Yeah no definitely

Zoe wasn’t quite sure how much black was the conventional standard. This was her first funeral since the two she attended as a child. And she didn’t remember what she had worn to either of those, she probably hadn’t even dressed herself.

In the full length mirror in her bedroom she turned for a profile and then pouted out of habit. Black converse boots, black tights, black skirt, black t-shirt, black cardigan, black scarf, black bangles on her wrist and coincidentally her hair had recently been dyed very dark. She wondered if there was such a thing as overkill.

Once dressed, she ate slowly from a bowl of cornflakes while sitting on the back step, enjoying the last of the late summer sunshine that would soon make way for autumn. She lifted the spoon carefully to her mouth, so as not to spill milky white on herself and dilute the outfit. One of the cats curled next to her, eyes half closed. Zoe stroked the warm fur and tickled behind her ears. Of the four, this ginger cat was her favourite, it was far less needy than the others.

Generally she would class herself as more of a dog person, but they were inside, with her mum Carol, as usual. The two Yorkshire terriers rarely left her mum’s immediate airspace. Endlessly orbiting her feet, jumping and yelping, and only ever really settling once she had taken a seat.

All of the cats and both dogs were inherited from customers at Carol’s pet shop, usually when the owners were moving overseas or getting too old to care for them properly, or getting divorced and moving into a flat, as in the case of the dogs. When each transfer was initially suggested she was adamant that she didn’t need “another blessed mouth to feed”. This stance always softened when preparations were made for the animal to be sent to the RSPCA, until eventually another plastic bowl was added to the others on the kitchen lino.

Zoe was a sporadic member of the workforce at the pet shop. She worked predominantly at the weekend or if her mum was hungover and fancied a day watching TV or sitting in the garden, which happened at least a couple of times a month. The majority of Zoe’s shifts were spent sat on the counter, monitoring the hordes of local school children sticking their fingers through the budgie cages or smudging the glass of the fish tanks with clumsy hands greasy from crisp packets. There were never many actual purchases to put through the till. She was mostly there to answer ridiculous questions, such as ‘do you sell shampoo for chickens?’ or ‘what have you got to stop my dog licking his nuts?. Or once, after a rigid looking rodent had been unwrapped from its tea towel on the shop counter, asked ‘Is this guinea pig dead?’. Zoe had rolled it over with the tip of her pen and then back again before replying, “Well, I’m no vet, but it doesn’t look good.”

It was the only actual job she’d ever had, not counting small-time cannabis transactions or occasional car-boot sales. The casual arrangement in the pet shop suited her lifestyle and the extra money enhanced her unemployment benefit to an amount that was slightly less demoralising. If she ever proposed moving on and finding something more ‘real’, her mum would just offer more hours or increased wages. Even when living away from home she still returned to spend her Saturdays cleaning up canary shit and scooping out the dead guppies with the little net.

She had been counting the day’s meagre takings late one afternoon before Christmas when Grant’s forceful shove of the door made the ancient bell jangle loudly. Zoe was about to tell the new customer that they would be closing soon, but looking up from the till she merely smiled and asked how she could help.

He prowled around the shop, whistling a nothing tune as he peered into the various cages and tanks. A red puffa jacket, unzipped to reveal a white v-neck t-shirt. Despite the padding of his coat it was clear he spent a lot of time in the gym. His brown hair was pulled back into a small tuft of ponytail and a silver stud pierced one ear. A leather wallet in one hand, car keys dangling from another, like he was too busy for pockets.

She knew he was older, his cocksure confidence suggested an age above her peer group. Most of the boys she spent time with were socially retarded, okay at rolling joints and playing Nintendo, but not much more.

He explained how his grandmother lived nearby and he had been sent to find millet for the budgie. Such a simple transaction could have been concluded within a few minutes, but his initial enquiry was extended to include the shop’s history and the hamsters’ names, before moving on to Zoe’s name and a bit about her. She left thirty minutes later than normal that day, after writing her home phone number on a brown paper bag.

“In case I need some more millet,” he said with a wink that was almost offensive.

It wasn’t a surprise when he called the following night. Her mum had passed the phone with a shrug and she instantly recognised the male voice.

“Alright Zo.”

“Zo?” she said with a laugh, “no-one calls me Zo.”

“Sorry, what would you prefer? What about Miss… er whatever?”

“I actually quite like Miss Whatever, but Zoe is fine.”

She heard him chuckle softly before trying again, “OK Zoe, do you fancy going out for a drink this week?”

He suggested a bar in Camden and asked if she’d heard of it, like it was some kind of test. She told him it was a new one to her.

“It’s a new one to everybody,” he said proudly, “it’s only been open a few weeks.”

“Well, how exciting,” she replied dryly, but agreed to meet him anyway. She wasn’t sure exactly why.

Even at that early stage in the relationship, the conversation felt unnatural. During her first three vodka and cokes Grant sat back barely speaking, just listening, smiling like he was watching a show, each anecdote a performance. She thought perhaps her voice was louder than his usual girlfriends, her speech more peppered with fucks and shits. When she referred to someone as an old cunt, he actually winced. And yet he did however seem fascinated by her, whether she ought to be flattered was unclear.

When he finally spoke about himself, she discovered that he was six years older and had his shit significantly more together than she did. He was a graduate and a teacher and volunteered at the local YMCA, helping with basic literacy skills. Community work he had done for years, but so virtuous, she actually thought he was joking when it was first mentioned.

As the empty glasses crowded their table, the tension softened and Zoe started to find him quite funny. Yet she was still mildly surprised when Grant asked about her plans for the next few days.

They saw each other almost every other night for the next couple of weeks. Drinking a lot with his friends, going to Greek restaurants and dinner parties where all the food was vegetarian. Talking about new Labour and Tony Blair, Frida Kahlo and South American travel, novels that she had never heard of.

She never officially moved in, it was more of a gradual migration of her clothes than a relationship milestone. She would bring a bag and leave it, which slowly turned one of his chairs into a clothing mountain, until he suggested she fill one of the drawers and take a few hangers.

His two-bed apartment in Islington was all wooden floors and clip-framed art prints. CD towers and fitted blinds. There was a large ceramic Buddha head in the bathroom.

The neighbourhood too was bourgeois hell and very different to her own postcode. She hated herself for loving it so much. Drinking gin and tonics in esoteric bars with one word names like Room or Dusk. And milky coffees served in tall glasses with saucers, in cafes with malformed sugar cubes. If only her relationship with Grant was as exciting.

They shared a relatively harmonious five months together. A weekend in Amsterdam was a notable high point, the photographs pinned on the kitchen cork board provided the evidence. Despite any problems in their immediate daily routine - the petty domestic arguments, the fist-biting irritation - a quick glance at the pictures of their happy wasted faces eased any doubts Zoe had.

She never felt that they fitted together perfectly, like she’d hoped to with a boyfriend. Zoe loved the idea of him and the sense of security and stability he offered, but even during the so-called honeymoon period it still felt like a mis-match. Their worldviews overlapped on certain fundamental topics, like opposing the death penalty and hating the Tory party, but he was so much more impassioned and intense than her, she felt at odds with him still.

Besides, Zoe knew that he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, a Spanish law student and part-time masseuse called Isabelle, or Izzy. She treated their flat like a second home and ignored all conventional parameters of personal space. Zoe knew that it was only a matter of time before she found a stray long hair on the pillow, or some other corny telltale sign of infidelity.

The night Zoe met Nick at the party in South London, she knew it was over with Grant. It had been at the beginning of the summer, some time in June. Close to the longest day and a few weeks before Glastonbury. It was after eight o’clock, but still as light as the afternoon. She had returned from a shift at the pet shop, to find Grant and Izzy smoking weed on the balcony, they appeared to have been there for a few hours.

Nothing had changed with her itinerary to suggest missing the party, but now Grant was too stoned and wanted to phone a takeaway instead.

Zoe lost it, “This is bullshit, all of this. Not what I signed up for at all.”

“Oh yeah, just what did you sign up for?” asked Grant rubbing his eyes.

Zoe took a bottle of beer from the fridge and opened it.

“I think I should go,” said Izzy poking her head around the door frame in a rare moment of self-awareness.

“No Izzy,” said Grant, “you don’t need to go anywhere.”

“Oh yeah Izzy,” said Zoe shouting into the still-open fridge, “you stay as long as you fucking want.”

The argument was a well-trodden path, with all the usual touch-points: Izzy, money, Zoe’s unemployment and lack of ambition, versus Grant’s arrogance and the way he claimed to be so laid back, but was in actual fact really really fucking uptight!

“Yeah you keep saying that, just because I’m a bit more sorted than the wankers you normally knock about with,” Grant was shouting, now a vicious finger jabbing towards Zoe’s face, “You always say the money has nothing to do with it, but I know you wouldn’t be here without the car, the flat. If you didn’t still live with your mum you probably would have never moved in. You’re full of shit.”

Zoe slammed the door behind her without responding and walked to Angel tube without once lifting her head. On the Southbound Northern Line, she ignored the Saturday night hubbub all around her within the carriage and stared intently at the reflection in the dark windows opposite. Arms folded, eyes dead, lips tightly thin and unsmiling. She was grateful when the shaky image of her face was interrupted by billboards and station platforms as they rattled down the ageing track. She couldn’t wait to get to the party and get wasted.

Josh took long strides on the sidewalk just to keep moving, his pacing had become almost therapeutic. The wide pavements of midtown Manhattan were only moderately busy, with dog-walkers and a few other tourists.

