the mood for your fucking antics. Your eyes are rolling, how much you had to drink?’
‘I’ve only had a few. Keeping tabs on me are you?’ Chelle replied cockily. Michelle rarely gave it the big-’un indoors. She was far too scared that Terry would walk out the door and not come back. Things changed, though, as soon as she met up with her gym pals. As soon as Chelle was in their company, her personality changed completely. She liked to give it the big-’un, make out she wore the trousers and ruled the roost. Instead of looking cool, she made herself look incredibly stupid. A complete prat in fact.
Terry sat quietly, sipping his JD and Coke, surveying the situation. The karaoke had now started and Benny had been the first one to get up singing with his rendition of ‘Mack the Knife’. Terry smiled to himself whilst weighing up the women around him.
Lisa was a typical Dave-type of bird. Blonde, young, tarty, she was as common and as thick as two short planks. He’d only just moved his last bird out a few weeks before he’d met Lisa, then within a month he’d moved her in. Davey Boy was one of these blokes who hated living on his own and Terry had lost count of the amount of birds he’d had living with him over the years. The one thing they all had in common was that they were all in their twenties, brainless and dressed like whores. Terry glanced around at the rest of the table.
Hazel Short, Terry had quite a lot of time for. He’d known her old man Stan quite well and knew that Hazel had been the brains behind Stan’s bollocks. She was well clued up, was Hazel, and definitely no man’s fool. Stan had been dead for years now and Hazel’s fortune just went on growing and growing.
Suzie Robinson, Terry wasn’t quite so sure about. She came across as pleasant enough but he’d always hated her current old man Richie, so he had his reservations about her.
Julie Beale frightened Terry more than any woman he’d ever met in his lifetime. He’d always imagined that she’d been born a boy, had her bollocks chopped off, took hormone tablets, grown tits and overnight had renamed herself Julie. He knew that for years she’d plied her trade at the local wash-and-wank shop, and he couldn’t believe that any man could be that desperate to want to fuck someone that looked like Giant Haystacks with tits.
‘Right, can I have Michelle and the gang up on stage please.’
‘Come on, girls, that’s us,’ Chelle said excitedly, galloping towards the karaoke.
‘You all right, Dad?’ Billie noticed her father sitting alone at the table and decided to join him. She had been standing with a couple of girls and a crowd of lads near the stage, but as soon as she’d seen her mother and her friends leap up there, she’d decided to make a quick exit. Scott, whom she’d been talking to, was a nice lad and she didn’t want to have to explain that the fat drunken woman on stage was her mother.
‘I’m all right, Bill. You having a good time, girl? Who are them lads you were standing with?’
‘I know one of them from school, Dad, but the one with the short blond hair that I’ve been chatting to is Scott. He’s a really nice boy. He’s seventeen and has a really good job up town. He’s asked me to go to the pictures next week, do you mind if I go, Dad?’
‘I want to have a look at him first, Princess. Bring him over, so I can vet him and if I like the look of him, you can go. Deal?’
‘Yes, deal. I know you’ll like him, Dad, he’s really nice.’
After absolutely murdering Diana Ross’s ‘Baby Love’, Chelle and her pals went on to crucify ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, followed by ‘Leader of the Pack’. Karaoke Kevin, who was a student by day and did his night-time job to pay for his education, had now had a gutful of the four women standing on the stage who refused to leave.
‘Now come on, girls, you must get off the stage. Other people are waiting to have a turn.’
‘Shut up, you mug, and give us the mike back,’ Kevin heard one of the girls say. He really didn’t need this shit. All of the lads he roomed with from uni had jobs working in Tesco or Sainsbury’s to earn a bit of pocket money. Kevin decided there and then that he was selling the karaoke equipment his parents had bought for him and would join his friends on the checkouts as quickly as possible.
Chelle stood on the stage, glaring at Kevin. ‘Look, I promise,’ she slurred. ‘Let me sing one more and that’s it.’
Kevin didn’t really have any choice in the matter. ‘OK, just one more song.’
Michelle looked at her friends. ‘Now sod off, girls, and let me sing this one on my own. I want to dedicate it to my wonderful fucking husband.’
Hazel, Suzie and Julie could feel trouble brewing and left the stage without argument. None of them wanted to get on the wrong side of Terry.
‘Right, ladies and gentlemen,’ Kevin announced, ‘I have a lady here who wants to dedicate a song to her husband.’
Michelle stood at the front of the stage with the mike in her hand. She was drunk now, really drunk, and was swaying from side to side. She didn’t care, she felt really important, the hall was silent and she had everybody’s attention. ‘This song is going out especially for my other half. Everyone knows who he is, ’cause he is the ultimate Charlie Bigbananas.’
At this point the hall was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop. ‘Well, I want all you people to know, he thinks I’m stupid and I’m anything but. I know he’s having an affair and all I can say is lucky her, whoever she is. Tel, this song’s for you, babe.’ Chelle then proceeded to sing Chas and Dave’s ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’.
Terry and Billie sat at the table feeling absolutely mortified.
‘Dad, I’m so embarrassed, what are we gonna do? What will Scott and my friends think of me?’
Terry looked at his daughter’s flushed cheeks and could have cried for her. ‘Don’t worry, Bill, it’s your mother that’s showed herself up, not you. Your friends won’t think any less of you, darling, and I’ll tell you what me and you will do. The day you turn sixteen, we’re leaving your mother for good. We’ll get a nice place of our own, just the two of us.’
‘Really? Oh, Dad, I’d love that. Do you really mean it?’
‘I’m not joking, Princess. I’m deadly serious. Between me and you, it’s something I’ve had planned for ages. I’ve never said anything to you before, the time just wasn’t right.’
‘Oh Dad, I can’t wait. It’ll be great me and you sharing a house together.’ Billie forgot about her embarrassment briefly. She couldn’t think of anything better than getting away from her mother. Over the years, Billie had tried so hard to build a relationship with her, she really had, but all her efforts had amounted to nothing. Her mother had no time for her and that was that. Billie had just had to learn to live with it.
‘Oh darling, I’m a-a leaving, that’s what I’m gonna do-oo-oo-oo.’
Kevin snatched the mike back quickly. ‘A round of applause for Michelle, everybody.’ Nobody clapped. Trotting down the stairs that adjoined the stage, Michelle promptly stacked it and fell flat on her face.
‘Dad, quick, do something, she’s fell over.’ Billie could feel her little heart beating nineteen to the dozen. In fact she wished the ground would just open up and swallow her.
‘Move
