‘Alright,’ I said. ‘So how do we do this?’

  ‘Start by pouring two of those.’

  I guess it goes without saying, but she was pointing at the vodka.

  The peroxide smell burned the back of my nose something chronic. I couldn’t stand it in Darcy’s tiny bedroom. I had to walk out onto the landing and waft away from my head with the old towel that Darcy had supplied.

  ‘Fucking stinks,’ I said. ‘Stings, too.’

  ‘It does, a bit,’ she said. ‘We should have done a test patch on your skin first, to make sure you aren’t allergic.’

  ‘But we didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘No time,’ she said. ‘You’ll be fine. Just say if it really burns.’

  ‘Only my eyes.’

  ‘Probably fumes, if it’s just making you want to blink. Don’t rub them, for fuck’s sake.’

  We left the red stuff in for forty eight minutes, even though the instructions said no more than twenty five. The first forty minutes were planned, and the rest was because we were onto the fourth vodka orange, and arguing about how orange juice was made.

  ‘They make it back up with water,’ I said. ‘I swear.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ she said. ‘That would be like mixing... cream with water to get, like, ordinary milk.’

  ‘That’s why it says made from concentrate,’ I said. ‘Did you reckon they were just thinking about oranges really hard while they did it?’

  ‘Don’t be a fucking smartass,’ she said. ‘What, you going to go on mastermind, with fucking.... juice... as your specialist subject?’

  She hiccupped, hard.

  We went into the bathroom and I knelt at the bathtub while Darcy held the showerhead and massaged all the lather and goop out and down the drain. I felt my heart beat hard in time with Darcy’s rhythmic scrubbing, felt my pulse banging against the side of my straining neck.

  We put the industrial strength conditioner in, and the hair began to feel a bit less like frayed electrical wire. I admired myself in the steamy mirror.

  ‘We’ve created a monster,’ Darcy said, stumbling on her feet.

  ‘I’m still me,’ I said.

  But I didn’t feel like me, any more. I felt like someone who had done something, even if it was something as simple as changing the colour of my hair. I felt this self-aware smile tugging at my face, and it wasn’t my smile, either. It was thinner, and more assured.

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ I said.

  ‘But you had to let the world know.’

  ‘Hell, yes.’

  ‘Vodka’s gone. Gimme five minutes to change.’

  When she called me back into the bedroom, she wasn’t properly dressed.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. I did.

  ‘What’s up? You’re not done.’

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re such my best friend.’

  ‘Sweet,’ I said. ‘You’re wasted.’

  ‘No,’ she said. Then more firmly. ‘No! Look at me.’

  I looked back at her. Right into her eyes. Saw them focus at a half speed.

  ‘You know I’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff,’ she said. ‘And you’re always there, and I need that, and I’m really happy for that.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You’re a friend.’

  ‘You make things alright,’ she said. ‘Come here.’

  She leaned in and hugged me, squeezing my shoulders.

  ‘I never talk to anyone, except you,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Everyone has things going on.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not like really, really heavy things.’

  She looked at me, meaningfully. I didn’t get it. I only saw my own meanings. I stared into her eyes, and felt like I had all the time in the world. I didn’t need to turn away, felt I could stare into those eyes until they couldn’t stare back. I felt excitement, control, anticipation. Anticipation, yes, but with an acceptance, and readiness, that was all new.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  But I didn’t answer. There was no need. We held our eyes in a lock, so that the world fell away at the edges, leaving only a tunnel of light between us. Darcy leaned forwards, put her arms around me again. Her lips brushed at the corners of mine. I turned my head by the smallest fraction, and then we were kissing. I ran my hands up her side, and she grabbed my head. She pulled me down to the bed, closed her eyes.

  Then she was unconscious.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I said.

  I lay down next to her, stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world, now.’

  VolcanoHead

  Time makes fools of us all. By break of morning things were a mess. I was wretched hung over with a crick in my back and Darcy had gone to the bathroom in situ. She didn’t remember the kiss. I sat with my head pulsing in my palms while she cleaned herself up. The hope drained out of it all. When I told her, she couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  ‘How could you?’ she said.

  ‘Because I wanted to,’ I told her. ‘I thought you wanted to, as well.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.

  ‘Well I’m sorry for thinking it took two people to kiss,’ I said.

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘When are you not?’ I asked. ‘And I’m always drunk with you, it’s all we ever do.’

  ‘I trusted you,’ she said.

  ‘And you kissed me,’ I told her. ‘It was a bigger deal for me, right?’

  ‘No,’ she said, sadly. ‘Because I only trusted you.’

  We worked it out, as best we could, but we were tired and sick. Eventually we said it was OK between us, but knew it wasn’t.

  I walked back to Fife Park in the dawn light. Sky was all blue and grey. I grabbed my guitar, went out and sat on our garden path, my ass resting up against the doorstep. It was a curious mix of warm and deepest cold. I cut a pose against the breeze, found a chord on the neck of my Strat, put it all out of my mind. Fife Park was the place to be, and I was on holiday from everywhere else.

