Denise Mina: Exile

"Are you hungry?" said Leslie, pulling on her leather jacket.

Maureen shrugged. She didn't want this, spending an evening with new, distant Leslie, being lied to and feeling like a mug and pretending that it didn't matter. She wanted to be alone, at home with a bottle of whiskey and the unquestioning companionship of the television.

"Well, are you coming, or what?"

Wearily, Maureen picked up her coat and her bag and followed Leslie down the stairs.

It was seven o'clock but as dark as midnight. A thin drizzle was falling, wafted up and down and sideways by the high wind, clinging to every surface. Leslie's bike was parked across the street. She gave Maureen the spare helmet from the luggage box and kick-started the engine on the fifth go. Maureen held on to her waist, resting her head on her shoulder.

A slick of rain covered the road and Leslie was driving too fast.

She ducked between vans and cars, revving the engine angrily before changing gear. At the foot of a high hill she skidded on a sharp turn, bristled with fright and corrected herself, steadying the bike at the last minute. Maureen thought they were going to crash, that they might die, and the possibility left her feeling strangely elated. She let go of Leslie as the road slid away beneath her, holding on to nothing, feeling the wind push and pull her off balance. She swayed like a reed on the pillion as they drove through the dark, sodden city to the west.

Maureen had always known that Leslie could be a cheeky bitch but she'd never turned on her before. She would never have believed that a boyfriend could come between them because they weren't that sort of women. They were bigger than that, they had a heroic history, and they were too close. She wrongly assumed that Cammy would be just another blow-through. She went out with them a couple of times but afterwards she was always left with the uncomfortable impression of having been talked about, kindly perhaps, but still talked about.

They had only been together a couple of months but Leslie had changed. She didn't want to spend time with anyone but Cammy anymore and was always leaving early to hurry home to him. She started talking about having children and had changed the way she dressed. She bought a new pair of leather trousers for casual wear, offense enough in itself, but she coupled them with low-cut sexy tops with a deep cleavage that made her look cheap and vulnerable.

The last time they had arranged to go out together Leslie stood her up. Maureen waited at the bar, drinking slowly at first, checking her watch every five minutes, every three minutes, every indignant fucking minute as she realized that Leslie wasn't coming. She phoned the house. Leslie said she'd forgotten. Sorry. But Maureen said how could she forget? They'd only made the fucking arrangement the day before. Leslie giggled and whispered to Cammy to stop it and Maureen blushed as she listened to them, intimate and exclusive, sniggering at her. She slammed down the receiver and tramped up the road to her house feeling like a tit.

Maureen and Leslie had met through a mutual fear of the Slosh. It was a horrible wedding. Lisa and Kenny were barely twenty and had only been together for seven months of drunken fights and public sex acts. The food was bland, the bride was drunk and the groom spent the reception making faces into the video camera. The communal knowledge that the marriage was ill advised added a hysterical edge to the reception. Everyone laughed too loud, acted drunk before they really were, danced confidently. Maureen and Leslie were sulking alone at adjacent tables while everyone else congaed in an ungainly stagger around the room, whooping and yanking at one another's clothes. Leslie scowled over at Maureen, tapped a fag from her and warned her that the band was threatening to do the Slosh. The Slosh is a graceless women-only line dance and nonparticipation is illegal at Scottish weddings, punishable by ritual dragging onto the dance floor.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," said Maureen, and they retired to the bar for the rest of the evening.

They drank whiskey and smoked cheap, dry cigars they bought from behind the bar. Maureen thought they were just big fags and inhaled vigorously. She could hardly speak the next day but that was down to the shouting as well; it was the most stimulating pub argument she had ever had. Leslie thought that women and men were born different but Maureen believed that gendered behavior was learned. Leslie made sweeping statements about the nature of men and women on the flimsiest of evidence: all men were bad drivers; all men were arrogant and bullish; all women were kind and helpful. It was like listening to a bigoted misogynist in reverse. Maureen said that if women did have an essential nature it wouldn't only encompass good things; some characteristics would have to be bad, like being crap at sums or too simple-minded to vote. Leslie didn't have an answer but got round it by shouting the same points over and over. They swapped numbers and stayed in touch. They went to Lisa's divorce dinner together. By the time Maureen had finished her degree they had become so close that Leslie and Liam were her guests at the graduation dinner.

The art history class was not a representative cross section of society. It was an intellectual finishing school for posh lassies, a grounding for careers in auction houses and other jobs so badly paid and highly prized that only the very rich could consider them. Maureen wasn't molding a career, she just loved the subject, and didn't think she'd live to see twenty-one. The girls were mostly from London and Manchester, they all had long flickable hair, timeless clothes, family jewelry. The milk-fed girls were slightly afraid of Maureen and she enjoyed it. It was probably the only social group in Glasgow where she would be thought of as a rough local. Leslie, who actually was a rough local, took umbrage at the graduation dinner and tried to insult all of her classmates, picking on Sarah Simmons particularly because she had misjudged the evening and worn her dead mother's filigree tiara. The girls conceded most of Leslie's points, taking it all in good part, and suggested moving the evening on to a cheesy disco, looking for a gang of horny medics who were known to hang out there. Maureen, Liam and Leslie deferred the invite. Trying to spoil it for them, Leslie told the girls that the disco was known locally as "a pint and a fuck." The girls got even more excited and left before the coffee arrived.

Maureen didn't work hard for her finals. She knew that something was happening to her. The flashbacks, the disorientation and the night terrors were building to a pitch. All her time in the university library was spent on the sixth floor reading books and articles about mental illness. She thought she was becoming schizophrenic but she didn't tell anyone what was happening. She was afraid that they would put her away, afraid that Leslie would disappear and take all the cozy, normal nights with her. It was almost a year later, when Maureen had her breakdown, that Leslie's true nature became clear.

After Liam found her in the hall cupboard in Garnethill and carried her into hospital wrapped in a blanket, whispering comfort and baptizing her with his tears, Leslie was the first person to visit and she kept on coming. She worked her shifts at the shelter around visit times, bringing magazines and nice food and spending time with her. But even Leslie couldn't stop the dreams or the fear or the panicked terror or the screaming at night. Winnie came to visit, sobbing loudly, drunk and drunker, attracting pitying glances from the patients. Una came to visit and brought Alistair. They smiled nervously and left quickly. Marie, their oldest sister, couldn't make it up from London. Busy time at the bank.