Ghosts in the Morning (14 page)

‘No,
not wine. L
et’s have a cocktail, Andy, yes, let’s
go for it
,’ Anita said, and gently banged her fist on the table.  ‘We haven’t been out together like this for ages, we should treat ourselves. How about a
Sex on the Beach
?’ She winked at me but I saw her gaze drift back to the blond guy.

At the bar, the barman managed to ignore me for a full ten minutes. Too many young, pretty things to serve. Finally...

‘What do you want?’ snapped the barman. He was big, confident. Arrogant.

‘Um, can I have a
Sex on the Beach
and, um, a, um
–’
T
he barman started to drum his fingers on the counter, and I felt my blood rising. ‘Two of those
,
actually,’
I spat angrily, and the barman looked at me curiously.

Anita had company at the table
; the blond guy who had been standing at the bar earlier was now sitting in the chair next to Anita. In the chair opposite sat another man.
Younger
than the first guy
,
but
h
e was blond too, and
had a passing resemblance to the other guy
.

‘Andy,
you’ve been
ages
,
I
was
beginning to
wonder
what had happened to you. I thought maybe you’d got lucky at the bar and left me to fend for myself.’ She winked to show me she was joking. ‘Anyway, th
is
young man
is Brad. And this
one
here is Tom.’

‘Oh, okay, hello Brad, hello Tom.’ There was no spare chair but neither man got up, their eyes were fixed on Anita. I put the cocktails down, and
walked across to the next table.

‘Is this chair spare?’ I said, to the young couple who were busy staring into each other’s eyes. The man
cupped his hand to his ear without moving forward, forcing me to lean closer. ‘I said, is this fucking chair free?’ The man jumped in his chair a little and frowned, then
rudely flicked his hand at me, which I took to be a yes.

‘Andy, Brad was just telling me that he’s a pilot,
he gets to fly all over the place,
isn’t that exciting
?
’ Anita said.

‘Oh, right, yes, very exciting,’ I said flatly. Brad clearly wasn’t interested in talking to me, so I didn’t see why I should
pretend to be interested
in
him.

The volume of the music increased again and I gave up trying to speak or listen, as Brad and Tom chatted and laughed with Anita. In truth, I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be at home, alone, with a glass of wine
and some crap TV programme
.

‘Come on, Andy, let’s go!’ Anita sounded excited
. She turned to Brad. ‘Where’s your brother?’

‘He’s coming, I think he’s just gone to the loo.’

‘But, but, where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Look, I think I’m just going to head home, I’m a bit tired – ’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Anita said, and took hold of my arm. ‘We’re going clubbing, Andy,
a
bit of a boogie and all that. You know that new club that’s opening soon – Mizzi’s or Mi
llie
’s or whatever it’s called –
  ’

‘It’s Mi
zzi
’s,’ Brad said. I could see him staring at Anita’s cleavage.

‘Mi
zzi
’s okay, yep, well, guess what Andy?
It’s opening night tonight, invite only. VIP night. And my little friend here –’ Anita patted Brad’s cheek gently – ‘he knows the guy who owns it, so he can get us in free. And we won’t have to queue or anything.
Oh, here’s Tom, co
me on
, let’s go
!’

I
sighed. I wanted to go home but Graham was
there
, and he would no doubt be sitting in the lounge, stroking his stupid, wispy moustache and watching some crappy film. Some pathetic action movie, where he’d have the surround sound turned up so high that the room would shake with each explosion. Or worse still, a horror film, with all that unnecessary gore.
I hated h
orror films
, they were different to the ones we used to see as kids, the ones where they were clever enough to let
your imagination do the work
. Now, they just
showed gruesome violence
, usually against some young, innocent looking girl or girls.
Torture porn, I’d heard it called.

‘Oh, what the
hell,’ I said and followed Anita, Brad and Tom into
a
taxi.

***

I hadn’t been to a nightclub for over ten years
. The last time was
Anita’s hen do. Her first one.

That night we had ended up in a club called
‘
L’Auberge du Port.
It translated as ‘
The Inn of the Port
’
. An unusual
name given that
,
although it wasn’t too far from the sea
– but then, nowhere in Jersey was far from the sea -
it was nowhere near
any
port. I think it may have been something to do with the fact that the club was popular with sailors and fishermen. It was that kind of club; tacky and tawdry,
full of leery guys and women who drank too much, or had few morals, or both. It felt like a cattle market with disco lights and hence had earned the dubious nickname of ‘
the abattoir
’, the French word for slaughterhouse.

We had ended up in there on Anita’s insistence – ‘
yeah
,
I know it’s
a
bit of a dive
, but
come on, it’s obvious we’re not on the pull, and
we’ll have a laugh
. Besides
, the DJ’s pretty good
’.

It had been a strange night – we had danced round our
hand
bags
like
throwbacks to another age, we
had drunk
shots of tequila like over-excited teens on a holiday in the Med, and
against all of my usual sound judgement I had ended up in a slow, swaying d
ance with a
guy with lovely, tanned, smooth young skin
. H
e told me was a surfer, and the tequila must have had an effect as I found myself locking my lips onto his and we snogged ever so briefly, before I pulled away and rejoined the girls.
I felt a frisson of guilt bubbling beneath the alcohol but a few minutes later I saw the surfer dancing close to another girl, and I promptly dismissed it. I remember heading for the bar
– it was my turn to get another
r
ound of shots –
and I was chuckling to myself, a little edge of elation pulsing through me at my daring snog.

