what haPPeNeD IN the kltCheN at the PartY23

‘And this . . .’ said my sister Ruthie, waving her finger around the kitchen, ‘. . . is where you’re all going to stay until the party’s over.’

‘In the kitchen?’ said Gareth. ‘All night?’

Ruthie glared at him. ‘I mean it! The three of you are to stay in here where I can keep an eye on you.’ Then she looked straight at me and said, ‘Seriously, Lottie, you’ve put me in a really impossible position. Your timing is unflipping-believable!’

‘It’s a Sunday,’ I said. ‘What kind of maniac has a party on a Sunday?’

Ruthie just shook her head at me in amazement. ‘Oh, get with it, sis. Sunday is the new Saturday. I thought anyone with a slice of style knew that.’ Then she looked all annoyed again and added, ‘And me and my housemates have been planning this party for weeks and now you’ve rocked up with your kiddy-mates and none of you are even sixteen! What the heck will Mum say if anything bad happens? In the eyes of the law, I’m responsible for all of you. I’m your legal guardian!’

I rolled my eyes and said, ‘Oh jog on!’ I said it really quietly though because Ruthie was looking well dangerous.

‘What did you just say to me?’ demanded Ruthie.

‘Ladies,’ said Gareth, and raised his hands palm up in a peacekeeping gesture, ‘We’re in Aberystwyth and we should try to remember that we’re all representing Cardiff here! Can we try and show a bit of decorum?’

Ruthie stopped glaring at me and glared at Gareth. ‘What?’

Gareth grinned sheepishly and, even though I was in the middle of an extremely tense situation, that sheepish grin was so cute and so lovely that it made me want to grin too and so I did.

Ruthie must have eyes in the back of her head because she spotted it. ‘This isn’t funny, Lottie!’ she said, staring at me again. ‘You’ve run away from home and you’ve dragged your two chums along with you. Have you got any idea how utterly selfish that is?’

I felt uncomfortable then and the grin slipped off my face. I couldn’t think of a good response so I just said, ‘Keep your wig on.’

‘Look,’ said Gareth, laying his arms across mine and Goose’s shoulders, ‘these two won’t get into any mischief, I promise you. I’m personally looking after them.’

Even Goose must have thought that was cute. Surely.

Gareth continued, ‘But to be fair, it’s bound to get a bit lively in this kitchen. I mean . . . look at all the booze you’ve got in here!’

He had a point. The work surfaces were piled so high with bottles and cans that the whole place looked more like a very scruffy off-licence than any kind of kitchen. I looked round a bit more. There was stuff everywhere. And it was all random scatty stuff. Like empty pizza boxes on the floor and photos of people’s faces in close-up on the walls and a couple of For Sale boards shoved into one corner and a complete set of Take That dolls on the window ledge. Obviously, somebody in the house blatantly didn’t like Gary Barlow because I could see that his head had a drawing pin in it and was connected to his body with sticky tape. Pinned by a magnet to the door of the fridge was a shopping list that said:

My mum would’ve had a fit if she’d seen it.

And the entire kitchen stank of stale beer and cigarettes and mashed potato.

Embarrassed, I glanced back at Goose and Gareth and saw that Gareth was staring up at the ceiling. He’d gone very red in the face. I looked up too. Above our heads was a massive poster of Britney Spears wearing nothing but a skimpy gold bra and skimpy gold hot pants. I’d seen this poster before – it’s actually the exact same one that Gareth has got stuck to the ceiling above his bed. But the one crucial difference between Gareth’s poster and the one in my sister’s manky kitchen was that someone had replaced Britney’s head with a big photo of Ruthie’s.

Gareth cleared his throat. And then he said to Ruthie, ‘Perhaps it would be better if we just stayed in your bedroom and kept ourselves to ourselves.’

‘No way!’ Ruthie looked genuinely alarmed. ‘I’m not leaving you tucked up in my bedroom with my little sister. Mum would kill me. And anyway, it wouldn’t be fair on Goose.’

Gareth looked confused. Goose just mumbled, ‘Oh, don’t mind me. Nobody else ever does.’ She looked fed up. I’m not surprised though. She was still wearing that hideous blue and yellow uniform.

