These are the best nights of the week, darts’ nights with the girls. I love weekend nights at the club; I love the dressing up; I love the music, the lights, the drinking, the flirting, the dancing with a stranger. I love living.
Men look at me; they like my curves. I’m not some skinny girl, all legs and no boobs. Dandy says I look like a real woman and that pleases me, because I love Dandy with all my heart.
Dandy, my unhidden lover; my worst kept secret.
Tonight we’re sat in the George listening to the Motley Crew putting the world to rights, while Paddy’s killing a song about ‘Smiling Irish Eyes’ or something like that.
Danny shouts over, ‘For Christ’s sake, Paddy, pipe down. You’ll drive everyone home.’ Paddy’s voice drops to a mumble, which isn’t much better. We’re about to start practice and Scottie Dog and Pegs haven’t arrived yet so we begin without them, just messing about, going round the doubles, trying to get our eye in. It’s Maggie who mentions it first; she pauses between arrows and says, ‘Did you hear about Pegs? Supposed to have been assaulted.’
Irish says, ‘What do you mean? Beaten up?’
‘No. Someone tried it on. In her lane.’
Irish says, ‘Wish someone would try it on with me.’
Katy, usually the first to laugh but not lately, says, ‘It doesn’t sound funny, Irish.’
Maggie reckons it’s supposed to have been – and here she drops to a whisper – ‘two lads off the Mazes Estate and we know what they’re like there’.
I say, ‘Well, she seemed all right on Monday. Apart from her throwing.’
‘It can’t have been that bad, then.’ Irish gives a conciliatory nod towards Katy; she isn’t unthinking all of the time.
Katy shrugs. ‘Maybe not. But at least I’m not the topic of conversation.’
Katy’s been like that lately, snappy and moody. Understandable really, seeing what she’s got on her plate. That’s the sort of thing Dandy says and it’s sometimes his voice, his expressions, that I hear coming out of my mouth.
Maggie tries to smooth things over. ‘We all love a bit of tittle-tattle now and then. Don’t we?’
Just then Peg’s comes into the bar and for a moment – only for a moment, mind – there is a sudden silence; like we’ve been talking about her.
And we have.
Danny phones for a taxi for me at closing time. I’m not staying late tonight, but Irish and Katy are settling into a session. Katy’s out for a ciggy every half hour, regular as clockwork, and this coincides with Scottie Dog’s visits to the loo. She was a late arrival but she’s more than made up for it.
‘Bladder weakens a bit as ye get older,’ she says.
I ask her if it’s anything to do with whisky and water but she reckons she used to be able to drink a pint of the stuff without taking a slash.
She’s got a way with words, has Scottie Dog.
Dandy’s waiting up for me when I get home. He’s sitting in the kitchen drinking a mug of cocoa. That makes him sound old, but he’s only thirty-eight and he doesn’t even look that. He’s got black wavy hair and all his own teeth. His eyes light up when I come in the back door and he stands up and holds me. Then he kisses me because he loves me.
And I’ve loved him since I was fourteen. And at fourteen…
Mum’s been different, happier, lately. Today when I come home from school she’s singing. She’s wearing her blue-striped apron as she’s cooking up dinner and singing with the radio.
Then she says, ‘Lena, I want you to meet someone tonight.’
‘Someone, Mum?’
I drop my school-bag in the corner and prise open the biscuit tin.
‘He’s coming round for dinner,’ Mum says as I stuff the first of several biscuits into my mouth.
All the time Mum’s talking, she’s watching the kitchen clock.
‘He, Mum?’
‘Andy. He’s a friend.’
‘A boyfriend?’
‘No. Yes. Well, sort of.’
‘That’s why you’ve had your hair done.’
But it’s more than a new hair-do. Underneath her apron her clothes are smart, casual. She’s got her tight blouse on and her even tighter skirt. And it’s short.
Shorter than she lets me wear mine. Still with my fat legs, plump body, and spotty face, I’m hardly Pirates of the Caribbean material and she’s probably right.
Then she says, ‘Watch the spuds, I’ve got to put my face on,’ and she clatters up the stairs in her high heels. High heels, mind.
