Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  ‘Who are you here with?’ she asked. ‘Seb and Brian?’

  I felt odd talking about Melissa to Freya.

  ‘I’m actually with another mate tonight,’ I replied.

  Freya raised her eyebrows suggestively. ‘Girlfriend?’

  I nodded guiltily. ‘Look, it’s early days . . . but, yeah, I think I could describe her as my girlfriend.’

  ‘Well done you,’ said Freya as though I’d won a competition that had more to do with luck than actual skill. ‘I’m really thrilled. Who is she? Do I know her?’

  I shook my head and Freya gazed around the bar clearly trying to spot Melissa. ‘At first I thought it might be that girl over there,’ she pointed to a blonde in a cream beanie hat, ‘but then I realised she wasn’t quite right so I thought it might be that girl there.’ She pointed to a pretty girl with black hair and a severe fringe. ‘But I was wrong again. That’s when I realised that it’s that girl over there with the brown hair and the denim jacket?’

  I was confused by her accuracy. ‘How did you . . . ?’

  ‘Easy. She looks exactly the kind of girl you’d go for. She works in here sometimes, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Just part-time. She’s actually at the university studying Art History.’

  ‘And she’s how old?’

  I was surprised by Freya’s directness.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Now you’ve made me really want to know. Come on, how old is she?’

  ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘Well, it obviously matters to you if you won’t tell me. She’s easily over thirty.’

  ‘She’s thirty-five,’ I said finally.

  Freya nodded sagely. ‘Good for you.’ Something in her face changed as though she was hatching some kind of plan. ‘Well, I’m here with Gina and Lou. We’re heading off up to the Jockey in bit. You should come . . . bring your girlfriend too.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I replied, unsure whether I should be relishing the thrill of turning down Freya. ‘This is sort of an important night for Mel and me, so I’ll have to give it a miss this time.’

  Melissa

  I’d been contemplating the sorry-looking gerbera floating on the surface of the water in the pint glass that we used as a tip jar and wondering why no one had thought to put a fresh flower in there – when I looked over at Billy and saw him talking to a pretty girl in her early twenties. I guessed straight away that the girl was Freya, as she looked exactly as Billy had described her: ‘cool’, ‘pretty’ and ‘more than a bit self aware.’

  Much to my amusement the second Billy saw that I was looking over at them his whole being seemed to cringe, as though he imagined I might think that there was something going on. The truth couldn’t have been further from my mind. Seeing Billy with this girl made me realise how much he was unlike any guy I’d ever been out with. I didn’t feel any pangs of jealousy. I didn’t feel the slightest bit insecure. And it wasn’t as though he wasn’t a catch – more than once when we’d been out I’d spied girls eyeing him up – it was more to do with the fact that I knew that I could trust him completely.

  ‘Hi,’ I said with a smile, ‘you must be Billy’s friend Freya.’

  Freya looked as though she hadn’t expected Billy to have been open enough to tell me about her. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘And you must be Melissa. I was just saying to Billy that he must be really mad about you because I haven’t seen him in ages. He always used to be hanging around somewhere handy but not any more.’ She laughed, as if to make it clear that she was joking. ‘Anyway, it’s really nice to meet you.’

  ‘What are you up to tonight?’

  ‘Freya’s just off to the Jockey,’ said Billy, clearly trying to minimise the amount of time that she and I shared the same air space.

  ‘You should stay,’ I said to Freya. ‘My friend’s having a leaving do downstairs and friends of ours are DJ-ing. It’s been a great night so far. You and your friends should come down for a while. I’m sure no one would mind.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ replied Freya, ‘But like Billy mentioned, my friends and I already have plans.’ She nodded over to where a group of ridiculously pretty girls were pretending that they weren’t watching us. ‘Maybe next time. It was nice to meet you.’ She looked at Billy. ‘And good to see you too.’

  ‘I had no idea she was going to be here,’ Billy said quickly. ‘That wasn’t too awkward, was it?’

  I laughed. ‘It was fine.’

  ‘And when you say “fine” do you mean “fine” or do you mean something else?’

  ‘I mean “fine” as in it was fine. She is pretty though. I can definitely see what you saw in her.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m glad I’ve moved on,’ said Billy uncomfortably. ‘Shall we head back downstairs?’

  Billy took my hand. It was then that I saw Paul. He was over by the cigarette machines, standing with Claudia and a bunch of her other friends as though he had been hijacked on his way to somewhere else and he was looking directly at me.

  I didn’t want to talk to him right now. The whole thing would be too awkward.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Billy.

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing, I’m fine. Let’s just go.’

  Chris

  I’d lost Paul almost as soon as we’d come downstairs to the party; Vicky and Laura were constantly flitting about in a triangle consisting of the dance floor, the toilets and the collection of sofas at the far end of the bar; Melissa seemed to be surgically attached to her new boyfriend and so by default I’d spent most of the evening together with Cooper floating in and out of conversations with Laura’s mates’ boyfriends.

