“Sometimes.”
“It’s quiet in my house too.” Mungo slipped a blade of grass between his fingers and tried to blow on it and make it whistle. The blade of grass made a thrumming sound and then let out a shrill song. “You know, you can come round anytime you like.”
“Cheers. But it doesn’t matter, I’m no gonnae be here much longer. Soon as I’m sixteen then I’m gonnae leave school and get out of this shitehole.”
“Aye, but where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Mibbe somewhere up north. Somewhere I could get a job working outside. I like being outside and anywhere is better than here. Here I just feel like I’m playing at happy housewives for an auld man that’s never home.”
Mungo could barely imagine life away from Hamish and the constant fear of something bad happening to Mo-Maw. He tried to laugh. “Tell you what, if you hold on, ah’ll come with you when I turn sixteen. I mean, I’ve never even been out of the East End. You could take me to Shettleston and tell me I was in Spain.”
James didn’t say anything to this. It made Mungo feel odd. He felt the seconds stretch awkwardly. He should have kept his mouth shut, but the words inside him wanted to fill the void. “You know, I thought my maw was dead too. But she wasn’t. She was cooking black pudding outside the hospital.” It was a stupid thing to say to a boy who had lost his mother. He lowered his face into the grass.
As the lights came on in the scheme Mungo helped James sweep out the last of the cages and lock up for the night. As they walked back to the tenements James handed him a long brown feather, one of Little Mungo’s moultings. “Ye should have this.”
Mungo turned the feather in his hand, it was soft and fluffy along the outer edge. Little Mungo was still a squab, he had yet to mature. He was going to mention this to James, but James spoke first. “I’m gonnae see some lassies up by the old fountain. Do ye want to come?”
“Nah. I’d better not.” He didn’t like Jodie to come home to an empty house. He wanted to have the lights on before she returned from the café.
James started hacking again. He took a blue inhaler from his tracksuit pocket and drank in two large lungfuls. His woollen hat was sitting above his ears as it always did and the cold had chapped the tips of his ears. “Maybe you should go home, and just warm up a bit? Watch telly?”
“Naw. I’m no ready to go back to an empty hoose. Are ye sure ye willnae come wi’ me? I know a lassie that will let ye finger her if ye buy her a Walnut Whip.”
Mungo felt along the soft ridge of Little Mungo’s feather again. He wondered if he would ever reach an age where that sounded like a nice thing to do. “Naw. No thanks.”
“C’mon, man up,” said James with a half-smile. But he’d already turned and was lurching towards the park.
* * *
By the time Mungo reached home all the lights were already blazing and she was sitting at the drop-leaf table in the kitchenette. She had kept her thick anorak on and was drinking whisky from a long-stemmed wine glass and using another as a lazy-man’s ashtray. The line of her violet mascara was ruined and it gave an odd blue tint to her face. He knew she had been crying. She must have seen him gawping at her.
“Don’t just stand there catching flies,” sniffed Mo-Maw, “come and gie us a hug.”
Mungo went to his mother. She pulled him on to her lap and she cradled him like the Pietà. He was almost sixteen now, much too tall to be babied, but he let her mollycoddle him anyway. He wrapped himself around her and sank his face into her hair. It smelled like sausage grease and loamy peat, cigarettes and Juicy Fruit, all the familiar smells he had missed. Yet as he snuffled into her crown, underneath it all was the scent of another person’s soap, and there at the base of it, the smell of Jocky’s house, the musk of a stranger’s bath towel. Mungo tried to ignore it. “I really thought you might be dead.”
“Ah-HA!” She shrieked and threw her arms wide like an Egyptian mummy. “Nae luck pal. It’s alive!”
Mungo couldn’t laugh yet. “There’s been stories on the evening news. Some teenage lassies went missing and it turned out they were murdered. I was worried about you.”
“Och. That’s a lovely thing to say.” She tilted her face towards him. There were creases on her face that were not there the last time he saw her. Old make-up was ground into her fine wrinkles, it made them seem like veins. “If ye were a mad murderer yerself, do ye still think I could pass for a teenager?”
Mungo scratched his face. “Oh aye.” He knew she would like this lie.
Mo-Maw stamped her small feet in glee. “Och. Ah forgot how much better ah always feel when ah’m around you.” She kissed his cheek. It was a strange open-mouthed kiss. He could feel the wet tip of her tongue. She was already drunk. “If only ah could find a man as good as you. Ah don’t know how ah never managed to make a mess of ye. Not like ah did with those there two.”
“Jodie’s awright,” said Mungo. “She’s gonnae be a doctor, or an astronaut. I think you should be proudest of her.”
Mo-Maw made a disgruntled sound, then she grinned conspiratorially. “Disnae matter. Who likes a wummin that’s no fun?” She poured a galloping stream of whisky into the wine glass. Mungo wondered if Tattie-bogle would come tonight, the dull-eyed monstrous side of her. He watched her closely, she looked like she was enjoying herself. Maybe it would all be okay. “Don’t ye hate being cooped up all day here with her? She’s no fun at all. Ah swear that scunner came out of me with a to-do list.”
“We always have a laugh when we’re the gether.”
“That’s another thing ah’ve never liked about that one. As soon as she was big enough to hold ye, she was running all over this scheme like ye were her wee baby.”
“Mungo, you can’t be burning all the lights …” They hadn’t heard the key in the lock. Jodie was standing before them with a soggy pizza box in her hand. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“What a way to greet yer own mother.”
Jodie put the pizza box on the table. She took Mungo roughly by his arm and pulled him off Mo-Maw’s lap. She dropped him into a seat of his own and pointed at the cold box. “Here, eat that.” Mungo did as he was told. Jodie used her index finger and dipped it into Mo-Maw’s elegant glass. She winced when she sucked it.
Mo-Maw’s eyes were glassy, the whites were steeped in redness as though she had been too long in the local pool. Her jaw was set at a funny angle and she was scowling at Jodie as she hovered over Mungo. The boy ripped a hunk of battered pizza and handed it to his mother. She reached out to take it, but Jodie drew back Mungo’s wrist. “When you are full and if there is some left over, then she can eat – not before.”
Jodie started gathering the dirty dishes. “So, to what do we owe this great honour? Haaah-ha.”
“Ah just thought ah would come and see ma weans.” Mo-Maw was sitting upright in the kitchen chair, trying to gather some dignity in her own house. “What’s the harm in th—”