It is a Wednesday or a Tuesday, just one of those nondescript midweek days in February when all you have to look forward to is a weekend spent in bed attempting to stroke your feral cat. It is 1982. At least this you are sure of. You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone. There you will find, no doubt, a cold potato salad gifted by a kind neighbor, the lingering smell of pipe smoke in the hall, and a delighted expression on the dog's face when your father opens the front door. You walk slowly, looking down at your sodden loafers, and so it is her toes you see first, bare against the gray slabs of the Edinburgh street, each nail painted orange. She is wearing an orange skirt, and an orange jumper, too. Behind her, there are four more people, all dressed in various shades of orange. Their ages range from about twenty-five to sixty, and yet their faces remind you of the youthful hilarity and sweetness of a school photo: all snaggleteeth, mad hair, and crooked glasses.
The barefoot one darts forward and drops a wet leaflet into one of your shopping bags. She is around your age, the youngest of them. Despite the rain, her neck is grimy. You imagine getting a soapy rag and scrubbing at her.
"Nice mustache," she says. And then, "Anything good in there?" She is pointing at your shopping bags.
Cream cheese. Wine. A bunch of excessively perky daffodils you bought for your father.
Already she has turned back to the others: the man with a dark beard and a hunter's eyes; the woman in her fifties with dank gray hair; the young man with a shaved head who keeps whispering to the others; and the tanned, ageless one.
Now the man with the beard and the eyes approaches you.
"Come back with us." He holds out his hand. You want to take it, but your hands are flaking with eczema so, instead, you pass him a shopping bag, realizing too late that, in doing so, you have accepted that you will now either lose your shopping or follow it home with him.
•
Their place is a typical New Town flat: soaring ceilings and peeling floral fifties wallpaper. It is so similar to the wallpaper in your father's home that at first your instinct is to run. The barefoot girl, who calls herself Ma, takes your bag from the bearded man, and holds out her free hand for the shopping you are still clutching. You give it to her and watch as she tosses your father's daffodils into the kitchen sink. She crows over the tins of tuna.
"Four!"
Back at your flat, your cat will be yowling for those tins, but you try not to think about him. There are two people here who weren't on the street. They look a little younger than you and Ma. You find that you like them. Ma puts the red wine to one side, ignores the shortbread, and scoops a glob of cream cheese onto her fingertip. You copy her and she laughs.
"Be yourself," she says.
She's one of those rare things: a woman who is not nice.
The others are hurriedly opening your food. They eat it without thanking you. The one with the beard and the eyes says that his name is Jitendra. You wait for him to ask your name, but he doesn't. He complains that the wine isn't white. You apologize and he nods, pours himself a large glass anyway, and tells you that you are handsome.
You sit beside Ma on the floor, clutching a mug of tea. You won't drink it. The milk is off-you could tell when she poured it. Silk scarves have been thrown over the many lampshades, and a candle is burning low on a coffee table. The whole place is a fire hazard. The air has that sickening smell of dried fruit. It reminds you of the long car journeys you used to take as a child, your parents' arguments and silences, your father quietly leaving the holiday home in the night, your mother laughing, then crying, then forgetting to cook dinner, so you ate bread and apples and befriended a stray sheep.
Ma strides about the room, waving incense. You want to laugh. You think about what it would be like to kiss her. You feel that you have kissed too few people in your twenty-six years. That time in the work tearoom when a girl pressed her dry mouth to yours and bluntly professed her love-you mumbled words of thanks and scurried off to an early lunch. You knew that she was the type of girl you were meant to take home. Your father would have congratulated you on her looks. Your mother would have complained about how ordinary she was and made your visits difficult. You knew you did not have the stamina for her. She would want things from you.
You take a few inexpert drags on the spliff that Jitendra passes to you. They all start chanting. You are too self-conscious to join in. You can't help but watch Jitendra. He looks a little like you, except that he has dark hair, hair that makes you think about the comb in your pocket. He sits cross-legged, and he sways, easeful, relaxed. You are not like him at all. The ageless one and a young man with glasses leave for an adjoining bedroom and have sex quietly, but not quietly enough. The others chant for a full hour. Toward the end of that hour, you stop checking your watch and find that you are swaying slightly, that the chant is reverberating in you, even in your feet.