Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

John Hoskins, 30, Edinburgh North, unemployed waiter, intravenous drug use.

Derek Hunter, 42, West Lothian, unemployed merchant seaman, father of four, intravenous drug use.

Nigel Jamieson, 18, Edinburgh South, unemployed, intravenous drug use.

Colin Jefferies, 22, Edinburgh South, clerical officer in GPO and singer/guitarist in rock ’n’ roll band, intravenous drug use.

David McLean, 20, Edinburgh North, unemployed, intravenous drug use.

Anna McLennan, 23, Midlothian, state registered nurse, intravenous drug use.

Lillian McNaughton, 22, Edinburgh North, seamstress, intravenous drug use.

Michael McQuail, 28, Edinburgh North, unemployed labourer, father of two, intravenous drug use.

Lewis Manson, 21, Edinburgh North, unemployed, intravenous drug use.

Deborah Marshall, 25, Edinburgh North, primary school teacher, sexual contact with intravenous drug user.

Derek Paisley, 26, Edinburgh North, unemployed engineer, Ferranti’s electronics, student on part-time computer programming course, father of two, intravenous drug use.

Greg Rowe, 18, Edinburgh North, YTS carpentry trainee, intravenous drug use.

Scott Samuels, 27, Edinburgh South, karate instructor, unprotected sexual contact with intravenous drug user.

Brian Scott, 19, Edinburgh North, YTS Edinburgh Council Direct Labour Organisation, intravenous drug use.

Kenneth Stirling, 24, Edinburgh South, unemployed, intravenous drug use.

Michael Summer, 20, Edinburgh North, pipe-fitter, intravenous drug use.

George Thake, 22, Edinburgh South, University of Edinburgh accountancy student and Duke of Edinburgh Award recipient, intravenous drug use.

Eric Thewlis, 27, Edinburgh North, unemployed heating and ventilating engineer, intravenous drug use.

Angela Towers, 20, Edinburgh South, retail worker, British Home Stores, route of transmission undisclosed.

Andrew Tremenco, 21, Edinburgh North, BA business studies student at Heriot-Watt University, intravenous drug use.

Norman Vincente, 45, Edinburgh South, wine bar proprietor, father of three, unprotected sexual contact with intravenous drug user.

Susan Woodburn, 20, Edinburgh North, Whisky Bonds worker, mother of one, unprotected sexual contact with intravenous drug user.

Kylie Woodburn, 6 months, Edinburgh North, antibodies through birth.

Keith Yule, 22, Edinburgh North, unemployed bricklayer and amateur drummer, intravenous drug use.

EVEN IN SLEEP’S domain, Renton sensed the onset of withdrawal, that point where his slumbering body gave notice of the critical imbalance in his junk-deprived cells. Through his fatigue he was experiencing his essence’s now unstoppable rise to the surface, from somewhere within the fabric of the mattress, or, deeper still, under the floorboards of the building, buried in the warm, soft earth, coming up, up up, into that wrecked, peeled body.

He’d been dreaming (or was it thinking?) about heroin. About being blissed out, staring at walls, his thoughts slowly ebbing all over the place, like golden syrup spilling from an upturned tin. The sudden realisation of how unconnected those ruminations were was followed by the appearance of that one detested itch: the solitary twinge in a previously relaxed body, graciously satiated by a tranquil night’s sleep. Yet to scratch this itch would merely bring more, then the torture would begin in earnest. Still desperately tired, he can’t get comfy. The prickle is displaced by a severe cramp; the legs first, then the back. When the shivers arrive he knows for sure that it’s not his imagination, the gear is leaving him.

He wakes up in the bed, trembling, next to another body. It’s Hazel. — What fuckin time …? he hears his hesitant, croaky voice plead.

His next thought: we huvnae shagged. No way . At least that was impossible. For three weeks he’s been battering into the gear, having lasted about eight hours since his discharge from St Monans. On two occasions they managed the usual tense, unsatisfying couplings. But that was over a fortnight ago. Since then it’s been the ‘tap me, fix me, ninety-six me’ scenario that he and Sick Boy had come up with in gallows response to the ‘wine me, dine me, sixty-nine me’ slutty T-shirt that was doing the rounds.

But she’s still here. Coming in from time to time, sometimes with food, occasionally more welcome paracetamol. In fleeting awe he looks at her asleep; beautiful, serene, temporarily removed from the source of her haunting.

He smells her hair. It merges into less worthy scents in the bed that he and Sick Boy or Spud often share, feet to head. Considers how Hazel in some ways prefers him as a desexualised junky, no threat to her. Recalling that terrible conversation when she came round the first night he was bombed after rehab; how she’d probably have said nothing if he wasn’t.

— Sex isnae good for me. It’s no you, or laddies … it’s just that my dad … he used to –

Him hearing, but not wanting to: the information coming from miles away through drug and psychic mufflers. Saying to her repeatedly, — It’s okay. I’m sorry …

— It’s no you. As long as you know that. I’ve tried tae like it but I cannae. I’m just sayin that cause ah ken you see other lassies.

— Right … well, no really, he said, grateful for the out. She made him sound like some sort of stud, like Sick Boy. But he did meet more girls than, say, somebody like poor Spud. At that point he thought of Charlene, her pinched features contrasting with the extravagant generosity of the locks that framed them. Fiona, with that oily patch on her forehead he’d loved, and how she got rid of it when she got rid of him. The way he’d been too scared to accept the love she’d offered him.

A coward and a waster .

— So what happened wi her in Aberdeen? Youse seemed really close.

— Oh, you know … drugs, he lied. A coward and a waster . — She wisnae intae it. He looked at Hazel’s sad, pale green eyes. You’d think they’d be brown, he always thought. Maybe it was her hair, she might have been born with a thick head of brown hair. That sudden thought made him almost physically sick: her mother presenting the baby to the smiling nonce father, who’d perhaps observed, ‘She’s got lovely brown hair. We should call her Hazel.’ Renton felt his throat constrict, and quickly asked her, — Why do you see me, ah mean, keep hangin aboot wi us?

Now he watches the shaft of light laser across her face from between those dark blue curtains that never quite pull together. Her eyes shut, her small, slightly protruding teeth glinting. — I really like ye, Mark, she told him.

— But how can you like me, he pressed, pained and confused.

— You’re a nice guy. Always were.

This had given Renton cause to contemplate that no matter how shite you felt about yourself, some people would never play the game. He said to her that night, — Sleep here wi me. Ah willnae touch ye.

She knew he meant it.

And they’d lain in bed together most nights since then, the junky and the incest victim, the voluntary and conscripted recruits to the army of the sexually dysfunctional, and helped themselves to sleep. They didn’t know if they were in some kind of love. They certainly knew they were gripped by a sort of need.