The Poisonous Cunt was lying on her bed wearing a garish red tracksuit. The telly was on a table at the bottom of the bed. She was smoking hash. Her face was drained of colour, but her black hair looked well washed, had a kind of sheen to it. Her face, though, looked rough, scabby and dehydrated and its contrast with the health of her hair made her look like an old hag wearing a wig. She still had her most startling feature ah had long admired, her thick black eyebrows which joined in the middle, making her look like one of those type of Celtic fans who always look like Paul McStay. Under these brows she had narrow green eyes which were permanently in shadow and usually half shut. Ah remember once when ah was eckied ah got an erection when ah saw her unshaved armpits visible in a white, sleeveless cotton top. Ah once had a wank about fucking her armpits, ah don’t know why this should be, but sexuality’s a weird cunt tae try and fathom oot. It caused me some angst for a while, well aboot two or three minutes. There was one particular time when ah was tripping in the chip shop at the Fit ay the Walk, unable to speak, unable to indicate what ah wanted, unable to think about anything but The Poisonous Cunt’s armpits. It was Ally who had started me off about them. He was on acid at Glastonbury and he said in a posh voice: – That lashie Veronica: an awfay abundance ay hair that lashie … After that we couldn’t keep our eyes off The Poisonous Cunt’s armpits.

Her face twisted at me in ugly recognition, then into a cartoon of disapproval, and ah understood just then why it should really be totally impossible to fancy her.

The Poisonous Cunt shagging: what a thought right enough.

– Well? she snapped.

– Goat it likes, ah said, handing over the bag ay coke.

She tore into it like a predator having a frenzied feast, chopping and snorting, her face contorted the same way it was when ah once saw her rummaging for fag dowts in the contents of my rubbish bin, which she’d tipped out onto the newspaper when she’d run out of snout. Ah cursed her angrily that time, and she went timid as she rolled up a single skin of stale baccy.

It was the first and last time ah saw The Poisonous Cunt deferential.

It was Monts that had given her her nickname. He’d fucked her once and either wouldn’t do again, or did do it but no tae her satisfaction, so she’d got the pre-vegetative Solo tae trash his coupon. – That Poisonous Cunt Veronica, he’d muttered bitterly when ah went to visit him in the hospital, his face wrapped in bandages.