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

I RISE AND move over to my computer and spark it up, checking my emails. One from last night, from Lara, who in any case, is coming round later.

To: mscahill@hotmail.com

From: msgrant@gmail.com

Jen

God, I hate this town. This county. This country. I want out. If it wasn’t for Scarlet Jester, the stables, the competitions, and of course, your good self, I hesitate to think how unbearable it would be. Just coming back from the (highly successful — if you’ve got it, flaunt it!!) tournament in Ireland, walking down the high street the other day, en route to the leisure centre, I was reminded of Ginny Woolf’s great words: ‘On the towpath we met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles… everyone in that line was a miserable shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, and an imbecilic grin, or a wild, suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.’

That’s how I feel about them all in this town. Particularly that weirdo, Jason King, who literally drools at the mouth every time he sees me. To think I once hung about with him!

Hope Midnight is shaping up. Fiona La Rue and all the stables very pleased with me right now.

Anyway, see u tomorrow.

Cocky fucking bitch, but it perfectly encapsulates how I feel, not just about Cowdenbeath, but about this house. I update my blog in MySpace, checking out what some of the usual suspects have been up to. Then I pull on a sweatshirt, leggings and trainers, which are in a sports bag at the foot of the bed, and tiptoe downstairs.

I’d intended to sneak into the little gym and use his cardio equipment. But he was there with his new dog. It was harnessed onto the treadmill and running along. He spends all his time with it. He looks at me, and the dog mirrors his action, glancing sadly from the side. — Just building Ambrose’s legs up, he says, with some guilt. — He’s quite weak for the sort of dog he is.

— Why not just take him outside? I ask him. He looks repulsive and brutish in that vest and those uncool, old man’s tattoos. They’re so thuggish, and devoid of style: a dragon, a skull and crossbones, a saltire and my mother’s name in a scroll.

— He keeps me company when I work out, he says, moving across to the bench press by his multigym. — You’re welcome to join us, he says, noting my tracksuit.

— No… I’m going to the leisure centre.

He shrugs and starts to bench-press his weights. His round face goes an unfeasible crimson shade and his eyes bulge. The dog’s tongue is lashing out as it pants heavily. I find myself wondering which of them will die first. Then I get to thinking: Would I cry at his funeral? Probably. What a depressing thought.

I leave them and get into my Escort and drive down to the centre. I do some stretches, then twenty minutes on the treadmill and another ten on the Stairmaster. I check my weight: ten stone two pounds. A three-pound loss since last week! After a shower I have a coffee, read a section of my novel, Danielle Sloman’s Reluctant Survivor . It’s about a girl, Josephine, who is in a coma following a road-traffic accident. She’s willing them to pull the plug, but the doctors and the family refuse to do so. Now one of the doctors, Steven, has fallen in love with her. Meanwhile, Josephine is recounting her life from her vegetative state, little knowing that her fiancé, Curtis, who was HIV-positive, has perished in the crash. After a while, I drive home.

I have some gym aches so I run myself a bath, remembering that Lara’s coming over later and we’ll probably take the horses for a canter, the state of Midnight’s leg permitting.

I stretch out my own legs in the bath; they are so ugly and stumpy I want to die. No shape to them at all. I turn the jets on so I don’t have to see them through the frothy bubbles. I find myself contemplating the possibilities of suicide by wilfully drowning oneself. Yes, obviously, by jumping from a boat into a stormy sea. But could you drown yourself in a bath? Would this be possible with solemn intent?

It would take a Herculean exercise of will. We would really need to want to die, but for longer than the second that it takes to jump over a cliff.

I fall back, sliding down into the tub made slimy by the bath salts and let myself go under the two feet of water.

I want to die.

I can’t do it. I can’t open my mouth and swallow, can’t even stop expelling air out from the holes in my nose. I just can’t. Then I force myself to try to take it in, but as soon as a trickle of water hits my lungs my body shoots bolt upright as I cough and splutter it out. The bathroom floor is soaked. My eyes sting with the bath salts that have dissolved into the tepid water. I’m gasping, my body a machine, a biomechanism with a sickening power over my will, filling itself full of air, fighting back, overcoming my conscious desire. Surviving.

I gather my breath as the pounding in my head subsides. I write in the condensation steam on the blue tiles:

Then I obliterate it with a sweep of my hand. Cancel that thought: who would look after poor Midnight?

Downstairs I can hear my mother at the door. She shouts up the stairs: — Jenni! Lara’s here!

Best-friend Lara. Back from Ireland, basking in her triumph, coming round here to gloat. And then I hear his voice, a low grunt. He’ll be sniffing around her, his cock stiff in his trousers, his tongue hanging out. Just like his poor miserable killer dog that accompanies him everywhere.

I haul myself out of the bath and, wrapping a towel round me, I dry off, throwing on the clothes I looked out. Those green tight combat trousers Lara thinks are cool will do for me. I know this by the way she looks at them. If she didn’t like them the bitch would say, ‘Oh, they look so good on you.’ I hear my mum’s voice again; insistent and desperate, possibly aware that she’s two-thirds destroyed. (The best two-thirds.)

— Come on up, Lar, I shout.

— We’re going to the stable to check on Midnight, my father shouts in his gravelly tones, straitjacketed into an ill-fitting corset of nonchalance.

— Fun, I snort. Like he cares .

— Come down and join us, he shouts again, in a patently insincere tone. Of course, he doesn’t want me there. He wants to ogle Lara, maybe even feel her up. He’s scum. But so is she. She’s a slag. Once when we were drinking she even confessed that she ‘quite fancied’ him. I think she said it just to shock, but all the same, what a sicko way to talk about your friend’s dad.

All the more reason to spoil their party.

I leave it for a bit, waiting until they go outside. I can see in my mind’s eye the dog following them, always a few paces behind. Both the pooch and my dad from the back: squat, square, thuggish versions of their particular species.

I hear him shout, — Stay, to the dog. From behind the frosted bathroom mirror window, I see them joking and laughing in a nauseatingly flirtatious way, her anoraked and wellingtoned back following him into the stable. Then I creep downstairs and run out, suddenly joining them. — Hey, I say breezily, studying first his expression then hers, looking to see how my unwanted presence has impacted on them. They stand a little apart from each other, and it might be my imagination, but their faces seem eaten up with guilt and disappointment.

Lara has cut her brown hair short and slightly spiky on top. With her upturned nose and freckled face it gives her a mischievous, pixie-like look. Her eyes are her best feature, almond-shaped, glowing, a warm brown, that and her mouth, those full lips which hide small, white teeth, till she smiles. She’s seven stone and never had a spot in her life. She’s rich, an only child, and she gets everything she wants. She’s my best friend and I fucking hate her.