Mud Pie

by Emma Lee Bole

  Chapter Ten

  Party

  I had a dream. Robed and self-righteous as a priest, I held a wide, silver knife with a thin black handle.

  “I can stab you with this,” I told Karl, “and it won’t hurt. It can’t hurt anyone.” So I stabbed him in the shoulders and the back, repeatedly, until he bled all through his yellow shirt and escaped on to the windowsill ready to fly away.

  “Karl!” I cried. “Don’t leave me, Karl!” but he wouldn’t listen or couldn’t hear. He was already climbing the vertical mosaic wall towards the sky, shrinking upwards.

  I woke up sobbing. My brain wasn’t clever enough for such ideas when it was awake: why must it inflict them on me in my sleep?

  Anyway, it was Charlotte I should be crying for. Both of them, both my fault. Karl and Charlotte. I sobbed into a clutch of hankies until the ordinariness of the night, and Swamp Thing’s angry presence on the wall, calmed me down.

  Charlotte, a few days later, tried to absolve me from blame. She said the police had prevaricated, had questioned her about business rivals, love rats and protection rackets. Although she’d mentioned my name, they hadn’t really been interested. They hadn’t asked to talk to me. They said there were plenty of other daft bastards around apart from Karl’s mates. Which was undeniable.

  And it wasn’t as bad at it looked, she assured me on the phone. It looked bad because it was so black, and the windows had gone, again. But the brickwork was fine. So were the ovens and the working spaces in the back, though they needed scrubbing down. I offered my services, desperate to make amends, but she refused.

  “There’s no need, Lannie. The insurance will pay.” I wondered if they would, and how Daddy would feel about the whopping premiums that would certainly follow. I wondered how long Charlotte could afford to stay in business even if she still had the heart for it.

  But I also knew I shouldn’t go there; I shouldn’t be seen near her shop or her flat, in case it made things even worse. No matter what she told me, I was to blame. My heart ached for the loss of Charlotte.

  “Hell’s teeth, Lannie,” her far-off voice said on the phone, “these things just happen. No reason. Kids getting kicks. Nothing to do with Karl.” Charlotte, so entirely without malice herself, determinedly refused to believe in anybody’s evil intent. “Anyway, you did the right thing there, like Daddy says.”

  “I didn’t have to,” I reminded her. “I chose to.”

  “If you’re called to give evidence, how can you refuse? That’s perjury or something, isn’t it? And then you’d be in jail as well as Karl. Forget it, Lannie. Now, I want to talk to you about Hugh’s thirtieth. What puddings have you got planned? Are you bringing your mud pie?”

  She was so collected, so practical. I’d forgotten all about Hugh’s party. I tried to gather my thoughts.

  “Yes, I’ll bring the mud pie, and I thought apple caramel, coffee roulade, and fruit flan. Flan’s boring but it’s easy and it always looks good.” I forced cheer into my voice. “How’s the Cake? Did it survive?”

  “It wasn’t in the shop,” said Charlotte. “I kept it in the flat, so it’s okay. But it’s not iced yet. The rugby pitch idea is a bit flat – literally. I need to liven it up. Goalposts aren’t enough. Have you got any ideas?”

  “Marzipan naked women,” I suggested, since she wanted me to.

  “Hah! Then you’re making them, Lannie.”

  “Sure. I’ll bring them on the day. Nice and voluptuous.”

  In the event, though, I didn’t. My marzipan ladies looked like incredible hulks so I painted rugby kit on them with food colouring and turned them into a front row.

  On the day of Hugh’s party, I carried them into the club on top of the tray of Madderlow Mud Pie, which, to my relief, was almost equalling sticky toffee pudding in popularity at the Woolpack. Some good news for a change to tell Charlotte.

  I was in the club all afternoon, making rice and pasta salads along with the teas, and cooking up a vat of rogan josh while the late players left and early guests arrived. Often they were the same people, with a quick change of clothing. Niall, in a tomato-red shirt, sniffed at the vat in suspicion.

  “That’s not our tea, is it?”

  “It’s Hugh’s curry.”

  “That smells all right,” said Brendan. “Could you do that for the Woolpack?”