‘No,’ said Ruthie. ‘You all stay in here and you do not leave this kitchen until I say. And then you . . .’ she pointed her finger at Gareth, ‘. . . are sleeping down here on the couch and you two can squeeze into my double bed with me.’ And then she looked up at the Britney Biggs poster and made a big angry frustrated noise which went like this:

Oooooooffffff

When she was all ooooofffed out, she pulled a mobile phone out of her pocket and said, ‘But right now, Lottie, you’re going to ring Mum and tell her where you are.’

I panicked. ‘She’ll kill me.’

‘Good. I’ll help her,’ said Ruthie.

‘Please, Ruthie . . .’ I begged. ‘I can’t. It’s so difficult. She expects me to play happy families with her new boyfriend and his weird emo daughter and I just can’t cope with it.’

Ruthie’s eyebrows nearly flew off her head. ‘What? Mum’s got a new boyfriend?’

She was blatantly gobsmacked. ‘Whoops,’ I said.

Ruthie went quiet and stared at me for a very long moment. Then she said, ‘I’ll phone her and tell her where you are—’

‘I’m not going back,’ I said.

‘I’ll phone her,’ said Ruthie, ignoring me, ‘. . . and then you two . . .’ she said, looking at Goose and Gareth, ‘. . . can call your parents as well. Agreed?’

Goose and Gareth nodded quickly.

Ruthie walked to the kitchen door, ‘Oh, and if I find out that ANY ONE OF YOU so much as sniffs ANY of this alcohol at ANY point during this evening, I will PERSONALLY see to it that your lives are ruined FOREVER. AND I SERIOUSLY MEAN THAT.’

Then she disappeared through the doorway and up to her room so that she could go and make that terrible phone call without all of us listening.

‘Well, that went well,’ said Goose. ‘Do you think that now would be a good time to ask her if I can borrow some party clothes?’

I looked at Goose. ‘Er . . . I don’t think so.’

Goose rolled her eyes and said, ‘Actually, darling, I was being facetious.’

Goose is very good with words. I am too but Goose is better.

Gareth, who has colossal manly thighs but doesn’t have such a good way with words, just said, ‘You two are doing my flipping flopping flumping head in,’ and then he started hunting for the kettle so that he could make us all a cup of coffee.

It wasn’t the last cup of coffee we had that evening. Ruthie’s party lasted until

. . . or, at least, that was the time on Ruthie’s digital clock just before I got to squeeze into her over-occupied bed and finally – thankfully – made the world disappear for a while.

And that left the three of us with a lot of time to drink coffee. And chat. And to witness with our own eyes the totally freakish behaviour of my sister’s friends as they let their scruffy student hair down. Ruthie has more friends than I ever could have imagined. And judging by all the Double Denim²⁴ on display, a good percentage of them most definitely fall into the Type C category for colossal fashion failures. We could see loads of them through the doorway of the kitchen, squashed together in the hall like denim-wearing sardines. Some of them were dad-dancing to an ancient hip hop record that was being played so loudly that it felt like all the walls were p-u-l-s-a-t-i-n-g and others were standing one millimetre apart and having shouted conversations into each other’s faces. And every few seconds, the crush of people hanging around the door would be pushed apart as someone barged into our stinking kitchen to get more beer. To begin with, I tried to be friendly to Ruthie’s mates but then a girl in a Double Denim miniskirt and bra combination started hanging around and sticking her chest out at Gareth and this made me a lot less friendly. Fortunately, I don’t think Gareth was at all fussed by her or her chest because he was too busy building an Eiffel Tower out of cardboard beer mats and didn’t even bother to stop what he was doing and check her out.

After that, Goose and I started pretending that we were called Olga and Inga and that we came from Moscow – just so that we didn’t have to talk to anyone else. And then Gareth joined in and pretended that he was called Boris from St Petersburg. I think me and Goose actually fooled a lot of people because we had really wicked Russian accents but I don’t think anyone believed Gareth because he sounded like a Mexican. And anyway, he was still wearing his Wales rugby kit.

But at some point during that weird evening, we also found the time to go mad.

And I mean completely moon

howling mad.

Now, I’ll be honest – I have a bit of a history of this kind of thing. I know I have. I’m not going to deny it. I’ve been seeing a counsellor called Blake and he’s been helping me to develop strategies to manage my madder moments. And, on the whole, I’ve been coping pretty well, I think. But on Sunday night, in Ruthie’s kitchen, I temporarily stopped coping and everything in my mind went totally wonk-side-up.

But what’s double weird is that Goose and Gareth went even wonkier than I did and, as far as I’m aware, they’re both a pair of utter normals. Especially Gareth.

