‘Nonsense. He makes a fortune out of us the rest of the year,’ Elaine argued. ‘But if you’re going to the bar, can we have another bottle of red, a bottle of white, and what do you want? Lager, cider, champagne?’
By the time her steak and ale pie arrived and she fell on it with eager little cries, Hope was halfway to happy. It wasn’t just the three large glasses of red wine, either – all the tension and the strain of the last week was ebbing away thanks to good company, good friends, good times. Which was rather hokey, but she was rather drunk.
Wilson and Simon had bonded over obscure indie bands of the 1980s and were happily discussing French New Wave cinema. Elaine was asking Iban deeply personal questions now it had been revealed that he and Marta were regulars at the Torture Garden, and that Iban had a piercing where no man in his right mind should have a piercing.
‘But can you still pee standing up?’ she kept asking him. ‘Isn’t there an issue with spray?’
And Hope was happily bitching with Marta about Dorothy and Sarah and the mothers that they couldn’t stand. ‘That child was still in nappies on the first day of school,’ Marta complained bitterly. ‘And when I told his mother that we expected all children to be toilet-trained, she said that they believed in child-led continence, and she wasn’t going to hamper his emotional development to appease the Education Authority.’
‘Poncey Islington mothers.’ Hope pushed away her plate after a few mouthfuls, because if she was eating, then she couldn’t be drinking.
‘Eat,’ Wilson ordered, pushing the plate back in front of Hope, who pouted at him. ‘You need something to mop up the rivers of booze.’
‘I had a mince pie earlier,’ Hope protested.
‘Eat your pastry and your potatoes,’ Wilson said. He looked around the table at Marta and Elaine who were also in an advanced state of inebriation. ‘Aren’t you three meant to be working tomorrow?’
‘Frankly, darling, I’m only going in to get the loot from parents grateful for my attempts to shape their children’s tiny brains,’ Elaine said grandly.
‘Yes, I see a long day of colouring-in for Red Class,’ Marta added. ‘Very quiet, very hard colouring-in. What about you, Hope?’
‘I know we sound like we’re bad teachers, but we’re really not,’ she told Wilson earnestly, even though he seemed very amused by her earnestness. ‘See, the thing about being a teacher is that you learn how to be a really good actress too. An Oscar-calibre actress. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a hangover or PMS or, like, you’ve just been dumped …’ She swallowed hard, blinked a couple of times and when she realised that she was OK and not going to burst into tears, Hope took a fortifying chug of wine. ‘Where was I?’
‘Um, the bit where you’d just been dumped,’ Marta said helpfully.
‘Right, yeah, but like I was just using being dumped as a hypotheoritical, hypetet … that thing, what’s it called?’
‘Hypothetical,’ Iban said, even though English wasn’t even his first language. ‘You mean hypothetical, yeah?’
Hope nodded. ‘So, even if you have been dumped, hypothetically or otherwise, you can’t bring all that bad shit into class with you. You just have to suck it up until three thirty.’
Elaine looked appalled, and for one moment Hope wondered if she’d read between the lines and was going to bawl her out in front of everybody for daring to keep her private life private. ‘Do you mean to say, you’re actually going to teach tomorrow?’ she asked in scandalised tones. ‘Have you done a lesson plan?’
‘Oh no, I’m going to let Blue Class watch a DVD while I sit on the floor with them and let the girly girls stroke my hair.’ Hope paused to ponder further. ‘I was going to let them do some singing too, but I’m not sure the hangover I’m bound to have tomorrow could take it, but that’s only because it’s the day we break up. Normally I would never do that.’
Wilson looked aghast. Or rather, he looked slightly sterner than usual. ‘But what was that your Head was saying about you being a credit to the school and your impressionable pupils?’
‘I am! Except when it’s the last day before the Christmas holidays,’ Hope amended. ‘Then I’m just there for the big tins of Quality Street and the Body Shop gift baskets foisted upon me.’
‘I’m shocked and dismayed,’ Wilson said, though he didn’t look particularly either. ‘Eat at least two of your potatoes or I’m cutting off your alcohol supply.’