  Now I was at the bar waiting to be served in a queue three people deep. The longer I waited the more people gave up and headed upstairs in the hope of getting served more quickly but I was glad of the opportunity to have some time on my own to think through the decision that I’d made to finally finish with Polly.

  Over the past few months this thing between us had become out of control. Each time I saw her I took greater and greater risks, the most recent of which had seen me inventing a conference I had to attend in Brighton when in fact Polly and I were planning to drive down to London and spend the night together in a hotel.

  Everything had been fine on the journey down but when we reached London I realised that I had left my work mobile – a phone on which I fielded an average of thirty to forty calls a day – at home. Even though I’d booked the day off work, all it would take for me to get caught out would be for a single person to call me. Part of me had wanted to drive back up to Manchester straight away but Polly begged me to stay, assuring me that everything would be all right. We did stay but the night away was ruined. Back at home I searched high and low for my phone only to find it switched off, on the table in the hallway. When I asked Vicky if it had rung at all, she said that just after I had left someone had called but she had missed them as she had been upstairs getting William dressed. Reasoning that I could probably do without the disturbances she had simply turned off my phone and gone back upstairs.

  Then a week ago Vicky complained that we still hadn’t booked a summer holiday, so the very next evening we devoted ourselves to looking through brochures and the interent trying to find somewhere to go. Nothing. It felt as though there were far too many choices to even begin to narrow it down. But the whole evening had got me questioning what I was doing with Polly. It made me think about the fortnight William, Vicky and I had spent in Sardinia the previous summer. How much I had enjoyed having every day with William unimpeded by the distractions of work and how well Vicky and I had got on together. And it occurred to me that if I carried on down the route I was travelling with Polly that kind of holiday would never be repeated. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted William to have good memories of his childhood holidays just like I did. Mum, Dad, me and Cooper stuck in a static caravan in Tenby. The funny-smelling toilet. The tall grass growing out of the sand at the beach. The wind that made the s
ea feel ten times colder than ice even on a sunny day. Holiday memories I could never forget.

  But the one thing above all others that convinced me it was time to end things with Polly was a conversation I overheard in the toilet at the party. Two guys had joined me at the urinals. Standing either side of me, they swayed gently from side to side, very much the worse for wear as they began talking across me about a girl that one of them had just met. The guy on my right asked his friend if he thought the girl fancied him and his friend replied he thought she did. The guy on the left said that he thought she had a great arse and followed up by asking if his friend was going to do anything about it. Right guy smirked and said: ‘It would be rude not to.’ Left guy asked if he was bothered about his girlfriend finding out and the guy on my right sniggered and said, ‘Well, she never found out all the other times,’ and then they both cracked up.

  I didn’t want to think that I had anything in common with either of them: I was me and they were something different entirely. But like it or not, my affair with Polly meant that I was treating Vicky with the same brand of contempt that the guys in the toilet had used on their girlfriends. I’d turned my life into a big fat cliché: bloke halfway through his thirties has crisis of confidence, goes in search of the meaning of life between the thighs of another woman and risks family, home, reputation – in fact pretty much everything that he’d worked so hard to create – in order to indulge himself, if only for a moment, in the fantasy that the last ten years hadn’t happened. My fling with Polly had been nothing more than an attempt to prove to myself that time wasn’t moving forwards. That things weren’t changing. And the months we’d been together were essentially nothing more than an aid to memory – like a photograph, a memento or a diary – to help me recall the highs of my twenties, underscoring in my mind the flawed belief that my best days were behind me.

  But the best wasn’t behind me, I knew that now. The best was right in front of me all the time. It was Vicky and William who gave my life meaning. They gave me a reason to carry on. And right there on the spot I decided that what I needed to do was end things with Polly as soon as possible and prepare myself for the mammoth task of trying to make up for everything I’d done wrong.

  Cooper

  Standing at the edge of the dance floor watching Laura and her mates enjoying themselves I reflected on the question Chris had posed earlier in the night: just how were Laura and I going to make this thing work when we were on opposite sides of the world? Though we’d been adamant that we weren’t splitting up, neither of us seemed to have the least idea what that meant in reality, other than relying on what Vicky had described as ‘the ancient art of finger crossing’. There had been a number of times I’d wanted to sit Laura down and make her sign some sort of agreement that she wasn’t just using this whole trip as a way of getting away from me; that she would be faithful to me; and above all that she did indeed love me like she said she did. But there was no agreement. And even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been worth the paper it was written on. When you’re in love you’re supposed to be able to trust one another. But though I hoped for the best I couldn’t help but have doubts not just about Laura but about myself too. Did I really have what it took to live like a monk when Laura was on the other side of the world? I hoped so but I wasn’t sure. I looked at her again on the dance floor – head thrown back, completely and utterly carefree and more beautiful than I’d ever seen her – and I realised that I just couldn’t let her go without a fight.

  I waved but she didn’t see, so I walked over and grabbed her by the hand as she danced.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Things aren’t right. They’re not right at all.’