So I’m watching the spuds, and eating more biscuits, when the bell rings. On automatic pilot and slowly munching like a cow on the cud, I open the door.
This is Andy and he’s standing on the doorstep. He’s tall and dark and he’s smiling at me.
‘Lena,’ he says. ‘You must be Lena.’
Through a mash of crumbs, I splutter a hello. I can’t even speak properly and my face must be scarlet. I suppose I’m staring, I suppose my mouth’s open, I suppose there’s biscuit on my teeth. I suppose he sees a fat, ugly, red-faced, half-dumb girl who looks as if she is immovable.
‘Shall I come in?’ he says.
So Andy comes in and he stays. And ten years later he is still here.
That night at dinner with Andy, I look at him and Mum laughing and joking together. I can see this isn’t one of Mum’s temps; she’s so vivacious. Vivacious. I like that word, it reminds me of oldtime film stars that I see on daytime telly that I watch with Mum. You know, like Vivien Leigh or Lauren Bacall or Olivia de Havilland. I love those films: Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Gone With The Wind. And that’s what Mum’s like: a film star. She’s too pretty, too glamorous to be just a mum on our scruffy council estate.
So at dinner she touches Andy’s arm, touches Andy’s shoulder, leans against Andy. He holds her hand, her slim wrist, her slim body, while fat old me steadily chomps the meal away.
But that night the chunky fourteen-year-old dreams that it’s her, a new shapely her who’s lost lots of weight but who keeps her boobs and enough of her bottom to be interesting. It’s her that Andy is holding, her ear that Andy is whispering into, her waist that Andy is slipping his arm around.
And the next morning that chunky fourteen-year-old has one slice of toast and a bowl of Special K for breakfast.
A new Lena is being born.
After a few months, I start to call him Dad. I say it as a joke at first, something that’s nearly funny. I think Mum’s pleased; she’s desperately keen for me to accept Andy. She comes into my room and sits on my bed.
‘You do like him, Lena. Don’t you?’
She’s always done this if we’ve had a row or if I’m upset about something. Or if she’s upset about something. But when Andy/Dad has been with us for a year Mum comes into my room, sits on my bed and says, ‘You’re going to have a little brother. How do you feel about that?’
I can’t, I dare not tell her how feel.
It was soon after that I started skipping school, hanging out with the Wild Bunch, getting into trouble, getting into fights. Getting rid of my virginity.
So there’s me, fifteen years old now with the weight falling off me, and going downhill fast. I’m the same as fifty other kids on the estate in what I do, but I’m different in that I’ve got a mum that worries, that waits up for me, that wakes me for school, that cooks meals I don’t eat; a mum that touches my conscience, causes me guilt.
And that guilt needs to be shoved away, buried beneath dark alley knee-tremblers and White Lightning, and screeching cars that burn rubber and go around and around the estate.
‘We smoke the dope and chop the coke and shag the night away.’
That’s our refrain. I can’t say who made it up, but it sort of grew into a rap and every now and then we’d add a line to it.
Space adds, ‘We’re council trash and we’re not flash and we booze the night away.’
Three days later Donna adds, ‘We pick a fight cos we are right and we kick- arse the night away.’
A couple of days after that Chimpee adds, in his lisp, ‘We own our time because it’s mine and we waste our time away.’
No one said it had to be good, or make any sense, and a poet he ain’t.
A week later I add, ‘I’m not bad and I love my dad and I dream the night away.’
The words just come to me out of the blue. I’m sitting on a swing at the park and we’ve drunk cider and vodka, and my head is staring to spin and Space’s hand is sliding up my leg.
The others look at me.
‘That’s pretty tame,’ says Hanny Scarecrow. She’s on the high end of the see-saw, drawing on a cig the size of my thumb.
‘It’s pretty freaky, Lena,’ says Blackhead. He’s on the low end, holding Hanny Scarecrow up in the air.
Chimpee says doubtfully, ‘Well, at least it rhymes.’
I say, ‘I feel sick; I think I’m going to throw up,’ and Space’s fingers stop their slow crawl towards my knickers.
