‘I wish we were at the Butlin’s in Minehead, Shirl,’ our Josie said, carefully attaching the false eyelash above her right eye.
‘Why, what’s wrong with this one?’ I said, helping myself to a cheeky sip of her Bacardi while she wasn’t looking.
‘They’ve got a monorail there. Can you imagine that?’
‘Wow, that’s sounds so good.’
‘I know. A monorail.’
I thought for a while, then worked up the courage to ask: ‘Josie?’
‘Aha?’
‘What’s a monorail?’
‘Oh, it’s like a railway in the sky. Goes round on one rail.’
‘From cloud to cloud?’
‘No, you daft apeth. God, you’ve got your head in the clouds, you. No, it goes from place to place. At Butlin’s, like. So. Like tonight. We might leave the chalet and head to the Gaiety Theatre on the monorail.’
‘Really?’
I couldn’t for the life of me picture it.
‘Oh yes, Shirl. These days, monorails and whatnot. It’s the only way to travel.’
Our Josie was what they called a beauty. All the blokes fancied her round our way. Some nasty people said she’d had half of them but I knew that wasn’t true. She was just a popular lass. That’s all. She had green eyes, like a cat, all almond-shaped and shiny. And a blonder head of hair you couldn’t imagine. She flicked it up at the sides like a proper pop star who had someone else doing their hair – oh, she was proper gorge was our Josie.
Like folk always said, ‘She’s the pretty one. You got the brains, Shirley.’
But who wants to have brains when you can have flicky-up hair like our Josie?
And on top of that she had a cracking bust. I’d read about her bust at a bus stop once. It was the one near Mumps Bridge. Some blighter had written: Josie Burke. Best tits in Oldham. Fact.
She pretended to be all embarrassed about it. But I thought it was proper lovely, that.
Best tits in Oldham.
I remember telling me mam about it. Ooh she went right peculiar, she did.
‘Shirley Burke, wash your mouth out this instant. You don’t say tits, you say bosoms. Honestly. Folk’ll think you were dragged up, and we all know you weren’t. Not by a long slice of the sausage.’
Whatever that meant.
Some folk said Mother had ideas above her station.
Which was funny, coz she actually worked at Oldham station. In the cafe there. Buns and a cuppa. You couldn’t beat it really.
Any road, here I was. Butlin’s Pwllheli. The best Butlin’s in the land, according to some. And our Josie was going in for the Holiday Princess Pageant, tonight at the Gaiety Theatre. I couldn’t wait. She’d bought this smashing catsuit off Rochdale Market, that Mam said looked obscene but Josie and I both knew was gonna right wow the judges, especially when she teamed them with those new cork platforms she’d borrowed off her mate Sunita.
Sunita was one of them Pakistani types. Loads of folk called her names. We never; we thought she was really pretty and cool. And her mam worked in a shoe shop so she had all the latest footwear. And coz we never called her names, she’d lent the cork platforms to our Josie for the whole holiday. And we were gonna be there a fortnight, so it was dead dead generous when you thought about it.
‘How are you feeling, Josie?’ I asked, offering her her own Bacardi glass now she’d got all her false eyelashes on.
‘Me ring’s playing me right up. Always does when I’m nervous. Anxiety goes to me shitter.’
‘I hope you’re not gonna use language like that on stage tonight, lady.’
‘Piss off will I! I’ll be all ladylike and kittenish. Saying I want to help blind folk across t’road and promote world peace.’
‘Aye, you’re a good liar!’ And we did, we fell about laughing.
See, that’s the thing with our Josie. She has to work hard at being sophisticated. All the other girls in these beauty contest things, it seemed to come natural to them. But with our Josie it was a bit of an act. Before she went on stage I had to remind her not to belch or do her dirty laugh, or wink at the fellas in the audience and mime having a pint with them later. Like the time she came second in Miss Runcorn Shopping City, last year, 1977. I reckon she’d’ve walked that if she hadn’t answered as she did in the interview round, when the host – a handsome bloke from the local radio station – had asked her, ‘And what are your plans for the summer? What do you intend to be doing?’
And she’d squeezed his bum, let out a throaty chuckle, and gone, ‘You, chuck, you!’
Half the audience had gasped, the other half had roared. But that was our Josie all over. Once she opened that foghorn gob of hers, opinion was always divided.
