The Chessmen

CHAPTER TWENTY

I suppose my obsession with Mairead began the first day I set eyes on her in the rehearsal room at the Nicolson Institute.

I had fallen out with Marsaili some time before and arrived in Stornoway aged fifteen, fancy free and awash with testosterone. Mairead came like a bright shining star out of Uig as this Crobost boy from Ness, fresh-faced and unsophisticated, began his first year at the Nicolson still dripping wet behind the ears. She was a goddess with a voice that sent chills down my back.

There were other good-looking girls at school, of course, but Mairead was a cut above. She held herself beautifully, with poise and confidence, and oozed the kind of latent sexuality that seemed solely designed to inflame a teenage boy’s passions.

She had beautiful hands, I remember, delicate, with long fingers and perfectly manicured nails. Her face was fine-featured, but still strong. She was tall, and walked with a certain swing of the hips, breasts always tantalizingly suggested by the way they strained at her school blouse. Her hair was a dark auburn and had a natural wave in it, and in those days she wore it long over her shoulders, or drawn back in a ponytail that was wrapped into a knot at the back of her head and held by clasps.

But her eyes were what bewitched me. A dark, dark blue they were, with a slightly darker circle around the iris, and there was always something like amusement in them, quizzical and superior. I can remember the first time she looked directly at me. My stomach flipped over, and I literally went weak at the knees.

Naturally, I wasn’t the only boy who was hopelessly in love with her. In fact, I doubt if there was a single boy at the school who wasn’t. Except for a rather soft boy from Carloway called Anndra, who turned out to be gay.

Of course, Mairead herself was only too aware of the effect that she had, and she wouldn’t have been human, I suppose, if it hadn’t turned her head. She teased and tormented and toyed with us as if we were children. And, in truth, mentally, she was probably several years our senior, in the way that there is always a gap between teenage boys and girls of the same age. She made me think of a Beatles song that my aunt used to play, called ‘Girl’. All about a girl who would put you down because it amused her, who would take your adulation for granted, and hurt you because it gave her pleasure. Such poignant observations from the pen of a still-young John Lennon, so clearly born of experience. Another Mairead, no doubt.

Singing and playing with Solas set Mairead apart from the rest, placed her on a kind of pedestal. And she was afflicted by the star syndrome, even in those days. But none of that affected my ardour. The fact that she was so impossibly unattainable somehow made her all the more desirable.

It wasn’t until the following year that I had my first close encounter with her.

It was early summer, before the holidays, and the bike group had already upped sticks and moved away from Holm Point after discovering the history of the Iolaire. We were all out at Garry Beach with the bikes. By that time I had been humphing gear for Solas for about eighteen months, and had long ago accepted that a relationship with Mairead was not in my stars. It didn’t stop me from admiring her from a distance, though, and I still blushed like an idiot when she spoke to me. But as far as the opposite sex was concerned I had started to focus my attentions on the attainable. Although not with any great success, it has to be said.

Mairead’s on-off relationship with Roddy was in one of its frequent off periods, and she had ridden pillion out to Tolastadh that day with Whistler, I think to make both Roddy and Strings jealous.

What had started with the promise of a lazy afternoon in the summer sunshine quickly faded. Dark clouds rolled over the moor from the west, bringing with them a chill edge to the wind and a hint of rain somewhere in the not too distant future. There were a dozen or so of us, just fooling around, smoking, dipping our feet in the icy waters of the Minch and running shrieking up the beach as the waves broke over our calves.

We hung on as long as possible, not really wanting it to end. Then, with the first drops of rain, made the belated decision to head back to Stornoway.

Try as he might, Whistler couldn’t get his moped started. Some of the others had already gone, and those of us who were left didn’t relish hanging about in the rain.

I called to Whistler, grinning, ‘Enjoy the walk back.’ I had no doubt he would get her going in the end, but it was fun to annoy him.

He came back at me with his usual wit. ‘Get stuffed, Macleod.’

I gunned my motor and was about to head off when a voice called, ‘Fin, wait!’

