advantage of not being local.  The week after that Mhairi decided to take lachlan to lunch.  He had lost much of the shyness, even the way he walked spoke of a new found confidance.  He laughingly complimented her on her hairnet and wellies.  He behaved as if sharing sandwiches with her among the trees at the edge of the car park was the most refined meal you could expect to have.  He had become good company but when she looked at his face you could still see the pain behind the smile.  He gave a good show but she felt certain that that was what it was, a show.

-oO0Oo-

It was like my first house, the first time I had a home all to myself.  A single bedroom flat on the ground floor of a southside tenenmant wasn't precisely the hight of luxurious acomodation but it was all mine.  No Mhairi sitting around making the place look untidy, no born in a barn flat mates to leave their mankey underwear on the radiators.  I had shared a flat with two other students when I left home.  This had seemed the ideal comprimise between staying at home and living on my own.  At least I wasn't 100% resposible for the bills, I had someone to talk to, someone to moan at when the washing up wasn't done, someone to blame when the power got cut off because none of us had enough for another power card.  We had fun there, drinking the cheapest bulk buy dutch beer to be had and watching star trek films till the early hours.  Not knowing quite who's girlfriend you would wake up next to.  The scary beetles living in the bottom of the couch, scary enough that you wouldn't chase a dropped biscuit when it slid down the side of the cushion, not viscious enough to stop you hunting out all the coppers to buy a pint of milk.  We had hauled Rodger's bike into the living room one Autumn weekend with the sincere intention of stripping it, cleaning it and painting it a darker shade of black.  It had still been sitting there, half complete come Christmas so we had strung it with fairy lights and put our presents underneath it.

The flat nominaly was a furnished affair, in reality there was a three piece suite, a divan bed and a fitted kitchen that came with and belonged to my landlord.  He wasn't fussed if I painted it, added sockets, layed new carpet or indeed threw out what little tatty furniture he had provided and started over.  As he had said to me the last time I had seen him "Don't knock down any structural walls." and that was it for the rules.  I could do anything I damn well pleased.  I aquired some second hand industrial looking shelving from one of the Jobs Mark had on refurbishing a wharehouse.  He gave me a pair of pendant storm style lantern fittings to replace the oh so eighties steel spotlamps.  The fire place cleaned up lovely after I binned the three bar electric fire with it's less than convincing log effect and ripped out the hard board that had been glued over the orgional cast iron grate and green tiles.  I couldn't afford to replace the suite yet but I could put up with it.  The bedroom and kitchen had been cut out of one room at the back of the house.  The kitchen had no window which made for boring wall staring washing up sesions instead relying on an extractor fan for ventilation.  It wasn't what you would call spacious but then I couldn't realy see my self suddenly becoming a culinary artiste and requiring a farm house sized table to prepare expansive meals.  It had a freezer and I aquired a microwave, I like pizza.  The bedroom, like the kitchen was on the small size.  The double bed took up nearly all the floor space.  I could stagger two paces from the front door to the doorway of the bedroom and fall full length on the bed.  It suited me as I fully intended to do little else but sleep here, alone.

There was a pub at the corner of the street where I quickly became known to the bar staff as a regular, at least on Sundays I was a regular.  I was a long walk or a short bus ride from Mark's house where I would go and use his computer or just smoke a few J's and talk shite.  I still did the odd bit of work with Mark when he needed an extra pair of hands.  Hod carrier and holder of ends I enjoyed Mark's company and the project based jobs more than I needed the cash in hand he paid me.  There is something satisfying about playing your part in making something better than it was, being there from the begining to the end.  We would talk through a plan of action over a pint or three then the next day we would go out and get it done.  I liked that better than having to deal with customers in my day job.  I had picked up a number working the evening shift at a local supermarket.  Officialy I was checkout supervisor or floor manager or something.  In reality I worked the tills and pointed the shelf stackers in the right direction.  We had the odd drunk wander in but in general it was quiet profesionals that couldn't shop during the day and liked their weekends free of domestic chores that chose to come in at night.  No doubt it would hot up before Christmas but it paid the rent and I could walk to work.  I didn't feel the need to aquire a car now that I lived on top of so many bus routes and just over the back was an urban station with a ten minute journey into town.  I fancied getting a bike but as that would mean taking my oft put off training and test I guessed it would remain out of reach for a while.

Christmas was a bit odd.  I bought some presents for the kids and sent the down to Morag and David.  I had talked to Morag a few times since leaving, mainly to try and get some idea of how Mhairi was coping.  I couldn't claim to have ever been friends with Morag or indeed David so I could see no reason we should be friends now.  David was just an anoyance, him and his bloody whiskey.  He would spend weeks fretting over some bottle of Macallan '72 or a limited edition bottling of Royal Something or other then he would go out and spend more than I could earn in a month on a couple of bottles of Scotch.  The saddest thing about David's collection of rare single malts was that he didn't drink it.  He would just store it up, slowly filling out the gaps in complete runs of 18 year old or 20 year old bottles.  Every now and again he would get it all out for our entertainment, wipe the dust from their necks and regale us with stories of distileries that had stopped production years ago and little out of the way shops where some wizened old highlander had somethingspecial put away for him under the counter.  He bored me to tears, his wife and family too.  Still at least they could look forward to a reasonable inheritance as the whiskey got rarer and the price went up, all suposing no one had drunk it and filled up the bottles with cold tea behind his back.  She was wasted on him, Morag, she deserved something better and I truely hoped she would find it.

The day itself was nothing and nothing.  I couldn't work out anything particularly exciting to eat, there isn't much point cooking a great big bird if the only one there to eat it is yourself, I bought a small gammon joint and had some of that with sprouts and mash.  I had a pudding, you have to have a pudding and though you can get a nice enough single one I considered my self man enough to make a decent sized dent in a standard family sized lump of duff.  I regretted it.  In the afternoon I fled to the pub, the alternatives being the god awafull family movies on the telly or drinking myself unconscious on my own.  It was a nice atmosphere in lounge bar, most of the clientel consisted of men avoiding the screaming kids and dull in-laws.  We played pool and pretended that Christmas had been about something better when we were children.  I felt like I had aged ten years and I loved it.  A younger crowd filled the place later on, my conteporaries in theory, the place came alive for an hour or two as they met up and headed off into town or to the local venues.  I could have gone dancing or seen some reasonable live stuff localy but I elected to stay with the old men, I was enjoying the crack to be honest.

Boxing day hit me in the face with a festive hangover.  I cursed the drink but knew that I wasn't likely to avoid it with any serious intent.  I went for a walk in Queens Park, enjoying the relative peace and refreshing myself with the cold air.  I watched children try the bikes and footballs that Santa had brought them aqnd enjoy this oh so short break from the relentless misery of school.  I hoped it would snow, if it snowed I could probably persaude Mark to go sledging.  Queen's Park offered excellent sledging potential with it's range of diferent inclines, steps and jumps.  I allready had a couple of strong plastic builders bags squirreled away against the possibility in my hall cupboard.  Andrew was in the city visiting his extended family, cousin's husband's sister's father or some such I think he said.  I had agreed to meet up with him, for a coffee and and as he had put it to catch up with my life.  I wondered if I ever would catch up with my life, I had trouble remembering what it looked like.

I couldn't claim to be overly familiar with Glasgow's offering of coffee shops and trendy eateries so we met in a bar near the station.  Andrew had come down by train from Oban and was heading back the same day,  I had offered my couch but he hadn't sounded keen.  We did drink a coffee, two I believe before we started in on the beer.  I did my best to fill him in on what I had been doing for the last seven years but I was still having trouble accounting for all that time myself.  Andrew seemed to be doing well for himself though.  The guest house plan had never realy made the money it was intended to but he had sold it and the outbuildings to a banker or some such to use as a weekend retreat from Glasgow.  He had used the unhealthy profit to set up a small travel agency in Oban.  He still had the boat but was subsidising it's loss from the profit he made sending the folk of the highlands and islands to the Balearics and the Costas.  He had bought an old church building that only lacked a roof and was living in a caravan in the graveyard.  He had grand plans for re roofing the church and splitting it into a self contained residence and a small guest house.  He thought he might be idealy located to run outward bound style team building courses, taking advertising executives into the hills and making them catch, skin and eat small rodents.  I doubted that there were that many small rodents living in the hills around Oban unless he was refering to the Haggis and thought he might have to settle for rabbits.  Andrew thought there might just be a market in organising Haggis hunts for the American tourists.  I told him that as all wild Haggis by right of an old charter belonged to the crown he could technically still be beheaded for taking a Haggis in or out of season without a royal warrent.  Andrew seemed to think that as he was a MacDonald and his clan had once held the title Lords of the Isles it was not just his right to poach the Royal Haggis whenever he could but he felt obligated to strike this blow for the downtroden highland man, in fact he could distribute the Haggis to single mothers and wood carvers.  I had allways assumed that the plural of Haggis wasn't Haggis but Haggi.  Andrew missed his train and had to sleep on my sofa.

Two hangovers in a row, if I hadn't been due to work that night I would have used the traditional hangover cure of putting it off until later.  We managed to get Andrew back to Glasgow and on to the appropriate train.
"So if you give me a ring and let me know what train you're on I'll meet you in Oban."
"Oban?  Train?  Ring you?"  I had no idea what he was on about.
"You did say you were going to come up for New Year didn't you?" a puzzled look crossed his face.
"I thought that was the guy in the Kebab shop" I told him.
"No" he said "The guy that threw up on his girl friend?"
"The guy that kept trying to order spring rolls I think" I honestly couldn't remember him asking but I had to admit it had some appeal.
"I meant you" He drinned "Well?  Do you want to come up or what?"
I considered the alternatives, I could stay in and go to bed early as I had planned to but some how this didn't appeal quite so much.
"Yea OK" I said "I'm not working New Years eve so I'll get the train up then"
"Sorted"
It had been good to see him after so long and I was looking forward to going back up to Oban even if it was only for a night and for the sole purpose of getting plastered.  

The sales had started in Glasgow and the press of people was somehow worse than it had been before Christmas.  I walked accross George Square trying hard to stand on one of the many scabby pigions.  I couldn't understand people who fed pigeons, nasty disease ridden things shitting everywhere.  Vermin, rats with wings.  Worse than those who would feed the urban pigion where the people who kept them.  The suberbs of Glasgow are littered with half arsed home made sheds built by middle aged pigion fanciers.  Every weekend the you could see people taking their little darlings in open fronted cages as far away as they could get then letting them go so they could fly home.  OK so the fact that these stupid animals that couldn't tell the diference between a cigarette butt and a piece of paper from six inches away could find their way home to Glasgow from the other end of the country even if they were blidfolded for the journey out held some minor interest but how did this continue to create any amusement once you knew they could do it?  I was more interested in why they would want to.  If some idiot were to pay for me to be taken to France I don't think I would be in any great hurry to come rushing back here.  I have literaly seen lorry loads of pigion crates traveling up and down the motorways of Britain.  There should be laws against this sort of idiocy.  A few years ago someone's prize racing pigion had been blown of course.  It had been found in New York three and a half thousand miles away.  I doubted the blown off course thing myself, I imagine it was just sick of being shipped up and down the country and having to fly hundreds of miles in the pissing rain just to get it's tea.  It was trying to escape to a country where such barbaric practices had died out.  They flew it back on a plane if I remember rightly, if they weren't so objectionable I would feel sorry for it.

The Christmas Decorations, subject of Glasgow civic pride where up all round the square.  Iluminated bells, angels and chrismas trees didn't look that impressive when they were not actualy illuminated.  The wooden nativity scene with life sized figures was barely visible behind it's security glass and wire fence but then we wouldn't want the baby Jesus getting stolen by some happy drunk, again.  I sidestepped uncountable big issue sellers on the way to the station, I couldn't realy see a major diference between selling the Big Issue and just begging.  I didn't give to either.  Poop.

If I was going to Andrews for new year I would need to get some essential supplies.  I bought a reasonably good bottle of Scotch from work using my employee discount.  I can't claim to know anything about whiskey, either to buy or to drink and I'm fairly sure that the local supermarket isn't the best place to get the genuine quality article but I felt that if I spent enough money it wouldn't be laughed out of town.  I paid £30 for a 12 year old something or other.  The rest of my supplies were not going to be so easy.  I'm not a big canabis smoker, I enjoy being stoned under certain circumstances.  I couldn't work or do anything usefull and productive after a joint so for the most part I didn't bother with it.  Since I left Mhairi and moved back to the city I didn't even have anywhere I could go get some.  I phoned Mark, he would know.  Mark said he would introduce me to someone local so I put my coat on and walked round to his flat.  It was bitter outside, the sky grey and oppressive.  I hunched up inside my clothes and wished I had some suitable warm headgear.  As I crossed the park the first flakes began to fall, it was snowing.  It came down thick and fast, in what seemed like minutes the path was white with a thin layer.  It had been cold and dry for a week and the snow lay where it touched, my boots left a trail of dark prints behind me.

I forced Mark to make me a coffee when I got there, I felt so cold it hurt.  I was confused when we left Mark's, I stood by the passenger door of his van while he walked off up the street.
"Hey!" I called.
"We're walking.  C'mon." He said.
I ran to catch up.  I couldn't understand why we were walking, Mark didn't walk anywhere, he drove to the shop on the corner to get his fags and I had been looking forward to warming my toes with the Transits over efficient heater.
"Have you ever noticed what's written on the side of my van?" He asked.
I looked back helplessly.  I couldn't see the Transit through the falling snow but I remebered that is said something like Mark Hastings, Electrical Contractor, Domestic and industrial blah blah blah with the usual logos for the profesional bodies he was affiliated to.  I looked back at Mark and seeing the bemused expression on my face he sighed.
"I know we're not going to pull off the deal of the centuary or anything, it's only a bit of hash, nothing serious but we are going to buy drugs.  from a drug dealer."  He looked again to check my comprehension.  "For god's sake Lachie, it's got my name and phone number on the side."
"Er...Yea, right.  Look, how dodgy is this guy?" I asked.
"Hugh?  He's not.  But I would rather avoid the possibility of any misunderstandings that involve my business, my livelyhood."
I supose I understood but it all seemed a little much to me.  I disliked the mistique of buying hash, all this messing around, making a conection.  It all seemed like shit games to me but then unless there was going to be a significant change in the perception of so called soft drugs, unless they decriminalised it then some one who sold a bit of dope was just a sleazy drug dealer.  No diferent in the eyes of the law than someone who sold cocaine, crack even heroin.  I have never been sure where I stand on the legalise canabis issue.  I supose I don't see that it has any serious issues, it's less dangerous and addictive than Nicotine, cafiene and alchohol, much less nasty than alchohol.  But if it were legaly legal then teenagers might feel the compulsion to turn to something less acceptable in order to atain the same forbiden fruit thrill.  Besides which if it were to be legal then our estimed leaders would just tax it to death and claim they were doing it to discourage people from buying it.  Allways a convincing argument when used to try and hide from the fact that punative taxes on addictive items like cigarettes and tobacco dont have a detrimental effect on their sales and the net result is more money in the coffers of the exchequer.

We walked down a long, pleasent looking suburban street.  The bungalos with their neatly clipped hedges and imaculate gardens slowly blurring under the thickening blanket of snow didn't quite seem to gel with the image of a sleazy drug dealer I had formed in my mind.  I shouldn't have worried.  At the end of the street were some small industrial units and beyond them some waste ground.  Between the waste ground and the units stood a single row of red sandstone tenemants, forgotten when the area had been re developed.  Of the three gound floor flats accessable from the single close only one still had it's windows un boarded.  There didn't seem to be any sign of life in the four story building and even the door to the close was missing.  If I had felt uncomfortable when Mark had refused to bring his van I had become scared on seeing the location of the proposed deal.  Mark walked ahead of me into the narrow hall at the bottom of the close.  The close, like so many others in this city smelled of stale urine, the empty flats had been fitted with the standard Glasgow District Council Steel door to prevent anyone savaging the water tank, plumbing and wiring for the scrap value of the copper.  The door of the one remaining flat had been overpainted matt black, scratches and dents allowed the origional red to show through.  Mark knocked once on the door, rattled the letter box then bent down and whistled through it.  Christ, secret knocks and everything.

We waited long enough for me to start wondering if anyone was home.  I assume that we were being checked out through the peephole but it remained dark and I didn't hear anyone.  Suddenly there was a scraping noise of metal against metal from behind the door.  We were let into the flat by a gaunt long haired young man wearing the obligatory black tee shirt and combat trousers.  "Hey, Shug, you're up then?" Mark said.  He mubled something incomprehensible and indicated we should come inside.  The heat was incredible after being out in the snow.  Even though it was daylight outside the curtains were drawn and the flat was in almost total darkness.  In the living room the gas fire was turned up as high as it would go.  A massive grey tabby lay as close to the fire as it could possibly get without catching fire.  Hugh came in behind me "sit down or something" he said indicating the large brown sofa under the window.  He wandered into the kitchen "what the hell time is it Mark?" he called though, Mark told him it was about two and he cursed.  I reached down to stroke the cat and it promptly bit me, sinking it's claws into my arm for good measure, I winced but knew better than to try and retrieve my hand too quickly.  Hugh chuckled as he came back into the living room carrying a standard foreskin style pint glass full of what looked like tea with milk.  "You've met the beast then?" he said.  Mark introduced me and made some small talk, they exchanged news of people I've never heard of.  Hugh asked me how much I was after and weighed a quarter ounce for me.  For the sake of politeness and to assess the quality before we left I offered to roll one off the bit I had just bought.  I assertained that Hugh was one of only two tenants left in this council owned block, the coucil where looking to knock it down and him and his upstairs neighbour where sticking it out for the compensation when they were forced to move.  Everyone else had given up and left, the coucil obviously hoped everyone would but Hugh thought they would probably front up soon and he wasn't going anywhere.  He rolled a reciprical joint from his own gear.  I tried to tell him about going up north for the new year before lapsing into wasted silence while I fought with his cat.  Eventualy Marked nudged me hard and said we should be getting back.  When we stepped out of the flat the cold hit me like a brick to the forehead.  Behind us as we left I could hear Hugh doing whatever it was he did to secure his front door.

