She has drunk two glasses and is on her third by the time she realises that he hasn’t touched his. — You no drinkin?
— I’m a bit slow, he says.
Frances isn’t so slow. She is getting drunk, flushing with a bombastic confidence, but with part of her brain still reserved for sobriety. This would be the time for her to stop, Begbie thinks, as he recharges her glass, but that’s never gaunny happen. — Ah like aulder guys, she ventures flirtatiously. — They treat ye right. Dinnae muck ye aboot as much as younger fellys.
Franco laughs in her face, shaking his head. — Larry, a bag ay disease, wantin ye tae go bareback wi um. Juice Terry, tryin tae get ye tae dae his crappy scud flicks. Aye, they’re proper gentlemen! The young team must be bad bastards, right enough!
That hit home. Her eyes fill with a steady anger. — It’s. . it’s no fair! They never leave ye alaine. She shakes her head, and knocks back another big swig of claret. — How can they no just let ye be. .
He recognises her dilemma: how the good-looking girl in their environment could be corralled into a similar pen as the hard man. How they had one resource to fall back on, were put on a pedestal for it, and discouraged from learning anything else, could never get past it, as it steadily entrapped them. But other things could imprison you too. — It’s a curse, so it is, the drink, Franco holds up his full glass. He looks at it in contempt; has zero interest in its contents. — Your auld man, Mo, he was rotten wi it. A nice guy, but eh couldnae pass a boozer. The old Irish genes, and reared in Scotland. . not a great mix, not a recipe for a sober life.
— Did you ken ma dad? Her eyes are big, sad, imploring.
— Aye. Franco picks up the empty bottle by the neck, his eyes flashing with violence. — Good guy; his lassie though, ah’m no that sure aboot her but, ay. The last person tae see Sean alive. Pits you right in the fuckin frame in ma book.
Frances’s bottom lip quivers. He raises the wine bottle, and in a sudden violent movement brings it crashing down against the table, shattering it. Glass flies across the room, eliciting a loud gasp from Frances. — Now it’s time, he holds the jagged bottle neck up to her face, — that you started gabbin.
Frances gapes at him in abject terror. It’s as if she realises that every other nightmare she’s experienced in her life has been solely to prepare her for this one. She nods, taking up her drink and throwing it back. Then she starts to talk in such breathless compulsion, it seems like only another threat of violence could get her to stop. — Me n Sean went up tae this flat he was steyin at, and we got wasted. Totally blootered. On everything. He took loads, ah did n aw, but no as much as him. Naebody took as much as him. She screws up her eyes, then opens them wide. — Ah passed oot, n when ah came to, ah found him like that. The door wis open, n ah got the fuck oot. Then ah phoned the ambulance, fae the payphone at the Esso garage.
Franco lowers the broken bottle to the table. — What did ye run away fir? How did ye no phone the polis?
— Ye say ye kent ma dad, Frances says, in reprimanding tones.
Franco doesn’t like the taste of that, but is forced to swallow it. — Was the door locked behind youse when you went intae the flat?
— I think so, but ah cannae be sure, she trembles. The way he looks at her, his hand still round the neck of the broken bottle. It’s like he’s going to rip her face apart. Frances reaches slowly for the intact, open bottle, emptying the last of its contents into her glass.
— So if it was locked, either somebody had a key, or Sean came to, and heard them at the door. He knew who it was and he let them in, Franco speculates.
— As ah said, Sean was even mair wrecked than me. Frances laughs bitterly as she looks him in the eye. It is a look of appeal, and it goes to another drink. He places the broken bottle on the table and picks up the corkscrew, opening another for her. — Ah doubt he’d have been able tae get up off the couch.
— Who else had a key?
— Fallon would have one, she says, lifting her glass to her lips.
— Who?
— Fallon. He’s the landlord, Frances says off-handedly, feeling a satisfying thump of the wine’s anaesthetic, — it wis his flat, and she lifts the bottle he’d opened and starts to pour.
— Where does he stey?
— Ah dinnae ken, Frances knocks back a full glass like a shot, — but I ken where he goes for brunch every morning. . tae that Valvona and Crolla place at the top ay the Walk, she says and looks at his glass. — Ye no gaunny take that drink?
— Telt ye, ah dinnae drink.
Frances pulls his glass over and starts on it, even though she has an almost-full one alongside it. — You’re gaunny tell me that ah shouldnae be daein this, she suddenly giggles.
— Dae what the fuck ye like, he responds, — ah dinnae care.
— Ah ken ye dinnae, she cackles in scorn. — But at least ye dinnae pretend tae. No like the rest ay them. At least you’re fuckin honest.
Franco raises his eyebrows. The charge of wine has now put her in a place beyond fear. This girl is doomed. — One other thing. Whae do you think came in and chibbed him?
— Ah dinnae ken.
— Anton Miller?
— Nup. . she says, and he is wrong about the wine’s effect, as Frances is incapacitated by terror, even through the emboldening drink, — ah dinnae ken. Honest, ah wis wasted. Ah really dinnae ken, and she starts to cry, her face swelling with drink and tears. — Sean was ma friend, eh wis the best friend that ah ever had!
And Frank Begbie leaves Frances Flanagan with her wine, and the sense that everything she has told him is the absolute truth.
19. THE TEXTS
The breeze has stiffened a little and fog has blown down from the north of the state. On the back decking Melanie Francis stretches out, then pumps her arms with the 3lb weights wrapped round her fists in Velcro, completing a burning set of exercises. On finishing her routine, she goes into the kitchen, looking to her phone for signs of incoming calls. One from her mom, but still nothing from Jim. Panic bolts are starting to surge in her chest.
Melanie feels that she let Jim down badly by calling the police. If she had elaborated on how Paula’s rape ordeal weighed on her, he would perhaps have understood. But it proved to be an error, and now she has allowed Harry, with his barely suppressed age-old agenda, into their lives. He doesn’t belong. Only the girls and Jim do.
Her mind rushes back to the opening night of that show in Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery. They were all euphoric after its success, sipping wine and chatting. Suddenly she realised that Jim, whose work had taken most of the accolades, was nowhere to be seen. For a horrible second, she thought, in spite of the ankle bracelet he wore, that he’d used the show as a front to run away. But then she went out to the fire escape, and he was standing there on the stairs.
When she’d asked what he was doing, alone in that draughty spot in the semi-dark, he’d looked at her, as if to say I was waiting for you. But what he said, with hushed conviction, was that this was the very best day of his life. Then his gaze was both searching and acute as he whispered, — It’s probably asking too much, but there’s only one thing that would make it even better, and he’d closed his eyes.
It was then that Melanie had kissed him on the mouth. It was all she could do. He was all she’d been thinking about. It was the most intimate kiss she’d ever had: simple, delicious and trippy. His eyes remained shut and hers did too. When they heard a noise from the gallery and broke off, he’d smiled and said, — Thank you.