Alan Ross stood in front of the wall mirror one Monday morning. He was trying to fix his school tie.  When he saw the knot still didn't look right, he sighed.  As he pulled the tie from his neck once more, Alan made a face.

   Mum used to knot the tie for me.  He smeared the back of his hand across his eyes. He sniffed.  Alan  put his other hand up to the mirror.  His fingers splayed and touched the glass tenderly.  The fourteen-year-old boy  reached to catch his mother's smile, her face showing clearly one second, then her image was gone.

   Wishing things could be right again, longing for his mother not to have died while watching Death Wish 2, Alan left for school.

   The boy's feet clumping down the tenement's stairs woke up the resident cat. It stretched its black and white furry self, meowing as its eyes searched Alan's face.

   Then he heard: "Heathcliff, Heathcliff...it's Cathy..."

   Alan felt his features glow, caught between pleasure and punishment.

  Maureen McArthur!  He turned from the second floor's last step and she was standing there, barring his way.

   "Hi," his mouth came out with, as he urged his brain's metamorphosis from near-fifteen to more like eighteen.

   "Off to your fee-paying, boys only school, are you, Alan?" Her chewing gum shifted to the other side.  She came closer.  He could smell her newly washed hair.  Her very femaleness, her thick black eyebrows, her midnight blue eyes, her dimpled red cheeks...and, most of all...her all encompassing lips...how Alan wished they were a vacuum hose.

   "Alan!  Are you all right?"  She peered into his face.  "Your eyes look funny, like a  frog in heat."

   "I, I, I have to go...I'll...I'll...be late.!"  His stutter betrayed him.  His body went rigid, his face coloured, he bent his head.  Seconds passed and then, freeing his legs, he ran.  He could hear her laughter as he left the building.

   Eyes squinting in sunshine, Alan walked to Govan Cross to catch the underground.  Along the way, he scuffed his feet and kicked a can with annoyance.  He imagined himself as a suave young man, plenty of money in his pocket, a girl-impressive car at his disposal.  He smiled ruefully on thinking he could have his pick of the girls if his dream would only come true.

   Yet, Alan knew it was an unlikely scenario.  He stood on the platform, waiting for a subway, swinging his satchel as he stared at the rubbish on the rail track.  Alan's mother had died and he and his dad had moved from their nice semi.  His dad's plumbing business had gone down the plughole, the grief-stricken man unable to cope.

   "I'll go to school with everyone else around here, Dad!"  Alan had tried to insist.

   "No, son, don't you see?"  His father would demand, fingers rubbing at his high forehead.  "Your mum had this dream...that you would have the learning we never had."  And he would shift his hand to his son's shoulder.  "I can't let her down, son."

   "But, Dad, I can work even harder, and get a scholarship."  Alan had suggested  once.

   "No, son, I've got to pay for it.  I'd be letting her - and myself - down, if I didn't do it exactly as we planned.  Aye."

   Alan came to realise that if he worked hard and got to University, gaining perhaps a first-class honour's degree, he could get a really good job.  That way he could pay his father back. And keep  faith with his mother's memory.

   It doesn't solve the problem with Maureen McArthur though, does it?  He now asked himself as the rumble of the carriages came towards the waiting commuters.  As the doors whooshed shut behind him, Alan found a space to sit.  He was squashed in between a straggly man who hadn't washed for weeks, and a gum-cracking punk.  The gum reminded him of his love.

   Indeed, Alan was sure he loved Maureen McArthur.  But she felt nothing but contempt for him.  Every time he saw her, she teased him cruelly.  About his fee-paying school,  about his school tie, about his high-pitched, low-pitched, cracking voice.

   He pictured Maureen, smiling to himself in spite of her words. 

   "And I don't mean you've a cracking voice in the sense it's pure dead brilliant, so ah don't.  If you're not cracking up, you're talking all plummy."  And she'd turn disdainfully away, her shiny black hair swinging with her hippy moves.

   Thinking of her on the subway, a grin and a sigh mingled as Alan stretched his legs.

   "Hey, gonnae watch it, you?"

   "Sorry."  Alan's familiar red face materialised.  The train was slowing noisily, the Hillhead sign appeared.  Dodging the aggrieved man's feet this time, Alan squeezed past his considerable bulk.

   As the young boy met with some schoolmates at the gates, one of his dreams finally came true.  His: "Hi, hello, how're you? Have a good weekend?" suddenly all came out in one steady tone. His voice had broken at last!

   Alan's confidence grew in leaps and bounds over the following week.  His voice was now a double brandy, no longer a pink champagne mixed with lager.  He felt that now he could do anything.  All goals could now be attained.

   He stood once more on a Monday morning, at the mirror, trying to put a knot in his school tie.  He did it first time.  It was another sign.  Whistling as he went downstairs, he caught sight of the minx's black hair, as she was just leaving the tenement.

   Walking a little faster, Alan then slowed as he reached the street.

   She was waiting for him.  A sudden strong breeze tantalisingly lifted the hem of her navy blue skirt.  

     "Looking for me, handsome?"

   "Yes, I was."  This newly confident Alan continued, "I wanted to ask you something."

   Coyly, Maureen raised her eyes, spreading questioning hands.

   "Would you like to go see Death Wish 3 with me?"