Emotionally Weird(98)

‘Where?’ I said. ‘Aleppo? Cairo? Truro? Fargo? Oporto? Quito? Jericho? Soho? Puerto Rico? Kyoto? Chicago? Bilbao? Rio de Janeiro? Io? El Dorado? Kelso?’

‘Who would have thought,’ Andrea said wearily, ‘that so many places rhymed with Glasgow?’

‘There’s more if you’re interested.’

‘Where’s Io?’ Chick asked.

We got back in the Cortina, which seemed strangely empty now. In the absence of alcohol, Chick took a swig of Proteus’s gripe water. Proteus himself hadn’t stayed awake to watch Hank and Terri go. He was sitting on my knee, his head lolling uncomfortably. He was beginning to smell overripe.

‘I wish I could find Kara and give him back,’ I said to Andrea. Now that I had embarked on a life of crime it didn’t seem right to have an innocent infant in my care. (Although such ethical reservations never stopped Nora.)

‘She’s going to that party tonight,’ Andrea said, ‘the one in Broughty Ferry.’

‘Why didn’t you say that before?’

‘I didn’t know whose baby it was,’ she said huffily; ‘they all look alike to me.’

Broughty Ferry, once a fishing village now the closest thing Dundee had to a bourgeois suburb – the party was in a huge house that looked more like a small castle than a normal home. It was a red sandstone confection in the Scottish fantasy style – hotching with corbels and crow-stepped gables and fanciful little turrets with arrow-slit windows, like the result of a Victorian architect’s fevered dream.

‘Forres,’ Robin informed us, built for a nineteenth-century jute baron, but currently home to a disreputable gaggle of dental students and medics. Robin and Bob were the first people we saw as we staggered off the bus with Proteus and headed for the house. ‘Remind me never to have children,’ Andrea muttered.

Bob was excitedly explaining to Robin what had happened in the concluding part of Dr Who’s latest adventure, The Curse of Peladon , which he had just viewed. ‘And then this evil alien ambassador, who’s just a brain on wheels basically –’

‘Where do you suppose Shug is?’ Andrea said, interrupting this sophisticated critique and speaking to Bob as if he was a slightly retarded chimpanzee.

‘Dunno,’ Bob said.

‘Did he say anything to you?’ Andrea persisted, ‘about me, for instance?’

‘He said . . .’ Bob closed his eyes.

‘He’s thinking,’ I explained to Andrea.

‘He said – “Don’t forget to bring the Thai sticks.”’

Andrea sniffed the air and set off, following her moonstruck nose. Bob followed her, leaving me with Robin in the kitchen of the house which was dimly illuminated by one yellow lightbulb. A trail of people were coming and going, all in a desultory state of drug overload – the doctors and dentists of tomorrow presumably. On offer was the usual student party fare – a couple of large pan loaves and a block of red Scottish Cheddar, cheap wine and a metal keg of gassy lager squatting in the walk-in pantry, the floor of which was swilling with spilt drink. The bottles of wine on the table were almost all empty by now, although a milk crate of Balniddrian elderflower champagne remained untouched.

Robin poured the remains of a massive bottle of Hirondelle into a couple of plastic cups and gave one to me. Miranda, the dopey goat executioner, wandered into the kitchen, an almost visible aura of torpor about her, and started knocking back Tiger’s Milk from the bottle. She caught sight of Robin and gave him a lethargic ‘Hi.’ I don’t think she recognized me. Was she a fit person for me to hand Proteus on to, I wondered. Hardly. I asked her if she’d seen Kara and she made a vague gesture towards the door before slumping onto a chair and apparently passing out.

I pushed my way out of the kitchen, past a crush of people in a hallway and up a staircase, Robin trailing on my heels. We came upon what appeared to be a small ballroom – a space that was like a cross between a railway station and a bordello. There was a fireplace at either end of the room in that red-and-white marble that looks like uncooked beef and huge mirrors fixed to the wall, set in ornate ormolu frames. A massive milk-glass chandelier shaped like a palm-tree hung from the middle of the ceiling and smaller versions sprouted from the walls. I could almost imagine myself being waltzed off by a dashing cavalry officer, my mousseline de soie skirts swirling, a dance card dangling from my wrist.

‘Really?’ Robin said, apparently quite aroused by this vision. Something rather slimy, like a snail’s silver trail, had dribbled down his beard.

‘No, not really.’