  “If you like.” I’d already suggested it, and Rhoda had turned me down. Too exotic. She’d turned down the broccoli and stilton soup as well, and even the Derbyshire oatcakes with black pudding and red onion jam that were all the rage in the Fylington pubs. But I was getting fed up of defrosting dinners. I wasn’t going to play dead any more. Once this party was out of the way, it would be monkfish plaki, goats’ cheese tart and pomegranate semifreddo, whether Rhoda liked it or not. All in those daft little towers. That’d show her.

  The club was no longer weighed down with its fearsome Christmas garlands but more buoyantly decorated with clumps of silver helium balloons doing their best to uplift every table. Bob arrived in a startlingly bad Hawaiian shirt with a crate of fizzy wine. Niall’s kids skidded in their socks across the dance floor, the boys in fancy waistcoats and little dicky-bows although children weren’t supposed to be invited. AnneMarie watched them absently, cigarette in hand, as if they weren’t hers, even when Cormac bowled over the loudspeaker which was already only held together with parcel tape.

  “Give me a hand with the tables?” I suggested to her. AnneMarie raised her eyebrows and then reluctantly followed me out the back to where the trestle tables were stacked.

  “This is man’s work,” she said. “We shouldn’t be doing it.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking. I hadn’t really got to know AnneMarie, although she turned up every Saturday except when her name was on the tea rota. She hardly ever spoke to me.

  We carried one table in and she let her end go just inside the door. I waited while she calmly picked a cobweb off her silky trousers. She looked very classy in a distant, Nordic way: her skin was pale against a fitted silk blouse of midnight blue, a silver cross like a shard of moonlight dangling from the thinnest of chains. I thought it was more a statement of style than religion. As for me, I’d decided against my smart top in favour of jeans and the rugby club T-shirt, the same as Becki’s outfit, only not so tight. I might have been Becki’s thinner, quieter twin.

  “I’ll be doing this till I’m fifty,” said AnneMarie wryly. I was struggling to unlatch the table legs, but she didn’t try to help.

  “Doing what?”

  “Shifting the bloody furniture around here. Doing teas.”

  “I didn’t know you did teas,” I said, sarky.

  “Not any more, thank God. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? Where was it you worked before?”

  “Manchester.”

  “And you like cooking for dozens of sweaty men?” She pulled elegantly on her cigarette, although theoretically smoking was banned inside the club.

  I shrugged and wrestled the table into place. “I’m don’t care who I’m cooking for.”

  “You could do better than this, though, surely?”

  “Than what?”

  “Than being a cook. All that bloody drudgery. Don’t you get sick of it?” She sounded weary and incredulous.

  “Ah, but I’m not a cook, I’m a chef,” I said. “Cooks just slap things on plates. Chefs are artists, doing their customers a favour by bestowing their talents upon them.”

  “Michelangelo rather than a painter and decorator?”

  “Got it in one. So what do you do?”

  “I was in HR,” said AnneMarie shortly. “Before the kids. Now I’m just a dogsbody. Taxi service. Swimming, football, piano, gym. And rugby.”

  “You don’t have to come down here every Saturday.”

  She pulled a face. “Niall likes me to. And now Taidhgh’s playing for the under-tens, and Cormac wants to start next year, so that’s Sundays out the window, what with Mass as well. Be thankful you’re not a mother.
”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that, mother or not, I worked Saturdays and Sundays too. “Get Niall to bring them down.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” she said flatly. I didn’t see the problem. Wives and girlfriends weren’t obliged to come. Quite a few had turned up this evening that I’d never seen before: Bob’s wife, who introduced herself as Mrs Bob, and told me, more warmly than AnneMarie, how thankful she was to be rid of teas; and Flipper’s wife, a large and cheerful girl called Molly whom I took to immediately. She and Becki helped me set out the rest of the tables, while AnneMarie drifted away.

  “She’s a lazy cow,” said Becki.

  “She’ll hear you.”

  “Do I care?” Becki hoisted a table round though ninety degrees and whisked a paper tablecloth over it with a practised flourish. “So who you going to dance with tonight?”

  “Anyone who’ll ask me,” I said. I like dancing.

  “Why wait to be asked?”

  “True. Are you going to dance with Niall again?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “And risk getting KK all upset like on New Year’s Eve? Could start a riot.”

