‘Great night eh? Just like old times. First time I’ve been out in ages too, although I’m kind of trading on past glories. What do you think of my new friend?’
‘She seems…’ Will searched for a word other than plain, as he didn’t want to say that, although he wasn’t sure exactly why at that point. His scrambled brain churned like a slush puppy machine. He eventually said, ‘Keen.’
‘Surely a good thing!’ Aiden replied. ‘She said she actually fancied you for ages at school but you called her Leslie for five years. Apparently she was waiting for you to realise and apologise and then she was going to ask you out, but you never did. Then you started seeing Sara her friend and that was it!’
Will tried to absorb that piece of information which he suspected cast his character in a rather poor light and took another toke. He then watched as a hot rock rolled out of the end of the joint and landed on his new white shirt. Despite it being expensive and brand new and him being in an uncomfortable position on the world’s most unforgiving sofa, he didn’t feel able to move.
Where had they found this couch he thought distractedly as he watched it sizzling. If his parents had just lined up a row of assorted cacti and they had thrust their derrieres straight on them it wouldn’t have been much more disagreeable. Or maybe that was the point; to prevent anyone from having any pleasure in the vicinity of their television.
Carl and Deidre came back with another rolled joint and she began to give Carl a blow back of frightening intensity. Will laughed out loud, secretly hoping that Carl’s ability to process dope was vastly superior to his prowess with alcohol. As they ran off upstairs again like a couple of four year olds at a kid’s party, Will looked at Aiden to see if he looked hungrier than him. He did. He always did.
‘Best you get in the kitchen and start bringing the food in,’ he ordered in a jokey manner. He imagined trays of heaped nachos dripping with cheese and freshly cooked steaming garlic bread.
He realised a bit later that he had closed his eyes and was drooling, several minutes or several hours could have passed by. Opening his eyes he saw that Aiden still hadn’t moved, so suspecting the former he nudged Aiden’s foot with his trainer. Aiden suddenly said, as though he had been considering a particularly expensive watch purchase, ‘I can’t imagine Carl’s parents having a house full of E numbers, or meat for that matter,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should just ring for a pizza?’
‘Great idea genius,’ Will deadpanned as he looked at his watch. ‘I suspect even Mr Domino is hanging his stocking up at midnight on Christmas Eve.’
Aiden let out a bark of laughter or a grunt of annoyance as he dragged his weight up, like Frankenstein getting out of his chair. Groggy and stiff, he hobbled into the kitchen.
Through the smoky haze, Will saw the door to the stairs open and Carl scamper round the sofa in a Harry Potter cape and just his boxers, with a squealing Deidre chasing after him waving either a wand or possibly a ruler, shouting out ‘You are a bad wizard’ to which Carl squealed ‘I’m a good wizard’. At least Will thought that was what was happening, he could have imagined the whole thing, but he didn’t mind. He felt as though he was sinking into an enormous warm fluffy white cloud on its way to heaven. Hopefully there would be a McDonald’s at the gates, Saint Peter encouraging him to supersize his meal and then winking at him whilst slipping some free chicken nuggets into his takeaway bag.
‘What’s hummus?’ Aiden popped his head out the kitchen and shouted.
Will groaned and as Sara and Lisa came in took one last drag on the joint. He didn’t notice the enormous boulder of magma roll out this time and it dropped onto his chest, seared through the cotton and landed throbbing on his nipple. Yelling ‘Arghh’ at the top of his voice he shot out of his chair rubbing his painful chest and knocked his can of lager over on to the carpet, which seemed to amuse the girls no end.
Will handed Alice the offending article and she stared at it with a curled lip and then looking around she ground it out on the nearest ashtray type item. This turned out to be a large, cream, porcelain Buddha resting on a table. Having left the butt sticking out the top of its head she left it looking like Caspar the friendly ghost, and over a decade of being friends caused Will and Aiden to catch each other’s eye and to convulse into peals of laughter.
