Life and Soul of the Party (2 page)

My baseball boots were almost as frayed and worn-out looking as my jeans. They were a faded brick-red colour and so heavily scuffed that I couldn’t even wear them in the rain because the seam on the right one had a tear in it as I had discovered to my dismay one wet morning. Still, grateful that it wasn’t actually raining I slipped them on, tied the laces and surveyed my new outfit in the mirror one last time. It was depressing. I looked like a student – which wasn’t exactly the look I was going for – but at least I didn’t look as though I was trying too hard.

I tied my hair back in a ponytail and began searching around my room for my make-up bag which I eventually located underneath a stack of magazines by the side of my bed. Rooting around inside it for an eyeliner that hadn’t spoiled, I tipped the whole lot out on to the bed in frustration and was about to scream when my mobile phone rang.

‘Hey, babe, it’s me.’

It was my friend Vicky.

‘Hey, you,’ I replied. ‘How are things?’

‘I’ve just put William to bed and told him Mum’s babysitting him tonight and he went off on one as though I was leaving him in the care of the big bad wolf. I wouldn’t mind but I know his gran will spoil him to death like she always does.’

Of all my friends here in Manchester I’d known Vicky the longest. We met during the first year that I’d spent studying Business and Economics at UMIST before I was kicked off my course for being completely and utterly hopeless. Vicky and I had both lived in the same halls of residence and I’d been drawn to her because, unlike most of the other eighteen year olds I met during freshers’ week, Vicky didn’t act like she was trying to cram several years’ worth of repressed teenage rebellion into seven days of debauchery. In fact, she didn’t act like she was eighteen at all. She seemed older and wiser somehow and even though she’d only been in the city for the same length of time as me she seemed to know the clubs and bars around Manchester like the back of her hand. So, rather than following the student hordes to grotty pubs and clubs playing the same music you heard everywhere in Manchester, thanks to Vicky we ended up in clubs in the depths of rough housing estates, warehouse parties in industrial estates on the edge of the city centre and the kinds of bars you had no chance of finding without being in the know. In short, back then, she had been an education in how to be cool. Fifteen years on, she was married to Chris, mother to William, my four-year-old godson, and hadn’t set foot in a nightclub since the late nineties, but to me she would always be the girl who was too cool for school.

‘Anyway,’ continued Vicky. ‘About the plans for tonight. Chris and Cooper earlier have decided we’re all meeting at eight in The Old Oak.’

‘Why eight? I thought that was when the party started?’

‘It is,’ she sighed, ‘but you know what the boys are like. Apparently it’s far too emasculating to arrive at a party at the time actually written on the invitation. Anyway, how does that sound?’

‘Fine by me.’ I paused to consider in what tone of voice best to ask the question on my lips, and decided to go with casual indifference. ‘What about Paul and Hannah? Are they coming or not?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Vicky. ‘Chris left a message on Paul’s mobile but he hasn’t got back to him yet. I’m sure he’ll turn up though, don’t you think? There’s never been a New Year’s Eve that we haven’t all spent together. And somehow I can’t imagine Hannah is going to change all that.’ Vicky paused. ‘You are okay about him coming, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am,’ I replied. ‘I’ll see you later, then, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ replied Vicky. ‘I’ll see you later.’

After I put the phone down I had a clear picture of Melissa sitting alone in her tiny bedroom thinking about Paul and Hannah, worrying where her life was going and why, of the two of them, it was Paul who was happy and not her. And as much as I loved Paul as a friend, I couldn’t help feeling angry with him on Melissa’s behalf. It was awful the way things had ended between them. Absolutely awful. And even though five years had passed since they split up, for all the moving forward Melissa had done, it might as well have been yesterday.