Strange how his fascination with the alien city had been superseded within just a couple of days, his thoughts now consumed by more personal concerns. No longer stopping to stare up towards the skyscrapers or taking photos of yellow cab traffic jams with his disposable camera. These things felt suddenly commonplace now that he had a role in the city, rather than just another aimless tourist. Watching one step and then another, he wondered if he was mentally prepared for his first ever business meeting and how many people would be seated around the boardroom table and whether it was a problem that he didn’t have a tie, or even a shirt.

Looking up, the painted lettering on a shopfront window seemed familiar, then he recognised the cigar shop nextdoor that he had bought an ‘I heart NY’ lighter from the day before. The hook-nosed middle-eastern guy who had served him was now sat outside on a milk crate, smoking a cigarette, rolling the filter between finger and thumb as if inspecting his own product. Next to that were a few steps that led down to the basement bar he had been at the previous night, the double doors were propped open with metal beer kegs. He peered in and heard music, Let It Be by The Beatles was softly playing, which seemed like a good omen so he went inside.

Within the large bar he could only see two other punters. A young couple, maybe honeymooners, both sitting on one side of a dimly-lit booth, each with a bloody mary, circling things in a copy of Time Out magazine. The lingering smell of stale smoke and the number of empty seats suggested it was never usually this quiet and probably wouldn’t be for long.

As he went to order, the girl behind the bar turned to face him, he recognised her instantly from the previous night. No Ramones t-shirt today, just a striped singlet. A thin tattoo wrapped around the top of her arm. Her red hair now tied up, exposing a gold chain with a small crucifix. In daylight her nose was dotted with freckles, her eyes now without make up and tired.

She smiled and seemed pleased to see him, “Hey man! You were in last night, right?”

He slid onto one of the cushioned leather bar stools and returned her smile, “Yeah.”

She held up an empty beer glass, “Hair of the dog that bit ya?”

He smiled again, “A beer would be good, thanks.”

She poured the drink and set it on a coaster. “There you go, man.”

“Cheers,” he said taking a sip, then wiping the cold froth from his lip, “so you’re working again?”

She laughed and looked around to check no-one else could hear, she spoke quietly as if to a co-conspirator, “Fuck it man, they give me the shifts, I’ll work them. I’d rather get paid for feeling like shit here, than sit at home feeling like shit. You know what I mean?”

She flipped the top on a bottle of Diet Coke and leaned back against the till, “So what’s your story? You on holiday or something?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

She took a sip, “You guess?”

He laughed, “No no, I am on holiday.”

“You sure about that?”

Josh smiled, “Not really, to be honest.”

He watched as she stacked some glasses onto a shelf above the bar and listened while she outlined her plans to travel to the UK and Europe, once she’d saved enough money. Which she didn’t think would be too long, she said he’d be amazed at what she made in tips. The honeymooners from the booth finished their drinks and paid up, leaving a twenty dollar tip, she held it up to Josh, “See what I mean?” she said, “I fucking told you, man.”

Josh drank another beer and smoked. She would sneak drags of his cigarette before returning it to the ashtray with a wink. Smoking behind the bar was strictly forbidden, despite no other staff visible on the premises. Eventually she told him her name, Lucy and he told her his. She said she finished in a couple of hours if he wanted to hang out. “Fuck it man, we could go to a different bar, where I can actually smoke without getting busted.”

Josh said sure, and that he could use the company, which was partially true. It was nice to talk to someone. He felt he’d been alone for a long time. The last person he had spoken to was Nick in London, but that was 36 long hours ago, or maybe it was 48, the time difference was disorientating. Lucy said she’d be in the diner over the street at three o’clock, that’s where she always went for something to eat when her shift had finished. He said he’d be there and he really did want to, but the nagging thought of his prior arrangement made his words sound less certain than he’d hoped. When she smiled and said see you later then, there was something in her eye that suggested she knew he wouldn’t show.

He went back to the hotel and showered, then got stuck watching Beavis and Butt-head on MTV for over an hour. Killing time and avoiding any serious thought. The only shirt in his bag with collars was a fake Ralph Lauren black polo shirt he’d bought from Chapel Lane market, it would have to do. He was still unsure if he was dressing for a date or an interview, either way he felt collars were essential. He’d only just met Lucy but he did want to meet her, she was fun and hot and the kind of girl he’d love to hang out in New York with, but there was that other thing he could do. And probably should do. That other thing that still seemed completely insane. In the lift to the lobby he took the printed email from his pocket and read it again from the start.

The streets were busier now, he was surrounded by people as he moved past the bar. He checked his watch and it was just after three. The diner was over the road, he glanced across and instantly saw her sitting at the counter with her back to the window. The recognisable blue and green stripes of her singlet, her red hair, the colours were unavoidable. And yet his pace only slowed, he didn’t stop.

Without acknowledging that an actual decision had been made, he continued walking. Even in that brief moment he knew it was a critical point on his personal timeline. A large part of him wanted to cross the road and slide up onto the barstool next to Lucy and concede to a drunken afternoon. He knew that’s what Nick would have done. In times like these he was unsure if the pragmatism inherited from his father was a blessing or a curse. There was already a growing sense of regret from missing his meeting with Lucy, but he knew it was minor compared with the regret he would feel if his decision was reversed. Maybe this made him ruthless, mercenary, a bastard. He couldn’t dwell on it, he kept walking.

After two blocks and a safe distance between him and the diner, he stopped to check the map, to see how far he would be walking. For a mathematical brain like Josh’s the numbered streets of Manhattan in their right-angled blocks were logical and somehow calming. Despite never getting lost in London, he found the mis-match buildings and the winding lanes, all such a mess. A fascinating historic mess, but still a mess. His strides became long and purposeful as he progressed through the ascending numbered streets. He calculated his ETA easily. Sixteen blocks, at approximately two minutes a block, it just made everything so much easier.

When he reached the building on 61st and 3rd, it was smaller than he expected, in his head it was a towering mirrored monster. By New York standards it was quite modest, only eight stories.

The security guard nodded at him from behind his desk.

“Good afternoon sir, can I help you?”

“Just up to see Symtech Industries,” he said as if he had been there a thousand times.

“OK then sir, you have a good day.”

His scruffy Adidas shelltoes squeaked as he crossed the shiny lobby, gleaming cream tiles paved the way to the double gold escalators. A small plaque between them listed the other companies in the building, Symtech occupied the seventh floor.

Inside the lift he looked into the mirror and stared into his own eyes. He looked scared, like a child. He relaxed his shoulders and tried to broaden his chest.

“It’s all OK,” he said to his reflection while straightening his collars, “Not a big deal.”

A perky ding announced his arrival and the lift doors opened into a large waiting room. Two flat screen monitors facing outward displayed scrolling numbers that could have been stock prices, he didn’t know, they reminded him of cascading binary code. There was a single red sofa and some futuristic light fittings that dangled from the ceiling on red cable. Everything else was white.

Behind the reception desk, a young woman offered a smile that was both welcoming and curious. Her dark black hair was tied up into a sculptured pile of curls, her large gold hoop earrings hung down to touch the wide collars of her bright white shirt.

She tilted her head slightly to the side, “Hello, can I help you?”

“Yeah, hi, I kind of have a meeting,” he pulled the printed email from his pocket, unfolded it and read the name from it, “with Andrew Pullman.”

She looked confused for a moment, “I think Mr Pullman works out of our London office, so...”

“Yeah, he told me to like... come here?” the upward inflection creating an uncertain question.

She paused before replying, “OK, can you give me a second? Please take a seat. Sorry what was your name again?”

“Josh,” he said sitting, “Josh Clements.”

As she disappeared, he watched the monitors, but the falling numbers meant nothing. He had never seen flat screen monitors before, only read about them in computer magazines. Maybe the numbers were just an aesthetic display or maybe they were hooked to the server or something. It was confusing and he already felt out of his depth.

When the receptionist returned, her smile was noticeably wider than before.

“Mr Clements, won’t you please come through to the boardroom, we have Mr Pullman on the video conference phone,” she opened one arm to indicate the way, “can I get you some coffee?”

Nick woke after a couple of hours asleep on the bench and South Bank had become a hectic blur of foot traffic. Snap-happy tourists, gangs of shouting kids and young couples. So many people buzzing around and all eyes seemed to be on him. Like a fox stranded on the high street at dawn, Nick had stayed out too long.

To his left a fat man now sat, slurping the end of his large MacDonalds drink through a straw. Nick sat up straighter and cracked his shoulder blades together, every muscle in his back ached and his legs felt like lead. He coughed and tried to swallow the golf ball stuck in his throat. He would do anything for a cold can of coke and some painkillers. Pushing up slowly from the bench, he started the slow walk to the tube station.

So many times recently, the morning-after made him thoroughly regret the night-before, but today was different. Despite the nausea, low-level paranoia and the looming prospect of a long trip home - the lingering feeling was still strangely positive. Thoughts of Zoe calmed his jangled state. The small chance of seeing her again, formed a protective barrier to the horrors of the day.

What kind of future they might have together was uncertain. She may never phone, or their next meeting - if it happened - might be a disaster, or she might remember that she already has a boyfriend. One that she actually lives with and who probably has a good job and a car and some money, or at least enough money to buy his own cigarettes.

And yet, he couldn’t help feeling that somehow the two of them made sense together. Walking across the large concourse at Victoria Station towards the southbound trains Nick allowed himself a smile, as his internal monologue became a dialogue, replaying snatches of mad giggling conversation from the night before.