I looked around and saw Mairead running across the sand. She had a magazine opened over her head, but it wasn’t going to keep her very dry. Her face was flushed and her eyes shining.

‘I need a lift.’

My heart was thumping. ‘Aren’t you going to wait with Whistler?’

She pulled a face. ‘I would like to get home sometime this week.’

I laughed, a little nervously, and glanced around. There were several others that she could have asked for a lift, but she had chosen me. By now my mouth was dry. ‘Sure,’ I said. And I was about to tell her to hop on, but she had already swung a leg over the rear wheel to sit astride the luggage rack and slip her arms around my waist.

‘Come on then,’ she shouted above the racket of my little 50cc motor. ‘I’m getting wet.’

I revved and let out the clutch, and accelerated across the stony car park towards the road, back wheel spinning and skidding from side to side, trying to impress her. And I felt her arms tighten around me. A thrill went through my whole body, ending in a deep ache of desire in my loins. I glanced back and saw Whistler standing by his bike, glaring after us. The rain began in earnest then.

Usually it would take about twenty-five minutes to get back to Stornoway. It took me well over half an hour that day. You could say that I went more slowly because of the rain. But the truth was I didn’t ever want it to end. Even although we were both soaked to the skin within minutes. The feel of Mairead’s arms around me was intoxicating, her open palms spread across my chest, the softness of her body against mine, the hardness of her breasts pressed into my back. I could feel the warmth passing between our two bodies, and I was more aroused I think than I had ever been in my life.

At one point, I could feel her resting her head against my shoulder. I wanted so much to turn and look at her face, to find her eyes with mine, and her lips, and kiss her softly. But I daren’t take my eyes off the road.

My mind was seething with conflicting emotions. Desire, fear, and a thousand imagined possibilities. What was I going to say to her when we got back to town? How was I going to make the moment last? Was there even the slightest chance that she had asked me for a ride back because she had always secretly fancied me? I rehearsed a dozen lines in my head. ‘What are you doing tonight?’ ‘Fancy going for a coffee?’ Each of them utterly banal and lacking in wit or inspiration.

When we finally came over the top of Matheson Road and turned into Springfield Road, I pulled in at the pavement by the school gate. Most of the others had got there ahead of us. All soaked. But the rain had gone off by now, and they stood around in groups animated by conversation and laughter. Mairead swung her leg over my back wheel and smiled at me. Her hair was wet and smeared all over her face. She removed it from her eyes with elegant fingers, and I thought I had never seen her look more lovely.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the flash of white blouse below her blazer. Soaked and made see-through by the rain, I was shocked to see the outline of her breasts, and the darker circles of her areolae visible through the flimsiest of bras. She looked down to see what I was looking at, but just smiled and buttoned her blazer shut. Slowly, without haste or embarrassment, her eyes fixed on mine, only too aware of the effect she was having. I think I must have blushed like a girl. And all the lines I had been repeating in my head disappeared in a sea of hormones. I couldn’t find a single thing to say.

She said, ‘Thanks, Fin. See you later.’ And she hurried off to join her friends. It was one of those moments in my life that I have replayed many times. And each time I returned her smile, unblushing, and said something clever that won her over. How smart we can be after the event, how suave and sophisticated in our imaginations. Donald would have known what to say and do, and would no doubt have ended up sleeping with her. Not that night, perhaps, but sometime. And, who knows? Knowing Donald, maybe he did.

My close encounter of the second kind came not long after that. I was down at Uig the following weekend. The band wasn’t playing, and Whistler and I had decided to take the tent up into the mountains to do a little illicit fishing for brown trout. We pitched it on the shores of one of the myriad lochs west of Brinneabhal. The land there opened up below the mountains, with views across the moor and the machair towards the cliffs, the Atlantic breaking creamy white all along the shattered coastline.

