Annie Stanley, All At Sea

by Sue Teddern

  At the hotel, I treat us to double Courvoisiers. We could perch on bar stools, beside the two suited business types who look as if they’ve been here since they finished work hours ago. Or we can sink into plush blue velvet armchairs, upholstered to match the corporate colour scheme. Music from a hits channel on the flat-screen telly above our heads is just loud enough to distract but Kim and I are too busy nattering to notice. Take That blends into Natalie Imbruglia, Shalimar segues into The Cranberries . . .

  Kim takes me through her CV; she drifted for a while: dental assistant, teaching assistant, shop assistant. But she’s recently found her calling in sales at a holiday apartment development. That’s how she met Stuart.

  And then suddenly we hear the opening bars of a song so familiar, it’s practically in our DNA. We catch each other’s eyes. It is! It bloody is! ‘Picture of You’ by our own special boyz. It came out in July 1997 and was ‘penned’ by Ronan himself, as Kim was always keen to point out.

  Mum and Dad bought me the album for my sixteenth birthday: Where We Belong. Kim and I could practically act out the ‘Picture of You’ video, frame by frame, with her as Ronan and me as Stephen. Lucky we didn’t have the technology back then to record ourselves on our phones, for bum-clenching posterity.

  It could be the Prosecco or the double brandy. It could be that I can do what I like in Scarborough, where only one person knows me and she’s thinking what I’m thinking. It could be the cumulative hysteria of a week on this wild ’n’ crazy trip.

  I jump up and start dancing as I would have done nearly a quarter of a century ago. Kim gives it a second – she does live here, after all – then joins me.

  The barman grins, does a thumbs-up, and carries on polishing glasses. It’s obvious we’re not two out-of-control drunks, just a pair of giddy women having fun. The business types at the bar watch us, intrigued, then they come over and start dancing too. The younger, better-looking one, with his slick suit and artfully loosened tie, is a typical dad dancer who doesn’t know it. The other one, paunchy and balding, can seriously bust a move. He tears off his jacket, Travolta-style, to expose a straining waistcoat, and hits the dance floor like he’s been dying to do this all his life.

  Boyzone fades out and the four of us grind to a sheepish halt. Best sit down now and pretend it didn’t happen. That’s the British way. And then, and then . . . on comes ‘U Can’t Touch This’ and off we go again. We are seriously Da Bomb. Paunchy Bloke is amazing, even removing his belt, so that his trousers can bag at the crotch like MC Hammer’s. The barman does a few hip swivels and finger-clicks as he passes by to collect our used glasses. He’s loving this too.

  As I rock and swirl, I realize that I am in the moment. The one that will be gone in a nano-second, like a snowflake on the tongue. As a rule, I don’t do ‘being in the moment’ because I’m usually worrying about just now or last Friday or next Wednesday. Or lately, if I do pick up on the right-here-right-nowness, it’s invariably to castigate myself for zoning out on the sofa in front of Escape to the Country while I chomp through a pack of Hobnobs. Somehow I’ve forgotten how to inhabit those rare moments when I actually feel good about myself.

  When did that stop? Why did it stop? And can this moment – this one right now – go on for a bit longer because it feels fantastic?

  The two men give us each a hug and depart. We make to leave but the barman brings us brandies on the house; he’s not closing for another hour. Kim and I slump back in our armchairs and grin, unfeasibly pleased with how this evening has panned out.

  She shakes her head and does one of her snorty giggles.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  She giggles again. ‘Do you remember when we skived off school so we could go to London and wait for the boys outside Radio 1? They were on the Jo Whiley Show to promote Where We Belong?’

  ‘Oh my God, yes. I had to give Kate £1 not to blab to Mum.’

  ‘And we stood out there for hours and hours and it was raining.’

  ‘And we’d changed out of our uniforms in the loo at John Lewis. And we got soaked because we didn’t want to wear our blazers.’

  We sigh in unison. Happy days.

  ‘Worth it though, eh,’ Kim says.

  ‘Deffo.’

  ‘I’ve seen them loads since then. I went to three shows on their Farewell Tour and did a meet-and-greet and got selfies and signed photos with all of them. But seeing them that very first time outside Radio 1, being that close to them, getting a smile from Shane when they went in, even though I really wanted one from Ronan . . . well, that was one of the best days of my life.’