The midday train was relatively quiet, he continued sleeping in an empty First Class carriage with his feet crossed on the opposing seat. Until a fat guard with a grey beard woke him with a shove as they were approaching Southampton.

“Good job you woke me up, I’d have probably missed my stop.” Nick said as he was escorted into the regular seats.

“Fucking students.” the guard muttered, punching a hole in the concession ticket.

It wasn’t like Nick enjoyed further education, but it seemed more appealing than an apprenticeship or claiming unemployment benefit. Which he would probably end up on anyway, at least for a short time. He had vague journalistic aspirations, but they were not strong enough to restrict himself to a field of expertise. His school exams came at a bad time in his life, or rather a good time in his life and thus a bad time to sit exams. Of the six he was required to sit, he missed two, almost fell asleep in another, one was on a subject he didn’t think was on the syllabus and the other two went OK.

His below-average results blocked his preferred choice of one of the London universities, but after ringing around for two days, he was offered a place on a course in Southampton. The catch-all title of ‘Media, Culture, Politics and Communication’ seemed exciting for someone without any focus or ambition, but it was a jack-of-all-trades degree, which offered a very cursory foundation in every career that could possibly fall under those headings, and there were a lot.

A meet-and-greet on the first day of term set the tone for the course. A silver urn of filter coffee sat next to a tray of croissants and danish pastries, in a feeble attempt to replicate the corporate environment of power brunches. The intention was to facilitate introductions and connections among the students, but half of the listed register never appeared, while those that did arrived late. Nick had expected to be intimidated by the zeal and hunger within the room, but there was none. Emotions displayed on the faces of the freshmen students ranged from apathetic to indifferent. Through some kind of Darwinian process he had found his natural level.

The lecturers hovered wearing suits and ties, hoping to spot a glimmer of enthusiasm from someone. Nick gravitated to a group of three clearly hungover individuals lurking at the back of the hall. Long-haired and rolling cigarettes, they all exchanged looks that confirmed that this definitely wasn’t their scene. All four decided to skip the official welcome speeches entirely and check out the lunch time drinks specials in the Irish pub over the road.

This very indifferent approach to attendence continued into lessons and lectures, as did the friendship group of four. Despite rarely attending classes, they all drank in the same pubs and had common ground to discuss at parties. In the second year when it was time to select housemates, rather than the random allocation of halls of residence, the four boys proposed sharing a small terraced house. They eventually acquired three extra female residents when it came to finally viewing rental properties, and at the time they presumed this could only be positive.

However, living in a seven bedroom house with one bathroom and one kitchen sometimes felt like a kind of contest, or maybe a prison. All food was communal simply because policing personal rations was impossible. Whole boxes of cereal would disappear in the night, luxury items like biscuits or crisps could go in minutes. Anyone foolish enough to get a trolley-full of groceries from the supermarket, would soon regret such a brash display of wealth. Getting access to the toilet involved queueing, arguing and occasional physical violence.

If you were unlucky enough to have one of the bills in your name, getting the six other contributions became a constant source of aggravation. There was always someone awake: drinking, watching TV, shagging, playing cards, reading magazines, making packet noodles or typing on the electric typewriter they shared whenever assignments were due.

Many things that were simple in a conventional sized household, became problematic in a dwelling with seven tenants, such as waiting for a call on the single shared phone. As Nick waited hopefully for Zoe to make contact on Monday, some tearful drama with one of the girls in the house was developing, which tied up the phone for most of the day. The girl was either halfway up the stairs with the receiver pressed to the side of her face, sobbing in hooded sweatshirt and pyjama trousers, or the extension was running the length of the hall and under her closed door, like the long fuse of a bomb.

Nick watched a daytime TV quiz show with two others and waited. They all sat sideways in an armchair with their feet into another. The small front room contained a lot of mis-matched rundown furniture: one sofa, two coffee tables and a variety of squashy threadbare velour chairs, all stuffed in like Tetris. Everything was pushed to capacity - the house was clearly never meant for seven.

He asked his housemates if they thought she would be on the phone for long, but they just shrugged and continued arguing about whose turn it was to roll a joint.

On Tuesday everyone in the house was scheduled for lectures, but Nick stayed home, waiting for Zoe to call. He only left the house once, for a pint of milk and some chocolate, and he ran both ways. By the evening he’d given up for the day and helped the others drink through a fridge of cheap lager.

By Wednesday the others started to ask him if he was ever going to leave the house again. Most of them were going for a day at a local pub which was a pound a pint before 6 with a free pool table and tried to persuade him to join them. He reluctantly declined, and sat reading the new Irvine Welsh novel next to the phone.

He was woken on Thursday morning at 8am by the shrill ring of the phone. Despite three days of anticipation, it still took a few bleary seconds to realise that it wasn’t the smoke alarm. He scrambled out of his room and found the phone down the side of an armchair.

“Hello?” He answered, his voice confused and croaky.

“Fucking hell, come on Nick, wake up! Bloody students.” Unmistakably Zoe.

“Ha, yeah sorry. I was er, in the shower.”

“Oh right! After your early morning jog yeah?”

Nick just laughed, “Yeah, something like that.”

They compared their respective Sundays and the subsequent Monday to Wednesday. Zoe seemed no less lively, the crackly line did nothing to dilute her spirit. She told Nick she was going out in Soho the following evening, “maybe you should come?” With her friend Cindy, “you’ll like her, she’s mental.”

Nick had nothing scheduled that weekend, but it was coming to the end of the summer term so his grant was spent months ago and all his credit cards and overdrafts were exhausted. Yet he still agreed to meet her in the pub, which was “a bar kind of club thing” she said, “it’s pretty fun.” Nick lied and said he knew the one she meant, said he’d been there before and agreed to see her in there.

Once the phone was resting back in its plastic cradle, he rolled a cigarette from a small pouch of tobacco he found on the arm of the sofa. He wondered if it would just be the three of them going out, and if that would be weird. Probably less weird than an actual one-on-one date, he thought, then tried to visualise Zoe’s face and failed.

What if he didn’t recognise her or what if she looked completely different? He would be no help to the police constructing a most-wanted sketch. The colour of her eyes eluded him, whether she wore jewellery he couldn’t remember, maybe some rings but who knows what kind. He knew her trainers were Adidas and her jacket was Levis, but past that he was lost.

Her hair was dark brown and cut quite short, maybe a bob or maybe shorter, well it certainly wasn’t long. Maybe she looked a bit like Winona Ryder, Nick hoped so, but couldn’t be sure.

The timetable of lectures for the day was once again ignored, as Nick struggled to finance the coming weekend. Of course none of his house mates had any sum that would be helpful. One of the girls offered ten pounds, but then took it as a cue to query his unpaid share of the electricity bill, so he backed out of the room mumbling.

The official channels were far more forthcoming. His local bank manager was surprisingly agreeable to increasing his overdraft limit another 200 to 1700. Which Nick then topped up with another 150 from the University hardship fund at the Student Union, which generally rewarded anyone desperate enough to tick all the boxes. Which were basically to sit with a clipboard and fill out all the forms, wait for a couple of hours and then lie convincingly about some spurious reason that you’ve got no money.

Nick used a burglary, which actually wasn’t all bullshit. It was true that his house had been ransacked by local junkies one saturday night when no-one was home, but all of his own belongings were deemed worthless by the thieves and left untouched, so it didn’t really impact upon his finances in any way. It was the perfect victimless crime, for him.

He celebrated his productive day with four cans of super strength lager from the corner shop and twenty cigarettes. Swinging his flimsy blue carrier bag of beer as he walked, he stopped to phone Josh. The home phone only accepted incoming calls (which is a prudent arrangement in a house with so many residents) and so a public phone box was the only way.

Their local one was vandalised so regularly that a council decision had clearly been made not to replace it. Almost every glass panel was now shattered and it was covered in graffiti. The stench of urine was indisputable. Thank god the modern design included a gap at the bottom for ventilation, and presumably piss drainage.

Once he had inserted his coins and they were connected, Nick told Josh of his plans to meet Zoe in London.

“Who’s Zoe?” he asked.

“You know Zoe. A friend of your mate with the glasses, from Saturday.”

“Really? That Zoe? I’m-so-fucking-mental Zoe? Everybody-check-me-out Zoe? I’m-so-edgy-you-just-can’t-handle-it. That Zoe?”

In the pause before his reply Nick considered hanging up, but that seemed a little precious. “No need to be a cunt about it. She’s cool.”

Josh had just snorted and wished him luck, but what did he know anyway? His girlfriend was a try-hard idiot, who was a perpetual drain on finances and fun. Never buying a drink and smoking everyone’s cigarettes and always dragging Josh home early due to a migraine or an assignment or work or rehearsing for some bullshit play she was acting in.

Nick had initially planned to invite Josh to join them tomorrow night, but he clearly would prefer to stay at home playing Scrabble with his boring girlfriend, so he didn’t bother asking. Fuck him.

His friendship with Josh had always been fiery. Drunken play fights often had a little too much needle and arguments about nothing soon became something. Like the time a discussion about their favourite Spice Girl (not that they really gave a shit about any of them) developed into a that’s-the-problem-with-you style shouting match and finished with Nick flicking a lit cigarette at Josh. They didn’t speak to each other for three weeks after that.

Their paths first crossed when Josh was mysteriously transferred to Nick’s thoroughly average secondary school, at around age 12 or 13. No-one explained the reasons for the move, there was just an extra name at the end of the register each morning. And despite barely speaking, his presence was hard to miss.

