At that moment Jonathon entered the kitchen, trying to duck out of sight of Deborah. It was getting severe. So what if he’d snogged her? Sod it, why couldn’t he have a snog just because she was a tubber? Now she was following him. It was awful. And so public! Whenever he lifted his head, there she was, looking at him, walking towards him, eyeing him sideways, craning her neck in between people to try and spot him. Jonathon was being hunted. By good fortune he turned up as the slight girl was opening the fridge door, just in time to duck behind it out of Deborah’s sight. The thought, ‘Never hide from a fat girl in the fridge’, crossed his mind, but there was nowhere else to go. He lowered his head as if to peer inside.
‘Yum,’ he said to the girl standing next to him. She waved a wedge of cream cake at him.
‘No’ bad,’ said the girl thickly. The little pink dress was so short she showed her knickers every time she bent over or lifted her arms; a pussy pelmet, as his dad would have called it. It occurred to Jonathon that it would be a good thing if Deborah saw him in close-up with a pretty girl like this. She might get the message.
‘I’m Jonathon,’ he told her, moving in, something he’d never have dared to do unless he had another reason other than to get close.
‘Zoë,’ she said thickly. She waved her cake into the fridge, generously inviting Jonathon to help himself. Jonathon reached in and took out one of the cold cooked sausages lying on a plate inside. He held it between his fingers, and on a sudden impulse – ‘May I?’ – reached across and dipped the tip of the sausage into the cream of the girl’s cake, wiping it along so it had a big dollop on the end. As he did it he had a nasty feeling he might regret it. He held the sausage up in his fingers and waited.
‘You disgusting thing,’ said Zoë, but even as she spoke she burst into laughter, snorting around her cake. Jonathon bobbed the sausage up and down like a little finger puppet.
‘Mr Porky is wearing a white hat today,’ he began. He was about to launch into a puppet show, but the girl laughed in surprise right through her mouthful of cream cake and sprayed all over the inside of the fridge. Everything was covered.
‘Jesus, sick in the fridge,’ said Jonathon. The girl was delighted with him, it was great. But at that inopportune moment, Fasil turned up.
‘What is this? What are you doing?’ he asked them. He looked in amazement at the sausage and then angrily at the girl’s handful of cake. Then he saw what looked like sick sprayed all over the inside of the fridge. Despite being caught snogging Dino’s girlfriend, Fasil was a man of principles.
‘That’s his fridge! That’s his food. You can’t do that!’
‘Who’s this?’ asked the girl. ‘Someone’s dad?’
‘What are you doing?’ Fasil asked Jonathon.
Jonathon smiled weakly. ‘It’s just a sausage …’
‘Look at that, she’s got half his cream cake there,’ complained Fasil. ‘She’s spat it all over the fridge and you’re encouraging her.’
‘Is this how you party?’ the girl asked. ‘Is this how you have fun?’ Fasil was pulling the fridge door shut on them. Revealed to the kitchen, Jonathon looked round. Sure enough, Deborah was there, right there. Two steps and she was on him.
‘Oooh,’ she said. ‘Sausage and cream. My favourite.’ She reached forward, took the sausage off Jon and licked the cream off the end of it.
‘I see,’ said Jonathon.
Taking advantage of the distraction, the girl in the pink dress dodged out of sight, past Fasil, who was staring at Deborah and her sausage as if he’d just seen a cat lay an egg, and out into the hall, where she leaned against a wall and finished off the cream cake greedily.
Zoë had started out the night before in a bar called Kas the Wanderer, drinking Red Bull and vodka with a group of friends. She’d done a load of e at another party, stayed up all day watching TV at a friend’s house before going to Dino’s. One of her friends was going out with one of Jackie’s, which was how they’d found out about it. The others had had enough fairly early on and gone home, but Zoë had nowhere better to go. She hung around in the hope of doing a bit of looting. She’d had nothing to eat all day and she was starving hungry and exhausted.
That guy with the sausage had been nice. She liked funny boys.
