Young Mungo

Content Warning: The following summaries and analysis explore depictions of rape and pedophilia.

Gallowgate reaches the shop on his own, but the owner is suspicious of him and sends him away into the rain once he’s bought some food and alcohol. Gallowgate realizes he doesn’t have enough money for the three of them to return to Glasgow on the bus. He contemplates killing Mungo, so Mungo doesn’t report the rape. It would not seem so suspicious, he figures, to come up with a story about Mungo drowning in the lake or freezing to death in the forest. He shelters from the rain in the telephone booth and makes some prank calls. Then, for an unknowable reason, he calls his own mother for the first time since being released from prison, using his real name (Angus). He tells her that he’s trying to get his life back on track with a new job and AA meetings. When he tells her he’s on a camping trip, his mother asks him if he's with any little boys. Angus (Gallowgate) is not allowed near children. It is revealed that his mother was the one who called the police on him, after what she heard from his brother Evan.