Was desperate to fuck her, she told me, in her hotel room, as she laced up her knee-length boots, black to match her mini dress, to match her kohl-rimmed eyes. The vampish riot grrl not yet sixteen, on the bed tending to her laces, me on the dresser stool, in a creased white school shirt and borrowed black tie, sipping room warm Baileys from a cup, trying to be cool, trying to be more than my not yet sixteen self. Last night of the trip. Our respective parents downstairs, in the hotel bar, soaking up Happy Hour, faces scorched by the Alpine sun. Desperate to fuck her, he was, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru, swishing through the late Easter slush, touching her bum on the t-bars, trying to land that first illicit kiss. Her not yet sixteen, him into his twenties, a portly mechanic with porcine hands. He asked me: What do you think your dad would do if he saw me kissing you? Stilled her lacing and looked up at me, knuckled knee flashing in the light. What are you thinking? That her father was an Irishman, known for landing his punches. Just thinking, I said. Thinking that there was a little flame for her flickering inside me. Just thinking, she mimicked and returned to her lacing. Hey, have you heard that song by The Outhere Brothers? Wiggle Wiggle? You know it’s about doing it up the bum, right? Then telling me, with some satisfaction, that she and her boyfriend were sleeping together, had a pregnancy scare earlier that month. I was so fucking late, I was looking at maternity wear in Mothercare. I took another sip of my room warm Baileys. She leaned forward, further this time, and I tried not to look beyond her boots. What are you thinking? That we both knew that all that week, when he was trying to fuck her, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru, it was me would slowly ski up to, slide her skis between mine, rest her body against my back, breathe onto my neck. That if she made a move, I’d have been powerless to prevent it. Powerless to prevent it, and incapable of doing anything. Nothing? Narrowing her kohl-rimmed eyes. Yeah, I replied. Nothing. Shrug of her shoulders, flick of her hair. Fine. Boots laced, we finished the Baileys and went down for dinner. Last night meant gala night. Gala meaning smoked salmon and gravadlax, reblochon and camembert, profiteroles heaped like Ferrero Rocher, unending carafes of box wine. The ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru, joined us at the table, poured for the parents, swapped jokes and japes and hi-jinks. My father had met him before, on a skiing weekend years prior, when he had seen him, pished as a wet fart and naked as a greased snake, strap himself into a pair of skis to perform his party piece ‘Eddie the Bald Eagle’, atop a high table in a crowded bar, a table from which he was shoved, roughly, by unseen hand, to land arse-first on a stray glass. After which, someone had to pluck the shards from his upturned, bloodied buttocks. But at dinner that night no mentioned. And when all the courses were done, and the parents suitably sozzled, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru, asked the vampish riot grrl, not yet sixteen, if she would come with him for a quick bye-bye drinky. The personal gift he desperately wished to impart. Come with us, she said. We left the hotel, the two of them walking just ahead of me. Her in dress, holding her arms across herself as if cradling something, him in a white t-shirt and stonewashed jeans, one frizzed ginger arm draped proprietorially across her shoulders. Not even a snowflake would slip between them. When they entered a brightly lit bar, she looked back and beckoned. I baulked, and bolted back to the hotel, to the slim single bed beside my sleeping father. Lying in the dark, I pictured them together, pictured her fingers brushing the scars on his buttocks, and felt the little flame flicker out. The next morning, as he loaded up the minibus to take us down the mountain, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru, I asked her, more in hope than good judgment, if she had slept with him, and she said she had. He told me his gran had died and he felt sad. We boarded the minibus and began our descent. At the wheel, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru. On the radio, The Outhere Brothers. No word of a fucking lie. Years later, I heard from my father that he had died, barely out of his mid-twenties, when the car he was working on slipped from its jack and crushed him, and I almost felt sorry for him then, in spite of it all, thinking of a life unfulfilled, all that was and might have been for him, all the little Irn-Bru children he’d never have, never carry onto a nursery slope and gently push off on their skis, launch into the world he knew and loved so much, and who probably died knowing that those days he spent in the mountains were the best of his life, and I wondered if he thought of them then, or the night they pulled the glass from his arse, and his night with her, the vampish riot grrl not yet sixteen, in his final gasping moments, those moments being no more and no less than he deserved, no more and no less, the ruddy boy from Paisley with the frizzed red hair, hair the colour of Irn-Bru.