Ross Raisin - Waterline

He is outside Renuka’s office for the weekly meeting. She is running five minutes late, she tells him round the door, and he waits in the corridor until she’s ready for him. When he comes in she asks if he’d like a cup of tea, as is the routine, and he gets sat silently while the kettle boils and she finishes off tidying some papers away.

‘So,’ she says, sitting down and looking at him across the desk. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine. Okay.’

‘Good. That’s good.’

She is looking right at him, like she’s testing if he’s telling the truth.

‘I’ve received a letter, Mick, that I need to show you.’ She reaches for a piece of folded paper from her in-tray. ‘It’s been forwarded to me from the Missing People charity — and I should just say right now that whatever happens from here is entirely up to you.’

Confusion. The brainbox jumbling.

‘I know this must seem quite out of the blue, but you were registered as missing in February. Obviously the charity will have been making efforts to locate you, but the letter simply asks if you would like to get in touch with them to decide on a course of action.’

His head is spinning. He steadies his mug on the desk and fastens the hands tightly around it.

‘Robbie?’

‘The letter doesn’t say.’

‘How they find me?’

‘It doesn’t say that either. Here, would you like to see it?’

She passes the paper across.

He takes a moment and tries to read it. They would like him to contact them. They never disclose information about people’s whereabouts without the missing person’s permission. Missing person. He is a missing person. Course he fucking is, what else is he: a holidaymaker?

‘It’s up to you, Mick. There’s a number of options.’ She is looking at his hands on the mug. ‘You don’t have to do anything, would be one. Or, I could write back to them and say that you would like to initiate contact. But if you don’t want to do that, or you don’t feel ready yet, we could ask them simply to let your family know that you are safe and well, without saying where you are.’

He feels sick. Renuka is smiling faintly at him. The side of her computer that he can see flicks now to a picture of a wean by a swimming pool, and it’s actually funny, the absurd pointedness of it, he could in fact laugh out loud only he’s feart he might boak up onto her desk. She is still smiling, and he realizes what a massive cunt she must think he is. He has abandoned his family. He has abandoned his family and now he is sat there at her desk and if he doesn’t feel ready he may pass on a message to inform them he is safe and well. But if they want to know where he is then get to fuck, they can’t.

They leave it at that. He is to have a think about it. He takes the letter and stands up to return to his room.

He barely sleeps that night. Or the next. He sticks the television on and keeps it quietly going in the background. The letter on the windowsill, weighted under the plant. How is it his decision? That’s what he can’t understand. How is he in charge of the situation, and they’ve no say in it? They. Is it? Is it they, or is it Robbie, or maybe is the whole of Glasgow out the now looking for him? The not knowing about any of it is what’s chibbing at him. He keeps to his room, gets his own food in. Misses the next art class. The wardrobe stocked again with superlager, no that it does any good: it’s lost the ability now to numb the brain. In fact it’s bloody turbocharging it. February. They declared him missing in February. Which means he must have been gone a few months before they notified anybody. So what? What difference does it make how long it took or who did it or if Alan’s involved, or if Robbie’s had to keep coming back from Australia, or any of it, because it doesn’t; what matters is what he has done, what he is going to do. The idea of making contact. Hello, it’s your da, how’s it going? Unthinkable. Totally unthinkable.

A girl is sprinting down a path through the park, her bandy legs looking like they are about to knock each other over at any moment. She passes the rose garden and begins to slow down, out of breath. A group of her friends are sitting in a circle in the middle of a wide, open area of grass, and she goes to join them.

It is hot, and she rolls up the bottom of her T-shirt, then she lies down and rests her can of Coke on her belly, the way the others are doing. For the last few days, the man on the bench has been there the whole time they have, and they’ve had to move further away from the rose garden. He never does anything though. He just sits there being drunk or falling asleep. They think he is probably mental. Sometimes he starts talking to himself, not loudly, like the mad woman who is always in the bus stop, but anyway you can see his mouth moving even though there isn’t anybody next to him or anywhere near him.

There are quite a lot of drunk and mental people in the park. Further down the path, there is a group of Polish homeless men who lie on the grass by the little trees and get drunk. Sometimes they stand up and chase each other about, and once they came over to where her and her friends were and started shouting something in Polish, so they ran away and that’s when they started sitting up by the rose garden instead. And, as well, there is a pub near the entrance on the other side of the park, where the drinkers come over the road to lie on the grass and take their shirts off to drink with their big red bellies out.

Most of the time since they broke up they come and sit and listen to music or talk or usually just lie in the sun. She is going on holiday to Spain in a couple of weeks with her family. They went last year as well, but it’s not too bad, it could be worse. At least she’s not going to stay in a caravan like Carolyn with her mum and brother and Shitface Anthony.

The days when it’s not sunny she stays at home or sometimes Carolyn comes round and they watch TV, but usually it’s hot so they go to the park. One time the hobo has a friend in a woolly hat that comes and joins him, and he is properly mental. Whenever anybody walks near them he starts shouting or laughing, but you can’t understand anything he says because he is drunk too. Nisha saw him weeing into the rose garden, just standing on the grass and doing it over the little fence onto the flowers. Most days though the man that talks to himself is on his own. His face is all red and sunburnt. Even on really hot days he never takes his jacket off. If he is asleep and you get quite close when you walk past, you can see that the knees of his trousers are all muddy and his fingernails have got loads of dirt under them.

The last day before she goes on holiday is the hottest day all summer. No point going to Spain, really. When she leaves, the others are just lying on the grass passed out, and pretty much that’s where they’ll be when she gets back so it’s not like she’s missing out on anything. On her way back to help her mum pack their things, she stops and watches the tennis players for a minute, and then, because she is on her own, she takes the path to the other side of the park from where she lives, so she doesn’t have to walk past the Polish men.

He tells Renuka to write back to Missing People. He is safe and well. He will get in touch with them when he is able. Pathetic. It makes it sound like he’s been fucking kidnapped.

Beans is back heavy on the drink, and they are returned now to the old routine. Away up the park and into the superlager. A few times Beans puts the mix in with the East Europes by the trees — for some reason he’s decided that’s where he wants to be sitting, and what right do they lot have taking the best spot? A couple of shouting matches but Mick is able to pull him away and get over the other side of the park before they both get skelped. One night, they have been drinking all afternoon, the both of them totally away for oil, and they don’t make it back to the hostel. They find a line of bushes along a path and collapse into it. The night is warm and still, and he lies there awake with the familiar warm weight of Beans pressed up against him. Safe and well. Blootered in a bush next to a madman, his head blaring with drink and sunburn, but he is safe and well, thank Christ for that.