Prentice, and if by the time we get to the bottom of this bottle I haven’t got some sort of sense out of you I’m going to break it over your thick fucking skull.’ She turned, beamed a toothy non-smile at me for about a micro-second, then strode determinedly on.
I tried to keep up. I looked at the bottle in the bag. ‘Couldn’t you just leave the whisky, I’ll drink it all, wake up in the morning - no, make that the afternoon - with a head that feels like you hit me over the skull with the bottle, and you sleep in the car ready for that long and demanding journey down the notoriously dangerous A74 tomorrow?’
Ash shook her head.
We got back to Grant Street. I looked up, saw some lights on in the flat. Maybe, I thought, Ash would be so turned on by the sounds of frantic coupling emanating from Gav and Aunt Janice in the bedroom that she’d tear my clothes off. Or maybe Norris and his pals would distract her from this crazed idea of getting air-locked drunk by suggesting a friendly game of cards.
Ash followed my gaze. She held the bottle up in front of my eyes. ‘Ready for this, Prentice?’
‘Drink doesn’t solve anything, you know,’ I told her. ‘Just dissolves brain cells.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m working on the principle that most people are okay unless they get muroculous with drink, when they become arse-holes; you’re behaving like an arse-hole now, so maybe drink’ll make you okay.’
I tried to look as sceptical as I could. ‘I bet you believe in crop circles, too.’
‘Prentice, I believe you seem determined to fuck your life up, and I just want to know why.’
‘Oh,’ I said brightly. ‘That’s easy; my affections have been rejected by the one I love and her carnality is being most thoroughly investigated by my elder and smarter brother on a more or less hourly basis, so I am spurned and she is spermed; my father believes his children should be free to make up their own minds, but preferably only out of the spare-parts that he provides ... And apart from that ... I mean the exams and getting nicked and stuff ... Well,’ I sighed, looking up to the night sky, where the clouds were starting to blot out the few stars that the city lights did not obscure. I spread my arms wide. ‘... I’m just a waster.’
Ash looked at me. I could see her chest move in and out inside the light cotton jacket. ‘Naw, Prentice,’ she said quietly, after a while. ‘You’re just a bairn.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe. Come on.’ I indicated the close. ‘Let’s get as drunk as you think we have to, and you can tell me all the reasons I’m so childish.’ I glanced at my watch as we headed for the stairs. ‘Better get started, though; we’ve only got all night.’
We climbed the stairs, reached the flat.
‘You know,’ Ash was saying, breathing hard and looking down the stair-well as I opened the door. ‘I don’t know anybody who lives in a flat who doesn’t live on the top floor.’
‘Friends in high places,’ I said, opening the door to Janice Rae.
Aunt Janice was clothed (shirt and jeans), which made rather a refreshing change, and standing in the hallway. She looked distraught. Her eyes were red and her mascara had left what appeared to be a diagram of the Los Angeles freeway system down her cheeks. Beyond her Gav stood looking awkward and sheepish. I glanced from Janice to Gav and back again, while Janice looked at me, lip trembling.
Let me guess, I thought; they’ve finally done it; they’ve broken the bed.
‘Oh, Prentice!’ Janice said suddenly, throwing herself at me and enveloping my upper torso in a hug that would have done credit to a grizzly. I wondered what had brought this on, and how to peel Aunt Janice off. What must Ashley be making of all this? (She’d be getting jealous, with any luck.)
Janice pulled away; I could breathe again, and promptly did so.
‘Oh, Prentice,’ she said again, holding my head in both hands and shaking her own. Her eyes closed, she turned her face away, released her hold on my cheekbones and let me go on into the hall. Gav stood by the hall table, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing nervously down at the phone now and again.
He avoided my eyes.
I took a couple of steps forward, then heard something whispered