So now that I find myself sitting in Wrexham library and raking over the nitty-gritties of that stressful evening, it seems only sensible to try to work out exactly what went wrong. And if this sounds like I’m dwelling on the past and crying over spilt milk and worrying about water that has already gone way under the bridge, it’s important to remember that sometimes you have to put your mind into reverse in order to make any positive progress. Or as some dead Danish bloke called Søren Kierkegaard once said:

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.²⁵

So I’m trying to understand it all backwards and I’m asking myself the following questions:

Did it all get so stressful because Ruthie had forgotten to feed us and we were slowly starving to death?

Or was it the fact that approximately two hundred students were jam-packed into a modestly sized terraced house and were replacing all the vital oxygen supplies with powerful clouds of nerd gas?

Or was it simply that Goose and Gareth have one or two mental problems of their own?

Maybe.

Or maybe it was all just the fault of Ruthie’s boyfriend, Michel. Because we’d been OK until he rocked up. We’d each drunk about eight cups of coffee and were doing some deliberate dad-dancing in the stinking kitchen. And at the same time, we were pretending to be Russian and playing the Place Name game, using any city in the world that we could think of. Me and Goose were really good at it because we’re women and we can naturally multitask but Gareth was struggling to think and be Russian and move his feet at the same time. I was tickling him with Gary Barlow’s feet, which probably didn’t help. And Goose had moved on from dad-dancing and was trying instead to break-dance on her head. In short, we were having a laugh. And then Michel barged his way in.

Michel is French. Just like Ruthie, he’s an archaeology student. He’s quite good-looking and has lovely long eyelashes but his trousers are always far too short so that his mustard-coloured socks are permanently on display. Despite knowing nothing about trousers, Michel is actually very knowledgeable in many other areas and always has a great deal to say. Unfortunately, none of it is interesting.

I spotted Michel’s face emerge from the dark hallway at the exact same moment that Goose was performing a handstand and yelling, ‘Don’t be embarrassed – Go to Paris!’

Michel stood blinking for a moment in the bright light of the kitchen and then he frowned at her. Suddenly spotting me on the other side of the kitchen, he smiled widely and shouted, ‘Dottie!’

‘It’s actually Lottie,’ I shouted back. Even though the music was coming from other parts of the house, it was still pretty noisy in our kitchen. And added to this was the noise of the neighbours who kept thumping on the walls and not in time with the music. I noticed a cork from a wine bottle lying on the floor and wondered if it would be any good as a makeshift ear-defender. I stooped down, picked it up and contemplated shoving it in my ear but then decided it was a stupid idea and shoved it into my pocket instead.

‘Dottie,’ said Michel and, grabbing me by the shoulders, he kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Ruthie was saying that you was here in the party but I was not believing her.’ And then he looked at Goose who had just crashed back to her feet and said, ‘But, in reality, how can it possibly be embarrassing to go to Paris? Paris is beautiful, no? Paris is—’

‘No, no . . . It’s just a game,’ said Goose quickly.

But Michel said, ‘Yes, in fact, Paris is certainly one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in the world. And it has been an important human habitation for more than two millions of years. How can this be an embarrassing situation? It has grown up from being a tiny island community on the Seine river to becoming one of the greatest urban populations on Earth. It is an important centre for arts and culture and history but also, in reality, for the entire global economy. In fact, it is the sixth most important economic centre in the entire world and the most important one in the entire space of Europe. Even more so than your capital city of London. And Paris—’

‘Mate, I’m Welsh,’ boomed Gareth firmly. ‘Cardiff is my capital.’

But Michel just said, ‘– has plenty plenty of millions of tourists who visit and take home happy souvenirs every single year. And plenty plenty of these tourists return to take more happy souvenirs in the following years. In reality, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the entire world. It has plenty plenty attractions to see and marvellous architectures and galleries of art and beautiful gardens . . . And you think this is a reason to feel embarrassing?’

‘Someone please help me,’ said Goose.

I spotted another stray cork on the floor and put that into my pocket too.

Michel said, ‘Yes, but Paris is—’

Gareth said, ‘Mate, do you wanna cup of coffee?’

Michel looked confused for a second. Then he looked at all the bottles and cans that were stacked on the work surfaces and said, ‘But no, I prefer to take a glass of wine.’

All three of us gave a visible and blatant sigh of relief. At least he’d shut up about Paris. Gareth passed Michel a plastic cup and then boiled the kettle and made us three more cups of coffee.

