Scratch (7 page)

‘Did you call your patients wankers?’ I said.

‘Not often, James. But I did charge them sixty quid an hour. I’m enlightening you to your
wankishness
for free.’

‘Well, eh …’

‘Hah, Terence, would you look at his face! Paula told me he was a gullible wee shite but I didn’t think he would be this easy.’ Terry joined Joe in his laughter.

I was confused. ‘So I’m not a wanker?’

Joe stopped laughing and fixed me with his gaze once again. ‘Oh no, Jim. Be in no doubt, you are by far the biggest wanker I’ve ever met in my life.’

I really,
really
wanted to call Joe a wanker, but realised it wouldn’t have much impact. ‘Okay, ha
ha
, cheers, good one,’ I said as petulantly as the Drambuie I’d downed would allow.

‘Ah, you’re not a bad lad really, Jim. Paula was right about that.’

I straightened my shoulders and took a silent count. If I wasn’t mistaken that was three times Joe had mentioned Paula so far. I decided it was my turn.

‘Speaking of Paula, how’s she doing?’ I was pleased with my tone: fairly innocuous, relatively innocent.

‘Ask her yourself, she’ll be home in a few weeks.’

Chapter 5

‘What did you pay for it?’

‘Eh, fifty thousand.’

The estate agent nodded mysteriously and stuck his pen in his mouth as he turned, walked out of the bedroom and headed back towards the kitchen. Not knowing what else to do, I followed him.

‘You’re leaving the white goods?’

I hadn’t thought about this. ‘You think I should?’

‘It’s worth throwing them in. It’s basically a starter home, so chances are your viewers will be pretty skint.’ This was hardly encouraging.

I didn’t especially want to leave the flat, but needed the equity to stand any chance of supporting myself sans employment. I’d have to get another job, but it was unlikely I’d walk into the same salary in any other field. Not having a clue what field I wanted to walk into added to the uncertainty.

Still, it was a good flat. The toilet was more a cubicle than a room, the cords had all snapped on the sash-windows and the gas fire in the living room barely managed to defrost itself in the winter, but I liked it.

‘You’re planning on painting before going to market?’

‘Not especially, no.’

The estate agent sucked air in through clenched teeth. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’ Why would I want to spent time and money painting a flat I was moving out of? You did that when you moved in, surely.

This guy was starting to bug me. He was at least five years younger than I was, and wore one of those shiny grey suits that made him look like a second division footballer on a night out. He reminded me of Patrick, with that same air of unjustified smarm and self-importance.

‘Hoping for a quick sale?’

‘Totally.’ It bloody better be quick. I’d nearly given myself a heart attack when I added up all my monthly debt payments. For years I’d let all the direct debits happen when I wasn’t looking then tried to make whatever was left last as long as possible. I got the fright of my life when I realised how much I was paying every month to the various vampires who’d seduced me into buying things I wanted. I had one salary cheque left in my immediate future, and if this place didn’t sell fast and big I was in bother.

‘Any smells?’ Patrick Two said. He’d told me his name when he arrived but I’d forgotten it.

‘Sorry?’

‘Any odour issues? Drains, rotting garbage, that sort of thing.’

Cheeky bastard. ‘No there are not. At least not when I remember to empty the bin.’

Not a flicker of a smile.
Dour
cheeky bastard. He made a note on his clipboard.

‘Okay, I think I’ve seen everything I need to. Shall we have a seat and a chat about where we stand?’

We went through to the living room, me sitting on the couch and him on the battered armchair I had inherited from my Auntie Margaret. I braced myself.

He waffled a bit about market conditions and the like, but I started to fidget and he got the message.

‘I’d advise you go for offers over eighty-five or a fixed price of ninety.’

Yes! I loved this guy. ‘Fixed price,’ I said. ‘Definitely fixed price. How long do you reckon?’

‘I’d imagine you’d have a couple of offers within three weeks or so. There’s a high demand for this sort of place in this area just now, and—’

‘Cool, let’s do it. It’s a deal. You’re hired. Do you want a beer?’ Christ, I might even end up with a couple of grand in my pocket. I
loved
this guy.

‘No, you’re fine, thanks. I’ve got a few other appointments tonight.’ Patrick the Second smiled for the first time. He looked quite sweet. I decided to stop calling him Patrick and call him something like Bobby or Jake instead; something friendly. ‘No worries, but that’s one I owe you, Jake.’ Shit, I hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud.

‘Sure, no problem.’ Jake looked a little concerned as he got up and handed me a business card. ‘I’ll get things moving in the morning. Give the office a call if you’ve got any questions.’

I glanced at the card as I shook his hand at the front door. His name was Gordon.

***

I called Terry and invited him over to celebrate. Ninety grand would solve a hell of a lot of problems. Debt-free at thirty-three, how brilliant would that be?

