Don’t You Forget About Me(45)

My breathing is shallow and my whole body is shaking, awash with fight or flight adrenaline. His fingers are digging into me and I can tell by the tension rolling off him in waves that he wants to hit me but is also aware lamping a woman might be a bad career move.

‘Get off her!’ I hear a voice by the door.

Help at last. Thank God. Although, oh no: it’s Lucas. He strides across the room, Keith bumbling at his heels, brushes Thor to the side, offers his hand and hauls me up. ‘Are you alright?’ he says.

I mumble I am. I don’t want to need rescuing by him.

‘Fuck her, look what she did to me!’ Thor says, wig lopsided, proffering a hand that’s full of blood. It does look terrible. I had no idea I could hit that hard.

‘What are you doing in here?’ Lucas says.

‘I’m a male entertainer. I didn’t know you had psychos working here.’

‘Yeah well you don’t male entertain on these premises without clearing it with management first, which you definitely didn’t, so get out.’

The hen-do women are bug-eyed and uncharacteristically quiet, a low burble of disbelief rolling round the group.

Thor collects his hammer, his Bluetooth player and his cape from the floor, his smeared face looking as if he’s a zombie that’s been feasting on flesh. It’s a strangely apt look for Halloween.

‘This is not over!’ he spits, as he passes me, pointing at his nose. ‘Bobby does NOT forget.’ Lucas yanks him away, grabbing his arm and propelling him out of the door.

‘Poldark-looking fuck!’ Thor says to Lucas, as he’s bundled into the street. I’m not yet capable of finding anything funny, but I file it away to find funny later.

The hen do decide to follow suit.

‘You’ve ruined Becky’s hen, you bitch,’ says one of the women to me as they troop out, and I flinch. I don’t know what to say other than whimper: ‘He wouldn’t get off me.’

Am I sacked? Please don’t let me be sacked.

Lucas leans over the bar, pulls the cord to rattle the bell for ‘time’ and takes my hand, firmly. I have no capacity left to find this awkward, I merely submit. He leads me into the kitchen behind the bar and plonks me on a seat. Keith is here! Keith is happy to see me, at least, and breaks off from lapping water for a stroke. (Wasn’t he going to leave him at a friend’s? I totally clock that was a fib.)

When Lucas returns, a minute later, with brown liquid in a brandy balloon, I’m on the floor with my arms round Keith’s neck. I let go guiltily, as if I’ve been caught in a clinch. Lucas says nothing apart from:

‘Drink this. I’ll finish up.’

I’ve never liked brandy but I let it numb my lips as I listen to the offstage, muffled conversations and clanging of the till drawer as it shoots back into the register.

Eventually, Lucas joins me, closing the door behind him carefully.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’m sorry I don’t know what happened, I told him he couldn’t strip in here. He grabbed me and I had a nervo … and twatted him. I’m so sorry, I don’t usually belt people.’

‘Hey, no,’ Lucas’s eyes are wide with surprise. ‘It isn’t for you to apologise. This is for us to grovel about the idiocy of leaving you on your own. I’m interviewing on Monday and we’ll get others in, and sod what Dev says.’

‘Oh? I … thanks.’

‘Leave it with us.’

He folds his arms. Conciliatory but not quite friendly.

There’s a pause and I say: ‘Thor is a Norse God. Felt entitled to any wench he chose. Should’ve known, really.’

Lucas smiles and shakes his head, in appreciation I’m making light of it but also implying I shouldn’t, and says: ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there earlier.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I’ll call your taxi, I can imagine you want to go home.’

I open my mouth to say something more, something to lever this moment open between us, and don’t quite have the nerve. But if I finish this Rémy Martin, as a chaser to so much adrenaline that I could have lifted a lorry, perhaps I will.

As I’m walking out to my cab, Lucas is mopping blood from the floor.

‘Lucas,’ I say, the sound of the car’s engine ticking over outside, knowing this is wildly reckless. It feels like a moment out of the ordinary, when both our defences are down, and if I don’t do it now, I possibly never will. It’ll only get harder to ask as time goes on. And I have to know.

‘I’ve been thinking. Didn’t we go to school together? Or sixth form?’

I hold my breath and swallow hard. Lucas stares at me for a moment. He half-heartedly plunges the mop in the mop bucket water, while he thinks.

‘… Oh, God. Yes, I think so? I thought I knew you from somewhere and didn’t want to say in case I got it wrong.’

I squirm. I immediately wish I hadn’t raised this. Every word out of his mouth for the next thirty seconds will crucify me. I’ve devoted years of my life to second-guessing what they might be, yet he will toss them away, carelessly.

‘Did we …? Were we …?’ Lucas hesitates. He clears his throat: ‘I’m not sure how to phrase this in an, er, gentlemanly way. My memories from eighteen through to twenty-two or twenty-three are very hazy at best.’