Michel had moved over to the bottle-covered worktop and was studying the labels on various bottles of wine, a look of disappointment growing on his face. Finally, shaking his head, he said, ‘In reality, the attitude of the English is—’

‘We’re Welsh,’ shouted me, Goose and Gareth.

Michel just said, ‘In reality, the attitude of the Welsh is very naive for the purchase of the wines. In France, we look to see what kind of grapes has been used in the manufacturing process and also where the wine has been produced and bottled but, in the actual fact, here in England, it—’

‘Wales!’

‘– here in Wales, it is simply the level of the alcoholic content and the cheap price which is the primary concerns and this is a great pity because much pleasurable experience is lost in the drinking. No? But, in any case, the wine here is—’

‘Mate,’ said Gareth holding up his hand. ‘Stop! Please! You’re boring my pants off.’

Goose looked at Gareth and started to giggle.

Michel looked confused and then he looked a bit hurt.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit startled by Gareth’s outburst. Gareth is usually the most patient human person I’ve ever encountered. I frowned at him and said as quietly as I could, ‘That was out of order, Gaz. Michel is my sister’s boyfriend. He’s practically family.’

Gareth downed his fresh coffee in one impossibly long gulp, put his mouth close to my ear and said, ‘I don’t care if he’s Barack flipping flopping flumping Obama. He’s still making my brain melt.’

And even though he was yelling, nobody other than me would have ever heard his words – had it not been for the fact that while he was speaking, the music abruptly stopped and everywhere was suddenly plunged into silence and darkness.

And then, outside the kitchen, the house erupted into a weird symphony of screams and cheers.

Inside the kitchen, I heard the unmistakable sound of Goose giggling even harder.

‘Why have all the lights gone off?’ I asked, adjusting my voice back to its normal volume.

Instead of answering me, Michel said, ‘Yes, but apparently I am making your friend’s pants fall down. This is a classic example of English anti-establishment behaviour. Here, in England, the young people have no sense of community or doing the social interactions with other society members and this is leading to—’

Gareth said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lottie. I can’t cope with this. Anyway, I need to circulate. If I stay in here any longer, I’ll go nuts. I’m going to find out what’s happened.’ Then he looked at Goose and said, ‘Are you coming?’

‘Huh?’ I said. My jaw had fallen open.

Goose ignored me and shook her head. ‘I’d love to, Gaz, but I’m wearing an usherette uniform.’

In the darkness, Gareth just shrugged and said, ‘Who’s gonna notice?’ And then he said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and moved off towards the door.

‘What?’ I said. ‘You can’t go. Ruthie will kill me. And you.’

Gareth’s dark shape said, ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ and then he disappeared into the mass of screaming and cheering bodies in the hallway.

I turned back to the silhouette of Michel and said, ‘Brilliant. Now look what you’ve done. You’ve bored my boyfriend out of the building.’

Michel said, ‘Pfffff.’ And then he said, ‘Yes, but, in reality—’

‘Oh pleeeease don’t start going on about reality again,’ wailed Goose.

‘Hey,’ I said, swinging around to face her. ‘Back off and leave Michel alone. He’s my sister’s boyfriend.’

‘All right,’ said Goose. ‘Keep your hairy tash on.’

‘I haven’t got a tash,’ I said to Goose. And then I turned to Michel and demanded, ‘Do you think I’ve got a tash?’

Michel said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What is a tash?’

‘A moustache,’ I bellowed. I was starting to get very agitated. In my hands, I had a piece of cork that I’d picked up from somewhere and I was so stressed out that I snapped the thing completely in half and threw it at the wall. ‘Do YOU think I’ve got a moustache?’

Michel looked even more confused and, after a moment’s pause, he said, ‘I cannot answer this question in the dark. I’m going to find out what has happened to the electricity.’ Then he too disappeared into the crowded hallway.

Goose started laughing again. Even though I could barely see her, I could tell that she was borderline hysterical. ‘He soooo thinks you’ve got a tash!’

‘Shut up,’ I said.

After a gulp of coffee, Goose said, ‘No, I will not shut up! Get over yourself.’

For the second time in the space of minutes, my jaw fell open. ‘Get over myself? What the heck is that supposed to mean?’

And then Goose did an extraordinary thing. She let go of her coffee mug and sent it crashing to the floor. Even in the dark, it looked pretty deliberate to me. I heard the sound of broken crockery smashing on the floor tiles.

