I walked the girls home. Chloe was spending the night at Alison’s and I accepted their invitation to come in for ‘one for the road’. Alison decided I should stay as well and pulled out a futon in the lounge. After some deliberation I again accepted, although it seemed a little silly as I didn’t really live that far away in Finsbury Park. As the girls got ready for bed I changed my mind again and decided to leave them to it and head home. I gave them both an innocent kiss and a cuddle goodbye and said I’d love to see them again sooner rather than later and headed out into the night.
As soon as I’d left the building and was walking up Kingsland Road I regretted my decision. Was it me or had Chloe been watching Alison flirt with me? It probably meant nothing, but I was sure I’d seen something in her eyes. It probably really did mean nothing, I tried to convince myself as I passed Herbal nightclub. There was no queue, just a bouncer in a long black jacket looking up and down the street, looking slightly chilly and bit cheesed off. I picked up my phone and called Chloe. She answered straightaway.
‘Hi, Chloe, it’s me. Listen, I was just thinking, do you fancy a dance?’
‘Erm yes, what, now?’ she said.
‘Yes, now,’ I replied.
‘I’ll be down in a second.’
I put the phone back in my pocket, turned around and started heading back towards Alison’s place. In no time at all Chloe was walking up the street towards me.
‘Where are we dancing then?’ she asked, and that moment took my breath away. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to have said yes. All these things that were happening right now were all dreamland things; they didn’t happen in real life. I struggled to keep ahead of the situation.
‘Erm, Herbal,’ I said, remembering there was no queue.
I paid for us to go in and once we’d had our hands rubber-stamped and smeared with an inky tattoo we made our way down the dimly lit stairs of the club. The metal doors that reverberated in time under the power and pressure of the bass yielded and our bodies were washed by a solid wall of sound. Herbal always made me happy because it always felt a strangely lucky place as far as I was concerned. It was one of the few places where honkeys like me went and some nights were in the minority, but never once in the times I’d been there did I feel out of place. Well, apart from the time I had to rescue Slim Mike from the toilets because the local dealers thought he was serving up on their patch and pulled a gun on him; I guess that was partly the reason it felt lucky – I was lucky to have got out of that situation unscathed. I’d been there a fair few times looking like a stereotypical white City boy twat straight from work via a good few pubs, still wearing my suit, and still managed to have as good a time on the dance floor as any of the clubbers who’d travelled to London especially for a night out. Admittedly perhaps my attire was a little too formal.
The music was typical deep and dirty progressive house with a smidgen of drum and bass, just like I’d have requested had I been dining at a musical restaurant at that particular time. We ordered a couple of JD and cokes and skirted back around the main nucleus of people congregated on the dance floor. We quickly found our dancing feet and in no time at all were moving in unison with the crowd, every now and then sharing smiles with random people or those in search of the toilet or bar or those seeking lost or new dancing partners.
Out of nowhere the DJ dropped the volume and the crowd looked towards him like customers at McDonald’s who’ve just learnt there are no more breakfasts available. The DJ introduced a young lad who I decided was quite possibly old enough to be my son. The crowd grew slightly restless as if in anticipation of the next boring child prodigy or squeaky voiced MC; he looked quite geeky and nobody expected much entertainment. I decided the kid didn’t even look old enough to be out and about at that time of night, and whilst he was introduced to the crowd I scanned the club, looking for his guardian. Once the boy had everyone’s attention he began his set. After a succession of rhythmic squelches he announced his name and everyone went nuts. He then started to beatbox and gradually the DJ joined in and one and all in the club went bonkers.
The lad had an orchestra and drum machine hidden somewhere in his gullet, and with the support of the DJ the rabble were whipped into a frenzy. Chloe and I were swept along as well, waving our hands in the air in time with the mob. I found myself moving in sequence with Chloe. Gradually we were getting closer together; I couldn’t tell if she was reversing towards me or if I was edging closer to her. We were engrossed, watching the entertainment, dancing with the throng and whooping, when I realised my hand was on her hip. It stayed there for a while until she turned round and then we moved closer together until we kissed and at that specific moment I was transported instantaneously to the top of a hill somewhere a million miles away deep in the countryside on a starry night alone with Chloe looking over a sleepy village and then a thousand fireworks were let off and I realised we were kissing. This was the kiss, the one that meant more to me than anything in my life had ever done before. The happiest moment in my life. I held her tight and we kissed some more.
The music came back into our consciousness. I realised when I’d heard it before I was listening on my own, but now, as I heard it again moments later, we were hearing it together.
54 – Twisted Minds – 5.20pm
‘Do you ever get it so bad, you see a girl walk past with such a sexy arse you just want to fuck her? You want to bang against a window and shout out to her, Do you want to fuck? Come on, admit it; I know I do. I have: that’s how I met your Sarah.’
‘Fuck off, Mason,’ I said. ‘You’re just weird; you always were and always will be. Nothing but a creep. I’m not being funny, but what have you done since school? You told everyone you had a little one, but where is he now? You said your missus is dead. That’s bollocks as well; everyone knows she ran off with someone else. Don’t give me the same sob story you told everyone else. We all know what went on. You were happy to milk the attention, saying she’d snuffed it; you were pleased as punch people believed you and went along with your bollocks. Sob stories galore, you were made for it.’
