Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  ‘So where are the boys?’

  ‘At the bar,’ replied Laura. ‘Although they seem to be taking forever about it.’

  I looked at Vicky. ‘And still no word of Paul and Hannah?’

  Vicky shook her head. ‘Not yet but I’m sure they’ll be here soon.’

  I think it must have been obvious that I couldn’t work out whether I was relieved or not because Laura reached across the table and touched my hand. ‘What do you want to drink, babe?’

  ‘I’m fine for the minute,’ I replied. ‘Maybe a bit later.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Getting drinks is what boys do best.’ Laura pulled out her mobile and dialled. ‘Coop, it’s me. Melissa’s here now, can you get her a drink?’

  Cooper and Chris, waiting patiently to be served at the bar, smiled and waved at us.

  ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘I’ll have a Becks if that’s all right?’

  Laura rolled her eyes as though my politeness was trying her patience. ‘Melissa wants a bottle of Becks and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps and be quick about it!’

  I poked her in the elbow with my finger. ‘You tell him right now that I don’t want any crisps . . . least of all prawn cocktail.’

  ‘You might not . . . but I certainly do. I’m starving.’

  Vicky looked perplexed. ‘I thought you were on that Courtney Cox diet? Are prawn cocktail crisps part of the menu?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ grinned Laura. ‘The diet starts tomorrow.’

  Laura and I had been friends for as long as she had been going out with Cooper, which give or take a few months was about six years. Cooper had met her when he’d first moved to Manchester after splitting up with his girlfriend. I hadn’t been too sure about Laura at first; she seemed much more of a boys’ girl than a girls’ girl, thriving on any male attention that was available. And although she’d probably be the first to admit that this was true, she was also a lot of other things besides and it was these that made me warm to her over time. For starters, she could be really funny when she wanted to be which I consider a good sign; beautiful people like Laura rarely bother cultivating a sense of humour. She was also burdened with more than her fair share of insecurities (she hated her nose, was a borderline bulimic through her teenage years and constantly put herself down for not being smart enough). And so once I discovered her human side, I found it much easier to like her and, with the minimum of adjustment, space was made to include Laura in the tight bond that existed between Vicky and me.

  While we waited for our drinks we exchanged stories about our various days.

  ‘Well, my highlight,’ Vicky began, ‘was watching Chris trying to teach William how to fly the kite we got for him for Christmas. It would’ve been hilarious if it hadn’t been so cold. Chris was running around like a demon trying to get the thing in the air and William kept asking if it was time to go home because he was freezing to death.’

  ‘Well, given that I only got out of bed about four hours ago,’ began Laura, ‘I’m guessing this is probably the highlight of my day.’

  Vicky could hardly believe it. ‘Four hours ago?’

  Laura nodded sheepishly. ‘I went out with a few of my old work friends from Albright High last night and it turned into a bit of a late one. I didn’t get in until three.’

  ‘How about you, Mel?’ asked Vicky. ‘What have you been up to today?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ I sighed, ‘I read about ten pages of that Monica Ali book that you lent me, watched a double episode of Deal or No Deal and finished off the entire top layer of the selection of chocolate biscuits that my evil stick-thin sister Mia gave me for Christmas. Not exactly the most fruitful of days but I’m not complaining.’

  Vicky laughed. ‘I’d kill to spend the afternoon watching Noel Edmunds and eating biscuits.’

  ‘You’re welcome to my life any time you want it. Really, just say the word and it’s yours. You have my life and I’ll move into yours and raise William as my own.’

  ‘You do realise you’ll have to sleep with Chris, then, don’t you?’

  I pulled a face and replied: ‘Ours would be a chaste marriage.’

  ‘So anyway,’ said Laura grinning, ‘moving on from that distasteful picture, how are we all feeling in general about the year ahead? Optimistic?’

  ‘As you all know,’ I began, ‘I hate New Year’s Eve and thinking about the future, so it would be fair to say that I’m pretty pessimistic about it all.’

