Alice already had her earplugs in. I handed my spare, unopened pack to Dora. ‘You’ll need these,’ I said, as I slipped my manky ones in.
‘It’s all right,’ she shouted, as Thee Desperadoes launched into their first song with a squeal of ear-splitting feedback. ‘I saw them last week. I’ve brought my own.’
Even with earplugs in, we could still hear Thee Desperadoes. Each of their songs lasted no more than two minutes, which would have been a good thing, if they didn’t have so many songs to get through. The guitar sounded like it had been filtered through mud, the drummer couldn’t keep time, I don’t even know what a bass player is meant to do but the bassist wasn’t doing it very well, and Louis was squawking and screeching about a ‘blackhearted woman with legs as long as sin who done gone and left me’. His singing always reminded me of the time when Siobhan stepped on her plugged-in hair straighteners with bare feet and the unearthly screams she produced.
But, oh, oh, Louis was so very good at strutting and throwing shapes. Excellent at jumping up on the speakers and holding a pose. And he aced thrusting his hips every time.
I knew all his moves and exactly when he’d pull them out, but I was never prepared for the moment when Louis tugged off his T-shirt during every gig.
‘Oh my,’ I murmured as he ran a hand down his bare, naked chest.
‘I’ve seen more muscles on my gran,’ Dora shouted in my ear, like it was perfectly all right to diss the father of my future children.
‘Shut up!’ Who wanted a chiselled six pack bashing into you every time you kissed? Louis’s chest was thin, hairless and totally rock ’n’ roll.
Thee Desperadettes obviously thought so because they were all screaming and waving their arms. I would never behave like that. Instead I stood there trying to sway in time to the music, even though there wasn’t much of a rhythm to work with, and memorised Louis’s performance so I could play it back in my head over and over.
Half an hour later, they left the stage. I could tell that Louis was thinking about stagediving but it was doubtful whether Thee Desperadettes would catch his fall so he just bounced off with a casual wave of his hand, and didn’t even catch my eye though I was willing him to with all my might.
‘I didn’t think it was possible, but they were actually worse than last week,’ Dora said, as the three of us removed our earplugs.
‘Yeah, they’re weird like that. Every time you think that, yes, that was their crappiest gig yet, they still have it in them to be even crappier the next time.’ Alice grinned slyly at me. ‘Right, Franny?’
‘I’m not saying anything. It would be disloyal.’ I caught the eye of the sneering studio tech, who was unplugging something on stage. He gave me a stern look like he knew Dora and Alice had been slagging off his band, or maybe he thought I fancied him, what with all the catching of eyes, and he wasn’t having it.
I wasn’t having it either. There was only one Desperado I was interested in. I turned away. ‘Let’s go back to our table.’
The mood at The Wow always took a little while to recover after Thee Desperadoes had done their thing. By the time Alice and I had had another glass of vodka and diet Coke and Dora some red wine, the DJ had binned the moperock and was playing some shouty, boppy music that we could dance to.
Dora did really gothy things with her arms when she danced and Alice always does hoochie mama gyrations like the girls in r ’n’ b videos. I just dance like a normal person with a few sixties flourishes I’ve incorporated after watching clips from really old music shows on YouTube. My favourite move is holding my nose and shimmying right down to the floor like I’m going underwater but I only pull that one out when I’m drunk.
I certainly wasn’t drunk enough yet and there was no way I wanted to make a show of myself, especially when Louis took to the dance floor. He was with Thee Desperadettes, who had much more of a sexy vibe than the younger indie girls that went to The Wow. They were all at college too, but the year above me, and hung about on the patch of grass by the art block, smoking and poncing about with their iPads. It was quite hard to tell them apart. They all merged into a pretty, shiny-haired, ‘Oh. My. God’-ing mass. Tonight, they were all wearing flouncy little skater dresses with Converse and Louis, my Louis, had his arm round two of them as they danced around to a Grimes track and all of a sudden I felt ridiculous and out of place in my silly cropped trousers and boy shoes and my jacket that didn’t look anything like a Chanel jacket.
‘You are worth more than the whole lot of them,’ Alice said, because she could see where my gaze had come to rest. Her gaze was resting there too, but she had a superior smile on her face. ‘I mean, did they get a group discount on the same skater dress from ASOS?’
I knew that Alice had the exact same skater dress from ASOS in black ‘for my bloat days’, but it was so like her to make me feel better.
‘Girls like that are so boring and safe,’ Dora said without pausing from waving her arms ethereally to the music. ‘We are what we wear, so they must have really dull personalities if they all wear the same things.’
I looked at the three of us – Alice in her slinky blue dress, Dora looking like Helena Bonham Carter’s little sister and me trying to do elegant, understated Chanel chic – and wondered what it said about our personalities, but then the music changed to an infectious thugstep and Alice took my hands so we could spin round and nothing else mattered for the three minutes that the music took us somewhere else.
After The Wow closed at midnight, it was time for another Merrycliffe Saturday night tradition. One of the few advantages of living in a town that was Europe’s eleventh largest container port was the Market Diner.