While everyone else had flat-tops and skinheads, Josh’s hair was over-grown and curly, and his Doc Marten boots made quite a statement in a sea of Adidas and Reebok. He even wore a gold earring to begin with, although he soon removed that.

When they first bumped trays waiting in line for the canteen Nick asked him why he had changed schools, Josh just shrugged and answered with a cryptic, “what difference does it make?” and moved along. They laughed about that opening line years later, but for Nick it was part of the appeal.

The fuck-you hostitlity and utter irreverence with which Josh treated everyone - including teachers - was quite a novelty at that age. It was Nick’s first exposure to any kind of teenage rebellion and although he took the ball and ran with it in subsequent years, when he first saw Josh rip the homework sheet to pieces walking out of a class, Nick knew that this was a kid he needed to be friends with.

Their relationship progressed beyond nodding terms when Josh lent him a cassette tape full of games for his Commodore 64 computer. New release titles that Nick had only seen at the arcades, all pirated onto one tape. Video games weren’t generally his thing, but on a rainy day he did sometimes enjoy staying in and shooting the shit out of some stick figures.

In one game they all screamed before they died, in another you could drop pixelated bombs on entire villages, but the graphics were so bad that it felt OK. He loaded and played them one after the other, upstairs in his bedroom with a small portable television and a cheap joystick, permanently set on ‘auto-fire’.

Josh said he had more, but Nick was keen to get out of his bedroom and explore other avenues with his new sidekick. They spent hours at the skatepark in town, sometimes using the ramp, but mostly hanging around the older kids and bumming cigarettes.

They dabbled with pyromania starting bonfires with wooden crates on building sites and wasteland. There was a short period of shoplifting, but they could never steal anything they wanted so would come home with pockets full of bath cubes and shoe polish. It’s strange the things you do for kicks before you can get served alcohol.

By the time they reached sixth form they spent more time in pubs and clubs than in class. Nick’s bedroom was were they started almost every night, listening to DJ mix-tapes and blu-tacking club flyers on the wall, drinking big plastic bottles of Old Country cider and puffing on his dad’s Marlboros out of the window. Before heading into town, both armed with a fake ID and occasionally a wrap of cheap speed.

Even during all the parties and boozing, Josh never lost his passion for technology. He could happily spend hours nerding out with a PC and would regularly correct his computer studies teacher when the course syllabus was revealed to be outdated. Nick however found nothing of interest in education and cruised aimlessly.

He specialised in getting wasted and very little else.

They both saw a London University as their future, but only Josh’s exam results were high enough to make it happen. Nick helped his friend search through the Loot listings paper and even accompanied him to view awful houses in Tottenham and Turnpike Lane.

When he eventually found a room, sharing with three other students in Islington, Nick was at the pub to drink a toast to the new collective. The house they found had wooden floors and a paved garden, an elongated kitchen with a huge oak table, where they all sat around smoking joints after last orders.

It was impossible not to acknowledge the massive contrast to the shit-hole bedsit in Southampton Nick had just paid the deposit upon.

After two years at college, Nick could sense their friendship slowly becoming more tenuous, the strain of the geographical distance now between them was starting to show. Nick travelled up to London for the occasional party and Josh even came down to Southampton a couple of times, not that there was ever much going on.

But even those times spent together now seemed to be broken up by other things they had to do, other mates they had to see. It was no surprise when Josh had slipped off early from the most recent party, to babysit his girlfriend. Nick couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper night out together.

It felt good to be planning a trip on his own, travelling up to Soho to meet Zoe. Yes he wanted to see her again and the prospect of some kind of future together was exciting, but so was the chance of a big night. A really big one.

The kind when you feel at the centre of the world and that there is no better place to be than right there. When you feel that everything was building towards these few mad magic hours of darkness, where it doesn’t matter how much money you spend or how many laws you break, it’s all worth it.

And he got the impression that Zoe was after the same thing. Maybe he didn’t need Josh anymore, especially not if he was going to be such a dick about it.

Zoe’s grandad died on the bus. No-one even noticed until they reached the Willesden depot. He was sat slumped on the bottom level of a double decker. Most of the passengers presumed he had just fallen asleep and missed his stop, until he fell sideways rather than waking when the driver nudged his arm. Maybe a heart attack, or a stroke, the paramedics called to the scene were unsure. They only knew that he was on his way to the supermarket, he had the empty shopping bag in his hand.

“Jesus,” said Zoe in the black cab on the way to the funeral, “I still can’t believe he died on the fucking bus.”

Her sister Jo murmured agreement, while pulling the hem of her skirt towards her knee.

“I know. Tragic eh?” Zoe’s mum said from the fold-out seat, facing them, as she leaned over to pick strands of lint from her daughter’s black shirt.

“Who’s coming today anyway Mum?” asked Zoe, “Nessa? Fat Sue?”

“No, Nessa’s on holiday. Again. Don’t know quite where she gets her money. And Sue’s actually in hospital, not sure what for, she wouldn’t tell me. Don’t think it’s anything serious.”

“Tummy tuck?” offered Zoe.

“Sex change?” said Jo with a snigger.

Her mum smiled and watched the busy high street through the window.

“What about Nick then?” she asked, “Or is it a bit early days for funerals? Not very romantic is it?”

Zoe laughed, “Not really mother. Give us a fighting chance for God’s sake.”

Despite her words she did wish he was there. They had been spending every weekend together and speaking on the phone almost daily. Nick had offered to come with her to the funeral, but he had exams and it was a Wednesday, so she told him not to bother. The thought of him being accosted by a gang of drunken uncles made her squirm.

Life with Nick had so far been very private. The two months or so they had spent together with rarely anyone else involved, it was almost always just the two of them. Which was strange for Zoe. She was usually far more comfortable in a big group - a coach-load of people going to a festival, parties where she knew half the house, ten people on the guest list at a club - but the rules seemed to change with Nick. She didn’t want to share him with anyone.

As he didn’t live in London, she hadn’t met any of his friends, except for Josh, and that was only once. The three of them went to a house party in Brick Lane two weeks previously. Josh’s distaste for Zoe was obvious and he made no attempt to conceal it, but over the course of the night he did seem to thaw a little.

The party was dreadful, a load of computer studies nerds sitting around in a small flat, arguing about science fiction films. Once they had finished their beers, they left and bought bagels from the 24 hour place nearby. Full of salt beef, mustard and gherkins. Hot oily juice dripped down her fingers as she ate walking alongside Nick and Josh, while they talked about some new band she’d never heard of.

Moving up towards Old Street, they shared cigarettes and Josh asked Zoe a couple of questions and seemed genuinely interested in her answers, even laughing at some half-jokes. She thought maybe she’d passed some kind of test, most likely by keeping her mouth shut. She still thought he was an arsehole.

But that night was rare. Mostly Zoe and Nick spent their days together drinking cheap wine and smoking joints on a blanket on Primrose Hill or Hyde Park, getting sun burnt and talking rubbish. Until it was time to move into pubs and clubs, not to meet other people, just to drink and dance and get wasted and kiss. They really didn’t need anyone else.

In the small church in the middle of the cemetery, thirty or so mourners lined the pine pews. Old men in dusty suits, women in polyester dresses and flesh-coloured tights, all holding handkerchieves or balled tissues. They listened to Auntie Pat deliver a sniffling eulogy, carefully read from a shakey sheet of handwritten paper.

The fact that poor Trevor lived a life beset with loss and tragedy was no surprise to Zoe. She knew most of the story and the extra details simply made his life more tragic. His father (her great grandfather) had died in the first world war and Trevor almost followed in his dad’s footsteps, torpedoed by the Nazis from the deck of a battleship bound for Egypt.

He was overboard and presumed dead for eleven hours. Eleven hours of night to tread water and kick out at imaginary shark attacks, before being picked up by a rescue crew. Civilian life was no less savage and both his wife and only son died within a tragic two year period in the 1970s.

Zoe had no memory of her grandmother and only very vague images of her father, who died of heart disease when she was four years old. Combing his hair in the mirror while she watched or sitting on the back wall smoking, was all she had outside of a few photographs. As well as hazy hospital visits, with stone-faced relatives stroking her head in sympathy.

She didn’t really miss her dad, because she didn’t know him. But with age she increasingly wondered how her life would be different, better, more stable, if he was still around.

She knew he wasn’t much older than her when he died and while his own dad lived on for much longer, the thought that it could all be over at any point was terrifying. Funerals just reminded you of that, she presumed that was why everyone was crying. Being aware of your own mortality is fine, as long as it spurs you to make the most of the days you do have.

The worst possible future for Zoe would be a mundane life. Working a shit job and hanging out with boring people. She didn’t plan on settling for that, no way. Standing within touching distance of her dead grandad, she vowed not to waste a second. Carpe fucking diem.

After throwing handfuls of soil on to the lid of the coffin as it was lowered into the hole, they mercifully relocated to the nearby pub. The only other punters were two paint-splattered builders on stools at the bar, who watched the new group enter and take over.

It seemed like everyone was smoking, even non-smokers like Zoe’s mum were shakily fumbling to pull a cigarette from the offered packet. Drinks were bought and ties loosened. No matter how fast she drank, Zoe had a glass in each hand almost constantly. Miscellaneous old men passing her another one with a wink. Gin and tonics, bottles of Becks, rum and cokes - they kept coming.

She was cornered and cross-examined by a woman whose name she had forgotten, Maureen maybe, asking if she was still living with her boyfriend. She didn’t seem surprised when the reply was a negative.