We walked out into the silent snow muffled night.  It seemed to have got very dark, very quickly and the falling snow created strange coronas round the yellow street lamps.  It didn't look like it was going to let up soon and there was enough underfoot to produce a loud crunch as with each step.  I let Mark get a few paces in front of me before bending down and scraping together my first snowball.  It hit him square in the back, I hadn't aimed for his head straight off the bat, that would have been downright nasty.  He ran to the first parked car up the street using it as both cover and amunition.  I got me with a couple of good ones before I made it to the cover of a hedge.  I watched him trying to creep up on me as I gathered as much loosely packed snow as I could from someone's front garden.  I dropped the lump of snow over the hedge and onto his head just as he came round the end of it.  This time I ran as he pelted my back.  We continued the running battle most of the way up the street and even when we were too out of breath to keep running and attacking we each tried to catch the other out with a sneak attack when we thought we might get away with it.

The doorbell rang.  I didn't open my eyes, even with them closed and the curtains drawn I knew the room was unaturaly bright.  The snow must have stuck right enough last night, no sudden warming of the weather had melted it, the rain hadn't com and turned it all to unpleasent mush.  I knew when I looked out of the window my city would still be white and soft.  I pulled the covers over my head and grinned, the door bell rang again.  Yea yea, I'm getting there.  I crawled to the end of the bed and without exposing too much of myself to the cold air I reached for the curtain, I wanted to see it.  The one time Glasgow could look clean and shiney new, under a good layer of snow.  I flicked the curtain aside, jesus!  It took a couple of seconds to assimilate what I was seeing.  40 beady little black eyes stared in at me with pure malice.  40 gnarled and twisted hands reached out to me as if to scratch out my eyes and blind me more than the stinging whiteness could.  20 narrow lipped smiles indicated nothing but self assured hatred.  The doorbell rang.  I scrambled bacward to the head of the bed. Juesus H Christ, those little bastards.  I opened the curtain a crack and took another look, they were still out there looking in.  The kids around here must have some kind of grudge against me or just a seriously over developed sense of the absurd.  Perhaps both.  Outside my window some one had constructed 20 or so small deformed snowmen each with their own twiggy little arms, their faces worked in unpleasent expressions with black pebbles from the path.  Silly sods I thought as the doorbell rang again.  I'm coming, I'm coming.  I pulled on a T shirt and opened the front door.  It was Mark (or possibly some character I haven't introduced yet depending on whether I've written enough Mark already) wearing the biggest grin you could want to see and carrying a cheap plastic sledge.

"You don't want one of them" I shouted through to the kitchen as I found my clothes "I have some heavy weight polly bags in the cupboard"
"We'll see" he said.
Fortified with coffee and with my trusty builders rubble sacks in my pocket we walked up to Queens park.  Victoria road, unlike the side street where I lived was almost completely clear of snow.  It formed an unnatural river of black in the white city scape, busses and cars made their allmost normal stop start journey up and down.  We were amoung the first people to make it to the park, the snow must have stopped sometime late last night.  The hard bright sunshine lit up the heavy white trees.  It was still and silent in the park proper and we stuck to the path as we made our way up the hill looking for likely runs.  I wondered about the park and the hill.  I assumed it had had been a Victorian  construction, the victorians where big on serious lanscape gardening and it was perfectly possible that they had created the hill just to give the ideal view down the tree lined avenue and on straight as an arrow down Victoria road to the city proper.  Ipressive bay fronted town houses faced into the park now almost exclusively occupied by the offices of Solicitors, Accountants and posh Dentists.  The hill was topped with a flagpole and view point where you could see and impressive vista of Glasgow, Glasgow and more Glasgow.  We didn't go all the way to the top.

We picked a decently steep spot starting from a tree by the path.  Down the slope I thought I could see an uneven hillock that might develop into a decent jump.  The idea of sledging in soft snow without a decent toboggan is to try and form a smooth hard packed run that leads you further and faster down the hill with each run.  We started with Mark's glorified tea tray.  It didn't precisely scoot down the hill the first few goes, truth be told I had to push him but once we got the start smoothed out we could get some momentum up.  Soon we were alternating between the sledge and the rubble bag.  Eventualy I hit the bump with enough speed to take off some.  I swear it felt like I broke my coxic bone and I rolled another ten feet unable to curse the pain for laughing too much.  We wasted the afternoon getting faster and longer runs in.  I was ringing wet from the amount of snow inside my clothes.  Even Mark had to admit that lying flat on one of the bags, just your shoulder blades and heels pressing on the glassy compacted snow was quite the fstest, scariest thing he had done in a long time.  Eventualy we couldn't go on.  We were wet and cold, sledged out.  My lungs hurt from laughing so much in the still ice cold air.  We trudged out of the park gates and straight into the nearest warm pub.

Mark tried to talk me into satying in Glasgow for the New Year.  I could spend it with him and Sam.  Yea that sounded great, she had been away for ages and when she comes back to be with her boyfriend and finds me loitering around getting in the way.  I realy couldn't see that she would be that happy to see me in any case.  It haddent been the most happy of times when I had last seen her.  I pointed out that I had made a comitment and that I couldn't realy let Andrew down, anyway Oban was bound to be fun for the festivities.  I jokingly suggested that he come with me.  He even seemed to give it serious consideration, I thought I was going to have to have the birds and bees conversation with him again.  I wondered if he realy did miss the point about being with Sam or if there were more to it.  I decided he was probably humoring me.  We didn't stay out long, I was heading north again the next day and doubted if I actualy had any clean clothes, well clean I could probably find but dry was going to be more tricky.  We parted at the door and I went back to find my flat still besieged by hordes of angry little snowmen with threatening pointy fingers.

Every radiator in my house was hidden under carefully folded shirts, trousers and underwear.  I gathered enough to last a couple of days and packed it all in a small holdall.  I set the alarm, shut the flat and locked the two mortices.  Outside it was biterly cold, the rutted, uneven snow had formed a hard crust that made walking a slipery and dificult affair.  After only a few days the underlying dirtyness of the city was begining to leak through the clean white covering of snow.  Patches of orange grit had been scattered on the road and pavements to at least try and ease the passage of pedestrians.  Most of the roads had now also recieved several dosings of salty grit and the blackend mush this produced had been sprayed onto the snow by passing cars.  The buildings themselves were warm enough to force the snow to retreat from their walls leaving a wet black moat round them.  The steps down to the small station had been cleared as had the platform itself.  I didn't have to wait long for a train to Glasgow Central.  You could hardly tell it had snowed at all in the city centre.  It was as cold and the greyish light spoke of winter but there were only a few tiny patches of white to be seen in nooks and corners.  Shoppers hurried past, thier collars set against the wind and cold.  I was in no particular hurry as I had nearly an hour before my train.  I sat in the station and sipped a coffee.  We still hadn't got the hang of decent coffee to take with you.  What I had was better than the watery muck I would have had a few years ago from a machine but it was filter coffee that had spent too long in the pot.  It just tasted bitter and nasty.  The only better quality beverage on sale were the newly trendy Lattes and esspresso based concoctions from Starbucks and the ilk.  There had been italian coffee bars in Glasgow for many years, a lot of them doubled as chippies and sweet shops.  I had never been keen on the frothy coffee they served in what I thought of as a tea cup but their mock 50's styling I found appealing and comfortable.  Perhaps it wasn't mock at all, I wonder how many of them had recieved any remodeling since the 50's.  Without ever having been there I was certain that they were still a cheap imitation of some half real, half imagined American diner of the period.

I stood on the quiet platform and waited for the train to arrive.  At the end of the platform nearest the station proper a crowd of passengers was forming expectantly, their trollies piled high with holiday luggage.  I stood away from their noise and bustle knowing that the train would be long to reach back to me here once it had stopped.  I looked down at the tracks.  How did so many people manage to use the toilet while the train was standing in the station, I realy wouldn't want to work trackside.  Accross the tracks from me a small electric cart pulled three large rubbish bins down the platform to be emptied.  The ecentric wheels of the bins rattled producing a twisted faximily of the sound of a full sized train.  The station anouncer told us something that was probably meant to give us usefull information as to when the train might arrive.  I could make out the word Oban and I don't think I heard either cancelled or delayed.  I looked up the track hopefully.  Nothing.  The train wasn't late yet but the sooner it got in the sooner I could get inside in the warm.  I hoped it would be warm.  I wondered idly if there was time to get another coffee and looked up at the large station clock.  Just under five minutes, I guess not.  I was wrong about the train.  I didn't recognise the little two carriage sprinter style train as mine even as it rolled by me, not until the garbled message came over the tanoy that the oban train had arrived did I walk back and get aboard.

I figured that Mark would be at the airport by now, waiting for Sam's plane to land.  standing watching the screen, ticking down the minutes till it landed.  The plane would land and still he wouldn't see her, just the empty gate, perhaps people from other flights comming through with their little laden carts.  He would have to wait impatiently by the gate as she cleared imigration.  Sam herself would then have to wait for her luggage to come spewing out onto the conveyour, watch everyone elses bag roll slowly past or perhaps she would be lucky, perhaps her bag would be one of the first out and she could move quickly on to the green and red chanels, did she have anything to declare?  Gifts, esentials from home that might infringe the punative rules of UK customs and excise, that might attract yet more tax?  I doubted it, she would breeze through the green channel and out to where Mark stood counting all the travelers that were not her, not Sam comming back to him.  She would eventualy be the next person past the "do not enter" sign, they would embrace.  They would feel all the worries about seeing each other again drop away.  They would know that they still loved one another and that everything was going to be OK.  Perhaps they would rush from the airport, get home just as fast as they could, tear each others clothes off, experience that hot rush of passion that is almost unique to those who have to be seperated by such a distance.  Perhaps they wouldn't even make it out of the airport before they just had to hold each other, touch each other as if to reasure themselves that there was nothing physically missing, that no small part had been left on the plane, confiscated by a cold official, stolen away while they were not there to gaurd it.  That fist kiss of missing someone, like the first first kiss all over again.  But then again, Mark wasn't me and Sam wasn't mine to miss.

The train was swallowed by the tunnel, the tunnel that led out of the city.  We headed north, the busy little train, last train home to the highlands this year.  It was a happy crowd that filled the two small cars.  Some of my fellow passengers had obviously began allready the festive consumption, making a running start at the main event.  I was happy to read the paper that some kind person had left on the seat and gaze absently out the window at the unfamiliar view passing.  The city, eventualy the river.  I loved it here and this time I didn't feel I was leaving, just going visiting was all.  I wondered if I was hiding, just a little from Sam.  I didn't want to introduce any note of sadness to her life right now.  I was sure Mark and her were right together and her home coming if thats what it was should not be marred by being reminded of things past.  I wished them all the best, happiness and prosperity for the new year and many more to come.  It occured to me that they might get married, they might have children.  Mark would be a great father.  He cared, he enjoyed life, he was enthusiastic about almost everything.  He would give you what little he had if you needed it and he would give it with a smile on his face and nothing but goodness in his heart.  Would they let me be uncle to their children?  Perhaps that wasn't fair.  It's not something I could reasonably hope for let alone ask.  I looked out the window again at the water passing bellow us as we traveled up the side of the loch.  I had allways thought I wanted to live by the sea.  Look where that got me though.  Living by the sea couldn't fix anything, couldn't make right what had gone wrong.  Couldn't make me happy while the rest of my life was fucked up.  I'd still like to do it though, one day but I suspected I was a city boy at heart.  Without the busy distraction, the press of people day after day, I just got my self into bother.

I put down the paper and looked around. *blah*

It was dark when the train reached Oban, lights twinkled and bobed out on the bay.  I stepped out onto the stark modern station.  There had been a victorian edifice here suitable and appropriate for the gateway to the isles.  I'd never seen it and misguided railway planners and updaters had stupidly disposed of it years ago.  I looked about at what they had obviously considered to be the cutting edge of rural station design at the time.  It didn't seem finished.  Andrew was waiting for me and he frowned at my bag.
"Shit, I didn't think about that" he said "I was just going to head straight to the pub, do you want to get rid of that?"
"No no, it's OK" I replied "I can lug it.
He didn't look convinced but nodded his assent.
"C'moan it's too bloody cold out here" He led the way.
I asked him what the plan was.
"Fucked if I know" he said amiably "we'll see how it goes"
The noise blew out into my face as I opened the door of the pub.  The place was full and then some, we struggled forward to the bar that I assumed lay ahead.  I tried to buy the first round but the barman just looked at me blankly as I yelled my order.  Andrew just shook his head watching my complete failure to comunicate, he almost climed the bar and shouted something I couldn't make out into the bar staff's ear from less than six inches.  I assumed my foriegn lowland accent had added to the already near unsurmountable comunications dificulties in the crowded and noisy pub.  I let Andrew break trail as we tried to find somewhere if not to sit then at least stand without danger of being sweapt away by the crush, I still had my bag though I had to haul it through the gap closing behind me.  We found a place of relative calm between the cigarette machine and the ladies toilet though conversation consisted of alternatly screaming in each other's ear.  I could hear the sound of a fiddle and possibly a guitar and wondered if it was live somewhere in here or if someone realy thought a duke box was in any way a practical thing tonight.  I looked about at the concentrated mass of drinking laughing people and realising that it was still very early I grinned.

Later we played pool.  When Andrew had said something about going to a club or the club I hadn't realy envisioned this.  We had had to sign a book to get into a large well lit and considerably less crowded bar.  The white formica tables where reminisant of school and the vinal floor looked easy to rid of those tricky blood and puke stains.  I was introduced the Archi, Heather, Claire, Donald and umpteen other people who's names I couldn't recall seconds after being told them.  I laughed at jokes I could barely understand and lied about who I was knowing that what they heard would probably be forgotten almost as quickly as I could say it.  The duke box here contained little or nothing less than 10 years old and most of what was played was either country or barly remembered tunes from the 70s and early eighties.  I put my mony on the edge of the table and waited my turn to play.  I must have been at that particular level of relaxed drunkeness for a while where the odd mathmatics of poolball interaction makes perfect sense or doesn't realy matter because I held the table for four or five games.  Eventually the beer took control again and I was soundly thrashed by a surprised looking young lad.  We smoked a couple of joints crammed round one of the big square booths in the back of the bar.  I looked to Andrew for a check on how cool it was to skin up in the place but he nodded that it was fine.  Eventualy we tired of the hard drinking dour mood of the place and headed off to find where the party had gone.

The main street was busy enough for a cold night with off key singers and wandering crowds.  We massed about twelve or fifteen bodies ourselves as we parambulated along the front.  One of our number, Archi or Jimmie or someone thought it was a good idea despite the protestations of his girlfriend to jump from the top of the low wall into the sea.  We wern't quite fast enough to stop him and 14 angsious faces peered down at him cursing and limping on the stoney beach below.  No doubt he was lucky that the tide had been out though when we met him at the top of the slip he seemed less than fair pleased that he had landed on solid ground rather than in ice cold water.  We made it into the hotel bar a couple of drinks before last orders and I assumed that at some point I had missed the bells.  It was already a new year and I hadn't noticed the old one passing.  Some how we must have moved on from the hotel after chucking out time becauSE I found myself again signing a book for entry into a lodge or the lodge.  I didn't actualy stop in the bar proper but sailed on through in the indicated direction of the toilet.  They were painted a pretty shade of royal blue and were obviously well cared for even on this busy night.  A very pleasent place to throw up.  I was sitting in the kind of deep sofa that takes considerable effort to rise from the next time I felt that particular urge but rise I did and putting down the glass of whiskey that had caused this sudden feeling of nausia I staggered and bounced down the stairs to the toilet.  I had looked for an up but for some reason the house seemed to lack one.  As I rid myself of the contents of my stomach for the second time I was convinced I had been drinking guiness though I couldn't quite figure what would have encouraged me to do so as I like stout less than I do whiskey.  I couldn't realy see the need to get up again from my seat by the toilet pan and the porcelain was comforting cool as I lay down for a second to collect my self.  It had been a fine night, a great night to get drunk in Oban.  I was glad Andrew had invited me, I wondered where he was.

-oO0Oo-

She continued to give me the blank uncomprehending look.  Perhaps I wasn't making myself clear.  Maybe my far from local accent was obscuring the meaning.  It couldn't be that what I was asking was such an alien concept that I deserved to be looked at like I just landed.  I looked at her, sized her up I supose though that is reading too much into it.  She was in her late thirties, early fourties.  Her short bobbed hair was a consistant auburn, out of a bottle?  I wasn't sure.  Her thin lipped misery seemed unmovable.  Her eyes were dull green, uninteresting, uninterested.  I started over.  They had a patient, a road accident victim, a Mr Hanabusa, Hanabusa Junpei.  She looked at her screen and corrected me "Mr Junpei Hanabusa".  No I said, Japanese names don't work like like that but that isn't realy important, I sighed.  I told her about the accident, how it was me who had hit him and that I was very worried about him, worried about him being alone here with no one to care about him.  I explained that I understood they might not let me see him but I wanted to know how he was at least.  If there was just someone I could talk to, a doctor, someone.  I pleaded my case.  The light from the window reflected in her eyes for an instant, they lit pure emerald before returning to the dull lifeless green.  I just wanted to know he would OK.  It was her turn to sigh.  She looked around.  "Just take a seat over there and I will see if someone will talk to you, Im not promising but I'll ask for you."  I thanked her, I told her she was a star, I told her she had renewed my faith in the human soul.  She told me to shut up and sit down but I think I caught the ficker of a smile.