I was there when Melissa and Paul first met. We were both twenty-three, living in that post-student nether world where you’re no longer in full-time education but you don’t exactly feel like a full-time member of the workforce either. Mel and I were living in a house-share in Longsight and spent most of our time buying clothes and music and, above all, chasing boys. One night in November a bunch of us met up for a drink in Chorlton with the plan of moving on to a club night in Hulme afterwards. Just after last orders in the Jockey, one of the girls we were with heard from a friend of hers about a party going on round the corner from the pub and so we decided we’d give it a try; if it was any good we could at least save ourselves money on the cab fare getting over to Hulme.

I’d never seen so many people crammed into such a small space. Though it was only a small terrace it felt as though the entire population of the pub had come along to the party too. I wanted to leave straight away and probably would have done had I not managed to lose Melissa within moments of arriving. Half an hour later I eventually found her out in the garden talking to a couple of guys in the freezing cold.

‘Vicks, this is Paul and Chris,’ she said with a grin. ‘They lured me out here with the promise of a hidden stash of booze.’

‘She’s lying,’ protested Paul. ‘It was her banging on about “hidden booze” that lured us out here!’

Paul and Chris seemed cool and funny without being pompous and annoying and, best of all, they were good-looking enough to make me want to join in with the conversation. I could tell straight away that Melissa was doing her best to try to impress Paul, which was fine by me. His friend Chris – tall and handsome, thoughtful without being morose – was more my type anyway, and I was happy to focus all my attention on him.

Around three in the morning, with the party showing no signs of flagging, the four of us decided to leave and headed towards Chorlton Park for a change of scene. We climbed over the gate and sat on the kids’ swings, knocking back lukewarm Red Stripe that we’d liberated from a kitchen sink full of melted ice at the party, and putting the world to rights with the kind of heated political debates that you can only have when you’re drunk, in your early twenties and have never held down a full-time job. Eventually we calmed down and started talking about the future.

‘So, where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?’ asked Paul, directing his question at Melissa.

Melissa shrugged. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Curiosity.’

Melissa thought the question over. ‘Ten years from now I’ll be . . .’ she paused and looked at me, ‘. . . what? Thirty-three? That sounds like a lifetime away.’

‘So, what will you be doing “a lifetime” from now?’ prompted Paul.

Melissa took a swig from the can in her hand. ‘Okay, okay. Ten years from now I’d like to be . . . right here.’

‘What, in Chorlton Park?’

‘No! But in Manchester at least . . . and by then I’ll have gone back to university and finished a degree in something more interesting than Business and Economics like – I don’t know – Art History. I always loved the academic part of my Art “A” level more than the sitting around drawing stuff. I like knowing the stories behind paintings, the reasons why artists create the things they do.’

‘So what would you be doing for a job?’

‘I don’t know. Something worthwhile, I hope. Maybe something for a charity. And I’d be living in one of those sweet little terraces on Beech Road.’

‘On your own?’

Melissa laughed. ‘No, with my bloke.’

‘And what’s he like, this bloke?’

‘He’s nice and caring and funny. Likes animals and is good to his mother.’ She paused, then added: ‘And he never ever forgets my birthday.’

‘Sounds like a made-up bloke to me.’ Paul grinned at Chris.

‘Nope,’ replied Melissa. ‘He’s out there somewhere. And do you know what? One day I’ll find him.’

The interesting thing was that although two relationships started at that party they both went in completely different directions. Whereas Chris and I were rock solid from day one, moving in together after nine months and getting married a few years later, Melissa and Paul were always volatile. In the early days it seemed like every other week they would have one argument or another only to make up by the end of the night. After a year or two they appeared to calm down and for a long while things were good between them. I remember them laughing. I remember them being happy. I can even remember thinking to myself when they moved in together (partly out of love but mostly out of convenience) that this was it. They would settle down into the kind of comfortable groove that Chris and I were already in. Finally there would be no more fights, no more arguments, and no more conflict. I even thought that one day the two of them might get married and have kids.

