GLASGOW

I pass up three opportunities to speak with Ewan before I screw my courage to the sticky subject.

The first is directly after the gig, as Gemma rallies around to congratulate us. That is cut short, though, by a replying text from Cammy to confirm that he has indeed seen me out with Maddie on a Silo-stroll. Zipping up my guitar case with the haste of a gunman on the run, I leave the club and make my way to the rendezvous point at the bus stop around the corner, where Maddie herself is waiting with a kiss and a double-decker getaway vehicle that groans up hills and smells of stale piss.

The second is excruciating. It has been arranged, a week in advance, that Ewan and I will spend our Sunday repainting the back wall of Cesare’s café. It’s a cash-in-hand job. Cesare wants the wall to be ‘mocha’-coloured because he’s seen the paint sampler and thinks it might put people in mind of coffee. At the very least, he reckons, it will be a conversationstarter. Not for us, though. We stand in silence, slapping sullenly at the wall with our paintbrushes. Even when Cesare cranks up the bullshit – I had a trial for Glasgow Celtic, boys; I gave up a career as a stunt man to go travelling in Malaysia; I invented the gingerbread latte, that they all sell at Christmas, yes? – we don’t share so much as a secretive smile, as we normally would, or respond with anything other than a grunt.

The third is at the recording session I won at the showcase, so on the face of it it should be impossible for us not to talk. Ewan sends me a text to confirm the arrangements, though, and when I text him back, to ask if he’ll be there, he doesn’t answer. There’s a sofa outside the live room, where Ewan could hang out, eating the softened crisps they’ve laid on and smoking a joint or two, but when he does turn up he only stays for long enough to listen through the first track with the sound engineer.

I should go through to speak with them. Especially because I’ve been having a running discussion with the engineer about the vocals on the chorus. He wants them ‘thickened’; I want them raw. So, for the ten minutes Ewan is in the building, I should really get him to question what exactly is happening at the mixing desk. He’s still my manager, after all. Instead, I stay in the airless live room and practise the guitar track for the second song.

It’s on a Monday, a fortnight and four days after the showcase gig, that I decide I really need to find out whether the hatchet that I’ve taken to our friendship can be buried. It may be the prospect of double biology that convinces me, more than guilt. Whatever the motivation, I skip class and make my way down to the shoe shop on Byres Road where Ewan works.

The shop is not a trendy one. It sells sturdy shoes with cushioned insoles to pensioners. Ewan is good with the old dears; he doesn’t cringe at the sight of a corn-pad or grow tired of explaining that they no longer accept cheques as payment. He’s not here today, though. I make my way over to the manager, a middle-aged woman with a mole on her cheek who blinks in surprise at the sight of a youngster in her shop, and ask after him.

‘Not in today,’ she says. ‘Called in sick. Said he’s had the flu all weekend.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I say. ‘Called in sick… so, maybe…’ Her eyes narrow, and I realise that my arrival might call Ewan’s illness into question for her. Conspiring to get him sacked from his job would probably not serve as an effective apology for stealing his girlfriend, so I quickly backtrack. ‘… it’s just, I’ve not spoken to him in ages… I’ve been travelling, you see, to Malaysia, and I lost his number… so… but I knew he worked here, so I thought I’d try on the off-chance.’

‘Oh. I could give him a ring for you, if you like.’

‘No, no.’ I smile, and backtrack right out of the shop. ‘I’ll try later in the week, maybe.’

I know where he’ll be. As soon as she said that he’d called in sick, I knew where he was. The same place I, or any of our group of friends, would go.

The woods are different in daylight. You can see where the mud, underfoot, is congealed enough to tiptoe through without sinking, and the littered debris of our drinking makes the foliage look corporate-sponsored, with cans hooked on thorns, crisp packets caught on bushes and plastic bags flapping from tree branches. The train station, just visible through the trees, seems closer because of the echoing announcements and the regular trundle of trains.

Ewan sits on the uprooted tree-trunk. He holds a bottle of cooking sherry. It is half-empty, but he doesn’t look drunk. Hollow-eyed and slump-shouldered, he picks at the bark and throws the shavings down to the ground.