I’d’ve been so much better than her at playing the game. But then, as the lads in my class always said, I did have a face like a bag of spanners.
Sixteen, I was. Sixteen. Near old enough to be an old maid. Sixteen and never been kissed. You can’t blame fellas. Every other girl in my class was prettier or dirtier. Even Mongy Mary had snogged Fat Larry up the back of the chemistry block. And she had one foot bigger than the other. Maybe I was just destined to a life on the shelf. A bit like our Aunty Glad. She’d never married and she was ancient. So likelihood was she’d never had a snog neither. But it didn’t seem to bother her. She’d just lived as the maiden aunt alongside my granny all these years, putting her first and looking after her like the ladies in waiting did for the Queen. I thought I’d be happy doing that for our Josie for the rest of my life. I just wasn’t sure she would be!
‘Right. Check all me outfits, come on!’ Josie hobbled from the bathroom into the bedroom of the chalet where I’d laid out her other costumes on the bed. There was the swimming costume. She lifted it up, all cornflower blue and gorgeous, and sniffed the crotch.
‘That’s better.’
‘Yeah, I swabbed at it with TCP. Staining’s gone now.’
‘Nice one Shirl, you’re a star.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’
‘And this is my disco look?’
Our Josie was a right good disco dancer. That’s what she was going to do in the talent section. She always wowed the crowd with the routine she’d copied from watching an episode of Blue Peter where Peggy Spencer was teaching Lesley Judd to disco dance. My favourite two moves from it were the ‘go in the phone box’ and the ‘pick up the receiver’ . . . I always found myself joining in with those bits.
The disco outfit I’d got ready for her was some spangly hotpants, some American tan tights, and then this beautiful bright yellow blouse with angel wing sleeves and a massive penny round tartan collar with matching tartan cuffs.
‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ She sounded so impressed.
‘The market. They give it me free.’
‘Free? You jammy bitch, how comes?’
‘Coz I said you might get in the papers with it. What with you entering Holiday Princess.’
‘And they bought that?’
‘Well, not at first. But when I showed them your photo. They practically threw it at us.’
‘Eeh, you weren’t behind t’mangle when they handed out brain cells, our Shirley.’
She could be dead nice, could our Josie. Honestly, I thought the world of her.
‘Right,’ our Josie said, as she checked her watch. ‘I better get a wiggle on. Contestants have to be in the green room by seven. Will you give us an ’and carting this lot over? And if you see Jed Jeffers and he tries owt? Knee him in t’goolies.’
Jed Jeffers was a DJ who sometimes did that Top of the Pops. Everyone said he was a dirty old man, and he was going to be here tonight to judge the Holiday Princess competition.
‘He wouldn’t look twice at me,’ I said, convinced that was true.
‘Don’t bet your life on it. Blokes like him aren’t choosy, trust me. As long as there’s a hole and gob they’ll stick it in. Come on.’
I didn’t mind having to carry all of Josie’s stuff over to the theatre. Like she said, she had to protect her nails; she’d only put the varnish on half an hour ago and it wouldn’t do to chip them so close to the event.
‘Hitch ’em high, our Shirl! Don’t wanna scrape ’em on t’ground!’
I tried holding the coat hangers as high as I could but I was just nowhere near as tall as she was.
‘Oh, give ’em here, shortarse,’ she moaned, as she snatched them from me just as we got to the stage door. She then turned and barked at me. ‘I’ll be all right on me own from here.’
And then she barged inside and let the door swing shut before I could even shout out ‘Good luck!’
As I turned to head back to the chalet I saw a swanky red MG pull up outside the stage door, and whoever was driving beeped the horn. Some sort of security man came hurrying out of the building. He went and opened the driver’s door, which is when I saw the man himself, Jed Jeffers, get out and head to the stage door without so much as a word to the guy in the uniform. Jed disappeared inside, keeping his sunglasses on, while the security guy got into the car and drove it off. How funny. Oh well. Time for me to get back to the chalet and get ready for the big night.
Me and our Josie were staying in one chalet in the red camp, while our mam and dad were staying in the one next door. I gave them a knock to see if they were almost ready and Mam called out that she was just backcombing her wig. I could feel it in my waters. This was going to be a great, great night.
