SAM
It was disgusting and it carried on all night. Rebecca twinkled and twirled and tried her best to outshine me with all the men in the room – in particular Charlie and Ed. It wasn’t hard for her – I wasn’t exactly able to strut my dress or sparkling personality around the room.
Can’t you see she’s faking it all! I seethed from the sidelines, sipping vodka on my empty stomach. It’s all a big game – she’s never going to give a shit about you, about any of you. In fact she’s never going to care about anyone at all ever.
Eventually I got talking to some random man who was quite cute and funny, and I slowly began to relax a little. I wasn’t going to go desperately pawing after Charlie. Rebecca’s tinkling was attention-seeking enough. And there was this cute, funny fellow. I hadn’t caught his name and I was missing sections of his banter but I picked up enough now and again to laugh.
I was amusing him with stories from shoots that had gone terribly wrong when an elegant arm wrapped its way around whatshisname’s neck.
‘Luce!’ he exclaimed, smiling a broad and genuine smile.
‘Hello, little brother, charming the ladies again are we?’
I swallowed and my insides dropped an inch. It was her.
‘This is Sam. Sam, this is Lucy, my sister.’
‘Oh, I know who she is.’ Lucy looked at me. ‘An old friend of Charlie’s – we’ve already met.’
‘Hi,’ I smiled, terrified.
Lucy launched into a conversation with her brother about people I had never heard of. She was dressed in a simple satin dress the colour of oysters, with tiny little straps that showed off sculpted collarbones. I sat there, my bowels loosening by the second, my body sending out urgent alarm signals. Get to a toilet now! it was telling me. But I couldn’t move. The coolness in Lucy’s eyes and tone had frozen me to the spot. Eventually though, after what was probably seconds, my body took over and I stood up, muttered my excuses and teetered to the toilet.
Halfway there I felt a hot, wet intruder slip out into my pants.
Oh fuck, oh fuck! I tried to pick up speed, clenching the top of my thighs together even tighter, thankful that I’d decided against wearing a thong. I could see the door to the Ladies, almost there, almost there.
But suddenly he was there, muscling me off track into a dark corridor, his unmistakeable scent enveloping me.
‘Not now, I really need the loo!’ I pleaded.
‘You are such a tease, I’ve hardly seen you all night,’ Charlie admonished me in his smooth voice, taking my hand and pulling me out of a fire exit into the cold night. He had obviously had several more drinks since he saw me at the beginning of the night. It was making him reckless. Dangerous. We were in an alley down the side of the club. He took my wrists and pushed me against the wall, kissing me roughly. I tried kissing him back but the effort of keeping my bum closed and concentrating on his lips was too much. I wrenched away from him.
‘You having a good night then?’ Distract him, that’s what I needed to do.
‘It’s better now,’ he mumbled, his eyes glazed with drink, and he tried launching in towards my lips again.
‘Charlie, I’d love nothing more than to ravage you right now but honestly I really need to go to the loo.’
Charlie sighed and released my wrists, confidently running his hands down my body.
‘You do look good enough to eat, Sam,’ he said huskily, and pushed his crotch into mine, ‘but I suppose I can wait a bit longer.’
Then he stood back and sniffed.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘What smell?’ I said, stepping into the doorway.
He sniffed around some more, his shirt open at the neck, hands in his pocket, swaying slightly. He was even more handsome, I noted, when he was drunk.
‘Oh, it’s gone.’ He kept sniffing. ‘That’s strange.’
‘Probably something in the alley,’ I called and bolted inside.
When I emerged from the toilet, having stuffed my soiled pants in the sanitary disposal bin, the atmosphere had changed. It felt like half the party was missing. The roar of conversation had gone, leaving only music. Those left were looking towards the door, where a bunch of people were all trying to get out at once. I could hear shouting from outside. It didn’t sound good. I cast around for Charlie, Ed and Rebecca. No sign of them.
Suddenly Lucy’s brother ran across the room and pushed his way outside, his face serious. I felt full of foreboding but my feet took me quickly across the room to follow him. Something was wrong. I had a dreadful feeling it would have something to do with me but I still had to know. Half the party were on the footpath. Someone was shouting in a shrill voice while a low voice rumbled in counterpoint. I skirted around the gawping half-moon of onlookers onto the road, only just getting out of the way of a cab as it pulled in. There – I finally had a view of the scene. It was Charlie and Lucy! He was pleading with her but she was having none of it.
‘Get your hands off me!’ she shouted as she stepped towards the cab, a couple of her pretty friends trying to shoo Charlie away.
‘Lucy, don’t go, this is crazy!’
‘No it’s not,’ Lucy yelled from the car. ‘It’s over.’
And with that the car pulled away from the kerb and into the night, leaving Charlie reeling on the footpath, and his friends heading back to the bar, eager to get back to the main business of the evening.
Instinctively I rushed to him. ‘Are you OK, Charlie? What’s going on?’
