Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  Paul and Chris seemed cool and funny without being pompous and annoying and, best of all, they were good-looking enough to make me want to join in with the conversation. I could tell straight away that Melissa was doing her best to try to impress Paul, which was fine by me. His friend Chris – tall and handsome, thoughtful without being morose – was more my type anyway, and I was happy to focus all my attention on him.

  Around three in the morning, with the party showing no signs of flagging, the four of us decided to leave and headed towards Chorlton Park for a change of scene. We climbed over the gate and sat on the kids’ swings, knocking back lukewarm Red Stripe that we’d liberated from a kitchen sink full of melted ice at the party, and putting the world to rights with the kind of heated political debates that you can only have when you’re drunk, in your early twenties and have never held down a full-time job. Eventually we calmed down and started talking about the future.

  ‘So, where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?’ asked Paul, directing his question at Melissa.

  Melissa shrugged. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Curiosity.’

  Melissa thought the question over. ‘Ten years from now I’ll be . . .’ she paused and looked at me, ‘. . . what? Thirty-three? That sounds like a lifetime away.’

  ‘So, what will you be doing “a lifetime” from now?’ prompted Paul.

  Melissa took a swig from the can in her hand. ‘Okay, okay. Ten years from now I’d like to be . . . right here.’

  ‘What, in Chorlton Park?’

  ‘No! But in Manchester at least . . . and by then I’ll have gone back to university and finished a degree in something more interesting than Business and Economics like – I don’t know – Art History. I always loved the academic part of my Art “A” level more than the sitting around drawing stuff. I like knowing the stories behind paintings, the reasons why artists create the things they do.’

  ‘So what would you be doing for a job?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something worthwhile, I hope. Maybe something for a charity. And I’d be living in one of those sweet little terraces on Beech Road.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Melissa laughed. ‘No, with my bloke.’

  ‘And what’s he like, this bloke?’

  ‘He’s nice and caring and funny. Likes animals and is good to his mother.’ She paused, then added: ‘And he never ever forgets my birthday.’

  ‘Sounds like a made-up bloke to me.’ Paul grinned at Chris.

  ‘Nope,’ replied Melissa. ‘He’s out there somewhere. And do you know what? One day I’ll find him.’

  The interesting thing was that although two relationships started at that party they both went in completely different directions. Whereas Chris and I were rock solid from day one, moving in together after nine months and getting married a few years later, Melissa and Paul were always volatile. In the early days it seemed like every other week they would have one argument or another only to make up by the end of the night. After a year or two they appeared to calm down and for a long while things were good between them. I remember them laughing. I remember them being happy. I can even remember thinking to myself when they moved in together (partly out of love but mostly out of convenience) that this was it. They would settle down into the kind of comfortable groove that Chris and I were already in. Finally there would be no more fights, no more arguments, and no more conflict. I even thought that one day the two of them might get married and have kids.

  Quite when they began to fall apart I was never really sure but Melissa always claimed that it was somewhere around the time that Paul turned thirty. It started with small rows about nothing, which eventually progressed into bigger rows about everything. Paul would get annoyed at Melissa and then Melissa would get annoyed right back, thereby guaranteeing that every petty quibble ended in full-scale war. As bad as it was, though, I never guessed that Paul would want to get out of the relationship because by this time they came as a pair. You never got one without the other. And I found that comforting because I understood it. That was exactly how things would always be with Chris and me.

  I think I assumed that these arguments were just a ‘phase’ or a ‘bad patch’ or ‘one of those things’ that all couples go through only to come out the other side stronger. I’d lost count of the times when friends of ours would appear to be on the verge of splitting up only to announce a few weeks later that they were getting married or having kids or leaving their jobs to go travelling. I didn’t realise that Paul was so genuinely unhappy with the way things were between him and Melissa. And I certainly hadn’t guessed that he was capable of speeding up the demise of their relationship with a catalyst so lazily constructed that I still find it hard to forgive him.

  It happened like this. Out in town one night with Chris and Chris’s brother Cooper and some other mates, Paul got talking to a girl in a club and went home with her. What he didn’t know though was that one of her housemates, Sara, was a friend of our friend Laura, who had even actually met Paul once out with Melissa. And although Paul hadn’t recognised her next morning as she left to go to work, Sara had recognised him straight away and told Laura everything. Laura checked the story with Cooper (who lied) and asked me to check the story with Chris (who told a different lie). This validated matters enough for Laura and me to present our evidence directly to Melissa.

  Melissa was devastated; it cut her to the bone. She challenged Paul the moment he got in from work and the second he admitted it she packed her bags and came to stay with me and Chris.

