Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  We got our coats and went to find Charlotte and Cameron to say our goodbyes. I told Charlotte that I would ring her later in the week to arrange a venue for me, Melissa and Laura to meet her for lunch the following weekend. Cameron suggested to Chris and Cooper that if we girls were meeting up for ‘one of those lunches that go on until just after midnight’ all the boys should meet up for a big night out as compensation. Cooper agreed straight away, jokingly telling Cameron that they should all pay a visit to a new lap-dancing club that had recently opened up in town. Cameron roared that he was definitely up for something like that but Chris barely reacted, and when pushed by Cooper to sign up for their boys’ night out would only say that he would have to see how things were nearer the time.

  Chris stayed quiet in the car all the way home. He was so lost in his thoughts that as we approached a pedestrian crossing he drove right through, much to the ire of a group of students who had been about to cross. They all managed to get out of the way but one hurled the bag of chips in his hand at the car as it passed by.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I yelled. ‘You could’ve killed someone.’

  Chris said nothing.

  ‘Look, are you okay, Chris? Do you want me to drive? You haven’t seemed right all night.’

  ‘I’m fine. Just leave me alone, okay?’

  ‘No, it’s not okay,’ I replied. ‘If you want to be left alone, you’re out of luck because I’m not going anywhere.’

  Chris slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

  ‘What are you doing? We’re only a few minutes from home.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Talk to me, sweetheart. What’s the matter? You haven’t been right since we left the party.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said but I could see that his hands were shaking.

  ‘Look, you’re not fine at all. Just tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on, okay?’ He closed his eyes and began rocking backwards and forwards, then without warning let out a groan from somewhere deep inside his chest. His hands clenched, he rained blow after blow down on the steering wheel in front of him until, exhausted, he finally broke down in tears.

  Melissa

  Paul and I stood in silence, staring at the pavement, the road, the trees and the cars around us – anything but each other. A group of lads were chatting at the bus stop about the night out in front of them.

  Paul lifted his head and looked at me. ‘You must be freezing.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I said I’m fine.’

  Paul took off his coat and put it around my shoulders. I hadn’t even realised that I was cold until I felt the weight of his coat warm with the heat of his body. For a few moments I felt comforted, as though he had put his arms around me and was holding me close. But when he tried to do just that a few moments later I flinched away from him the second his hand touched my shoulder.

  Paul looked hurt but I didn’t care.

  ‘Did you cheat on me again?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t. You don’t really believe that, do you? You must know I’d never do that to you again.’

  ‘So how many weeks gone is she?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Paul. ‘It wasn’t that kind of conversation.’

  ‘And . . . and you’re sure?’

  ‘That I didn’t cheat on you? That it’s mine? Or that she’s telling the truth?’

  ‘All of the above.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘I didn’t cheat on you, Mel, I promise. And as for the other questions I wish I had some reason to doubt her in either scenario but I haven’t.’

  So there it was. The last possible escape route closed off. I looked at my watch. ‘Everybody will be wondering where we are.’

  ‘Do you want to go back to the party?’

  I shook my head and finally let out all the tears I’d been holding back.

  ‘Why did this have to happen now? We were going to be so happy. We were going to make everything right.’

  ‘We still can be happy,’ said Paul, putting his arms around me. ‘We can still make everything right.’

  I shook my head. ‘How long has she known?’

  ‘She took the test just after New Year.’

  ‘So why didn’t she tell you earlier?’

  ‘She said she needed time to sort her head out.’

  ‘So what does she want from you now?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Like I said, it wasn’t that kind of conversation.’

  ‘So you’ll be seeing her again to clear up the details?’

  ‘I’ll have to . . . you understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Is she going to keep it?’

  Paul said nothing.

  I repeated the question. ‘I said, is she going to keep it?’

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ he replied.

  I felt as though I was going to be sick. Everything was becoming too real. Too intense. I wanted the emotions boiling up inside my chest to go away. I wanted to be back in control of my life and all the things I was feeling. I closed my eyes, momentarily blocking out the world.

  ‘So what does she want from you? You’re not hers any more. You’re mine. Why is she involving you in all this? Does she want you back?’

  ‘This is a mess,’ he said quietly. ‘I know it is. I screwed up. But we’ll sort it out, I promise. We’ll be fine.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ I replied. ‘We won’t be fine. We won’t be fine at all. You’ve been telling me for the longest time how you’re ready to settle down. Ready to grow up and be more responsible. This could be just what you need. A fresh start. A new beginning . . .’ I could barely get the word out, ‘. . . a baby.’

  ‘You’re my fresh start, Mel. You’re my new beginning. I don’t want her. I want you. You are all that matters. Just you and no one else.’

  I wanted to believe Paul. I wanted to believe him so much that the desire to be proved wrong was like a burning ache in my chest.

  ‘I love you,’ said Paul.

  ‘But that’s not enough any more.’ I broke away from his embrace. ‘What do you think she’ll do if you don’t go back to her?’

