My Best Friend Has Issues Page 4

  He went on to explain, in his long-winded way, that so long as I promised to look after my health, he’d resigned himself to my going. I was then treated to Charlie’s glory days backpacking through Europe. Anyone would think Spain and France were on some dark as yet undiscovered continent the way he went on. My other brothers Joe and Jim had also been to Europe. Even my nan, who was seventy-three and had a colostomy bag, had been to Spain.

  ‘I wonder if Ewan’s still in Barcelona,’ Charlie mused. ‘Last I heard he was running a hostel out there. You could look him up. I used to hang about with him at school, Ewan Moffat, d’you remember him?’

  ‘Eh, not really.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you were only wee at the time.’

  ‘But Charlie, how weird is that? I’m looking at hostels right now.’

  ‘Weird,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway, I can’t remember the name of the place. I think it was something to do with music. Is there one called Music hostel, or Hostel de Music, something like that?’

  I quickly scanned the webpage.

  ‘No, but I’m only seeing the ones that have websites. Wait, there’s one here called Blues Hostel, is that it?

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Here’s another one, Jazz Hostel.’

  ‘Jazz Hostel! That’s it. We called it jizz hostel because Gary and this wee Irish burd…’ said Charlie, tailing off. ‘Eh, no, sorry, inappropriate. Jazz Hostel, that’s the one.’

  ‘It’s cheap, seventeen euros a night, that’s the cheapest I’ve seen.’

  ‘Aye well, Ewan might give you a discount if you mention my name. If he’s still there.’

  ‘When did you last speak to him?

  ‘Eh, three, four years? He’s never come back to Cumbernauld, I would have seen him. Maybe he’s still in Barcelona.’

  I booked for three nights. Charlie seemed relieved. He didn’t say so but I knew he was worried that I wasn’t recovered enough yet, that I might have a relapse. At least this way he’d have his old friend Ewan keeping an eye on me. Without Charlie’s dubious recommendation I’d probably have booked Jazz Hostel anyway, it was the cheapest, but maybe it was a good omen.

  When the taxi pulled up outside the hostel I saw why it was only seventeen euros a night. And when I lugged my rucksack inside there were more disappointments to come.

  ‘You’re booked for three nights, aye?’ asked the receptionist from inside his reception box.

  He was Scottish but there was no way this guy was Ewan. This guy looked at least five years older than my big brother Charlie. He was older, but he wasn’t bad looking. The bare bulb in his wee reception booth shone down on his long, red, dreadlocked hair. He had good face bones, his cheeks tapering nicely to his jaw. When I came in he was looking down, consulting the register. I put on the new smile I’d recently been practising and waited for him to look up.

  He wasn’t quite so attractive when he looked up. His face was pink, his bright eyes suspicious and his mouth as tight as a cat’s arse.

  ‘Sixty eight euros,’ he said, ‘three night’s accommodation and one night’s deposit returnable on day of check out. And I’ll need your passport.’

  He spoke with a pronounced west of Scotland accent, for instance saying ‘out’ as ‘oot’, as if he was trying to emphasise his Scottishness. He must have recognised my Scottish accent but he didn’t mention it. He probably had Scots coming through here all the time.

  ‘There you are,’ I said, handing over the money, ‘thanks very much.’

  I turned towards the dormitory but it was too much of a coincidence that this guy was Scottish.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I asked, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘The name’s Ewan.’

  ‘I know someone who knows you.’

  ‘Really,’ he said flatly, looking down again at his register. ‘A lot of people know me. They think they know me. Check out on day of departure before 10am or you lose your deposit, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Since that rather sour introduction I’d spent two nights in his sweaty low rent hostel. Now as I got out of another taxi, this time to move out of Jazz Hostel into Chloe’s luxury penthouse, I couldn’t wait to tell Ewan exactly where he could stick his manky hostel.

  Chapter 6

  Charlie had been baffled.

  ‘Well if it is him, he’s a changed man,’ he said sadly when I phoned home.

  ‘It’s him.’

  I’d seen his full name on the registration sheet when I picked up my passport the next morning. Ewan Moffat, it was him all right. Ewan Moffat had been working here for all these years. It had made him a bitter man, and no wonder.