When she’d finished she picked up a drink someone had left on a windowsill and took a swig. Snakebite – cider and lager. She whacked down the glassful, pulled a face. She put a hand behind her to steady herself against the sill. Her head was swimming. She decided to have a look upstairs, see if she couldn’t find a place to get her head down right now. The stairway was solid. The first room she found was the boxroom, where Simon Tiptree had to quickly pretend he’d passed out on his back on a pile of coats. Zoë watched him closely, staring at him for a full minute, listening to his breath, until she was sure he was asleep. She went up and prodded him with her foot. He didn’t stir.
Satisfied that he really was out cold, Zoë began to go through the pockets of the coats heaped on the bed beside him. In his false sleep, Simon was outraged – a thief, standing there stealing while he was asleep! The awful thing was, there was nothing he could do about it. If he woke up and nabbed her, she might make a fuss, and then someone might come in and find his own bag full of their valuables. He just had to lie there and take it.
The girl was disappointed to find so little money. She went through the coats – nothing. Then the bags, but it wasn’t until she opened an unpromising-looking nylon rucksack that she suddenly struck it rich. It rattled like a collection box with handfuls of loose change. Inside were watches, bits of jewellery, paper money. There must have been fifty or sixty pounds in cash there.
‘Oh yeah,’ she whispered. She stared intently at Simon, who lay on his back in fury, still trying to appear fast asleep. His face twitched slightly.
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ she told him, and slipped out.
She knew she should leave right then. But she was truly exhausted. The slice of cream cake was about all she’d eaten for twelve hours or more, she was full of vodka and cider and needed to lie down. She poked her head next door into one of the bedrooms. There was a couple lying side by side on the double bed on top of the duvet. She couldn’t tell if they were post coital or just past it, but there was a small sofa under the window with a candlewick cover lying on it. She got onto the sofa, pulled the cover on top of her, and went to sleep.
Next door, Simon was furious. After all the trouble he’d been to! He’d had plans for that money, it was important to him. But what could he do? As soon as she left the room, he sat up, groaned and held his head in his hands. The vile little bitch was so tiny! It was infuriating – a small person getting one over on him like that! The funny thing about it was, he felt so violated – he the thief – because he’d been robbed of his thievings. Frustrated and sullen, he jumped up and stamped downstairs with the idea of finding the girl, following her home and mugging her to get his money back. But he didn’t see her again. He went home with a headache, empty-handed. But there was one lesson to be learned, he realised: if you’re going to steal, steal from a thief. They are the least likely to report it.
At two, Ray and Alan Wicks started throwing bottles on the street outside the house – a sure sign that the party was over. There was nothing left to drink, the strangers had left; acquaintances and semi-friends were already pulling on their coats. There was a flurry of fury when people discovered that their bags had been raided. A few of them had nothing to get home with and had to borrow from those who had been more careful with their things. Taxis turned up and ferried people away. There was a final clump of dedicated smokers getting happily stoned on the landing, who made Dino feel very uncool as he booted them out. The semi-hardcore hung about searching through the bottles for dregs, then left in a lump, leaving Jacks, Ben, Fas, Sue and her boyfriend Dave. And Jonathon. And Deborah.
There had been a weak attempt to begin the clearing up, but Jackie evidently had other things on her mind. People were drinki
ng coffee, but she was sitting next to Dino on the sofa sighing and leaning her head on his shoulder. Whenever he turned to look at her, she kissed him.
‘I guess it’s time to go,’ said Sue. She stood up and smiled at Jackie. ‘Come on, let’s go and get the coats for the dregs. Speed things up.’ Jackie got up and they went upstairs together.
Jonathon leered. ‘You don’t have to boot us out, Dino,’ he said. ‘You don’t need the whole house for that.’ He smiled awkwardly at Deborah, who was sitting next to him clutching his hand.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Dino.
‘Do you need the downstairs for some sort of overflow system?’ said Jonathon. ‘Is it your organ size? Do you need the extra room to manoeuvre it? Perhaps some of us could help with the positioning?’