  ‘Better than marrying Stuart?’

  Kim’s guilty grin says it all.

  I suddenly remember another shared passion. ‘Who were those two lads we fancied from Batchwood? I can see their faces, clear as anything. I can even remember that I liked the dark-haired one. But their names? Not a clue.’

  Kim hasn’t forgotten. ‘Malcolm Robbins and Chris Walling. I preferred Malcolm but you said I had to have Chris.’

  ‘Did I? Really? They were both DDG.’ Our secret code for Drop-Dead Gorgeous.

  ‘Chris had acne. That’s what swung it for Malcolm. Hey, there was that night we went out with them. Proper out, not just hanging around by Burger King. Do you remember, Anne?’

  Vaguely. Distantly. ‘Go on, remind me.’

  ‘They were going to a party somewhere miles away . . . Potters Bar, was it? And they said: did we want to come too? And we were so gobsmacked, we said yes.’

  ‘We did?’

  ‘And Chris had a car and all these cans of Strongbow on the back seat. And we didn’t want to look like wusses, even though I don’t like cider, so we drank two each.’

  It’s starting to come back to me. ‘Oh God, and you threw up.’

  ‘That’s just it, Anne. I didn’t. I told Chris I was going to throw up, to stop them. Because I twigged that there was no party in Potters Bar and I got scared. And I didn’t want to snog Chris in some deserted layby. Or be made to do anything else. Seriously, Anne? You don’t remember that?’

  I do now. I thought Kim was pathetic. I was on a promise with Malcolm Robbins – who I’d fancied for years – and that was all that mattered. Why did she have to spoil it?

  ‘I pretended I was about to throw up,’ Kim continues. ‘And Chris panicked because it was his dad’s car. So they dumped us at a bus stop in the back of beyond at 2 a.m. and I found a phone box and rang for a minicab and we made it home. And my folks were fast asleep when I got in and they never found out.’

  Malcolm and Chris totally ignored us after that. Or they’d do puke noises whenever they saw us, until they lost interest. I blamed Kim. I was fucking furious with her for ruining my chances with Malcolm Robbins, even though I see now that she was the responsible adult that night and I was the wild child.

  Kim was lucky. Dad was waiting for me when I got home, shivering because I’d gone out with no jacket, and stinking of cider. He was low-volume and calm, which was way worse than a tongue-lashing. And I couldn’t go to bed until I’d answered his questions: Where had I been? Who with? Was I drunk? Who dropped me outside just now? Why didn’t I ring, if I needed a lift?

  I remember lying in bed afterwards, feeling pretty pleased with how I’d saved my skin. I’d had no choice. It was all Kim’s fault, I told him. Going to the party with those two lads was like totally her idea. I didn’t want to, I really, really didn’t, Dad. But she wouldn’t listen. It was only my quick thinking that got us home, safe and sound.

  Dad was all for stomping round the next day to tell Auntie Maureen and Uncle Ray that Kim had led me astray and put us in danger, but I persuaded him not to. He and Mum agreed that, from then on, I should give Kim a wide berth, knuckle down to my A levels and get the grades I needed for university. So I ghosted her, although we didn’t have a name for it back then. I caused our friendship to die and it wasn’t because our paths were about to diverge.

  ‘So shall we?’ Kim is sayin
g.

  I haven’t been listening. ‘Shall we what?’

  ‘Get together next time I’m in St Albans visiting my folks? It’s been so great catching up with you, Anne. Sorry, but I just can’t call you “Annie”, however hard I try.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘I can’t wait to tell Mum and Dad that we’ve met up. They’d love to see you too. Any time. They’ve been in that semi nearly forty years now so you know where to find them.’

  I nod, a bit too enthusiastically.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, hauling herself out of her armchair, ‘I best get home or Stuart will worry.’

  We hug. She turns and waves twice before spinning out of the hotel’s revolving door.

  Back in my room, I make my claggy cocoa for something to do. I feel ashamed. I took a bad thing and made it worse, even though I was pretty damned smug at the time. I didn’t need Kim’s friendship for much longer so I happily chucked her under the bus. Is that how it all began, my inability to be a good friend, a good partner, a nice person?

  ‘It wasn’t Kim’s fault that night,’ I tell Dad’s urn. ‘It was me. I made you think less of her, probably for the rest of your life, and she never knew.’

