by Shari Low
I recognised that tone. It was the one that they used in the Godfather movies right before someone got whacked. Oh no, that wasn’t going to happen here. There could not be a bullet here with my name on it.
‘I’ve been thinking that . . .’ he continued.
Instinct kicked in. This wasn’t a time for fear or hesitation. Gary Collins was not going to tell me anything I didn’t want to hear. I had to fight this because a) he was nineteen b) he was the best-looking guy in the town (yes, I know I’m repeating myself again) and c) I realised that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t lying about how he felt about me. Maybe he did love me. Maybe this was it. The One. And if I let him go now over some stupid doubts and the instincts of a woman with questionable hair, I would never forgive myself. Noooo, I’d already had a bad day: I’d had a career choice foisted on me, I’d left home and I was living in a room so small that it necessitated sleeping in the foetal position. This guy was one of the few good things in my life and I damn well wasn’t going to let him go.
This called for tact, assertive action using the first weapons that came to hand.
And that is how, on a rainy night in Paisley, Gary Collins finally got to see my nipples.
As I prepared to say goodbye to my virginity in a bright green Mini Metro I realised that when something feels right then it usually is . . .
. . . except when it’s not.
Five
Lou
The St Kentigern Hotel, Glasgow. Friday night, 9pm.
‘Is my face burning? Is it? Oh my God, I’d forgotten about the car. For years after that I’d get a nervous twitch every time I saw a green Metro.’
If we weren’t in the middle of a very classy restaurant I’d have put my head on the table for a minute to recover. ‘I’m locking Cassie up until she’s eighteen. And banning her from speaking to any boy with access to a vehicle. Why didn’t you stop me? Why?’
‘I was too busy trying to work out how to get behind enemy lines to give Jason Walsh a piece of my mind for running out on me,’ Ginger said. ‘Did I ever tell you that I bumped into him at a concert a few years ago? Fat. Bald. Total cliché. Said he was on his third divorce and he should have stuck with me all along. I told him I was glad he hadn’t – that I’d gone on to bigger things. Emphasis on the “bigger”.’
An older couple a few tables away eyed us with blatant disapproval as our cackles interrupted their romantic ambiance.
I gave what I hoped was an apologetic smile and was rewarded with a furious glare from the woman.
‘Girls, I think we’d better keep it down. That lady is looking mighty displeased and she has a steak knife in her hand. Shall we move through to the bar?’
We asked for the bill to be charged to our room, left a tip and relocated to the very glamorous bar. Four young, impressively stylish guys in shiny, skinny-legged suits vacated a table at the window just as we arrived so we slid in and took their places.
‘Oh no,’ Lizzy groaned as she plopped herself down. ‘Do I just look like a floating head?’
We immediately grasped her point. Her gorgeous, chiffon tunic dress was exactly the same shade of soft purple as the high-backed chairs.
I thought again how glad I was that I’d come. If I was at home I’d just be thinking about it all. Wondering. Regretting. This was filling all that headspace with laughter and warmth.
The problems were still there and we all knew that but for now it was enough to cover them up with a shiny layer of nostalgia. Ginger and Lizzy had been around for every single important thing that had ever happened to me, from losing my virginity to leaving home . . . to . . .
‘Oh. My. God. Those girls are the same shade as my garden fence,’ the floating head whispered, her gaze resting somewhere behind me. ‘Don’t turn around,’ she hissed. ‘Do not turn around – they’re looking!’
So of course I turned around.
Three girls, must have been eighteen or nineteen, all of them in unfeasibly high heels, outrageously short skirts and fake-tanned complexions which sat somewhere between mahogany and dark oak on the wood stain chart. One of them caught my eye and glared, before her gaze went to Ginger and her expression completely changed. That always happened. There were consequences of being friends with someone as notorious as my large-haired friend.
‘Who do those three remind you of?’
An answer wasn’t required. The tans, the dresses, the shoes, the aura of being absolutely indestructibly young and fearless . . .
‘So which one is which then?’ the floating head asked, amused at the theory.