  Becki snorted. “KK enjoys getting upset. It’s his idea of a good time. He didn’t need to get so wound up, it was only a bit of fun. Anyway, it was AnneMarie I was trying to wind up, not KK.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s such a bloody killjoy is why. I’ve done her loads of favours and she still treats me like shit.”

  “What sort of favours?”

  “Not so much as a thank you,” said Becki. “Don’t think I’ll bother next time. I’ll dance with Brendan instead. That’ll wind Rhoda up good and proper. Stupid cow. She cut me dead on New Year’s Eve, you know.”

  “What for?”

  “How would I know? I was only trying to be nice. But she leads poor old Brendan a dog’s life. He’d leave her if he had any sense.”

  “I told you, Rhoda’s not well,” I said.

  “She’s putting it on. She just wants Brendan to feel bad.”

  “No, really, Becki. She’s really not well.”

  Becki stared at me, then shrugged. “Whatever. You gonna dance with Frank? They say gay men make the best dancers.”

  “Becki, I don’t think he’s gay.”

  “All that funny business, though, about that friend of his who died,” she persevered. “What’s that all about? It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? And Frank’s never come on to me.”

  “So what does that prove?”

  “I’m just saying it’s unusual,” said Becki. “Most of them do, some time or other.” She said it with pride. Becki was sexy, her elasticated bulges transformed by her spirit. She was a lot sexier than AnneMarie. Elegant though AnneMarie was, she didn’t look like she felt inclined to give anyone a good time.

  “Frank’s got a girlfriend,” I said.

  Becki snorted again. “She doesn’t count. Have you met her? Like a bloody nursemaid, with padlocks. I bet she wears a fucking chastity belt. Christ, here she is. I’m going.”

  Becki dived off to the bar. I set out paper plates and napkins and pretended not to notice the woman approaching me until she said,

  “Hallo. I’m Sue. Frank’s Sue. I gather you’re Lannie.”

  I looked up. “That’s right.” She was neat: neat brown dress, neatly waved brown hair, neat smile that drew her mouth up while her unsmiling hazel eyes looked me up and down.

  “How is the house suiting you?” she asked. She spoke out of one side of her mouth.

  “Fine.”

  “I’m afraid it is very basic and rather old-fashioned.”

  “It’s fine,” I repeated. “I’m very grateful to Frank for the use of it.”

  “You haven’t thrown anything away, have you? I left some Laura Ashley china in a box upstairs.”

  “I haven’t thrown anything away.”

  “I gather Frank’s started on the living room. At last! I’ve been on at him for ages.”

  “Yes, but he hasn’t got very far yet.”

  She raised her eyes heavenwards and shook her head. “Trust Frank. I expect it’s a terrible mess. I shall have to come round and supervise. I keep telling him, the house needs to go on the market by the summer.”

  “You’re definitely going to sell it?”

  “Or possibly rent out, at market prices.” It took me a few seconds to realise that this was a dig at my peppercorn rent. “My flat’s handier for work, and much better equipped.”

  “New flat, is it?”

  “It’s a Georgian style terrace in Macclesfield. Cheltenham Mews. It’s got a Carlucci kitchen, a walk-in wardrobe, and underfloor heating.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Well, compared to that old back boiler!” The mouth smiled neatly. “I did try staying there, but it was so uncomfortable. I’m sure there are mice.” She lowered her voice. “And Frank’s grandmother still lingers.”

  “Really?” I said, annoyed. “You think so?”

  “Oh, yes. The smell. The whole place is just so old lady.”

  “You knew Nan?”

  “Oh, no. She died before I met Frank.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “He dropped a paving stone on his foot. I was a staff nurse in A and E.” She smiled again, on one side only, and raised her eyebrows in a way that said, Men!

  “Men,” I said. “Excuse me, I need to put these out.” I picked up the salad bowls.

  “Can I help?” She was already rearranging the plastic cutlery.

  “No, they’re fine, thanks.” Oh, Frank, why?

  “Just tell me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “There’s nothing at the moment.” I picked up my big knife and waved it vaguely at her, but since Charlotte hadn’t yet arrived with the quiches and I couldn’t cut up the salad, I had to put it away again. Anyway, I was being unfair. She seemed perfectly nice and efficient. I went to the bar to get away from her.

  “Bloody patronising cow,” said Becki.