The Gaiety Theatre here in the holiday camp was my favourite thing about the whole blinking place. The other thing I really really liked was the heated indoor swimming pool, with its leafy branches hanging down from the roof making you think you were going for a swim in the jungle or something. And then under the water all those windows that looked into the bar, so folk who were having a quiet pint or chicken in a basket could watch your bum and legs and stuff underwater while you were swimming.
‘Perverts’ Paradise’, our Josie called it. And Mam would blush and say she didn’t know what she was on about. When it was quite obvious she did.
Not that I ever really went in and got too wet there. Not because I was anxious that some dirty beggar would be under the water, sat eating scampi and chips and trying to get a glimpse of my noo-noo. I just couldn’t take to that swimming malarkey. I often bandied about in the shallow end, walking round with my feet on the bottom of the pool, and pushing my arms in a breast stroke motion to give the effect that I was a top-drawer swimmer. But really, I’d never actually learned to do it. If I went and put me head under the water I’d look even worse. I looked shocking after I’d had a bath. Why on earth would I choose to do that in public?
No chance. Swimming was naff. Stuff that.
The Gaiety Theatre reeked of glamour. It was so big. ‘Bigger than anything you’ll find in that London!’ Dad would boast. And he knew. He was a lorry driver so he’d seen some sights. And nothing, he claimed, compared to this place. My favourite bit was either side of the stage where they had these huge boards on the wall. Above them it said BABY CRYING IN CHALET and then under it was a criss-cross board of all different numbers and if your number and colour flashed it meant there was a baby crying in your chalet so you had to get up and go back. I loved it when that happened. Except the time it happened and they said it was our chalet and our Josie shouted, ‘Cheeky bastards! Like I’ve had a frigging baby! Right. That’s it. Get your coat Shirl, we’re going.’
As me, Mam and Dad took our seats, Mam forever touching her wig, which made it obvious she had one on as people with real hair didn’t make such a song and dance about it, the resident band struck up with my favourite tune of the day – ‘Under the Moon of Love’ by Showaddywaddy. I couldn’t help clicking my fingers along to it and humming as well, which made Mam do this massive sigh before going, ‘Honestly Shirley, it’s Josie’s night, not yours. Have a little decorum.’ And then she turned to my dad and went, ‘I think to our youngest decorum’s a foreign word.’
‘It is a foreign word.’ I couldn’t help myself.
‘You what?’
‘Decorum. I think it’s like . . . Latin.’
‘Oh, stop showing off, Shirley. Not everything’s about you, you know.’
‘I know!’
‘Well then!’
‘I’m going for a wee.’
‘Oh, make your mind up, Shirley. We’ve only just sat down.’
And then I saw her lean in to the woman sat next to her and said in a showy-offy low drawl, ‘Our eldest’s in the contest. Very highly thought of in beauty queen circles.’ And I squeezed past and ran out to the loos.
I liked to think that everyone could look at me and tell I must be related to one of the contestants. I’d tried to flick my hair like our Josie, but my hair was more flyaway than hers. Flyaway Peter I called it, so it just ended up looking a bit over-singed, like I’d sat too close to the three-bar fire getting ready. And the catsuit I had on was a bit saggy round the gusset as it was one of our Josie’s cast-offs and she was so much taller than me. But still. I looked better than I usually did at school, and nobody seemed to be sniggering too much.
When I pushed into the ladies’ loos, that’s when I saw her. Pretty as a picture. Stood there in a party dress, hair in ringlets and a big silvery bow on top of her head. Can only have been about three. Like one of the Victoriana dolls I’d see on the market all the time and badger Mam to get me when I was a nipper. There’d been one called Tringalonga Trixie. Heavyset doll with ringlets and a bow who had a big red telephone clasped to her ear. She was the one I coveted most. But Mam always said the addition of the phone made her common. ‘And clearly into tittle tattle, which must be avoided at all costs.’
‘Mother, it’s a DOLL.’
‘I know. And you’re not having her.’
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled at the little lass and said, ‘Look at you! Tringalonga Trixie!’
At which she right there and then burst out crying. Would you credit it? I meant it as a compliment. Of course, I tried telling her that, which was when I realized she wasn’t crying about that. She’d obviously been on the verge as I came in and now that someone had talked to her it had all erupted, so to speak. Hot tears bubbled up like the geysers in my geography textbooks, and between breathy sobs she told me she can’t find her mam or dad. Except she called them Mummy and Daddy, of course, what with her speaking the Queen’s English, proper and that. Her voice was exotic, like summat off the telly. In ordinary circumstances I could’ve stood there and listened to it all day but . . . well, a few things really:
One. I needed a wee. So I told her to wait there while I had one. I even left the door slightly ajar for some reason, probably to show her I hadn’t legged it.
