pretty good.’
‘Listen. I’m going back with her.’
‘With who?’
‘Cat.’
‘Shit. I quite fancied her myself.’
Danny’s grin widened. ‘No chance, my son. I’m in there.’
‘Who’s driving, then?’ Rob’s old van was parked outside. After the pub they had all piled into it, the girls’ legs and buttocks heaving and pressing in the passenger seat. Rob remembered laughing and gunning the clapped-out engine, and the traffic lights on sentry duty down a long stretch of wet road to the club warehouse.
‘We’ll get a cab or something,’ Dan said vaguely, his smile beatific, irritating.
‘Sod you then.’ A prickle of antagonism renewed itself between them.
‘What about what’s-her-name, Zoe?’
‘Thanks.’
Cat came back. She had pushed her hair off her face and her round forehead looked bare and vulnerable.
‘Rachel’s in the toilets. She’s not very well.’
Danny took another pull on his beer.
‘What’s happening then?’
‘We’re going to take her home.’
‘All of you? What is she, crippled?’
Cat hesitated. Her top lip crimped, making a new triangle in the inverted one of her face. ‘Wait a minute, then.’
There was beer spilt on the bar, and a slick of it underfoot. The crowd standing three deep was now dotted with familiar faces, and the sweating barman in his soaked T-shirt was a regular at the gym. The gathering seemed suddenly tribal and this and the women’s invisible crisis tipped the boys back into collusion. They turned their backs on the heaving dance floor and the barman saw them and sent two uncapped bottle slithering across. Dan clashed his against Rob’s and they drank, leaning their heads back. The blue and purple lights recoloured Rob’s sweat-darkened hair. Standing shoulder to shoulder while the surf of people and music crashed around them, they had almost forgotten Cat before she materialised again, with Zoe beside her.
‘The other two have gone.’
Danny took hold of her wrist, his feral grin showing his teeth. ‘C’mon then. We’ll drive you girls home.’
The rain had thinned into drizzle once more. In the front of the van Cat sat across Danny’s knees but her arm and shoulder and thigh were wedged against Rob. Zoe crouched in the space behind, her chin over Danny’s shoulder. They were not singing or laughing any longer. Rob peered ahead, frowning through the hypnotising arcs of the wipers. The cab of the van vibrated with engine noise, but on a different frequency each of them plainly heard the ambiguous whisper of sex.
Jess washed up her soup pan and placed her bowl and spoon in the proper slots in the dishwasher. In the hallway she glanced at the security chain for the front door hanging loose from its bolts. She checked her watch and hesitated for a minute as a dark wing of anxiety shadowed her thoughts. Then she went slowly upstairs, leaving the door unsecured. Her bedroom and the inviting bed were as she had left them. She sat on the edge of the bed and wearily reached down to undo her shoes.
Cat’s place was a rented room in a rambling mouldy-smelling house near the railway line. While Rob and Danny were waiting on the step for her to rummage for her keys they heard the muffled rumble of a goods train passing. Rob thought of heavy flasks of nuclear waste being transported from somewhere to somewhere in the midnight dark, and shivered as if a cold hand had been laid on him.
‘There isn’t much to drink. Some vodka I think, if you want that. Someone left it here.’
Cat produced a half-empty bottle from a partitioned sink cupboard.
‘I’ll have some,’ Rob said. They had begun laughing again. The two boys stumbling in the cluttered room seemed incongruous, comically out of scale. Zoe peered at her pale reflection in her handbag mirror and stretched her mouth ready to coat it with lipstick. Her hand slipped with the cylinder and slashed scarlet across her teeth instead. Her helpless giggle turned into a hiccup.
Cat gave each of them a green glass with an inch of vodka in it. Danny took his and immediately put it aside, losing it. Cat slid a tape into a cassette player and music blurted out, much too loud. She laughed and prodded at the controls, then collapsed backwards on the bed beside her friend.
Danny mumbled, ‘I’ll roll a spliff.’ He sat sideways at a tiny table and produced the pouch from his pocket, humming as he spread the papers.
Then they sat on the bed, one on either side of the girls, passing the clumsy roll-up between them. Cat’s black legs sprawled impartially. Danny touched the curve of her thigh with the tips of his fingers and began to stroke, lightly, then more insistently.
He drew in a breath and held it. Then, abruptly, he lurched to his feet.
The room was spinning around him but he didn’t care. There was a wash of light inside his head, golden light filled with stars that prickled within his brain in the way that not very long ago a certain type of sweets had been made to fizz on his tongue. It was impossible to contain this feeling of power, which was what the light was; he had to let it burst out. He could feel the wild breadth of his own smile. He was dry-mouthed and his gums squeaked against his teeth. He looked down at Cat to see her staring up at him, amazed. Zoe’s eyes were closed, her head lolling on Rob’s shoulder.
Danny flung out his arm. To his surprise, his fingers were still nipped on the roll-up. Tiny sparks smouldered for an instant in the air. He had been going to say something important but he had already forgotten it. No matter. He knelt down at Cat’s feet instead. She leaned forward slowly until their foreheads were touching. Then she lightly kissed his mouth, but her fingers locked warningly in his black hair.
Danny breathed, ‘I love you.’
Cat made a little bubble of a laugh. ‘I know what that means; I’ve heard it all before.’
‘No, no, it isn’t that. I do. I really do.’
‘Yeah, course you do.’
Her flippancy irritated him. He took her chin in his hand, twisting her head a little. The golden light in his head faded to dull, pounding redness.
‘C’mon. Be nice.’
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘You like it.’
‘I don’t. Stop.’
He pushed her backwards, reaching his hand up her skirt.
‘Don’t cocktease. Isn’t this why we’re here? Look, I love you. I mean it.’
‘I mean it.’ Cat was suddenly breathless. The changed note in her voice made Zoe’s eyes snap open.
Rob was afraid of violence. The sight and most of all the sounds of it set waves of panic and