‘Shut yer trap,’ said Dino. But he loved all this.
Upstairs, Sue and Jackie were in Dino’s parents’ bedroom.
‘So this is the holy of holies.’ Sue tested the bed by pressing down on it and bouncing it up and down. ‘Plenty of give, should give a good return service …’
‘Shut up!’
‘Did you change the sheets?’
‘Shut up!’
‘There’s nothing worse than waking up to the smell of his dad.’
‘Yeah, I know, I made him do them yesterday.’
‘Did you? Make him do it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jackie. Which was a lie. She just thought she needed a bit more cred.
Sue sighed. ‘So you’re finally going to go through with it?’
‘Yes.’ Jackie’s voice came out all high and funny, but she was determined this time. The thought of it made her squeak with excitement.
‘Well. I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll get the coats. You get into bed, eh?’
Jackie burst out into a fit of nervous giggles, but she kicked off her shoes and started to unbutton her top. She paused when she noticed that Sue was still standing on the other side of the bed, smiling and watching her.
‘Go away!’ she scolded, turning her back.
‘I hope he appreciates what he’s getting,’ said Sue, and she left to get the coats.
Jackie walked excitedly round the room a couple of times, anxious about getting in naked. She ran to the door to listen and make sure no one else was coming up, then she took all her clothes off. Naked, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes weaved their way across to the bits she didn’t like. Her hips, which seemed to stick out sideways like a set of lard shelves. Her buttocks quivered as she walked – disgusting! Her breasts looked fine when she was standing, but headed south for her armpits as soon as she lay on her back, and when she stood up with her legs together, instead of her thighs touching each other on the way up to a neat triangle at the top, she had a slight bow in between her thighs which ended abruptly. These were secret faults, of course, only for lovers ever to see – which was of course precisely what she didn’t want.
She scowled and tried to concentrate on her good points. She turned sideways, looked at her breasts and her tummy and her skin. Nothing’s perfect but …
‘Pretty good,’ she told herself uncertainly.
She paused, unsure whether or not to wait up and give him a flash as he came in – she looked at her best standing, when gravity worked for her – or to get into bed and risk him finding he had to feel under armpits to find her boobs. She went to hover by the bed. She turned off the main light and put one of the bedside ones on. She decided to wait. She pulled on a gown she found on the back of the door. She’d slip it off as she heard him on the stairs and give him a second or two of full frontal as he came in, then she’d slip in between the sheets. She went to stand by the bed and pulled back the crumpled cover so she could jump in quick.
9
dino
Sue came back down with the coats. ‘Time to go home,’ she said.
‘Mighta known, prefers his hole to his mates, typical,’ groaned Jonathon, and I thought, Man! I am the One. I mean. They were going home and me – what was I gonna do? Me and Jacks. If you saw her, you’d know what you’re missing.
I saw them out. They were all as jealous as a cat in a fish shop – or, put it another way – jealous as cats watching another cat in a fish shop, and that cat was me. I closed the door. I caught a glimpse of Jonathon turning to face Debs with a funny look on his face. Poor sod, I thought to myself, and Jacks is upstairs, all ready, in bed, probably with nothing on, waiting for me.
Up I went, up the stairs with a couple of bottles of Ice Head all ready to make it and what was waiting in the bed for me? You know what was there? A big heap of sick.
I think I nearly went mad for a moment. It was just lying there where she should be, and there was a definite second when I thought she’d actually been turned into a pile of squashed puke. Then I realised – she’d been ill! Just my luck – she’s bloody drunk so much she’s been sick and now the whole thing’s off again!
I ran out to the landing and into the bathroom, but she wasn’t there. I called, ‘Jacks!’ down the stairs, but there was no reply. Right then, I knew. In fact, I reckon I knew even before, as soon as I saw the puke. I started to think that maybe she was hiding from me, or maybe she’d passed out and was lying on the floor out of sight. I ran around the house checking behind all the chairs and things like that, but I knew she wasn’t there.
