Kiss My Name (39 page)

SIMON – May 2012

             
I was beyond drunk. I had no idea where I was, who I was with, what time of day it was, what day it was or how long I had been there. My brain was ticking over on minimum power. I kept waking up for a minute because I was uncomfortable and then drifting back off to sleep. My head hurt. I wanted to sleep for another 24 hours.

             
There is however, nothing more sobering than fear. I was woken from my sleep by two knees pushing into my back. With my eyes barely able to open, I twisted my neck to the left and it just caught a glimpse of a red rosed tattoo on my attacker’s neck. Shit! It was Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth. I tried, clumsily and drunkenly to sand up, but he pushed down harder on me, pushing my face into the grass. It was night time and we were outside. Why I was on grass, outside, in the middle of the night, I wasn’t sure. It was drizzling too.

“I wouldn’t even try getting up, Muscleman,” warned Boffin, there’s a knife in my right hand and I will happily dig it into your back, if I have to. You have no idea how much I hate you.”

To illustrate his point, he slid the blade across the back of my neck, so a trickle of blood ran down my back. I remembered where I was. I was on my Stag Do in Blackpool. I wasn’t sure how Boffin had managed to get there though. I kicked him off the coach.

“Thanks for the cut, knobhead,” I had never been and would never be scared of that fool, “What are you doing here anyway? Come to kill the rest of the Strong family off? My Dad’s in a B&B somewhere, you’ll have to go back to Chorley for my Mum though.”

“Just shut it, Simon,” Boffin warned, punching the left side of my face with his left hand. It wasn’t particularly hard though. I wasn’t sure whether the lack of force was because Boffin was going soft in his old age or because I was numb from sleeping on the floor in a field, which is what it appeared I had been doing. How the hell I had got there, I had no idea. I could see we were near a windmill, by the sea. From memory, it appeared we were in Lytham. I could remember being in ‘Reflex’ and dancing on tables to ‘Thriller’ with Tim, Arthur and my Dad and then later doing the same with Will and Tim to ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ but after that, my memory banks were empty.

“Right, Muscleman, I’m going to stand up now and after I do, I want you to stand up too.
You’ll need to wake the midget up too. Don’t try anything clever, if you do, I’m warning you, this knife will be put back to work.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Never you mind,” Boffin said.

I went to stand up
. I pulled my handcuff to wake Tim. I was aching so much and felt so weary. I needed to summon all my strength to stand up, but I did it as I didn’t fancy the prospect of being attacked by Boffin’s knife. I was just in the process of getting to my feet when the weirdest thing ever happened. There was a crackling noise and Boffin suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. An electric current shot through him and after a few seconds of shaking, he just dropped to the floor. He seemed to be out cold. I presumed he must have been struck by lightning. I looked up to the heavens.

“What the hell is going on?” I said out loud in my deeply hung over, gravelly voice, sounding like a mix of Barry White and Leonard Cohen.

“I just tasered, Boffin,” said a voice beside me, I looked around and a smiling Blue Goblin winked at me, “Now what shall we do with him?”

JOEY – MAY 2012

              My luck must have run out at midnight. Saturday was perfect, but here I was in Zara’s en suite at 4am on Sunday morning, trying to give the little chap a shake to turn him into the big chap. I had tried everything, shaking it, talking to it, begging it. I had even screwed my eyes up and pictured Zara in that dress and then pictured her taking it off. Nothing worked.

There was a knock on the door.

“Anything happening, Simon?” Zara asked from the other side of the door.

“No, I can’t believe it. This has never happened to me before in my life.”

“Don’t worry, Simon, we’ve drunk gallons. Just come back to bed and we’ll go to sleep.”

This was so frustrating. Getting into bed and going to sleep when you are sharing a bed with Zara, felt like a defeat, a massive defeat. I gave it another vigorous shake but he looked back at me tired and unmoved.

“I so want to do this, Zara. You’re there all naked and gorgeous and I’m here with my brain desperate to go, but my body on strike. It’s infuriating.”

“Stop making this into such a big deal, Simon. There’ll be other times,” Zara said reassuringly.

              The thing was, I knew if my body kicked into gear, I wouldn’t want there to be other times. Zara seemed pleasant enough. There was no question that she was gorgeous and had the best body I had ever seen, skinny legs and hips with an arse better than Kylie’s and tits better than Tulisa’s, but despite all that, she came across as an airhead. If I was going to see her again, she had to have all that but at least a sprinkling of intelligence on top. The day they sprinkled intelligence, they forgot to call on Zara.

             
That was why I gave Simon’s name to her. This was always going to be a one off. I should have thought of a better name than Simon’s, but he was up there dancing on the tables with Frank and Arthur and I don’t look like a Frank or an Arthur. She would probably find out it was a bogus name from someone in David Lloyd’s gym anyway, but I’d deal with that at a later date. For now, I had to deal with the small matter in hand. If my little bloke didn’t start working, I probably would have to see her again, which was a right royal pain in the arse, but at some point I needed to finish the job I had come here for.