“Have you got someone else now then love?”

“Oh, yeah there’s someone I like, but it’s early days.”

“Good for you Zoe. A beautiful girl like you shouldn’t be on the shelf for long.”

On the shelf, thought Zoe, well thanks for that. She wanted to tell her to fuck off, but maybe she was right. Maybe she was just sat up there, waiting for the next big pair of hands to grab her off the shelf.

She picked at some food that had been laid on the table next to the jukebox. Triangular sandwiches and mini sausage rolls. The giant jar of pickled onions reminded her of grandad, they were his favourite. Popping them into his mouth like grapes and then tipping the vinegar over his chips. She decided against the buffet and lit another cigarette.

On the other side of the pub, Jo was talking to their cousin Stuart and waved Zoe over to join them. As children they had all played together, at family functions like Christmas and summer BBQs. Recently she had seen him at a few clubs, bug-eyed and sweating or really hammered in the pub, knocking over tables and spilling drinks.

He had a reputation as the black sheep after back to back expulsions from school, but Zoe always found him to be a gentle soul. Honest and generous with both his time and money, it was clearly his dickhead mates who dragged him away from the path of the righteous.

Stuart kissed her cheek clumsily, banging heads together. His face was red and sweat was collecting on the edge of his receding hairline. The tie and starched white collar looked to be strangling him. Zoe could see he was desperate to change into a t-shirt.

He stood back and blew air on to his face from his bottom lip, “Alright Zoe, how’s it going? Sorry about your grandad.”

“Thanks Stu, pretty sad eh?”

“On the bus, poor fucker, didn’t have much of a life did he?”

Zoe half-laughed before Jo interrupted, “So, Stu was just telling me about Spectrum. Have you heard about it?”

“No, should I have?”

“It’s this massive rave on a farm near Bristol. Loads of DJs, live bands, bouncy castles. Sounds amazing. And Stu’s mate knows the organisers.”

“Yeah,” Stuart added eagerly, “it goes on for four days”.

“Sounds wicked,” said Zoe looking around, wondering where the payphone was, “Sorry, I’ve just got to go and do something.”

She dropped a fifty pence piece into the coin slot of the phone outside of the main bar, next to the toilets. The yellow plastic handset smelled musty and old, she moved it away from her mouth. She let it ring for longer than usual, to allow for the members of Nick’s house to rouse themselves from the sofa.

His exam was in the morning, she thought he would be back home by now, but she guessed they had all gone out to the pub. Drinking snakebite and black at some awful all-day happy hour or similar.

“Fucking students,” she muttered, letting the phone drop back into the cradle.

Through the window of the door into the saloon bar, the muted scene of her extended family made her pause before re-entering. Uncle Tom was on the cigars, Carol already half-pissed and shrieking with laughter, Len and Gary talking seriously about business by the fruit machine, Christine checking her watch - looking to leave, and a host of other faces she recognised but was unable to name. She wondered how many of them were at her dad’s funeral.

“So you gonna come or what?” asked Jo as she rejoined the group.

Zoe picked the lemon slice from her gin and tonic and dropped it into the ashtray. “Come where?”

“Fuck’s sake,” said Jo, glancing away impatiently, “The party, Spectrum.”

“Oh that. No, I don’t think so.” She smiled at an old man with a familiar face as he bumped past her. “I’m going down to Southampton, to see Nick.”

From the wild look in her sister’s eye, Zoe knew that a single line excuse would not be sufficient to stem the tide. The free flowing alcohol was amplifying Jo’s enthusiasm. She had barely left the house in two years due to her recent separation and was now seemingly desperate to get wasted in a field.

The majority of her married life had been spent researching mortgages or looking at houses or talking about baby names or planning a pregnancy that never happened. And for someone who had previously been defined by hedonism, this was a significant sea change.

Her husband suggested they only stop birth control once they had a house, but that never happened either. Two years into their grand plan, he revealed that there was “still a lot of the world he wanted to experience” and that he felt suffocated by her. Jo now had a recurring dream of wrapping his face tightly with cling film.

When first told of the split, Zoe was conflicted. Her primary response was to agree with Jo: yeah what a twat, what’s he like, etc. But her secondary response was just massive relief. The prospect of a potential divorce could only be a good thing, such boring domesticity didn’t suit Jo.

She was four years older than Zoe, and her influence was everywhere. Starting with hand-me-down toys and clothes, Zoe rarely experienced something that her elder sibling hadn’t already done. Roller-skating, dancing, driving, kissing and sex, were all approached with at least a word or two of advice or instruction.

Her first underage drinks were purchased by her sister and for her 16th birthday she was given a pill in a matchbox and a mixtape of acid house music. It was only since the wedding that they had drifted slightly apart.

Now Jo’s days as a divorcee were spent sat on her mum’s sofa watching daytime television or on marathon phone calls with friends, bitching about her failed marriage. Little wonder she had pounced upon Stuart’s half-hearted invitation with such gusto. It must have been the best offer she’d had for a while and had no intention of flying solo.

The advantages were listed as bullet points and each one was punctuated with a soft fist to Zoe’s upper arm.

“Stu and his mate are driving.” Punch.

“They know the organisers.” Punch.

“The weather forecast is amazing.” Punch.

“The festival sounds wicked.” Punch.

“Loads of DJs.” Punch.

“It will be mental.” Punch.

Zoe stepped back, “Will you stop fucking punching me!”

Jo held her hands up in mock innocence and Stuart laughed, “You’ve got to admit it Zo, she makes a convincing argument.”

Zoe sighed, “What about Nick?”

“Tell him to come. Bristol’s halfway to Southampton. He could meet us there.”

She was on the verge of surrendering to her sister, when their mum arrived with a tray of drinks. “Beer anyone? Hello Stu love, how you doing?”

When joined by their mum, the conversation switched gears and focused more on the deceased. Well-worn anecdotes were re-told, like the time her grandad fell into the canal at Camden or got shat on by three pigeons in one day.

No-one really remembered him happy though. Never laughing or smiling, just eternally forlorn, the poor bastard. Which only made Zoe’s resolution to carpe diem the shit out of every single day, even stronger.

She tried the public phone in the hall three more times that afternoon, but the monotonous ring tone was all she ever heard. Drunk as she now was, the festival was slowly becoming unmissable, and she knew Nick would love it, if only she could reach him.

It was dark when they left the pub. Most of the relatives had gone and the funeral crowd had been diluted with regular drinkers. Waiting outside for the cab her mum perched on the edge of an empty picnic table, her head hanging like a dead weight coconut.

Zoe thought she may vomit, but her attempts to provide assistance were swatted away with a flapping hand.

“Shut up shut up Zoe. Leave me alone I’m fine,” she said, but the slow defeated groan she released immediately after her protest, was probably more honest.

Once at home Zoe pulled off her mum’s boots and left her face down on the bed. Changing her into a nightdress was a level of assistance she was unwilling to provide, at least not for a few more years.

She sat and watched her sleep for a while, before moving her attention to the bedside table and the framed picture of her Dad. Blurred and smiling and still in pole position. She couldn’t imagine being devoted to a missing person for such a long period of time. She was unsure if it was inspiring or depressing, or perhaps a bit of both.

In the kitchen Jo was making cheese on toast under the grill, slamming cupboard doors with the fridge hanging open. Spilt milk and several burnt matches lay across the counter.

“I’m going to bed,” said Zoe, “don’t leave the gas on will you?”

“Zoe, I’m not a fucking idiot,” Jo replied as she attempted to slice a small piece of cheddar cheese with a huge carving knife. Zoe winced as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

She considered trying Nick again, but figured he would probably be out all night, plus the phone was downstairs and closer to Jo. Her sister was far more pissed than her and dangerously close to another emotional breakdown. It simply wasn’t worth the risk. She knew she’d speak to him in the morning anyway.

The tech boom which defined Josh’s school life seemed to be gaining momentum year on year. By 1995 there were more than one million internet users in the UK and companies in all sectors were scrambling to add a web address to their printed stationery. Internet Explorer had just been launched and the first secure financial transactions were being made online.

Josh would love to claim that he had seen it all coming, but in truth he just loved playing with computers and this keen interest seemed to place him slightly ahead of the curve.

While most newspapers and magazines had started to acknowledge the internet as something to be taken seriously, countless articles were still published claiming that it could die on its arse before the end of the year. And this scepticism seemed to be shared by anyone without a modem.

Ten months previously, when Josh spent £1,200 of his own money buying 18 domain names, his father came the closest he ever had been to actual physical violence. He was so incensed by such “blatant stupidity and a complete lack of understanding of how money works in the real world” he was forced to leave the room, red-faced and fuming, rather than make the threatened open palm strike his son’s face.

Josh took pride in reminding his dad of this scene as he cashed in £7,000 for a single URL. Especially as there was no indication that this would be an isolated sale. Domain names were selling for increasingly large sums. Pizza.com just sold for half a million US and anything remotely pornographic was going for huge amounts almost daily. Josh had been keeping a close watch on all trades.

If only Nick had been more receptive to his suggestion that they go 50/50 on the investment. Instead he had blown his student loan on some new speakers and a two week bender. Typical Nick.

Now rather than a celebration, breaking this news required a fair bit of diplomacy and tact. Especially in light of Nick’s current depression, Josh feared this news may push him over the edge.