The thing is, it was squashed sick. It was well slept on, that puke. I ran back up to check and tested the temperature of the vomit with the tip of my elbow – I know, it’s mad, you have to remember what I was going through. I didn’t want to touch it with my fingers. I had no idea of the cool rate of vomit, but this was stone cold.
‘This is not my fault,’ I hissed to myself. I’d even got her clean sheets to put on the bed! How could she do this to me! I stood there steaming, then I thought to look for her coat in the boxroom, ran through … It wasn’t there. That was the final proof. The bitch had sneaked out without even telling me. I ran to the front door to shout after her, but I didn’t dare to shout very loud; it was too humiliating. There was no answer.
Can you believe that? Why me? Just a few minutes before, I was about the happiest bloke on earth. It was so perfect, showing your friends out of the front door, while your beautiful girlfriend is sliding all naked and gorgeous and ready and waiting into the sheets upstairs. And now look! It’s all just … a pile of puke.
I walked back along the hallway and I suddenly realised what a horrible fucking mess everything was. There were crumpled plastic cups everywhere. Some of them had spilt, some of them were full of dog ends and other crap. I couldn’t bear to go back into the living room, I just went straight up the stairs, but I could feel the presence of the mess in every corner of the house, like a haunting. Stinking beer and dog ends, ash, mud and puke on the carpets and in the beds. I remembered now that someone had been sick actually in the fridge. Even along the landing it was filthy. There were dark puddles on the carpet. Someone had rubbed the black rubber of their shoes along the skirting boards. There was broken glass on the top few stairs. There was a row of dog ends standing like a little fence on the little table by my bedroom door. Some of them had fallen down and charred the wood.
And I was still a virgin.
I went back into my parents’ bedroom to have another look at the sick, like it might not be there this time, or it’d turned back into Jackie. It was really well ground in. I stared at it for a minute. I thought to myself, If I shag the sick instead of Jackie will I still be a virgin? … because just then I’d have done anything on the planet not to be a virgin. I’d destroyed my parents’ house and it hadn’t worked. What did I have to do? I took a deep breath into the depths of my lungs and I screamed, ‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’ as loud as I could, and someone right next to me screamed back so loud I think I died briefly as I jumped about ten metres into the air.
10
jonathon
Dino closed the door and Sue and her bloke shot off home. It was Ben, Fa
s and Meandeborah. All I wanted was for it to be Ben and Fas and me and Deborah. Or even better Fas and Deborah and Ben and me. Or better still, Deborah, Ben, Fas and me on the other side of the whole fucking sentence, but there I was – Meandeborah. Help.
Ben was being very nice. He can be very … courteous, I suppose. Fasil was quiet, I knew he disapproved. Well, Ben disapproved too, but he disapproved because he thought I was going to hurt Debs. He was probably right. Fasil disapproved because he thought that going with a fat girl was morally reprehensible.
I was coming down. I felt like my nervous system had been wired up to some sort of fairground attraction. Have you ever had that feeling where everyone looks like machines? You know? Only pretending to be human beings? What do they want? What are they up to?
So this was hilarious, really. We’d just got to the T-junction on the main road when there was this low, moaning call. It sounded like mating wombats lost in the drains or something.
‘Was that Dino?’ someone asked.
We all stopped and the call came again.
‘Yaaaackeeee …’ As if Dino, if indeed Dino it was, was scared of shouting too loud in case it punctured his status.
‘Could be,’ said Ben. We waited for a while, but there was no more noise, so we carried on a little way. Then, feet, clip-clopping down the road. It was like a movie. Like the camera crew and the lighting guys were going to come running backwards round the corner at any moment filming something coming towards us.
‘I think it’s coming towards us,’ I hissed, and Deborah laughed too loudly. It was so late there were no cars about, everything was dead quiet. We all turned at once to watch the T-junction behind us, just as if we’d been told to.
Clop clop clop clop clop, they went. I turned to look at Ben to see if he was aware that we were in some sort of production; he just smiled at me sideways and raised his eyebrows.
Clop clop clop clop clop clop. It was like, will it be, won’t it be, will it be …?