  Chris

  As I stood outside Blue-Bar calling Polly I watched people passing by – a young couple dressed as though they had been for a big night out in town, a gang of indie kids looking like they were on their way to a party, and a group of lads in search of the nearest curry house – and I wondered whether any of them had noticed me or given any thought to why I was standing outside the bar. Maybe a few thought I was waiting for a taxi or calling my girlfriend to let her know I was on my way home. I doubted any of them would’ve guessed that I was about to make a call that would put an end to the five months of deceit that had been part of my life since Christmas.

  She finally answered.

  ‘Polly, it’s me.’

  ‘Where are you? At Laura’s leaving do?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much Tony wanted to come tonight. We had a big row and now he’s in the living room pretending he’s watching a DVD but really he’s just sulking.’

  I swallowed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘I think we should stop seeing each other,’ I said quietly. Polly said nothing. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but you must know as well as I do that this has got to stop. It’s getting too dangerous and I’ve . . .’ I corrected myself, ‘we’ve both got too much to lose to even think about carrying on.’

  Polly found her voice. ‘So this is it? You just want to walk away? I understand it’s difficult for you, Chris, I do. But whatever it is . . . whatever the problem . . . we can work something out. There’s always a solution.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not to this one.’

  ‘And that’s it? Your mind is made up? I don’t understand why you’re giving up so easily. What about everything we talked about? What about the times you told me you loved me?’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because there is nothing left to say,’ snapped Polly, and then she put the phone down.

  Cooper

  I took Laura over to one of the quieter corners of the bar that was insulated against the music by virtue of being so tucked away. There were a couple of sofas covered in our friends’ coats and bags. I made a space for us and sat down.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Laura. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Look, I’ve been thinking and well . . . I don’t want you to go.’

  Laura looked confused. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. I don’t want you to go travelling. I want you to stay here with me. Don’t worry about the money we’ve spent on the ticket. Don’t worry about any of that. And if you want we can blow every last thing we’ve saved on the holiday of a lifetime – wherever you want – New York, Japan, the Caribbean – anywhere. Just don’t go travelling. Stay with me.’

  ‘What’s brought all this on?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘But you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘What’s not to understand? I love you and I thought that you loved me so why are you going off halfway around the world without me?’

  ‘We’ve talked about this. I thought you were fine with everything.’

  ‘Why would you think that? Because I told you? I tell you that it’s fine if we don’t get married and you believe me. I tell you that it’s okay to go off around the world and you think I’m fine with it. Is there anything you wouldn’t believe?’ I grabbed hold of Laura’s hand. ‘I’m telling you now, Laura, I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to make this work with you not here with me. I’d miss you too much. I want you to stay.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘You think this is a threat?’

  ‘Well if it isn’t, what is it?’

  ‘It’s a declaration of love. It’s me asking you to stay because you love me.’

  ‘And if I don’t stay?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

  Laura sat there staring at me with tears in her eyes. I was about to say again how much I needed her. How I’d got it all wrong. How she was my safety net just as much as I was hers but then Alistair and Baxter went from playing ‘She Left Me on Friday’ to ‘Waterfall’ – a song to which the opening bars seemed to demand the attention of everyone who had ever danced t
o it at the Student Union on a Friday night – and within seconds the dance floor was flooded. Jumping up and down to the music like drunken teenagers Laura’s friends Davina and Alexa tripped on the carpet and came crashing to the floor at our feet. Picking themselves up with the minimum of fuss they were back dancing within seconds and their delight in seeing Laura was matched only by their delight in dancing to this long-forgotten student anthem. Ignoring Laura’s resistance they grabbed her by the hands and re-entered the fray leaving me to stand on the fringes of the frenzy looking on until Laura was swallowed up in the crowd. I stood watching the space where she had been, occasionally buffeted by the people around me but I couldn’t see her, and so, grabbing my things, I drained the last dregs of my pint and left.

  Melissa

  It was just after one in the morning and I was dancing with Billy to the Happy Mondays – my fifth song in a row – and though I was getting tired Billy showed no signs of flagging.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ he asked as the Happy Mondays faded into The Inspiral Carpets.

  ‘Vodka and Coke would be wonderful.’

  ‘Vodka and Coke coming up.’ Billy looked over at the crowded bar. ‘I think I’m going to head upstairs. I’ll be ages down here.’ He smiled at me and we kissed.

  I made the decision to retire from the dance floor and scanned my surroundings for someone to talk to. Who was I kidding? Not just someone: I was looking for Paul. Laura and Vicky had told me that they had spoken to him at various points during the evening and that he had seemed okay if a little the worse for wear, and the knowledge that he was here and alone made me want to see him even more. I had been thinking about him all evening: about everything that we had once meant to each other and why it had fallen apart. The pain when we’d first split up and the worse pain the second time. And I thought about how even now I still felt that there was a bond between us that couldn’t be destroyed. It would always be there. Primed. Ready. Waiting. I told myself firmly it was time to make our peace, time to stop hanging on to the past and move on. With this in mind I went in search of Paul.