He mulled it over while sitting on the top deck of the bus on his way to see Nick. It was the same route he always took to his best friend’s house, he had made this journey hundreds of times, but it was weird now that they both lived out of Guildford, Josh in London, while Nick was in Southampton. Both now home for holidays, but sitting on the number 27 bus again not much seemed to have changed.

Josh first moved to Guildford when he was 13, to be a commutable distance for his dad’s new job. It was a miserable relocation from rural Devon, prompted by his mum’s infidelity and the resulting separation. A sad situation, but not unexpected.

Josh’s father was an overly-anxious civil servant with high blood pressure, while his mother was a borderline-bohemian piano teacher. Josh struggled to recall a single civil conversation between them. His dad was constantly frustrated by his wife and always walked at least five paces ahead of her. How they got together in the first place was a mystery that was never solved.

During Josh’s childhood his mother was a key figure in the local cultural festival, hosting and entertaining visiting artists. The performers regularly stayed in the spare bedrooms of their large family house and invariably came with an entourage of assorted eccentrics. Staying up late drinking red wine from tumblers. Laughing, shouting and sometimes playing music.

His dad would go to bed and his mum would stay up, singing Russian arias under the willow tree with a travelling soprano or drunkenly playing Debussy on the piano with some Canadian virtuoso.

It was messy fun and could happen on any night. The guests were always friendly with Josh and would perform for him or help build paper boats for the pond or re-tell well-worn anecdotes, until he crashed on the sofa and was covered with blankets. When he woke in the morning they would often still be awake, making a huge breakfast and gushing over the beautiful sunrise.

When Josh tells people that he had a happy childhood, these are the times he is remembering. Selectively forgetting the following evening when his dad would follow his mum around the house, with a can of beer in his hand, tie-off and shirt untucked, yelling at her about how she wasn’t sixteen any-fucking-more and who half of those arseholes were last night anyway?

These are the scenes Josh ignored when he told his family that he would rather stay with his mum after the divorce. A plan soon quashed in part by his father’s anger, but mostly by his mother’s palpable hesitance.

“Whatever you want to do darling, don’t rush your decision, take your time,” she had said, ten seconds after he had already spoken the bravest and boldest statement of his life.

It was shortly after he reluctantly moved with his dad and idiot brother to a bungalow in Guildford, that his insomnia started. Even after a long day exploring his new surroundings on a BMX, when he finally laid down on the futon his eyes would simply never shut.

It’s not like he was lying awake tortured by the prospect of his parents divorce, it wasn’t really something he thought about much. Although he guessed there may have been a subconscious connection.

Whatever the cause, sleepless nights in the 1980s were no fun. Terrestrial TV stations had yet to see the value in any kind of decent broadcast schedule after midnight, and the only VCR was downstairs, so it was Open University learning programs or nothing.

Which is part of the reason he was unbeatable on any Commodore 64 games. He was the first in his class to complete all one hundred levels of Bubble Bobble and the only person to ever reach the final boss on The Last Ninja. Not that it was really fair, as most kids only played for an hour or so after school. Josh was at it all-night.

He usually slept a couple of hours before it got light, when utterly exhausted. Then sometimes on the desk during Physics, or some other lesson where no-one could hear the monotone drone of the teacher over the class noise, even if they wanted to.

He never learnt anything in lessons anyway and found school a complete waste of his time. He was a bright and capable pupil, his school reports constantly urged him to tap his wasted potential. The slightly-above average exam marks he received were always the result of quick flick through the previously-unopened textbook the night before and not much else.

He felt the grade would have been the same with or without the terms of lessons. A theory that was proved correct during the final year before his GCSEs, when the daily form group register rarely had a tick next to his name and nearly all of his grades were As and Bs.

One thing that he did value from school was his friendship with Nick. Having joined halfway through Year Eight, he could easily have been savaged by the lions. Instead he was accepted by a small mob of lads who seemed to control a specific corner of the playground during lunchtimes.

Josh’s brazen disregard for authority had not gone un-noticed by the boys, and his huge library of pirated computer games cemented his status as ‘alright’.

Nick was a key player within this group and his friendship was a priceless endorsement for Josh as the new kid. Nick was tall, could play football, always had good trainers and didn’t really take any shit - which was pretty much all you needed to survive in a secondary school back then.

He forced Josh to think outside of his computer, at least sometimes. Parties and skateparks and drinking underage in pubs are things that he probably would have missed if he had remained in his one-man gang.

As their friendship grew, sleeping over at Nick’s house also became commonplace. So much so that his tastes were soon factored into the weekly shopping. Nick’s mum Wendy would often pass him on the stairs and say, “Josh I got you some of those biscuits that you like,” or “Josh we’re running low on Frosties, but don’t worry I’ll get some more tomorrow.”

It became a welcome sanctuary away from the heavy-drinking gloom of his own house.

Even now coming back for the holidays, it was Nick’s family house he was looking forward to visiting, not his own. As he approached the familiar address, nothing seemed to have changed. The crazy-paving pathway lead up to the same red door of the semi-detached townhouse. The same Peugeot estate in the driveway, the same melodic chime from the doorbell.

Wendy swung the door open and her face was initially flustered, as if she didn’t have time for such annoying interruptions, until she saw it was Josh and any agitation melted into a warm smile.

“Oh how lovely,” were the first words she had spoken to him since the Christmas break.

She was wearing a green velour tracksuit and yellow rubber gloves. From a distance she could have passed for a Sunday-league goalkeeper.

“Hi Wendy, so good to see you,” Josh replied honestly. He wasn’t sure why he found other people’s parents infinitely less infuriating than his own.

She ushered him into a hall that smelt strongly of disinfectant. Wendy was a slave to the housework, the level of cleanliness throughout their home was almost surgical. It was something Nick hated and saw as a characteristic of uptight suburban hell. Josh however loved it.

The fact he knew there was no dust or dirt or grime anywhere - from the darkest corner of the garage to behind the upstairs toilet - was strangely thrilling.

“Is Nick in?” he asked, pointing a finger upstairs.

She gave her head a small shake before answering, “Oh god yes, he’s barely left the house in two weeks. I’m desperate to clean that bloody room.”

Josh laughed, “Oh right.”

“Yes go up. You remember where it is don’t you?”

He smiled at her, “I think I can remember.”

She giggled with a hand over her mouth, as if responding to an innuendo and went back down the hall towards the kitchen. Presumably on her way to bleach the living shit out of something.

Upstairs Portishead played quietly from within Nick’s bedroom. Josh paused and wondered how deep he had fallen into the sinkhole this time. He seemed to take break-ups so hard, Josh couldn’t understand it.

He hadn’t actually seen him for several weeks, but that was not unusual. Last time they met he was clearly in the cliched honeymoon period, barely functioning outside of the relationship. He seemed really happy with Zoe (annoyingly so) talking about holidays and other future plans.

He did wonder what had happened to send it all arseways, although he was keen to avoid a day spent dissecting Nick’s failed love life.

He knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Nick croaked from inside.

Josh briefly considered impersonating his mum, but thought she might hear him.

He kicked the base of door gently, “Let me in, you tit.”

Nick answered wearing only his boxer shorts and a faded Stone Roses t-shirt. He acknowledged Josh with a barely perceptible nod, then got back into bed and pulled the duvet up to his neck.

His hair was much longer than Josh remembered it being and several days of stubble growth covered the bottom half of his face.

The room was dark with minimal sunlight penetrating the curtains. Josh sat on the only available seat, an office swivel chair with a broken backrest. No carpet was visible under a layer of socks, magazines, pizza boxes and other adolescent detritus.

“Fucking stinks in here.” said Josh, “What is that smell? Is that perfume?”

Nick yawned, “Maybe.”

“Well I can tell you haven’t had a girl in here. What is it?”

Nick sighed heavily and looked towards the window, “It’s Escape by Calvin Klein.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Zoe used to wear it.”

“Yeah so?” said Josh, as he picked a CD from Nick’s desk and turned it over to look at the tracklist.

“So I went to Boots the chemist and got a load of those little paper samples from the perfume counter.”

Josh tossed the CD back onto the desk and turned to Nick, “Why?”

Nick rubbed his face with both hands. “I just liked the way it smelled and I guess it reminded me of her. I know it sounds stupid.”

“You’re right it does.”

“Anyway, they started to recognise me at Boots so I felt I had to buy a bottle. And last night I drank a load of vodka and tipped some of the perfume over my duvet and the sheets. Kind of felt like I was in bed with her.”

Josh looked at him blankly. “I think you’re fucking losing it.”

Nick rolled his head on the pillow and groaned, “I think I’ve fucking lost it.”

Josh stood and walked over to the curtains, he pulled them apart and let sun fill the room. Behind him he could sense Nick flinch.

“Come on mate, at least get out of bed,” said Josh pulling the bottom half of the window open. A gentle breeze blew in and distant birdsong was now audible above the gloomy trip hop from the speakers. The next-door neighbour was trimming the top of his hedge with a pair of large shears.

Reluctantly Nick came to sit by the window, still wrapped in his duvet like a giant cocoon. They each lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside.

“So what you been doing?” asked Josh.

“Not much,” replied Nick gloomily, “just a lot of thinking really.”

“Sounds exciting,” said Josh.

Nick continued, “Just going over it in my head, was it something I did? Did I come on too strong?”

This was the kind of bullshit conversation Josh was keen to avoid, “Fancy a pint?” he asked.

“Skint.” said Nick. He looked down into the garden and spat into the flower bed below.

“My shout,” said Josh casually.