The cloud was down so low you couldn’t see the tops of the mountains, and the rain drifted across the loch like a mist. We sat in our waterproofs and wellies among the rocks along the shore, rods raised, lines cast out across the dark, rippling water. Neither of us was in any great hurry to land a fish. That would come, we knew. The loch was teeming with them. As long as we had a couple of trout to roast on the fire by the time we were hungry we would be happy. Those are days in my life that I look back on with great nostalgia. Moments long gone, that I wish could be recaptured and lived again. Impossible, of course.

We hadn’t spoken for some time. But it was a comfortable silence. The best friendships are the ones that don’t need words to fill the silences.

Suddenly Whistler said, ‘How come you turn into such a bumbling idiot every time Mairead so much as looks at you?’

I was so shocked I swung my head around to look at him and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Eventually I muttered, ‘Do I?’

Whistler gave me one of his looks. ‘Aye, you do.’

Which gave me time enough to recover my wits and issue a hot denial. ‘I do not!’

Now he laughed. ‘You fancy her, don’t you?’

I could hardly deny it. ‘Who doesn’t?’

He gazed out across the water. ‘She’s not like you think she is, you know.’

‘Isn’t she?’

He gave a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘Everyone thinks she’s super-cool, super-confident, arrogant even. Self-obsessed and full of herself.’

I didn’t say anything. I could hardly have summed her up better myself.

But Whistler shook his head. ‘Truth is, that underneath it all she’s really very insecure.’

‘How would you know?’

He kept his eyes on the point where his line entered the water and its reflection made an oblique angle with it. ‘Me and Mairead were together through most of primary school. I even took her to the qually dance in primary seven.’

That was the first time I had heard about their past relationship and I looked at him with jealous awe. ‘Wow. What happened? I mean, why aren’t you still together?’

He pushed out his lower jaw and cocked his head to one side. ‘All good things come to an end.’

Of course, Kenny told me later that it was Roddy coming between them that brought about the end. But Whistler wasn’t about to confess that then.

‘The thing is, I know her. Grew up with her. She’s not really like that. She’s confused and mixed up, and. . well, trying to be something she’s not.’ He glanced at Fin. ‘That’s why she and Roddy are off and on like a hot-water tap. Roddy’s girl is who she’d like to be. The image, I mean. But it’s not really her.’ He grinned then. ‘I think maybe she’s got a wee bit of a fancy for you.’

I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair. ‘Crap!’

‘Is it? She could have picked anyone for the ride back to Stornoway the other day. But she chose you, Fin. And I’ve seen the way she looks at you.’

‘Aw, give it a break!’ I stopped being embarrassed and figured he was just winding me up now.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ And he turned his eyes back to the loch. ‘Just thought you should be aware of it, so you don’t miss your big chance next Friday.’

I frowned. ‘What’s happening next Friday?’

‘Big Donald Ruadh and Ceit “Cat” Mackinnon are getting married over at Mangurstadh. You’ve been invited, haven’t you?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ I’d forgotten all about it. Donald Ruadh was from Ness, a second cousin or something. I never quite knew. It was not uncommon to be related to folk without knowing it. He was ten years older than all of us, of course, and a bit of a Jack the Lad. The last thing anyone expected was that he would get married. Least of all to a lassie from Uig that he hadn’t even got pregnant. The marriage was to be conducted at the church at Baile na Cille, and the celebrations held afterwards at Ceit’s house at Mangurstadh. One of those weddings that would go on all through the night and end up with breakfast the following morning. Which is why it was on the Friday, and not the Saturday. Because then the party would have had to end at midnight with the coming of the Sabbath.

Whistler said, ‘Well, me and Roddy and Mairead are invited, too. And no doubt Roddy’ll be taking Cairistiona.’ Cairistiona was Roddy’s latest flame. A flame that would flicker and die the moment Mairead wanted him back again. But for the moment Mairead was unattached, and Whistler added, ‘Which means that Mairead’ll be available to whichever of us is the first to ask her to dance.’ His eyes were gleaming now, his smile mischievous. ‘Are you up to the challenge, boy?’

‘Challenge?’

