The pair of us were beaming as we trotted away, and although I chanced the odd paranoid look over my shoulder, there were too many people camouflaging our tracks for me to have anything to worry about. We were off the lead and were sniffing out the booze as quickly as we could. Or at least Naomi was. She knew exactly where we were heading and wasted no time in getting us there.
I stood and stared at the sign that hung above a set of elaborate metal gates. It read ‘IRNWRX’, forcing me to close one eye and squint at it hard, hoping blurred vision might help me make sense of what it meant.
‘Ah, the Ironworks.’ Naomi sighed with a hint of nostalgia. ‘The finest and cheapest boozer on the north-east coast.’
I looked at the building again. Everything about it said cheap, but not only because the booze was on special offer; it looked downright nasty. The sort of place you didn’t want to be seen in after dark. Yet here we were, ducking through the gates and heading towards the beer garden.
It was rammed in there, the men in identikit checked shirts and jeans, the women in their flimsy, web-thin dresses. There was more substance to their make-up than their clothes, and it made me grin to think of them rushing to the bogs every ten minutes, trowels in hand, ready to smear another layer on.
Spotting a particularly busy spot in the far corner, Naomi grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me behind her.
‘Perfect,’ she said, grinning. ‘Free bar over there by the looks of things.’
She was right too, but not in the way I’d imagined. There was no buff barman clutching outrageous cocktails, or even a beer fridge left lazily unlocked for us to raid. Instead there was a table by the fire exit covered in drinks, with no one claiming them.
Naomi was on them in a flash, grabbing a pint glass that was about half full, decanting the dregs of another on top. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it was free, and I didn’t want to piss Naomi off yet. The last thing I needed was to be left on my own in a place like this. Following her lead, I mixed a few lagers together, avoiding any that looked like they’d been there too long.
She was sharp and certainly no novice when it came to this sort of thing. Although she looked a good couple of years older than me, with her tight curls falling past her shoulders, it would’ve been a stretch to convince the bouncers we belonged here. So after grabbing her drink, she led us into the midst of a crowd, nestling behind a couple of particularly big bruisers. You could’ve hidden a sumo wrestler behind them, so we reckoned we were safe.
It didn’t take me long to put the second-hand-ness of the drinks out of my head. Despite the few quid we’d pilfered from Eric, the change in my pocket wouldn’t have gone far, and even if we had sweet-talked someone into getting us something from the bar, that just increased the risk of being rumbled.
And when you thought about it in those terms, we were happy with what we’d found.
Naomi certainly was, caning the first pint in super-quick time, then ducking back to the table and returning with a bottle of Sol that still had the slice of lime in the top.
‘What a find,’ she crowed. ‘Nectar of the friggin’ gods, this.’ And with a salute to the heavens she tipped half of it down her neck in one gulp, before burping loudly.
That simple action summed up the next hour. It was loud, lewd and increasingly out of control, and I loved every second of it. For the first time in weeks I let myself go (with some help from the dregs thrust into my hand), and with the drink taking her over too, Naomi finally let her guard fall. It was the first time since I met her that I didn’t feel in danger of a slap.
She was savage in the way she pulled the other drinkers apart, the women in particular. She gave some of the hardest-faced ones a backstory – the number of babies they’d spawned, by as many different dads; she knew how many of them were in care and how many of them had pushed kids out by our age. There were moments when she said it all too loudly, like she wanted one of them to hear, but in our excitable state it just added to the adrenalin rush.
On it went, until the sun had long gone, although I could feel its warmth in my cheeks. We’d lost count of the number of glasses we’d lifted – ‘minesweeping’ she called it – and Naomi had got braver as time went on, daring to distract lads from their pints before waving me behind them. While she chatted, I dived in, liberating a glass or two before retreating to the far end of the garden. After a couple more minutes of chitchat she would excuse herself and wobble back towards me, her grin as lopsided as her steps. It was seamless, like we’d been doing it years, not hours. Unfortunately, it was such a stellar performance that eventually we ended up with a small audience.
I noticed them first. Naomi was glazing over, little wonder given the amount she’d packed away, but there were four of them huddled together, all shaved heads and bumfluff. They were older than us, but I doubted they were eighteen. Maybe they had fake IDs on them. Whoever they were, they were paying us plenty of attention, going as far as a little round of applause after our final sweep.
Naomi spun to look at them, her beer goggles turning them into something they weren’t, and before I could stop her she lifted her glass and beckoned to them.
They were over in a flash, clinking glasses and offering us fags, which Naomi accepted greedily. I waved the offer away and rolled my own, taking time to try and clear my head, assess what they were after.
Naomi was in her element, lapping up their compliments and offers of more drinks, pressing herself close to each of them in turn, so close you couldn’t have squeezed a credit card between them. She may not have known any of their names yet, but they were quickly becoming friends.
I tried to let it all wash over me and accept they were here for the same reasons as us, to get slaughtered, but unlike Naomi I kept my guard a little higher and my hips further away from theirs.
Now our two had become six, it was becoming difficult to stay anonymous. A couple of the lads had quick tongues, loud ones too, and once the jokes started we stood out more than we should have. If we’d had any sense we might have called it quits and moved on, but now that the drinks were free and fresh from the bar … well, we got greedy. And pissed.
Naomi was the first one to start weaving, and though it was funny to us, it started to rankle with those around us. At first it was just raised eyebrows, which soon escalated into snide comments. But it was once she started dancing – a mixture of pogoing and grinding that involved treading on toes and spilling drinks – that the trouble started. A couple of groups told her to watch herself before backing away to safer ground, but one woman, who seemed to have got dressed in the late 1980s and forgotten to change, wasn’t quite as forgiving. To be fair to her, she was now wearing the drink that she’d been holding, thanks to Naomi, and it was enough for her to walk forward and have words.
‘Oi, you bloody idiot. Look what you’ve done!’
Naomi forced her eyes to focus before cutting the woman down with one swift sentence.
‘Sorry, love,’ she slurred. ‘I didn’t get you dressed tonight, so don’t blame me for what you’re wearing.’
Our new friends howled their approval, and Naomi turned to take their applause, turning her back to the woman momentarily, long enough for her to grab Naomi by the hair.
What followed happened in a flash, even with our senses slowed by the drink. As the woman yanked on her curls, Naomi swung instinctively, her arm arcing wildly. Her fist slammed into the woman’s cheek. She folded instantly. As her friends poured round her, trying to restore her to her feet, I grabbed Naomi by the arm and spun her towards the exit. We were getting out of there while we could still walk.
Unfortunately, the lads we’d just befriended chose to come with us.