‘It’s not true, fuck off,’ Mason said.
But I continued. ‘It was like winning the lottery, being able to say your missus had died. All those single mums desperate to lend an ear. All you had to do was lay low for a while and then move…’
‘Shut up or I’ll kill you,’ Mason said.
‘Let me go and I’ll shut up,’ I said.
He didn’t, so I continued.
‘You’re a cunt, Mason; you always were and always will be. You should have killed yourself when she supposedly did. What did you do when you saw people you knew? Hide? She would only have died or made herself ill to escape you anyway. You blamed it on cancer. Fucking cancer! The only reason she would have got cancer or wouldn’t have fought to survive it would have been to get away from you. She would have smoked herself to death. Imagine having to be seen in public with you! Look at you, all milk bottle skinned; you look disgusting. Have you never heard of a sun bed? Join some of those freckles up, ginger twat. And what’s even worse is that you didn’t even realise she could do so much better than you. She was a nice girl and you ruined her. You never heard that saying “If you love someone, let them go”? Instead you were jealous, possessive and paranoid. You forced her away and ruined that relationship. What’s wrong, you going to cry? Let me go and I’ll shut up, Mason.’
He didn’t, instead he stamped on my face, not hard, just as a threat of what to expect if I carried on. His face masked the internal anguish I was causing. He would react soon. I thought he might have started crying, but he looked mad.
‘You could have appreciated her but you never did. Instead, you took her away, knocked her up, mentally drained her and took her for granted. You ruined her life. Now you’re left with a kid who’ll never know her mummy because you were such a nasty twat. You probably still think she was in the wrong for leaving you no matter how much abuse you dished o
ut. You could have helped out and supported her instead of worrying about your next benefit cheque. You let them both down, just like you let your family down. Do you ever even go home and see how your poor mum is doing with your kid? You treat your family like your friends: you let everyone down like you let your mates down when we were kids. No wonder you disappeared. Why are you back anyway?’
Now it was Mason’s turn; I could see he had snapped.
‘It’s been known, in some places, once the usual holes have been used for rape, you can cut someone and make new ones. You ask me how I know these things?’
I didn’t say a word; I just looked at him staring down at me and thought, Freak.
He went on. ‘I can see it in your eyes. At the same time as wanting the answer you know you might regret asking, so you lie there and stare at me, trying to bluff your way out of this situation. See, you don’t know me, you know fuck all about me and where I’ve been and what I’ve done. You’re trying to bluff me right now with your mental steeliness; it won’t work, though. You see, your eyelids flicker at the thought. The repulsive nature of the subject offends you and you’re ill at ease. You could scream and shout but I can cut your tongue out. You ain’t going anywhere. Your options are limited. You’d do incredibly well to get out of this in one piece. In the end it might be better to be dead.
‘Would you like to live the rest of your life minus your tongue? Your famous tongue that could talk its way out of any situation. Bollocks. You’d be mentally scarred, physically spent. That’s what I’m going to do to you. Physically spend you. You won’t be able to tell anyone anything. They won’t want to know the gory details. If I cut off your fingers and hands as well, you’d be a gurgling mess. Imagine how long it would take for you to tell your story with blinks of the eye or nods of the head. You ain’t going to be doing any sign language. I could hold my scalpel blade right in front of your eye, yeah, I could take off your eyelids first then you won’t be able to blink or do nothing but watch whatever I do to you.
‘I could bum you; you’d probably like that though...’
‘Fuck you!’ I screamed and thrashed but got nowhere.
‘Oh, am I getting to you now?’ Mason said.
He was right he was getting to me; he’d got me with the scalpel and the eyelids shit and now the talk of bumming was the icing on the cake. I’d had enough.
‘We should have let you fall off the train,’ I replied.
55 – Iceland
Iceland generally has an effect on you or me or anyone. You drink in pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants. You drink some more, you go out for a cigarette, maybe lots of cigarettes. You get drunk. You go to another club and get even drunker. You go out for another cigarette and it isn’t dark. You drink so much that you can barely stand and the thought of another smoke makes you feel sick but you go outside and it’s still not dark. You aren’t sure if it’s tea time or breakfast; the only certainty is that it isn’t night-time. It was never night-time. Only it is, according to your watch. It just never got dark.
I wasn’t sure if sometimes it was always dark. I was barely coping with the whole lack of darkness; I would have been beside myself without any light either. We seemed to be continuously partying surrounded by arguably the most beautiful girls in the world. It was a chilly oasis where the days never ended. We were there for my cousin Henry’s stag party; during the day we’d been hiking all over icy glaciers and now we were out clubbing all night in Reykjavik.
