These are unpublished, linked flash-fiction pieces. Contain strong language.

The Teacher

The aristocratic houses along Park Circus, above Kelvingrove Park, look like mausoleums and for much of the year must be as cold. A triumph of wealth over pragmatism, they boast lofty ceilings and vast windowpanes unsuited to the bitter climate. They hold themselves frigidly above the street, conscious of their status as monuments to consumption. The builders intended them for men rich enough to afford endless fuel. Now they rise in listed splendour, proud architectural affronts to democracy. I imagine the inhabitants prize their expensive discomfort.

My students are unmoved by the honour of being chosen for special study sessions. The group changes every other week, but they all look alike. The boys are thin, their truculent adolescent faces sharp and pale as wedges of cheese. They wear Nike or Adidas tracksuits and hoodies, or jeans belted below the hips. Despite their collective swagger the boys are careful to not infringe on the scented feminine clusters that form around forbidden iPhones. The girls are coy, aware their power lies in commanding attention. They flutter, fiddling with necklaces and earrings, or combing strands of hair with bright acrylic nails.

None of them take an interest in my lessons. They are obedient and indifferent. I am a novelty, like the star-nosed mole I point out on a trip to the zoo. “Do you like living in Glasgow?” One asks. Another: “Do you have a girlfriend?” These questions are automatic. The products of a lifetime habit of using interrogation to distract authority figures. I tell them I am interested in post-industrial cities, wondering if anyone will ask me what I mean. No one does.

“Did any of your family members work in the shipyards?” I ask once.

A girl looks at me pityingly: “It’s lunchtime, you know.”

They regard the future with suspicion. Like misers, they are averse to even modest speculation. “What do you want to be?” I ask. “If you could visit any country, where would you go?” The girls’ eyes flicker like snake tongues. The boys nudge each other. At first I thought this was a silent protest against my accent, age, and shirt-collar. But my self-consciousness exceeds their curiosity. Glasgow is the universe; I’m a transient alien.

The Friend

I walk from town early, as the shopkeepers and street-sweepers perform their daily rituals of addition and subtraction on Woodlands Road. Passing taxis throw sheets of water across the pavement. The shop windows contain rickety furniture; mediocre paintings; comic books; or sour-smelling vegetables. A mattress slumps against a parking meter, the legs of a decapitated office chair poke the air next to it.

Alma works in a coffee shop with frosted-glass tables and bookshelves lining the walls. The first time I went in she overheated my cappuccino and, smiling, urged me to try an almond croissant. There was something in that smile I couldn’t place, a kind of play-acting. Calum was her lifeboat. Her eyes held premonition of the end but she hung on, even as the waves ran high towards the rocks. Mornings, he would dash into the shop on his way to work. Jeans sagging with the weight of keys, wrenches, pliers and a spare sprocket; Adidas baseball cap rearing back from his forehead. After he left Alma would stand by the espresso machine, arms crossed, eyes distant. Glasgow’s West End pulsates freely with details of private lives. She made only perfunctory efforts to mask her unease. I would see them walking, her hair brushing his shoulder as she tried to match his stride. Many cappuccinos later, after we become friends, she volunteered information. Her smile hid a terrible need to be heard.

One Friday I asked her what she was doing that night. “I have a spare ticket to a show, would you like to come?”

She said, lightly as she could: “Sure, what time?”

I asked her out most Fridays after that. She was always non-committal. If Calum was there when I passed the café I would go to the cinema. Otherwise, I would go home and shower. By the time I was dressed there would be a message: “Want to get a drink later?”

You walk down half a dozen steps to enter the Drake. On the left a gas-fire, straight ahead amber whisky bottles twinkle in a setting of highly polished cherry. She drank Glenfiddich 15, neat. “It’s Calum’s favourite.” She tried to not mention him but always slipped. Calum. She would mould the word carefully with her lips then glance away, or push the whisky glass back and forth between her middle fingers.

The Lodger

Rupert Street runs perpendicular between Great Western and Woodlands Road. A square tower of yellowish brick rises above the rust-coloured tenements at the junction with Woodlands Road. At the corner is a pub, the pavement marked by coronas of vomit. In weeks of walking this street I can count on my hand the number of times I have passed another human. But detritus hints at life behind the blank windows. Someone has placed a half-drunk bottle of Irn Bru inside a horizontal refrigerator. A bike with one wheel is chained to a lamppost. Cigarette butts cluster on the pavement in front of some doors, tiny piles of dog shit near others. Perhaps the inhabitants are elderly, or just lazy.

I arrived here after my city centre flatmate came home drunk one night and urinated on the television. Calum and I met by chance. If I had thought he would offer me a room I might not have mentioned my housing difficulties, but he did and it seemed foolish to refuse. There are other coffee shops.

Calum and his father Alan live at number 10. Moving in, I slipped on a worn concrete stair and twisted my knee. “Sorry,” Calum said, pushing his hat back. “There’s no point fixing it till the workmen finish. They’ll just fuck it up again.” It was originally a three bedroom flat. His father divided the master bedroom: half for each daughter. This arrangement no longer serves a purpose but Calum and his dad occupy the flat as if the women were still there. The builders have knocked through the wall but Alan is in no rush to reclaim the master bedroom. He urged me to make myself at home and wrestled in a mossy log of a sofa. The springs gouge my back.

I don’t know what Alan does for a living. Sometimes I walk to the kitchen in my shorts, thinking I’m alone, and he’s slumped on the sofa, watching chat shows on mute. He sits up, tugs at the frayed sleeves of his cardigan and smiles nervously, revealing absent teeth. Calum is missing the same premolar, as if they were removed in some atavistic ritual. Their voices are indistinguishable on the phone. Most nights they eat pasta and garlic bread, or chicken and chips from Styrofoam boxes. Since Calum’s mother died they have built a cocoon of habit.

I am a permanent house-guest. To be a lodger you need to be ignored and slight quirks in their domestic rituals betray an awareness of my presence. Alan runs the tap when he uses the toilet. If Calum is home when I return from work he loiters while I heat up soup and butter bread, bragging about cars he’s fixed and girls he’s groped. I know his anecdotes are fiction but something in is eyes make me ashamed of my scepticism.