The reception area was far from crowded.  It wasn't casualty, no bleeding head wounds, no screaming children just old women coming in for what ever old women came into out patient departments for, I didn't realy want to give it much thought.  A family hung around by the doors, the father standing outside while his wife and daughter were inside looking out at the cold grey day.  I waited.  Other people came to reception but they must have been lost or had more legitimate reasons for being in the hospital than I had because none stayed.  No one joined me on the limited seating in the waiting area.  Someone in a white lab coat stooped to have covert conversation with the receptionist and I quickened in anticipation.  Neither of them looked my direction though and the doctor, or whoever he was, could have been a porter for all I know, left.  Wondered where he was.  Where do they keep comatose patients, ICU is it?  Intensive Care?  From what Andrew had told me about his conversation with the police I suppose he must be there.  There was a sign for Intensive Care the other side of the reception desk but with about 10 others it pointed straght back into the hospital proper.  I looked around, as if I could sense it, smell it out.  It might not even be on the same floor.  What would he look like now?  I had little experience of real hospitals.  I had been kept in over night as a child but I hardly thought a children's ward would be suitable preperation for seeing someone in a coma, hooked up to machines that performed all the functions he was now incapable of.  They didn't make you alive, they just kept you from dying.  Would they beep?  Would they hiss and gurgle?  Topocatapocatapocata?  Didn't Jimie Savil come and speak to you if you were in a coma?  They can hear every word, is that true?  Perhaps he could but he wouldn't understand any of them.  To my shame I couldn't think of a single Japanese celebrity.  Who would come and talk to Junpei?  I wanted to, I wanted it to be me.  I wanted to go and talk to him and on hearing the voice of his asailant he would be so angry he would leap up off the bed and try and strangle me.  He would be alive, animate again.  But that was silly, I couldn't speak Japanese and he had never heard my voice, how would he know it was me that did it?  Anyway I was sure that they didn't do that kind of thing for accident victims who had been unconscious for a week and they were not about to let me see him.  I doubted they would tell me anything either, not family you see, you have to be family or you don't have a hope.  I looked again at the signs, little cardboard arrows pulling people into the building.  I bet there is more of them at the next intersection, some going one way, some leading on.  I could just follow them in, reducing in number through the hospital until I got to the ICU.  I couldn't do that.  There must be something to stop me.  They might think I wanted to finish the job, have me arrested.  Good grief that was more stupid than the idea that I could wake him up.  I could go and have a peek though, lots of people just walked straight in like they knew where they were going.  That was the theory of going into municiple buildings you didn't belong in, look like you belong.  Just walk like you know where you are going and you have pressing serious reasons for being there.  I could do that.  I would just look in, see if I could see him.  I stood up.

"Mr Baillie?" I started. "Lachlan Bailie?" I hadn't been watching reception, I had been gazing absently at the signs.  I coloured with guilt.  "I believe you wanted a word." he said.  I regreted coming now.  I felt suddenly that I had no right to have anything to do with Junpei, anything more to do with him, anything more than running him down in the street.  This Doctor was doing his best to put back together what I had managed to break.  I looked at him.  I couldn't see any trace of disaproval, no judgement in his eyes.  "I did it" I said.  "I did it, it was me".  
He looked around "Mr Baillie, why don't you come with me?"
He shot a look at the receptionist I had talked to earlier and let me into a small office behind reception.
"Sit down Mr Baillie" he pointed to a leatherette armchair.
I declined.  The room smelled smelled of many nervous cigarettes, it was faded and grubby, the furniture cracked, the blinds yellowing.
"You're not related to.."He looked at a small folder he held in his hand "Mr Hanabusa?"
I shook my head.
"No.  But you where involved in the accident?" he asked.
"Yes, it was my fault"
"That's not realy my business Mr Baillie.  You realise I can't tell you anything that might be considered confidential don't you?"
"I know" I told him, I felt wretchid "I want...I want him to be OK, I want to know your going to make him better" my voice sounded small, like a child's.
"I understand that Mr Baillie, that's what we do here.  We make people better.  In Mr Hanabusa's case though.."  he looked at the still closed file again as if the prognosis was written on the outside, perhaps it was.  Perhaps it said hopeless in big red letters, perhaps there was some kind of code there, one dot for complete recovery, two for long term disablity, three for persistant vegitative state.
"I don't want him to be alone"  This wasn't coming out sounding as well as it had in my head, it didn't make even as much sense as the way I had put it to the receptionist.
"He wont be alone Mr Baillie, the police have managed to contact his family.  I believe his brother is coming over.  He isn't alone." He said, emphasising each point as if to drive it home to me.  I felt even less grown up.  "Why don't you go home Mr Baillie?  I strongly suggest that you are not alone either, find a friend to talk to.  Do you have family at home?"
"I'm not at..no..I have a friend.  Couldn't I see..."
"No" he interupted me "No that wouldn't be a good idea."  He opened the file for the first time and took out a piece of paper with some names on it.  "let me take your number,  he's stable now.  If there is anything you should know we can give you a call."
I told him the number at Andrew's.  I didn't expect him to call me, what could there be by his rules that I should know?  I felt defeated but in a way relieved.  I had made the effort, I had tried.  No one could say I hadn't tried to get involved, I was'nt just leaving him here to rot, I had come here, asked to see him, I had pushed the walls of officialdom even if it was only a little.  He was looking at me, as if he expected something.  I looked around the room again.  On the table were some leaflets, I couldn't read the titles but I assumed they were about grief and loss, possibly counceling.  I knew what this room was for.  I wondered if he were waiting for me to cry, had lapsed into a programed behaiviour pattern.  He had delivered me the message he had and now he was to stand here in silence and wait till I cried or didn't.  I looked him in the eye and felt something inside me go hard.  I didn't like this man, this Doctor.  Sure he was doing his job but he was doing it by wrote.  I turned to leave.
"Good bye Mr Baillie" he said with no intonation.
"Yes, yes goodbye" I replied without turning.

Outside the lights were on.  It wasn't dark yet but the yellow monochrome streetlamps shone, blocking out the sky, aging the world with mock sepia.  The wind had a bite to it, snow?  Rain?  My face stung.  I turned and looked back up the face of the hospital building, here and there lights shone from the windows there too.  He had a brother then, family.  No one here in this country but family who were willing to come half way round the world for him.  Family who loved him.  I was glad.  The cars hissed wetly on the road as I went back to the van.  I was tempted to stay here, just set the van up in the car park, camp out on the doorstep until I could gain entry.  I got in, I had told Andrew I would come back to his, he had no transport without my van and I already owed him enough without letting him down now.  It was a long drive back, what had been a wet wind turned into driving rain by the time I was half way down the loch.  It streaked towards me obscuring everything but the small patch of road directly in front of the van, acasionaly it would buffet me, sometimes slowing the van to a crawl as it pushed back against me, sometimes rocking me alarmingly.  As I parked up in Andrew's yard the wind was moaning round the buildings, it cut right through my light jacket and I was soaking in seconds.  I slammed the door hard agains the night and relaxed into the warmth of the boathouse.  Andrew came through from the other room and offered to make me a cup of tea.

I managed to resist going back to the hospital the next morning.  We drive into Oban and I bought some food for both of us.  We worked at getting some of the plaster board up on the skelital rooms.  I held the boards while Andrew nailed them to the joists.  He tried to teach me how to mix the plaster for the skim and make it stick to the wall.  I felt cack handed and clumbsy but but the end of the day I did feel I had learned something.  We worked hard, it was distracting but not distracting enough.  Had Junpei's brother arrived?  Was he still stable?  What was happening to him while I was down here playing builders?  I had to go back, back to the hospital.  Even if they wouldn't let me see him I could be there, they might give me some idea how he was doing, perhaps I could overhear something, maybe I could sneak in.  I didn't know what I could do but I knew I couldn't just stay here pretending I had nothing to do with that boy in the hospital.

I set out again for Fort William in the morning, it seemed like a long haul.  I wondered if people comuted this road, drove all this way before working all day, drove it all the way home at night.  I had never further away than I could resonably walk.  It was an odd concept to me to have to go all this way to your job.  I didn't go straight into the hospital when I got there. I sat in the carpark with the radio on watching the large grey building.  It didn't seem particularly busy.  Some people came and went, there were other cars in the car park but it didn't seem quite busy enough for a hospital.  I must have sat there for a couple of hours, the radio spouting some drivel.  I felt hungry.  I left my van there and walked down into town.  The mainstreet was busy, people living their everyday lives, the odd person who stood out as a tourist.  I found a bakery and got myself a hot pie and a buttered roll, sqashing them together, letting the juices mingle with the bread, the heat of the pie melt the butter.  My body craved the fat.  I ate the whole thing in three bites, I never knew I was so hungry.  I hadn't eaten a proper meal for days.  All the food in the van, all the food I had left at Andrew's and all I had managed was some dry toast and a bowl of noodles, that and the coffee.  I had to start looking after myself again otherwise I would end up being ill.  I considered getting another pie and roll but thought better of it.  That way lay indigestion.  I would leave it a while and try and have a proper tea tonight.  I felt better just for the thought.

I walked back up towards the hospital, toward Junpei.  My mood began to sink.  I decided I would jsut ask after him, find out how he was and then leave.  It would be OK, I tried to believe that, to reasure myself of his good prospects but without anything to go on I didn't find myself particularly convincing.  I knew what to say, planned it in my mind as walked through the double doors and stolled over to reception giving a convincing impression of knowing where I was going and what I was doing.  I looked down at the receptionist.  It was a diferent woman. "I am..er.." the words wouldn't come "I was here yesterday, I don't mean yesterday I mean the day before and there was a Doctor... Doctor" I stoped again, I didn't even know the name of the Doctor who had spoken to me.  I pictured him in my mind "He was..." she looked at me with no begining of comprehension, she wasn't going to help.  I doubted that she cared.  "I'm sorry" I said "I'll wait" I turned to go.

I nearly knocked the person behind me over. "Oh sorry" I said.  The woman behind me was beautiful.  Thats easy to say I supose but it was true, she was stunning.  I couldn't break my gaze, I just stared at her feeling that I never seen anyone before.  She nodded her head slightly, a ripple ran through her almost jet black hair, and looked down for an instant before bring her eyes back up to meet mine.  She said something but I missed it.  The smooth clean line of her nose wrinkled slightly suggesting a smile, her mouth remained set and dertimined though.  I appologised again and backed away along the desk, I still couldn't bring myself to stop looking at her.  She held eye contact for a moment then stepped forward into the space I had left in front of the receptionist.  I had forgotten what I was supposed to be doing, again I realised as it came back to me.  I turned towards the seats facing the desk.  The dark haired girld seemed to be looking for someone.  She spoke with a foreign accent, something asian, Japanese?  It was a bit much to be a coincidence.  I walked away but did my best to listen to what was being said.  They definately mentioned Hanabusa.  Who was she then?  I sat down.  Was she something to do with Junpei's brother?  Was she someone official?  I looked over at her, she seemed to be wearing what might be considered a suit, matching jacket and skirt in a brown rough textured fabric, calf length boots.  Would the Japanese embassy send someone?  Should I talk to her?  The conversation she was having with the receptionist was just audible.  I couldn't hear it clearly but could make out the gist.  The receptionist pointed to the signs and she walked off into the unseen corridors of the hospital.  I felt deflated.  I went and sat in one of the seats again, prepared to wait for her.  When she came back I would tell her, ask her about Junpei.

I waited.  I hated waiting.  It wasn't significantly diferent from just sitting but there was an extra dimension.  The expectation of something happening, worse that I had no way to judge when or even if it would happen.  I hoped the Doctor I had talked to before would show up, I wouldn't have to explain the whole thing over to him.  I was sure he would let me know how Junpei was, what was happening.  I looked about.  There didn't seem to be an excess of doctors coming through reception.  Sometimes a nurse or an orderly, I couldn't realy tell the diference, did nurses wear green and orderly's wear white?  was it even that deliminated?, would accompany a patient to the front door.  Most of the traffic though seemed to be members of the public.  Then I noticed that some of the people entereing and leaving would say hello to the girl behind reception.  Did that mean they worked here or was it that they were just here so often that she knew their faces, I couldn't tell but I started looking at their faces more intently.  At some point there must have been a shift change.  I looked up expecting to see the same girl and instead there was a man in a blue uniform style shirt.  How did I miss that?  I thought I was watching the comings and goings.  He looked at me, held my gaze.  I felt uncomfortable.  I looked round, it was getting dark again.  When I looked back the security gaurd was still looking right at me, I couldn't meet his eyes.  I looked at the table in front of me.  I had read all the leaflets about giving up smoking, premature incontinence and examining your own testicals that I could possibly bear but I was confident that if I looked up he would still be staring at me.  I picked up a leaflet at random and held it in front of me.  I moved it round slightly so that I could see the guy at reception out of the corner of my eye.  He was grinning at me now.  My eyes focused on what I was pretending to read.  Breast Cancer and You.

As I left through the sliding doors I wondered what happened to the woman from the embassy.  It was getting dark, she must have been in there for hours.  Was there a back enterance?  Had she walked right past without me seeing?  I doubted it.  I wanted to talk to her.  I had no idea what was happening to him now.  I walked accross the nearly empty car park.  I wasn't going back to Andrew's tonight, I had told him I would find somewhere to park up.  I could go back to the hospital tomorrow, perhaps the Doctor would be there, I could ask him what was happening.  I drove out the road towards Glenfinnan, over the canal and past the paper mill.  It was to dark to see the waters of the loch or indeed anything else.  I wasn't sure what I was looking for, if it was anything like the roads I drove up here on there would be nothing but No Overnight Parking signs and blocked up laybyes.  This was stupid.  A couple of miles out past the last of the houses I passed a large gravel area just off the road with a single artic' parked in it.  I turned round and head back to it.  I assumed that this is where trucks overnighted before heading on towards Sky or turning back to head south.  I pulled in and parked as far from the road as I could get on the rutted gravel.  I killed the lights and the engine and climbed out, shutting the door left me in almost total darkness.  It was a still damp night, the only sound I could hear was the gentle lapping of the water at the loch shore.  I could see the lights back towards Fort William and accross the lock a single white light.  Perhaps a boat, more likely a house.  In the distance I heard the sound of an approaching car, I felt suddenly vunerable out here, I climbed into the back of the van and turned on the light, drawing the curtains against the night.  The living area was considerably tidier than when I had origionaly packed it.  The influence of Andrew, the packing of Andrew to be honest.  I looked in the cupboard and dug out some of the tins.  Corned beef, tomatoes, I checked the onions for softness and found them to be acceptable, the potatoes were in not bad condition either.  I found that the easiest way to work at the cooker was to kneel down and reach up rather than stand up and stoop.  With the lid of the cooker raised there was very little useable workspace so I lifted the seat and found the table leg.  With the table set up I had very little room to move around but I put up with it.  The only alternative was to open the door and for some reason the thought of having the door open on all that darkness frightened me.  I dumped the result of my cooking endeavors on a plate, it looked horrible but it didn't taste bad.  Once I had finished I realised the only water I had was a two liter bottle of evian.  I wiped the one plate and one pan out with some kitchen paper and put them in a carrier bag to wash later.  I would have to find somewhere to get some water.  I used the mineral water to make a cup of tea, it was starting to get distinctly foggy in the van.  While I waited for the water to boil I took a deep breath and opened the door.  The night seemed to flood in, it was cold but not unpleasent.  I sat in the doorway and looked at the light accross the loch.  The was a slight reflection on the water, pointing it's way back towards be like an accusing finger.  I would be having so much fun by now if I hadn't gone and fucked up so badly.  I had made a serious mess and I doubted if there was anyone who could sort it for me.  This time I would have to pick up my own mess.  If I just stuck close perhaps something would come up, maybe I would see my way clear to a solution.  I hoped so.  I would have prayed, offered childish bargains with someone unseen, oh please if you sort this out I will never...I couldn't think of anything I could exchange for a favour this big.  Shit.  Just me then, me and the NHS.  God help us both.  I sniggered and the finger disapeared, gone to bed I thought.  I should do the same.  I climbed back inside and and started rearanging the space for sleeping.

-oO0Oo-

It felt like poverty.  Not having any milk or coffee or tea, she opened another cupboard, or indeed any food beyond a few tins of plum tomatos and tinned peaches in syrup.  She pulled out the tin of peaches and looked at it, considering.  No that would just be sick, she put it back.  It felt like poverty being without and not having any way of getting more but of course it wasn't, it was just stupidity.  Mhairi could have gone shopping yesterday, the shop at the end of the street was open till five, five thirty and after that she could have driven into Newton where the supermarket would have been open til eight.  It wasn't worth driving into town for something small but from the look of the denuded cupboards she needed to do some serious food shopping.  It hadn't helped that she had spent most of christmas at her mother's eating her food and watching her TV.  It had been nice to let her mother take care of her for a while but it had quickly become opressive.  Mhairi's mother believed that the best therapy was to talk.  The last thing Mhairi wanted was to talk, certainly not about Lachlan, what had gone wrong, did she love him, had she called him, did she want him back, why couldn't she swallow her pride for once, look at what had happened with David, what was she going to do now, she wasn't getting any younger and on and on.  Eventualy she had told her mother to keep her nose to her self and had come back to the house.  It wasn't so bad, she liked her house but it had become a bit quiet with just her and the cat.  Mhairi had never been poor but that night she went to bed on an empty stomach, curled up alone in her big bed and came as close as she could bare to being sorry for herself.

