Skagboys

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Even the plank-stiffness of this old, unyielding settee can’t arrest my body’s slink into deliverance. It reminds me of the university residences in Aberdeen; lying in the dark, basking in exalted freedom from the fear that coalesced in my chest, like the thick phlegm did in his. Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won’t hear that noise.

No coughing.

No screaming.

No thumping sound: doof doof doof …

None of those urgent, raised whispers which, by their panic levels, enable you to calibrate just how sleepless your night will be.

Just the dozy, relatively silent darkness, and this settee.

Nae. Fuckin. Coughing.

Because it always starts with a cough. Just one. Then, as you will him to settle down, your quickening pulse tells you that you’ve subconsciously been waiting for that bark. Then the second one — the worse moment — when your anger shifts from the source of the cough onto those who would assist him.

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