"God, Martin, I can't remember anymore." She'd taken up his time, reminded him of a deep hurt and touched his hand. She stood up. "I'd better be going," she said.

Martin had to stand flat against the wall to let her by. He came out after her and turned off the light, pulling the door to.

"That's a lovely wee den. How long have you had that?"

"Years," he said, leading her through the L-shaped room and back to the kitchen corridor. "Years and years and years. Don't tell anyone. It's my secret."

He walked her down the gravel path to the road and along to the bus stop. She knew fine well where the bus stop was and said Martin needn't bother but he said that he didn't need to do any work as long as she was with him and to shut up. The pavement was littered with dead leaves from the trees in the hospital grounds, helpless little carcasses, unable to defend themselves from the breezy wash of fast-passing cars.

"I think it's kind of you to keep seeing that stupid doctor so as not to worry your family," he said.

"I only do it so they won't hassle me."

"Aye, well, lots of people do good things for the wrong reasons. It's still a good thing."

He waited with her until the bus came and bade her take care.

Chapter 20

She got off the bus outside a large chemist's shop in the town center. It was on three levels and sold everything from face cream to home electrolysis kits. Maureen had a weakness for cosmetics, even the pseudoscientific face creams that made mad claims. She knew that surgery couldn't really come in a tub, that cream would have to be sold as a medicine if it did anything but moisturize, but still, when she felt bad, a good temporary solution was a face mask and a new tub of miracle face cream or a hair dye.

She wandered up and down the aisles, pausing at displays, reading packets, and settled on a dark hair dye that would condition and moisturize, and a face mask she'd used before. The mask was too harsh for her skin, it left it red and sore, but the cream came out of the tube black and turned bright orange as it dried. It always gave her a buzz.

Back at the house Benny had left a note on the coffee table in the living room to say he was speaking at an AA meeting and would be back at eight. Maureen started the bath running, took two clean white towels from the linen cupboard in the hall and locked the bathroom door. She stripped off, pinned her hair on top of her head and put the face mask on, spreading the black cream evenly over her face and neck. It had a pleasing rubbery texture. She sat on the edge of the toilet seat as she waited for the bath to fill and rubbed her lingers together, gathering the residue of the face mask into a gluey lump, rolling the warm black grape into the soft hollow of her palm.

She thought about Douglas, not shoddy, lying Douglas but the kind, compassionate man she'd been training herself to forget. She could understand him giving Siobhain money because of the Northern but Maureen hadn't been raped when she was there. Apart from Winnie, nothing bad had happened while she was in there. She thought about Shirley's suggestion that Douglas had been fucking someone in his office at the Rainbow. It seemed wildly out of character for Douglas. He had been so concerned with differentiating their relationship from that of a therapist who fucked his patient. He used to talk about it a lot. But, then, he hadn't mentioned that recently either so it could have been him. The bath was full. She turned off the taps.

Her face was rubbery and orange. Rolling her fingertips up her neck, she gathered the edge of the mask and pulled it off whole. Every pore on her face was tingling. The bathroom was foggy with steam as she slipped into the deep bath, sliding down until only her nose and tits were sticking out of the water, thinking of poor Ophelia. The scratches on the back of her neck bristled as the water hit them.

She stepped out and dried herself with the crisp, clean towel. The hair dye was the darkest she'd ever used: it wasn't Goth black but it wasn't a kick in the arse off it. She was shaking the bottle when she realized that she would ruin the white towels if she used them.

She chucked some clothes on and went into the hall, looking for an old towel in the airing cupboard, but there weren't any. Benny had some scabby ones, Maureen had seen them. She went into his bedroom, knelt down by the chest of drawers, pulled open the bottom one and rummaged, feeling for a towel texture. The drawer was filled with big winter jumpers and odd socks. Her hand landed on a glossy piece of paper. She nearly pulled it out before she realized it was a pornographic magazine. She shoved it back in, bristling with embarrassment, and pushed it to the very back. She felt something hard and flat and plastic lying on the floor of the drawer. She pulled back a jumper and looked in. It was a CD: it had been set into the corner of the drawer on the floor so that it didn't get lost in the jumble. She lifted it out, recognizing the two-tone corner before she saw the front of it. It was the Best of the Selecter CD. It was the CD she had left on the bedroom floor up in Garnethill; it even had the crack on the corner of the plastic cover.

She put it back where she had found it, covering it over with the same jumper and odd socks, and went back into the bathroom.

She combed her hair into a ponytail and hacked through it with a pair of nail scissors.

It was half-seven.

She listened at the bathroom door. The flat was still. She left a note on the kitchen table saying she'd stay at Leslie's tonight, and made her way down to the Great Western Road, taking a backstreet route she had never known Benny use.

Liam had more or less lived there for three years so she remembered the phone number. Lynn had moved; the guy who answered gave her an Anderston number.

"Hello, Lynn?"

"Aye," said Lynn cautiously.

"Lynn, it's me, Maureen O'Donnell."

"Mauri! How the fuck are you?"

They arranged to meet, under conditions of the utmost secrecy, in a large, busy cafe near Lynn's house.

LYNN WAVED HAPPILY WHEN Maureen walked through the door. She had naturally black hair and flawless pink velvet skin but her eyes were her crowning glory, black with a blue tinge that made them look like polished semiprecious stones. Her body was slight and wiry and if Liam was to be believed she was unusually agile. She had a deep, gruff voice from smoking twenty a day from the age of twelve. She was eating a bowl of carbonara made with cubed gammon. Expertly, she rolled a string of spaghetti onto her fork as Maureen sat down. "So what's this about, Secret Squirrel? And what have you done to your hair?"

"Cut it myself," said Maureen, sitting down.

"It's all uneven. You come to mine after we've eaten and I'll straighten it."

" 'S all right," said Maureen distractedly.

"No, it's not. There's all jaggy bits hanging down at the back. It looks like a mad wummin's fanny."

They sat in silence for a moment as Lynn chewed a mouthful of pasta. The creamy sauce gathered at the corners of her mouth; it looked like froth. Maureen looked around the room. Tourist posters of Italy had been pasted onto the wall: behind Lynn's head loomed an aerial photograph of Florence. The pictures were skirted with flags-of-all-nations bunting.

"Auch," said Lynn. "Let's just skip all these pleasantries."

"Aye," said Maureen.

Lynn looked her over. "I know about your boyfriend, Maureen. Is that why you're doing this silent, haunted thing?"

"Ami?"

"Aye."

"Don't tell anyone we've met, eh?" said Maureen.