Mhairi's car was little used and over tempramental.  The red paint was streaked with chalky pink lines and an unsightly rash of rust spots had broken out all round it's lower extremities.  She got in and slamed the door twice before it caught on the latch, the sound of falling particles inside the door subsided.  She muttered the usual prayers and inducements, promising it fresh oil and maybe even a service before trying the key.  It turned over, this was a good sign, it continued to turn over, slower and slower.  Just as Mhairi started to feel the sinking feeling in her stomach and started wondering if her father would be in to give her a lift the engine caught.  She hit the accelerator, gunning the engine and producing a respectable cloud of grey white smoke.  She sat for a moment with her foot slightly down till the car warmed to the task of running and backed carefully out onto the road.  The road wasn't what you would call busy at any time.  The only likely traffic were tractors at this time of year, sometimes during the summer there where turists but it was hardly this most popular corner of Scotland to spend your holidays.

Newton Stewart while not the most populous settlement in this part of the world did at least represent an attempt at civilisation.  The essential goods and services could be found.  The High School for the area was located here, at the top of the hill, grocery shops, hardware stores, the main post office were all located on the main street.  The small local newspaper was published and printed here and there were no less than three italian cafe come chip shops.  Recently a modern super market had been built in a not particularly out of town location.  There had been a fuss about the local shops losing business, people had expected big things from it, better choice, better prices.  In the end it wasn't much bigger than the other two grocery shops in the town.  It had it's own car park but it didn't seem to have any major advantage.  It was open slightly later than everything else but that was about it.

Mhairi aimlessly wandered down the main street.  She looked in the windows, lost time staring at a brush outside the hardware shop with no intention of buying it.  When she got to the bridge she crossed the street and wandered back up the other side.  Shopping was defeating her as it usualy did.  She went in the chemist and bought sanitary towels and a toothbrush.  This wasn't helping, she couldn't eat these.  She gave up shopping the hard way when she found herself staring accross the street at the brush again, she didn't need a brush she needed food.  Back to the car and drive to the supermarket.  Picking a trolly and wheeling in through the doors she realised what she had been avoiding.  This had been the Friday night ritual.  Her and Lachie had taken their respective wage packets here every week.  Not the most exciting Friday night she could imagine but it had felt comforting and secure to behave like a family.  Supermarkets the country over followed the same tired and true formula.  The doors opened into the fresh fruit and vegitables, lit in a way that enhanced their colour to cartoon like vividness.  They hadn't had what you would call a plan, they just picked out what they liked and tried to make meals out of them later.  She would get staples like potatos and onions, he would buy capsicums and baby peas.  Out of habit she picked up a five pound bag of Ayrshires.  Supermarket shopping hadn't been something they had slipped into as their relationship had become more comfortable and settled, it had been their first date.

They were seen together often enough at work for there to be talk.  There was always talk, you couldn't realy avoid it.  Regarless of serious or not her work mates assumed her relationship was to Lachlan she countered by treating them like they were joking.  She enjoyed his company, she enjoyed the ill disguised envey of the other girls on the line.  Lachlan was considered a catch not just because of his foreign origin.  He was hansom but still.  The faint lines at the side of his eyes crinkled with humour when he joked around.  His humour was never depreciating and he genuinly seemed to care about those around him.  He had opinions and wasn't afraid to share them but she had never seen him fight or even get into an argument.  When faced head on with the beligerence of the usual meat heads that worked at the factory those eyes would crinkle up and he would make a disarming funny before finding something to do elsewhere. It didn't earn him any friends among the meat heads but she felt herself loving him for it.  She hadn't had to chase him down, they would almost allways bump into each other at lunch.  They would sit and talk and be late back to work.  The odd days they worked together the rest of the noise and fuss would fade into the background, his soft voice carrying enough to to sound intimate to her ear.  She didn't think she was being romanced in fact she began to become aware that this would go no further unless she took and active role.  He didn't talk about Hazel though the other girls had told her she was still on the scene.  She decided it was best to ignore the fact that he had a girlfriend for now.  Approaching it now would be more than a little tricky if this wasn't going anywhere.  Failing an approach from him she asked him back for pizza and a video at hers.  It was more than a little schoolish.  Her parents had gone to France for two weeks and she had the house to her self.  The advantage was it didn't have the overtone of a genuine date, no dinner, no dancing, no movie; well there was a movie but it was on video and indeed was still in the video rental place.  Despite having spent several days leading up to asking it still sounded half arsed and ill considered when she put it to him, this was most apparent when she realised she didn't have any pizza and getting take out wasn't an option if you didn't actualy live in Newton Stewart.  He seemed genuinly keen though, laughed when she explained the lack of food problem that had occured to her.  They agreed to pickup food after work and head back to hers.  She flushed as he turned away, she felt disconcerted and silly.

The second major flaw in this well thought out seduction plan became apparent in the supermarket.  It wasn't something you noticed after working all day with seafood, your nose got used to it, cancelled it out but the other customers didn't have that advantage.  She had noticed people stepping away from the the two of them as they argued amiably about food and snacks and red wine versus whit.  It didn't sink in straight away but by the time they were checking out it occured to her that they both probably smelled pretty ripe.  She didn't mention it and whether he had noticed or not neither did Lachlan.  They got into her car, throwing the shopping in the back seat.  It had been more red and less rust bitten then but just as tricky on the starting.  She smiled nervously as the starter drained the battery, at the last possible moment the engine burst into life.  She was silent and antsi on the drive back to her parents house.  As the car heated up the smell became apparent to her and evidently Lachlan too.  He chuckled.  "I think we could probably do with a shower before we try and eat anything"  She glanced at him, unable to stop her own smile at the thought.  "seperatly I mean" he quickly intejected "probably".  Her smile widened.

They did shower seperately, Mhairi first, carefully and quickly washing the not so faint fishey aroma out of her hair and skin.  She tried to find him something he could wear while Lachlan used the shower.  All she could come up with was a large baggy T shirt that she sometimes slept in and a pair of bermuda shorts of her belonging to her dad.  Anything reasonably presentable in her dad's wardrobe he had taken with him for his holiday leaving only the unbearably scabby and hilariously dated.  She couldn't help but giggle at him standing there in the long shorts with two fluffy bunnies on his chest, he did a twirl.  The pizza's were on and the wine was open.  "All clean then?" She made a show of leaning into him and sniffing.  The smell of the shower jell didn't quite mask his own warm appealing aroma.  Her eyes half closed and she breathed him in.  His head inclined slightly and her breath caught in her throat and for a moment she thought he might kiss her.  He sniffed her in return and smiled "hmmmm, very nice" he said.
"come on fishboy" she laughed "let us retire to the lounge and watch a movie."

Their first kiss when it did come was her doing.  She hadn't exactly pinned him to the sofa but although Lachie had shown every sign of being as atracted to her as she was to him he had been unable to cross that final hurdle on his own.  They had put the film on but ending up talking no less than was their normal habit.  He had told her how much he liked her hair, brushing it with his finger tips as he did.  His own was still wet from the shower and she had run her fingers into the top of it producing a pleasing spike.  She had found herself sitting up against him after that and he had pulled her closer with his arm around her waist his hand resting on her hip.  She had turned her head slightly expecting him then to close the the gap and kiss her but instead he had asked about the pizza and turned his head slightly away to better see the film.  She had asked him why he had come here, looking perhaps for a reason behind his reticence but he had brushed it off saying it seemed like a good idea at the time.  He had told her again some amusing incident involving him living out of the back of a van and had seemed to relax.  This time she cheated, she looked up into his face and said his name, he turned and met her look, she held it for just an instant before pressing forward and kissing him softly on the mouth.  She let her lip catch slightly on his as she pulled back enough to see his eyes almost closed.  They opened slightly, the light from the screen reflecting wetly in them.  He turned into her and this time kissed her.  She felt him respond, he adjusted his position on the couch to better fit her body.  His other arm encircled her, lifting her shirt slightly he stroked the skin at the base of her spine.  They stayed that way for a time, not talking but looking.  The lids of his eyes would slide almost shut each time before his lips met hers.  she sighed and stroked the still slightly damp hair at the back of his neck.

She took his hand, sitting up slightly she pulled him upright with the mearest peressure.  His look slid down drinking her in before returning to her face.  She touched his shoulder, feeling the firm flesh below the thin t shirt before running her nails down accross his chest the cotton catching slightly as she went.  His hand still under the edge of her shirt pressed jsut below her ribs, he ran it round following the line to her back.  This time as he pulled she leaned against the pressure and he came towards her.  He bent forward buried his face in her hair at the side of her neck, planting soft kisses on her as he went.  She lifted his shirt and layed her hand on his chest.  The muscles stiffened under her touch as if reacting to cold, she pushed against him and felt them relax again.  She hooked the top of his shorts with her thumb, sliding them down enough to dig her fingers into his behind.  He pressed into her and murmered something.  His hand brushed a nipple on it's way down to her waist, she felt a fleeting tingle and pushed her hips away slightly to give him room.  There was the barest release of pressure on her waist as he popped the top button of her jeans.  His hand rested for a moment on the curving soft skin revealed beneath before continuing with her zip.  Slightly disturbed now by the fluffy bunnies but also intent on uncovering as much of Lachlan as possible she pulled the T-Shirt over his head.  His chest was dusted with small tightly curled black hair, a the reminants of a tan suggested time spent working outside shirtless.  She imagined him pricked with sweat in the golden sun of a dying summer.  She pressed her face to his chest, breathing again that warm sweet smell of him.  His cupped her breast, the thumb excusiatingly close to her nipple but deliberatly circling round actual contact.  She pushed up against  him, using the oportunity to relase her waistband from her hips and slide futher out of her jeans.  Her nails traced paralels up his back as he bent to kiss her belly.  Softly he pecked his route accross the landscape of her pelvis and down her leg pulling her trousers with him to reveal more of her as he went.  She looked down at him, his thick black locks, his sculpted shoulders, each kiss sent a thrill of chiled pleasure through her.  The jeans tangled around her feet, sticking at the last but he took his time, released them and held one foot with a look of discovery.  She felt his thumb pressing the sole of her foot, sliding towards the toe.  She leant back into it and quietly said his name, tasting the sounds on her tongue.  Lachlan.

She closed her eyes, felt his weight shift through the cushions beneath her, he wasn't touching her now, anywhere.  She tried to picture where he was, was he over her?  Would she feel his breath on her face?  His lips against hers?  He shifted again.  "Lachlan?" the not of enquiry in her voice was subtle, unstressed.  His lips brushed her nipple. "Oh" he caught her by surprise.  She twisted slightly, encouraging him but he had moved, now the other side "uh huh".  One hand traced a line along the top of her leg, the thin layer of flesh covering the bone of her hip, she push gently against it and felt the hand cover her sex, just covering, not probing but holding.  His leg against hers was naked now, she could feel the warmth of him, he had removed the shorts.  She drew her leg up, feeling the soft hairs of his leg on the inside of her thigh, she sunk her fingers in his hair and pulled his face up towards hers.  His mouth encapsulated hers.  She softly bit his lip and sank into the kiss.  She traced the edge of his teeth with the very tip of her tongue, feeling the slight uneven roughness in the smooth enamel.  She felt him pressing against her leg, she reached down, wanting to know, held him.  She ran her thumb along it to the base, experiencing the indistinct contures.  She wanted him, wanted him inside her but she didn't rush.  Slowly she stroked him, testing his response to her touch.  His cock swelled in her grip, she could feel it pulse.  Teeth teased her nipple, biting lightly and drawing her in.  Lachlan's hand now under her dug into the soft flesh of her behind.  He kissed her chest, her neck, her cheek.  Brushing enticingly on her lips hmoved up pressing his lips to the side of her nose, lingering gently on her eyelid before audibly drawing breath in her hair.  She released her grip and felt him pressing on her.  If she were to move slightly, push up against him again, the slightest movement would be enough now.  She lent her head forward, placing her mouth on his chest.  She didn't want to breath, just holding the moment. He leaned away from her, his head and shoulders moving with only a barly perceptable change in the pressure she felt between her legs.  His eyes wide now looked down at her, the merest smile playing on his lips.  He scanned her face as if checking, asking permision.  She licked her bottom lip and slowly closed her eyes, arching her back she opened them again and fell into that open face.  She could feel herself parting to allow him in.  He watched her, savouring every nuance of her expresion as with utmost care he entered her.

-oO0Oo-

My mouth tasted foul, cloying and sticky.  Had my tongue swollen?  There didn't seem to be quite enough room in there to keep it out of the way off my teeth.  I could only imagine what used cat litter tasted like but I imagined it tasted much like my mouth.  My head didn't hurt so much as felt delicate, fragile, prone to breakage.  I didn't want to move it, even the slight disruption caused by my shifting to become more comfortable produced waves of bright sparkling agony.  I didn't want to open my eyes again.  The first time I had opened them the dull grey light in the room had been way too much, from the brief glimps I had I was in bed, in a smallish bedroom, there was some kind of picture pinned to the wall above me.  I shifted again, I was still fully clothed unless denim and heavy cotton had become the norm for PJs without me noticing.  Something smelled bad, I was fairly convinced it was me.  I wanted to go back to sleep, wake up when all this was less painfull and could be coped with.  That wasn't a possibility.  Wherever I was it wasn't the scene I had closed my eyes on last night, I assumed last night, it could have been this morning, yesterday morning?  I would have closed my eyes and moaned, as it was my eyes were already closed and the best my throat could come up with was a preemptive croak.  I couldn't hear anything, total muffled silence.  I mustered as much courage as I could and sat up and opened my eyes.  My own head screamed at me, endless streams of serious discomfort washed through me, I hated being hung over.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I could feel my arms and legs but only in a detached, remote way.

The bedroom was probably pink, the light filtering through the thin blue curtains though gave it a grey lifeless cast.  It obviously blonged to a woman, there were several articles of clothing discarded on the floor of a female variety and a bedsite table held a motley collection of makeup and perfume.  I didn't think I had been that drunk, drunk enough to have a sexual encounter and have no memory of it whatsoever.  I held my head.  No, nothing came back to me, I couldn't pin together the timeline after the toilet at the Masonic.  Oh, I'd been sick.  There was a slight crusty stain on my shirt, black and stinky.  I assumed it was guiness sick.  Guiness, I didn't drink Guiness, I diliked stout intensly.  Perhaps someone had been sick on me.  Thinking about it I thought that was unlikely and I did have a dim recolection of drinking a glass of stout, shamrock and all.  I took off the soiled shirt and looked around for my bag which I knew contained my clean clothes.  Shit.  It wasn't here.  I tried to think, to remember where I had last seen it but it wouldn't come.  Bugger.  I could do without this.  I checked my pockets, I still had my wallet, my return train tickets and various scraps of paper.  I didn't seem to have a whole lot of cash left but I was fairly confident I knew what had happened to that.  The way I felt right now it might have been wiser just to have torn it up and flushed it down the toilet, cut out the middle man altogether.  I cracked the curtains and peered out, squinting against the unatural light outside.  There was a thick layer of snow over a small back garden.  There was a slide, obvious despite it's broken fleese covering and a vague lump that could have been a snowman before the latest fall but could as easily been some other playground style toy.  It was way too bright for my sesitive eyes and I let the curtain fall shut.  I looked around the room again, the poster above the small single bed where I had slept was a group of young smiling boys, I recognised them though I couldn't recall their name.  The latest in a long line of popular but short lived manufactured boy bands that appealed to young girls and I suposed young boys of suspect sexuality.  How old was the normal occupant of that bed?  The clothes appeared to follow the fashion trends that might be comfortable to someone in their late teens.  Oh no.  I couldn't have.  I patted myself down, although my belt and top button had been undone I felt fairly confident I had not been any more naked than this.  It would have been rape if I had had sex, I certainly couldn't have consented to anything.  Despite the fact that I obviously hadn't done anything untoward, I felt embarasment and shame.  I checked the bed, mainly to assertain whether I had been sick on it but also to see if anything interesting had fallen out of my pockets as I slept.  No I hadn't embarrased myself that way.  I wondered where I was.  Who's house was this?  It wasn't Andrew's anyway, he didn't have children and when I had looked outside we were definatly in a suburban area, the garden overlooked by many small houses.  Andrew had said he lived out in the sticks, remote was the term he had used.  I wondered where he had got to.

I pulled on my socks and boots without doing up the laces, some kind soul had left them by the bed, I had sniffed the socks and decided I would get away with them.  I cracked the bedroom door and eased it open.  I was making a reasonable effort to stay quiet.  Much as I wasn't deliberatly avoiding anyone I would rather just get my stuff and leave rather than have anything I had done last night brought up to me by other hung over persons.  I was in a short corridor let into it three other doors led to what I imagined where bedrooms, perhaps the bathroom.  I walked slowly up the stairs, partly with a view to not waking anyone unnecicarily but mainly to prevent jarring my head.  I passed the front door on the first landing but decided to have a quick peek into the living room upstairs to see if my bag was there.  The curtains in the living room where shut also, the gloom made it iposible to see if my bag was here or not.  I fiked on the light, there was a groan from the area of floor in front of the couch.  Someone probably feeling almost as bad as me muttered some curses and turned over.  It wasn't Andrew and my bag didn't seem to be anywhere obvious.  I sighed and walked back downstairs to the front door, sitting on the bottom step for a minute to fasten my laces before heading out into the snow.  It was a crisp bright New Year's morning, I looked at my watch, only just morning.  I looked around trying to get my bearings.  The houses were all Identical, lying close to the hill side overlooking a shallow vally.  Along the bottom ran a road and possibly a river from what I could see.  I crunched through the fresh snowfall enjoying the friable squeak beneath my boots.  The cold air at first stung but then cleared by nose and by inches my head.  I would have to retrace my steps, visit the various pubs and bars we were in last night until I found my bag, assuming I hadn't just put it down outside somewhere or if someone hadn't taken it home with them.  Perhaps I was still a little drunk but I couldn't realy bring myself to be anoyed about it.  The search was just something to do, a distraction until the rest of my brain woke up and remembered what else I should be doing.

