Irvine Welsh - If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

I check the clock. It’s farking morning and I’ve only gone and left Em all night with Cynth!

I dig the wobbly out me pocket and switch it on. Seven missed calls, and loads of messages. All from Cynth, and in tones of ever increasing panic. It’s the last one that proper shits me up though: Em’s gone!

I’m looking at her image on my phone’s screen; a younger kid with a toothy smile, but still recognisable as her, stares back at me and I can hardly breathe. I’m trying to dial Cynth but her incoming call beats me to the punch. — Mickey… are you okay? Where have you been?

— I’m fine, what’s this bout Em?

— She didn’t come back last night. She met this boy, he was a nice lad; Jürgen, German, they were going to a disco. She’s stayed out. I’ve tried her mobile but she doesn’t get a signal over here with her service provider… What happened to you?

— I got tied up, ran into some old friends, I say, looking at Seph, still crashed out and snoring for Greece. I open the sliding patio doors and go out onto the balcony for a better reception. The sea looks pretty smooth and calm. The sunlight shimmering on it relaxes me a little. — My mate Worthy gave me them shots, knows I can’t drink that shit, the cunt; only went and passed out, didn’t I.

— Teresa was on the phone for Em a while ago…

Another bolt of panic hits me and my legs are pretty shaky now. I sit down on the moulded plastic chair. — You didn’t say nothing about her being gone, did ya?

— Of course not. I said that she’d gone out for a walk and some breakfast with you and she’d call her back later.

If that shabby old munter back in England gets wind of this… — Good gel. I’m back over on the next ferry. Keep me posted.

— She’ll just have gone on to a party and maybe drank too much and got her head down somewhere. You know what teenagers are like. She’s a sensible girl.

I clock a big Merc going past on the coast road and I’m thinking about those farking gangster cunts. — She’s only a farking kid, Cynth… I swallow hard, —… Any roads, keep me posted and I’ll see ya soon.

The panic is trying to rise, but I’m fighting it down, keeping a lid on it. Think Churchill, when the Luftwaffe fancied their chances. I pull myself out of the chair and head inside. My heart jumps again as I see a note on the table. I relax a little when I clock it’s in Worthy’s handwriting:

Mickey,

You cunt! Trying to outdo me on the shorts, you fucking lightweight. Thought I’d best let you sleep it off. Incidentally, you caused me no end of grief last night, when you nutted my barman. I squared it but you owe me an apology, and him too of course.

Jesus cunting Christ on a mortgage in Romford. What a stupid fucker. Barman’s probably some farking headcase. I’ll square it with Worthy, hopefully they’ll have put it down to alcoholic high spirits. Now I’m fretting about the time, as I can’t recall when the next ferry is. But it’s not for a bit. In the bathroom I catch a dodgy whiff from my armpits, so I peel off my gear and go into the shower. The warm water’s relaxing me but suddenly I hear a blood-curdling wailing sound, followed by shouting and things smashing. I run out the shower dripping wet, wrapping a towel round me, and Seph’s lying on the wooden floor, bawling her eyes out, a crunched-up note in her hand. There’s a glass ashtray smashed to bits on the floor. — He’s gone… Costas…

Of course. The note I helped him slip into her handbag in my last semi-sober moment. I remember that one. I need to make sure she don’t wreck this gaff, that’ll be another thing Worthy’ll have me for. — What’s up? Take it easy, gel…

She looks urgently at me, then screams, — He is a pig, then opens her arms. — Please, Michael, hold me!

I’m on the floor with her and she’s in my arms. I’m stroking her hair, consoling her. — I am so glad you are here, she wails. I’m worried shitless about Em. But then I recall, there’s two hours left till the ferry and her dress has ridden up and the old fellah’s desperate for the spotlight, pushing this towel aside like it’s a flaming curtain…

NAILING HER WAS the wrong farking move; ain’t never gonna get rid of her now. Course, anybody can play Emperor within the Enlightened Realm of Retrospect, just as we can all play Cunt in the Kingdom of Trouser Wood; that ain’t the bleedin issue. The pertinent topic of concern is: what do I do with a nutty Greek bird whose hair’s blowing all over the place on the deck of the ferry and whose eyes are bleeding black, teary mascara all over her face? — Seph, I’ve got my daughter here, in Fuerty… and my girlfriend, well, sort of… I qualify. Daresay it’s been a long time since Cynth was described in that way, —… and I can’t have you around!

— Please, Michael, please, I need you… She pouts like a kid. — I will find a hotel over there and stay away from them if you come and see me. I cannot go home, I cannot face my father after all the things Costas said about him in his note… all the lies! She breaks into that farking wail again, the sort of sound you’d do anything to stop somebody from making. A nosy old couple on the deck stare at us. I give em the eye and they find something else to gawp at.

All I can do is play the honest broker. — Don’t do anything rash, gel. See this as an opportunity to take stock. Attempt to divest all emotion before making decisions, I explain, trying to talk down my own mounting panic about Em. — You gotta believe that things happen for a reason. Some kind of divine, cosmic ordination. That’s the word: ordination.

— But the things he said in that note… telling me that he had fallen in love with my father, and that was the only reason he wanted to be near me! He feared that my father only wanted him for sex, on the side!

— It’s a funny old life, gel.

— But my father is chief of police, she moans, — for the whole island! He is a real man! How can he be homosexual?

That was a good move, though. My advice, that one. He listened and learned, no flies on old Costas. — Stranger things have happened at sea, gel, I tell her as the boat tears through the waves.

— It’s not possible… it’s just not possible…

— Maybe it’s all just been a misunderstanding, I shrug, happy to see the Fuerty shoreline and Corralejo harbour coming into view.

Cynth’s there at the dock and she’s looking at me and then Seph in bemusement. She’s got that sour, betrayed face, like she’s been put in her place by younger skirt she can’t compete with, which, I suppose, is the case. I put her out of her misery by introducing them and giving her the party line: — Cynth, Seph; Seph, Cynth. Cynth, Seph’s an old friend who has just been, how could one put this delicately, disappointed in love. Her boyfriend’s been working on this film they’re shooting over here, and he’s only gone and done a runner. Left her a note, the lot.

— Oh… okay, says Cynth, now relieved and rather sympathetic.

Seph pouts, starts grizzling and bursts into tears again, and Cynth, on cue and now delighted cause she thinks she ain’t got no competition, is waiting to smother her into that ample bosom. As Seph gets the treatment and is happy to succumb, Cynth coughs out, — Still not heard from Em. This German boy she met seemed ever so nice, she pleads, her voice rising in panic. — I never thought they’d stay out, Mickey, she promised she’d be back before midnight!

— Yeah… I say, struggling to stay cool myself, especially as I’m thinking again of them gangster cunts. The top crowd among them maniacs these days ain’t like the old school who played by a certain code. They always target the families of the geezers they want onside. Farking low-life pseudo-nonce scumbags. — Listen, Cynth, you take Seph back to base and wait there in case of Em showing up. I’m gonna go off looking for her.