He stood swaying, his eyes still glazed. ‘Sheesh a fucking nightmare,’ he mumbled, gazing in the direction the cab had gone.
‘Come on, come and have a drink.’ I tugged on his arm softly.
He looked at me finally then, confused, as if he couldn’t understand why I was there.
‘Charlie?’ I said.
But he said nothing. He turned away from me and gazed at the disappearing cab, as if it was the only thing that existed in the world right then. In the argument with Lucy, his shirt had become untucked, his hair ruffled and his jacket was no longer sitting on his shoulders properly. He looked desperate. He looked totally heartbroken.
I felt the hope I had for that evening and all the desperate weeks leading up to it turn into sharp needles in my belly. I stepped back from him, almost turning my heel on the kerb, just steadying myself in time. This. Was. All. Wrong.
‘Come on, mate.’ A couple of his friends barged in where I had been and clapped him on his back. ‘Come and celebrate, there’s plenty more totty inside, come on!’ They tried to move him out of the road but then Ed was there, shadowed by Rebecca, her make-up still looking as pristine as it did five hours ago. Another cab pulled up and Ed opened the door.
‘Just go home, mate,’ he told Charlie as he negotiated him inside, somehow completely ignoring the vociferous complaints from his friends. Rebecca hovered by the door, one arm on Ed’s back, like a little nurse guiding the doctor to the patient. She completely blanked me; I may as well have been invisible.
‘How do we make sure he gets home OK?’ she chirruped to Ed. He didn’t answer and leant in to talk to the driver, then shut the door firmly behind Charlie, effectively preventing anyone else speaking to him.
‘He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need any more liquor, that’s for sure.’ He was using such old-fashioned language but somehow making it sound right. ‘The driver knows where to go.’
The next thing I knew I was back inside. I don’t remember walking back in. I was reeling from what I had just seen, trying to make sense of it, the furious screams of Lucy still ricocheting around my head. Had she seen us kissing? Is that why she took off? But I had kept an eye on the entrance to the alleyway the whole time and we were only out there for a minute, weren’t we? The night was a jumble in my head. All night I’d felt outside of myself. Mara was right, I was in no fit state to be out, and instead I’d put a couple of vodkas on an empty stomach with my feet in heels. No wonder I felt so jangled. And Charlie had never felt so . . . aggressive before. That wasn’t like him. It must have just seemed that way because I’d been feeling so unwell, so weak. He couldn’t have been so forceful with me really. It was all in my head.
I looked around me at the deflated party, the punters swaying out the door to more exciting venues. I longed for the safety of my own bed more than I’d longed for anything all night.
At that moment Ed came up to me. He was holding my coat.
‘Here you go,’ he said, gently helping me put it on.
I almost started crying with the relief of having my coat on.
‘Thank you. My hands are shaking.’
‘I’m not surprised. You look like you need to be in bed.’
‘Funny, that’s just what I was thinking.’
Ed shook his head at me.
‘You look like your sister when you do that,’ I said. I managed a small smile.
‘For once, I don’t mind. Mara’s right, you know, you are a worry, Sam Moriarty.’ He put an arm round my shoulders and squeezed them.
‘You’re not going, are you?’ Rebecca appeared next to us. She looked as bright eyed and bushy tailed as she had at the beginning of the evening. I looked at Ed. Surely he won’t want to stay here will he? The idea of him not being at my side as I trekked home was horrible. At that moment it felt like Ed was the only thing keeping me warm, upright and sane enough to get home to where I should be. But his face was blank, completely unreadable.
‘The night is young! Let’s not let all that drama ruin Saturday night.’ She did a little wiggle. ‘What do you think, Ed, time for a boogie?’
I looked at him again. What would he say?
‘No thanks. I’m going to take Sam home, she’s not feeling well.’
Thank God.
Rebecca gave a little pout.
‘Aw, poor Sam. I would have thought you’d be bouncing off the walls seeing Lucy take off like that, not feeling all sorry for yourself—’
‘I’m feeling sick, actually—’
But Rebecca ploughed on. She wasn’t listening to me. Her eyes had taken on an extra gleam. She was a cat about to pounce.
‘Not that you should be getting your hopes up. There’s no way he would ever go backwards to you. He’s moved on into a different world to you and it’s not a world you’re ever going to be a part of—’
‘OK, that’s probably enough, Rebecca. I’m going to take Sam home.’
‘Oh.’ Rebecca looked crushed for moment then gave a little shrug. She leant up and gave Ed a peck on his cheek. ‘Too bad, Ed. I’ll get you on the dance floor one day.’
‘Bye, Rebecca.’
Ed turned me round and led me to the door.
‘Get better soon, Sam. And forget about tonight,’ Rebecca called out to me.
I didn’t answer. Forget about tonight, she says. Forget about what? About Charlie kissing me roughly? About crapping my own pants? About him being heartbroken when his girlfriend took off? About the horrid words you just said to me?
Ed led me out into the cold night, his arm firmly round my shoulders. It stayed there all the way home.