  Vicky disagreed. ‘I love the idea of being handed a clean slate every year and setting myself a whole new set of goals.’

  ‘There speaks Wonder Woman,’ I replied. ‘So what’s your goal for this New Year then, Vick? Something involving those cookbooks of yours. Maybe it’s time you finally applied to appear on Ready Steady Cook. You’d be ace on that.’

  ‘Cheeky cow! No Ready Steady Cook for me.’

  ‘Well then, you should have another baby,’ suggested Laura. ‘You and Chris make great babies, it’s a proven fact. William is quite possibly my favourite human being on the entire planet.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re not his.’ Vicky gave me a wink. ‘Before we came out tonight it was Auntie Mel this and Auntie Mel that. I think he’s got a massive crush on you, Mel.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I replied. ‘What is he, four? I’m more than willing to hang on another twenty-six years for the right one.’

  ‘That is so wrong on about a million different levels,’ groaned Vicky.

  ‘So, are you going to have another baby then?’ Laura was probing.

  Vicky shook her head. ‘I’ve only ever wanted one.’

  ‘Looks like you and Cooper will have to take up the slack then,’ I said to Laura.

  ‘Cooper would have kids at the drop of a hat if I let him,’ she said despairingly. ‘Your William’s such a walking advert for procreation that I’ve lost count of the times Coop’s dropped subtle-as-a-brick hints like, “How great would it be to have one of those around the house?” and I’m like, “Are you insane? I can barely look after myself let alone another human being.”’

  ‘So you don’t ever want kids then?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘There’s too much I haven’t done for me to even think about any of that. In fact if there’s one resolution I do want to make this year, it’s to go travelling. I want to see a bit more of the world. I want to spend time in a place where it isn’t always raining. I want to live a little. Do you know what I mean?’

  I nodded. ‘You and Cooper should definitely do it. Grown-up gap years are all the rage for the discerning thirty-something.’

  ‘Tell that to my boyfriend. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s making us save up a stupid deposit for a stupid house I’d do it in a heartbeat.’

  Vicky sighed. ‘You know you really shouldn’t give him such a hard time. Cooper’s just doing what Cooper does. He wants the best for you both.’

  Laura shrugged and fingered the label of the beer bottle in front of her. ‘I don’t know, maybe he does. But why does he have to be so boring about it?’

  ‘Look.’ Vicky tried to lift the mood around the table. ‘Let’s not get depressed. It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re all together so let’s just enjoy ourselves.’

  Chris

  It was just after nine by the time we left the Old Grey and made our way to Sharon and Ed’s. On the way I tried Paul’s mobile a couple of times but kept getting his voicemail. This was one hundred per cent typical of Paul. He never returned people’s calls if he could help it and when you had a go at him he’d just look at you as if you were acting like some kind of girl making a big deal out of nothing and say: ‘I’d let you know if I wasn’t coming, wouldn’t I?’

  Whilst hitting redial I thought about how long Paul and I had been friends. We first met through mates of mates one summer night outside The Black Horse in the days before they knocked down Shambles Square and moved it over the road. I was in the second year of my law degree and I’d just finished my exams – a
whole bunch of us had been sitting drinking on the benches outside the pub since late afternoon. Heading up to the bar to get a round in I’d ended up standing next to Paul. We were both quite drunk by this point in the evening and out of nowhere Paul turned round and told me a joke about a nun and a polar bear that was so ridiculously puerile that even thinking about it now can still put a smile on my face.

  We got chatting and he told me a bit about himself. He was in the second year of a Social Studies degree at MMU and though he’d been born in Stockport he had moved around the country quite a bit with his parents before ending up back where he started at the age of fifteen. That was pretty much it for biography because after that all we talked about was football and motor-racing before the conversation as a whole disintegrated into the typical mix of music and films, clothes and trainers, in fact all the usual stuff employed by certain types of men to separate the wheat from the chaff.