  The first night I arrived at the hostel I had been unprepared for the squalor. Once I’d got my head round the cramped conditions of the dorm, I lay down carefully on the bunk I’d been allocated. There was nothing I could do about it; I’d paid up front. I kept my clothes on. Since there seemed to be no private space I wasn’t about to change into my nightie in front of a lot of strangers, boys as well as girls.

  My room-mates had no such anxieties. People were whipping their kit off right and left. An inhibition-free zone. Naked and nearly naked bodies of both sexes were strewn around like the aftermath of a particularly exhausting porn movie. And the smell.

  Before my nostrils became thankfully immune to the rank stench I could make out urine, garlic breath and smoke-singed clothes, but these were way outranked by the whiff from unwashed body parts: pits, groins and worst of all, cheesy feet.

  It was an orgy of exhibitionism. Hot as it was in the overstuffed, low ceilinged, bunk-crammed dorm, I wouldn’t be getting naked.

  An argument was taking place in two languages. A girl speaking what sounded like some kind of Eastern European, was going at it with a French woman. The dispute was over whether the window should be open or closed. It wasn’t until they began to tussle: the Balkan girl opening the window and pulling the French woman’s pigtails and the French woman closing it and smacking the Balkan’s face, that it became clear who wanted what. It escalated to the point where the French woman poked the other girl’s eye and nobody intervened. After that, the window stayed closed.

  Half asleep and almost unconscious, instinct took over, I had to cool down. I peeled my damp dress off my clammy skin and over my sweat soaked head. The relief was instantaneous. I wafted the dress above me a few times before laying it lightly on top of my body and going to sleep.

  The next morning I awoke to find my dress on the floor and my limbs spread north, south, east and west. My mouth was dry and wide from snoring, my top lip stuck to my teeth. One breast had spilled out my bra. Luckily there was no one there to see it. Apart from a few still sleeping at other end of the dorm, everyone had gone.

  ‘Right,’ said Ewan, bounding into the room, ‘it’s five to ten. Check out in five minutes or you lose your deposits.’

  By the time he’d made it along to my row of bunks I’d managed to pop the rogue breast back in my bra and was working my mouth, trying to regain the use of my top lip.

  ‘Check out in five minutes,’ he repeated.

  ‘Ewan,’ I said, pulling my dress in front of me, pinning it under my arms to hold it in place, ‘I’m booked in for three nights.’

  Panic had crept into my voice. ‘I’ve another two nights to go, I’ve already paid.’

  ‘Aye, cálmate, calm down, I’m not talking to you.’

  He was a charmer, all right. It was hard to believe that only two days ago I’d been so scared of him. Now that I was preparing to leave the hostel Ewan could no longer wield such power over me.

  As I entered the hostel he was enclosed in his little reception box as usual, arguing with someone.

  ‘Haw you!’ he bawled at the bemused hosteller who was attempting to bring a bike into the building.

  ‘You cannae bring that in here!’

  ‘But only to bring ze bicycle here?’ suggested the guy, indicating the lobby area.

  The hosteller/cyclist was wearing o
nly a few key garments: army shorts with grease-bordered pockets, dust-coated open-toed sandals, thick socks and a long, straggling Taliban beard.

  ‘Ze bicycle vill be stole if it stay outside.’

  He was a perfect example of the unwashed types who stayed here.

  ‘Not my problem, pal, get it out!’ shouted Ewan, pointing to the door with his pen.

  There was an embarrassing kerfuffle as the cyclist awkwardly heaved himself, his huge rucksack, his bike and his beard through the narrow doorway. As he exited he shouted something foreign and, by its tone, offensive.

  ‘And you!’ retorted Ewan cheerfully.

  I would have slinked upstairs and picked up my stuff but as I passed his booth Ewan cried, ‘Alison, it’s wee Alison Donaldson!’

  Charlie. He must have emailed Jazz Hostel.

  ‘How are you doing, Alison, have you had a nice day?’

  ‘Splendid, thank you,’ I said without a smile.

  When I came back down a few minutes later with my rucksack, ready to do battle with the front door, he seemed alarmed.