  KK beckoned me over. He leaned on the bar and looked into my eyes. His were deep brown, like a begging dog’s. “Cake?” he said.

  “Charlotte’s bringing it.”

  “No, the beetroot cake.”

  “Ah. Sorry, KK. It didn’t work. Beautiful colour, quite amazing actually. Good moist texture. It’s just...”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s beetroot,” I said. “There’s no disguising it.”

  “You didn’t bring any?”

  “No.”

  KK sighed, and I felt bad. Luckily he was distracted by a crowd demanding drinks. Charlotte teetered in with a pile of platters and cake tins. I hurried over to help her.

  “Charlotte? Are you okay?”

  “Never better,” she said breezily.

  “Look, I wish I could–”

  “Honestly, Lannie, I’m fine. I’m going to have a good time tonight, and so are you. Forget everything else. Now, what do you think of the Cake? It turned out very green.”

  “It should be brown,” I said, “if it’s anything like the pitch outside.” I set about arranging my front row on it, marzipan arms around each others’ shoulders.

  Charlotte gave a cry of pleasure, but not at me. “Here he is! The birthday boy!” She ran over to hug Hugh who was strolling in with a cluster of unknown friends, to shouts of “Road-Runner!” from the players. He looked very smart and sixties in a black polo-neck jumper, James Bond-style, and good-humouredly ran the gauntlet of handshakes, hugs, and presents that piled up rapidly in his arms like a runaway game of Tetris. Most of the presents were either rude or alcoholic.

  His friends nestled themselves into the prime corner seats despite Bob’s glass already being on the table. They were Cheshire Set: slick young men and identikit blonde girls with strappy dresses and highly processed hair. One of them sniffed the air, which had its usual reek of mud and liniment, said something and laughed.

  “Bloody snooty cow,” said Becki, in not quite eno
ugh of an undertone.

  “That’s Hugh’s girlfriend,” said Charlotte evenly. “That’s Tamara.”

  “Tamara and Tamara and Tamara, creeps in this petty place,” recited Flipper.

  “Tamara never comes,” added Bob. “Whoops.”

  “Bloody stick insect,” huffed Becki. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” She thrust forward to give Hugh a lavish, busty hug and insisted on him unwrapping her gift of suggestive boxer shorts. I gave him a more discreet kiss on the cheek and a bottle of Californian wine, bought from Brendan (“no bugger drinks it anyway,”) and then went back to my kitchen to put things in ovens. The lanky DJ turned the music up and the lights down until Bob went over for a quiet word and suggested he put both in reverse, right now, because people wanted to talk and not in the bloody dark.

  I checked the baked potatoes, stirred the rogan josh and listened to Niall holding court to a group of younger players. He was having an Oirish day.

  “–I’ll race that any day, says Greavesy, and he gets hold of the greyhound–”

  “Straining at the leash,” said AnneMarie flatly.

  “–straining at the leash, and lets it go. And it goes tearing off across the pitch–”

  “Like a bat out of hell,” said AnneMarie.

  “–like the hounds of hell were on its heels, instead of just old Greavesy thudding after it in his size twelve boots.”

  “He soon gave up,” said AnneMarie.

  “He didn’t last long, but the dog just streaks across the pitch and makes straight for the opposition fly-half and starts nipping at his ankles. Well, you’ve never seen anyone run so fast–”

  “Started dancing up and down,” said AnneMarie.

  “He started dancing up and down like a demented monkey and then he takes to his heels and tears off to the touchline with the bloody dog snapping at his heels all the way. And when he got there, Greavesy turns and says to Will–”

  “Will said to Greavesy.”

  “He said, well, somebody can run faster than a greyhound but it sure as hell ain’t you,” said Niall triumphantly. Everyone laughed except AnneMarie. She leaned against a table and stared at her cigarette smoke.

  Sue was talking earnestly to Frank and Drop-goal. Brendan, Bob and Flipper were getting stuck in at the bar while their wives had formed a comfortable posse in the second-best corner. Bob occasionally glowered at the Cheshire Set, who were all buying Hugh lurid cocktails of oily blue and green bedecked with paper parasols and cherries. KK served them up with a scowl. Becki snook over to the kitchen, pretending to get ice.

  “KK’s in a stinking mood,” she said. “I can’t do anything right.”

