Sweet Sorrow(112)

‘High-level meeting,’ said Alex, drawing the four of us together. ‘This party is over. We are getting out of here.’

‘Shouldn’t we say goodbye?’ said Fran.

‘I have these,’ said Alex, dangling car keys. ‘Mum’s car. If anyone wants an adventure …’

‘Yes!’ said Helen.

‘Let me just say goodbye to George,’ said Fran.

‘No, we have to go NOW,’ said Helen.

‘Alex, are you too drunk to drive?’ I said.

‘I swear, I’m sober as a lord,’ said Alex. ‘Come on. We’re going to see the sun come up,’ and we slipped away into the night.

We drove south down silent, frightening lanes lit up by our headlights like the corridor of a haunted house. To hold our nerve, we shouted along to old Madonna and Prince songs, Fran and me in the backseat drinking vodka and lemonade from fragile plastic cups that sloshed onto our wrists at each bend.

‘Where exactly are we going?’ shouted Fran.

‘I want to dance,’ shouted Alex. ‘Let’s go to Brighton!’

This seemed like a fine idea, and we whooped and headed for the motorway, Helen lining up the songs and cranking up the volume until the speakers buzzed. We felt tireless, immortal, invincible. Entering Brighton, we found ourselves in traffic – a traffic jam, at two in morning, what a town! – and peered, amazed, at the crowds of people still out on the streets. We parked in a grand square close to the beach, delirious at the sight of the actual, literal sea, and underneath the promenade, we put on our most sober faces and joined the queue outside the nightclub in the arches, attempting a kind of world-weary nonchalance at the bowel-shaking dumpf-dumpf-dumpf of the bass, the sweaty, shirtless, goggle-eyed insanity of the skinny boys stumbling out for Marlboro Lights and water. We looked and felt like children in comparison, even Alex, and soon we’d been turned away from every place he knew. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Alex, ‘we’ll have a private party,’ and we found a spot on the beach itself and stomped the shingle down. Alex and Helen went off on an expedition for booze and chewing gum, chips and music and cigarettes, and Fran and I passed the time by kissing, clumsy and drunk like all the other lovers there, dark shapes on the shingle like a colony of seals. Then we lay for a while, our faces close enough to be a blur, our hands on the other’s cheek.

‘I mean, your face …’

‘And yours.’

‘Will we always know each other? Even if we’re not—’

‘Sh. Hope so. I don’t see why not.’

It was four in the morning now and on Alex and Helen’s return we summoned up enough energy to dance once more to house music on Alex’s tinny CD player, retrieved from the car. Nearby, some other all-night revellers sat round a man with a guitar. ‘Could you turn it down, please?’ shouted one of them. ‘Hippies,’ muttered Alex, but the sky was lightening, exhaustion and self-consciousness were setting in, and we surrendered, turned the music down and sat, huddling close for warmth.

Drunk and sentimental, we said out loud what we loved about each other and made declarations of lifelong friendship that would embarrass us when we recalled them the next day but which we hoped would hold true.

‘Helen – are you crying?’ said Alex. ‘My God, I didn’t think you could.’

‘What’s up, Hel?’ said Fran, taking her hand and shaking it out, and Helen laughed.

‘I don’t know. I just suddenly thought – what if it doesn’t get better than this?’ and she wiped her face with the back of Fran’s hand.

‘Don’t wipe your snot on me,’ said Fran, crying too. ‘It’s disgusting.’

‘Look,’ said Alex. To our left out beyond the Palace Pier the sun was rising. ‘Night’s candles are burnt out and something something something.’

‘… jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops,’ said Fran.

‘I don’t feel very jocund,’ said Helen. ‘I feel sick.’

‘I suppose we ought to think about heading home,’ said Fran.

‘Bit longer,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should try to sleep first.’

And so we huddled close and closed our eyes, but something was happening behind us. The music in the clubs had stopped abruptly and now the crowds were spilling onto the beach all at once as if a fire drill was taking place. Steam rose from their bodies as they loitered, arms round each other, shaken and bedraggled and sucking on cigarettes, and now a crowd of clubbers was forming around a sea fisherman nearby to listen to his radio. A group of girls staggered past, high heels sinking in the shingle, some crying, others looking dazed, one girl laughing and crying at the same time and swearing to herself. ‘What’s up?’ asked Alex, but they didn’t stop, marching unsteadily to the sea where the laughing, crying girl began to wade out into the waves.

The world was coming to an end, with no hope of salvation. Ballistic missiles were minutes away, an asteroid perhaps or a solar flare, the one we’d been waiting for. The group with the guitar must have heard the news too, bundling up their stuff and trudging up the beach.

‘What’s up?’ shouted Helen. ‘What’s going on?’

‘There’s been an accident!’ a girl shouted back, then something about Diana, a tunnel in Paris. ‘She’s dead.’