Mo-Maw stole sleekit mouthfuls from a polystyrene cup. When she wasn’t looking, he checked the cup. It was filled with fortified wine that smelled like cold medicine and rotted fruit. She must have been drinking and refilling the same cup for a long time. The lip of it was ruined with lipstick and she had chewed all along the edge.
The snack bar smelled sweet with fried onions. The late-night radio played soft rock from Mo-Maw’s youth: Dr Hook, Eric Clapton, Kenny Rogers. Mungo sat on the plastic cooler and she handed him a tub of bread rolls. “If yer gonnae bother me at ma work, then ye might as well make yersel useful.”
Her new perm had set tighter than she had wanted. Between filling rolls with potato scones and fatty bacon, she tugged at it and tried to steam it straight, holding it out over the sizzling griddle. “That Pauline, the glaikit bitch. She had the nerve to charge me eighteen poun’ for this. For this! Ah went to her house and had her weans climbing all over me. By the time I came out I was looking like Orphan-fuckin’-Annie.” She tugged until she winced. “Sun’ll come out tomorrow. My arse.”
“It looks awright.” It looked like she had been electrocuted.
“Couldnae even get a decent cup o’ tea out of her.”
Mungo was ripping the guts out of the bread rolls and eating the soft dough. With a plastic knife he spread bright-yellow margarine on both sides. He thought he was doing a thorough job, he imagined the drivers would want their rolls dripping with grease, but Mo-Maw slapped his hand with the fish lift. “Stop eating they rolls. And stop wasting so much bloody margarine. Big Ella will be on me like a rash.” She went back to relaxing her perm. “Why are you here anyway, is it money?”
“How, do you have some?”
“Naw.”
“Then I came because I missed you.”
She tickled him under the chin. “Ah suppose you do. Ah’m sorry, ma darlin’. Have you been stickin’ in at school?”
Mungo wiped some margarine from the front of his jumper. “Not exactly. I was hoping I could leave soon. Get an apprenticeship or a job or something.”
Mo-Maw crouched beside him and lit a cigarette. She smoked it under the counter, hunkered out of view. “Ah wish you would stay in school.”
“I don’t think it’s for me. I think I’d be better off working.”
“Then do what ye like. Ah can’t force ye. Fat load of good school did me.” Then she squinted at him. “But Mungo, see if ah get the School Board at ma door, ah tell ye, yer feet will no touch the ground.”
“You won’t. They’ll be glad to see the back of me.”
“Aye, well, yer almost a man now. Time ye grew up and paid yer own way.” She took a long drink out of the half-chewed cup. As she opened the bottle of wine to refill it, the metal Buckfast cap rolled away across the greasy floor. “Ah, bugger.” Mo-Maw shrugged and took a long swig from the bottle as though she had better finish it now. She offered it to Mungo.
He shook his head. “And I wish you wouldn’t.”
“It’s got a wee buzz. It keeps me gaun through the night.” Then she added, “And it makes me mair fun. Men prefer women that are mair fun. Ah get better tips.”
Of all the alcohol Mo-Maw enjoyed, Mungo feared Buckfast wine the most. He had heard Ha-Ha’s boys refer to it as the “Commotion Lotion.” Its high alcohol content mixed with its high caffeine content meant it made his mother blindingly drunk and too jittery to subdue. Mungo tore at a bread roll and held the doughy guts out to her. Mo-Maw pushed his hand away. “Have ye seen the shape of me? If I get any heavier this caravan will pop a wheelie.”
He crammed the bread into his own mouth. “How’s Jocky?”
Mo-Maw suddenly became animated. She spun and splayed her hands out wide, and Mungo could tell he had struck a seam of gold. There was such excitement on her face that, combined with the tight perm, she looked like she was convulsing. “Oh. Ma. God! Ah cannae believe ah didnae tell ye already. Jocky found some widow’s wedding ring that a wee house-robbing basturt tried to fence through his pawnshop. He got a cash reward, but better than that, he’s on a promise of a caravan in Burntisland for two weeks. Can you believe?”
There was a hole in the calf of her sheer tan tights. Mungo traced it with his finger. “Can I come?”
Mo-Maw brushed his hair away from his face and made a little moue. “Oh, sorry son. It’s still what morning telly calls the honeymoon period. We have to focus on us the now. It’s very important.” She clawed at her waistline. “Oh these tights are killin’ me. Ah should know better than to stand at this griddle and smother myself.”
He pushed his finger into the hole. “Can I?”
She huffed, and then she nodded. “Aye, go on. If it’ll make ye happy.”
Mungo felt the stubble of her leg hair against his knuckles. He tore at the hole and the tiny stitches ran away, they poured down her leg like raindrops. He pushed more fingers inside the tear and he tugged them apart. The tights ripped from her ankle bone up beyond the line of her skirt. He burst a hole in the other leg and ripped that one too. Mo-Maw clung to the counter and squealed in delight. They had loved this game as children. When her tights had become laddered beyond decency, she let the children rip them. They never split at the gusset or the toe seam so they made a game of pulling their mother out of her chair by her stocking feet, dragging her giggling across the floor until, finally, the pale softness of her legs thudded to the carpet, like chicken meat escaping from a string bag.
“Oh, I can breathe again.” Mo-Maw stepped out of her destroyed tights. She stepped back into her trainers. Mo-Maw put her foot up on the low shelf, picked at some ingrown hairs, and traced a finger along a varicose vein. “That one ah got from nursing you. Such a needy wean. You would never let me put ye down.”
Something in the darkness caught her attention. Mungo watched her lean out and peer beyond the glare of the fluorescent light. “Hello there, son. Can ah fill you a roll?”