Nick looked up sharply to study his friend’s face. They had spoken last week on the phone and both spent the majority of the conversation moaning about a lack of money. Neither had a part-time or summer job, and any student grants, loans or overdrafts had dried up long ago.

And so, it was at this point, that Josh was forced to break the slightly uncomfortable news of his massive financial windfall.

Friday night punters spilled out of the Soho pubs to stand in the road drinking. Men wandered the pavements clutching pint glasses, while others perched on street signs and car bonnets, as if motor vehicles wouldn’t dare drive through. It was one of the first warm evenings of early summer and everyone seemed to have hit the ground running in a boozy free-for-all.

Nick squeezed through a group of high-heeled girls all smoking and giggling, with a bottle of Moet and a long-stemmed champagne flute each, basically sitting in the gutter. There was noise everywhere, loud laughter and shouting, clinking glassware and far off sirens wailing.

Nick stopped to light a cigarette and check the photocopied page of the A-Z from his back pocket. After a few right and left-turns away from the main hubbub and he found the small street he was looking for.

It was a narrow alley with a no entry sign and barely enough room for a single car. Everything was closed and lifeless except for the one bar he was looking for.

Nick joined the small queue of about twenty people shuffling impatiently. The windows were blacked out and a spinning mirrorball hung above the door. The music from within was so loud and the temporary metal barrier Nick was holding vibrated from the bass.

He smoked another cigarette in the line for something to do, and gave one each to the girls ahead of him when they asked. They were from Southend and apparently “up for a big night”. Their hugely dilated pupils suggested it had been quite big already. Not that the bouncers seemed to mind, they just waved them in with an “evening ladies”.

After scrutinising Nick’s photographic ID they looked down at his trainers, thankfully quite new.

“On your own tonight mate?”

“I’m meeting my, er…” he thought for a moment, “girlfriend in there.”

Naturally the pause made it sound like a lie, but they stepped aside and let him through without questioning him further.

Inside it was already busy. Nick struggled to determine any division between the dance floor and those waiting for drinks, there seemed to be some form of motion all the way to the bar. In a raised booth, the DJ flipped through a record bag with headphones around his neck. It was hot and dark and very loud.

There was a smaller bar downstairs which was slightly less busy, where he was able to buy two cans of Red Stripe. He was thirsty and had almost finished one while he was waiting for his change.

He found a spot in front of the speaker stack and nodded to the music, as if he always came here on a Friday night, on his own.

The venue filled up even more, with barely any space to move and the crowd was getting loose. Nick had to fight his way to the bar to get more drinks, but no-one seemed to mind him leading with his shoulder and forcing his way through.

Men in sweat-soaked business shirts and pleated trousers drank bottled lager, while girls in hot pants and boob tubes danced on podiums without moving their feet. The effect of the large silver fans hanging from the ceiling was negligible, the heat inside was overpowering.

Nick struggled to keep a grip on the ice-cold cans of lager, as the condensation moistened his hand.

He was finishing his sixth beer when Zoe grabbed him round the neck and shouted in his ear.

“Nick! Fucking hell, sorry we’re so late!”

In the six days since they first met, he had thought about her almost constantly. While he had struggled to actually picture her face, the mere thought of her released the kind of dopamine that gave Nick the buzz on a level with his first high school crush.

She wore a vest top with zebra print, tight black trousers that stopped above the ankle, her eyes were heavy with make-up. She looked kind of punk.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the floor. Relieved to see her, but he was also a little drunk.

“Woah, easy tiger!” she laughed, “this is Cindy.”

He turned and shook the warm limp hand of a large girl with a pile of peroxide hair and a fringe that covered her eyes. She was dressed all in black and her drunken smile revealed pillowy dimples.

Her eyelids were halfway closed and she seemed to sway on her heels. He couldn’t really hear anything she said, it sounded like a squeak when she spoke, no matter how far he leaned towards her.

Zoe grabbed both of their hands and reversed into the bouncing crowd. Bumping hips and elbows as they danced, Nick passed out cigarettes which they held in the air to avoid burning anyone.

Cindy bought a round of Hooch and then Zoe appeared with bottles of Sol and lime.

They lost Cindy to the crowd at some point, but Zoe motioned back to the bar. She smudged a kiss across his cheek while waiting for tequilas. Licking salt and sucking lemons they fell into each other laughing.

He almost vomited, but it didn’t matter.

The music seemed to get progressively louder, until he gave up speaking completely. In a silent movie world they gestured and made faces, did joke dancing and grabbed each other in play fight tickles and sloppy headlocks, before submitting to a drunken kiss that Nick couldn’t quite believe was happening.

Her arm wrapped his shoulders, she tasted of lemonade and lip gloss.

Once apart they laughed again, like naughty school kids. Zoe was squeezing his hand and smiling when Cindy re-appeared.

The two girls joined heads in conversation, Nick just watched them, drunkenly swaying and wondering what was next. Zoe was nodding in agreement with Cindy’s proposal. They moved and he followed, the three were attached hand in hand, in a line as they pushed through the dance floor.

They were outside on the street within minutes, club flyers thrust at them from all angles. There was a party apparently and they were going.

Cindy had befriended two lads in button-down shirts and trainers, who introduced themselves as Gary and something else, Nick didn’t quite catch it.

In the black cab everyone spoke at once, a cacophony of drunken shouting. The driver slid the plastic divider firmly shut.

Somewhere in Whitechapel was all that was offered when Nick asked for specifics.

Away from the bustle of Soho, the taxi crept around the deserted East London back streets until Gary recognised something and banged his fist on the roof.

“Here we go, this is it! And you all thought I was a fucking dickhead,” he said, displaying remarkable insight.

Through a nondescript door they climbed several flights of carpeted stairs, which spiralled round like the steps of a lighthouse. Loud techno emanated from a room at the top which was full of people and almost completely dark.

A single flashing strobe seemed more of a health hazard than a light show.

Nick was relieved when they continued moving up. All the way to the top and they were rewarded with a large roof top with panoramic views across the London skyline in every direction.

There was no music and the sudden silence was surreal. Strings of glowing light bulbs swayed gently above a messy scene. Wasted people smoking and chatting on threadbare furniture, while others occupied the floor, dazed and motionless.

The reduced volume of the roof was too much of a culture shock for Cindy and her two friends, who swiftly disappeared back downstairs.

Nick and Zoe went to the perimeter wall, hanging over the side, feet off the floor, looking down to the street below.

They lit cigarettes and pointed out landmarks they recognised, laughing and arguing over whether you’d survive if you jumped.

“So how come you’re out on your own again? Where’s Grant tonight?” asked Nick.

Zoe flicked her cigarette over the side and they both watched the orange dot float all the way down and waited for the explosion of sparks when it hit the pavement, but it never came.

“Yeah I moved out.”

Nick failed to disguise his smile, “Oh?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said smiling, nudging him with an elbow, “I should have done it weeks ago.”

She explained how every time she had spoken to Grant it had developed into an argument. How he was always at work or out with friends, she never saw him, and whenever they did go out it was in a large group, which usually included his ex-girlfriend “the Spanish Kate Moss, who’s a borderline fucking genius by the way.”

Zoe sighed, “I don’t know why I ever moved in.”

Nick nodded slowly, “Yeah right,” he was saying as a small sofa became free and they both jumped to claim ownership.

The tired springs beneath the scruffy brown fabric offered no support. They dropped almost level with the floor and fell against each other laughing.

A skinny boy wearing glasses who was perched on the arm of the couch was drawn into their conversation. His name was Simon and he had spiked blond hair.

He said that his mates were downstairs dancing or maybe they’d gone home, he didn’t seem sure.

Together they assessed the welfare of a man in a kilt lying unconscious on the concrete nearby. He had a shaved head and ruddy red cheeks. A tattooed Celtic ring wrapped around each bicep, exposed by a tight sleeveless t-shirt.

Passed out or sleeping, but perhaps dead, Nick suggested with a smirk.

He dared Simon to check if it’s true what they say a Scotsman wears under his kilt.

“I’m sure that’s a myth,” said Simon, “besides, how do you know he’s Scottish?”

“Come on Simon,” replied Nick, “stop being a killjoy and just lift up his fucking skirt.”

The man eventually stirred and wearily stood, before lurching downstairs.

But Zoe, Nick and Simon barely noticed, their discussion had since progressed into more conceptual territory. Was it possible to swim in custard, would you rather be a pirate or a ninja, that kind of thing.

Simon gave them several small amphetamine pills, which they both swallowed with warm lager from a can.

Zoe laid back against the broken couch and used Nick’s bended knees as a footrest, while they laughed and talked nonsense.

Others sat around them, passed joints and shared lighters, one girl had an endless supply of red wine, which she gave out in plastic cups.

A group of lads in hooded tops struggled to control their shivering jaws, eyes rolling. Two black girls in matching puffa jackets leant on each other, shoulder-to-shoulder, chatting quietly and giggling.

A man in dungarees and no shirt, long curly hair in a ponytail, never once stopped smiling, eyes wide and loving it. Whatever ‘it’ was.

As conversations overlapped, the group began to spill and mingle. They learnt that the building contained a number of recording studios, but they were all locked.

“Anyway,” said a girl with an eyebrow piercing and a large hole in her earlobe, “why would you want to be downstairs when it’s such a beautiful morning up here?”

Despite the dawn breaking on the panoramic 360 skyline, Nick still managed to miss it.

No longer insulated by the night, the milky blue sky all around created a morning that stretched into eternity in every direction.

The laughter and chattering voices were suddenly isolated and echoing. He was aware that their little group was now a lot smaller, only five or six others remained. Simon had also disappeared at some point.

