"Did you buy it and get a good look?"
"Well, naw, I wouldn't give them my money."
"It wasn't a picture of me, it was a photo of Liz."
Liam shifted uncomfortably and avoided her eye. She stomped across the room to her rucksack and pulled out the folded front page of the newspaper. She opened it out and handed it to Liam, sat down and watched him as he examined the picture. "Is that me?" she said.
Liam handed it back to her. "It's not you."
"Yeah, and I'm not responsible for you getting busted either. I want that one nipped in the bud."
"I know that. I'm sorry, pet, I was angry."
"Everyone I meet thinks I did it," she said.
"Everyone I meet thinks I did it," said Liam. "It's like being at school again."
"Yeah, we're a pair of wrong 'uns."
They looked at each other. Liam reached out solemnly and took her hand in his. "I'm gonnae go about saying you did it and put myself in the clear."
Maureen laughed and Liam grinned back.
"Do me a favor." She held up the newspaper. "Look at this picture again and tell me, if you didn't know me all that well, could you mistake Liz for me?"
Liam glanced at it. "No. I thought it was you because of the booth."
"Liz doesn't look like me?"
"No. Her hair's the same length as yours but that's about it."
She folded the picture away and slipped it back into her bag. "How's Mum?"
Liam's face wilted with a despondency familiar from childhood.
"You don't want to know, Mauri."
Benny opened the front door and stepped into the hall. Leslie was standing behind him. She looked into the living room and saw Maureen and Liam sitting close by one another on the settee. "All right, Mauri?" she said, skipping past Benny into the living room. "You're in the paper."
"What, again?"
"Yeah."
Leslie had the Evening Tribune. The headline picture was of Maureen on holiday in Millport. Liam and Leslie had taken her there just a month after she got out of hospital. The weather was sunny and they had hired tricycles for the day. Maureen was standing next to hers wearing cutoff shorts, a "Never Mind the Bollocks" T-shirt and shades. She was grinning. The picture was grotesquely inappropriate next to Douglas's murder story. She looked very different in the picture, her hair was long and straggly, she had dyed it darker since then, and she was painfully thin: she hadn't been able to swallow comfortably when she was ill.
She avoided looking at the photos from that time because they reminded her so sharply of the aftermath of the breakdown, when she had had to keep smiling and telling people she was all right, when she struggled to assimilate all the things that had happened to her in the recent and the distant past. She had left the bundle of holiday photographs facedown in a box at Winnie's house.
"Who gave it to them?" asked Leslie.
"My mad cunt of a mother."
"Oh, okay," said Leslie, arching an eyebrow at the carpet.
"You look a bit less tired," said Maureen, trying to get off the subject.
"Yeah, I got a sleep last night."
Liam took the paper from Leslie and excused himself.
Maureen grinned up at Leslie and Leslie grinned back. "You ready to talk to me now?" asked Leslie.
"I am, pal. How'd the appeal go?"
"Bad." She frowned, put her crash helmet down on the settee and took off her leather jacket. "They won't make their decision until next week but I think we're fucked. I talked to the CAB lawyer and we've missed out loads of stuff."
Liam came back and threw the newspaper down on the coffee table. He dropped heavily onto the settee and waited for someone to acknowledge his dirty mood. Leslie caught Maureen's eye.
"I could do with a shower," said Maureen, and stood up.
"I'll make ye a cup of tea," said Leslie innocently. "D'ye want one, Liam?"
"Huh." He snorted. "Actually, no. Tea happens to be the last thing on my mind at the moment."
MAUREEN WAS STANDING UNDER the shower, washing the shampoo out of her hair, when she felt a familiar shiver. The ghost of her father was in the bathroom. She was very small and was standing in the bath, waiting to get out. He bent down and put his face level to hers. She rinsed her hair quickly and opened her eyes but he was still there with her, she could almost smell him. She turned on the cold water and stood underneath it, sweating. Change the ending, Angus had told her. Change the ending. Keeping her eyes on her father, she reached purposefully into the bath water and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. She aimed it at him and squeezed the trigger. His head blew off. His blood was all over the bathroom. Just like Douglas.
"You look fucking terrible," said Leslie, as Maureen came into the living room.
"Yeah."
"Benny and Liam have gone out for a pint, fancy it?"
"Liam's being a prick. Have you got your bike with you?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Can we go to yours? I want to get away from him."
Leslie gave her the spare crash helmet from the carrier box and Maureen climbed onto the pillion, wrapping her arms around her friend's waist, and nuzzled her face into her shoulder. Leslie sat back a little as she kick-started the bike, pressing into Maureen, letting her know she was all right. The cold rain nibbled Maureen's legs numb as they rode to the northern outskirts of the city, to the Drum, the scheme where Leslie lived.
As they hit the lip of the hill overlooking the scheme a sudden burst of sunshine from the west lit the rain as it fell. In the deep valley below, the high-rise blocks stood like giants paddling in a shallow sea of bungalows.
Chapter 13
Leslie lived on the fourth floor of an old-fashioned block of six flats. She was lucky: her neighbors were good-natured and elderly; they were at home most of the day and asleep most of the night. They put net curtains, plants and bits of carpet in the close to give it a homely atmosphere.
She pulled up outside the close, dragged the bike through to the back court and chained it to a large metal ring attached to a block of concrete. Three tiny girls were playing at skipping ropes out the back. They stopped and stared at Maureen. The weeest girl had a square head too big for her body and thin, wispy baby hair, pulled up into a pony tail at the top of her head. She was dressed in a pale pink skirt and a red woolly jersey with bleach scars on the sleeve. Her mouth was stained with orange juice. Maureen made a silly face at her. She blushed, giggled and pulled her skirt up to cover her juice-stained face.
"That's wee Magsie," said Leslie. "She's three and a half. Aren't ye, wee teuchie?"
Wee Magsie kept her skirt over her face and giggled shyly, rocking from side to side.
"Yes," said the biggest girl, who could only have been seven. "I'm her big sister and I've to look after her today."
Wee Magsie ran away.
"Don't be fuckin' stupid, wee Magsie," shouted her big sister, running after her and dragging her back. She spat into a tissue and wiped at the orange stains on wee Magsie's face. Magsie held on to her sister's jersey with both hands and grinned as her face was roughly scrubbed.
"See that?" said Leslie. "They're wee mammies before they stop being kids."
Leslie made some coffee and listened as Maureen told her everything that had happened.
Two hours had passed and they were both tired. Leslie poured them a glass of beer each and heated up a pot of stew made with slices of onion and fifty-pence-shaped carrots.
"It's not like you to cook, Leslie," said Maureen, buttering four slices of bread and putting them on a plate.
"Mrs. Gallagher across the close made it."
"And how did you get it? Did ye steal it from her?"
"No," said Leslie, "she brought it across. She always does that, makes too much and gives ye some."
"Una does that sometimes, when she bakes."
"How is Una? Up the duff yet?"