For starters, it was open twenty-four hours to cater for the port workers, drivers and haulage contractors who rolled in and out of Merrycliffe at all hours. And secondly, it did the best bacon sandwiches in the world. Thirdly, its chips weren’t too shabby either and lastly, everyone went there after The Wow because there was nowhere else to go.
When we arrived, Thee Desperadoes were already at a table. We joined a long queue because there was always a ten-minute wait for chips.
‘At least they’ll be fresh,’ I said brightly, because Alice was getting that look like her feet and her Spanx were killing her and she’d already asked me quietly on the walk over, when Dora went on ahead, if we were going to be stuck with her all night.
I didn’t mind getting stuck with Dora that much, not that I’d admit that to Alice. She was all right, and when Alice had gone to the loo before we left The Wow, Dora had said to me, ‘You do know that Thee Desperadoes are terrible, don’t you? There isn’t a tiny bit of you that secretly likes their music, is there? Because if there is I’ll have to rethink everything I’m thinking about you.’
I was curious about what Dora was thinking about me. ‘Oh no, they are awful. It’s almost like they’re my penance for getting to spend half an hour doing nothing but stare at Louis without fear of reprisal.’
Dora had shrugged. ‘He’s not my type but he doesn’t offend my eyes.’
‘Louis looks like a young Terence Stamp,’ I’d sighed longingly. ‘I wish I looked like a young Jean Shrimpton.’
‘Wasn’t she gorgeous?’ Dora had agreed. ‘Something so timeless and elegant about her.’
So Dora knew something about sixties fashion icons and she and Alice had bonded over hair dye and how rubbish Thee Desperadoes were, so it wouldn’t be a bad thing if occasionally me and Alice became me, Alice and Dora.
‘How long do you think Krystal is going to last?’ Dora asked me as we waited for chips and I discreetly stared at Louis, who was demolishing a bacon butty. ‘Matt says she won’t get through another week.’
‘Don’t you mean Krystal with a K?’ I asked innocently. ‘The lost Kardashian.’
Dora snorted. ‘In her dreams. How long must it take her to get ready in the morning? I thought I was high maintenance, but I can get from bed to bus stop in an hour.’
‘She must h
ave to set her alarm for about five o’clock.’ I stopped to think about it. ‘Unless she goes to bed in her make-up and just puts a light coating of new make-up over the top.’
Dora and I both shuddered. ‘Dirty birdie,’ she said in a creepy voice and we giggled.
Alice nudged me. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Krystal is that orange girl I was telling you about who…’
‘You know, you’re right,’ she interrupted.
‘I am? Really? What am I right about?’
Alice tossed her hair back, which was silkier and shinier than any of the Thee Desperadettes’ hair (they were further down the queue from us). ‘About the boys at school being totally immature.’
‘Oh, that! Well, yeah…’ I looked at Alice, unsure if she was about to renounce her boy-stealing ways once and for all. Had I finally managed to get through to her?
‘I deserve much better than that. Much, much better,’ she said, almost under her breath. ‘I’ve decided that older boys are where it’s at. They have, like, wages and their own cars and it will give me a social standing that I don’t have at the moment. Yeah, I’m definitely going to go older.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ I really was and I was also glad to hear that the chips were ready and piping hot and crispy. ‘Even the styrofoam boxes they put them in can’t ruin how yummy they are,’ I explained to Dora as we shuffled down the queue to the condiment station.
I was a vinegar girl. Dora was one of those weird people who eschewed all garnishes and Alice suddenly wasn’t there any more, but moving purposefully to where Thee Desperadoes were sitting, right in the centre of the Market Diner. They usually sat there if no long-distance lorry drivers had got the table first, and it was very convenient because it meant that a person (by which I mean me) could look at Louis without everyone knowing they were looking at Louis.
No one in the place was looking at Louis right at that moment though. They were all looking at Alice walking over to their table. If Thee Desperadoes had had any discernible musical talent, they could have written a song about Alice’s walk, it was that good a walk, and it would have topped the charts in forty countries.
It was a measured, sexy, utterly nonchalant walk. I’m not even sure what nonchalant means but it felt like the right word to describe the unhurried sway of Alice’s hips.
I had enough time to scurry over, intercept her, but how could I? God knows I didn’t want to get stuck playing the part of the needy best friend who couldn’t function on her own so I took five steps forward then stayed exactly where I was – just out of shot but near enough that when Alice reached their table I could hear her say in a challenging voice, ‘So, what’s a girl got to do to get some tomato ketchup in this godforsaken place?’
There was plenty of tomato ketchup at the counter. Loads of it. In red plastic tomatoes so there could be no mistaking it for brown sauce or mayonnaise. They even had sachets of the stuff. It was the lamest reason ever for going over to Louis.
He picked up the red plastic tomato on his table and looked at Alice from under his extraordinarily long lashes. ‘How much do you want?’ he asked in a throaty way.
‘Oh, I want a lot,’ Alice said.
It was like they weren’t even talking about the ketchup.
