The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

You Can Trust A Man Who Chooses Anchovies

Glasgow, June 1993

The end of the student year. and, oh, what a year.

The holiday build-up had started long before the last day of term. Students were spoiled rotten, Kippy supposed. As a painter and decorator, he was given five weeks' holiday a year. Now, the summer stretched out ahead of him, beguiling in its length. The BBC weather people promised a scorcher of a summer too. They did every year, but this year he believed them.

Thanks to Tony's money, he didn't need to get a job for the summer. He could just do...fuck all. Maybe even literally. Weeks and weeks of lazy days, getting up at lunchtime, then afternoons in the park and evenings in bars, exchanging eye meets, building the flirt up over a couple of songs, and then escaping outside. Alleys, doorways, bushes and park benches all done in the balmy heat of summer sun.

Or drizzle. This was Glasgow, after all. Best not to expect too much.

Like him, Lillian had no intention of going home. London, she said, was dreadful in the summer. Wall-to-wall tourists, suffocatingly hot and smelly, and her ma and pa making noises about internships.

"The horrors!" she said. "Working in offices, running around after everyone and making them bloody coffees! All so's I can get a job afterwards!"

She made it sound like the worst thing in the world. Lillian, though, was someone who would have the luxury of turning down jobs post-art school. She'd be able to look at something, shake her head and say, "God, no! That sounds shitty dull!"

The rest of folks, Kippy included as Tony's money wasn't gonnae keep him beyond art school, didn't have the luxury of pickiness. Professor Gallen was sniffy about students who did anything but fine art, but it had little practical applications beyond art school.

There are very few people who can make a living from painting and drawing, the illustration tutor told them. Graphic design is the most useful skill you can learn if you want to work when you leave here. Kippy took her seriously. It was what he was going to choose once his two years were up.

In the meantime, they had a flat to find. The halls turfed them out as soon as term ended. They had summer school to think of, students coming in who would pay much more than art school bods for out of term-time accommodation.

"West end!" Lillian announced grandly. "We can't go anywhere else."

She'd made two assumptions there. One, that she and Kippy would live together, and Kippy had his reservations about that. She was messy as hell. And two, that they could afford Glasgow's pricier des res. Even with George and Alicia's incredible generosity, and Tony's money, they couldn't.

After a week or so of traipsing around tiny places off Byres Road and flats in Knightswood that cheekily called themselves 'west end', they settled on a place in the city's south side, a top floor flat in Govanhill. Its bay window living room affording them a view of Queen's Park to distract from the immediate views, rubbish that strew the streets, and graffiti everywhere.

Their new abode was billed as three-bedroom, which was pushing it as the third was a box room, and all that you could fit in it was a single bed and a small table. When Gaynor saw it, she squealed. "Can I move in? I'll be as good as gold. You'll not know I'm here!"

Gaynor flitted between various places. Her current place of residence was a flat in the Merchant City. The bastard gulls, she said, started up at four o'clock every morning. It was playing havoc with her beauty sleep.

"Why am I surrounded by gays?" Lillian asked. Kippy and Gaynor exchanged looks and didn't reply. A rhetorical question, surely. Somewhere deep inside her Lillian must know the answer: I am terrified of sex and intimacy. Gay men keep me safe.