‘Unemployed, homeless and debt-free,’ Terry pointed out as he cracked open a can of Stella.

‘Aye, but it’s still cool.’

 
‘If you say so. Personally I prefer to know where I’m going to be sleeping this time next month.’

‘You’ve got no imagination,’ I said. ‘In a couple of weeks I’ll have no bills to pay, no shitty job to get stressed about. I can go anywhere I want and do whatever the hell I like.’

‘And yet, what’s the
bets
you don’t go anywhere except a bed-sit, and don’t do anything except get drunk four times a week, which you do now anyway.’

‘I could travel and stuff.’

‘Where to?’

I didn’t feel Terry was being as supportive as a good friend should. ‘
America
,
Barcelona
,
Amsterdam
, anywhere.’

‘Christ, you can’t even get past ‘b’ in the alphabet. You’re going nowhere mate, I guarantee it.’

‘Piss off.’

‘So, what? You’re going to go away by yourself, are you? The lone traveller on an adventure of exploration?’

‘I might.’

‘Jim, you can’t even get to
three o’clock
on a bank holiday Monday without phoning me for a pint. There’s not a chance you’d last a week on your own abroad.’

Terry was right. I’d never been very good with my own company; to be honest, I’d never found myself all that interesting. No doubt Simon/Joe would have something to say about that.

‘What about Ms Fraser?’ Terry said.

‘What about her?’ I attempted nonchalance.

‘You telling me you’re going to disappear off around the world when she’s coming home? I don’t think so, mate.’

‘Just because her dad was desperate for company doesn’t mean she will be. She’s married, for God’s sake. She probably doesn’t even remember me.’

‘She remembers you enough to tell her dad you’re a wanker.’

‘I think you’ll find she said I was a gullible wee shite.
He
called me a wanker; and you, come to think of it.’

‘Aye, but I bet it was her who planted the idea in his head.’

‘Fuck off and get us another beer.’

Terry went through to the kitchen to lighten the fridge’s load and I sat back on the couch.

Paula’s dad had told us her language school in Germany had hit the skids and she and her husband were moving to Scotland for the foreseeable future. I didn’t particularly want to know, but he’d gone on to say that Paula’s husband, Ingo (the childish part of me had secretly hoped I would be able to take the piss out of his name, but
Ingo
was fairly cool, unfortunately), was a German linguist she’d met and married in London five years earlier. They’d pooled their resources and taken out a mortgage on a small, run down office building in his home city of
Munich
. After years of trying to turn it into a successful private college teaching English as a foreign language and getting deeper into debt with each passing year, they had finally given up and decided to call it a day.

I’d tried to pretend I was sorry to hear this as Simon/Joe informed us that Paula had been offered a job teaching German at Glasgow University and Ingo had secured a post as an English teacher at
Holyrood
, my old secondary school in
Govanhill
. I had subtly discovered this would mean Paula would be earning more than Ingo and, according to her dad, Paula didn’t have a problem with that. This was useful information.

‘So,’ Terry said, handing me a nicely chilled Stella and resuming his position on the armchair. ‘Are you seriously going to watch the game with Joe on Saturday?’

‘Course I am, and you’re coming too.’ I had, through nothing more than an innate sense of compassion and a desire to do right by the older generation, invited Paula’s dad to the pub to watch the football with us the following weekend.

‘It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?’

‘What?’ I don’t know why, but I was determined to pretend that none of anything had a thing to do with Paula Fraser.

‘Don’t you think Joe knows you’re only being nice to him because of Paula?’

‘I’m not; he’s a good old guy. He’s the first person I’ve met who could shut you up for more than five minutes. Besides, he said yes. The man’s only looking for a bit of a social life, nothing wrong with that.’

‘Aye, right. I still don’t think you should have given him your mobile number and email. That man’s not the most stable of individuals.’

‘Ach, he’s fine. He’ll be fine.’ Terry looked even less convinced than I felt.

Chapter 6

Two days later, I was two days past the point of admitting Terry was right.

The first text arrived at 6.30 on the morning after Terry had been over. The
bing
-bong
of my mobile’s message alert woke me from a very pleasant dream about something I won’t go into here. I pawed at my bedside cabinet and brought the phone over until it was a few inches from my face, the light from its screen feeling like a supernova in the darkness.

-
bruce
lee invented his own martial art
-

I dropped the phone back on to the cabinet with a groan and tried to get back to sleep. I had a Stella hangover, which is never pleasant. At around quarter-to-seven, just as I was slipping back into the welcoming arms of the Sandman, I heard it again:
bing
-bong
.

I lay there trying to ignore it for a while, but eventually lost the fight with my curiosity and fumbled on top of the small unit once again.

-
he called it
jeet
kune
do
-