Louis started drizzling ketchup on Alice’s chips and all the while his eyes were running over her curves in the blue dress I’d made for her and she licked her lips. It was the hottest, heaviest flirting I’d ever seen. This was Alice, my best friend, my soul sister, and Louis, the guy I’d been crushing on and dreaming about for the last four years. He was out of bounds, and a best friend and a soul sister should know that.
Each squeeze that Louis gave that bloody tomato was a stab right through my heart and instead of just letting this happen I was all set to storm over and drag Alice away from my Louis, and then I heard it. A snort. A small, snuffly snort. It came from Sneering Studio Tech, who then said, ‘Don’t you think there’s enough ketchup on those chips now?’
At that moment I loved Sneering Studio Tech. Louis put down the red plastic tomato and Alice straightened up and walked back to where Dora and I were standing at the condiment station.
Alice flirted. It was what she did. Half the time she didn’t even know that she was doing it, but this was different. When I saw Louis blatantly checking out her arse, it made me so furious that Dora put a warning hand on my arm even though I hadn’t said a word.
‘Not worth it,’ she advised me, and then Alice was back with her chips lovingly ketchupped by Louis and a blank expression on her pretty face.
‘What was that about?’ I demanded as we grabbed a table. I had to demand it very quietly because I didn’t want to cause a scene.
Alice selected a chip and munched it thoughtfully. ‘Well, I love you, Franny, you know I do, and I’ve always got your back but in the four years that you’ve had a crush on Louis —’
I had to stop her right there. ‘It’s not a crush, it’s much, much, much deeper than that. It’s practically on a spiritual level.’
‘Whatever.’ She actually rolled her eyes as if I wasn’t me but one of the other girls who must have had similar conversations with Alice.
‘Don’t whatever me. In fact, just don’t,’ I said softly. ‘Not to me. Please don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ Alice was all wide eyes and innocence. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ I said. Alice reached across the table to nudge my hand, even as Dora reached under the table to give my other hand a comforting little squeeze.
Alice gave me an exasperated look. ‘Oh, come on, lighten up.’ She made a fist and placed it against her heart. ‘Chicks before dicks. That’s my motto.’
‘Yeah, but boys are my toys is another one of your mottos,’ I reminded her and Alice pouted like she couldn’t believe I was using her own words against her.
We argued all the time, it was what best friends did, but this particular argument felt different. Like Alice had crossed over a line and she didn’t even care that she’d crossed it. I had to make her understand that.
‘I can’t believe that you even went there.’
‘I hardly went there. Way to overreact, Franny,’ Alice said, and she held out her hands, palm side up like she had nothing to hide. Like maybe I had been overreacting. Then her gaze shifted to Dora, who was sitting at an odd sideways angle to accommodate her crinoline. ‘Anyway, it’s not like I abandoned you. Not when you and Dora were so busy talking about all the stuff you get up to at college. I’m surprised you even noticed that I wasn’t hanging around like a spare part.’
Not this again! ‘I’m sorry that maybe I didn’t give you my undivided attention for, like, one whole minute while I talked to Dora but you need —’
‘I thought your curfew was midnight,’ said a voice in my ear and I forgot that Alice and I were having a big, scary fight that felt different to all the other times we’d argued. I even forgot that every cool person in Merrycliffe was in the Market Diner, as I got up and threw my arms around my dad.
‘You’re back!’ I exclaimed. He hugged me back and he smelt a bit ripe because he probably hadn’t stopped for a shower in order to get back ahead of schedule but I didn’t care. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until teatime tomorrow.’
‘Thought I’d surprise you,’ my dad said and for one moment his thin, craggy face lit up with a grin that not many people got to see. Even I didn’t get to see it often. ‘So, about this curfew of yours…’
‘Oh, that curfew. Expecting me back at midnight on a Saturday is an infringement of my basic human rights.’
Dad smiled again and it was like since he’d been gone I’d been clenching all my muscles and holding my breath and not realising it. But now, he was back and standing in front of me in jeans and the navy shirt with his name embroidered on the breast pocket by my own fair hand and a jean jacket, though I’d told him a million times not to do double denim. But it was more than that, he was smiling at me again and h
olding my hand even though, at sixteen, I was far too old to have my hand held by my dad.
Six weeks ago, when he got into his lorry to deliver fridges to Rotterdam (Europe’s actual busiest container port), he was barely speaking to me because he was still furious about my GCSEs. When he had spoken to me it was only to say stuff like ‘I expected better from you.’ And ‘You’ve not only let me down, you’ve let yourself down.’
Now it seemed like we were friends again. And when he said, ‘Come on, Little Miss Trouble, I’m going to walk you home,’ I didn’t point out that I’d only just got my chips or that he was showing me up in front of le tout Merrycliffe.
I told Dora and a still pouting Alice that I’d text them, picked up my styrofoam container of chips and let Dad lead me out by the hand like I was six. The only thing I couldn’t forgive him for was saying as we walked past Thee Desperadoes’ table, ‘No socks, Franny? You’re asking to catch a cold.’