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’

  ‘I’m checking out.’

  ‘No, but Alison, you’re booked in for another night, plus deposit.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said as I strode past.

  The impact of this parting shot was lessened by me having to stop at the door. A large group of students was now blocking the exit as they came in. A cloud of communal body odour engulfed me as they passed. They would have been my room-mates tonight, my scratching, snoring, farting compañeros.

  ‘Ho!’ Ewan bawled, and then emerged from the reception box and followed me to the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘D’you not remember me? I’m Charlie’s pal, I used to give you money for a cone when the ice cream van came round, d’you not remember?’

  ‘Nope.’

  I kept my back to him and he tried to sneak around me.

  ‘Aye, you do. Me and Charlie, up in the room playing music.’

  I shook my head.

  I did remember, I remembered all too well Charlie’s porno mags and his ruses to get rid of his kid sister but I was anxious to get out of Raval before anyone recognised me as The Girl with the Blood-Stained Flip-Flops. The taxi was waiting.

  ‘Well I remember you, wee Alison, course I do. How could I forget those beautiful green eyes?’

  My beautiful green eyes flicked him a dirty look.

  ‘You can’t go, I told Charlie I’d look out for you, show you round town and that. Anyway, what’s the rush? You’ve still got two nights to go, and you can stay an extra four nights, no charge. I’m doing a buy-one-get-one-free, just for you. Fancy it?’

  ‘Sorry Ewan, I’ve sorted out something else.’

  ‘Where? You’ll not get a cheaper deal than I’m offering.’

  ‘An apartment,’ I said vaguely; I didn’t want anyone in Raval to know where I was going.

  ‘Well, okay.’ He sounded crushed. ‘But I’ll need a forwarding address before I can let you have your passport, or at least a contact number. Sorry Alison, it’s the law.’

  I thought about this while the straps of my rucksack bit into my shoulder and the taxi waited outside. A taxi idling so long was conspicuous and the meter was still running.

  ‘D’you promise you won’t give it to anyone else?’

  I was cold. He lay between my legs. The parts of me that he wasn’t lying on, my face, my left arm and foot, were cold. The other parts were numb.

  Stuff was on my face. I tried to reach my face with my free hand to wipe it away but he was too big, too wide, I couldn’t get round him. It dripped on my face. First it was warm then cold, then it dried hard. Like the cucumber face mask Mum used on a Friday when I was wee. Not every Friday, just special Fridays when we prepared a special dinner and waited for the Aberdeen bus to get in. After she’d smeared it on herself, her face a stern and ghostly pale green, Mum put what was left on me.

  ‘Don’t laugh, and don’t dare cry or your face’ll crack,’ she told me. ‘I won’t,’ I said, my face set like rigor mortis, ‘I promise.’

  Chapter 7

  Bad dreams, too much excitement, but as I woke up I remembered I was now in Barcelona. The light was different here, the sunshine bright and cheerful. I lay enjoying my privacy and celebrated my solitude with a long, plangent fart. I could see myself reflected in the big carved mirror.

  I saw a girl, a Euro-traveller. A girl who’d grow dope and live in Barri Gotic; who’d have American girlfriends and Spanish boyfriends. A girl with green eyes and a great figure.

  I hooked my toe round the sheet and stretched, pulling it down, slowly, teasingly revealing the slim body that was attached to my head.

  I was still getting used to the slender arms and legs that had emerged from the sausage casing they’d been trapped in for so long. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I turned sideways to give the mirror an appreciation of my peachy bum. Glandular fever had been the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Juegita was on at me as soon as I got out of bed, so I filled her bowl with the dried cereal Chloe had showed me and topped up her water. The pups were still sleepy and lay curled in comical upside-down positions in the sleeping bag. When they woke they clambered over each other, tiny paws on tiny necks, tummies and ears. They squeaked with the high-pitched tone of soft toys. While Juegita suckled them, one of the pups was too sleepy to open her eyes. Instead of her mother’s nipple, she sucked happily on one of her sister’s tails.