  My sleep is fitful. I keep remembering the thoughtless, heartless girl I once was. Where did she come from and why is she still here?

  I must do better. I need to do better. This isn’t who I’m meant to be.

  Chapter Eleven

  March 2001

  Mum said: Just go! She sounded irritated and impatient, as if she couldn’t wait to see the back of them. Honestly, Annie and Dad were making a silly fuss about nothing. And anyway, she’d rather visit the next university on Annie’s wish list, Sussex. Who’d say no to a day out in Brighton? She even started singing: ‘Oh I do love to be beside the seaside’.

  ‘If you’re sure, love.’ Dad’s forehead was creased in a concerned frown. ‘Or what if we visit Sussex University first? UEA isn’t top of your list, is it, Annie Lummox?’

  Now it was Annie’s turn to frown. Yes, the University of East Anglia was top of her list. She liked what she’d seen in the prospectus, her favourite teacher, Mrs Bates, was an alumna and it was a two-hour drive from St Albans – far enough away to be independent, close enough if she had a sudden craving for cake and hugs. Plus Janet the Prannet’s older brother, Colin, was in his second year of a law degree there. She’d snogged him at Janet’s sixteenth birthday party and it felt like unfinished business.

  ‘Oh, don’t make such a thing of it, Peter,’ Mum sighed. ‘It’s just a stupid doctor’s appointment. I don’t need you there to hold my hand. She’ll probably send me home with a flea in my ear and a prescription for antibiotics.’

  She returned to the kitchen to finish making their packed lunch: cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, some cartons of Ribena, two fat doorsteps of sticky bread pudding, plus the essential bag of humbugs. If they still wanted crisps, on top of all that, they could buy them at a service station.

  The Ford Sierra gleamed in the driveway. Dad had cleaned it thoroughly inside and out yesterday morning. He’d checked oil levels and filled the tank. He’d even burnt all his favourite tracks onto a blank CD. ‘You can’t have a road trip without road music, An-An.’

  Annie was fairly certain what the road music would be: Graham Parker & the Rumour, Brinsley Schwarz and Dad’s absolute favourite band, Dr Feelgood. He knew he could get away with it if Mum wasn’t coming with them. She’d insist on non-stop Radio 4 or a ‘nice family conversation’. They’d only just weaned her off I-Spy.

  ‘I’ll call you from the campus,’ Dad insisted as he gave Mum a big hug that rocked them both sideways from foot to foot, until she pulled away. ‘And tell Dr Golding about all your aches and pains, love. That’s what she’s there for.’

  Mum looked heavenward. ‘Oh, just bugger off, will you, pardon my French.’

  She stood on exaggerated tiptoes and kissed the top of Annie’s head, then bustled them out to the car. She still wanted to clean the kitchen before heading off to the health centre for her 9.10 appointment. Then she was meeting her best friend Judy for their monthly coffee and catch-up in Abbots Langley.

  Dad had studied the route the night before and needed no navigational assistance from Annie, but the AA British Road Atlas was in the side pocket, just in case. She kicked off her uncomfortable shoes and wiggled her toes. Mum had insisted she look smart but this was just the open day, not some all-important, make-or-break interview.

  The A1 became the A505, through Baldock, where Dad had once reversed into a bollard, and Royston, where she’d lost a purse full of pocket money. Then the A11 and their favourite sign: Six Mile Bottom.

  ‘I’ll have a six-mile bottom if I eat all that bread pudding,’ Annie giggled.

  ‘And I’ll have a ten-mile tum. Or, let’s see, a forty-acre arse.’

  ‘A hundred-metre middle, a fifty-foot front.’

  ‘You win. Sheesh, who made you such a clever clogs?’

  ‘Must have been Mum. She’s the smart one out of you two.’

  Dad feigned affront. ‘Right. No bread pudding for you, madam.’

  They stopped for a wee and a coffee at Newmarket, then cracked on. Dad couldn’t wait any longer. On went the first CD, starting with ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3’. Dad knew every word, every single stanza of nonsense and trivia. He’d even looked up Bonar Colleano, who turned out to be an American film star.

  Dad was as encyclopedic and obsessive about Seventies pub rock as he was about the Shipping Forecast. If only Dr Feelgood had recorded ‘Sailing By’ to a thumping, jackhammer beat, Dad would have been sorted for life.

