High society (2 page)

ST HILDA’S CHURCH HALL, SOHO

R
ight from the start I were in a crap mood. They were holding the show at the Docklands Arena, which really ought to be called the Docklands Big Crappy Concrete Box. Having the Brits there is like deciding to have a party in a multistorey car park. What’s more, a multistorey that’s been located at the furthest point in London from anywhere even remotely happening. I mean, come on. You can’t have every pop star in the country sat for three hours in a limo crawling through the sadlands of London. Particularly not Tommy Hanson — number-one UK recording artist and uberlad. The man who finally took Robbie’s crown.

‘No, if you want Tommy Hanson to turn up at your gig sober, don’t ask him to get to the Docklands Arena in the rush hour. Particularly seeing as for some reason that has slipped my memory I was coming up from Brighton, so I had it even worse. M23, Croydon, Brixton, I mean, come on.

‘Anyway, I started drinking in the car. You’d have been the same, I swear. There I was, sat in a big, stupid limo. Opposite me there was three twats from the record company who were all trying to impress me with stories about going off shagging with Motley Crue, as if I give a toss about who they’ve been off shagging with. And next to me there was my triple L. I call ‘em triple Is because that’s what the press call ‘em. ‘…and Tommy arrived with his Latest Leggy Lovely…‘ Triple L, see. Even if they’re short, that’s what they get called, and as it happens I quite like short birds. I mean, Kylie’s got to be your benchmark, in’t she?

‘Actually, it were this fookin’ triple L that drove me back to the booze, as it happens, or at least I reckon if she hadn’t been there I would have lasted till we got to the Arena.

‘She was just such a right pain in the arse. Emily, her name was. Well, you all know who she is. She’s that posh bird, in’t she? The one who became a celeb because she’s a lord’s daughter, or duke or whatever, and she got her tits out in GQ. Fookin’—’ell, we British are pathetic, aren’t we? Who’d have thought in the twenty first century the premiere magazine for the British bloke would be getting itself all in a tizzy because a lord’s daughter was letting us see her tits? We’re still serfs, us Brits, the lot of us, always will be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Emily’s bad looking, she’s all right, but there’s at least twenty birds as tasty in any club in any town in the country on a Friday night, even Doncaster or Skeggy. But they’re not posh, see, and what we British lads want is to get a look at the knockers of our betters. We want to feast our eyes on the forbidden cookies normally only laid out before some arrogant rich twat who’s running the country because he went to the same school as the Prince of Wales.

‘I’m as bad as anyone. I love shagging posh birds, besides which, you know me, if every lad in the country is slapping his monkey over Emily’s knockers in GQ magazine then I have to have them wrapped round me ear’oles. Just have to. It’s my job, I’m Tommy Hanson. I’m the top lad. I shag the birds all the other blokes dream about.

‘So I pulled her. The minute I saw her oiled-up, airbrushed, cheeky little fun bags staring up at me with a staple between them, I knew I had to pull her.

‘Not exactly a difficult assignment, I have to say. I just sent a car round with a note saying, ‘Congratulations, my sweet Lady Em, you’ve been pulled. Get in the car, signed Tommy H.’

‘I knew she’d come. Any bird who gets her jollies out for GQ wants to be in the papers so bad it in’t funny, and the best way to get in the papers bar none as of this point in time is by shagging me. Honest, the euro could collapse, the ozone layer evaporate, the Pope get run over by a plane while kissing a fookin’ airport, but if I’m shagging a new triple L, me and her get the front page. I am a bird like Emily’s idea of a dream come true. For her, it simply does not get any better than me. All right, maybe Prince William, but that’s it; after him, I’m next. So of course she got straight into the car and came round to my place.

‘She walked in, asked for some charlie, did about a suitcaseful of it, and by way of payment climbed aboard.

‘I can’t deny it were top sex. Superb. Most exhilarating. Loved it. Posh bird, see, can’t resist ‘em. I’m banging away, looking at those tight little cup cakes jiggling about and I’m thinking, ‘I am shagging a lord’s daughter. Me! How fookin’ good is this?’ Like I say, it’s absolutely pathetic, but I’ve told you, I’m English — to me shagging a posh bird is an act of conquest because secretly I don’t think it’s my place. Like the way them black pimps always used to make sure they had white girlfriends, it’s stealing the enemy’s most prized possession, in’t it?