It was a long time, or maybe the first time, that anyone had ever exhorted Hope to load up on carbs. And when Hope ordered and ate sticky toffee pudding with custard, Wilson shot her an approving smile and rested his arm on the back of her chair, so every time Hope leaned back, she could feel the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up to try and get his attention, and once Wilson absent-mindedly brushed her nape with his thumb, and really, she was acting like a thirteen-year-old girl who’d finally got to sit next to her crush object at the school disco and she needed to Get. A. Grip.
They were lingering over coffee and brandy when Elaine started making noises about going home. ‘We left Lola and Abby to fend for themselves, and that never works out well.’
Hope should have been thinking about making tracks for Holloway too, but it wasn’t like Jack was going to be home. Or if he was, he’d be stinking drunk. And she wouldn’t be able to resist picking a fight with him. ‘We might as well stay until they call last orders,’ she reasoned, even though Al would be calling last orders in over an hour’s time.
Marta and Iban had a whispered confab. ‘We’re going to see a band in Shoreditch,’ she said. ‘You can come, but there might be public nudity.’
‘Are they a very shouty band?’ Hope asked.
Iban nodded. ‘The shoutiest.’
Hope wasn’t in the mood for shouty. She looked at Wilson pleadingly. ‘You wouldn’t make me drink on my own, would you?’
His thumb was stroking the back of her neck again, but he didn’t say anything at first – though, over the strains of the Phil Spector Christmas Album, Hope could almost hear the cogs in his brain whirring. ‘How do you fancy drinking somewhere else?’
‘Like where?’ Hope asked, mindful that she was wearing car-to-bar heels.
‘I was planning to go to a Northern Soul night in Camden Town.’ He dipped his hand. ‘Do you fancy it?’
Hope did fancy it. She wasn’t a Northern Soul aficionado but she’d liked what she’d heard, which was pretty much the original version of ‘Tainted Love’ and a compilation tape that her dad used to play on the way home from school on Friday afternoons.
‘My parents swear that they once went to the Wigan Casino,’ she told Wilson, ‘though I very much doubt it.’
‘Why would you doubt it?’
‘You would, too, if you’d spent even five minutes with my mum and dad.’
‘My parents – actually, my dad was a huge Northern Soul nut,’ Wilson revealed. ‘He used to go to the Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca, even the Golden Touch in Stoke-on-Trent. Hence my name.’
Hope frowned. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘There seem to be a lot of Northern Soul artists called Wilson,’ he grinned. ‘Jackie Wilson, Al Wilson, Frank Wilson. He really wanted to name me after Garnet Mimms, but my mum put her foot down.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Hope said. ‘So, is your dad still into Northern Soul?’
‘Till the day he dies. He travels all over to go to these Northern Soul weekenders, though his hip’s a bit dicky these days.’ Wilson twisted his finger around a lock of hair, which had inevitably escaped from Hope’s updo. ‘So you in or out?’
‘I’m so in,’ Hope said enthusiastically. It had been ages since she’d been to a club, and though she liked disco and soul and anything with a beat, the only music Jack ever put on her iPod was new albums by mopey boys playing guitars. ‘Can we get a taxi?’
‘Um, don’t you have fifty cupcakes to ice?’ Elaine asked sharply, as Hope turned to look at her in surprise, because she sounded so d
isapproving.
Hope waved an airy hand. ‘Cupcakes, schmupcakes,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’ll do them when I get in. It’s not like I’m going to be that late.’
‘But you said you had to frost and ice them.’ Elaine was putting on her coat but paused so she could give Hope what was meant to be a deeply significant look. Hope gazed back at her with a ‘who, me?’ expression. ‘Why don’t you pop to the loo with me before I leave?’ Elaine insisted.
‘No, thanks, I don’t need to go,’ Hope said, because she knew that popping to the loo was not-very-secret code for, ‘You’re coming with me to a woman-only space where I can talk some bloody sense into you.’ Then she’d have to tell Elaine what was really going on, and the lovely mellow drunk feeling would exit stage left. Besides, Hope didn’t need anyone else’s common sense, she knew what she was doing and she wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was going with Wilson to a club where there would be lots of other people, and she would drink and dance and then go home. She’d probably be home before Jack, because once he was drunk, all bets were off – that reminded Hope that she needed to do something.