  For most people that would have been the end of the story but not for Melissa. Because she was still in love with him, she just couldn’t seem to let go of what they had. Paul must have felt the same way because about six weeks after the split Melissa had a long talk with Paul and announced that despite all that had happened they were going to try and stay friends. I assumed that this was just a way of saying that they would carry on sleeping together but it wasn’t that at all. Melissa really did want them to be friends and nothing more. And even though in the months that followed she stayed over at his house on numerous occasions, sometimes even sharing the same bed, nothing ever happened between them. According to Melissa all they ever did was talk with an honesty and openness that they had never been able to achieve when they had been together. With the single-mindedness of a scientist on the verge of making a medical breakthrough, Melissa made it her mission to use these conversations to analyse why things hadn’t worked out for them. Taking Paul’s confessions and half-mumbled revelations, she did her best to make sense of them and then one evening, not far from the first anniversary of the Big Split, she made a pronouncement to Paul that seemed to take even her by surprise. She said: ‘You think you don’t want what other people want. You think that all you want is to be alone. But it’s not true. The day will come when you’ll be so sick of being alone that you won’t know what to do. And when that happens come and find me and we’ll pick up right where we left off.’

  When I heard what she’d said to him I got so angry that I lost it completely. I told her to her face how pathetic she was being to let Paul walk all over her and that the last thing she needed was to promise to hang around for him to get his act together. I told her straight. Paul didn’t deserve her. He wasn’t going to miraculously turn into some kind of Prince Charming overnight. And if she was under some misguided notion that she was going to be the woman who was going to fix whatever was broken inside Paul and make him want to settle down then she was wrong. The best thing she could do would be to move on to someone else as soon as possible instead of hanging around for him like somekind of lapdog. Melissa’s response? She just got up, walked out and didn’t speak to me for the best part of a month.

  Billy

  It was just after seven, I was on the phone with Freya and my New Year’s Eve was not off to a good start at all.

  ‘So, what are you up to tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘Gina and Danni have got me tickets
for some club in town,’ said Freya. ‘Apparently it’s going to be really good.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Dancey or indie?’

  ‘Indie.’

  ‘Which club?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘What about you then?’ she asked. ‘Are you hitting the town with the gruesome twosome?’

  She meant my housemates Seb and Brian.

  ‘Yeah,’ I lied.

  ‘Anywhere good?’

  ‘Some club in town.’

  ‘Indie or dancey?’

  ‘Dancey, I think.’

  Another long pause.

  ‘Well, have a good New Year, yeah?’ she said. ‘I’ll be thinking of you come midnight.’

  My heart still skipped a beat even though I knew that Freya would not be thinking about me at all come midnight. When the bongs arrived she would be thinking about whichever tight-trouser-wearing, big-haired, ‘Look at me I’m in a band’ loser that she’d selected as her next victim. ‘And I’ll be thinking of you too,’ I replied, realising just how much I didn’t want this call to end. ‘Are you going to make any resolutions?’

  ‘No,’ said Freya firmly. ‘I’m not into all that. You?’

  ‘I’m making a few.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know, the usual.’

  There was a short silence, which was undoubtedly Freya considering digging a little deeper before deciding against it. ‘Well, good luck with all that then. And we’ll catch up soon, yeah? Go for a drink or something, yeah?’

  ‘Definitely. Let’s catch up soon.’

  I put my phone down on the empty computer-printer box that doubled as my bedside table, picked up the remote for my CD player, pressed play. As ‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’ filled my ears I lay down on my bed, closed my eyes and wondered whether Bill Callahan had ever had problems with ‘the ladies’ when he was twenty-four like me.

  I’d never been entirely convinced that what I’d felt for Freya had been love (after all how could it be real love if she didn’t love me back?) but even so, what I felt now was torture.

  I’d first got to know her when she took a job at the Duck and Drake at a period of my life when Brian, Seb and I virtually lived there. A lot of our mates used to go there and as we too became regulars we got to know most of the staff. So when I turned up one Saturday night and saw Freya standing behind the bar, it took me by surprise: she was absolutely amazing. She had shoulder-length black hair that, along with the way she dressed, made her look as if she had just stepped out of a time machine from 1963. She had that whole doe-eyed, sexy indie-chick thing going on and the most beautiful face I had ever seen.

  I guessed from the way she dressed that she was into music and so over the course of a couple of conversations, as I got my round in, I’d drop in the names of a few bands that I thought she might like and when those worked, I dropped in a few more, then a few more. After about a month of name dropping bands like crazy she told me that a band we’d both been raving about recently were playing at Night and Day and asked me if I fancied coming along. I couldn’t believe it. A date. With Freya. This kind of luck was unheard of in my life. I was over the moon.

  Though we’d arranged to meet at Dry on Oldham Street at eight, Freya didn’t turn up until minutes to nine.

  ‘I’m really sorry I’m so late.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You see, the thing is . . .’ she stopped, a bit tearful, ‘the thing is . . . I’ve just had a massive row with Justin.’

  ‘Who’s Justin?’

  ‘My boyfriend.’

  The news that she wasn’t single knocked me sideways, even though it made perfect sense that a girl like Freya would have guys throwing themselves at her left, right and centre.

  On the way to Night and Day, Freya gave me a potted history of her and her boyfriend, right up to and including the fight that they had just had. I listened attentively and gave her advice on how to sort out the problem, even though this guy sounded an awful lot like some of the idiots who had been on my course at university – all rock-star poses and daft haircuts without a shred of personality between them.

  At about ten o’clock, when the headline band came on stage, Freya suggested that we move towards the front and before I could say a word she grabbed me by the hand and led me right to the front of the stage. And from the band’s opening song to their closing encore she didn’t let go of my hand.