‘Aye. To the victor the spoils. Or maybe you don’t have the balls to ask her.’

It was easy, sitting up there, to enter into the spirit of the dare, imagining myself walking up to Mairead and asking for a dance. And, even better, the thought of her saying yes, and me holding her close and feeling the heat of her body against mine and the softness of her breasts pressing into my chest as I held her in my arms. Easy to dream when you are a million miles from the reality. But the memory of her sitting behind me on the bike, her arms around me, was still fresh in my mind, and for a moment I believed that anything was possible.

I grinned back at Whistler. He’d had her and lost her. Maybe it was my turn.

The little church at Baile na Cille sat up on the hill above the machair and had panoramic views out over Uig sands. It was packed for the ceremony. Standing room only. It was late on the Friday afternoon, and by the time everyone got back to the house at Mangurstadh it was almost seven. Broad daylight, of course, since midsummer was only just by, and it would be hours before the sun dipped into the ocean beyond the far horizon. And even then it would never get fully dark.

Ceit Mackinnon’s parents lived in a whitehouse at the end of a rough track heading out towards Mangurstadh beach. There had been two extensions built on to it, front and back, and there was a large stone barn with a rustred corrugated roof where the dance would be held. There were cars parked everywhere along the track, as far up as the road, and in the field next to a disused sheep fank.

You could just see the beach from here, and beyond it a tendril of headland at the south end of the bay, slabs of cliffs rising out of the ocean where they had stood firm for eons against the onslaught of the Atlantic. This was green, rolling machair land, peppered with occasional crofts and meandering drystone dykes that had long since tumbled into desuetude. To the south and east, the mountains rose up into a gathering of clouds. To the west, the sea lay shimmering in sunshine. The young couple had been lucky with the weather.

In the crowd at the church I had only caught the briefest glimpse of Mairead. I had arrived in a white minibus with a group of guests from Ness, and was tied to them for my lift to the house. By the time I got there, Mairead was with all the Uig women in the kitchen preparing the meal.

They had set out two long tables in the house. One in the sitting room, another in the dining room. But it still wasn’t enough to seat all the guests at once. We knew we would be called in to eat in shifts, and so contented ourselves with hanging about outside, smoking and laughing and drinking beer from big casks that they’d brought down from Stornoway. It was a long wait.

A number of guests had arrived with chickens and rabbits for the meal. You never took a dead animal to a wedding, so they had to be killed, and plucked or skinned, then gutted and cooked. But there was no hurry, since no one would be leaving until the following morning.

I saw Whistler once or twice, but he was busy with the Uig crowd. You hung about in your own village groups, like factions at a tribal gathering. The real mixing wouldn’t start till the music kicked off and the dancing began. Then the beer, and the whisky which had come in half-bottles in the back pockets of most of the men, would have loosened inhibitions, and a good time would be had by all.

By the time the Niseachs had been called in to eat it was late, and the light was fading. I’d had quite a few beers already, and was flushed and a little unsteady on my feet. A lot of the men were dressed in kilts. But I didn’t have one and was wearing my good suit, which was shiny around the arse and the elbows. My conservative dark-blue tie was pulled loose at the open collar of my white shirt. I could barely eat for nerves, because I knew that sooner rather than later I was going to have to face Mairead with the big question.

Girls have no idea how hard it is for a teenage boy to pluck up the courage to ask for a date or a dance. They must always take the initiative, with the ever-attendant risk of refusal, and therefore humiliation. And so I found myself putting off the moment.

When I had finished eating, I sought out the Ness boys who were out back, and we stood talking and smoking, and watching the sea turn from dimpled copper to blood red before fading to a dark-blue haze, the smudge on the horizon that was St Kilda vanishing in the dusk. I heard the music starting up in the barn. An accordionist and a fiddler. I had kept an eye out for Whistler, but had only caught the occasional glimpse of him. It seemed like a long time since he had winked at me and given me the thumbs up across the heads of the other guests before disappearing into the barn.