  Paul shrugged, the hopelessness of the situation apparent in the dullness of his eyes.

  ‘It’s out of my hands,’ he said.

  I exploded in anger. ‘How dare you say that! How dare you! It’s not out of your fucking hands. It’s not out of your hands at all!’

  The students at the bus stop were looking at the two of us with embarrassed amusement. I struggled to catch my breath through my tears. ‘She won’t have the baby if you don’t go back to her. She won’t go through with the pregnancy. She’ll get rid of it if she thinks you’re never coming back. She’ll get rid of it because she’ll think she has no choice.’

  Paul cut me short, his eyes flashing with indignation. ‘You don’t know that for sure. How could you? No one knows what’s going through Hannah’s head right now apart from Hannah herself.’

  I looked down at the ground: it seemed the safest place for my eyes to rest. ‘But that’s just it. I know exactly what she’s going through because I’ve been there too.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Paul. I could see a car crash of questions piling up in his head, one after the other hitting the inside of his skull at maximum velocity. ‘What is it you’re trying to say? I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ I replied. ‘And I don’t expect you ever will.’

  Then I turned round and walked away.

  Three Months Later

  Cath and Simon’s Fancy-Dress Party

  April 2006

  Cooper

  It was just after six on the Saturday of Cath and Simon’s party when I finally arrived home shattered after having spent the afternoon trudging round jewellery shops on Kingly Street trying to find the perfect engagement ring in order to propose to Laura on her birthday at the end of the month.

>   I was about to head straight upstairs and hide the box when Laura called from the living room.

  ‘Coop? Is that you, babe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The internet has gone off again. Can you fix it for me?’

  Stuffing the engagement ring deeper inside the pocket of my leather jacket I made my way to the living room to find Laura sitting at the dining-room table with her laptop in front of her. She stretched her arms out towards me for a kiss. ‘Hey, you. Did you get anything good?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ I replied as I squeezed her tightly and kissed her on the lips. ‘So you’ve killed the internet connection again?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t touch it.’

  Leaning over her shoulders I studied the screen for a moment before solving the whole problem with three clicks of the mouse.

  Laura laughed. ‘I was just about to do that.’

  ‘Bet you were,’ I replied noticing what was on the screen: one of those last-minute-holiday-type booking websites. ‘What were you looking at anyway? Holiday porn?’ I sighed and rubbed her shoulders affectionately. ‘I don’t know why you do this to yourself when you know we can’t afford it.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ replied Laura. ‘There are lots of deals on here and we’ve got loads saved up already. There’s stuff on here that’s dirt cheap. We could be somewhere better than this dump by next week if you let me make a booking.’

  ‘We’ve been here before, babe,’ I replied, willing the conversation to end as soon as possible. ‘The money we’ve saved isn’t there for a weekend at a posh hotel, or a new car, or even some cut-price holiday in the sun. It’s for a house. A house for me and you. And I don’t understand why you don’t get it. House prices round here are going through the roof. And if we don’t buy soon then we’ll never get a place of our own.’

  Laura stood up from the table abruptly and walked over to the bay window. She stood glowering out into the dark street. ‘And would that really be so bad?’

  ‘So you’re saying you want to rent forever?’

  ‘It has its plus points.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Well, for starters not having to save up for deposits that only half of us are interested in.’

  ‘Right, so it’s just me that wants to stop messing around and put down some proper roots?’ I sat down on the sofa and tried my best to stay calm. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting from the evening at all. I’d just spent a month’s wages on a engagement ring. I was planning to ask Laura to marry me. All I wanted to do was sort out some kind of a future for the two of us and she was making me out to be the bad guy.

  I looked up at her. ‘So you’re telling me you’d rather trade sorting out our future for a week’s holiday that’ll be nothing but memories the minute we land back at the airport?’

  There was a long pause and I sensed that she was about to drop some kind of bombshell. ‘Well . . . if we’re putting all our cards on the table then the truth is I was actually thinking a little longer than a week.’

  ‘What? Like a fortnight?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was actually thinking more like a year. Come travelling. Coop! You’ve never been. You’ll love it. We could have the best time. We could go anywhere you wanted: Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan . . . you name it.’

  ‘I think we’re a bit long in the tooth to be taking a gap year.’

  ‘People our age do it all the time.’

  ‘Do they now?’ I hated sounding like I was Laura’s dad but I also hated listening to her banging on like a spoilt teenager. In the last year she had given up a well-paid job as a biology teacher at a rough comprehensive school in Preston citing ‘unrealistic levels of stress’ in order to teach yoga. But then she needed to undertake a week’s crash course in how to teach yoga – a course that cost me, not her – the best part of five hundred quid. And since then she had managed to pick up the sum total of three yoga classes a week each paying the princely sum of forty pounds a session.

  I needed to calm things down a little. ‘So what brought all this on?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while. But I only really made up my mind on New Year’s Eve.’ She smiled softly. ‘Look, I’m not saying we have to go straight away.’