Ignoring Elaine, who was now standing over her with hands on hips, Hope yanked out her phone. There was a text message on it from Jack: Why are you in such a mood with me? which Hope also ignored as she texted: If you get home before me DO NOT EAT ANY OF MY CUPCAKES!!!!! I know exactly how many there are and I will kill you. She put her phone back in her bag and smiled at Wilson, who didn’t even attempt to hide the fact that he’d been reading the text over her shoulder.
‘Shall we get going, then?’
He stood up. ‘Thought you’d never ask.’
Hope and Wilson said goodbye to the others outside the pub, and began to walk towards Highbury Corner to find a cab with its light on. She could have sworn that things had been getting a little charged between them back in the Midnight Bell, but now that it was just the two of them walking along the road, then in the back of a taxi, the atmosphere went back to being not charged. Wilson was positively garrulous as he volunteered the information that he wasn’t going back to Preston for Christmas because he and all his siblings had clubbed together to buy his mum and step-dad plane tickets to San Francisco, so they could spend the holiday with his little sister who lived there.
‘It was a joint Christmas and silver anniversary present,’ he explained, as the cab weaved its way through the back streets of Islington. ‘I’ve been ordered over to my other sister Melanie’s for Christmas dinner. She’s Alfie’s mum. Lives in Highgate. My dad’s coming down, too, with Maureen, his girlfriend. What about you? Are you going back home?’
‘Yeah,’ Hope said, without much enthusiasm.
‘So, do you go to Jack’s for Christmas dinner or does he come to you?’ Wilson asked, and hearing him say Jack’s name sounded wrong and weird and very unsettling.
‘Jack and his parents and one set of his grandparents come to ours,’ Hope explained. ‘And Marge, his mum, and my mum cook the dinner together, and I’m meant to help them, while the menfolk go to the pub, but I usually storm off after ten minutes because I get shouted at for not peeling potatoes in an ergonomic and economic fashion.’
‘Do you not get on with your mum?’
That sounded more like a question that Angela would ask, and Hope tried to shrug, but her shoulders were too slumped to be able to pull it off. ‘Well, I do on one level, and then I don’t on another much bigger level.’ She sighed. ‘I shouldn’t wind her up as much as I do.’
‘You’re really down on yourself today, aren’t you?’ Wilson tapped her knee in an avuncular fashion. ‘Tell you what, we’ll get inside, do a couple of shots of something to get us in the mood, and then we’ll have a dance. It’s impossible to be in a bad mood when you’re dancing.’
Wilson didn’t dance, Hope was certain of that. He was too big and bulky, and didn’t like to put himself in situations where he’d stand out or make a fool of himself. Still, if the shots worked their alcoholic magic, Hope quite fancied having a bit of a shimmy.
An hour of dancing and then she’d get a cab and she’d be home by midnight. Half past midnight tops, she decided.
HOPE WAS STILL on the dancefloor at two in the morning when the music suddenly stopped and the lights came on.
She put her hands to her mouth so she could catcall and boo more effectively, until Wilson pulled her away. ‘Come on, Cinderella. Let’s go and find your glass slippers.’
Hope had kicked off her heels hours ago, at around the time that the third shot of tequila had taken effect and she’d discovered that Wilson could dance. Like, really dance. Twisting, turning, spinning on the dancefloor, which had been dusted with talcum powder, and doing nifty things with his size-eleven feet that she wouldn’t have thought possible.
She’d looked over at a wiry boy who’d leapt gracefully in the air in a star jump and landed in the splits before arching his back and spinning on his shoulders. ‘Can you do that?’ she’d asked Wilson, who’d shaken his head.
‘Not even in my younger, skinnier days,’ he’d said, taking her hands and modifying his footwork so Hope could follow. And that had been when she’d kicked off her shoes because they were getting in the way, and it had been ages since she’d danced, and then it had only been with her friends and never with Jack, because Jack had absolutely no sense of rhythm and was almost as terrified of dancing as Hope was of heights.
