twelve-noon-five

Sarah pushed open the door to the living room. A fan heater threw up a little hot air and re-circulated the stink of cigarettes booze and the acrid smell of pee. A discoloured and dusty mattress was pushed into the corner. On top of it a scrunched up navy-blue sleeping bag, the lining a pale blue colour, on top, a make-shift bed and sofa. Black plastic bags were piled into the corner falling towards the window. Fast-food polystyrene cartons of various shapes and sizes, and the remains of meals of chips and cheese, chips and hamburger, a kebab, some kind of gooey meat and cartoon-pink sauce and other culinary delights surrounded the mattress like offerings to a Hindi shrine. A carton of cigarettes and half-empty bottle of vodka caught her eye, the effigy of her stolen bag lying open beside it.

She stepped daintily through the mess, picked up her bag and tipped it up and looked inside, feeling inside the compartments to make sure, but it was stripped clean as she expected.  Picking up the cigarettes she flung them into her bag and snapped it shut.

Louise watched her from the door, shivering, holding the door handle, as if ready to bolt and lock her in.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any of my money left?’ Sarah asked, tight lipped.

Louise felt in her pocket and shook her head, ‘about sixty pence’.

They stood staring at each other.

‘I’d nae money and had to put my heating on,’ said Louise and when Sarah didn’t answer and made no move towards her, her bottom lip sticking out, whined, ‘And get something to eat. I was starving’.

Sarah picked up the forty-ouncer of Vladistock, sloshing it about, weighing it in her hand, opened her bag and added it to the cigarettes. ‘What about my bankcard?’

She hitched her bag over her shoulder and walked towards her. Louise brushed against the wall as she retreated into the hall, keeping the distance between them. The front door was still open and she stood on the threshold of the close. ‘I’m sorry about your bankcard.’

Sarah stood, waiting for her to say more. ‘Well, that’s a start. What about all the other stuff, you not sorry about that?’

‘Well, I licked you out good, really good, didn’t I?’

Sarah sighed, ‘Well, I’ll sleep so much better for that. Thanks for that Louise’. She took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘That makes me feel so much better about myself. You make me feel like an old roué.’

Louise’s mouth fell open and she studied Sarah’s face. ‘What’s a rue?’

‘Well, it’s a type of Australian kangaroo,’ Sarah smirked. ‘So you’ll not get very far without me bouncing up and catching you.’ She angled her head and looked, pointedly, at her feet. ‘And anyway, you’ve not got any shoes on. So why don’t you stop messing about and come inside and we’ll have a little chat?’  

‘OK,’ Louise continued to eye her warily. ‘You want me to lick you out again? I don’t mind.’

‘Maybe later.’

Louise stepped inside the front door, but when she went to close it, a spider crawled out of a corner and she shrieked and danced back out into the landing.

‘For fuck sake.’ Sarah strode forward and stood on the spider and held the door open.

‘I fucking hate creepy crawlies.’ Louise brushed past her, chewing on her distaste.

Sarah closed the front door and followed her. But instead of going into the living room she nipped into the toilet, leaving the door open, whipping her joggies down and sitting on the edge of the pan, peering out at her in the hall, as a tinkle then a deluge hit the water in the lavvy pan.

‘I’ve not got any toilet roll,’ she explained, smiling, pulling up her joggies and adjusting her jacket.

‘Charming,’ said Sarah, ‘but you could at least wash your hands’.

‘No soap.’   

They went into the living room. Louise studied the floor, like a learner driver studying a road map. She picked an almost full cigarette out of the debris of biryani and grabbed a bottle of Vodka lying horizontal near the mattress and twisting the top off, took a swig and wiped her mouth. She settled on the mattress, back against the wall, feet tucked in beneath her and pulling a lighter out of her pocket, lit her fag. She patted her thigh, and looking through the smoke, dusted down a space on the dirty mattress next to her. ‘Come, sit here.’

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just stand, and grow tall.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Louise took another uppy and downer of vodka and smacked her lips. Bottle finished she tossed it to the side and rolled across to her left, picking up another empty with dregs of vodka.

She held it up, ‘you want some of this?’

Sarah shook her head and pulled at the strap of her bag. ‘No, it’s OK, I’ll give it a miss.’

Louise hooted, and now she felt safe, seemed suddenly drunk.  ‘That’s right, I forgot, you’ve got your own.’ She clawed at her neck and scratched her chest and nodded. ‘C’mon sit beside me. I promise not to hurt you.’

‘I’m not scared of you hurting me. I’m scared of me hurting me.’

‘You can be a bit snobby, you know.’

‘Me?’ She rubbed at her eyes. ‘Snobby?’

‘C’mon sit beside me then. I won’t bite.’ She laughed. ‘Not unless you want me to.’

Sarah opened her bag and took out the packet of cigarettes and put one in her mouth and tossed another towards Louise. She leaned in, to get a light and took a step back, standing on kebab meat and squashing chips. A deep draw of nicotine into her lungs settled her and she breathed out smoke. ‘What about your family? You not got any family?’

‘Aye, we’ve all got family. Just sometimes they just don’t want to know you.’

‘That’s true.’ Sarah put her bag down on the floor and pulled out the bottle. ‘But you know what you told me the last time, about you and your baby and it getting eaten by a rat? Well, that was just a pack of no good lies.’

‘No it wasnae.’ Louise slithered towards her across the mattress, grabbing her knee. ‘That was my twin sister.’   

Sarah stepped away, slowly uncorking the bottle, her tongue licking the rim. ‘You’re lying. That was a wee black girl. Seen a photo. Looked it up on the internet.’

‘Same mother, different father. It happens. Not very often, but it happens. Look that up on the internet, Mrs Tooty Snooty.’

Sarah gulped down straight vodka and when the hand reached for her leg again, felt herself falling, falling, on to the dirty mattress.