Quite when they began to fall apart I was never really sure but Melissa always claimed that it was somewhere around the time that Paul turned thirty. It started with small rows about nothing, which eventually progressed into bigger rows about everything. Paul would get annoyed at Melissa and then Melissa would get annoyed right back, thereby guaranteeing that every petty quibble ended in full-scale war. As bad as it was, though, I never guessed that Paul would want to get out of the relationship because by this time they came as a pair. You never got one without the other. And I found that comforting because I understood it. That was exactly how things would always be with Chris and me.

I think I assumed that these arguments were just a ‘phase’ or a ‘bad patch’ or ‘one of those things’ that all couples go through only to come out the other side stronger. I’d lost count of the times when friends of ours would appear to be on the verge of splitting up only to announce a few weeks later that they were getting married or having kids or leaving their jobs to go travelling. I didn’t realise that Paul was so genuinely unhappy with the way things were between him and Melissa. And I certainly hadn’t guessed that he was capable of speeding up the demise of their relationship with a catalyst so lazily constructed that I still find it hard to forgive him.

It happened like this. Out in town one night with Chris and Chris’s brother Cooper and some other mates, Paul got talking to a girl in a club and went home with her. What he didn’t know though was that one of her housemates, Sara, was a friend of our friend Laura, who had even actually met Paul once out with Melissa. And although Paul hadn’t recognised her next morning as she left to go to work, Sara had recognised him straight away and told Laura everything. Laura checked the story with Cooper (who lied) and asked me to check the story with Chris (who told a different lie). This validated matters enough for Laura and me to present our evidence directly to Melissa.

Melissa was devastated; it cut her to the bone. She challenged Paul the moment he got in from work and the second he admitted it she packed her bags and came to stay with me and Chris.

For most people that would have been the end of the story but not for Melissa. Because she was still in love with him, she just couldn’t seem to let go of what they had. Paul must have felt the same way because about six weeks after the split Melissa had a long talk with Paul and announced that despite all that had happened they were going to try and stay friends. I assumed that this was just a way of saying that they would carry on sleeping together but it wasn’t that at all. Melissa really did want them to be friends and nothing more. And even though in the months that followed she stayed over at his house on numerous occasions, sometimes even sharing the same bed, nothing ever happened between them. According to Melissa all they ever did was talk with an honesty and openness that they had never been able to achieve when they had been together. With the single-mindedness of a scientist on the verge of making a medical breakthrough, Melissa made it her mission to use these conversations to analyse why things hadn’t worked out for them. Taking Paul’s confessions and half-mumbled revelations, she did her best to make sense of them and then one evening, not far from the first anniversary of the Big Split, she made a pronouncement to Paul that seemed to take even her by surprise. She said: ‘You think you don’t want what other people want. You think that all you want is to be alone. But it’s not true. The day will come when you’ll be so sick of being alone that you won’t know what to do. And when that happens come and find me and we’ll pick up right where we left off.’

When I heard what she’d said to him I got so angry that I lost it completely. I told her to her face how pathetic she was being to let Paul walk all over her and that the last thing she needed was to promise to hang around for him to get his act together. I told her straight. Paul didn’t deserve her. He wasn’t going to miraculously turn into some kind of Prince Charming overnight. And if she was under some misguided notion that she was going to be the woman who was going to fix whatever was broken inside Paul and make him want to settle down then she was wrong. The best thing she could do would be to move on to someone else as soon as possible instead of hanging around for him like somekind of lapdog. Melissa’s response? She just got up, walked out and didn’t speak to me for the best part of a month.

It was just after seven, I was on the phone with Freya and my New Year’s Eve was not off to a good start at all.

‘So, what are you up to tonight?’ I asked.

‘Gina and Danni have got me tickets for some club in town,’ said Freya. ‘Apparently it’s going to be really good.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Dancey or indie?’

‘Indie.’

‘Which club?’

‘I don’t know.’

There was a long pause.

‘What about you then?’ she asked. ‘Are you hitting the town with the gruesome twosome?’