As the night wore on and the music had got faster and louder, with all those smoky-voiced men and women singing about love and loss set to a beat that matched the excited thrum of Hope’s heart, the dancefloor had got more and more crowded. People had stopped doing the really fancy stuff and Wilson had taken Hope in his arms. Occasionally he’d whirled her round or spun her under his arm, but mostly he’d held Hope close as they’d danced. They’d only stop dancing to grab another drink, then find an empty patch on the dancefloor again and start swaying again.
With the lights back on, everyone looked a little lost and bewildered. Hope realised that the tight skirt of her wiggle dress was rucked up almost to her hips. She pulled it down and dropped to her knees so she could start crawling under chairs and tables in the hunt for her missing shoes and bag. She was very, very drunk. Tequila-drunk, which was a more messy and dishevelled kind of drunk than the drunk that Hope was normally used to.
She found one of her shoes in the furthest corner of the room and decided to put it on before she lost it, then limped forlornly across the floor, trying in vain to spot her other shoe and her huge handbag.
‘It’s your lucky night,’ said Wilson behind her, and Hope turned round, nearly landing flat on her face in the process, to see him standing there with her shoe and bag in his hands.
‘Oh God, I don’t know how to thank you!’ Hope cried, cradling her bag to her chest and looking inside. Everything seemed present and correct. She looked up in time to catch the leer on Wilson’s face, like he had a really good idea of a way she could thank him. It was only there for one blink of her eyes, then his face settled back into its usual austere lines. ‘I’m so on to you now, Wilson. That grumpy thing doesn’t cut it any more.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Wilson snapped. ‘I was born grumpy and you … You’re very drunk, aren’t you?’
Hope didn’t know why he sounded so surprised. ‘How come you’re not drunk? You matched me shot for shot.’
Wilson held up his index finger and slowly brought it towards his nose. If he hadn’t been wearing glasses, he’d have poked himself in the eye. ‘I might not seem drunk to the casual observer, but on the inside I’m absolutely spannered.’
‘Good.’ Hope nodded in satisfaction, then grabbed his arm to keep herself upright as she put on her other shoe. Her tights and the hem of her dress were covered in talcum powder. ‘Shall we get gone?’
‘Taxi?’
‘Hell, yes!’ It seemed perfectly natural, though rather impractical, to cling to Wilson as they tottered down the narrow, twisty stairs th
at led to the side entrance of the pub. There was a little crowd gathered in the doorway, shivering and not showing any inclination to move, so Hope and Wilson were forced to push through them and came to a grinding halt as they stared out on to a world that was heaped with mounds of snow. Yet more big, fat flakes were falling from the sky and turning Eversholt Street, usually a soulless thoroughfare that roared with traffic, into a scene from a Christmas card.
Hope stepped out and tipped her head back to try and catch a snowflake on the tip of her tongue. Within a few seconds even her eyelashes were so thickly coated with snow that she couldn’t see, and she gave an excited little shriek and surged forward, not even caring that the snow was seeping through the thin soles of her party shoes.
She loved the snow, and not just because it made her think of snow days and missing school. Snow made everything look white and magical. It hid all the grey, all the rough edges, and always gave Hope the same kind of satisfaction she got from putting freshly laundered linen on the bed, or achieving a perfect glossy smoothness when she was icing a cake. Oh God, she didn’t even want to think about icing cakes, or frosting then icing fifty cupcakes, to be more specific.
‘You’re not really wearing the right footwear for frolicking in five inches of snow,’ Wilson said, coming up behind her. ‘You’ll get chilblains.’
‘Do people still get chilblains?’ Hope wondered aloud, as she skidded precariously along the street. ‘You know, I think the cold air has sobered me up.’
Then she promptly fell over.
Wilson was laughing so hard that it was a while before he could help Hope to her feet. She realised that her hair was soaked because she hadn’t put her hat on, and she was so cold that her teeth were chattering and her bones were aching, and, actually, she didn’t like the snow half as much as she remembered.
Camden High Street was snowed-in, only a few cars were inching slowly down the road. Hope’s heart sank as they approached a bus stop and saw a miserable huddle of people standing there like they were waiting to buy bread in an Eastern Bloc country some time in the 1970s.