‘You think she’s Yoko, don’t you?’ I ask, sitting down next to him.

‘Get over yourself.’

‘You’re no John fucking Lennon, mate.’

I smile, conceding the point. I’d like to laugh as well, but I’m not sure it would take the venom from his words. He stares at the ground, digs the toe of his trainer in underneath a root, and takes a swig from the sherry.

‘Why are you drinking that?’ I ask. It’s a daft question – the sherry is obviously the only thing he could lay his hands on.

‘Listen,’ I try, ‘we really should talk about this, Ewan.’

I nod. ‘I know it hurt you, but I waited until the two of you had split up…’

‘… and it doesn’t have to change anything between us…’

‘… although, Pierce wants to take over as my manager…’

He takes another drink.

‘… so maybe you guys could talk and work something out?’

‘Do you remember,’ he says, ‘we used to hang out together all day, around Naseby Park then up around Broomhill? We’d talk about all sorts, Rab. Not girls at that stage, but other shit.’

‘And we’d stick football stickers to our shorts before we played,’ I say. ‘As though that would give us the skills of Giggs or Bergkamp or whoever.’

He nods, but doesn’t smile. ‘You said to me once, just before we started secondary school, that you’d like to be a pharmacist when you grew up, because you were amazed that moods could be altered, that pain could be taken away, just like that.’ He snaps his fingers.

‘Right,’ I say, although I don’t remember saying it. ‘But maybe that can be done with music as well.’

‘All with one little pill, you said.’ Ewan holds up his finger and thumb and pinches the air. ‘So I went rooting through my mum’s medicine cabinet that night and found her antidepressants and I thought…’ He stops, takes a drink, shrugs. ‘I thought you were a fucking soothsayer, y’know.’

‘This was all before I started playing the guitar, though.’

‘And I thought, maybe he’s destined for great things, our Rab. Maybe he can find a cure for my mum – a permanent one – so she’ll stop bursting into tears when my dad asks her how her day’s been.’

‘It was before I started playing the guitar, though, wasn’t it?’ I repeat.

‘Aye.’ He looks up at me. ‘But I thought the reasoning behind it was great: that you wanted to save others from pain, even if it was only a headache. That was a noble thought for a boy of eleven or whatever age you were…’

If I ever wanted to be anything other than a singer, it has long since been forgotten. Even my exams, this summer, seem pointless. I already have three Highers, from last year, and I see no need for the two more I’m taking now. Pierce will manage me and I will produce album after album, year after year. Other folk can work in pharmacies, cafés, shoe shops – they get their wages and buy my music; the world keeps spinning.

The demo I recorded at the studio is being mastered by a producer Pierce knows, just to tweak the sound a little. Before he sends them out to labels, Pierce wants the tracks to be ‘vibrant, amigo, with a pulse of anger’. Hopefully the producer has a button for that.

‘What do you want me to talk to Pierce Price about?’ Ewan asks.

‘Well…’ I bite at my lip. ‘Pierce just wants to make sure that you pass on the management duties fully…’

‘You mean he wants to buy me out?’

‘Well, we – me and you – don’t actually have a contract. So it’s more a courtesy, really.’

Ewan shakes his head. ‘I don’t want your money.’

‘I’m not offering you any.’

I want to reach out and take the sherry from him, both to save him from it and because a swallow would do wonders for easing the tension. He shows no sign of relinquishing his grip on the neck of the bottle, though. I stretch out to uproot a sapling instead, to give my hands something to do. Systematically, I strip it of its leaves.

‘We can still be friends, Ewan,’ I say, ‘surely.’

‘Rab, I’m not that upset about Maddie. If truth be told, like, she wasn’t my – ’ He stops, sighs, sips. ‘But I still wish you’d come to me, y’know.’

‘I would have – ’ I say.

‘You didn’t,’ he replies.

We both sit and stare at the ground beneath our feet, flecked with the bark shavings.