‘Anyway, me and Emily became an instant item, as they say, and pretty soon we had that many press camped outside my house we invited them all in for vintage Cristal and we were that pissed up and wired we told them we were engaged.

‘It was a lovely night that. Emily had had ‘Tommy the Tank’ tattooed round her belly button because she reckoned I shagged with all the awesome power of a Challenger Tactical Assault Vehicle (her uncle was a general), and she showed this tattoo off to all the snappers. Well, the next day her taut, muscled little tummy was on the front page of every single paper in the country, not just the Sun and the Mirror and the Star but The Times and the Telegraph and the Guardian, an’ all. Course, the Guardian tried to play it all ironic and amused like they weren’t so much doing the story as the story of the story, but they still fookin’ showed the photo, didn’t they? So what a bunch of twatty little hypocrites they are, eh?

‘Emily loved it. It was like she’d won an Olympic gold medal or got a Nobel Prize or whatever. She just spread them front pages on the floor and knelt among them sort of squeaking with happiness, drooling at all them photos of her belly button with my name round it looking up at her from every single one of ‘em.

‘Well, what was I to do? Not a difficult decision. I got behind her, hoiked up her Versace pink suede mini-skirt, thumbed the G-string from between her tanned, golden arse cheeks and gave her one from behind. Well, it were a celebration, weren’t it? We were the business. Britain’s number-one story. Two coked-up fookwits, me banging away and her giggling and moaning and preening over all them front pages of herself, which she’d got just through being posh and shagging me.

‘Top morning. Does it for me, I can tell you.’

The circle of recovering alcoholics sat in stunned silence like so many open-mouthed wax dummies, tea half finished, biscuits perched on the saucers on which they had lain un-nibbled since Tommy had begun to testify.

‘Afterwards we rolled around on the floor for a bit and had croissants and champagne and another shedful of my charlie, and Emily sent out for more copies of the papers to give to all her mates. Then I turned her over, ripped five grand’s worth of designer daywear off her rock-hard, worked-out, emaciated little bod and banged her till she went off and puked…’

For the first time the circle stirred.

‘Don’t get me wrong — she would’ve gone off and puked whether I’d been banging her or not. There was no way she was going to let herself digest those croissants, mate. Believe me, the closest a girl like that gets to having a square meal is agreeing to swallow.’

Only Tommy could get away with that one. Somehow with Tommy it sounded cheeky.

‘Lovely morning. Lovely, lovely morning. Me and Emily were so happy together. But the funny thing was, even though it was obvious who the real star was between us, even though she’d jumped from third-billed spread in GQ to front-page saturation media coverage solely on the strength of letting me up her on a regular basis, she was that well bred and posh that she still acted like she was the top dog in the relationship and I was just some jolly bit of rough. She had so much confidence. They all do, those posh birds. Loud voices, officers’ accents, loads of deafening mates and a couple of great big cunty brothers in jumpers who are the only people they will defer to because they’re just ‘sarch a farking larf, right? So-o-o droll’. Let me tell you, after a month or two of having her baying in me ear’ole, love was well and truly dead. I was sick of the sight of her, and by the time the Brits rolled around I was looking for a way to dump her. That was partly why I’d given up the booze, as it happens, in order to dump Emily. I’m better at reality when I’m sober.

‘ ‘Oh, farking Christ, I hate the farking Brit Awards,’ she was shouting at me and the record company twats like we were in the next county. ‘They always give best newcomer to some little farking Scotsman nobody’s ever heard of and the big Americans never turn up, so they don’t usually have any really proper stars at all.’ Can you believe it? There she was, sat in a stretch with a bloke who’d sold fifteen million albums in the previous twelve months, and she’s moaning about the absence of proper stars! I mean fookin’—’ell. Well, that was it. You remember that old Paul Simon song, ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’? I love Paul Simon, me. Anyway, he says don’t agonize about it, just get out, make a plan, don’t be embarrassed, just fookin’ do it. Well, he never mentioned anything about waiting till your limo stops at traffic lights, opening the door on the bird’s side and sliding her out onto the street with your boot, but I think he would have done if it had scanned because it’s a top way of dropping a bird. Makes the point, let me tell you. ‘I even remembered to grab my bag of charlie off her as she went. Bang, into the street, right on her arse. There she was, sitting amongst the McDonald’s wrappers in a fifteen thousand quid Gucci number, which basically consisted of three small handkerchiefs connected by bootlaces. Me and the twats were pissing ourselves as the limo pulled away, let me tell you.