Seeing as he was standing up Will went into the kitchen, desperate for something other than hummus and no doubt its healthy unwelcome friends Mr Celery and Mr Carrot. He remembered wanting a kitchen towel for something, but the reason had temporarily escaped him. The fridge contents were indeed a salutary lesson on how to live to a hundred but never enjoy a meal.
Frustrated he began opening doors and found the first of two unnerving finds that night. At the back of the pantry was a battered old Roses tin, pushed in a corner with a newspaper placed on top of it. He slid it out, and like Indiana Jones peering into what he hoped was going to be treasure, but could well be plutonium, stole a quick glance inside. He was hoping for a chocolate cake maybe, or even some biscuits. Milk chocolate digestives would be really nice. As his mind wandered, he thought hopefully though not a dead animal, or worse a baby.
It was instead full to the brim with Cadbury’s Crunchies. Very odd Will thought, but definitely better than vegetables and dip. He returned to the room with his prize cradled in his arms.
When he got there Aiden and Lisa had disappeared this time. It was too much to keep up with. ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ was just starting to blare out of an old but serviceable cassette player that had been placed on the coffee table and Deidre seemed to be constructing something involving about six tobacco papers. Just looking at it made Will feel like someone had tied one of his trainers on each eyelid and was ushering him to the land of nod. Blinking in slow motion he sat next to Sara and turned to look at her.
‘Crunchie?’ he offered.
‘Don’t mind if I do she said,’ pleasing Will by also looking decidedly worse for wear.
‘Carl,’ Will asked. ‘You didn’t mention you had a secret sweetie stash. Or music for that matter.’
‘The Crunchies are my mums. She loves them, and I’m not allowed to go in that tin. She says it’s the only thing that gets her through the day. The music is NOW 30 my friend, I bought it myself!’ More odd revelations for a twenty-one year old that Will wondered if he would remember in the morning. All things considered Carl looked to be holding up fairly well under the onslaught of disabling substances. It was as if adrenalin and nervousness were cleansing his body of all impurities, readying him for the deadly task ahead. He suspected Deidre would not be a considerate lover.
Will started sniggering to himself again as he thought this is the moment Carl has been training his whole life for. This set off Sara to his right, who made some deep throated noise as she finished her chocolate bar and lobbed the packet over the back of the sofa.
He passed Sara another Crunchie and tried to flex his face. His cheeks ached from laughing or was it the speed he was powering through his friend’s mum’s treats. The tastiness having gone up a notch due to their new illicit properties. Just one more bar he thought as he too lobbed his second wrapper over the back of his seat, noticing but not caring that he had eaten that last one before the song had finished.
A clearly hammered Deidre stood up to present her dope filled creation. As she went to light it the contents dropped out of the middle and fell like snowflakes onto the carpet. Will, Carl and Sara all neighed with laughter, particularly at Deidre’s face, who looked like her grandma’s wedding ring had slipped off her finger and plopped straight between the bars of a drain cover. The next song came on, ‘Stay Another Day’ and recovering her poise, Deidre dragged Carl up and began to slow dance with him.
Will found through his confused state he was eating this final bar to a rhythmic banging which was coming through the ceiling as though someone was trying to break through with big heavy swings of a large blunt axe. Will found his head swirling as the banging speeded up. Carl and Deidre spinning faste
r and faster, Wills teeth grinding harder and harder and Sara’s laughter getting higher and higher. Suddenly it stopped just as the tape finished leaving a wide eyed silence and a guffaw exploded from Will’s throat firing a huge squirt of chocolate and honeycomb goo straight onto the television, where it slid down like a slick slimy slug.
‘Upstairs with you my boy,’ Will heard through the heavy silence which was only broken by the odd merry whimper from Sara. He strained to open his eyes and wiped the moisture out of them in time to see Carl’s face after that instruction. It was the same face he had worn when bracing himself to go to the bar earlier that night. Gritting his teeth, head down and muttering under his breath, he followed Deidre out of the room and with heavy footsteps followed her upstairs.
‘Little boy with big job to do,’ Will said to Sara.
Sara got up and came and snuggled up to him.