‘I don’t think,’ he says, ‘you would have made a good pharmacist after all. Because you don’t need a pill to ease your pain. You have no concept of brooding on something, letting it eat at you. Letting it affect you, change you. You just forget, you just carry right on… I kind of envy you that.’

I look away, through the trees, towards the commuters gathered on the train platform. I have answers for Ewan – that I’m interested in progressing and succeeding, whereas he doesn’t seem to have any drive, any desire whatsoever – but I think it would be unkind to take him on in his current state.

‘Will you talk to Pierce if he gives you a call?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Of course.’

‘And what about Maddie?’

‘She won’t call,’ he says, trying out a smile.

‘I mean, are you OK about her and me?’

‘It was never about Maddie, Rab.’

I nod, but don’t press him further.

The woods in the daylight are different: the patchy grass is trampled smooth in places, there are branches snapped and bowed towards the ground, and the uprooted tree-trunk has been picked bald and bears the burns of countless cigarettes and the carvings of sets of initials. And, even with half a bottle of sherry in him, Ewan doesn’t laugh or lash out. There is no anger to him, no temper. Instead, he sits with his hands on his knees and his back hunched. He swallows, sways, and stares at the mud. Then he hawks up some sherry-thick saliva and spits it slowly out so that it trails down, forming one continuous thread between his lips and the ground.

I spend more and more time with Maddie through the Easter holidays. Her mother and father split five years ago, with enough by way of alimony and acrimony that she can tell one she is staying with the other and never be caught out. Her dad shuttles between London and Glasgow for work, so we take over his flat when he is down south. I tell my parents that I am staying with Ewan, knowing that our own split means he won’t call to contradict.

The only time we spend apart, really, is the last weekend in March, when Maddie takes a bus down to London to stay with her dad and take part in this anti-cuts, anti-austerity march. She argues that I should be going down too, that this is the equivalent of a massive one-day workshop for my songs. Hundreds of thousands of people all willing to talk to me about contemporary politics and how the government cuts affect them. I tell her that I’d rather get the music down first and worry about honing the lyrics later. That’s only part of the reason for staying in Glasgow, though. Truth be told, I’m willing to miss out on the opportunity to ask the government why they’re screwing the country if it avoids the prospect of Maddie’s dad asking me the same question about his daughter.

Through April, Maddie stresses about revision for her exams. She has covered a wall in colour-coded timetables, charts, fact-sheets and quotations. You can find a detailed diagram of the urinary tract and the poetry of Edwin Morgan side by side, or a list of the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament and a summary of the Stanislavski system. In the mornings, I sleep late and Maddie rises to add another layer of notes. After lunch, I pluck and fret on the guitar and she pores over past papers. It’s only in the late afternoon, by half-three or four o’clock, that she’s ready to be distracted. We go back to bed and try to make the walls shake, try to loosen the annotated wallpaper.

It’s on a Wednesday, a few weeks after the recording session, that I get the final mix of the demo. I’ve just run out to the chippy and we’re sharing a post-coital cod supper when my laptop chimes to tell me I have a new email. With vinegar-soaked fingers, I open it up. The producer has sent it to Pierce as well as myself, so I’m aware that I’m listening to my pitch for stardom as I play the first track. Maddie shuffles along the sofa towards me, after the opening chords, and folds her greasy fingers into mine. We sit in silence and listen.

Track one is good. The producer has kept the layered vocals on the chorus and added some reverb, so it fills out over the basic chord progression of the guitar. Track two suffers a little by comparison, because the vocals trail off before the harmonica section, but the lyrics sound crisp and clean and confrontational. Pierce will be pleased. It’s track three, though, that stands out. The song about Maddie. The melody is strong, the vocals throaty, and the lyrics heartfelt.

My first thought is that I’ll need to send it straight on to my Uncle Brendan, because you can really hear the hammer-on in the first intro – the pick-and-jab – and the intricate finger-picking on the second. There’s also a lick on the third track that’s as clean as I’ve ever heard it. Brendan would appreciate that. But then I start to worry about the lyrics. He’s used to political, after all, and I’m not convinced that all the lyrics are there yet. It’s only a demo; it’s not Bragg-worthy yet.