‘What did you do that for?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said another voice that had arisen from nowhere and which I knew only too well. ‘What did you do that for?’

It was Ruthie. She was holding a lighted candle in one hand and with her other she was dragging Gareth back into the kitchen by his ear. This wasn’t easy because Gareth is about eight inches taller and three stones heavier than Ruthie. ‘We forgot to feed the electricity meter,’ she said before anyone had even asked. ‘Michel’s gone out to see if he can get some pound coins from the petrol station.’ And then she said, ‘Have you lot been drinking?’

‘No,’ we all said.

Ruthie took my mug from my hand and sniffed it suspiciously. ‘Just coffee?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘So why are you throwing my mugs around? These things cost money, you know.’

‘Sorry,’ said Goose. And then she sighed noisily before adding, ‘I dropped your mug and it smashed because there was nothing to save it – just like there’s nothing out there to save any of us.’

Ruthie held her candle up towards Goose’s face and peered at her. ‘Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?’

Goose nodded. ‘I’m just having an existential crisis, that’s all.’

Ruthie looked confused for a moment and then she said, ‘Well, just be a bit more bloody careful with my cups.’

‘Oh, chill out a bit, Ruthie,’ I said. ‘It was only a scatty old mug. And anyway, what’s a few measly quid to you? You’d only waste it on booze.’

Ruthie glared at me. ‘No I wouldn’t.’

‘Yeah you would,’ I said. ‘Because you’re a student and that’s all students ever spend their money on.’

‘Er . . . excuse me,’ said Ruthie, her face a spooky picture of candlelit outrage. ‘I think you’ll find that students spend their money on a lot of things.’

‘Oh yeah,’ chipped in Gareth, who was rubbing his ear and sounding cheesed off, ‘Like what?’

‘Like books . . .’ said Ruthie.

‘And?’ This time it was Goose who wanted to know about the purchasing habits of the student population.

My sister held her candle up and glared at her. Then she glared at all of us. And then she said, ‘. . . and paper and ink cartridges and food and the electricity meter . . .’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Gareth with a snort. ‘I can really see that you spend heaps of money on that!’

‘Er . . . excuse me, Gareth,’ said my sister, ‘. . . remember whose sofa you’re sleeping on tonight.’

Gareth sighed noisily. And then, because he must have had a death wish, he pointed at the dirty dishes in the minging sink and said, ‘And cleaning products?’

‘Yes . . . and cleaning products!’ Ruthie was blatantly annoyed. She put her candle down and then, counting off each item on her fingers, she added, ‘. . . and library fines and archaeology field trips and tools for an archaeological dig . . . oh, and dwarf hats and mini pretend coal-miners’ lanterns and . . .’

‘Mini coal-miners’ lanterns? Dwarf hats?’ I can’t remember who interrupted her. To be fair, it could have been any one of us.

‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘Because we all went to a fancy-dress party dressed as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Obviously!’ And then she said, ‘. . . and fake beards and glow-sticks and takeaway chips and nightclub entrance fees and Do-it-Yourself mask kits and a 3D projector for our photos and Lego and shoes and funny fridge magnets and plastic cups and string and . . .’

This time it was definitely me who interrupted. ‘Plastic cups and string?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘For making telephones. Obviously.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said.

And then Ruthie said, ‘. . . and tubs of ice cream and board games and Chinese takeaways and kebabs and toasted-sandwich-making contraptions and charity-shop trinkets and second-hand cushion covers and energy drinks and . . . and . . .’ Ruthie paused, and then she shook her head and said, ‘No, I think that’s pretty much everything.’

Goose said, ‘Do you want me to pay for the mug?’

Ruthie muttered, ‘Oh, forget it.’ And then, after taking a box of candles from the cupboard under the sink, she disappeared back into the hallway.

The second she was gone, Gareth started opening cupboard doors. ‘I’m starving. If I don’t eat something soon, I’ll collapse and die. And that’s a fact.’

‘You can’t help yourself to her food,’ I said.

‘I can and I am,’ said Gareth. And then, as if to demonstrate the fact, he waved a large bag of prawn cocktail crisps and a packet of chicken soup at me. ‘It’s not what Coach Jenkins would call a good square meal,’ he said, ‘but it’s a start.’

‘Gaz,’ I said nervously. ‘We really should ask Ruthie first.’