  The G string snapped, with the first strum. It rasped across the other strings, and a sharp end of it flicked me in the face, just below my eye. The stinging pain enraged me. The broken string was maddening. Just when I had it all together. Fucking, just when I had it all together.

  I grabbed the neck of the guitar, and brought the body down hard on the flagstones. The body held, but the veneer fractured. It was chipboard, underneath. I leapt to my feet, and swung again.

  ‘Fuck you!’ I screamed. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’

  I brought it down over and over again, at different angles, until cracks ran over the entire frame of the guitar, but it still held.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said at last, and threw the guitar over my shoulder. It bounced off the wall of Fife Park 8, and landed in the bushes near the front door. I walked away. I just walked.

  Fussball

  First time I’d been out on the town in a couple of weeks, and I felt like shit. Darcy had asked me not to tell a soul. I was a bit lost, but I held to that. There were a million things I needed to get off my chest. She’d asked me not to call, so I didn’t. She told me she needed space, so I gave it. Somehow it was all about her, and that made me bitter.

  I’d spent a couple of straight days in bed, sulking. I’d spent a couple of quiet weeks sitting in. Luckily it was essay season, so there was plenty to procrastinate over. But Frank kept inviting me out, and eventually I ran out of excuses. I was moping over a nasty pint for about an hour. Frank had little time for this.

  ‘You’re a miserable bastard,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got things going on,’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But are they as important as my winning streak?’

  ‘Winning streak?’

  ‘Since you started being a whiny bitch and staying home, me and Paedo haven’t lost a match of table football. Not even against South African Dude.’

  South African Dude was a pure legend at the table, and also not even vaguely South African. He could trap a ball and put pressure on the paddles till the bars bent. Eventually the ball would shoot directly into the goal of its own volition, rather than suffer any more.

  ‘I thought I was irreplaceable,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, well. I’ve had to make do.’

  ‘I’ll get over it,’ I said.

  I rubbed my forehead with the tips of my fingers. Took another tiny sip from my warming pint.

  ‘We could play the quiz?’ Frank said.

  ‘I’m not fussed,’ I said.

  Frank scowled. He wasn’t about to make another concession.

  ‘I know,’ Frank said. ‘About you and Darcy.’

  That broke the tension. I felt my shoulders heave with a great winding rush of relief.

  ‘Oh, thank fuck,’ I gasped. I could have hugged him right there and then. ‘How’d you find out?’

  ‘From Euan, actually.’

  ‘Fuck me, I didn’t know she’d told him yet. How’s he taking it?’

  ‘He’s really into his Shitokan Karate at the moment,’ Frank told me. ‘I’m sure that’s helping him work it out of his system.’

  ‘Shotokan, you mean.’

  ‘Like that,’ Frank said. ‘But you learn to beat the shit out of people who mess with your woman.’

  ‘Dude,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, Quinn, but this is funny. You’re properly reaping what you’ve sown here.’

  Had to be that the extreme sport that Euan had thrown himself into this semester was some form of the art of ass-kicking.

  ‘I feel lousy,’ I said. ‘About everything.’

  ‘Welcome to it,’ he said. ‘Still looking for advice?’

  ‘Mate, whatever you’ve got.’

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is how it is, all the time, for everyone. You didn’t fuck up, you just got promoted a division.’

  ‘This is how it is for you, too?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit, no. I don’t get involved,’ Frank said. ‘It looks messy.’

  ‘See, I’d like to be like that,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Frank said. ‘You want all kinds of things.’

  ‘Yeah, ’ I said. ‘But I’d like to handle them like you do.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ Frank said, swelling. ‘Who wouldn’t want to be like me? But you can’t, because you’ve forgotten the most important thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That I’m the Daddy,’ Frank said. ‘And you’re not.’

  Darcy Loch and the Last Midnight Walk

  Darcy sent me an email. ‘We’ve got to talk.’ It was damn near three in the morning, but we were obviously both awake. I went over, post haste.

  It had been a curious few weeks of half-pleasant exchanges. It’s not like we didn’t see each other, in fucking St. Andrews. But we didn’t talk to each other – or quite ignore each other either.

  ‘Hi,’ she’d mumble, and move right on down the street.

  ‘You OK?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Just need some space, some time,’ she might say.

  It was pregnant, like it always was with us. First one tension, then another.

  This time we were expecting to finish something, and we’d be doing it at her leisure. She was well-prepared when I arrived: house was empty, throw was all tidy on the couch, couple of mugs of tea on the lounge table. It could have been a date, but it so obviously wasn’t.

  ‘It’s been a rough few weeks,’ she said, as if for both of us.

  ‘Has it?’ I asked. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I wanted out, but I stood my ground. She sat, so I sat. Opposite ends of the couch. Just like the tea on the table, come to think of it. I took mine, cradled it in my cold palms.

  ‘I’m still really angry about what happened,’ she said. ‘But I realise that I was responsible, too.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, diplomatically. ‘We were both there.’