‘Will,’ she smiled. ‘I have honestly never laughed so much. I missed you.’ She gave him a hot, soft, wet kiss on his cheek which felt so lovely he purred like a cat. She disappeared into the kitchen, and after a clinking of cups and a hissing kettle came back with two strong coffees.
She drank hers quickly and then laughing, with meaning in her eyes, whispered in his ear, ‘Upstairs with you my boy.’ She hauled him out of his seat and helped him up the stairs like a survivor from a place crash. She shimmied off her clothes with no inhibition, leaving what appeared to be matching underwear on. She then walked to the light in the corner as if to turn it off but stopped and turning round, gave him a big wink and slid under the sheets of a big double bed. He caught all this out of the corner of a puffy eye as he had been unsuccessfully trying to balance his coffee on a book on the bedside table.
He hopped on one leg as he removed his jeans, promptly falling off to one side and decided it would be best if he removed his clothes whilst lying on the floor. Leaving his boxers on, he got into bed next to her puffing like he had just done a hundred press-ups. He realised for the first time that night that the heating must have been on full blast as it felt like a mid-summer day, so warm and close it was. She rolled over to him, and uttered, ‘Will,’ and began to kiss his neck. He could feel something under his head and reaching round he found a sturdy grey thing, which might have been the world’s heaviest nightie or more likely was someone’s shroud. Maybe it was for Grandad, if he didn’t make it.
He threw it to the side of the bed leaving an unusual musty smell in the air. It hit the wardrobe with a worrying clunk and as he turned his head to see what he’d broken, found himself staring into a grinning picture of Carl in his school uniform. There would be no need for any more press-ups he thought, if he couldn’t get that image out of his mind.
He suddenly felt woozy and weak and a little bit freaked out that he was practically naked in Carl’s parents’ bed. He blew out a breath and tried to will his body into action. So stoned was he that he could imagine what it must be like for people with locked-in syndrome. Your brain is working and you can hear what’s going on, but you can’t respond. He suspected he may be able to move his forehead if a large angry hornet had alighted on it, trying to fend it off with a bushy eyebrow, but that was all.
As her kisses began to patter down his chest, he thought of lunchtimes on the school field, trying to get his hand inside her bra, where he would have given his left nut to be in the position he was in now. His priorities seemed to have become skewed over the years.
Dragging his mind back to the present, he realised her head was rapidly approaching what was only going to be a massive disappointment, or in this case a tiny disappointment. Worse for him maybe, would be listening to her platitudes afterwards. Something awful along the lines of ‘It not mattering’, ‘It happens to lots of guys’ and ‘I only wanted to cuddle anyway’.
With a superhuman effort he dragged himself up and said, ‘Let me just finish my coffee,’ and reached over to it with a set of numb fingers that seemed to belong to someone else. He caught the handle with his thumb and sent the cup jolting into a wonky dance like a spinning top just before it comes to rest and then it fell on its side, coffee pouring all over the flat surface and down onto the carpet.
‘Jesus,’ Sarah chuckled. ‘You can’t get out of it you know.’ She kissed him on the forehead and added, ‘I’ll get a cloth.’
Will looked over the side of the bed and as luck would have it most of it had drained onto his white shirt. That shirt was like a May Fly he sighed, destined to live only one day. Although he was pretty sure the insect had sex before it expired, to go out with a bang so-to-speak, which might be something he might not be able to manage. He noticed the cabinet drawer was slightly open and when the noisy sounds of drunken lovemaking stopped humming through the wall next to their room, he could hear the drip of liquid.
Wincing, he sat up, pulled the metal handle and slid the drawer open, worried about what he had ruined. What was nestled in there, like a hamster cosy in its nest, shocked him out of his stupor. He lifted it out with both hands and marvelled at its weight. It was the biggest vibrator he had ever seen in his life. Both on screen and off. Incredulous, he placed it back in the drawer as shocking visions appeared in his mind. He heard Sara come back in to the room so he slammed the drawer shut and leapt back into the bed.