‘But we can’t, can we?’ snapped Gareth. ‘Because she’s just gone and banned us from leaving the kitchen. And anyway, I’m not going near that living room again because there’s a bloke in there wearing make-up, riding a unicycle and juggling fireballs. It’s a wonder I didn’t get my rugby kit scorched. This entire house is a total health and safety hazard.’

Goose was holding up the packet soup against the candle flame and investigating it with interest. She tapped the printed instructions and said, ‘It says here we can add an egg to make it thicker, Gaz. Do you reckon you can find one?’

I watched the pair of them helplessly. They were robbing my sister’s food and getting on like they were suddenly the best ever friends in the whole of best-ever-friend-land. It was getting on my nerves. I might as well have been at home.

Gareth found a solitary egg in another cupboard and handed it to Goose. ‘I don’t know how old this egg is,’ he said. ‘And it hasn’t got a date stamped on it. Do you reckon it’s worth risking? I don’t wanna get the squits.’

And that was when I felt something ping inside my brain. I think it was my patience snapping. I said, ‘Hello? Hello? I’m STILL here. I can’t believe that all you two can talk about is whether or not to put a stupid egg into some stupid soup! My mum is having an affair with Stevie Wonder! Do you have ANY idea how much that freaks me out? Well, I’ll tell you something – You can take your eggs and SPLATTER them for all I care.’

And then Goose did another extraordinary thing. She let go of the egg she’d been holding and sent it crashing to the floor. Even in the candlelight, it looked pretty deliberate to me. Bits of broken egg yolk and slime slithered over the floor tiles.

‘What did you do that for?’ I said.

And not for the first time that evening, Goose said – or rather shouted, ‘I am having an existential crisis!’

And after she’d said this, she started mumbling.

Really fast.

In a manner which was – quite frankly – scary.

And what she mumbled sounded something like this:

‘I’m sorry but I just don’t know what I’m doing here and I don’t even know what the point of my life is any more and I’m trapped in a kitchen inside a house party which I’m not even invited to and I’m getting skin irritations from this hideous polyester uniform and I’ve probably got the sack from my job for not turning up to work today but the most tragic thing of all is that I don’t even care because I hate my job and I only ever see the beginning and end scenes of the films and I spend half my life in the dark and also I’m sick of picking up other people’s choc ice wrappers and I work with a woman who has developed her own mumble-language and the worse thing of all is that I’m already totally fluent in it myself . . .’

At this point, she stopped mumbling for a second and looked over at me with big alarmed eyes. ‘Oh . . . my . . . God,’ she said. ‘I spend half my life having muttered conversations in the Ponty-Carlo. Does that mean I’m turning into another Pat Mumble?’

I picked up another cork from the work surface, put it between my teeth and bit it. My mum has always told me that honesty is the best policy. Sometimes, though, I reckon that there are certain occasions when it’s better to lie.

‘No way,’ I said.

‘Phew,’ said Goose. And then she started mumbling again. ‘It gets worse though because even though my job is minging I can’t stay away from the place because I’m hopelessly devoted to a boy whose name backwards just happens to be Pure Vomit and it’s totally tragically pointless since I’ve already made a massive mess of everything because yesterday after work I went and told him how I feel and he told me plain and simple that he refuses to consider any serious or frivolous relationship with anyone who isn’t yet in sixth form because he is totally turned off by school uniform . . . and I really don’t know what to do because I am totally in love with Tim Overup!’

And then she threw back her head and made a big scary noise that was part Oooooooffffff and part proper scream.

Me and Gareth stared at her in horrified astonishment. In the room next door, somebody was strumming a guitar to the accompaniment of bongo drums and a drunken choir of singing students. But in our kitchen it felt like you could have heard a pin drop. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think Gareth did either and he’s usually very good in awkward situations. Finally, I took the piece of cork I was biting out from between my teeth and said, ‘I wondered if you’d noticed that Tim Overup’s name backwards is Pure Vomit. It’s unlucky, isn’t it?’

Goose said, ‘I don’t care. I love him. But he doesn’t love me.’ And then she sank down on to the floor and started crying.

Before I could go and comfort her, Gareth made a groaning noise and said, ‘This is the worst party I’ve ever been to.’ Then he walked over to the sink, rinsed out his coffee mug and started to fill it with beer from one of the big plastic bottles on the work surface.

‘Gareth David Lloyd George Stingecombe,’ I said, ‘what the heck do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m having a beer,’ replied Gareth. ‘You two are driving me to drink.’