  “What’s up with him?” I hoped it wasn’t the beetroot cake.

  “God knows. I reckon he’s feeling his age. He had his thirtieth here last year.”

  “Any good?”

  “Yeah, bazzing do. Everyone got rat-arsed and Danny threw up on the dance-floor.”

  “Bazzing,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Becki slid away to greet the Killick brothers, who were looking disconcertingly suave and handsome in jackets. I glanced over at Frank. Scruffy jumper, no jacket. I was surprised Sue hadn’t forced him into one. They just didn’t match, that pair; they were as incongruous as a bad menu. Frank was solid yet somehow incomplete, a Yorkshire pudding without a filling; whereas Sue was baked cod – boringly wholesome and totally wrong as an accompaniment.

  I looked over at Brendan propping up the bar. Roast ham, obviously. Rhoda, laughing at something with Mrs Bob, was mustard, so those two matched all right. As for Hugh – well, he was fresh bread and cheese, like Charlotte. Didn’t know what Tamara was. Probably a stick of celery. Damn. That went with bread and cheese too well.

  My gaze drifted over to KK. He was a large steak, rare, but Niall was a banana. And AnneMarie? I didn’t know. She was as sharp and shielded as a crayfish. A yabbie, only much less fun.

  The crayfish leant over the counter to offer me a glass.

  “Top this up with water for me?”

  “You driving?” I said sympathetically.

  “I’m on medication. It doesn’t mix with alcohol.” AnneMarie dabbled the ladle into the curry. “Smells good,” she said drearily.

  “I hope so. You all right?”

  “Headache. I didn’t want to come.”

  “Then go home again,” I said.

  “No point. What’s there to do at home?” She let the ladle sink, before lifting it to dredge the curry again. Then she said suddenly, with unexpected vehemence, “For Christ’s sake, Lannie, don’t you get stuck here. Don’t get bogged down in the mud like I have. You’re young. You can go anywhere you like. Christ. See the world.”

  “I will, eventually.”

  “It’s too late for me.”

  “That’s rubbish, AnneMarie.”

  “It’s bloody motherhood, it sucks you in, it’s like wading through an endless bog and you just keep sinking,” she said viciously.

  “You don’t have to sink.”

  “Oh, you do, if you’re trying to be a good bloody Catholic wife and mother. It’s a bloody stranglehold. There’s no escape until you die.” She took her water and turned away abruptly. I was glad her kids were out of earshot. If it was Prozac she was on, it wasn’t working.

  Charlotte came bounding over, wanting to serve up. “No-one’ll dance until they’ve eaten. And you can relax once it’s served. You shouldn’t be stuck back here.”

  “I’m happy back here.” The kitchen was familiar territory. Out there was still another country. I was happy doling out the curry and juggling potatoes, happy rearranging sausage rolls and salads into ever shrinking piles on fewer and fewer plates: unhappy when all was eaten, and until Charlotte declared puddings and Cake, there was nothing left to do.

  But Charlotte wanted everyone up dancing first.

  “I wish that lot would stop buying Hugh drinks,” she confided in me. “He’s too nice to refuse, and he’s going to end up absolutely blotto. I know the signs. He’s drunk already, and he’s terrible with hangovers. I want to get him up and dancing.”

  So I grumpily stuck the mud pie back in the fridge until some unforeseen hour when everyone would be too drunk to appreciate it. The DJ turned the sound back up and the lights down and soon the dance floor was vibrating and no conversation was possible, only shouting. Bob was bounding dangerously up and down yelling “Pogo!” while Mrs Bob, next to him, covered her face. I could see Sue trying to persuade Frank to dance, and Frank refusing.

  Niall pestered me repeatedly for a dance, and when I declined, went to pester Molly instead, despite AnneMarie’s cool presence only yards away. Maybe AnneMarie didn’t dance. Tamara pulled Hugh up, to Charlotte’s relief, and began to teeter around with him.

  “Look at her! She dances like a bloody Barbie doll,” said Becki loudly. Flushed and angrily excitable, she was jiggling up and down, but when she tried to drag me onto the dance-floor I shook my head.

  “Not to this.”

  She harried a couple of yoof onto the floor instead. I went down to the side door for some relief for my eardrums, and joined a clump of people standing outside under the car-park lights to drink and talk. A steady trickle of men walked past us, round to the wheelie-bins at the back.