I didn't find the bag.  I tried the Masonic where I discovered I had been barred for vomiting all over their plush toilet and saying something inapropriate about my sexual relationship to the bar staff's mother.  I tried several other pubs I thought I recognised but they had no recolection of the bag or me.  I tried working mens club we had been in to begin with and the pub by the station where Andy and myself had started out but I was seriously out of luck.  Standing on the sea front looking over to the inner hebridies I realised I was slightly stuck.  Andrew had my phone number so could call me at home but I wasn't in.  He didn't have or hadn't had a phone in his new house so I just didn't know how to get in touch with him, I had never even been to his new house and he hadn't exactly told me where it was.  I looked at the few brave people who had felt able to drive carefuly picking their way down the street on the slipery layer of dirty snow.  I didn't even know what he was driving.  This was a bit of a pain.  There didn't seem to be a whole lot open today so getting breakfast might be a problem I decided I might as well go back to the station.  Funny, I'd had a realy good time last night but in common with every other New Year in living memory I was walking home in the cold with a good reason to be down.  I hadn't lost  whole lot I supose, just some clothes.

There wasn't another train for an hour so I walked along the pier, enjoying the cold hard sunshine that didn't warm me.  The gulls were the only things busy today.  No boats went out or came in, just rested, bobing gently against the pilings.  The cars accross on the main street were few.  I enjoyed the silence and peace.  It was a nice little harbour town, gateway to the isles or some such it was styled.  From here on a working day you could catch a ferry to the Hebridies, inner and outer.  Weekly in the summer there were cruises I think that would take you all over.  Seal watching trips and visits to Fingal's cave.  Looking down on the town and harbour is McCaigs tower.  A folly?  The story runs that he had it constructed to provide employment for the locals, how very public spirited of him.  It looks reminicant of a Roman relic, A minature version of the colusium or a circular aqueduct.  I know from being up there that the perspective is false, exagerated, designed to make the structure look bigger and more imposing from down here.  I couldn't tell if it worked or not, well not without having a simetrical one to compare it to.  Still it looked pretty imposing if slightly softened by the trees.  I looked back at the water, picked up something from the wooden floor by my feet.  A rusty bolt, no longer suitable for it's orgional purpose.  I thought about throwing it out as far as I could into the water, I heard the faint pop it would make as it hit, the ripples of its passing iperceptable amoung the wavlets.  I dropped it back to the peir and kicked it up against the edge.  I went to catch my train, time to go home.

I hoped there would be a paper left on the train, I just wanted to lose myself for a bit, catch some distraction.  There wasn't and I missed the book I had been intending to read still in my bag, wherever that might be now.  I looked out of the window and watched Oban roll away.  What was it about him that got in the way of forming friendships.  You would swear I can only run one relationship at once.  Other people seemed to have swarms of friends, going out as a group, talking, laughing, visiting one another.  They always had a shoulder to cry on, they were there when they were needed and they were, needed.  I've got, had short term aquaintances that seemed to be developing into close friendship but their seems to be a barrier round me.  No one gets closer than that, no one invites me closer. Mark was cool, Mark would be called my friend but he retains that status without getting too close, he doesn't ask the hard questions and doesn't come to me with his problems, his heartbreak.  He also puts up with my complete inability to maintain my friendships, doesn't seem to get anoyed with me when I don't contact for months on end.  Andrew looked like he might pan out the same way but he had fucked off and left me.  I know 'm a big boy now but I came up here as his guest, he invited me, I had no idea where we were and I was very drunk.  I didn't feel uncomfortable about being abandoned in itself but it did seem like a symptom of that failure to connect.  Failure to be close friends.  Felling sorry for myself I wondered if essentialy I would alone for ever, with no relationship ever touching me.  I wondered if any had.  Certainly not Mhairi.  Mhairi was good company certainly, she was a joy to spend time with when she could get her nose out of a book.  Attractive as well, I never had any problem in that department, caring, loving, tolerent.  Her good points were legion but for some reason I just never felt very close to her.  I didn't need her, it hadn't hurt when I left her.  It felt more painfull to be leaving Oban and the highlands again that it had leaving Mhairi.  I worried about her, she was intoverted and I worried how she would react to being on her own, but if I never saw her again, I probed, couldn't find anything, any feeling, if I never saw her again it just wouldn't matter.  Had any relationship ever mattered?  It was dificult to find a good example of one that mattered.  When I was still at school I had a girlfriend and she had broke my heart.  I think she broke my heart, I felt so cold and alone when she left me, I had thought about all the usual things young men with a broken heart think about but I was't the type to end my own life.  I had left, went wandering, run away in the words of my mum.  I hadn't known what to do with myself.  Was that a broken heart or just a disjointed nose.  I don't know, I was very young.  There were people from my past that I missed but they wern't old girlfriends, some of them wouldn't realy constitute friends.  But then did I have any freinds or where they all just aquaintances?  I shook my head.  This was all pretty pointless.  I doubted if anyone where significantly different.  Only those that were willing and able to count all their aquaintances as friends thought that they had lots of friends.  I was was normal, except for the fact that I thought I wasn't but then perhaps that too was normal.

The train got in to Queen Street late.  It was dark and frosty by the time I got off my local train and walked round to my house.  It wasn't much warmer inside, I stuck the heating on and stripped off my grubby clothes.  After a shower I collected my messages.  There was one from Andy wondering where I had got to, he had been round everywhere we'd been without trace of me though there was some talk about me sleeping in someones house.  He had found what he assumed was my bag, he would keep it for me and I was to give him a ring.  He didn't leave his number and if it was somehow stored in my voicemail it was beyond my abilities to retrieve it.  There was a message from Mark as well, would I like to come round for dinner, I did my maths, tomorrow night.  Bring wine.  Wine?  I remembered that Sam was back.  Dinner and wine wasn't entirly like the single Mark but when Sam was here he seemed to turn all civilised on me.  I would probably have to go as I didn't realy want to offend anyone but I needed sleep.  I would ring him tomorrow.  I ignored the other two messages and crawled into bed.

I felt great when I woke up.  I knew I wasn't in any particular hurry, I reached over and turned the radio on and just lay there coming round.  It was nearly 12, nearly afternoon but not quite, I wondered if I was getting into a bad ahbbit of this.  Had I adjusted my body clock to expect to be able to sleep till noon?  that wasn't good, I liked having my mornings, I could get things done.  Any hour of morning time is worth two hours or more of afternoon time.  I'd much rather get up early and go to bed early if I had something I expected to acomplish.  Today I didn't expect to accomplish anything in particular.  Damn, I remembered Mark's message about dinner, too late to cancel now I thought, best ring him though.  I groped about on the floor till I found the handset for my phone.  They weren't in, or at least no one was answering.  I left a message to the effect that if tonight was still on I would see them later, failing any further instructions I would aim for eight.  Mark had a cell phone but if they were in and otherwise engaged I realy didn't want to push the issue.  I dropped the hadset and lay back, I could just rest my eyes for a minute, I would be fine.

I woke with a start.  Bugger, an hour gone.  Had that been the phone?  I needed to pee and didn't feel quite so good anymore, this was the disadvantage of waisting the day in bed.  I got up, scratched and wadered to the toilet in semi Zombie mode.  I would need to get moving now, pah.  I tidied up a bit and searched for clothes that were reasonably respectable, unsuccessfully.  I had taken far to much with me for just a night anyway and that meant that anything I had that wasn't seriously dated or indeed downright rude was in that bag.  I stuck on a pair of jeans that didn't actually expose my dangly bits and a T shirt that read "If you dont want to fuck me baby then baby fuck off" and went out.  Officialy it was still a bank holiday but I reckoned that a few shops on Vicky road would be open.  I was right, most everything was open.  The pubs and offlicences because, well because it was still new year and that's what new year is realy all about; the paper shops because that's how they make there money on tight profit margins, by being open all the time; everything else because it was sale time.  The windows were full of bright dayglo signs advertising the fact that it was sale time and proclaiming the fantastic bargains to be found inside.  Near park was a clothes shop.  Not you're trendy high street chain style clothes shop filled with the latest fashions, here today gone tomorrow but a proper clothes shop.  The Ladies, mens and childrens departments were on diferent floors, up stairs was the kind of old woman's cafe where you could get the most vile frothy coffee available.  It was like something out of another age, even the decor stood out as being of a certain aged style reminisant of the fifties and sixties, in a grown up rather than a Carneby St way.  I found some trousers that weren't quite Jeans and yet were not quite slacks, tastefull in green.  I bought a couple of shirts and a sweater top type thing.  I wasn't going to wow anyone with my finger on the pulse understanding of men's fashion but then I believed there was a diference between style and fashion.  I could get away with calling my purchases stylish as long as no one was too picky.  Any way they were on sale, I liked getting a bargain.  I looked at my boots, I looked at my clothes, they would have to do I wasn't about to go and buy new shoes, anyway DMs where allways going to be stylish, I didn't even have to pretend.

When I got to the front door I realised I had forgotton the wine.  I would have to pick it up on my way, I could walk back up Vicky road to get to Mark's.  It was about four so I stuck the shower on and emptyed my purchases onto the bed, I was happy with the shirts, one blue and one bright orange, the orange one was perhaps a bit much, it had a fait check but I had just liked the colour.  The blue one felt nice, cool and slipery to the touch, no pocket and hidden buttons gave it a clean look from the front.  I stopped fussing and got in the shower.  I stayed in the steamy stream of water as long as I could bear, long after I had washed every possible bit of me within an inch of it's life.  I turned the water off and let myself drip for a moment before toweling my hair and half drying.  Standing naked I inspected my face in the small mirror above the sink, pcked at some blemishes, I needed a shave.  I felt my denuded skin, chasing down the bit's I missed.  I liked the feel of my hairless chin but I hated the thought of actually shaving, it was a pain.  I plucked out a couple of stragling eyebrow hairs.  When did my eyebrow hairs get so big, like a couple of hairy catapillars squaring up for a fight on my brow.  Did men pluck their eyebrows?  Should I?  I had no idea.  I looked up, my hair was a mess but then it allways had been.  Thick and black with a slight curl it defied my attempts to control it.  I had given up on using various gells and mooses and now just ran a brush through it.  I flicked at it, hoping to produce a look I could be happy with.  Not a hope, if it wasn't too long then it was too short.  I left it.  I got dressed and made a coffee but still had several hours to spare.  Eight o'clock seemed a long way off.  I twidled my thumbs and kicked my heels, feeling like an idiot for getting ready so early.  Christ it was dinner with some friends, I had had dinner with Sam and Mark before.  We had had dinner with Sam and Mark before, I was no longer a we.  Perhaps that was all I was freaked by, this would be the first time I had to cope with the Sam/Mark couple thing without being part of a couple myself.  I would survive.

I futzed about till about twenty past seven, tidying and realising that half the things I thought I had in the flat were realy back in Galloway with Mhairi.  It had been my decsision to leave it, walk away without sorting everything out.  I didn't feel that I would be at all justified in asking for any of it back now, I had let the whole thing go on too long now.  I looked at the few books and CDs I had aquired since being here, I could try and replace what I could.  It might be fun.  I went out into the cold yellow night.  The sky didn't realy start, it was curtailed just above the streetlamps and buildings, a dark grey yellow.  It might snow some more but it felt a bit cold for that.  Thinking about it I didn'y know what that meant, too cold to snow.  Didn't it snow in the artic, the antartic?  Surely it was much colder there and the snow managed to find it's way to the ground.  I walked accross Victoria Road to the offlicence there.  It was a brightly lit streak compared to the dull darkness around it.  Cars jostled between the evenly spaced traffic lights, most of the shops had close but the exterior lights stayed on.  The glass door swung shut behind me switching off the noise.  I browsed the wines through the security glass.  As the customer I was restricted to a a glass box about 8 feet wide by 20 feet long in the middle of the shop.  The goods, the wine, beer, bottles of fizzy drink, spirits etc was all the other side of the glass.  It was arranged properly to display the goods to best advantage, pyramids of cans occupied the right had side near the front of the shop, each with its large price ticket or massive reduction stuck to it.  On the left with the wines they seemd to have a wicker motif going on.  Baskets stuffed with shredded crepe held bottles of white and red.  Behind them lay the standard shelving you would expect to see.  I peered through, I resented getting treated like this, locked into our glass cage.  You could look at the other way, you could try and imagine that the beer and the employees were in the cage with the cash.  I had come in from the outside, walked in here of my own free will while they were trapped by the constraints of employment and fear.  But they had carpet and heating and soft lights and lets face it all the beer and cash.  We, the customer, had a hard vinyl floor for those hard to remove blood and vomit stains, it was cold with the door being opened and closed all the time and the heater being through the toughened glass from us and in order to get any of their beer we would have to shout through the little hatch at the end and try and carry out some kind of semi normal transaction.  On top of that, I knew from having worked in an almost identical off licence that there was a little button up there by the till.  If the girl back there got too jumpy she could press it and what felt like a prison would become one.  The outside door would lock and everyone would stay put until the police arrived and sorted the good guys from the bad.  I didn't loiter steaming up the glass too long, I knew what I wanted and joined the short queue.  I recognised the hair before the face.  I knew the girl serving, I had worked with her.  You would think after all this time she might have moved on from serving at the counter here but then I was in no position to throw stones.  I looked about again.  I looked at her open face, her tired eyes as she gave the woman in fron of me some fags.  There had been more than a colegue relationship.  There had been some embarasment.  Had I caught her and someone else?  No, it had been me and her, very drunk and my flat mate had walked in.  Good grief.  I looked her in the eyes and smiled, told her what I wanted.  I had to tell her agien before she moved, was she doing the same as I had just done?  Tracing though the memory until she found all the pertinant details?  I watched her pick her way through the shop to the wine, She picked up two out of three and then looked confused.  She shouted something which I missed because of the glass and I followed her over.  Did I want the the white off the shelf or out of the fridge because they didn't have what I wanted in the fridge.  She looked at me again, full in the eyes this time, her lids have closed and a serious smile bolted on her lips.  I grinned and flashed her my teeth.  Whatever she had dredged from that drunken night long past seemed to have pleased her, I pointed to a bottle in the fridge and keeping eye contact till the last, turned back towards the hatch.  I didn't watch her return.  I handed over my cash and said "Thanks Polly, take care."  and walked.  She's been a psycho.  It had been her that didn't want to see me in the end though, I had a soft spot for psychos, or I used to have.

I didn't want to walk through the park in the dark carrying alchohol, they could smell it.  I skirted round the outside and walked down to Marks's block.  There were plenty of folk about, last day of the holdiay and everyone was out wringing the last dregs out of the new year.  People carrying bags identical to mine hurried past, others who had obviously been at it for some time made there way carefully from pub to pub.  The cold didn't seem much of a discouragement.  Mark opened the door and ushered me inside.  I gave him the wine and hung my coat up on the back of the door.  I could smell dinner cooking.  I followed my nose through to the kitchen where Mark had his head in the fridge.  "Drink?" he said, his voice slightly muffled.  I asked for a larger, bad habit I know, mixing the grain and the grape but a habit I had none the less.  There was a tall steamer bubbling on the stove top and something in the oven.  I asked what we were having.  Mark claimed it was chicken in filo parcels.  I bent and looked in, tinfoil packages glittered within.  It sounded more than a little ambitious for Mark and I was honestly disapointed there wasn't anything interesting to tast.  I asked him where Sam was, in the shower he told me.  I tried not to think about it.  I started telling him of my idiocy of the previous night.  He had done the usual drinking in town, bells in George Square, desperate crush to try and get it somewhere and a long wait on an expensive taxi.  Taxi's where allways on a premium after 12 but on new year I imagined they stuck extras on for a laugh.  I heard movement through the wall.  Where are we eating I asked?  Here or next door? I clarified for his puzzled expression.  Realising I was diging a hole of confusion I added "The living room?".  "yea, give us a hand then" Mark said handing me cutlery and glasses.  We wandered through.  I liked Mark's living room with it's polished floor and modern wooden furnishings.  We laid the table and I went to find my beer.  I almost knocked Sam over in the door.

She was wearing a tight black pencil skirt that gave her legs an impressive inverted tulip shape.  Over her black top she had a loose slightly transparent linen shirt.  Her long dark hair hung over one shoulder the light showing the faint copper highlights.  The contour of her collar bone was visible above the neckline of her top and flowed oh so sweetly into the soft flesh of her neck.  I looked into those deep brown eyes all thoughts fled, my hand, suspended in the process of reaching for her to catch a fall that never happened stuck out in front of me at an odd angle that couldn't quite be interprited as a hand shake.  She took it anyway, lightly gripping my first two fingers and smiled, her nose crinkled slightly.  "How are you Lachlan?  So very sorry to hear about you and Mhairi, I thought you where wonderful together"  I blinked slowly and tried to regain control of my motor functions.  "These things happen" I said weakly.