  Despite us both proving our credentials with talk of obscure Italian horror films, the back catalogue of the Stones and several shared sitcom favourites, we didn’t have a great deal to do with each other after that night-out, apart from the odd nod of the head or short conversation whenever we bumped into each other (usually either coming in or out of Piccadilly Records). It wasn’t anything personal. I doubt that either of us gave it any consideration at all, but if we had it would have been something along the lines of if we were meant to be friends then it would happen whether or not we did anything about it.

  A few months later, on an unseasonably mild afternoon at the beginning of our final term we once again found ourselves sitting outside The Black Horse with the same group of mutual friends. But this time by the end of the night we ended up making plans to go for a drink, and go and see bands together, and somehow we both followed through with these haphazard arrangements and gradually became the best of friends.

  I tried his number one last time. It still switched to his voicemail. Giving up, I returned my phone to my pocket and caught up with the others.

  Melissa

  There were already quite a few people lingering outside Ed and Sharon’s tiny terraced house by the time we arrived. Some had just arrived and were congregating by the door saying hello to each other, while others were enjoying the first of many ‘last’ cigarettes before they resolved, once again, to give up for ever at midnight – something I could appreciate as an ex-smoker myself. I recognised two of the smokers outside as Fräser and Helen, who I’d first met when Vicky and I moved into a shared house with them in our early twenties. The boys claimed it was too cold to stand outside talking so they headed straight indoors taking Vicky and Laura with them. As I hadn’t seen Fräser and Helen since they went travelling over a year and half ago, I told the others I’d see them inside and stood chatting for a while. I was dying to hear their travelling stories and although they were a bit self-conscious at first, wary of coming across like those irritating people who constantly evangelise about the wonders of seeing the world they relaxed when I assured them I was genuinely pleased that they appeared to have had such a great time. They seemed so much happier with their lives in general and with each other specifically that it made me hopeful about my own future too.

  Leaving Fräser and Helen finishing their cigarettes I entered the house. The hallway was crammed wall to wall with party-goers who – even though I didn’t know most of them – all appeared to be the same vintage as me which was reassuring: at least if I got drunk and ended up dancing I would feel my peers’ sympathy rather than their embarrassment.

  In my search for Vicky and the others, I ended up bumping into an inordinate number of people that I hadn’t seen in ages and it made me think about a newspaper survey I once read that said each person in the UK on average knows at least one hundred and twenty people. I remember thinking at the time how a hundred and twenty people seemed like a lot, but standing here at this party, suddenly it didn’t seem like such an outrageous figure after all. Some were friends, some were friends of friends of friends, but I knew that if I started a conversation with any of them within minutes we’d discover that we had people or places in common. I’m guessing in university towns and cities from Edinburgh to Southampton and from Cambridge to Cardiff there were pockets of people like us – refugees who’d arrived with the intention of finishing off our education but never found the wherewithal to make it back home again.

  I eventually found Vicky and Laura but, conscious of the fact that I hadn’t got a drink in my hands and that my plan for the evening was to drink myself silly, I made an excuse about needing a drink of water, and headed for the kitchen.

  Ed and Sharon’s kitchen, was, like the rest of the house, packed with people but I eventually spotted all the booze lined up on the kitchen counter next to the sink. I’d asked Vicky to give Sharon and Ed my contribution – a bottle of Sancerre that had cost me nearly a tenner – when we first arrived and I was dying to try it. Scanning the various bottles and cans in search of it I eventually found it, minus its cork and empty, poking out of a green recycling box on the floor. Resigning myself to the situation I selected a sophisticated-looking oak-aged Chardonnay with a posh label to open as remuneration, even though there was already an open bottle of Sainsbury’s own-label Chardonnay right in front of me.

  Cringing at how I was letting myself down by three-quarter filling a plastic pint glass with wine (I couldn’t find any others) that to make matters worse I had no proper claim on, a male voice from behind me said: ‘All right, fella, what are you looking so guilty about?’