As always seemed to be the way with me, our numbers had dwindled until I was left with only the most determined of pissheads. After the last of our crowd had sensibly headed home we tried a few more bars and searched for one last hot spot; me and my new wing man Mark, whom I had only met for the first time a little over twenty-four hours earlier. Not that that mattered in our continued pursuit of beautiful woman, music and – paramount in my mind – recreational drugs. I could have been paired up with Jack the Ripper and we’d still have been mates for the evening.
Somehow we ended up in a gay club, not that Mark seemed to have noticed, not until I pointed out that the place was well short of the beautiful girls Iceland was fast becoming famous for.
We cut our losses and jumped into a cab. Our laughing, mental taxi driver was a cunt. In most countries the purpose or role of a taxi driver is to drive you from one point to your requested destination, A to B. In this particular cabby’s case his job description meant he would charge you and then go straight to point C. This bastard drove us around for a while whilst laughing and chatting gobbledegook in Icelandic before abandoning us nowhere near where we wanted to be. He royally stitched us up, laughing all the while.
Mark called after me, ‘Where are you going?’
I was pissed off and pissed up and had decided we were staying just over the brow of the hill at the end of the rural street where we’d disembarked and along which I now found myself swiftly ambling along.
‘Wait here with me and I’ll try to get another cab to take us back via town. I think I remember the way,’ Mark said
He was probably right as well, and I shoulda, woulda, coulda listened but I had already passed the point of no return. I was in the place I went where no matter how stupid the idea, there really was no reasoning. I was walking and I didn’t give a fuck if he was with me or not. I knew where I was going, the taxi driver probably hadn’t stitched us up and I wanted to trust him for no reason at all. My legs worked fine anyway. How hard could it be? I was staying just over the hill at the end of the street along which I was cruising so I speeded up, determined to prove my point and get home first.
I got to the end of the street, which was like any other from American movies like The Goonies or Teen Wolf where the paper boy throws the pre-rolled newspapers onto the driveway, aiming for the porch or dog. As I walked the over the brow of the hill the initial familiarity of the street gave way to a steady stream of similar looking roads and neighbourhoods that all looked the same and foreign. Mark would be long gone by now. My initial confident stride developed into a drunken jog and in turn my boozed-up musing became determined rants, one more hill… one more street. I knew we were staying in a hostel somewhere near the coast, and I was sure if I could get there or at least see the sea I’d have a slight chance of finding my way home.
On I jogged, rapidly becoming sober, tired and very annoyed. My feet were aching from hiking all day and dancing all night and now running. The houses and suburbs gave way to an industrial area with factories and giant parking lots. Still, it was light at least, and still on I jogged. I didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the coast and I hadn’t seen any taxis for hours.
I decided to try to use my phone. I didn’t have my cousin’s number and didn’t know anybody else’s in Iceland. I tried calling 118 118, disregarding what country I was in; it might work and at least they might be able to give me a taxi company number in Iceland if only I knew where I was. No joy… I sent a few random text messages in frustration.
My sister thankfully suffered from insomnia and didn’t mind giving up on a little lie-in to help rescue her stupid lost brother wandering around somewhere in another country. She sent my number to my cousin Henry’s sister, who then contacted her sober stag of a brother, informing him over breakfast I was still at large meandering the streets of Iceland in the middle of nowhere. By the time Henry had contacted me my phone’s battery had been on its last bar for quite some time and was now regularly beeping at me, letting me know it was no longer capable of assisting my rescue mission.
Thankfully he found me on the outskirts of town with nothing but wilderness between me and the glaciers and then probably the Arctic. I was totally knackered; I’d wandered and jogged over ten miles away from where we were staying. I got home after a slightly emotional reunion to be told the group was leaving for the day’s activities in half an hour. I’d already missed breakfast and it was understood if I didn’t fancy going along. I figured half an hour’s sleep would be plenty. I was st
ill feeling drunk anyway. A little sleep and I’d feel right as rain again.
As soon as my head touched the pillow I felt myself drift away, succumbing to fatigue. I closed my eyes for a second, smiling at the thought of Henry’s heartfelt rescue of me. I guessed it might be a highlight of his stag party and certainly something to tell the grandchildren once we were old and haggard. We had grown up together and had known each other all our lives, and we’d been through certain trials and tribulations only people who’ve know each other all their lives experience. I rolled over, trying to get comfortable, and rubbed my heavy eyes.
‘Right then, time to go!’ Henry cheerfully announced.
I had only blinked and it was time to go? I figured I might get a chance to grab forty winks on the coach en route to wherever we were going.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, hoping for some respite.
‘White water rafting,’ Henry replied.
‘Terrific!’
We were going white water rafting! As far as I could tell it might be the best hangover cure ever invented; if nothing else, it was sure to wake me up after less than half an hour’s sleep.
I drifted in and out of consciousness on the bus, occasionally aware of my name and tales of my exploits being related. Questions were raised as to the extent of my sanity; nothing should be taken for granted, I supposed. I heard Henry and one of his friends saying that if the opportunity arose that they’d prefer to do the white waters in a canoe rather than as a group on a raft; a few others agreed; the majority thought they were mad. So I volunteered to try the canoes as well.
‘Jesus, we thought you were asleep!’ Henry said.