Sweet Sorrow(72)

‘Fucking hell, Alex,’ said Helen.

On the patio – I’m sure it had a better name – stylish men and women arranged themselves in stylish clusters like the plastic figures on an architect’s model and dance music thunked from the speakers concealed somewhere in the trees, the eponymous pines that shielded the grounds from outside eyes. Off to one side of the house we could see a rectangle of phosphorescent light that cross-faded pink to blue to green to red; a swimming pool, empty now but waiting.

‘Again, I say it. Fucking hell.’

‘I know, right?’ said Alex.

‘Should we have brought something?’ I said.

‘Four cans of Stella and a mix-tape?’ laughed Alex. ‘It’s not that kind of party.’

‘It’s an orgy, yeah?’ said Helen, eyes lit up. ‘You’ve brought us to an orgy.’

‘Not until much later. Until then it’s just a nice party with someone that I know from the local scene.’

‘I didn’t know we had a local scene,’ I said.

‘Charlie, you’re not meant to know. If anyone asks you – they won’t – then you’re all at college and, by some statistical freak, you’ve all just turned eighteen.’

‘I can’t pretend that I’m at college.’

‘Yes, you can! Imagine school with less violence and everyone drinking coffee.’ He looked at us intently one by one, a fortune-teller. ‘Fran, next year you hope to study … Psychology at Durham; Charlie – Geography, Sheffield; Helen – PE and Politics at Loughborough. You want to be a games teacher!’

‘Ha.’

‘So Alex,’ I said, ‘are we gate-crashing?’

I had gate-crashed parties before, in houses all over town, Montagues sneaking into the Capulets’ ball. ‘We’re friends of Steve,’ we’d say, or ‘Stephanie said we could come.’ I’d been to parties that had been gate-crashed by hordes as merciless, crazed and destructive as any Vikings; CDs and purses stolen, locks prised from drinks cabinets, sinks wrenched from the wall, sausage rolls ground underfoot and brawls on the lawn as the parents returned home in fury and shock. I’d been at parties that had made the local news. Once a helicopter had hovered overhead. Didn’t all house parties end like this? With blue flashing lights and molehills of pink salt on the carpet?

‘Are we going to get chucked out?’

‘No, because you’re not gate-crashing, you’re my dear friends from the show. I’ll go say hi to Bruno. Mingle! Go! Go!’ and as he disappeared into the house, we were left, the three of us, gawping at the edge of this entirely new world. I had never seen so many attractive men and women in one place, so varied and glamorous, and I wondered, were these really the neighbours that I saw in the Cottage Loaf Tea Rooms, the Boots and the Spar, the Trawlerman Fish Bar and the Golden Calf Chinese? The men wore expensive T-shirts or open shirts under linen suits, the women stylish summer dresses or ironic retro jumpsuits, like the covers of the house-music CDs my dad had sold so reluctantly. Even the middle-aged guests looked cool as they stood, drinks held out to the side, in a minty, soft-focus mist that might have been steam from the heated pool or haze from all those Marlboro Menthols, or just the flattering light that comes from money. ‘This is so not the Methodist Church Disco,’ said Helen, and I found myself trying hard not to stare at a statuesque woman in a red PVC catsuit, while another man, handsome as a model, walked directly at us, a tray held at shoulder height.

‘He’s coming over!’ said Helen, gripping my arm.

‘Mushroom galette?’ said the model, and obediently we all took one and dipped our heads.

‘Fuck me,’ said Helen, canapé halfway to her lips, ‘caterers!’

‘Where I come from,’ said Fran, ‘these are called vol-au-vents.’

‘Oh, that’s rank,’ said Helen, spitting it into her hand. ‘That tastes like soil. What’s wrong with sausage rolls or cheese and pineapple?’ and she tipped the mulch into a pot of bamboo. ‘Bloody yuppies. I can’t eat this. I’m going to see if they’ve got Pringles.’

Another tray passed by, shallow glasses filled with mounds of green alien snow, and I snatched two and hoped that caterers did not ask for ID. Alone now, Fran and I touched glasses and pouted and craned our necks towards the rims. We sipped, and Fran clenched her jaw and opened her eyes wide. ‘Look – I’m trying to be cool and not wince. Don’t wince, don’t wince, don’t wince …’

‘It’s basically a lime-flavoured slushy. You can get it from the newsagents.’

‘Do they put salt on the rim at the newsagents?’

‘If you ask them. Under the till, big catering tub of Saxa.’

She sipped again. ‘Tequila. Have you noticed, when you’ve thrown up on a type of alcohol then it always reminds you of vomit?’

‘Well, I’ve thrown up on pretty much every kind of alcohol, so …’

‘Hey, James Bond. And you still like it?’

‘I’m not sure you’re meant to like it.’

She patted my arm. ‘You’re so jaded.’

‘I am. I’m very experienced,’ I said, and removed the straw so that it wouldn’t poke me in the cheek again. ‘This is classy though.’