He heard her chuckle as she wiped the floor but did not say anything. The sneaky cow must have noticed his shirt had saved the day. As she got back in beside him and said, ‘Where were we?’ one especially gruesome image formed in his mind; Carl’s staid, fifty year old teacher mother, kneeling on all fours on the bed. Her long, thick, tartan skirt pulled over her hips, sensible knickers around her ankles, strong shoes on twitching feet as she drove that monstrosity inside her.
As Sara’s hand reached into his boxers, he horrified himself by feeling himself respond to the images. He was indeed a sick man. Then realising this was his opportunity, he reached out for a firm breast and with a sneaky smile rolled on top of her.
19
24th December 1998
He walked through the arrival entrance of Peterborough station just in time to look through the open doors and see Sara’s car edging past the taxi traffic at the front of the building. She saw him and gestured to the short stay car park and drove off in a puff of smoke. He despised that car. It was an old Citroen 2cv that Sara would not be parted from. She poured her money into it like a desperate person on a fruit machine, knowing you were going to lose but doing it regardless. It looked like a battered upside down pram and was slightly less reliable.
The amount of times it had let them down was legendary. The V98 music festival that year had been a prime example. He was ambushed into going with promises of great times and spent two long days in inclement weather feeling like he was missing the point. They had bought some ecstasy tablets on the first night and he had never really recovered. Obviously Dolly wouldn’t start for the return journey, no doubt feeling as lively as he did after being slumped in cold mud for forty eight hours. They had to wait until everyone else was gone, so they could be dragged to the nearest main road by a tractor and then wait for the AA. Depressing doesn’t even start to describe it.
It was only ten o’clock in the morning yet a ferocious tide of people already rushed in and out of the railway building. History had taught Will to get home early on Christmas Eve. He stepped round a young couple who were so stereotypically student that he would put money on them being embarrassed by their clothes and hair when they looked back, many years from now, on this year’s family photographs. They looked overjoyed with each other though. Squealing and crying, hugging and kissing, as though he had just pulled her out of some particularly rough surf to stop her from drowning. He searched his memory for when he last looked that happy and wasn’t drunk or under the influence of some other kind of chemical and found himself wanting.
He put his Bergen rucksack in the boot of the car looking at it fondly. He had bought that for Army Cadet Camp over ten years ago and it was still in good nick. It
was one of the last links to that time he thought, that and his friends. He climbed in the passenger seat next to her and struggled to get the seatbelt on. The car seat was as comfy as sitting on an enormous piece of ravioli that had been left out in the sun.
She reached over to kiss him on the cheek, but missed and hit his ear as the car juddered as she fought for first gear. Will thought back to those two students and felt down. Finally with an angry oink the car went into gear and they pulled into the surprisingly light traffic. He looked over at Sara, still in her Vet’s uniform and felt happy for her. She had exactly what she wanted, well workwise anyway. He suspected there would be a few things she would like to change about him.
He thought back over the last few years and it felt like he had just drifted to this point. After that spontaneous Christmas Eve party at Carl’s house three years ago they had all woken up late and rushed their separate ways, no time for embarrassment or future plans. He had made more effort to keep in touch with the boys though. On the last Sunday of each month he would sit at the scuffed dining table in whichever shared house he was in and write them a letter. He had considered writing to Sara but Liverpool seemed so far away and that night quickly became a blurred furry spot in his mind, smothered by many more memories of the same ilk.
It was only when he had gone back to his parents’ house six months later for Nathan’s depressing wedding that he had given it much more thought. His mum had told him he had some post on his old bed and there he found a pink envelope resting amongst a few white circulars and bank statements from empty accounts. He knew straight away who it was from. His handwriting looked like a disabled spider limping home from a heavy weekend with Keith Richards. Whereas hers almost looked like it had been typed. He could remember the moment he opened the letter very clearly, like another signpost in his life to look back to. It was midday and he could hear his brother and the best man nervously laughing in the sunshine in the back garden. The sounds were softened by the double glazing though and he felt warm and peaceful as he sat on the bed and read it.
Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller Page 12