Now I saw him coming out, head down, hands thrust deep into his pockets. He pushed past us and wandered off towards the old cart track that ran down to the beach. I stamped out my cigarette and hurried after him. ‘What’s wrong?’

He didn’t even turn his head. ‘Fuck off,’ he said in a low growl.

I tried to grab his arm to stop him walking, but he shook it free of my grasp. ‘What happened, Whistler?’

‘She wouldn’t dance with me.’ He turned to look at me, his eyes lost below a gathering of his brows. ‘Nearly six years I went with her at primary, and she just blew me off. Said she was waiting for someone else.’ He looked away again. ‘I suppose that would be you.’

‘No way!’

‘Well, who else, then? Roddy’s sitting in there smooching in a corner with that Cairistiona. Strings is with some girl from third year. And Mairead would never even look at Skins or Rambo, I can guarantee you that.’ He turned a contemptuous sneer in my direction. ‘It can only be you. Why else would she have asked you for that ride back to Stornoway?’

I could scarcely believe it. Could Mairead Morrison really be waiting in the barn for me to ask her to dance?

‘Go on, you daft bastard. Better get in there before she gets fed up and says yes to someone else.’

The barn had felt huge when I looked in earlier and it was still empty. Now it was filled to the gunwales and appeared tiny. Folk stood two or three deep around the walls, the Drops of Brandy being danced with great relish in the centre of a mud floor strewn with hay. Couples spun up and down the lines of facing men and women waiting for their turn to go birling along the aisle arm-in-arm with their partners.

There were storm lamps hanging from the rafters, and smoke rose into the roof space along with the music and laughter. I spotted Mairead standing on her own at the far end of the barn, peering anxiously over the heads of the dancers as if looking for someone. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the crowd. She saw me coming at the last, and gave me one of her smiles. ‘Hi Fin. Having a good time?’

‘Sure,’ I said, suddenly uncertain, and having to shout above the noise. But it was now or never. ‘Would you like to dance?’

She grinned. ‘I’d love to.’ And for just a moment my whole world stood still. ‘But I came with someone, and I don’t think he’d be very happy if I did.’

It was as if she had stuck a pin in me and I had just burst, like the balloon that I was. ‘Who?’ I couldn’t help myself.

‘Whistler, of course.’ And she smiled past me as Whistler appeared out of the crowd to take her hand and lead her away to the floor. I stood gaping after them in disbelief, and Whistler half turned to glance back in my direction, his face split by the widest of grins. He winked at me and slipped his arm around Mairead’s waist.

The worst thing about it, I think, was that I was trapped there with my humiliation. All I wanted to do was go home. But I couldn’t. I had to endure a long night of male company, cigarettes and beer, catching all too frequent glimpses of Whistler and Mairead in and out of the barn.

When finally we nursed our hangovers through breakfast the following morning and got into the minibus for the long drive home, my humiliation had been replaced by anger. I realized then that Whistler’s jealousy had been aroused the day Mairead rode back to town with me, and this whole elaborate charade at the wedding had been his way of warning me off. It took me a long time to get over it. I don’t think I spoke to him again until after the holidays.

It is clear to me now, though, that he must have been trying desperately to win her back. That he had always been in love with her and always would be. And that all through her on-off relationship with Roddy, he had harboured the hope that one day she would come back to him. A hope that he had recognized, finally, in fifth year, was a forlorn one. That she was embarking on a journey he couldn’t make, on a road he could never follow.

Which is why he took the decision to stay at home while the rest of us left for Glasgow. He had lost her, and wasn’t about to play the role of rejected lovesick puppy through all the university years. And when I look back now, with the understanding of hindsight, I feel no anger. Only sadness.

What I could never have dreamed back then was that my fantasy of a relationship with Mairead would finally be realized three years later during my second, ill-fated year at university in Glasgow.