-oO0Oo-

She was wearing an all too practical suit.  The fitted skirt accentuated the shape of her legs, drawing the eye up to where the the suit jacket done tight up to her neck against the cold failed to hide the slim but well proportioned shape of her torso.  Her hair had blown accross her face and she reached up to hook it back with one thin finger.  She looked slightly up at me and as before dipped her eyes briefly before appologising.  I had been hurrying accross the carpark, ill dressed for the weather and trying to hold my light coat closed against the sting of icy specks of rain.  I hadn't seen her and as I had scurried for the protection to the reception doorway I had nearly bowled her over.  I reached and caught her arm, steadying her and muttering an apology before I realised who it was I had run down.  As she cleard the wayward hair I looked agine into those attractive brown eyes.  Her face betrayed a smile though her mouth stubornly still refused to play along.  I let go of her arm and wondered what to do with my hand, I felt large, misshapen, clumsy next to her elegance.  I wanted to talk to her, I was convinced she had something to do with Junpei.  It was too much of a coincidence that she should be here and not be connected to that young man still presumably unconscious in the bed in Intensive Care.  When I thought about it though I was making a massive leap.  I didn't feel Fort William was particularly multicultural, I hadn't seen a single black person anywhere or indeed anyone that didn't look pasty, short and local.  I supposed it would be diferent in the summer once the turists hit the place but this early in the year there only seemed to be locals.  I felt debilitated by my own political correctness.  To assume that any Japanese face was necicarily conected to any other Japanese face I knew of here was to fall into a blunt racisim that I despised in others.  Like assuming any one that appeared to be from the Indian subcontinent probably had a corner shop or at the very least strong conections to the retail industry, that any English voice would be an over rich holiday home owner depriving the area of any affordable housing.  It might be a statisticaly good bet that there weren'y that many Japanese people in this part of the highlands but it offended my sensibilities to verbalise what I considered to be my predudice.  I had no choice though.  I looked at her feeling the that the moment was going on way too long.  If I wanted to know, to find out before she got away, possibly forever I had to ask.

"Are you..do you kn..were you just.."  Shit.  She cocked her head, trying to hear me over the wind.  I tried again.
"Can I have a word with you?"  I chickened out.
"Do I know you?" She asked searching my face, looking for something familiar.
"No, I don't think so.  I saw you here yesterday but.."
"Yes, that was it" She relaxed a little "Is there something I can help you with?"
I took a step back, conscious that I probably looked and sounded like some kind of lunatic or sexual preditor.  "I wanted to ask if you were anything to do with Hanabusa Junpei?"  I mentaly crossed my fingers noticing that my real fingers were nervously twisting together, I put the all behind my back and almost crossed them in actuality.
A pained look passed accross her face "Yes."  She answered "yes I am here to see him"
We were standing outside the hospital, strictly speaking still in the car park, the wind curled loudly round the building and buffeted us where we stood.  It was cold and uncomfortable and I didn'y think it was exactly condusive to delicate conversations.  I tried to put it as delicatly as possible, I told her that I had been there, at the accident and I would be very gratefull if she would tell me how he was.  There was a cafe or resteraunt affair somewhere in the hospital, I knew because I had seen the signs pointing the way.  I suggested that we go there and talk.  She looked at my face again with her searching look, she must have been comfortable with what she found there because she agreed to come with me.  I was astounded and relieved at the diference inside the building.  My ears rang with the sudden silence and my limbs groaned in relief at the warmth that started to return.

She followed slightly behind and to the right of me, letting me lead her though I was relying on the signs to guide me through the building and I got the distinct impression that she had been here before.  The cafe turned out to be more of a canteen, it's institutional roots showed in the blue grey colour scheme and plastic school style chairs.  I recalled something about this horrible utilitarian stackable seating being a design classic but I knew from memory that it made no diference to their comfort or complete lack of any.  I bought us both a coffee, over the counter in a mug rather than the more usual vending machine and we sat down either side of a long table.  Most of the other people in the canteen seemed to be staff, at least they dressed like you would expect hospital staff to dress, white was the colour of choice, I didn't look for blood stains.  Why do they wear white in hospitlas?  Surely red or better brown would be much more sensible?  I procrastinated wildly, not looking at her, trying not to even think about her or Junpei or having to tell her who I was.  I could tell she was looking at me though, Still inspecting my face, trying to guess who I was?  Perhaps she knew already who I was.  Perhaps the staff had told her I was there yesterday, even pointed me out?  I compressed the thought inside, holding it down so I could say what I had to.  I turned to her and started to tell her who I was.

I held back from saying I was to blame.  I told her what had happened, described the scene in the softest possible tones.  Tried to assure her that the emergency services had been exemplary in their actions, they had responded quickly and effectively, had not left him there, on the ground any longer than you could expect.  I had reiterated that in my opinion you couldn't have expected more in Glasgow or any other city.  I told her I had been in the car that had hit him but I just couldn't tell her I had been driving.  I explained that I had been worried that no one was here for him, no one would take a personal interest.  I told her about the hospital not letting me see him, how because I wasn't family, didn't have any clout, wasn't even local that I just couldn't be all I wanted here.  I told her that the doctor had told me her brother was coming and said that I realy hoped he would be here soon.  I had heard that a familier voice, someone he was used to might help him.  She had a funny expresion on her face as I said this.  I asked her if she would be staying or did she have to get back to the embassy, or was it a consulate?  Was she based in Edinburgh, Glasgow or was it England?  There was almost a trace of amusement in her face now.  I thought she was from the embassy she asked, I nodded dumly.  I was waiting here for Junpei's brother?  I nodded again.  She didn't laugh but looked down at the table and shook her head.  "I am Junpei's brother" she said.

Obviously she wasn't Junpei's brother.  There had been some confusion with the police localy and information being passed through too many people on it's way here.  Origionaly her father had wanted to come, insisted on coming but his doctor had forbiden it.  He wasn't well and certainly was not allowed to fly half way round the world to see his son lying unconsious in a hospital bed.  He had no other family, just her and her father.  She had come, come to see him to take care of him.  I was so relieved.  I felt like a weight of responsability had been lifted from me, not that anyone had expected me to take resposability for Junpei or even allowed me to but up until this point I had felt totaly responsible, the only person here with any personal interest.  She was his sister, she would be able to take care of him.  It was selfish of me to assume so, I hadn't thought through what she might be going through, that she might not cope with her brother being criticaly ill in a foreign hospital.  She had an impecable Edinbrugh accent and I had to ask.  She had grown up here, in Edinbrugh.  They both had.  Junpei was intent on getting back here and was due to start college in Glasgow this year, he was supposed to be here for a month to scout around and see what accomodation was like, become familiar with the country he had know as a child, see how the west coast differed from the east.  He had been excited about driving up here himself, going to the highlands and islands.  She didn't cry but her eyes glistend wetly as she talked about his plans that I had put a premature end to.  I reasured her, reached forward and touched the back of her hand with my finger tips.  Told her that when he was up and about I would personaly escort him round Scotland, show him the sights, find the best pubs, take him to all the castles.  In reality I probably knew less about Scotland than he would, perhaps he could show me around.  Do you want to see him she asked without warning, fixing me again with those dark eyes.  Yes I told her, of course.  That was why I had been here.  That was the one unlikely thought that had dragged me up here from Andrew's.  I wanted to see him, se what I had done, see if he would be alright.  I don't know what made me think that I would be able to assess his condition better than the doctors could but I believed I would.  I just knew if I could see him I would know what was going to happen next.  It wont be today she said, they threw me out and told me to come back tomorrow.  Perhaps if you would meet me here.  She touched my hand.  We could go and sit with him.  I agreed to come back tomorrow, early afternoon.  We walked out into the carpark, she said her hotel was nearby and I didn't feel it was appropriate to walk her to the door.  Now we were outside I started to feel uncomfortable again.

I couldn't quite understand what had happened.  Why hadn't she been angry with me?  I had run down her brother, caused this to happen.  Because of me she had been obliged to fly all this way to pick up the pieces of her family.  She should have been livid, angry with me, I was to blame.  I wanted her to blame me, to rail against me.  I didn't expect her to be calm, this calm, to want me to see him, to understand any of it.  I didn't expect her.

I drove back to Andrew's, I had told him I would only be away one night and I wanted to have a shower and a shave.  I had water in the van, if I remembered to fill it up that is, but only cold.  The only hot water came from the kettle and it realy wasn't up the task of being a shower.  The only way I could invisage of pulling it off was to use the bowl and sponge method, I shivered at the thought.  Perhaps I could have found my self a Camper with such niceties but I was pretty sure that meant a massive increase in size.  Half the reason I had plumped for this one was it's compact one person neatness.  I could carry me and all I realy needed in a vehicle no bigger than a large family car.  All I realy needed except hot running water.  If I was going to continue this trip I would have to work that one out before I got much further.  It was just getting dark when I pulled into the yard, the lights were on in the boathouse and the kitchen window cast a huge square of light down into the yard.  Andrew waved down at me from the window as I climbed out and locked the van.  I looked around enjoting the still night air.  I could smell the spring.  It was till cold but it wasn't so bitter out of the wind and the promiss of better weather was being made by the night.  I could hear the wavlets lapping the slipway, I loved being this close to the sea.  I tried to tell myself not to get too attached, this wasn't realy my home.  It was nice to have somewhere friendly to come back to but it would never be mine and it would be foolish to get too comfortable.

We started on coffee.  Sitting in the upstairs living room next to the massive window as the darkness got thicker and thicker, the blanket of the night pricked with bright stars.  I watched them as we talked, some of them moved.  Satelites I supose, catching the light as they made their circular journeys.  A boat made it's way accross our view, a ferry I think though the scale was decptive, it could have been a rowing boat or a liner, there was no point of reference.  I couldn't even work out where it was going, the coast here crinkled and I had never fully worked out which way we were facing, what islands or hills made up the view from the front of the boat house.  I dispaired at my lack of knowledge about my own country.  My father when he was alive could have told you where you were and what way you were facing just by looking at a picture of two hills together from anywhere up this coast.  It wasn't a skill I had inherited much as he had tried to encourage me.  I loved it here, this place familiar from family holidays but I had not even the slightest understanding of the place.  Perhaps that meant I could discover it all afresh for my self.  It would all be new to me even though it was tinged with familiarity.  I doubted it though.  Sitting here looking out to where the hills had faded into the dark I felt like an alien, I didn't understand the place and I didn't understand the people. Andrew was making a sincere effort to be nice to me, to make me feel at home and I appreciated it.  I felt it but I didn't know why he was doing it, why he bothered.  When I started telling Andrew about the girl at the hospital and who she realy was he suggested we switch to whiskey.  In two cabinates either side of the fire were what looked like an extensive collection od serious malts.  There were runs of matching labels with diferent years marked on them, 12 year olds, 18 year olds, some even older.  This represented a serious investment in the other national drink of Scotland.  No one ever got rich collecting Irn Bru though and I assumed this was Andrew's nest egg, speculation in Scotch was a pretty good bet, as rare bottlings got rarer, well people kept drinking the stuff, the price went up.  If you wern't a complete idiot it had allways seemed to me to be an almost ideal way to lay down some growth potential with your capital.  He opened the cupboard at the bottom of one of the cabinates though and pulled out one that had been opened.  "We'll have some of the good stuff tonight Lachie, *insert some old, expensive but not too ridiculous Scotch here* do you?"  I had to admit I knew nothing about it, sounded impressive though and I agreed.  He went and got the glasses and I got up and had a look at the bottles on display.  He had *another one* all the way through from 74 to 81, He had two bottles of *and again* and some nice looking bottles that claimed to contain *blah blah* in velvet lined boxes.  There was something funny about the seal on these though.  Looking closely I could see they had been opened.  I looked at the others.  The liquid inside them was a range of shades from pisswater yellow through to a rich oaky golden brown but every bottle on the shelf had a broken seal.  
"Ah so you've discovered my little secret then Lachlan?" his voice directly behind me said.  
"but..."  I was at a loss.
"there is no point buying a good bottle of whiskey if all your going to do with it is look at the bloody thing" He smiled "Cold tea, every last one of them.  There is a bottle of *Yea yea* in the cupboard and this" he waved the opened bottle at me "the rest is purely so I know what I have had, and what I am yet to have."
"What about the colours?  are they..is that what they looked like?" I asked in amazment.  I couldn't contemplate drinking that amount of money.
"Well some of them are about right"  he poured a hefty mesure each into the glasses "and some of them I can't realy remember, it's an art you see and I'm far from good at it"
I laughed.  It would be heart breaking to be run over by a bus having spent all that money on *one of the ones mentioned earlier* and not to have tasted it.  The I straightened my face.  Or to have been hit by a Volkswagon without having even begun to live your life. He saw the look on my face.
"C'mon, sit down and have some of this.  Their's few better."
I sat and took a sip.  It was like nothing I had ever tasted before, certainly nothing like the cheap shit I called whiskey.  It glowed on my toungue, smooth and clean it slid down the back of my neck without catching.  I felt the warmth, tasted the  rich golden flavour of the real thing.  I liked it, a lot.
"So he doesn't have a brother then, she was his sister this woman, what did you say her name was?" he asked.
"Samiko, Hanabusa Samiko, Sam" I replied.

-oO0Oo-

She folded another box into shape, sealing the bottom with brown parcel tape, using her teeth to detatch it from the dwindeling roll.  Mhairi wished she had got a tape gun, the pistol gripped zippy hand held alternative to making a tangled mess when it came to packing.  It hadn't seemd worth the bother but when you kept fluffing it and having to rip the stuff back off the bax you were sealing it made more sense than this.  There was a jumbled heap of books on the bed, some sweaters and a loose stack of bills and statements.  There were three small boxes stacked up by the door and she had a roll of black rubbish bags for anything soft that would fit.  It was time to get rid of Lachlan, get him out of the house and her life for good.  If he wasn't going to come and do it himself she would just have to pack all his stuff for him.  For him.  This wasn't for him, this was for her.  She had grown bored of opening the wardrobe and seeing his clothes, of picking up things in the kitchen and realising they didn't belong to her.  She wanted his stuff gone and if he didn't want it it could go to the spastics for all she cared.  A lot of it he had aquired while he was here or they had bought together and she could have reasonably claimed to have some right of ownership but she knew what was his and what belonged to her and she would rather buy new than go on looking at it.  She recognised some of the books and odder knick knacks as having come from before.  He had trecked up to Glasgow with that stupid little van of his on a few occasions coming home with old and tatti boxes of rubbish which he would then empty all over the house and spend days showing her or just in solitary catalogue mode going through it.  She had thought he was throwing out the chaffe, thining down what seemed like a poor picking from a flea market stall to her.  No, he hadn't thrown half of it out, he had gone through it, made neat or less neat piles of it and eventualy squirreled it away round the house.  She had asked him to get rid of some of it, he never looked at most of it, it was no use, she didn't even understand what half of it was.  She had no idea where it had been hiding in Glasgow while he had wandered around Scotland pretending to be a new age traveler.  He had tried to justify it but the justification meant nothing to her.  She knew he was a hoarder of junk and knew she would have to do something about it.  He had muttered about E-Bay and there being some value in it but even he didn't seem convinced of that one.  She had taken to packing him a box every weekend for him to take to the tip.  She included some of her own junk and she had relented on some things but slowly, over time they had got rid of most of it and the house had grown tidier again.  He had still aquired things.  She wouldn't let him in the house after he had been to the tip or been shopping until she had inspected both him and the car for any sneaky aqusitions.  They didn't need a tin bath.  It was unlikely that a damp computer from a skip was ever going to work.  He couldn't physically read that many books and most of them were romance.  Nice desk but it didn't go and wouldn't fit in the house.  She dreaded to think what his house now looked like, without her to filter his habit.  All the furnature was hers, chosen by her.  Unless he asked, and even then she would fight him, he wasn't getting anything bgger than a foot stool.  They had started shopping together for furnature but even the start had been a bit of a fight.

I'm not buying a bed from a jumble sale, she had insisted.  Antique market he had corrected her.  It was all the same to Mhairi, it was second hand, someone else had used it.  This was her first house, her house, she wanted to be the first person to use the bed and everything else.  They had driven all the way here in his shakey old Volkswagon Van, Mhairi fretting and nervous the whole time.  It was a death trap that van and she hated being in it but if they were going to actualy get a bed or anything else they were going to have to bring it home somehow.  She wanted to go to the furnature shop in Dumfries but Lachlan had insisted that they go on to a weekend antique fair further into the borders.  She had agreed but had invisioned getting some decorative items for the kitchen, perhaps a picture or two to hand in her hall.  Lachlan planned to furnish the entire bedroom though with seconf hand stuff,.  Sorry, antiques.  She couldn't understand the apeal of having furnature that was old, pre worn, falling appart.  It was the kind of thing her parents did and inevitably they paid over the odds for things that didn't work properly, were the wrong colour to go with everything else or fell appart within a week.  There was no value in it for Mhairi.  She was right, when they got there it looked like a car boot sale.  People were selling thigs out of the back of vans in what was obviously a car park.  There was a large cattle shed as well with folding tables and makeshift stalls, she imagined she could still smell cow shit and was sure that anything they did buy would allways smell of cow shit.  They comprimised.  Lachlan found a tall boy that he liked.  It was a golden brown with dark discolouration at the bottom of one side.  Mhairi inspected it criticaly, the best she had to say was that it didn't have wood worm.  He paid way too much for it, nearly as much as she had laid aside for the entire bedroom.  The guy from the stall helped him load it into the back of the camper.  Mhairi felt her heart sink, the van seemed to be way too low at the back now.  She asked him if it was safe but didn't feel better after his careful reasurance.  She made him stop on the way back through Dumfries so that she could arrange to have a bed delivered to the house.  They looked together but Lachlan sulked and agreed to everything she suggested.  Eventualy she plumped for a cast iron bed stead with a decent firm matress, she talked the salesman into a feel good discount for cash.  She gave Lachlan a "that's the way to do it" look and they headed home to spend one extra night sleeping on a mattress on the floor donated by her parents.  