‘It’ll be easy to spot which one is a younger version of Lou,’ replied Ginger, a distinct note of teasing in her voice. ‘That’ll be whichever one buggers off first to meet her boyfriend.’
Six
Lou
1988 – Aged 18
‘Miss Cairney, if you’d like to follow me.’
Just by looking at the guy in front of me I could tell several things:
He was married (ring on finger).
His wife probably hadn’t spoken to him since the 70s (dated clothes, scary demeanour, cruel face and he hadn’t even looked at me or smiled).
He was evil. Pure evil. The kind of man who enjoyed inflicting pain on others (just a hunch).
And finally, this was about to be one of the most tortuous episodes of my life.
I did as he said, despite the fact that every single synapse in my brain (thank you Mrs. Tucker – those anatomy modules did leave some residual information) was screaming at me to run. Run like the wind. But I was wearing my favourite white high heels and I knew I’d never make it to the end of the street without a free pass to several weeks in traction.
I was trapped. Cornered. And I couldn’t do anything other than give in to his demands and hope I survived. He stopped suddenly, opened the door of a black car and stood there, waiting for me to climb in. I searched around frantically looking for an escape, heart beating out of my chest. I tried to calm myself down by picturing my favourite place of safety, an image I conjured up whenever I was feeling upset, or down or scared. Nope, it wouldn’t come. I wasn’t sitting in the corner of that American dance hall and Patrick Swayze wasn’t just about to come rescue me and make me do thrusting pelvic dance moves all the way up the centre aisle, culminating in a high jump into mid-air from which he would catch me.
Nobody was going to rescue Lou from this corner.
I slid into the seat and, hands shaking, resigned myself to my fate. As he climbed in next to me I could smell the evil coming from his breath. Or it might have been tuna.
‘So, Miss Cairney, shall we begin?’
‘Oh, my God! Oh my God! I cannot believe it!’ Lizzy screamed. ‘Here! Drink this then tell me exactly what happened.’
She handed me a Malibu and pineapple and grabbed a bottle of Grolsch for herself. It was more of a fashion choice than a particular liking for the beverage. As soon as she popped the top off the bottle, she bent over and threaded it through the top of her Reebok trainers. Matt and Luke Goss had started the trend and, as the head of the Scottish chapter of the Bros devotees club, Lizzy slavishly followed. This was despite the fact that only last week, one had come loose when she was taking her shoe off, she’d stood on it, punctured the sole of her foot and had to go to A&E for a tetanus injection.
‘Every detail!’ she demanded, her screech level ramping up by the minute. She’d inherited more than her mother’s jet-black hair and DD bosoms. I was just about to open my mouth when the door slammed and Ginger stormed in, all wild frizz and gob blazing.
‘I swear if I ever see another set of old lady feet again it’ll be too soon. Corns. Bunions. When I get to sixty, just shoot me. I swear I mean it. Just. Fucking. Shoot me. Because if the rest of the body is anything like the feet, then life will not be worth living.’
Neither Lizzy nor I chose to point out that since she was doing a Youth Training Scheme in a chiropodist’s practice, the chances of her encountering future foot deformi
ties were – like her hair – exceptionally high.
‘On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you?’ Lizzy asked her.
Ginger regarded her with open hostility. I had a feeling PMT was in play here, taking her usual agitated demeanour up a notch to downright irritation.
‘Lizzy,’ she sighed, ‘it’s Friday night. I want to be doing something glamorous, something that would top off a week of excitement and thrills, possibly spent in the company of a rock star. Instead, I’m knackered and contemplating going to bed early after a week working with old lady feet. I’m a one, Lizzy – the only thing that’ll push me up to a two is if you magic up a vodka and pineapple from somewhere.’
There was a pause as she slumped down on the one free chair in the room. Actually it was the only chair in the room. Lizzy and I were both on beanbags. When Ginger realised we were still sitting there with huge grins despite her rant, the perception skills of Cagney and Lacey kicked in and she eventually clocked that something was afoot. Pardon the pun.