  Annie knew what Dad would say next. She did a silent countdown from fifty but got no further than thirty-two before he trotted out his well-worn comment.

  ‘Proper, sweaty, eardrum-splitting music this, Anne. Not like your pimply 12-year-old Irish lads with their wishy-washy covers of other people’s songs.’

  ‘I told you. I’m Annie now. Anne was a schoolgirl but Annie’s going to uni. Got that?’

  ‘Loud and clear, Miss Lummox. Anyway, best live band ever, best gig ever. Southend Kursaal, 1975. I barged my way to the front row so I wouldn’t miss a thing. I was wearing this new white T-shirt and I got covered in beer. The Feelgoods had it all back then. I was gutted when Lee Brilleaux died of cancer, when was it, ’94? Only two years older than me. Put him up against your Boyzone boy and he’d have had him for breakfast. With extra bacon and a sausage.’

  Annie gazed out of the window, watching the Thetford Forest flash past. Dad had no major issues with Boyzone. He just liked to wind her up. But these days it didn’t work. She’d lost interest in the boyz, although she would always retain a deep affection for Steo. He’d come out a year earlier and she was pleased for him. What a relief, rather than living a lie. She’d never had any fantasies that they’d marry anyway. Not like her friend Kim, who still hoped she was in with a chance with Ronan.

  The traffic had been light and Dad’s road music suited fast-lane driving. They were in a car park on Norwich’s eastern ring road by ten and were early, really early.

  ‘All part of the plan,’ Dad said. ‘I thought we could do a bit of sightseeing first. Norwich Castle, maybe, or the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which is on campus.’

  Annie groaned. If in doubt, Dad always suggested something cultural and wholesome. He never said: ‘Hey, let’s find a funfair,’ or ‘Who’s up for crazy golf?’

  He picked up on her underwhelmed response. He could hardly miss it. He leant over to grab the AA British Road Atlas from the side pocket and put it on her lap.

  ‘Go on then, Annie-not-Anne. You come up with something we can do in less than two hours.’

  Annie located East Anglia on page 29 and scanned it for suitable destinations while Dad thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘In your own time, smart arse.’

  She traced her finger along the A47 until she hit Great Yarmouth.

&
nbsp; ‘Seriously?’ Dad groaned. ‘You’d prefer that to a nice bit of culture?’

  She ran her finger north, up the coastline, finding fantastic place names along the way . . . California? Scratby? Eccles on Sea? Happisburgh?

  ‘It’s Haisbro actually, not Happy’s Berg.’ Dad suddenly perked up. ‘Happisburgh lighthouse. It’s on my Shipping Forecast tea towel. Where sea area Humber meets sea area Thames, I do believe. Now you’re talking, An – I mean, Annie. You navigate, I’ll obey your every word.’

  He screeched out of the car park and they hurtled towards Happisburgh, with yet more thumping Feelgood as their soundtrack. Annie wished she’d brought her Boyzone CDs, just to piss him off.

  It was a lighthouse. Fairly old but just a lighthouse. Red-and-white striped like a Man U woolly hat. There was a sign saying it was open on occasional Sundays in the summer, but today was a Tuesday in March. So all they could do was walk round it a couple of times, then perch on a bench and eat their picnic.

  Dad gazed out to the horizon, happy as a happy berg. He loved it when his tea towel destinations came alive. He inhaled the seaweedy smell and waved his sandwich at the view. ‘Not bad, eh, An-An. Not flipping bad.’

  ‘Yup. Pretty good. Although I think Mum went a bit light on the Branston.’

  ‘Ha-ha-ruddy-ha! What I don’t get is that you want to study geography and yet our glorious British coastline leaves you cold.’

  ‘Only because you bang on about it all the time, Dad. North Utsire this, Rockall Hebrides that.’

  He chuckled. ‘Guilty as charged. Okay then, what will you do with a geography degree? Become a travel agent, an air hostess . . . a weather girl?’

  Annie shrugged. She didn’t know. She hoped university would make all that clear.

  ‘Derek’s youngest’s got a whizzy job with a City bank,’ he continued. ‘Even though she did English at uni, not economics. You tell me, what was the point in all that studying? Why did she do that?’