  ‘But a year?’ I replied. ‘You want to go for a year?’

  ‘Anything less wouldn’t be worth it.’

  ‘But why a year? I’d have to give up my job and everything. I mean, are you serious about this? This isn’t just some sort of whim?’

  ‘You mean like all my other flighty plans?’

  I didn’t rise to the bait. ‘All I’m asking is are you sure?’

  Laura nodded. ‘I’ve checked the prices for the tickets we’ll need and we’ve got more than enough money saved to buy them and cover spending money for a whole year. Look, it will be one last blast of freedom and then we’ll come back to England and put down roots as deep as you like wherever you like.’

  ‘But my job . . . I can’t . . .’ my voice trailed off. ‘I’m not like you. I can’t make snap decisions just like that.’

  ‘And you don’t have to. All I’m asking is that you think about it. Seriously think about it. We’ve got the rest of our lives to settle down. But right now I feel like this is our last chance. Our last chance to do something fun.’

  Melissa

  Lying in bed watching mindless early evening TV on the portable that lived on top of my dresser I was thinking to myself how I was probably due yet another call from Vicky when my mobile rang. I looked at the screen and raised a small smile when I saw that it was indeed Vicky calling.

  ‘Are you dressed yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because nothing’s changed since our last conversation half an hour ago, or the one we had half an hour before that or the one half an hour before that.’

  Vicky laughed. ‘But aren’t you sick of me calling you like this? I know I would be. I know for a fact that I can be really, really annoying when I want to be. Chris tells me I am all the time.’

  ‘Look, Vicks, I know you’re trying to be nice and everything but I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t want to go out tonight and even if I did feel like going out, a fancy-dress party would so not be my thing right now.’

  ‘But it’s Cath and Simon’s birthday party. Cath loves you. She specifically called me this afternoon to make sure that I brought you along.’

  ‘But I’ve given you a card and a present to give to her – what more does she want?’

  ‘You, to come out tonight, instead of festering in that bedroom of yours like you have been all these weeks. I bet you’re even tucked up in bed right now watching one of those ridiculous celebrity talent shows that are always on.’

  I picked up the remote and switched off the TV.

  ‘Look, none of this matters as I don’t actually want to come out. Why can’t you just let me be?’

  ‘Because I don’t understand why you’re still letting him rule your life like this. You aren’t coming tonight because you don’t fancy it, you’re not coming because you think that Paul’s going to be there. And it’s not like I blame you because it must be awkward. But things are always going to be like this when the two of you have so many friends in common. So what are you going to do to escape them? Move back to Swindon? Cath and Simon are your friends as well as Paul’s. He doesn’t own them so I don’t see why you’re handing them over to him on a plate.’ Vicky sighed as though coming to the end of her argument. ‘Come out, Mel. You know it’ll be a laugh. I’ll personally make sure that they play Abba: Gold from beginning to end so that we can dance all night if you’ll say you’ll come. Think about it. When was the last time we all went dancing?’

  ‘I’d love to, babe, I really would, but I just don’t feel up to it.’

  ‘But you’ve done nothing wrong, Mel,’ pleaded Vicky. ‘It should be Paul avoiding you, not the other way round. It was his mistake, not yours.’
>
  ‘But that’s not really fair, is it?’

  ‘I’m not trying to be fair. I’m trying to be a friend. And if Paul really was trying to be a friend to you he wouldn’t come tonight anyway.’

  ‘But that’s not what I want either. You, Laura, Cooper and Chris are his friends as well as mine and he’s not been in contact with any of you since it all happened. And I don’t want him to feel like he’s alone in all this. That’s not what I want at all.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I sighed. ‘And that’s why I think it’s probably best if I don’t come tonight. If I see him I don’t know what I’ll do or say so I think it would be best for all of us if I stayed away.’

  Chris

  It was just before seven and Vicky and I were in our bathroom getting ready to go to the party. William was in bed, Vicky’s mum was downstairs watching TV and we were both standing at the sink brushing our teeth when out of the blue, her mouth full of toothpaste, Vicky said to me, ‘I love this, you know.’

  I spat my toothpaste into the sink. ‘You love what exactly?’

  Vicky spat her toothpaste into the sink, rinsed her mouth and then dried her face on the hand towel behind her.

  ‘You’ll think I’m stupid.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Vicky grinned shyly. ‘We were just brushing our teeth in time with each other.’

  ‘Were we?’

  ‘It was just a nice moment, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re easily pleased tonight.’ I glanced in the mirror at the freshly shaven skin on my chin. I looked old. I barely recognised this haggard-looking version of myself. ‘What’s brought this on?’

  ‘Nothing really . . . It’s just . . . you know . . . having someone brushing their teeth in unison with you . . . it’s nice. And I’m just glad I’m me and that I’ve got you and William, that’s all.’ She paused again and looked up to see if I was following her argument. ‘Does that make any sense?’

  Yeah,’ I replied. ‘It does.’