  The earth in the marijuana pots slowly stained an inky black as I watered them. I pulled out weeds as I went. It was pleasant work, before I’d even finished I was looking forward to the next watering. The next job wasn’t so pleasant. I swept up the cockroach bodies from outside the front door and shook out more bug powder the way Chloe had shown me. I was careful not to drop any inside the flat. It could poison the puppies, she’d warned me.

  The chores done, I began sorting my own stuff. In my hastily packed rucksack my dirty clothes had got mixed up with my clean ones. I started to sort through them but then gave up sifting and slung everything in the washing machine. I didn’t know when I’d have access to such good facilities again.

  She probably wouldn’t mind if I borrowed something of hers, just until my own stuff was dry. I looked through the cupboards and drawers. I didn’t really have to look in the cupboards; there were plenty of Chloe’s clothes on the chair and on the floor but I wanted to find out about her. All her clothes were gorgeous. Even the names I didn’t recognise looked like they were designer: Balmain, Valentino, Mui Mui, Mulberry. Dear Lisa and Lauren, what to wear, what to wear? Will it be the Alexander McQueen dress or the Marc Jacobs skirt with the Prada top? Oh, what the hell, everything looks good on me now. Are the market stalls still selling those cheap Burberry fakes? How I pity you, you sad losers.

  I tried her perfumes and found a make-up bag full of expensive products. A bottle of foundation had burst in the bag. Everything was stuck together and a grey-green fungus was growing in the gunge.

  It was easy to tell which clothes Chloe had worn and which were clean. The dirty ones smelled like the inside of the yurt: a powerful doggy stink. Most of her clothes needed washed. I considered putting a load of hers in the machine when mine came out but I didn’t want her to think I’d been snooping.

  Some skirts were a bit long on me but otherwise everything fitted. Chloe was at least six inches taller than me but we were the same size everywhere else, even shoes. I tried tops and skirts and trousers in different combinations. If they looked this good on me, how amazing did they look on her? In the bottom drawer there was a gorgeous white lace bra and pants set wrapped in tissue inside a Victoria’s Secret box.

  My phone rang.

  I panicked.

  I had to get out of the bra and pants. If I answered the phone in them I might give myself away. I whipped the pants off and threw them acros
s the room, distancing myself from the evidence. They landed somewhere at the back of the shoe cupboard. The bra was too tight to come off easily. My fingers fiddled behind me but I couldn’t unfasten it. I pulled the straps, yanking my arms free and forcing the delicate material down. The elasticated bra was dragging and becoming embedded in my belly flesh. I tugged at it again and heard the expensive white lace rip.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hey! How’s my darlin’ girl?’ said Chloe.

  ‘Eh, fine, I just woke up,’ I said, trying to disguise my fright as sleepiness.

  ‘Actually I meant Juegita,’ Chloe laughed, ‘but okay Alison, you’re my darlin’ too.’

  She laughed again and I felt an unpleasant flush across my naked skin.

  ‘Juegita’s fine,’ I said, all bumbling. ‘I’ve filled her bowl and given her fresh water. And the pups. They’re fine too. Everything’s fine.’

  At the mention of her name Juegita toddled into the bedroom and looked me over, her expression hovering between confusion and envy. She must have longed for some multi-cupped dog bra to support her long pendulous breasts.

  ‘Great,’ said Chloe, sounding relieved. ‘And the other matter?’

  Dizzy with confusion, I had no idea what she meant. The lacey bra cups drooped like empty holsters from my hips.

  ‘The other matter?’ I repeated.

  ‘The vegetable matter.’

  Finally I hauled myself clear of the torn bra, the elastic snapping painfully against my skin. I lifted it at arms length and moved to the shoe cupboard to recover the pants. Chloe was still talking.

  ‘You know, the vegetables I’m growing,’ she said, putting extra emphasis on the word ‘vegetables’.

  I rummaged in the back of the cupboard, pulling a tin box aside to get at the pants.

  ‘The ‘vegetables’ in the pots on the terrace. The ones I asked you to water?’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘that vegetable matter! Yes, yes, I’ve watered the mareehwhana, it’s fine too. Sorry, I was thinking of another matter entirely.’

  Chloe laughed again.

  ‘British humour, I love it!’