             
Zara tried to open the bathroom door, but I had locked it. I have some pride and didn’t want her walking in whilst I was administering life saving operations to my penis. As he now seemed to be dead on arrival, I put a towel around my waist and let her in. Zara was not so shy. She stood there wearing nothing but a stud in her stomach. I could not believe things were not stirring, I mean look at her. My little bloke should have been saying ‘a million time thank you’ rather than ‘I’m tired and can’t be bothered’.

“There is an alternative to going to sleep,” Zara said suggestively.

“What?”

“This.”

Zara opened up the palm of her hand and there was a little circular blue tablet on it.

“What is it? Viagra?” I queried.

“No, but it has the same active ingredient as Viagra, so does the same job.”

“OK,” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible, “I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but what sort of girl bring
s a penis enhancing drug with them on a Hen Do?”

“Oh, it’s not mine,” Zara explained, “Do you remember Lucy, in Reflex? My room mate, the girl who went back to that blokes? She brought it. She used it last night too.”

“Did it work?”

“She said it worked brilliantly.”

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Pass it here then, Zara. I might as well give it a go.”

              Ten minutes later, we were on Zara’s bed and her little miracle tablet had done the business. I can’t describe how good it felt. Jack could have used it, instead of the beanstalk, it was that effective. We had been kissing and feeling our way around for a few minutes and I was ready to go to work.

“Have you got a condom, Simon?” Zara asked.

“No, Zara, I don’t need one. I’ve had the snip.”

“I’ve got one,” Zara said.

“Bloody hell!” I said rolling on top of her and kissing her passionately, “Is there anything you haven’t got?”

“An SDT and I’d prefer to keep it that way. Put one on, it’s on the sideboard at the bottom of the bed.”

“Alright, alright, I get the message.”

I jumped off the bed. Took the condom out the foil, I hated wearing these bloody things. I put it between my thumb and forefinger and was about to put it on. I looked over at Zara, her pert bottom was up in the air, so she wasn’t watching me. I paused for a few seconds and then thought,

‘Do you know what, sod it!’

I left it on the sideboard, next to the opened foil.

“Is it on?” Zara asked.

“It is. Fits like a glove, but you’ll be glad to know there’s only one little chap, heading your way, not five.”

“Hope he isn’t little any more!”

“You can be the judge of that, gorgeous!” I said as I jumped on top of her.

              The sex, or what I remember of it, was really great. I managed to get out in time and caught everything in my cupped hand, so I didn’t give the game away. We both fell asleep soon after, but the seagulls woke me up about seven. I had the hangover from hell, which came as no surprise. Zara was flat out, I had pinched all the covers off her, so she was just there, naked and uncovered. She was stunning. What a waste! Maybe one day Judy Garland would take her to the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and get her a brain. I decided to creep out of there. I shut her door quietly behind me. As I left Zara’s B&B, I passed what I presumed to be the landlady in reception. She gave me a look of disgust, but then it broke out into a huge smile, almost a laugh. I can charm the birds from the trees, I can. It’s a real gift!

SIMON – May 2012

              Carrying an unconscious man, with a dwarf, when you are hung over and handcuffed together, isn’t the easiest of tasks, but somehow we managed to lean Boffin up against the sea wall. It was tempting to leave him on the sea side of the wall and let the tide take him away, but we opted for the land side.

“How long will it take for him to come around?” I asked Tim.

“Any time now,” Tim replied.

“How are we going to keep him from attacking us?”

“That’s simple,” Tim said, “I’ll just point the stun gun at him and I’ve got pepper spray too, so I’ll threaten him with that.”

“Where in God’s name did you get the Taser and pepper spray from? Have you been robbing policemen?”

“It’s not exactly a Taser,” Tim explained, “A Taser is just a make of stun gun and mine isn’t one of them. This one is a Far Eastern stun gun. It’s not exactly legitimate either. I bought it from Black Market Bryan, who deals out of a flat in Chorley. It cost me £200, but he threw in the pepper spray for nothing. I need some sort of protection in my line of work and this has worked well. I’ve used it four times this year already. Taser’s stop the brain controlling the muscles in the body, the body recovers when the Taser stops. This one seems to take people longer to recover from. Lucky it does.”

“Tim, you can’t just go around zapping people! You need to get rid of it. You’ll end up killing someone.”

“It hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

“It only needs to happen once, mate.”

“Alright, I take your point. I’ll get shut of it, but not until we’ve dealt with Boffin.”

We sat a few feet away from Boffin, just staring at him, waiting for him to come around. It didn’t take long, two or three minutes after we propped him up against the wall, he started to murmur. A minute after that, he was coherent.”

“What did you do to me?” he asked.

“We used a stun gun on you and we’ll use it again if you move, so keep still,” Tim warned.