I don’t think it was just then I decided to go back to normality; I’m sure it must have been in my mind for a little while but this night, overfilled with cider and vodka, I phone Mum.
‘Lena,’ she says. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Will you come and get me, Mum?’
‘Mikey’s playing up, Lena. I’ll ask Andy.’
There’s a murmur of voices through the phone.
‘Andy says, “Where are you?”’
I tell Mum and she says he’ll be there in ten minutes.
The others have been listening in.
‘Going home?’ says Blackhead.
‘It’s early yet, we were going up town,’ moans Space, ‘and then I thought you were coming back to mine.’
‘Mine’ is his dad’s two bed flat. I don’t like staying there much because even if I go to the loo at two o’clock in the morning, I meet Space’s dad on the landing. It’s as though he’s waiting, listening for me.
‘After you,’ he’ll say, holding the bathroom door open.
I always put some toilet paper down the loo first, so as he can’t hear me tinkle. Sometimes I’m sure he’s got his eye to the keyhole, so I don’t turn the light on. Anyway I’m never, never ever, going to stay there again. Space keeps hinting at me sharing his narrow bed but he can take a running jump.
So tonight Hanny Scarecrow asks, ‘You not feeling well?’ She’s fifteen but she looks about twelve, and she’s as thin as a rake.
In answer I throw up. It’s a gut-wrenching mess of cider, vodka, crisps and chocolate that splashes over Space’s new trainers.
‘Jesus, Lena,’ he says, ‘I only just got them.’
He didn’t just ‘got them’, we all got them: me, Blackhead, Hanny Scarecrow, Chimpee and Space. We got them in Arcade Sports on the high street at lunchtime, because that’s when the trainee’s on duty. He’s a bit disinterested; he’s got his MP3 player stuffed in his ear, deafening him, and he’s reading some lad’s mag on the counter. We go along the rows of trainers until Space sees what he wants. Then we crowd around him to block the cameras as he snips off the security tag, and stuffs the trainers under his coat.
Then we leg it, fast.
So this is the night I throw up on Space’s feet.
This is the night when Dad comes to pick me up.
This is the night when I tell Dad that I love him.
It’s dark and warm in the car and the streetlamps are flicking by. I’m in two minds whether to call him Andy or Dad. What comes out is Dandy, and he laughs.
‘You’re getting your worms jumbled up,’ he says.
He’s like this, he can turn a drunken smelly girl into giggling wreck with a one-liner.
I put my hand on his, give it a gentle squeeze and all my feelings well up, swell up.
And I speak the forbidden words, the words I’ve whispered to my pillow a hundred times.
‘I love you, Dandy,’ I say.
‘Love you too, Lena.’
He’s concentrating on the turn into our road and all of a sudden it’s now or never.
‘No, I really love you,’ I say.
He’s stopped the car outside our door and turned the engine off and there’s a thick silence you could cut with a knife. Into it I say again, ‘I love you.’
Dandy says, ‘Don’t Lena. You shouldn’t.’
‘But I do.’
‘Lena, you’ve been drinking; you don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘I do. I do.’
And then I start to cry and he puts his arm around me.
‘Look, Lena, we’ll talk about this. Sort it out.’
But I don’t want things sorted out; I want this gorgeous man to hold me forever. I want passion and love.
His hand is on my waist, high up, just under my boob. And I take that hand and I raise it onto my breast.
Just before he wrenches himself away as if I’ve scalded him. Just before he says in a stunned voice, ‘Jesus, Lena, you’re only fifteen.’
Just before all of that, his fingers squeeze oh so slightly, oh so briefly, in gentle, forbidden, interest.
Inside Mum says, ‘You were a long time in the car, what were you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ I snap at her. ‘Nothing.’
Mum rolls her eyes at Andy and shakes her head. And Andy looks away like he’s ashamed to meet her gaze.
Afterwards, I always call him Dandy and Mum laughs at my amalgamation of his names.
That’s how I’m leaving it tonight, laying in the dark next to Dandy.
Laying next to him and thinking of Mum and Mikey and what I did to get what I wanted.