Free Solace by Belinda McKeon Page B

the party – at least, not after the coke had kicked in. He was not sure he wanted to remember. And he felt pretty shit about the coke
as well, about having taken it with her. He felt guilty, but not guilty because he had somehow led her astray – it was obvious that she had done it before. Guilty, rather, that he had let her
see him in such a fitful, shit-talking state, because that was how he was on coke, that was how everybody was, and he wished she hadn’t seen him like that. He didn’t know how many lines
they’d ended up doing, but he knew it was more than was wise. One was more than wise, for fuck’s sake. He’d promised himself he was finished with that shit for good. It
wasn’t like he did it very often, maybe once every couple of months, maybe more at certain times of the year than others; it was just that he was getting a bit fucking long in the tooth for
all of that, by now; it was that he wished he hadn’t had to go and make such a jabbering prick out of himself in front of her the first time they’d talked. And he couldn’t
remember what, if anything, they had done in the bedroom – had they even been in a bedroom? He had a vague memory of a bed, but he also had a vague memory, now that he thought of it, of
someone else already being on the bed, on top of someone else. So where had they done it, whatever they had done? He had a vague memory now, too, of having spouted some stuff to her, while he was
touching her, while he was getting off with her; he groaned. That was the problem with coked-up sex, or with any kind of physical contact while you were on coke: you just ended up saying –
shouting – the most excruciating things. You went from being someone who knew how to make all the right moves – all the hair-stroking, all the eye-contact, all the kissing and caressing
it took to get over the threshold of the bedroom door – to someone who was bellowing at a girl to know who her daddy was while at the same time trying to ignore the fact that you
couldn’t really get properly hard.
    At least, at least , he had not said that to her. But it was hardly as though the question had not been, and was not still, hanging over their heads. At the party, after she had told him
who she was, before they had gone anywhere near the coke, he had tried, by a series of apparently harmless questions, to work out whether she knew anything about the history between their fathers.
About what her father had done to his. About how his father had reacted. About the fact that his father still held a grudge. But she had given no sign of knowing anything. She talked mainly about
growing up where they had grown up, about trying to get into the pubs in Edgeworthstown, about hitching lifts to the shitty clubs in the Fountain Blue, about seeing Mark around the place sometimes,
and – this part had swollen his head pretty nicely – wondering about him, wondering if he had noticed her. He could remember that part. And he could remember, too, that she had talked
for a while about her father, about working for him one summer and hating every minute of it; he remembered being relieved to hear that, relieved that he would not have to listen to her gushing
about the dead father she still worshipped and adored. He had been crooked, she said; as crooked as a briar and just as nasty to come into contact with. Mark had said nothing. She had fought with
him, she said; he had wanted her to fiddle with a will or something, and she had refused, and had walked out of the job, and she had never talked to him again before he died. That had been an
opportune moment for hair-stroking, and for a concerned arm around her shoulders, and for a comforting little hug that had had the very satisfactory ending of a long, deep kiss, and it was a couple
of minutes after that, actually, that he had suggested they take a trip into the room with the mirror and the marching powder. It had got him high, the feeling of her body in his arms,