Two. I wanted to see my sister in the Holiday Princess competition. Well, who in their right mind wouldn’t? Eh?
And three. Well, there wasn’t a three. But things sound better when they come in threes, don’t they? They used to say that about me, our Josie and our Kymberly. Till Kymberly drowned in the sea and air-sea rescue never got to her in time. Neighbours still didn’t know what to say and it was over ten years ago now. Some days I wished Kymberly was alive. It’d be good to have another sister who wasn’t such a bobby-dazzler and could be more like me. But then other days I was glad she’d gone. Well, not glad, but I didn’t mind so much, coz I think if she’d still been around, me and our Josie wouldn’t be so close, if you follow my drift. And that’s one thing in life that I did like, being great pals with her.
Anyroad up I come out the loo and take the little girl’s hand.
‘Let’s go and find your mam and dad, lass,’ I said.
‘My name’s not lass, it’s Abigail.’
‘Well, come on then, Abigail.’
But by the time we came out of the loos into the foyer it was nearly showtime, so the place was swarming with people. And none of them looked like they’d lost a little girl. I took her up to a Redcoat and told him we couldn’t find her mummy. But he just wanted to know what chalet she was staying in and Abigail was too little to remember – three, she told me – and then the redcoat got waylaid by a woman telling him his bum looked great in those tight white slacks so I dragged Abigail off through the crowd, knowing full well that even though her parents must by now be beside themselves with worry about their missing little girl, my folks would be becoming really annoyed that I’d gone AWOL for so long. And I was only doing a good deed! If only there was some way of killing two birds with one stone.
We went outside and it was getting quiet out there now; everyone was taking their seats. Was it possible that her mam and dad weren’t that bothered she’d gone walkabout?
‘Were you coming to see the Holiday Princess competition, poppet?’ I asked her.
‘My name’s not poppet, it’s Abigail,’ was all she said.
They must’ve been bringing her here. Why else would she be in the girls’ lavs all dressed up like a dog’s dinner?
Inside I heard a drum roll and an announcement being made.
Ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seats and put your hands together for the Redcoat dancers!
And right there, right then, I had the most brilliant idea imaginable. A way in which we’d find Abigail’s family, but also let my mum and dad know what an amazing person I was.
I tugged her back inside. The foyer was quiet now and I ran at high speed, dragging the poor thing behind me like a light suitcase and as if I were running for a train that was just pulling out of the station. I pushed open the theatre doors and the heat from the auditorium hit me like a Bunsen burner. I looked to the stage. YES! There was a small ramp leading from the front of the stalls up onto the stage. I walked Abigail down the side aisle and stood at the bottom of the ramp.
‘Luck Be a Lady’ was being played by the band and the Redcoats were doing a funny dance to it, zipping across the stage even faster than I’d zipped through the foyer with this little one. At the end of the piece the lights went low and the dancers stood in an upturned V shape, arms pointing out to the back of the stage, and there was another announcement . . .
Ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome your host for the evening. The one and only . . . Mr . . . Jed Jeffers!
Circles of light spun round the stage as the spotlights went to find the star, and that’s when I did it. That’s when I held Abigail’s hand real tight and started to walk up the ramp.
Jed Jeffers was talking into his microphone and the audience were laughing. He was saying something about having been in the changing room and seeing more knockers than in a front-door shop. But then he faltered as he saw me taking to the stage, holding hands with Abigail.
‘Oh, look. My favourite pastime. Babes in the wood. Only joking, mums and dads, only joking. You all right, love?’
And I just said it: ‘I can’t find this girl’s mam or dad.’
You’d’ve thought I’d set a bomb off, the way Mam went on about it later.
‘You held up the beginning of that pageant by a good twelve minutes, I counted. And all coz some daft brush had taken her eyes off her kids, daft apeth.’
‘The little girl was upset.’
‘I’m upset, Shirley. That lost twelve minutes put our Josie off her stroke.’
Turned out that because the show had ‘gone up’ late, thanks to the general pandemonium caused by me ‘storming the stage’ – Mam’s words, not mine – half the girls in the changing rooms had helped themselves to a free bar and were half cut by the time they came on to do their turns. By the time they did the talent round, well, let’s just say our Josie Harlem Shuffled so far to the left that she fell off the stage into the orchestra pit.