‘What? What’s going on?’
‘Tell her!’ Lizzy prompted. ‘Tell her!’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘Sod it, I’ll tell her.’ Her impatience cut me dead. ‘Lou passed her driving test! Can you believe it?’
Ginger didn’t reply for a moment.
‘Did you hear me?’ Lizzy wailed.
I thought it best not to tell her that the passengers on overhead jets en route to nearby Glasgow airport could hear her. Ginger’s gorgeous face suddenly broke into a grin and she gestured in my direction. ‘Did you go dressed like that?’
Instinctively, I quickly glanced downwards. White spandex dress, highly clingy to my size 12/14 body, due to having been purchased for Ginger’s size 10 body. The below-the-knee hemline would have brought a bit of modesty to the ensemble if it wasn’t for the fact that my boobs were spilling out of the top. Three sunbeds that week had left my legs a deep shade of mahogany and the white stilettos completed the look.
I nodded.
‘Then I believe it,’ she said, her words topped with a resounding edge of pride. ‘Did he by any chance notice that you can’t actually drive?’
I screwed up my nose as I shook my head. ‘Not so much.’
Three identical hairstyles rocked backwards and forwards as we dissolved into laughter. The coiffures were my handiwork. After two years of training, with one afternoon a week at the local college, I’d finally been allowed near a pair of scissors. So far, I was concentrating on getting really good at the most popular hairstyle around. Cut over the ears at the side, the top feathered backwards with a little quiff pulled down at the front, the back cut in long layers and sprayed so that every strand was almost horizontal. Between the hair and the shoulder pads that we’d inserted in every jacket we owned (my favourite blazer now gave me a silhouette that was the approximate width of a sunlounger), getting in and out of confined spaces was a squeeze. Every week I was allowed to take one model into training night, so slowly but surely everyone I knew was being inflicted with the same haircut.
It looked fab on Lizzy, Ginger, her brother Red and Josie, but Mr. Patel was getting strange looks at his yoga classes down at the community centre.
‘The driving instructor looked like a serial killer but he didn’t take his eyes off my boobs the whole time. Not even when I mounted the pavement outside the fruit and veg shop in the High Street. The rest of it was perfect though. Except for the parking bit at the end, but I got it on the third try.’
‘Oh my God. Oh my God. This is so fantastic.’ Lizzy frequently repeated herself in times of excitement. ‘We have a flat, we have a car –’
‘Hold on!’ Ginger interrupted. ‘You passed your test this morning and already you have a car?’
I nodded, trying really, really hard not to seem too pleased with myself. ‘When I lived with Josie she insisted that I give her an extra five pounds every week to save for me. She said it was in case I ever needed a good lawyer. Anyway, when I told her I passed my test she gave it back to me so I bought Red’s car off him for two hundred and ninety pounds.’
‘That car is a wreck!’ Ginger was clearly unhappy with this development and, to be honest, I was a little put out that she was adding any kind of downer into the situation, especially since it involved her own brother. But I didn’t let her reaction bother me. I already loved my new Ford Cortina. Even if it was ancient, there was a hole in the passenger side floor, a strange smell coming from the boot and, if you pulled back the upholstery on the inside of the door, there was an Irn Bru bottle wedged inside to hold the window up.
‘I know. But those brand-new Jaguars are slightly out of my price range, so unless they’ll give me one for say, flashing my arse at the showroom, then I’ll have to make do with what I can afford. And besides, the Cortina has just passed its MOT and Red says it’s completely road worthy, so it’ll be fine.’
Lizzy butted in, completely disregarding the bickering, always eager to diffuse any confrontation. ‘So, as I was saying, we have a house, a car and it’s payday! Where are we going tonight, girls? I’m not working until ten o’clock so we’ve got hours yet.’ Lizzy was funding her way through college by working in a nightclub called Tijuana Junction in Glasgow. There was nothing Mexican about it. Nothing. If they wanted to call it something that truly evoked the atmosphere and qualities of the place, they’d have named it Dodgy Plumbing and Feet Stuck to the Carpet. But it was cheap to get in and always mobbed, thanks to the bouncers’ policy of admitting all female clients as long as they wore short skirts or revealed at least three inches of cleavage. We’d realised very early on in our socialising careers that this was a common theme with the door staff of licensed premises.
