Missed You.

My junkie girlfriend sold her body to feed her habit. ‘I’m no doing any harm,’ she said. ‘I sold myself tae you. Look how that fucking worked oot?’

I didn’t love her. Sometimes I hated her. But I loved possessing her. The way she thrashed about was my deadly poison. The noises she made must have infuriated the neighbours. It killed me. I had to hold on to the bannister as I walked down the stairs to nip into the toilet. I crept out of her house, haunted by the sight of her small, perfect breasts.

Scientists had a name for all those hormones and surges in the pleasure centres of the brain. I was no scientist. High risk, addictive behaviour. Stupid-as-fuck-itis to you and me.

Like most relationships it started innocently. I was standing outside Hunters and Curries. I’d already made a dash from one bus stop to the next, craning my neck watching the road for a 64 bus. I figured I’d be quicker walking home. I was already soaked through.

I was one of those mugs on the Job Creation Scheme. I loved it. You got almost £40 a week. Tenner to your mum. That left £30 for the weekend. And I was already planning how to spend it and couldn’t wait.

I fell into stop behind a woman. Blonde hair, slim hips, a shimmer of silver. I didn’t want to pass her on the pavement in case she thought I was following her.  We passed Woolies, which was lit up like a circus that had closed for the night. Thinking I might cross over at the traffic lights and get a gander at her face.

She turned around and nailed me, staring at her. She’d a belter of a black eye. Only it wasn’t black. More turquoise, pink and raw looking. ‘Whit yeh gawking at?’ she asked.

Words crumbled in my mouth like kindling. ‘Nothing.’

She frowned, but her good eye was laughing. ‘Yeh’ve been following me.’

‘Huvnae.’

‘Huv.’ She reached out and patted my arm as if to check I was real, or to put me in my place. ‘Yeh’ve been staring at my arse.’

The flash of colour in my cheeks did the talking.

‘A tenner,’ she said. Might even have winked with a cyclops eye. ‘Is that awright?’

I nodded agreement so quickly she became wary.

‘Twenty quid,’ she said.

A childish wheeze in my voice. ‘For whit?’

She reared up on me, even though she was tiny. ‘Yeh, got twenty quid?’

I dipped into the inside pocket of my Wrangler jacket and handed her my pay packet. She ripped open the brown envelope with her teeth. Held two tenners up to show what she was taking and handed me back the change.

She tucked the cash into her cleavage, pushed her arm through mine, and pressed against me. A 64 bus splashed past us and I felt for the change in my jacket pocket.

‘Yeh got somewhere tae go? she smiled.

I was so proud to be seen with her as we passed the Town Hall, I hadn’t yet thought of that. She was gorgeous. Far prettier than any of the girls that I’d went to school with. My mum would love her when I introduced her.

‘Nah, I don’t.’

She became shrill, pulling away from me. ‘Yeh, cannae come tae mine. Whit dae yeh think this is?’

‘Dunno.’ It was probably the daft expression on my face which pacified her.

She sidled up beside me, her perfume more plentiful than cheap wine inflaming and curdling my senses in the same way. Pink nails dug into my elbow. ‘I’m not daeing it ootiside. Whit dae yeh take me for? A wee hairy?’  

‘Alright,’ I said, pulling away, my back against the railing beside the library. ‘I don’t take yeh for anything.’

She danced around me. ‘We’ll go in there.’ Nodding towards the entrance to the library, her earrings jerked as if caught on a fishing line.

I knew the basic layout, but it had been years since I’d be inside. Downstairs had a kind of study room—I’d never been much for studying—and they’d usually some kind of exhibits nobody ever saw mounted in cases on the walls. Claustrophobic. Even thinking about it gave you asthma.

‘Yeh go doon tae the women’s toilets and lock the door,’ she instructed me. ‘Gie me a few minutes and I’ll come doon and rap on the door three times.’

‘I cannae.’

‘How no?’

‘I’m no allowed in the women’s toilets.’

She held onto the railings, her bangles playing a wee tune as she giggled like a younger girl. When she composed herself she took the two tenners out of her cleavage and held them up between us. She handed me one of the notes and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek, but it was more the side of my ear. ‘For yer cheek,’ she said.

I’d hoped to see her again. If not that week, the following week, or the following month. But I got caught up with another girl. She wasn’t much to look at. We kissed lots until our face and lips were pink and featureless as uncooked chicken. And we bundled together like Victorians in doorways until her face flushed and she wilted. Couldn’t take any more excitement without a wedding ring.   

‘We could go to Clydebank Library on a Thursday night.’ My proposal was met with bemusement. She read the Jackie. It offered enough collective sensibilities for her needs. The problem page warned her about neds like me. ‘Yeh go intae the Women’s toilet and I’ll follow yeh in and rap three times on the door—’

I should have feigned some breakdown, perhaps thrown myself into an epileptic fit into my act. Jackie’s readers understood things like that. It being the right sort of test, before marriage and life-ever-after bliss with the intended one.

She shuffled away, sobbing. Rehearsing what she’d tell her pals about the sick weirdo. The lucky escape.

My name was mud even before I’d gotten properly dirty with her. I consoled myself with nipping into Dees and buying a double-breasted jacket. Jiggling her breasts and tweaking her nipples through cloth were the nearest I’d come to losing my virginity.

I was almost a married man when I wandered down to the toilets in Clydebank Library. A middle-aged man brushed past me in the corridor, sweat on his forehead. He avoided meeting my eyes. I’d seen him about but couldn’t remember his name.

It popped into my head when I was peeing in the communal cistern that ran around the walls in the Men’s.  A flash of turquoise in the corner of my eyes.

Being a junkie was meant to age you like a witch. But she remained dazzling in a way I just couldn’t explain. ‘Yeh owe me a tenner,’ I told her.

She giggled and put a finger to her lips to shush me. Back heeled the toilet door and slipped back inside. The sprinklers started spraying the toilet. I heard the bolt slamming shut. I washed my hands and rubbed at my face with cold water, before rapping on the door three times.