  “They’re not, are they?” I said. “What’s wrong with the toilets?”

  “Traditional,” said Frank. “Especially for forwards.”

  “Uncouth lot,” said Flipper. “Need keeping in check.”

  “I suppose you think that’s your job,” growled KK.

  “Naturally.”

  “Typical bloody scrum-half.”

  “Scrum-halves are like babies,” Frank informed me. “Small, bald, loud, think the world of themselves and love to be the centre of attention.”

  “And irresistible to women,” added Flipper with a grin. “Ain’t that so, Lannie?”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right! The scrum-hal
f is always right! The hub of the game and the brains of the team,” declared Flipper.

  KK picked him up and saying, “Excuse us,” carried him away into the dark in the direction of the bins. There was a yelp and a clatter before KK returned, brushing his hands. “Has to be done sometimes,” he said apologetically.

  “I suppose all the backs are poncing around on the dance-floor through there?” growled Brendan.

  “Mostly. Bob’s pogoing.”

  “Oh, Christ. Safer out here.”

  But I heard the music switch to Marvin Gaye, and went back in, pulled irresistibly by the grapevine. Northern Soul used to be my thing. So when Becki yelled “Come and dance!” I pulled my hair free of its bobble and headed for the dance floor. With that sort of music, you can belong anywhere.

  Hugh was jogging around in a state of drunken contentment with Tamara, who was doing a lot of self-satisfied hip-wiggling. Becki, eyes dark and wild, pulled a face at her and shouted in my ear.

  “I’m going to ask for Road Runner. You up for it?”

  I nodded, because I guessed what she meant. When Road Runner started up, Becki and I with one accord moved over to Hugh and started slinking around him. Becki wasn’t very subtle. She was doing her best to outslink Tamara, brushing her chest against Hugh’s and sliding her legs up and down his.

  I was busy listening to the music, but I probably wasn’t very subtle either, since I learnt my dancing technique off Shanice and Kayla, the coolest girls in year 10, for whom dancing was a blood sport. They shook their stuff every lunchtime on the sports hall steps, majestically ignoring the whoops of the watching boys. They were tolerant of me, despite my skin being too white – although Mrs Long next door disapprovingly muttered that I had a touch of the tar-brush, a term she must have inherited from her delightful parents. I longed for that touch of the tar-brush. It would have proved my father wasn’t really my father. I pretended I was Shanice’s little half-sister, and copied her every sinuous move.

  This time I was Becki’s sister. She grinned at me and winked as she ground her hips against Hugh’s. By the time Road Runner segued on to Beyonce, Hugh was sweating, Tamara was steely-eyed and tight-lipped, and the crowd was cheering. Becki loved it. When I walked off the dance-floor after three minutes of being Crazy In Love with Hugh I was immediately accosted by four of the yoof who wanted to dance with me. Obviously not too subtle, then. I turned them down.

  “By heck,” said Brendan, looking startled.

  “Just a bit,” said Frank. I gave them a big grin.

  “Bloody hell,” said Bob, “the sun just came out.”

  I felt good. I felt like I was coming back into my own skin after a long absence. This was what I used to be like, cheerful and carefree. I felt the past slide off my shoulders onto the sticky floor.

  I wanted to dance again. When KK came over and asked me, I accepted, though also because of guilt over the beetroot cake. KK was a good mover despite his size. Becki had captured Niall and was twining herself around him. I moved diplomatically so that KK was facing the other way and we jigged and laughed through a selection of ancient disco together until Charlotte rushed over mouthing, “Cake! Pudding! Cake!” and I followed her back to the kitchen.

  We pulled a table on to the dance floor. Charlotte fenced the Cake with candles and Becki produced my red Zippo lighter to set it aflame.

  I leant on the bar and listened to the speeches by Niall (too long,) Hugh (just about coherent,) and Jamesy, the first-team captain (very funny). Tamara applauded them all, clapping her hands prettily as Hugh used my big knife to cut the Cake. She was rather lovely in a holiday brochure sort of way: delicate little features and a good even tan for the middle of January.