‘Come on, let’s go for it,’ Lizzy exclaimed in her usual state of overexcitement, suddenly reminding me that one of the customers in the salon had told me that coffee could make a person hyperactive. That couldn’t be right, could it? Otherwise, why would it be called Mellow Birds? But Lizzy did drink at least ten cups a day and had more nervous energy than anyone I’d ever met so maybe there was something to it.
I could see that Lizzy’s idea appealed to Ginger. She and I made eye contact and she got that look – the one that usually ended with us in trouble, lost or naked in public. OK, that was just the once and, to be fair, she didn’t know those French exchange students would nick our clothes while we were swimming nude in Loch Lomond.
‘I say we head up to Glasgow, go to a couple of bars. I’ve got twenty quid – that’ll get us a few cocktails in the West End,’ she said.
I wanted to. I really did. There was nothing that I loved more than going out on the town with Lizzy and Ginger. We’d been living together for a year now and apart from the occasional minor disagreement about clothes, make-up and the artistic integrity of Terence Trent D’Arby, apart from the slight compromise of privacy because we all shared one huge bedroom and apart from the drilling noises that came from Lizzy’s uncle’s dentist surgery down below (he owned the flat and had agreed to rent it to us for minimum rent because it breached just about every safety regulation and was therefore unfit to rent out on the open market), I was loving every minute of it.
There were only five rules that governed our existence:
No men allowed, except in event of communal parties, in which case, the more the better.
Friday night was Girl’s Night Out.
Sunday nights were ‘clean up and tidy’ sessions. Unless there was a decent happy hour on somewhere in which case any efforts to ‘clean and tidy’ were deferred until the next available Sunday. I think we’d actually managed to get the Jif out twice in the last six months.
All bills were split three ways. Unless someone was skint in which case the others chipped in the deficit.
No Phil Collins music. That one was Ginger’s. She claimed she suffered from a rare psychotic condition whereby ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’ invoked homicidal tendencies. We were too scared to put it to the test.
I
pondered the offer. I did want to go up to town in my new, not so shiny Cortina. I did. I wanted to drive down busy streets with the windows down and let Lizzy stick her head out of the sun roof and whistle at cute guys. But there was something else I wanted to do even more.
‘I . . . I . . . can’t. I have to go pick up Charlie at the airport.’
Charlie. My boyfriend of one month, three weeks and two days. I’m too embarrassed to give it in hours and minutes but I do actually know. Oh OK – one month, three weeks, two days, four hours and thirty-six minutes. We met when he came into the salon one Saturday afternoon and we were so busy that I was the only one available to cut his hair. I expected him to say no when I revealed that he would be only my third paid client and the other two were a five-year-old and Mrs. Conchenta’s red setter, but strangely he agreed. I won’t tell you what his hair looks like but let’s just say that from the back it’s difficult to tell the difference between him, Lizzy and Mr. Patel.
He’d asked me out that night and we’d been together ever since. It was fate. We’d just clicked straight away and I knew, just knew, that he was special. I was about to launch into full-scale daydream when I realised that the temperature in the room had dropped and Ginger and Lizzy were staring at me with shocked expressions.
‘But . . . it’s Friday night!’
‘I know, I’m sorry! But he’s flying into Prestwick Airport tonight at nine o’clock.’
Which was three hours, fourteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds from now.
Right up until the last minute, I’d prayed that he’d manage to get out of the fortnight at his aunt’s house in New Jersey, but he’d explained that his mum had her heart set on seeing her sister for the first time in thirty years and he couldn’t let her down. That was the kind of guy that Charlie was – loyal, dependable, reliable. And the fact that he looked a bit like Rick Astley was a bonus too.