I had been roadying for the band for nearly a year and a half by then, paying less and less attention to my studies, and growing increasingly unhappy with my life and myself. I had fallen into a sort of tailspin in the wake of my final split with Marsaili. Driving for Amran was a mindless activity that earned me much-needed cash and gave me access to a succession of groupies who would sleep with the driver if that was the closest they could get to the band. A sordid and unsatisfying succession of sexual encounters that did nothing to increase my self-esteem.

I was never one to seek escape in drink or drugs, but I did my fair share of drinking, and smoked more than my fair share of joints. My problem was one of lassitude. I just couldn’t bring myself to care. About anything.

It was late winter, around February or March. We had played a gig somewhere on the south side of the city, and had been invited afterwards to a party in one of those huge, red-sandstone mansions in Pollokshields. It sat up proud at the top of a sprawling garden, surrounded by chestnut trees, black and stark in their winter nakedness. A corner site in a gushet that must have occupied a couple of acres.

An enormous conservatory with elaborate curving roofs had been built on to the back of the house to contain an indoor swimming pool. The house itself was tastefully furnished. Thick-piled woollen carpets, signed prints on the walls, antique furniture. Hugely expensive crystal and china ornaments lined shelves and were displayed in cabinets. It was not the ideal playground for fifty or sixty young people high on dope and drink, and intent on having a good time.

Mairead and Roddy, it appeared, had finally broken up for good, and Roddy was there with his new girlfriend, a beautiful blonde-haired girl called Caitlin. This was her parents’ house, and they were away on holiday. Self-appointed guardian in their place was Caitlin’s brother, Jimbo, an unpleasant young man with a designer haircut and a single ring in his ear. He appeared to have several girls on hand, and was strutting about the house in his Gucci shoes and Armani suit as if he owned the place.

A great deal of alcohol was being consumed, and by one or two in the morning almost everyone was skinny-dipping in the pool, spilling champagne and shrieking to be heard above the brain-splitting blast of the sound system.

I was tired and fed up and couldn’t be bothered with any of it. I sat in the main lounge, sprawled on the settee, a can of beer in my hand, watching a video on the biggest TV screen I had ever seen. I say watching, but I don’t think I was, really. I have no recollection now of what was playing. A movie maybe, or music videos. Bubblegum for the eyes. And the brain.

At first I was barely aware of someone sitting down beside me. Until I felt the warmth of a thigh pressed against mine, and a scent so familiar it was almost comforting. I turned my head to find Mairead smiling at me, a smile that might once have quickened my pulse. But I was used to it by now, and didn’t trust it.

‘What you doing in here on your own?’ she said.

I shrugged. ‘Wishing I was somewhere else.’ But it felt good to be speaking just Gaelic again.

‘Snap.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t have to be here. You can get a taxi home any time you like. I’ve got people relying on me for a lift back.’

Even although I had got over her by this time, I think I was still in awe of her beauty. Her dark hair was cropped, as it had been since the accident on the Road to Nowhere, and she had developed into a striking-looking woman. The soft features of the teenage girl were hardening into something more adult, but no less beautiful. She had lost weight and her eyes seemed larger, even more compelling.

She was still in her stage gear, a full-length black dress that hugged a pencil-thin figure and plunged from shoulder straps into a deep V between her breasts, an extraordinary contrast with her porcelain-white Celtic skin. It would be fair to say that she looked stunning.

‘What if I asked you to take me home?’

I eyed her suspiciously. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Maybe because I don’t want to go home alone.’

When I said nothing her smile widened.

‘Remember that time you gave me a lift back to Stornoway on your crappy old moped?’

I was surprised she even remembered it. ‘Yeh, we got soaked.’

‘And my bum was bruised for days after in the shape of your luggage rack.’

I laughed out loud. ‘You’re kidding!’

‘I’d have shown you, only you might have got the wrong idea. Roddy always kept a blanket folded on his. Yours was raw metal tubing. It was bloody agony. All the way back.’

‘And here was me thinking it was passion that made you hold on to me that tight.’

There was mischief in her eyes. ‘Maybe it was.’

‘Yeh, right.’