At the bar, I had scrambled for my purse
and
then
suddenly
I
happened to glance
at the man standing next to me.
Immediately m
y blood went cold.
It was as if the room had gone silent, the thumping bass stilled. The barman had been on his way to me, but stopped and turned to serve someone else. The man standing next to me
was
Jonnie, from the care home.
He hadn’t changed much; he was still scrawny, and his face still looked emaciated. He still had acne too; red, angry spots peppered his face like shotgun pellet-blast of tomato puree.  He recognised me straight away, too, I hadn’t filled out so much then
, I still had the semblance of a figure
.

For a moment that lasted an age, we stared at each other
. Ne
ither of us said a word.
Jonnie actually looked scared.
I could see him growing redder, his spots glowing even brighter under the fluorescent bulbs, and I wanted to throw the tequila in his face,
and
to grind the glass into his weaselly cheeks, his
nose, his eyes
, I wanted him to bleed, and I wondered if he could feel the burning anger that was scorching from my eyes.
Eventua
lly, he
warily
nodded at me,
as
a sad
, nervous
look
scuttled across
his face, and then he was gone
, scu
rrying
away into the darkness of the club
.
Anita had bounded alongside me then, oblivious to the confrontation and had shouted at the barman for more tequila. I carried on drinking but I felt sober for the rest of the night.

‘
L’Auberge du Port
’
was gone now
. It had been
torn down and replaced by a development of luxury apartments, the
sort that had
been springing up all over the island in recent years.
Imposing and impersonal, these developments had private driveways and large, electric gates to keep the hallowed gated communities within separate from the plebs without.

The nightclub we found ourselves in now – ‘
Mizzi’s
’
-
was a world away from
L’Auberge du Port
.
There was n
othing tacky here
; t
he touch of
serious
money
was apparent in the elegant subtlety of the
profession
al interior design.

‘Hold this
for me
, Andy,
please,
I’m just going to dance.’ Anita passed me her glass of champagne as the pulse of dance music throbbed around us. She followed Brad onto the dance floor and started to gyrate her hips to the beat. It was hypnotic, Anita was a good dancer, and
Brad looked clumsy and awkward as he tried to find the rhythm. He settled for a simple uncomfortable sway of his hips, whilst alternating his feet up and down.

Tom was standing next to me, clutching an overpriced bottle of trendy lager, but he wasn’t looking at me
, h
e was wa
ving to a young girl at the bar. I assumed
it must have been someone he knew, because she spotted him and waved back.
She had g
lossy hair
and
glossy teeth that shone under the neon lights, there was no contest.

‘Er, excuse me a moment, I’m just going to say hello to a friend,’ Tom said, and disappeared towards Miss Glossy.

I stood there at the edge of the dance floor, feeling awkward. I wanted to go home, I didn’t want to be standing on my own in a club, feeling like the lonely, fat girl without any friends. I waved my hand towards Anita, trying to catch her attention. She saw me, and cupped her hand, beckoning me onto the dance floor. I shook my head vigorously, no way was I joining her out there. I doubted I could move much in my dress, and besides, I didn’t much feel like dancing.

Two young lads were standing nearby and I could see them sniggering about something. I wondered if they were laughing at me – the fat girl in a dress that made her look like a jam blancmange – but perhaps I was just being paranoid. I walked to the bar and put down Anita’s glass, it was time to go, Anita would be fine.

Anita was
suddenly at my side.
 
‘Andy, babes, where are you going? We’re having a great time,
aren’t we? T
his club’s great
, don’t you think
?’

‘No, Anita,
we’re
not having a great time,
you’re
having a great time.
And no, I don’t think this club is all that great, actually.
I just want to go home.’ I was annoyed at Anita for dragging me to the club, and I tried in vain to keep the anger out of my voice.

‘Well, thanks a lot, Andy,
just because you’re a bit grumpy,
you’re just going to go off and leave me on my own.’

I felt my blood rise. ‘
Leave you on your own!
That’s a bloody cheek, Anita, considering I’ve just been standing on my own for twenty minutes, like some fat gooseberry, while you...while you get all cosy with bloody Biggles over there.’

‘We were just dancing, Andy, it’s hardly like...’

‘Oh, whatever, Anita, whatever. I’m going home. You’re a big girl, you’ll be fine,’ I hissed, and turned away, heading for the exit. From the corner of my eye, I saw Anita give a nonchalant shrug and walk back towards Brad. I felt a rage inside me, Anita didn’t even bloody care.

At the exit, I
looked back
and
saw Anita dancing with Brad, closer now, her hands
were
on his shoulders
, his hands were on her hips
. I barged past the doormen.
‘
Alright, love, calm down, bit of common courtesy don’t cost nothing
,’ I heard one of them say but I kept on walking,
I
didn’t turn around
again.