Mam was not best pleased.
Our Josie was dead to the world, fast asleep fully clothed in our chalet.
And I was in the doghouse.
‘It’s not my fault they all helped themselves to the free booze,’ I’d complained.
But Mam had an answer for everything. ‘Well, not all of them did, did they? Busty Bernice from Poulton-le-Fylde never. And she waltzed away with the flamin’ crown. Of course you’re responsible. Go to your chalet and we’ll speak in the morning.’
So I lay in mine and our Josie’s chalet, listening to the croak of her snoring and the rumble of the funfair in the distance, the occasional squeal of laughter from people passing, and I tried to remind myself that I’d done a good thing. I’d found a lost little girl and now, thanks to me, she was probably sleeping safely in her chalet, and was definitely back in her parents’ company. Well, she could hardly stay in those toilets forever, could she?
Her family weren’t even in the theatre. They’d lost her in the bar. The woman from the chalet next to theirs recognized Abigail and went to fetch them. The mother came running in five minutes later, tears streaming down her face, and grabbed Abigail so tight you’d have thought she was going to choke her.
It was no good. I wasn’t going to sleep. I decided to take myself off for a late-night walk. Mam and Dad would never know, would they? They’d be spark out by now.
The holiday camp looked so different at night. A world of fences, shadows and bright lights. Ghoulish waves of noises from corrugated-iron boxes that passed themselves off as centres of fun and games. I decided to take a walk down to the outdoor swimming pools as I reckoned nobody’d be round there this time of night. I wasn’t sure what time it was but it felt late.
There was a little hill that blocked the chalets from the pools. As I got to the top of it I saw so much of the funfair reflected in the rippling waters of the pools. I wasn’t sure what was making the ripple; it wasn’t that windy. Maybe it was the reverberations from the late-night funfair rides. At each end of the pool area were the tiered fountains that looked like wedding cakes. Even though it was probably nearly midnight, they were still bubbling with water.
I heard a sniff to my right. I looked. Some fella was sat on the hill. He had his head in his hands and it looked like he was crying.
I wasn’t used to seeing fellas cry. My dad certainly never did, and none of the lads at school, except maybe the jessies. But not a proper full-on bloke like this one. He looked old, but in the moonlight I could see a wash of freckles on his muscly arms. And he had sandy hair. I wanted to reach out, stroke it, like he was a dog or something.
I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to make him feel better.
‘Are you all right, mister?’ I said.
He looked up. And he seemed dead embarrassed to have been caught crying.
‘Oh, take no notice of me. Domestic.’
‘No woman should make you feel that rubbish, though,’ I said. And I don’t even know why I said it. It made me sound worldly wise, and I can tell you for nothing, I most certainly wasn’t.
He rolled his eyes. ‘You haven’t met my missus.’
He had a nice voice. The accent was familiar. Not quite posh but definitely from Down South somewhere.
‘Is she a right cow?’ I said. And that made him snigger.
‘You’re a tonic, aren’t you?’ he said, impressed.
‘Better than being a gin,’ I said, sounding like a minx. It’s the sort of thing our Josie would have said. The sort of thing pretty girls said, the sort of girls who knew they could get away with being saucy or cheeky. It was like the cloak of darkness; the cape of night time had allowed me to pretend to be someone else, as if nobody could properly see the real me.
It made him chuckle again. The way folk would chuckle at the pretty girls.
It made me feel all warm and gooey inside. Like a marshmallow on the fire.
‘My little girl went missing. It was only for about ten minutes. We got her back. But there’s been hell to pay. And of course, it’s all my fault.’
I felt a rush of excitement. This man was going to think I was really ace.
‘Is her name Abigail?’
He looked right shocked, he did. ‘How did you know?’
I sat down next to him. ‘I’m the one what found her.’
And his eyes lit up.
‘You really are a tonic. What’s your name?’
‘Shirley.’
‘That’s a pretty name. I’m Doug.’
‘Hello, Doug.’
‘Hello, Shirley. Shirley? Can I buy you a drink? Say thank you?’
‘I’d love one,’ I said. And he took me up the Continental Bar.