  ‘I think we need to get it out in the open,’ she said. ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘I don’t mind talking,’ I said. ‘How’s Euan taken it?’

  ‘I told him,’ she said.

  ‘I know. It was the right thing.’

  ‘He thought I was going to leave him.’

  ‘No,’ I said, looking at my feet.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I don’t like things being like this, with us.’

  ‘Awkwardness always fades,’ I said. ‘I should fucking know.’

  ‘It is awkward,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t last.’

  ‘It won’t be the same again, either.’

  ‘No. You’ve always been right about that.’

  ‘I’ve lost so many friends.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want us not to be friends.’

  ‘What is this to you?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just...’

  She broke, as if to cry.

  ‘So, we’ll be friends,’ I said.

  ‘Why did you kiss me?’

  ‘I loved you.’

  ‘Do you know for sure?’

  ‘In the end. You must have known, too.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I always wondered.’

  She ran her hand up her arm, as if it were cold.

  ‘I’m not expecting some grand happy ending,’ I said.

  ‘I just don’t think of you like that,’ she said.

  ‘You did, though,’ I said. ‘It was your kiss, first.’

  ‘That’s not why.’

  ‘Why then?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I trusted you.’

  She crossed her legs, put her feet up onto the couch, grabbed one in each hand. She fidgeted with her toes. We sat there, quietly, taking in what meanings we could snatch from the cloud of our half sentences.

  ‘How could a feeling like that be a bad thing?’ I said, at last.

  ‘It depends on who you are,’ she told me.

  ‘How do you think of me?’ I asked her.

  She shrugged, and took a sip of tea. Looked into the mug.

  ‘You said loved,’ she said.

  ‘I think that kiss broke a kind of balance,’ I told her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We needed different things, from different directions.’

  ‘We’ve passed each other by,’ she said. ‘It’s over, maybe.’

  ‘We’re friends,’ I said. ‘We’re going to be, still.’

  ‘It’s never going to mend completely,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not really about being mended,’ I told her.

  Somewhere in it all was the truth that I didn’t spot for years to come. I walked back to Fife Park as the horizon rolled over and turned blue again. The sky is so large in St. Andrews.

  The East Nuke

  We came back to the house to cap a night off, late some time in April. Mart was with me, Craig had declined as usual. Fife Park was dead to him, apparently.

  Frank had been away with medics all night. We couldn’t see in the kitchen as we came over the lawn; the windows were all steamed up. But there was movement. There were raised voices. One raised voice, anyway.

  Mart ran upstairs to use the john, and I went to investigate. In the downstairs hall, one of the Randoms had his door half open and was peering round it. Kitchen door was shut, as were the other two rooms. If the other Randoms were home they weren’t showing.

  ‘Hey Dylan,’ I said.

  ‘I think Frank went crazy,’ he said.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘He broke half of everything, I reckon.’

  ‘You been in there?’

  ‘Almost. Look, can you speak to him, before he breaks everything else?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. Did you speak to him?’

  ‘He wouldn’t answer me.’

  ‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ I said.

  ‘Just, he might listen to you.’

  I stepped up. My hand reached out for the handle, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.

  ‘You fucking cunting bitching fuck.’

  With each expletive, there was a bang. As if someone were hitting something in time with their own rage.

  ‘You cunting fucking mothercunting shit fucker!’

  ‘Who’s he shouting at?’ Mart asked, appearing behind me. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘Very Zen,’ Mart said. ‘You should get in there. He might hurt himself.’

  I pushed the door open, and a spray of porcelain flew past my nose, right to left. It was my porcelain. Another mug hit the door before it was half open. I poked my head around the door.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  Frank was standing over by the cooker, with half a plate in his hand.

  ‘This fucking plate,’ he said. He threw it at the floor, where it shattered, the fresh pieces mixing with the wreckage of half our crockery.

  ‘And this mug,’ he said.

  He hefted it into the air almost gently, but quickly spun the golf club round to intercept it. I pulled my head back into the hallway just in time. I could hear tinkling pieces of it hitting the floor. I shut the door.

  ‘Fucking bastarding shiteating cuntbreathing fucking cocksores.’ Frank’s voice was muffled, but still loud.

  ‘Cocksores, huh?’ Mart said.

  ‘Are you alright in there?’ I shouted through. No answer.

  ‘Hello?’ Mart called.

  I looked in again. The cupboard doors were off, lying on top of a pile of broken bowls and plates. Frank rested his hands on the work surface for stability, and then kicked out at the drawers. It took one kick for each of them to lose their facades. Pots and pans spilled out onto the floor, and crunched onto broken porcelain.

  Frank turned around, angry wildness in his eyes. He scanned the room, and found his golf club leaning up against the table. He grabbed it, grimaced for a moment, and then smacked it into the counter.

  ‘OK, Frank,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  I stepped out of the room, neatly, and shut the door for the last time. There was nothing in that room I cared about apart from Frank, and he was on his own path.

  ‘We’re going to let him work it out,’ I said.

  Mart nodded.