  At the end of the night we filed out of the venue and headed to a fast-food place for curry and chips, which we ate sitting on a bench next to the bus stop before getting the bus back to Withington. Later, as we parted to go our separate ways, she told me she’d had a great time and that she would call me in the morning. The call never came.

  The next I saw of her was about a week later, when I turned up at the Drake with Seb and Brian to find her behind the bar.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t call you, did I? It’s just that . . . well . . . Justin and I sort of got back together.’

  ‘Great,’ I replied, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. ‘I’m really, really pleased for you.’

  ‘Good, because in a way it was all down to you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I followed your advice to the letter and before I knew it we were having this massive heart to heart and we realised that we were just both really wary of getting hurt. Ever since that night things have just been perfect.’

  It didn’t last though. Like most devastatingly pretty girls, Freya had spectacularly bad taste in men and soon Justin was superseded by a whole litany of poseurs who could smell her father-issues and lack of self-esteem from a mile away. And although the names changed (Oscar, Tom, Jamie and Lucien) the pattern remained the same. They’d fancy her, she’d fancy them, they’d get off together at some crappy indie club in town, then a few weeks later she’d find them snogging some other girl in the same club; or she’d find out they already had a girlfriend; or they would simply stop calling altogether. Distraught, she would turn to me for comfort and support. And while I’d be hugging her and telling her how it’d all be all right in the end, she’d be telling me how special I was and how different I was from the other guys. And all the time I’d be thinking to myself ‘If I can just hang on a bit longer maybe she’ll finally see just how mad about her I really am.’

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, a few nights before Christmas Eve, following the demise of yet another short-lived hook-up with a skinny, scruffy, waste of skin and bone called Luke, Freya dropped round at mine to claim both consolation and a free bottle of wine. We joked about how love was a game for losers and made plans for a perfect New Year’s Eve.

  ‘How about I come to yours?’ she said. ‘We can order a takeaway.’

  ‘And drink as much as our livers can take!’ I added.

  ‘And then when we’re well and truly wrecked,’ said Freya, really getting into the rhythm of things, ‘we can watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the millionth time.’

  At this particular moment we were the closest we had been in all the time I’d known her and so I decided that six months of unrequited love was more than enough for anyone and attempted to convert a good-night embrace into something more. Honestly, I couldn’t have misjudged the situation more if I’d tried. The second my lips touched hers Freya pulled away and was all ‘I’m really flattered, Billy, but I don’t really see you like “that”,’ and although I wished I had some kind of comeback, I didn’t say a thing because I was too busy willing the earth to open up and swallow me whole.

  With five hours to go before midnight I still had no idea what I was going to do with my New Year’s Eve. I called Seb and Brian to see if there were any tickets left for the club night they were going to but apparently the whole thing had sold out months ago and tickets were now changing hands for ten times their face value. I didn’t really fancy
the idea of bankrupting myself just so that I didn’t have to see the New Year in watching Jools Holland so I told them to have a good time and decided to put on yet more melancholy music, turn off the lights, climb back into bed and allow myself the indulgence of feeling totally and utterly depressed. After a few minutes realising that I wasn’t exactly being a man about all this I got out of bed, picked up my mobile and called my older sister Nadine.

  Chatting to her about life in general for a bit to give her the illusion that I wasn’t after anything (covering topics as diverse as our parents, the love life of my middle sister Amy, and Nadine’s impending thirty-fifth birthday) I finally jumped in with two feet and asked her the big question.

  ‘So, sis, what are you up to tonight?’

  ‘I’m off to a party.’

  ‘You’re thirty-five!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do people your age still have parties?’

  Nadine laughed. ‘You’re such a cheeky little sod sometimes.’

  ‘Ah,’ I replied. ‘But you love me for it, don’t you? So this party, is it local?’

  ‘It’s in Chorlton. My friends Ed and Sharon. Why?’

  ‘Well, I’m sort of at a loose end and I was wondering if I could come with you.’

  ‘You’d hate it,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be a bunch of people standing around talking house prices and swapping notes from the Habitat catalogue but that’s not far off, Billy. There won’t be any drugs, raids by the police or young girls throwing up in the bathroom.’

  Looking around my sad bedroom, I allowed my eyes to come to rest on the portable TV on top of the chest of drawers in the corner. Jools Holland could wait. A boring party full of boring people my sister’s age it may be, but at least it was somewhere to go.

  ‘It sounds perfect,’ I replied. ‘Give me ten minutes to sort myself out and I’ll be ready.’

  Melissa

  It was just after eight when I arrived at the Old Grey. The pub – a favourite with the older crowd in Chorlton – was packed out as it would be just before last orders on a Saturday night. Vicky and Laura were at a table near the jukebox, hemmed in on all sides by large groups of what Laura liked to call ‘people like us’ but who could equally be labelled ‘slightly worn at the edges, Big Issue-buying, left-leaning, thirty-something graduates who still feel like students even if they aren’t’. Searching around the bar for an empty stool, I eventually located one and made my way over to my friends.