‘I looked back at her and waved. Brixton High Street, five in the afternoon, almost naked. The only white face I could see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone looking so scared. That’s what charlie does to you, empowers you to be an arsehole, makes you think kicking girls out of cars because you don’t like their accents is funny…I wish I could pinpoint the moment in my life when I turned into such a complete cont.’

Suddenly there were tears in Tommy’s eyes. The circle of faces were amazed. They were used to raw emotion in their meetings, but this had come so suddenly.

‘Don’t worry, it’s just the booze seeping out through me tearducts…Anyway, that’s when I had my first drink. Like I say, I’d still been doing the coke, so it wasn’t as if I was properly dry. I’d just started me detox programme with booze because booze makes you fat whereas coke helps you slim. But, bollocks, I wanted a drink. I needed a drink. The record company blokes were all cacking themselves about what a great bloke I was for kicking a coked-up, half-naked girl out of a car in the middle of south London, and not for the first time in my life I realized that if I didn’t get drunk quite quickly I might notice that I was a sad, arrogant, bullying bastard.

‘I stopped the car at the next off licence and got a crate of Special Brew and six Kangaroo’s Arse Method Champenois, which was all they had. Well, you’re not going to get vintage Cristal in the Brixton Londis, are you?

Then I went and sat in the front with the driver. I didn’t even give the three twats from the record company any of my booze. I just left them behind the glass and went and sat up front, just me, the driver and of course my old mate charlie. By the time we got to the Arena I was well and truly on one and I’d also decided that what I did to Emily was a top move and she’d deserved it and she’d be all right anyway.

‘I like Australian wines.’

A HOUSE IN CHORLTONCUM-HARDY

B
illy was ten, Kylie was nine. By rights, they should never have been left alone, but Billy’s mum was a single parent and she had to go to work. The children were in the care of Billy’s seventeen year-old sister Michelle, and she had gone out for milk and coffee. Besides which, Michelle was sick to death of Billy and Kylie and she felt that the five-minute walk to the shops might restore her sanity and thus prevent her from throwing one or both of them out of the window.

Billy and Kylie went upstairs to Michelle’s bedroom, which they knew was strictly out of bounds, and lay on the bed together beneath the Eminem posters. They practised kissing until fits of the giggles made further experiment impossible and then Billy showed Kylie Michelle’s condoms, which he earnestly explained were a ‘contradiction device’.

‘So Mish doesn’t get up the duff,’ he added, ‘although she says fat chance of that anyway, which means she hasn’t got a boyfriend at the moment.’

Kylie had recently agreed to be Billy’s girlfriend, and Billy had been hoping on the strength of this that Kylie might take her knickers off and show him her bits. Disappointingly, Kylie demurred, but offered instead to show him her knickers. This she did and Billy stared for quite a while, which he enjoyed, although he didn’t know why. Kylie declined the offer to see Billy’s pants and the conversation moved on. Billy said that he knew where Michelle hid her special things — her cigarettes and sometimes some money. Billy suggested that they look to see what they could find. Kylie, who was harbouring a major craving for a Honeycomb Wispa, agreed. Besides, if there was no money they could at least have a smoke.

Billy pulled out the drawer of Michelle’s bedside table to reveal the space behind. They found no money but they did find a small decorative box in which were six tablets, each embossed with a bird. They both knew that it was dangerous to put pills in their mouths, but they were bored and these little pills didn’t look like medicine. It seemed more than likely that they were sweets.

Billy and Kylie ate three pills each.

When Michelle found them writhing on the floor of her bedroom she saw the empty pill-box and knew exactly what had happened. Grabbing the children in turn, she forced her fingers into their mouths in an effort to make them sick. Then she rushed to the fridge and brought milk, thinking in her panic that it might help. As the children began to lose consciousness she called her mother at work, who told her to call for an ambulance.

Later Michelle was to admit that as much as fifteen minutes might have passed between the discovery of the stricken children and her calling the emergency services.