  “I’ll bet that dress cost three hundred quid,” muttered Becki behind me. “At least. And I’ll bet it’s not her money.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “She’s just a gold-digger.” We watched Tamara trit-trot over to the bar, where she ordered two Number Nines and a Hayley’s Comet.

  “What the fuck are those?” demanded Becki.

  “Stop swearing at the customers and look in the book,” said KK. He asked Tamara, “You sure? They’ll cost you.”

  Tamara shrugged. “It’s only money.”

  “Which one’s for you?” asked Becki.

  “The Hayley’s Comet.”

  “Fattening, that one,” said KK.

  “I think I can take it,” said Tamara. Her glance flickered over Becki’s bulges. Becki drew herself up, eyes flashing, but before she could come out with a retort Tamara was trit-trotting away again.

  Becki slammed the book of 101 Cocktails down on the bar and began flipping through the pages so roughly they tore.

  “Bloody bleached twiglet,” she muttered. “So she thinks she can take it, does she? Anorexic little weasel. Jesus, butterscotch liqueur? Where does she think she is, the fucking Ritz?”

  “Use Tia Maria,” growled KK. “And stop abusing the customers.”

  “I can say what I like,” said Becki.

  “Not at my bar you can’t. And you can’t do as you like either.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what I’m on about.”

  “You mean Niall?” She put her hands on her hips.

  “And the rest,” said KK. “Just have a bit of discretion, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Who do you think you are, my Dad?”

  “Thank God I’m not,” said KK.

  Becki drew herself up, but her reply was drowned out by Charlotte’s cry of “Puddings! Pudding, everybody!” I went to slice them up as she tried to chivvy the dancers into a queue. They kept escaping, like sheep.

  Becki appeared at my shoulder. “Borrow some cream?”

  “What’s that? It looks like something you’ve scraped off the pitch.”

  “That’s Madam’s drink. Tia Maria, Bailey’s, Crème de Cacao, and some extra ingredients.” She scraped a large spoonful of fudge sauce off my mud pie and added it to the glass together with a generous gloop of cream.

  “Jesus. You trying to give Tamara a heart attack?”

  “If only,” said Becki, stirring it all up with a plastic knife.

  Charlotte was having trouble persuading people they wanted pudding. I went round the tables offering samples.

  “Oh, it’s too late to eat now,” said Sue.

  “Too full,” said Bob.

  “Ooh no, we’ve got to watch our weight,” chanted the Cheshire starlets, patting their flat stomachs complacently.

  “There’s Tia Maria in this,” complained Tamara. Hugh took the glass off her and swigged. “S’fine,” he said.

  “Well, what kind of a barmaid hasn’t heard of a Hayley’s Comet?” argued Tamara.

  “A rugby one,” I said. “We’re geared for beer.”

  I was annoyed. Most of my mud pie was going to be wasted. I was annoyed with Charlotte for delaying the puddings, annoyed with Frank for dancing with horrible Sue, annoyed with Niall who was holding forth and stopping his audience eating my pie, annoyed with AnneMarie for letting her whining kids stay up so late and foul the carpet with stray sausages, annoyed with Hugh for blithely knocking back the rest of the Hayley’s Comet and everything else in sight, annoyed with Tamara for being thin and pretty, and annoyed with myself for being so annoyed.

  I spotted Charlotte weeping softly over the demolished Cake, and went to give her a guilty hug.

  “It was a lovely Cake. Everything’s been brilliant, Charlie.” But it turned out she was weeping because her mother, who lived in Spain and played golf, wasn’t seeing Hugh for his birthday and although Hugh didn’t care, Charlotte did.

  I hugged her tighter. Poor Charlotte, wanting everything to be perfect. As the DJ started up the smoochy music, I went over to persuade Stevo to ask Charlotte to dance, which he did willingly. The entire group around Niall, deciding that even Lady in Red was preferable to listening to Himself banging on, dived as one onto the dance floor
which was soon overflowing with unsteadily clinging couples.

  Brendan and Rhoda waltzed. She was a good mover. When she twirled and smiled saucily at him I saw a sparkle in her that had been invisible to me before. Tonight she looked years younger, and Brendan looked happy. Bob was asleep on a bench. Niall, grumpy at being ignored, stormed off to shout at the DJ.

