Free Bloodletting by Victoria Leatham

been past the warehouse, I just had no memory of doing so.
    Both of them admitted the next day that they were worried about me: the warehouse wasn’t a good place.
    Perhaps not, I said, but I had no intention of leaving. I did give up smoking dope, however, and kept my drinking to a minimum, despite Angus. A heavy-drinking Scot, Angus was the latest addition to our little community. His accent was impenetrable but I didn’t care: he was beautiful. Long-haired, smooth-chested and tanned, he looked as though he’d walked off a Calvin Klein poster, not a building site.
    We’d all been drinking vodka at the kitchen table one night, listening to someone’s plan for a new sport involving horses and balls.Angus had only just arrived, and I didn’t know him but by the end of the night we found ourselves alone in the kitchen. As I opened the fridge door, he saw the scars on my wrist.
    ‘Bad habit,’ was my response when he asked about them. He then pulled up his own sleeve and showed me a faded gash on his forearm. It had seemed like a good idea, he said, when he was sitting in a pub in Glasgow, high on magic mushrooms.
    It was a bond, of sorts.
    We started having what I thought of as an extended fling, not a relationship. He was happy enough for people to know we were seeing each other, but he had a ‘real’ girlfriend living in Melbourne. Only I knew this, and tried not to think about it. I focused on the fact that he liked me enough not to be embarrassed that other people knew it.This was a new thing for me.
    There was a downside.I could hardly understand a word Angus said, and what little I could decipher related mainly to football, or beer. He also admitted that he was wanted by the Scottish police, and had skipped the country.When I asked him what he’d done, he was evasive, ‘It was an accident. I hit a policewoman.’ I tried not to think about that too—until he gave me no choice.
    We were walking back from a pub late one night and popped into the kebab shop for a snack.As we were heading out,Angus told me to wait there for a moment. I assumed he was going for a pee, so stood on the street corner eating my kebab, trying to look nonchalant.After a few minutes he hadn’t come back,which was odd.After a few more, it occurred to me that he wasn’t going to. I started walking home in the dark.The bastard, I thought, getting more annoyed and upset with each step.
    Lights were on at home, and I heard voices. Raised voices. Darren, one of the less tolerant members of the household, was worked up about something. I didn’t care what it was. He had regular fights with his partner, as well as the other blokes living in the warehouse. And he wasn’t the only one. I’d heard yelling one morning and gone down to the bathroom to find Ralph, who was well over six foot, with his boot on a naked, prostrated Ian’s neck. But this did sound different. I walked past the table where Darren and Ian were sitting, and they immediately turned on me.
    ‘I can’t believe what a fucking arsehole that boyfriend of yours is,’ Darren spat at me.
    ‘What’s he done?’ I asked, puzzled, but not surprised that Angus had annoyed someone else.
    Ian took over. ‘He turned up here about fifteen minutes ago,’ he paused, as my jaw dropped, ‘and rushed in, saying he’d nicked a car. He then asked if anyone wanted to go for a joyride.’
    ‘The bastard.’ I was furious.
    ‘Oh no, that’s not the good bit.We went outside with him and he showed us a van—Darren’s van. He’d managed to nick Darren’s van which was parked up on the street outside the pub.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you believe that? And he screwed up the lock and the ignition while he was breaking in and hot-wiring it.’
    I couldn’t believe it. I’d actually been ditched so he could nick a car. ‘Where’s he now?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t know.The prick’s disappeared again. In my van.’
    I decided that I didn’t want to be around when Angus returned, so