Her arm was draped over the top of the settee behind me now, and her fingers were playing absently with my curls. It made me uncomfortable. She said, ‘You used to fancy me Fin, didn’t you?’

‘Used to.’

‘But not any more?’

I just shrugged.

‘What happened?’

I turned to meet her gaze. ‘I got to know you, Mairead.’

It was like a light went out in her eyes, and all the animation left her face. She took her arm away from the back of the settee and sat forward on the edge of the seat, hands clasped in her lap. I couldn’t see her face now. ‘I think that’s just about the most hurtful thing anyone’s ever said to me.’ There was the slightest tremor in her voice.

I had a sick, hollow feeling inside me. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, and yet it was a kind of payback for all those years of frustrated teenage fantasy when she had taken pleasure, or so I thought, in exploiting my weakness. And I wondered suddenly if it had all simply been a figment of my own imagination.

‘No one knows me,’ she said. ‘Not really.’

‘Whistler thought he did. He told me once you were really insecure. And trying to be something you weren’t.’

She turned surprised eyes on me, then. And I saw the tracks of silent tears shining on her cheeks. But I still didn’t know whether to trust them. ‘Whistler said that?’

‘He was in love with you, Mairead. Probably still is. I always figured that’s why he never came to Glasgow. Removing himself from the source of the pain.’

A distant look washed momentarily across her face, then she focused on me again. ‘Take me home, Fin. Please.’

I don’t think anyone noticed us leaving. But I saw Mairead’s backward glance through open French windows into the conservatory, where Roddy was frolicking naked in the pool with Caitlin. I didn’t much care about how the others got home. They could all afford to get taxis by now. And I was feeling bad about what I’d said to Mairead. It’s one thing to think it, quite another to say it out loud and carelessly inflict pain.

We drove in silence through the dark, overhead lights reflecting in wet streets, passing in an endless succession through tenemental south-side suburbia and on to Paisley Road West. Mairead had bought a penthouse flat in a restored Victorian drapery warehouse built into the triangle of a junction between two roads. On the apex of the triangle, at its most easterly point, stood the sculpture of a golden angel that looked back towards the city. The apartment block was called the Angel Building, and I had always thought that Mairead could not have lived anywhere more apposite.

She didn’t bother turning on any lights in the flat. Windows all along each side of it let in the city nightlight, casting deep shadows around the sitting room. At the opposite end from an open-plan kitchen a door led through to her bedroom.

‘I’ll just get changed,’ she said. ‘Help yourself to something to drink.’ Her heels clicked across polished wood floors, and she pushed the door open. Beyond the bed, from a large, arched window facing east, I could see the city spread out below. But I didn’t move. Wasn’t interested in a drink. She turned back, silhouetted against the city behind her, and stood looking at me in the dark for what felt like an inordinate length of time. Then she raised her hand to slip the straps from each of her shoulders, and her black dress fell to the floor in a whisper of silk. She was completely naked.

I felt a constriction in my throat, and all the pent-up desires of my teenage years returned to flood my senses. Here she was, the object of all those fantasies, standing naked in front of me, offering herself in a way that no woman has offered herself to me before or since. By the time I reached her I had already stripped off my T-shirt. I was out of my jeans in seconds, and sharing her nakedness just moments later. We stood, inches apart, looking at each other, both listening to the other breathing in the dark. I knew that the moment I touched her there would be no going back. It would be like opening a floodgate, and I was destined to drown in her.

I cupped my hand around the back of her head and felt the soft bristle of her hair, the shape of her skull, and drew her towards me. From the first touch of our lips I was lost. Our bodies came together, and I felt my passion press hard against her belly as we fell backwards in slow motion on to the bed. Her body so white, framed against the black satin sheets stretched tightly across the mattress. At long last she was mine. But, as always, it was on her terms.

It lasted for more than three months. A relationship based on sex. There were no candlelit dinners or romantic moments. No holding hands or declarations of undying love. Just lust.

We made love at her place, in my bedsit, in the back of the van. In countless hotel rooms. And I never lost my appetite for her. I never stopped wanting her. Nor she me, apparently.