  I spun round almost spilling the wine all over me only to find Chris and Cooper standing behind me grinning like idiots. ‘Okay, okay,’ I replied. ‘You caught me in the act. Someone drank the whole of that bottle of wine I brought with me. I didn’t even get a sip.’

  ‘So now you’re wreaking your revenge by searching out the most expensive bottle you can find and chucking the lot into a pint glass?’ Chris laughed. ‘What are you? Some kind of student waster?’

  ‘You’re such a git to me sometimes.’

  Chris put his arm around me. ‘You know I only do it because I love you.’

  Chris and Cooper were more like older brothers than friends. The pair of them often teased me mercilessly (their jokes focusing mainly on the notion they had that I was a bit flaky, lacked ambition and was hopeless with men) but the flipside of this kind of abuse is that as their honorary ‘little sister’ it was their duty to protect me. Over the years that I’d known them both I’d lost count of the times that one or the other had walked me home in the rain, picked me up from the airport, put up shelves in my bedroom, even sorted out dodgy guys in bars giving me hassle.

  Obviously I’d known Chris longer than Cooper. In fact it was hard to believe that Chris had ever existed apart from the unit I’d come to know and love as ‘Chris and Vicky’. In many ways he was the complete opposite of Paul. Whereas life with Paul was like being on a rollercoaster with highs that thrilled every nerve ending and lows that took you to the depths of despair, Chris was a lot more even and steady. You always knew exactly where you stood with him and how he would react in any given situation. He just seemed to give off this aura of authority, so much so that whenever any of us had a ‘real world’ problem, like when I was being hassled by a debt-collection agency over an unpaid mobile phone bill a few years ago, I didn’t take my problem to Paul, or Cooper, I took it straight to Chris, and he sorted the whole thing out with a few phone calls.

  Chris picked up a bottle of champagne from behind my back and held it aloft. ‘Still,’ he said giving me a wink, ‘if you’re going to do this revenge thing at all, at least do it properly.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ I said, outraged as Chris pulled off the foil and began attacking the twisty metal surrounding the cork. ‘What if Ed and Sharon are saving it for midnight?’

  ‘It’s okay, Mel,’ Cooper chipped in. ‘No need to get your knickers all bunched up, mate. Laura and I brought it with us. We’ve had it sitting in
our fridge for ages. Me and Laura don’t really like the stuff so we brought it along tonight, but you can consider it your belated Christmas present if you like.’

  Before I could protest Chris popped the cork. Everyone in the kitchen looked at us with disdain as though we were acting like a bunch of yobs, which I suppose in a way we were.

  Chris took a swig from the bottle and then handed it to me. ‘Happy New Year, Mel.’

  ‘I really shouldn’t be doing this,’ I said taking the bottle from his hand. ‘You two are always leading me into bad ways.’

  ‘Us? Never.’

  I took a swig. ‘So, are either of you going to make any New Year’s resolutions?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘Don’t believe in them. I mean, what’s the point?’

  ‘They’re only supposed to be a bit of fun.’

  Chris didn’t look convinced. ‘Okay, so what’s yours?’

  ‘I’ve got a list as long as my arm . . . I’m taking up jogging . . . I’m going to start cycling into uni . . . I’m going to cut down on takeaways . . . and read more books . . . watch less TV . . . and . . . do you want me to carry on?’

  Chris did a mock cringe. ‘Please don’t.’

  I turned to Cooper. ‘What about you? Unlike your useless brother here you must have a few.’

  ‘No resolutions as such, just some plans.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘To buy a house. I’m sick of renting. It’s money down the drain. Laura and I should have enough saved for a deposit by the middle of the year as long as house prices don’t carry on going through the roof.’

  I thought about Laura’s comments back at the Old Oak about wanting to go travelling and sensed trouble on the horizon but said nothing.