The tallboy hadn't stayed.  Too big to squeeze up the stairs it had lurked darkly in the hall for months.  She had been wrong about the price being too high thoug, Lachlan had sold it for half again as much as it cost to an English couple in the village.  The irritation she had felt at being dragged all over the country in Lachlan's van faded fast as well.  When the bed arrived they made up properly.  Lachlan had been a sensitive and considerate lover, he made her feel good about her self.  She enjoyed his touch and his attention.  Mhairi had been convinced of their happiness and security, they had shared an amiable life.  Lachlan had pottered around, he had done most of the work on the house, he had refurbished the tallboy and after that had aquired other pieces of second hand furnature.  He hadn't kept any of them but usualy made a small profit, more than enough to cover materials, enough to make a reasonable contribution to the houshold income.  She didn't know when it had started to go wrong.  It wasn't a relationship based on flaming pasion, there were no constant declarations of love and devotion.  He hadn't made her lose her mind with desire and she assumed that she didn't inspire that feeling in him it was just that they had seemed to fit together at the edges.  They didn't anoy each other, he wasn't an irratent.  It was good knowing he was here, having someone to walk with, to share the basics of life with.  They had bothed cooked and she had grown to enjoy that too.  Together they had learned to be adventurous.  Progressing from the frozen pizza, burgers and chips to preparing interesting and provocative dishes using local organic produce, herbs and spices that they had to order in as the local shops had never even heard of them.  It was fas from unique, the cult of the celebrity chef, far from a new fad, more of a long running theme stretching back to Mr Beaton and beyond, was peaking again.  The media was full of men in black and white checked trousers getting physical with a pestle and mortar, Delia showed us how to boil an egg with elegance and class.  Although they couldn't deny the inspiration behind the cooking revolution going on in their lives some deep snobery present in them both forced them to go beyond popular cook books.  They searched for and aquired strange domestic manuals for young wives in seconf had book shops, they collected verbal recipies atributable to someones mother.  They had found suppliers who were willing to sell them small amounts all be it at premium prices.  They had tried throwing dinner parties, having people over.  Feeding their friends within an inch of their lives.  It had some value, to see people's faces light up at that first taste, to be able to accept compliments knowing that you agreed with the high opinion being expressed but ultimatley they enjoyed feeding each other.  Cooking and eating was at it's best when they were alone.  It was a personla and private experience that she felt only her and Lachlan could understand.  She wondered if he cooked with someone else now or if he had some well equiped kitchen all to himself.  She couldn't bare to think of him sharing that with another woman.

She was convinced now that he had shared something with at least one other woman.  Hindsight was always clear and cold but she should realy have recognised the signs at the time.  Mhairi had quit her job at the factory in favour of a nice clean warm and most importantly less ofensively odiferous position with Dr Ross.  She enjoyed the fact that she could walk to work in less than five minutes.  She could could think without having to scream.  She didn't have to put up with a constant stream of cack handed short timers staying barely long enough to learn the job.  That she didn't have to get up at dawn or work compulsory overtime shifts when things got busy.  The surgery was a little pool of calm compared to the factory floor even at the busyest times.  Lachlan would get home before her and by the time she got there he would be clean and sweet smelling, he would at the very least figured out what they could eat if not actualy have made her something.  She loved having someone to come home to and would hold his warm body to hers the moment she walked in.  He would wrap her up in those long arms, lift her slightly off the floor to kiss her nose.  It was a happy time, she was satisfied with her life.  There hadn't been a sudden change, it had crept up.  He seemed less tolerant of her, he would look at her with iritation if she asked anything of him beyond what he was already doing.  He snapped at her.  Lachlan had allways been patient and understanding and she knew that sometimes she asked a little much.  She had made an effort not to attack him for habits that were obviously ingrained but as much as she backed off from any confrontation he seemed to quicken in finding fault.  She hadn't been sure at the time what she had done wrong, looking back now though she wondered if he was growing away from her then.  He began to avoid her in the house.  If she were in the kitchen, he would be in the living room in front of the TV.  If she were to go through and join him he would make some excuse to go elsewhere.  Into the kitchen to spend hours making a snack or out to the shed to mess with his tools and his pots of paint.  They didn't have the most exhausting sex life.  Perhaps once a week, perhaps less they would share something special for dinner, unspoken lust would creep into their normaly more comfortable and relaxed cuddles.  They knew each other, there were few surprises and fewer disapointments.  When they didn't make love though they always went to bed together, he would hold her in his arms as she relaxed into sleep.  Again there wasn't a sudden or dramatic change but he didn't allways come to bed with her anymore.  He would stay up on his own and watch late night telivision or have one last job to do when she was too tried to remain awake.  More and more she found her self turning over and over in cold sleeplessnes in that empty bed.  That had hurt.  She had looked closely at herself.  Was she unatractive?  Did she wear dodgy pyjamas?  She had asked him to come to bed with her, tried to tell him he was hurting her but he hadn't seen it as a problem.  He claimed not to be tired, told her she was welcome to stay up with him.  She knew now, knew that was when she had lost him.  What could she have done diferently?  How could she have made him keep loving her?  She couldn't see the answer to that yet, she doubted she ever would.  He had taken extra shifts.  When she got home she didn't know if he would be there or not.  She would have to make up the fire herself, make something for them both to eat.  When he did get home he would stink of stale seafood and be too tired to talk much.  She would put out something to eat for him, they didn't even eat together anymore.  Thinking about it had he allways smelled of work?  She couldn't tell, she didn't like to go close enough to smell him before he had had a shower, changed his clothes.  He washed his own clothes.  She hadn't understood why he wanted all the overtime, it wasn't as if they were particularly short of money, she had wondered if he was saving up for something, perhaps a van to replace the one she had made him get rid of.  Not long after the first time he stayed out all night, claiming it was a men only birthday party for one of his friends at work, he had phoned her late to say he wasn't coming home as he was to drunk and skint to get a taxi, she had found a condom in his pocket.  For some reason she had washed his clothes, she despised the smell and had held her breath and stuffed them all straight in the machine.  Only when she started unloading it did she realise she hadn't checked the pockets and a tissue or some other paper had exploded all over his dark work clothes.  She cursed, inspecting the frgments and hoping it wasn't anything important.  There was a wad of stuff in the pocket of his jeans, it may at one point have been letters, a bill or just reciepts but now it was a solid mass of paper.  Breaking it open to check what it had been the bashed and creased foil wrap had falled out.  Durex sensitive.  He didn't use condoms with her, she was on the pill.  She hadn't lost the place with him.  She had gathered all the fragments and lumps of whatever had been in his pocket with the condom and left the pile on the kitchen table.  When he had come home she had apologised for not checking his pockets, chided him slightly for not washing his own smelly clothes and watched his face carefully for some hint of guilt.  He hadn't even looked at the white and pink blobs on the table.  He had put the kettle on and asked if there had been any money.  God he had played it cool.  She had been convinced at the time, certain there was nothing in it and unable then to mention the condom then without starting a fight.   He hadn't touched it, had shown any desire to look, there was nothing about him that suggested any guilt.  He had asked her to throw it away and gone for a shower.  How had she let him away with it, thinking back he hadn't met her eyes throughout the whole conversation.  There might not have been any obvious guilt but ther had been avoidance, denial and she hadn't seen it.  She had been so intent on the few possiblities she thought existed, prepared for his story of messing around at work or getting it for someone else or picking it up somewhere.  She had expected to judge his alibi, but he just hadn't had one.  She thought he might have tried to snatch it up, check if she had seen but no, he had feigned disinterest.  She felt like she had been taken in by a deliberate and calculated lie.  It was possible though that he didn't know, had forgotton.  He was perfectly capable of doing the most dizzy things, like leaving important shit in the pocket of his trousers after leaving them in front of the washing machine.  Devious or stupid?  She couldn't tell.

Mhairi went out to the shed.  He had bought the shed second hand.  Who ever heard of a second hand shed?  The shed had been standing in someones back garden, in the way of an extension or conservatory or something.  He had paid £50 cash on the understanding that he took it away himself.  He had gone over one Saturday morning with a hammer and a pinch bar and taken it to pieces with the utmost care.  They didn't have a vehicle big enough to haul it back here but he had made some arrangement for one of the local boys to load it into a trailer on the back of one of the many tractors that plied the roads around the village.  Once he had it all leaned up against the wall of the house she had noticed that Lachlan had extracted a bonus from the deal, the shed had contained someone else's junk and he had packed that up as well in three big boxes and brought it along.  She had given up on the whole project at that point.  The idea of him getting a shed was that he could move his junk out of the kitchen and put it in an apropriate environment.  He would have somewhere to work where any mess wouldn't spoil the work he had already done on decorating the house.  She couldn't see the point if the shed already came full of extra junk for him to play with.  She had gone inside, pretending not to watch as he carefully and precisely braced the sides, the ends of the shed once screwed in place gave the box some rigidity.  Mhairi couldn't see how he was going to get the roof on without her help.  The roof consisted of two large flat panels once joined in the middle and covered in tarred felt.  They looked heavy.  She put on some coffee and waited for him to come to her and ask for a hand.  It was taking him a while.  Pride? she wondered.  She looked outside, he had one panel in place and was fastening it to the top edge of the walls.  There was a complicated arangement of ladders leaning against the side of the shed, lengths of blue nylon rope lay on the ground.  She sighed, guessed he didn't need her for this bit either.  He loved this little shed, painted it once a year, patched up the roof, lined it inside to keep out the draught.  It was his shed but there was no way she could pack it up and send it to Glasgow.  She could however pack his tools.  She freed the padlock and swung open the door.  Oh god what a mess.  This could take some time.

-oO0Oo-

The phone was ringing, I could hear it but I couldn't get my key to work.  I kicked the door in frustration.  Perhaps it shifted something or maybe the door understood that the next stage after trying the key was borrowing an axe.  I dashed in, sliding on some mail under the door and went to look for the phone, my alarm was beeping urgently.  I went back an entered my code, wrong.  I got it right second go and spotted the phone in the bathroom.  I scurried in there and knocked the phone into the bath.  It skittered away still ringing.  I snarled at it and plucked it out, the tap had dripped on it but it was still ringing.  I pressed answer and put it to my ear.  I heard the dialing tone and swore.  I put the phone down on top of the cistern and went to put the kettle on, collecting my mail on the way.  Phone bill, pre approved credit card application, this is not a circular and a white envelope with a Newton Stewart post mark.  My heart sank.  A more observant person than I might have been able to recognise the hadwriting but as it was I fretted.  There were very few suspects and the only one's that particularly mattered where Mhairi and Morag.  This was probably all the venom Mhairi hadn't been able to get off her chest due to the fact I hadn't talked to her for a month.  I turned the envelope over, checking for scortch marks.  I could throw it out, bin it without reading it.  Did I realy need to hear how much she hated me, how my actions were without any kind of merit, that I was a coward and a bastard to boot?  I didn't know.  I made my coffee and took that and the letter through to the living room.  I looked at the envelope again, what harm would it do?  I could handle her anger, what could she say to me that I hadn't allready accused my self of?  I knew what a shoddy move it had been to just walk out leaving my half arsed attempt at a goodby as the only explanation.  She had deserved a more grown up approach, it wasn't her who had made it dificult to talk, it had been me.  Then once i was here I had plenty of oportunity to phone her or even to write.  I could have tried to make amends, to explain my actions but the longer I left it without contacting her the harder it got.  I wouldn't just have to explain what went wrong and why I had left but why I hadn't told her and why I hadn't called in all this time.

I opened the letter.  I couldn't imagine having writen a similar missive to her.  The tone was friendly if not warm with only slight bitter tinges.  She had packed all my things that I had left.  That hurt for some reason though I could see there wasn't any hurt desire to damage me in the action.  If she had wanted to strike a blow it would have read "I piled all your things in the back garden and put a match to them".  It seemed cold though, emotionless.  She had excised me from her life, packed me in boxes and now she wanted to know where to ship me.  She said I could arrange to have it all collected or if I wanted she would get rid of it for me.  What did that mean?  Get rid off?  Perhaps she did have a desire to burn it.  More likely she would give the lot to a charity shop, she was fond of giving things to charity shops.  Could I collect it?  I didn't have any transport, didn't own even so mch as a bicycle.  I could hire a van I supose.  I tried to imagine what it all looked like, how much space it would take up.  Would I need a van?  I could probably fit everything important in a very small car.  She had written the letter apparantly because I never answered my phone nor did I return my messages.  I had to admit this was true, I didn't answer my phone because it rang when I wasn't here and I didn't return my messages because people didn't leave me their numbers.  Come to think of it I didn't remember getting any messages from Mhairi.  There were some messages from new year I hadn't listened to though.  I went and retrieved the phone from the bathroom, avoiding dropping it down the toilet pan only by virtue of the seat being down.  "You have six new messages, would you like to listen to them?"  Yea right, because I often phone 1571 just to not listen to my messages.  Six was unheard of, I doubted if six actual people knew my phone number, if you didn't count the pizza place and the local taxi firm.  They only knew my number so they could check i wasn't some kind of prank caller.  She was right, three of the messages were from her.  The first was nervous and short, if I had recieved it I doubt very much if I would have been able to tell what she was after.  The second was calmer and more organised as if she had sat with a pencil and paper and planned it.  It layed out everything she had said in the letter right down to a bitchy comment about not answering my phone.  The third definatly sounded bitter, she couldn't understand why I was being so childish, she had gone out of her way to sort out my shit as usual and the polite thing for me to do would at the very least been to call her and tell her what I wanted done with it all.  I listened to all the messages.  I didn't want to get caught out again and upset someone else by ignoring them or beig accused of ignoring them.  My boss wanted to know if I could work an extra shift.  I would have to say no, I didn't have a lot of choice as the shift in question had been last night.  Andrew had phoned again.  He hoped I had got home alright and he would appreciate a call just so as he knew I was all right.  I would have to sort that one out, silly bugger.  Perhaps he wasn't ex-directory, I could just phone directory enqyuiries and ask for his number, only not right at this moment.  The last call, it had to have been the one I dropped in the bath when I came in, was from Morag.  Mhairi had dragged her into it as well then.  Please call me, it's important was all she had said.  Damn that was all I needed.

I rang Morag back, at least I could scope out the lie of the land, she would have a better idea of what was actualy important than even Mhairi herself.  Morag wanted me to come down and get my stuff.  I started bemoaning my lack of appropriate transport but she interupted me.  I could catch the train, Morag could pick me up from the station and give me a hand with the boxes.  She would also deliver me back to the train and I could get a taxi home,  She had seen the pile and thought it was easily manageable that way, it amounted to less than she normaly packed to go to Spain.  What had I done with everything I owned?  I laughed and told her I didn't know.  I did know.  Everything that had some intrinsic value but wasn't heart breakingly hard to dispose of I had sold to the benefit of the escape fund.  By the time I left there was very little in Mhairi's house worth giving to Scope.  I felt like I was being organised, directed.  The sister's had teamed up to make sure this happened knowing that left on my own I just wouldn't have bothered.  I told Morag that it didn't sound particularly fair her doing all this running around for me but she told me I would be doing her a favour.  This would shut her sister up from going on and on about me dumping my resposiblities and running away.  I doubted this would apease Mhairi for long though.  I agreed to come down and let Morag ferry me about but only if I could give her something for the petrol and stuff.  She told me she would find a way for me to pay her back and she would see me on Wednesday.  I didn't like the sound of that but I said OK and told her I would call her.  I needed a breather after that.  I wasn't totaly comfortable with Morag's motives for getting involved in this.  Perhaps I would be better off seeing if Mark would lend me his van or even come down with me, the moral support would be appreciated too.

I phoned Mark but he wasn't in.  Sam answered the phone and had to say hello twice before I remembered to talk.  I would realy have to do something about this, it was seriously distracting knowing she was only a short walk away.  I would have to grow up with regard to her as well.  Having a crush on your best friends girl friend was something I should have grown out of by now.  Mark was away in Fife all this week and unless he started making better progress with the job he might have to go back up next.  I couldn't understand why he took these jobs the other side of Scotland.  I wouldn't have done had it been me.  Sam asked me about Mhairi and ended up dragging the whole sorry tale of me being an ignorant bastard and not calling her since I left.  I told her about the letter and how I had been an arse and Mhairi had been the grown up.  Sam tried to point out the positive aspects of my behaviour, how I had been heart broken and it was almost normal behaviour when a relationship ends to go away and lick your wounds.  She said Mhairi may sound like she is being cold and hard but everyone copes in a diferent way.  I couldn't quite agree about my broken heart but I didn't want to go into the whole story with her on the phone.  We talked about her trip home and her father's family.  We talked about Mark but didn't discuss the fact that he was working away again.  We talked long and shallow.  Saying nice things and avoiding anything that might hurt too much.  We talked ourselves out and I wished I could see her face, watch her smile, look into those glittering eyes.  I told her I would call her later in the week and tell her how I got on with my visit to the ugly sisters.  She didn't laugh but chided me for being cruel.


It looked like I was going to have to rely on the questionable charity of Morag.  I suppose it could be done and all it would cost me was a taxi, a train ride, some petrol money and a few pounds of pride.  When I looked at it like that I wanted to hire a van.  Fuck it I thought.  I called Mhairi.  Like the letter it was no were near as painfull or as nasty as I had built it up to be in my head.  I resisted the pleasentries but she still managed to give me the full story of Christmas at her mother's.  Her brother in law had embarassed himself under the influence of way to much alchohol by colapsing in the bathroom with his trousers around his ankles where Mhairi had found him eventualy.  I couldn't see this happening on Christmas day so assumed she had spent New Year at her Sister's.  I used one word replies and evasive "you know"s to save me from telling her much.  She did laugh at the fact I had lost most of my clothes though.  I told her I would be down on Wednesday to get my things, I didn't voluteer how I was doing it.  She told me that although there was nothing personal in it she didn't intend to be there.  She would give the keys to her sister and I could make my own arangements with her.  I wondered what she knew, or thought she knew.  It was regretable that we wouldn't see each other.  Talking to her had made me realise how little I had to fear from her.  It didn't hurt and I was suddenly taken with the idea of being friends.  I didn't mention this, I doubt I would have met with a favourable response anyway.  There was nothing left to say.  I asked about the cat.  She said it was the cat.  I said goodbye, she hung up.  I felt disapointed.  I would have felt happier if we could have argued but it was never a major feature of our relationship.  I just couldn't remember a single satisfying argument in the whole five years.  She would be angry at me OK, I would get irritated at her but when it came down to it she would turn her back on me and I would give in.  It seemed important at the time not to attack her.  I allways had the feeling that she was very soft underneath and I didn't want to find that out by hurting her more than I could handle.  Did I have a broken heart?  Had I loved her like that?  I didn't know but I doubted it.  I doubted I had ever had a broken heart or loved any woman like that.  I was glad I knew when to walk away though, what would this have been like if we had been married with kids.  It didn't bear thinking about.