I didn’t even need to think it wasn’t like he was ashamed to be seen with me; it was just a fact. He wasn’t. And for the first time in my life I felt powerful. Like I called all the shots. This man owed me a debt of gratitude and it’s like he was the first person on this planet, except maybe our Josie, to see that I was okay, that I was a decent person, that I was capable of doing good things.
I ordered a Bacardi and Coke coz that’s what I knew sophisticated girls ordered and even though each sip made me wince, soon I was relaxing and we were chatting away like old buddies. Which was weird as I was only sixteen and he had to be dead old, like, thirty or something. I still had my make-up on from going to the contest, and my catsuit, so I knew I looked older, but he didn’t even ask if I was old enough to drink. He thought I was the bee’s knees, I could tell. But that was okay. Coz I thought he was too.
The bar was busy but he didn’t seem to care who might clock us. At one end of the huge room there was a stage and a white woman was singing ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’.
‘We’ve got a brown girl lives next door to us,’ Doug said.
‘Have you?’
‘We have.’
‘That’s novel,’ I said, ever the sophisticate.
‘Really nice tits on her,’ he said.
‘You mucky pup,’ I said.
‘What?!’ He sounded all offended. ‘I’m a red-blooded male, we notice these sorts of things.’
‘And what have you noticed about me?’
‘You?’
‘Yeah, me.’
He shook his head.
‘Well, I couldn’t possibly say, could I? Because you strike me as a lady.’
‘Someone once told me I had very nice ears,’ I offered. Which was true. And I saw him having a good look at them.
‘And they were right,’ he agreed. ‘They can be very sensuous things, ears.’
‘Can they now?!’ I chuckled.
The singer started to sing ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’.
‘Must be a Boney M. medley,’ I said.
‘You know your music, then.’ He winked.
‘Aye. I love me top-twenty countdown.’
‘I bet you do.’ And he gave me this dirty wink that I didn’t quite know what to make of.
After the one drink though he looked at his watch and then winked again. Less dirty now.
‘Won’t your boyfriend be wondering where you’ve got to?’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘Thought they’d’ve been queuing round the block for you, Princess.’
‘I’ve not looked.’ Nonchalant, that’s what I was being. That’s what they told you to be in Jackie.
He nodded. ‘Well. My missus’ll be sending out the dogs.’
‘Best you walk me home, then.’
‘Well I’m a gentleman, so I’ll have to.’
When we got to my row of chalets we started to walk dead slow. Conversation became intermittent. And then we got to my door.
‘Gonna invite me in for coffee?’ he said, quietly, jokily.
‘Our Josie’ll be in bed. And we haven’t got any coffee,’ I said.
‘I’ll just have to settle for a kiss, then,’ he said.
I shrugged as if to say ‘if you like’. And he leaned in and cupped one cool hand behind my neck and then drew me in for this kiss. He slipped his warm tongue into my mouth and as he did he made this kind of whimpering sound, bit like the dog used to do when he had all the cysts and you patted him on the back. It was a weird feeling, someone else’s tongue inside your mouth, but I quite liked it actually. He pushed me up against the chalet door and I could feel something warm and hard press between my legs. Well. I knew immediately what that monstrosity was, and there’d be no funny business. Not tonight, thank you. Not all over our Josie’s catsuit, thank you. Oh yes, and not with a married man.
He moved his hand round and started caressing my left ear lobe. It really tickled, but in a nice way. And I felt a funny feeling between my legs.
Oh no, this would not do.
This catsuit was dry-clean only.
Eventually I pushed him away with a quiet, ‘That’s your lot, Doug.’
‘Spoilsport,’ he said, but all teasing, like.
‘I need my beauty sleep.’ I didn’t. But that’s what the girls said on the telly.
‘Can I see you again?’ he whispered. ‘You’ve got to let me see you again. I have to say a proper thank you for finding our Abigail.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Where?’
‘Same time same place.’
‘Shall I bring some johnnies?’
‘If you want.’
‘Not that I’m assuming anything.’
‘No, neither am I.’
‘And you won’t tell my missus?’
‘I think she’s a bit of a cow.’
‘She is.’
‘Okay then. See you tomorrow.’
‘By the pool. Half eleven.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Bye, Princess.’
‘Bye then, Doug.’
I let myself into the chalet. It was dark and I went and sat on my bed. I was shaking. I was scared. I was excited. I was all sorts of things rolled into one.
Oh Christ, Shirley. What have you gone and done?