“Where’s your knife?” I demanded.

“In my pocket.”

“Well, take it out of your pocket and throw it along the ground to me. The Goblin has pepper spray as well as the stun gun.”

Boffin took a Stanley knife out of his back pocket and hurled it along the floor to me.

“I can’t believe I’ve been stunned by a Blue Goblin,” Boffin said sounding a little groggy.

“It’s Timmy Anderson,” I said, “Timmy from Parklands.”

“Now, I believe it,” Boffin moaned.

“Why are you here, Boffin?” I asked. I had no idea what we were going to do with him, so I thought the best thing to do, would be to see what he had been planning to do with us.

“I came to make peace,” Boffin stated like a character from Star Trek.

“Get lost Boffin, you did no such thing,” I argued, “you’ve just cut the back of my neck and told me that I have no idea how much you hate me!”

“I was acting. It’s only a scratch.”

I dabbed the back of my neck and then held my palm up to show him the blood.

“It’s more than a scratch,” I said, feeling a little sorry for myself.

“Where were you intending on taking us?” Tim wanted to know.

“Just out from the middle of the field, so we could talk. Somewhere like here.”

“Why threaten me with a knife then, if you just wanted to talk?” I asked.

“Would you have done anything I asked without it?”

I thought about it.

“Probably not.”

“Probably not!” Boffin scoffed, “Definitely not. Every time I see you, you attack me.”

“That’s an exaggeration, Boffin! I’ve only ever attacked you twice and the first time was because you were beating Tim up.”

“I’ve changed since we were kids, Simon. I’m not denying I was a horrible kid. I know I was. I was a bully, I am well aware of that. I am not a horrible human being now though.”

I was more than a little dubious about this claim.

“Leopards don’t change their spots,” I insisted.

“Emily says they can. Emily says every leopard has the potential to change their spots.”

“Emily?”

“My girlfriend, Emily.”

I found it hard to believe that Boffin would have a girlfriend. I was expecting her to turn out to be an imaginary one. A voice inside his head. Boffin could probably tell I was dubious about this claim too.

“Simon, you know my girlfriend, you’ve met her.”

“I don’t think I have Boffin. I don’t know any Emily’s.”

“Yes you do. She works with Nicky at the nursery.”

I tried to think of an Emily. I thought of one.

“Young Emily?”

“She’s 25, Simon, she’s not 16.”

Emily at the nursery where Nicky worked was someone whose name I had heard mentioned a lot, but I had only met her on a couple of occasions. She was a lovely, friendly girl. Physically, she was a bit on the heavy side, with dark hair and glasses, but then I would never make a judgement on someone based on their looks. The main point was that she was lovely and friendly, not the type who should be interested in Boffin. If she was Boffin’s girlfriend, I decided I would get Nicky to warn her off.

“So Emily thinks you can change your spots?”

“She believes anyone can, Simon. She’s a Christian, she believes in repentance. I’ve started going to Alpha classes with her. They are really interesting. Luke Chapter 15 has become an important passage to me. I want to turn away from sin. As I said, Simon, I was a horrible child, at times I have been a horrible adult too, but I am changing, changing for the better, day by day.”

“Boffin, here’s a tip for you. If you want to change for the better, day by day, then don’t carry a Stanley knife, cut someone’s neck or say how much you hate them.”

“I’m sorry for that Simon, but my ultimate goal was a noble one. I wanted you to listen to me. You have never listened to what I had to say about Colin.”

I wasn’t swallowing all this Christian goodness stuff.

“Because you have always lied, Boffin.”

“I haven’t lied, I just haven’t told the whole truth. That is why I have come to see you, to tell you the whole truth. I really need you to hear my story. Emily knows what happened. She also knows about your Stag Do as Nicky has mentioned it at work. Emily has never mentioned to the girls at work who her boyfriend is, because she has been willing me to speak to you first. She has been urging me to come on this Stag Do. She feels you would appreciate the truth. Obviously, the problem was that you didn’t
want me here, so I had to get the train over. That was why I had to get my £70 back, to pay for the train and a B&B. I have been following you to see if I could catch you when you were on your own, but once you were handcuffed, that was impossible, so I have been waiting for a point when it has just been the two of you. Please will you just listen to what I have to say, Simon?”

“I’ll listen, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll believe you.”

“Just listen though. Don’t interrupt.”

“OK. Can I ask you a couple of things before you start?”

“Go on.”

“Were you the kid spotted wearing the baseball cap, walking with Colin along Euxton Lane?”

“Yes.”

“And did you go to the canal with Colin?”

“Yes.”

This felt like progress. They were the only two questions I was going to ask, but once he answered yes to both of them, I needed to ask one more.

“Final question, will you tell the police exactly what you are about to tell me?”

“If you want me to, Simon. I’ve carried this burde
n with me for twenty five years. It feels like time to let it go.”