I understood that, really, we were just using each other. She as a means of getting back at Roddy, of flaunting me in his face, hoping to make him jealous. Although, in truth, I think she enjoyed our sexual dalliance as much as I did. For my part, I was only interested in the sex. I never really liked her, but in a strange way became addicted to her. When I wasn’t with her, I found myself missing her. We never spoke much, but in a sense I think that’s what I liked the most. She made no emotional demands on me. There were no moods or fits of jealousy, no requirement to say things I didn’t mean. It was, perhaps, the most sexually fulfilling but undemanding relationship I have ever had.

And so I took it badly when she ended us one night, suddenly and without warning.

We were supposed to be going to a party and had agreed to meet in the bar of the Cul de Sac in Ashton Lane, in Glasgow’s west end. Mairead had said she would meet me at seven. By 8.30 I was still waiting and was on my third pint. The place was crowded, and I could see people milling about in the lane below. There were several restaurants, bars and a cinema in the old cobbled street, and one of the restaurants on the far side had put out tables so that its patrons could enjoy the fine midsummer weather and take advantage of the light nights.

At first I wasn’t worried. Mairead was prone to bouts of lateness, when she decided five minutes before going out that she really had to have a shower. At least she didn’t have to spend hours on her hair, but the make-up could take half an hour. She was very conscious of her appearance or, as she liked to say, her image. Mairead had a mobile phone, and I would have called her. But I couldn’t afford one myself, so that wasn’t an option. I was about to leave and drive over to the Angel Building when I saw her pushing her way through the drinkers towards me. As usual she was turning heads.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘what happened?’ I went to kiss her cheek but she averted her head in a strangely abrupt movement. I knew at once what was coming.

She moved closer, lowering her voice, and her eyes. ‘Fin, I’m sorry. It’s over.’

I waited until she looked up to meet my eye. ‘Why?’

There was something like exasperation in her voice. ‘You knew it wasn’t for ever, Fin. We both knew that.’

I nodded. ‘We did. But I’d still like to know why.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s no point. Explanations aren’t going to make either of us feel any better about it.’ She suddenly took my face in both of her hands, an intensity in her eyes that I couldn’t remember ever seeing there before, and she kissed me so softly, and with such tenderness, that I might almost have believed she really did feel something for me. ‘I’m so sorry, Fin.’

And she was gone. In those few moments everything I had been and known these last months came to an end. The dream was over. There was no hiding any more. I turned back to the bar and finished my pint.

Outside the air was cool, but soft on the skin. I walked in a daze through the west end, heading instinctively for the party that Mairead and I had been going to. It was in a block of red sandstone flats in Hyndland. I knew I didn’t want to go home. It was far easier to be lonely in a crowd. I would never have believed that breaking up with Mairead could be this painful. The thought that I would never kiss her again, or touch her breasts, or feel her legs wrapped around my back was almost more than I could bear. All I wanted to do was get drunk.

The party was already jumping by the time I got there. I said hi to a few familiar faces, and heard someone ask where Mairead was. I didn’t answer. I found myself a soft seat in a dark corner with a six-pack at my side and sprung open the first can.

The music was deafening, and people were dancing. The girl nearest me stepped back over someone’s handbag and promptly sat down in my lap. A pretty girl with short black hair.

She’d been drinking. She giggled. ‘Ooops. Sorry.’

Maybe there was something about her that reminded me of Mairead. I’m not sure now what it was, but I smiled. ‘Be my guest,’ I said.

She tipped her head and gave me a curious look. ‘Are you at uni?’

‘I am.’

‘I thought I’d seen you somewhere. What year?’

‘Second.’

‘I’m in first.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘We intellectuals ought to stick together. My name’s Fin.’

She giggled again. ‘So we should. I’m Mona.’

And that is how I met the girl who would wake me up in the morning to tell me that Roddy was dead. The girl I would marry, and who would bear my son. The girl I would divorce sixteen years later when the one good thing we had made together was no more.