‘But you can’t,’ I wailed. ‘Ruthie will go ballistic.’

Gareth laughed loudly. Too loudly. And then he stopped laughing and said, ‘Well, she’ll just have to be patient and wait her turn because right now there’s a whole queue of people wanting to go ballistic at me.’

‘Yeah . . . well . . . alcohol isn’t the answer,’ I said.

Gareth gave me a long hard look. Then he directed his gaze up to the ceiling and gave Britney Biggs a long hard look too. And after that, he said, ‘Ooooooooffffffff,’ and tipped his beer down the sink and sank down on the floor next to Goose.

‘Goosey?’ I said. ‘Gazzy?’

‘I love him, Lottie,’ sobbed Goose. ‘Tim Overup is the most individual and unique person that I’ve ever met. But he’s in sixth form and he isn’t interested in me.’

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ said Gareth miserably, ‘my rugby career is over.’

Putting both my hands on my head, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I just couldn’t keep up with this conversation.

Gareth sniffed and rubbed his nose on the cuff of his rugby shirt. ‘It’s finished, Lottie! And it never even properly began.’

‘Of course it’s not over,’ I said. ‘You told me just the other day that Coach Jenkins reckons you’ll get called up to play for the Wales youth team.’

Gareth’s head sank into his hands. I looked at him in bewilderment and then, anxiously, I snuck a glance at Goose. She had her arms wrapped around her shins and was all hunched forward so that her face was pressed against the tops of her knees. I think that – ever so slightly – she may have been rocking backwards and forwards. Generally, this isn’t a good sign. She certainly didn’t look happy. Neither did Gareth. Which leads me to conclude that he was bang-on accurate with his earlier assessment: This really was THE WORST PARTY EVER.

‘The thing is . . .’ said Gareth in an oddly strangled voice, ‘I did get that call-up, Lottie.’

‘Well, that’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘So why the face like a half-chewed chip?’

‘Because,’ said Gareth, still in that weird husky voice, ‘. . . because . . . instead of turning up for my first training session at the Millennium Stadium, I bumped into you and ended up at this poxy party!’

I stared at him in horror. My stomach hurt. Just like someone had kicked me. In a voice that sounded even more oddly strangled than Gareth’s, I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I tried to,’ said Gareth.

I couldn’t think of anything good to say so I said, ‘Whoops!’

‘Yeah,’ said Gareth. ‘Whoops. They’re never going to want me now. Coach Jenkins reckons you don’t get anywhere in this world if you’re not reliable.’

‘I didn’t make you come with me, Gaz,’ I said and nervously jiggled the corks in my pocket. I wasn’t deliberately shouting at him but my voice – all by itself – had gone up a few octaves. ‘In actual fact, I didn’t even ask you.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Gareth and breathed out a great big noisy sigh. ‘But it’s not as simple as that, is it? I was so completely panicked about the idea of you and Goose clearing off out of Cardiff without telling anyone that I had to do something! You weren’t even wearing a coat.’ And then he looked me right in the eye. Gareth has got very beautiful green eyes. Even in the dim candlelight, I could see that. Without really knowing why, I held my breath. Gareth bit his lip and then took a deep breath and said, ‘You’re my girlfriend, Lottie – and I love you.’

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Goose through her sobs. ‘That is the sweetest thing I have EVER heard.’

‘I’ve been trying to say that for ages,’ said Gareth, wiping his face on the sleeve of his rugby shirt. ‘But it kept coming out wrong.’ He puffed out his cheeks in what I can only describe as an expression of pure and total frustration. ‘I always thought it would be a totally amazing moment when I first ever said those words to anyone – but actually, it’s just rubbish.’ Then he gave a big sniff, put his hands over his eyes and left them there.

And I’m pretty sure that it was at this point that I started to cry too because suddenly everything had got way too intense and very very confusing.

And even though all I can do is live my life in forward gear, it makes a helluva lot more sense when I think about it now in reverse. Food deprivation and oxygen starvation had nothing to do with why Goose, Gareth and I went so utterly mad on Sunday night. And I can’t even blame Michel. As much as I hate to admit it, I think that my wiser and cleverer sister Ruthie had correctly understood the situation right from the start.

It was my fault.

I’d run away from home and – without any thought for either of them – I’d dragged Goose and Gareth along to support me.

And the eight cups of coffee probably didn’t help much either.