As the last track fades out, Maddie pushes me back against the cushions and reaches a hand down to rub against my crotch. I am fully clothed; she is wearing only a T-shirt and shorts. With a smile, she slides off the sofa and on to her bare knees, lowering her head to give me a blowjob that, at first, has the faint sting and tingle of salt and vinegar.

‘You must be proud,’ she says afterwards.

‘It was you that did all the work really,’ I reply, with a grin.

‘About the songs, you wanker.’ She slaps at my arm. ‘They sound great.’

‘They do, don’t they?’ I smile. ‘Let’s just hope Pierce Price agrees.’

‘He will.’ Maddie cuddles in against my chest. ‘Definitely.’

I reach out a hand for a chip, but they have gone cold. The congealed cod curls in underneath a clump of them. I scrunch the wrapping up, leaving fingerprints against the brown paper, and set it down on the arm of the sofa.

‘Will you move to London?’ Maddie asks.

I peer down at her. ‘What?’

‘Now that you have a manager down there,’ she says. ‘Would you move to London?’

‘I’d need a record contract first. But there’s no reason why not, I guess.’

She sits up. ‘Am I not a reason?’

‘Well, I’d take you with me, wouldn’t I?’ I grin.

She turns away from me, towards the door. Bringing her legs up on to the sofa, she hugs her knees to her chest. Then, with her fingernail, she starts to scrape at the red polish on her toenails. Flecks and flakes of it settle on the sofa cushion.

‘Why did that annoy you?’ I ask.

The laptop chimes again – another email.

‘Maddie? Why did that annoy you?’

I squint at the screen – it’s from Pierce Price.

‘Answer me.’

I don’t lean forward to open the email. I can’t, yet. I need to concentrate on Maddie.

‘Maddie? All I said was that I’d take you with me. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You weren’t being serious,’ she says, into her knees.

‘Fuck off, Rab.’

‘I was.’ I reach out a hand and rest it on her shoulder. ‘Honestly.’

She half-turns, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘What about our exams? And university?’

‘They have universities in London, don’t they?’ I say.

She nods and turns fully. The frown has not disappeared completely, but it has smoothed out a little. Her eyes – those wonderful, wide brown eyes – flick back and forth across my face.

‘We’ve not been seeing each other that long, though.’ She bites at her lip. ‘And you’ll probably have girls tripping over their fake tits for you down in London…’

I lean across to kiss her. ‘I only want you, Maddie.’

That convinces her. A smile breaks through. She nods down at the laptop on the table and asks a question with a lift of her eyebrows.

‘Email from Pierce,’ I reply.

‘Are you serious? That was quick.’

‘It’s a brave new age of technology we live in,’ I say. ‘No more carrier pigeons or – ’

‘Is it good or bad that it was so quick?’ she interrupts. ‘Why haven’t you opened it?’

‘You were upset,’ I say. Although, now that she’s raised the possibility, I’m also nervous about what it might say. A rejection – polite or impolite, dismissive or encouraging. Nothing is signed yet. I don’t want to open it in front of Maddie, don’t want to dash her hopes as well as my own. I can’t tell her not to look, though, or ask her to leave the room. ‘Let me – ’ I begin.

‘Just tell me what it says.’ She screws her eyes shut. ‘I can’t bear to look.’

I click, I scan it quickly. The words blur.

‘It’s just what he’s looking for,’ I say. ‘He’d like me to come down to London to discuss it and to finalise the paperwork… he’ll send it out to some record companies in the meantime… there’s one called Agitate Records that are on the lookout for this sort of thing… and, listen to this, right at the end. Buckle up, it says, buckle the fuck up, buddy.’

Maddie opens one eye. She studies my grinning face, then opens the other. With a yelp, she jumps at me, rocking me backwards against the arm of the sofa. The remnants of our cod supper fall to the carpet. We both ignore it. Fuck it, we’ll be eating caviar from now on.