  KK wriggled through the crowd and asked me to dance. A close dance with KK was unexpectedly pleasant; so stirring, in fact, that I had to remind myself of Brendan’s warning against getting involved there. KK was complicated. Though I was beginning to feel alive again, I didn’t need complications yet. So I politely shook him off, tied my hair back and went to clean up in the kitchen. Becki was helping herself to mud pie with my knife. Nice that somebody was.

  When I began to clear plates I found that two-thirds of my puddings were not only uneaten, but also unusable for the pub dinners tomorrow as they’d been messed around and scattered with crumbs. Someone had sat on the remains of the fruit flan, and the coffee roulade was on the floor, being trodden in by the yoof who were leaving en masse in a minibus for a more exciting twenty-first in Macc. The Cheshire set, apart from Tamara, drifted away with expressions of relief to their pads in Wilmslow and Prestbury.

  “Want a lift home in ten minutes?” asked Brendan, his arm around Rhoda whose sparkle had mellowed to a happy glow.

  I shook my head reluctantly. “I’ll stay and clear up. I can always share a taxi with Becki.”

  The crowd continued to thin. AnneMarie eventually carted out her sleeping children to the car. Only a few determined stragglers remained on the dance floor, as I piled plates and scraped things into bin bags. Straightening up with the remains of the coffee roulade, I glimpsed KK throwing a punch at Niall. There were shrieks and curses; Bob woke up and shouted “Ninety nine!”

  “Bloody hell,” said Stevo, holding them apart, “Behave yourselves, the pair of you! This is Hugh’s night. Don’t spoil it for him.”

  “Too late,” said Frank. He propped up a limp and sodden Hugh whose arm was draped around his shoulder. “I’ve just prised him off the car park. Someone needs to take him home. Whose car shall I put him in?”

  “Get house,” said Hugh indistinctly, before his eyes closed. His James Bond jumper was splashed with vomit, as were Frank’s sleeves. Tamara took proprietorial hold of Hugh’s arm, and his eyes opened again.

  “Chicken bitch,” he said. Tamara recoiled.

  “Oh, Hugh,” sighed Charlotte. “Don’t worry, Tamara, I’ll take him home and sort him out. Come on, Hugh, we’ll get your clothes in the washer and you into bed.” Hugh collapsed onto the floor, and Frank picked him up in a fireman’s lift and carried him out despite Hugh being no lightweight. Sue strode efficiently and Tamara pattered helplessly after them.

  That seemed to be the impetus for the last dregs to leave: five minutes later the only people remaining were Bob and Mrs Bob, Niall and KK, who weren’t speaking to each other, and the DJ.

  I began to clear up, again. I seemed to have done the rounds sixteen times with the bin-bags, and the only person helping was Mrs Bob. To cap it all, I’d lost my big knife which I was sure I’d left by the Cake. My heart sank. That knife had cost a lot of money. I’d been a fool to leave it out.

  Hunting under the tables, I found only a detritus of pastry, napkins and empty bottles. I had four more full black bin-bags by the time I’d finished, and was silently cursing Becki, AnneMarie and all the other ingrates who’d buggered off and left me and Mrs Bob to it.

  I lugged two of the bags out into the cold and round the back to the wheelie bins, treading carefully because there was a splattery feel underfoot and a stench of vomit and fresh urine. As I came round the side of the club I saw stretched out a dead, pale bird, a swan I thought at first, then realised it was a goose, poor thing, maybe caught by a fox foraging round the bins. Its feathers were covered in a stain that I realised must be blood.

  “What a bugger,” I said. I stepped over its body and saw Becki, sitting up against the far side of the bin, her head dropped forward.

  “Becki? What are you doing?”

  I bent down to shake her shoulder and her head rolled frighteningly. Her mouth was open, her eyes closed. She looked tired and sad. By the uncertain glow of the car park lights I saw the darker stains all over her dark, torn T-shirt, and her neck, painted with black trickles down the right side. I pulled my hand away abruptly. It was wet.

  “Oh, Jesus, Becki,” I said. “Oh, Becki, Jesus.”

  A familiar knife lay on the ground beside her. I didn’t pick it up. Instead I gently touched her sticky neck, feeling for a pulse. It took me a while to be certain. But I was certain anyway. I laid my finger on her cheek, smearing it with blood where before it had been pristine.

  “Jesus, Becki,” I whispered, but I was talking to myself.