I was becoming a frequent flier on Scotrail.  I like traveling by train.  Getting a coffee in the huge Victorian station and standing with the herd in from of the big board waiting for the incoming train to be assigned a platform.  Edging forward, making guesses based on experience, trying to be among the first on to get a jump on that elusive forward facing seat at a table.  The carriages themselves are, despite the protestations of the press about the state of our railway, comfortable and clean.  The wiews from the line are often ones unfamiliar to those who travel by road and not having to drive gives you time to look, space to be impressed.  The mere fact that you can go for a pee whenever you like and there is allways the chance that there will be a trolly service to keep me in coffee and crisps for the journey is a major bonus.  I buy a magazine to add to the paperback in my pocket that I brought from the house.  The  train is only five minutes late pulling in and I walk swiftly accross to the platform getting there just as it is slowing to a stop.  I get my seat and am please to see that there is a coffee pusher on the train.  I ocupy the seat next to me with my jacket and settle down with my book for the long journey down the coast.

It was still morning when I got there but not by a whole lot.  I hadn't realy thought through how long this would take and how long it would take to get back once I had picked up my stuff.  It would be an hour from here to Mhairi's probably at least an hour there and an hour back here.  I shouldn't have any trouble getting here before the last train but it would be late by the time I got back to Glasgow.  I walked up the gravel platform past the small old fashioned station building.  There was a thick mist lying heavy and wet accross the vally I could feel the dampness between my fingers, like walking in a cloud.  I got round to the carpark and imediatly spotted Morag, she was standing next to her car smoking.  She smiled as I came through the gate and stepped forward to meet me.  I felt myself returning the smile, my face moving almost on it's own without any will from myself.
"Lachie" She hugged me, my arms limp at my sides "how are you?" she steped back, the very tips of her fingers maintaining contact with my arms.  She looked me over as if she would ne able to assess my emotional well being just from my choice of clothes or perhaps she was weighing me, looking to see if I was any thinner since she had last seen me.  I mubbeled something about feeling fine and it all coming together.  
"Come on then hansome" she grinned and turned toward the car her trailing hand hooking my finger as if to lead me to it.  I exticated my hand from hers and went round to the passenger side.

When she started the engine the radio burst into life, it was Jimmie singing Cross tTown Traffic.  I sniggered.  I couldn't think of anything less appropriate for a Wednesday afternoon in main street Barrhill.  On a bad day there were probably three or four cars an hour.  I turned it down and enquired after Dave and the kids.  I couldn't pretend to have any interest in Dave though I hoped the little one's where doing well.  Dave had apparantly been promoted which meant he spent less time at home than he normaly did which hadn't been a whole lot to begin with.  Morag seemed unconcerned.  If anything it had simplified her life as she didn't have to put up with him loafing around the house making the place look untidy.  In any case she said there was a new guy in the office at the fish factory, younger than me and with an arse to die for.  In her amused opinion he was as shy as I had been when I had first started there.  She looked over at me, waiting for me to turn and meet her gaze.  This was more than a little scary as she drove this road at over sixty mph, like a more relaxed Mika Hakenan.  She gave up waitng for eye contact and turned back to the road when the tyres on her side of the car clipped the verge.  I let out the breath I had been holding.
"Ooops"  She said.  Ooops would be right I thought imagining us flipping over the hedge and tubeling end over end down the steep sided vally to the river below.
"Still I'm sure I can bring him out of himself, I'm not totaly without skills in that department" She fumbled a gear change, dragging her nails across my thigh.  It was painfully obvious that it was deliberate apparent if nowhere else in the evil smile on her face.  Despite the lack of subtlety and the obvious complications that lay down that path I felt myself respond though it could be put down to the effect of the vibration of the car at this speed on the shoddy road.  She asked me how it was all going in Glasgow, life in the big city and everything.  I told her about my flat, my new things, my job.  She was more interested in whom or what I was fucking as she put it and seemd unconvinced and disatisfied with my negative response.  She didn't feel it was believable I had been away from her sister for this long without getting any.  She looked at me with suspicion, trying to fathom what it was I was hiding.  What I was..what was I hiding.  A few years ago it wouldn't have seemed unusual for me to go much longer without having a girlfriend but I had to admit that my behaviour down here didn't suggest I was the type to let the grass grow under my feet.  Perhaps I was heart broken.  I inspected my self for any internal wounds.  It could be that this breakup had effected me more than I had let on to myself.  Was I realy suffering a massive emotional turmoil without realising it?  Was Sam right about me?  No.  No I doubted it.  If there was anything I was hiding it was that I had been waiting for someone, someone very dear to me, someone I never felt worthy of and didn't think I could ever get anywhere near but I had to have one last look see.  I had to find out if there was anything there before moving on.  I had let her go once before without doing anything about it and this time I wanted to give it a better shot.

I sat in silence the next few miles watching Morag drive.  The road turned twisty and for once she was looking at the road, holding the wheel with both hands except when changing gear which she managed without missing the stick.  She was a good driver if a little fast.  She guided the car into the corners with confidence and surity accelerating again while still in the corner to give her a burst of speed before she had to brake for the next one.  She had on a tight skirt in dark reds that didn't come anywhere near her knees.  I followed the creases round her thigh, watching the slight movement ase she ajusted the speed of the car.  It would be fair to say she was good looking.  Her body curved and soft stretching the fabric of her clothes just so.  I imagined running my hand up that leg feeling those creases in her skirt pluck at my skin.  It had always been this way with Morag.  From the first time I noticed her, smelled her close beside me I wanted her.  It wasn't love, it was most definatly lust.  I could just reach out and slide my hand accross that lap.  She coughed, half laughed.  I lifted my eyes from her leg to her face.  The road had straightened out again and she was looking over at me.  I coloured.
"You want a picture?" she asked, the tone was amused rather than offended.
"Have you got any?" I put on my most inocent voice.
"Pictures and video hun" this time she laughed.

I could have backed out then.  It would have been easy enough to turn the whole thing into a joke and that is probably what I should have done.  It had never been a wise move getting involved with my Girlfriend's sister.  Talk about shitting on your own doorstep.  There where however serious advantages.  We had never needed any excuse to see each other, I had been her primary baby sitter.  I had been atracted to her before I even knew who Mhairi was but the whole married with kids thing had put me off.  She didn't actualy need to do anything to turn me on, just looking at her was enough.  She didn't have any expectations of some long lasting deep and meaningfull.  She knew what she was after and could see right through me.  I didn't want her to leave her husband so she could be with me, I couldn't think of anyones place I would less like to take than Dave's.  She treated him like shit.  Called him on every little thing, had him running about daft in that house wiping arses, fixing things, washing, cooking, tidying and however much he did it wasn't quite enough.  She got bitter and nasty with him in front of his friends, family, me of all people.  I could see why he worked away so much, when he was there they would fight loud and long.  I had had him round at the house in the early hours bending my ear about it on a few occasions.  OK so Dave wasn't the most exciting person you would ever want to meet.  To put it bluntly he was thick and dull with it but it had allways seemed to me that he had the best intentions.  I asked him why he didn't leave Morag and his answer was that he doubted she would cope on her own.  He seemed to think she was incapable of doing the day to day jobs, not running out of cash, not disapearing under her own detritus.  The way I saw it she wasn't about to do anything she could reasonably get Dave to do instead.  He was prepared to put up with her taking out her own frustration on him because otherwise she might take it out on his children.  I wouldn't have taken Dave's place, I couldn't.  I had no understanding of how he put up with her, it all just seemed so personal.  If marriage gives you the right to talk to someone like that, to talk about someone like that then I guess I wasn't going to get married.  He avoided her when she was at her worst, I sought her out.  Morag to me was at her best in her blackest mood.  She would get her self wound up for the merest slight, building on it, taking things Dave said out of context, treating the missbehaviour of her children as a personal insult.  She would get angry at them and then she would be angry at herself for letting them get to her.  I would just stand there and watch her rail.  She was beutiful, incandesant, raw anger spilling out of her.  I would listen to it all, passing the minimum allaowable coment to let her know she still had an adience.  Sometimes it was hard not to laugh.  Afterward, when the words ran out, when she could no longer express her rage without going over again what she had already said we would have sex.  It wasn't making love, it was sex.  I disauded her from biting me.  I could pass off the odd bruise, I had a physical job but I don't Mhairi would have believed that the prawns had bit me.  I don't think I had ever encountered a Morag before and I thought I would have to look for a long time to find another.  I could have passed it off as a joke.  I didn't.

I didn't think we were going to make it out of the car with my trousers still on.  I hadn't thought we were actualy going to make it here alive when the oncoming catle truck had sounded it's horn and she had near broken my hand between her thighs.  I didn't enquire as to wether Dave was likely to come home at any moment, it didn't even cross my mind to ask where the kids where.  There had been more than a little contrivance on her part, getting me to come down with her.  I was sure that Dave wouldn't be back for a while and that the children would be going to grandma's after school.  Morag had planed this or at least had planned for this to be a possability.  She pinned me in the passenger seat, one hand supporting her weight the other rubbing me through the fabric of my jeans as she bit me hard on the lip.  I tasted the sharp metalic tang of blood in my mouth.  She thrust herself against my hand, my fingers inside her knickers, inside her. 
"C'mon" I said as she let me up for air "Lets continue this inside.  I was conscious of traffic passing the end of the drive, her neighbours popping over to borrow some rat poison even if she wasn't.  She kissed me again and grabbed at me as I climbed out.  I didn' wait for her but turned toward the the front door.  She caught up before I got there hooking her hand under my behind and propelling me forward.  She turned me and pushed me up against the door with her hand on my chest kissing me hard as she unlocked the door and let me stumble backward into the hall, she caught me by the belt before I could get too far way from her.  This time I pinned her to the door from the other side forcing it shut my hand under her shirt, lifting her breast through her bra.
"Hey I don't have a spare" I complained half heartedly as she removed my shirt without wasting time with the niceties of buttons.  Her top came off over her head and I dropped it to the floor kissing her neck and shoulder.  She removed her own bra, I was never particularly skilled with the little catch thing and I moved down down to her breast, biting her nipple.  She pulled me back to my feet and pushed me on through the house shedding garments as we went.  By the time we got to the bedroom we were both naked and she forced me backward on to the bed.  As she knelt above me she raked her nails down my chest raising red lines in the pale skin.  I looked up at her, her lightly tanned belly, smooth pendulous breasts squeezed between her upper arms, her hard mouth set in a slight smile she looked back at me unblinking.  I hadn't thought I would be here again any time soon.

I had never flatered myself that my relationship to Morag was anything to do with any strong feeling she had about me.  To be honest I assumed there was some basic sibling rivalry going on here and that I was benefiting from a real or imagined wrong Mhairi had done her.  Morag and Mhairi seemed to get on OK most of the time.  I had never seen the kind of anger Morag was capable of directed at her sister and Mhairi her self had never intimated to me that she had any particular problem with Morag.  They spent a lot of time in each other's company as you would expect I supose from close family living within a few miles of ech other all their lives but there had been something there.  Mhairi had allways been fairly open and vocal in her support and sympathy for Dave.  She seemed to pity him and showed considerable understanding for what he put up with from her sister.  Morag never went to Mhairi when she was upset and angry.  Admitedly in all the time I had known her she had to a greater or lesser degree used me to aleviate her more extreme moods but even the less frantic things had been talked out and sorted with her friends before Mhairi even heard about them.  I honestly didn't know what to expect from that kind of relationship, I had never known my brother.  Together though they didn't show any love or affection for each other.  Thier relationship seemed to be that of close aquaintances rather than friends.  They wern't intimate on any level.  I had at first questioned both of them as subtly as I could.  Probing to find the root cause of any failing in their relationship.  I thought they both had problems and could benefit from being closer as sisters but they had each in their own way let me know that it was none of my business.  Mhairi had let me get only so far before shuting the door and telling me that she didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about it.  Morag had told me to shut up and fuck off.  I had done both.  I didn't hold it against her and she didn't bring it up again.  I thought it was a shame that they couldn't be there for each other but realised that I was applying my own predudices, my own need and lack of that kind of close family tie to a situation I wasn't being allowed into.  

I pushed up against her, lifting her slightly from the bed.  She continued to watch me with that intent, expectant look.  I knew what she wanted and close as I was with her bearing down on me, my fingers buried in the flesh of her hips she wasn't going to get it yet.  I lifted my knees, she resisted, pushing down on my legs with both hands but I pitched her forward anyway.  Her breasts pressed into the raw scratches on my chest, cool and smooth feeling despite the thin sheen of sweat covering us both.  She bit my neck reach for my hands to keep me where I was.  I flipped her over on to her side, withdrawing and slipping out from under her.  She tried to roll over on to her back to face me again but I was ready for her.  I sunk my teeth into the cheek of her arse and pulled her hand down underneath her.  She moaned.  I knew this frustrated her, she liked to look, to touch, to make marks on me with her nails.  I pressed my chest down on the soft smooth flesh of her.  She pushed her hips back against me her hand between her legs.  She said something but I missed it, atching only the nuances of desire.  I pulled her up against me, entering her again.  I looked down at her back, the curves of her waist running smoothly into the swell of her arse thrilled me.  I bet my lip feeling her grip me with a slight flex.  God she was gorgious.

There had never been anything between us before I got together with Mhairi.  I had dated Morag's best friend, I worked with her at the factory, ea shared the same circle and I had spent a lot of time with her but nothing had ever transpired.  We had flirted.  We had talked drity to each other.  I had been called in to speak to my boss for spending way to much time perched on the edge of Morag's desk swapping sexual deviances rather than being out on the factory floor actualy doing my job.  Most of our mutual friends had assumed we were at it like rabbits in the stock room holding their tongues only out of respect for Morag's married status.  But it hadn't happened and I had given up any thought that it ever would by the time Mhairi had expressed an interest.  When it had happened both of us had been drunk and needless to say Morag had been angry.  There had been a party.  Party was probably a misnomer, we avoided the term party as it implied certain things.  If you had a party then you could garuntee that there would be incidents picked from a very small set of possibilities.  Someone would break something of considerable intrinsic or sentimental value; a coffee table, a glass door, your grandmother's blue china plate or something.  Someone would be sick somewhere other than in the toilet.  People you wanted to be there wouldn't show and other people that you didn't want there in fact didn't invite would show up.    Someone would fall out with their long term partner in a very loud and very public fashion and someone, probably a member of the aforementioned couple would have sex with the wrong person in the wrong place.  Your neibours would call the police either because the whole affair was far to noisy and offensive or because ther were people having sex in their garden.  If you refused to call it a party then our superstition held that you could avoid following this path of party.  OK so even gatherings that didn't start with the term party could be subject to some of the normal party events but we held that they wouldn't produce so many so reliably.  The gathering had taken place at Morag and Dave's while the kids had been farmed out to grandma's.  The regular crowd and then some had filled the house and spilled out into the large garden.  I missed what had caused the fight but at one point I dragged some young kid off the top of Dave, who he was happily pummeling and gave him a slap.  There had already been a mounting tension between Morag and Dave and this just pushed the whole thing over into a running battle.  Mhairi had drunk herself through a headache and by the time people started drifting off home she was sleeping it off in the children's room.  I watched Morag lay into Dave through the patio doors as I collected the worst of the mess in the garden.  I didn't catch what was said but Dave stormed out.  It was the first time I had been exposed to Morag in full sail.  As I filled rubbish bags with empty cans she raged, I muttered ascent, not realy paying atention to the words but thrilled at her animation.  The whole thing followed a course that was later to become a pattern.  I made us a coffee and stood in the kitchen as she ran out angry words.  When it came it was unexpected.  Before I knew it she had her tongue down my throat and I had my hands in her pants.  I might have had some guilt about Mhairi in the next room or some fear of Dave coming back to make it up with his wife if I hadn't been quite so drunk or quite so taken with Morags angry visage.

I was seriously close.  There was no way I could hold back even if I wanted to.  I gripped Morag's breasts, my face pressed into her neck, breathing her in, I wanted to be inside her when I came but Morag had other ideas.  She pushed back against me before sliding forward, escaping my grasp.  I moaned but already she had turned over and out.  She took me in her hand pulling me to the edge of the bed.  She brought me back to the edge with her moth and hand.  She had serious skills with her mouth.  She knelt on the floor.  "sit up" she told me.  Tired as I was I complied.  As she puled me off with one slick fist I put my hands on her shoulders.  I could feel it welling inside me.  I couldn't speak, I could hardley breath.  I stuck my fingers into the hair at the back of her neck looking down into that hard cool gaze.  She slowed, holding me right at the edge for the mearest second before I flushed red and came in a sudden tingeling, draining orgasm.  I couldn't hold myself in the sitting position any longer.  I slid slowly off the bed to my knees, our legs entangling.  I held her, both of us sticky with sweat and seamen, my orgasm continued to send shivers through me.  I bit down on the words that welled up in my throat, stopping them short.  I let out a breath and kissed her gently on the forehead.  I had nearly said it and right at that moment I would have meant it.  For the pain and the pleasure, for that heart stopping moment whenever I looked at her, for her pure unadulterated lust; at that moment I realy did love her.