A man in a collared bomber jacket with a shaved head appeared from a doorway and told them that it was time to go.

Among the grumblings of protest, Zoe explained they needed to get her friend, “She’s downstairs raving.”

“Not anymore she’s not, love” he replied, “everyone’s gone, you’re the last ones.”

Zoe simply laughed in reply and grabbed Nick’s hand, pulling him towards the door.

The stairs were now lit and clean. All the empty bottles and lager cans from the night before had been cleared away.

The main room was also now fully lit and almost empty. Two men were packing the turntables into silver cases, while another looped electrical cables between his elbow and hand, like a lasso.

The smell of smoke lingered, everything else had gone.

As the front door shut behind them, all around on the street was silent. No cars or cabs, all shopfronts were dark and closed for the weekend.

Alone again in the early morning light, they both smiled, acknowledging the shared deja vu.

It was only six days ago when they had been forced from a party with nowhere to go and now it had happened again.

A minor geographical shift in location, but the dynamic between them had changed massively. Not a girlfriend, not yet, but already closer than anyone else currently in his life.

As they discussed their options, none of them involved splitting and tackling the day separately.

The pubs wouldn’t be open for a few hours and neither fancied moving to a club that might still be going, full of drugged lunatics with their shirts off dancing to techno.

They walked aimlessly and found a cafe near Smithfields which was open. The red plastic clock inside was hanging at an angle, but Nick thought the time of ten past seven was probably correct.

The smell of deep-fat fryers and bacon, mingled with the smoke.

At the tables, cab drivers at the end of a shift drank mugs of coffee. Builders in dusty overalls ate from oval plates, getting set for the day. Fried eggs, sausages and puddles of beans. Ashtrays and small piles of sliced bread and butter everywhere.

They ordered mugs of tea and took the table by the window.

Zoe poured sugar from a glass jar with a silver spout, while Nick rearranged the plastic sauce bottles to keep his twitching fingers busy.

“The woman behind the counter was looking at me funny. You reckon she knows we’ve been up all night?”

“Well,” said Zoe stirring her tea, “you don’t look like you’re on your way to work.”

Nick had a smudged stamp on his hand from the club, a large red wine stain on his jeans and the white soles of his trainers were covered in black gunk from the dance floor.

She watched him assessing himself before adding, “...unless you’ve got a really shit job.”

Nick’s snort of laughter made the man at the next table glance over his shoulder.

“What about Cindy? You reckon we need to worry? You think she’s still with Gary and his mate?”

“Oh I dunno, she’s probably with one of them. It’s always the same whenever we go out together, she disappears with some bloke and I end up travelling home on my own.”

Zoe cupped her mug with both hands, “She’s always been a bit of a slag.”

Nick almost choked on his tea.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love her, but she can’t help herself. Someone went round to fix her washing machine the other day, he was in her bed within twenty minutes. I had to go with her to get the morning after pill.”

“Oh my god, you’re not like that are you?”

“What,” she said, “is this when you ask me how many people I’ve slept with?”

“No, no, I don’t want to know that.”

“Good, cos I lost count years ago.”

Nick smiled nervously.

“Joke! Come on, what do you take me for?”

They shared his last cigarette and Zoe told him how she had moved back into her mum’s house. Who was pleased to have her youngest daughter back, plus she was openly happy Zoe’s relationship had failed.

She never liked Grant, thought he was “a bit of a ponce”.

Inevitably this forced Nick to wonder if Zoe’s mum would think he too was a ponce. And if so, would he be considered more or less poncey than Grant?

As the cafe thinned out, they ordered another round of teas.

Nick considered ordering a bacon sandwich and then decided against any kind of food after watching egg yolk drip down the chin of a man at the next table. His stomach contracted at the sight and he decided to stick with liquids.

Zoe asked him about his university course and she seemed interested when he explained it. Probably more interested than he was.

She asked if he had any siblings and he told her how his older brother Ryan lived in Hong Kong and had a decent job, exactly what he did he wasn’t sure, but it was “something techy”.

Despite a five year age gap with his brother, they had always been close. Now the only communication was via tacky postcards.

It had become a thing when Nick sent one from Portsmouth of a girl in a bikini and a sailor’s hat, standing on board the HMS Something.

His reply came from Taiwan and pictured three suited Asian men pointing at the screen of a monstrous computer, their attire and the hardware both comically dated.

Ryan had added a speech bubble with a biro above their heads which said ‘Wish you were here!!’

And from then the exchange became increasingly competitive, both seeking the worst possible designs. Nick’s biggest triumphs had been a dog dressed as Axl Rose and a selection of taxidermied weasels.

Ryan had countered with some phallic mushrooms and one from Tokyo showing half-dressed schoolgirls at the beach, which he had annotated in pen with the banner ‘Welcome to Paedo Island’.

“I haven’t actually spoken to him for years and I guess it’s kind of a weird relationship,” said Nick, “but it’s closer than some brothers are. My mate Josh fucking hates his brother, every meeting ends in a fist-fight.”

Zoe stubbed the cigarette into the ashtray and finished her tea.

“I’ve always been slightly suspicious of people who don’t get on with their siblings. Like, what do they know that I don’t. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah I do.” Nick laughed, “So you close with your sister then?”

“Oh yeah,” said Zoe as she rolled her eyes, “a little bit too close recently. I’m currently sharing a room with the old bag, while she’s waiting for her divorce to come through.”

“It was really nice at first, but the novelty of laying in bed chatting until after midnight won’t last forever. I’m only a week in and already its wearing a bit thin.”

Zoe floated the idea of travelling north to her house, but admitted that would mean her mum, her sister and at least three dogs.

“I’m not quite sure we’re ready for that,” she said.

Plus it was all the way over in Cricklewood. Nick didn’t know where that was, but meeting Zoe’s mum with no sleep was hardly fair. He didn’t exactly feel like the best version of himself.

Nick knew that if you have been up all night, it is usually best to stick with the people who have been with you since the start.

Introducing fresh faced outsiders will only rock the boat unnecessarily. Even if they don’t judge you (although they probably will) in your head they will anyway and the power balance will be unfairly stacked against the vulnerable.

So when Zoe suggested the cinema Nick nodded enthusiastically, as it was the least daunting option.

It was dark, the seats were comfortable and Zoe knew a place in Soho still showing Pulp Fiction.

The official run had finished long ago, in fact it was soon to be released on video, but the cinema was always half-empty and they didn’t turn the lights on to clear the theatre between shows, as in most multiplexes.

She’d been to see it recently and watched it twice on a single admission ticket. They could probably spend all day in there if they wanted.

Before they left the cafe, Nick paid their bill with the coins from his back pocket, avoiding eye contact with the woman at the till.

He dropped a pound coin on the counter, before stumbling out of the door.

Zoe knew the number of the bus that would take them to Shaftesbury Avenue, and they didn’t have to wait long for it.

Upstairs they sat above the driver and she fell against him in the seat with a tired sigh. Her back seemed small as he laid his arm across it.

Together they watched the huge windscreen in front of them, as a light rain shower left its mark upon the glass.

Nick could feel her pressing heavier against him, dropping into sleep.

The bus moved slowly down the busy street, the actual stops were barely noticeable.

He was almost resigned to sleeping himself and all the end-of-the-line bus depot horrors that would entail, when Zoe suddenly jumped up, “This is us, let’s go!”

They found the cinema, in Soho among the sex shops and gay bars.

It was a mass of dusty red velvet curtains and chipped gold paint. The thick floral carpet was worn through in places but the foyer was currently empty.

Film posters from the 1950s framed on the walls. It smelt musty, with the vaguest hint of a chemical air freshener.

A giant chandelier hung low in the middle of the lobby, which Nick eyed suspiciously before stepping aside, to avoid standing directly beneath it.

A woman in a cardigan and a neck brace took their money and pointed to the entrance.

She asked them if they wanted popcorn and seemed relieved when they said no, as this was presumably also her job, the sorry-looking sweet counter was un-manned.

“It’s already started.” she said.

“It’s OK,” said Zoe, “we’ve seen it before.”

Only one other seat in the theatre was taken. A man sat on his own in the front row, a number of full carrier bags beside him.

On screen John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson were scrubbing blood from the back of the car.

Nick tried to remember where this scene was in the chronology, he’d only seen it once when it came out, with Josh when they were drunk.

Zoe stopped in the middle of the back row and silently waited for Nick to sit, until raising the armrest next between them.

She sat at first, but waited for a break in the dialogue before leaning against him.

Nick slid down in his seat to offer a flatter pillow for her head and they were both asleep instantly.

The sound of the front door downstairs slamming flicked her eyes open. It seemed like only minutes ago that Zoe had crashed out on her single bed and pulled the trusty Garfield duvet over herself.

Early morning sunlight now flooded into the room, through the paper-thin curtains. Swallowing hard she watched the air bubbles collect on the inside of the full pint glass of water on the bedside table.

After all the funeral booze from the day before, the sensible thing to do would have been to rehydrate before falling asleep. And that was what she planned to do, such a shame she’d forgotten the vital step of actually drinking it.

Silence resumed downstairs and the only sounds were outside of the window - birds casually twittered and a car engine spluttered then started, but all muffled by the double glazing.

Her focus moved across to the fading Lost Boys film poster, next to an even older one of Prince, they had been on the wall forever and both now painfully anachronistic.

She’d never felt like a permanent resident in her mum’s house, her recent stays were only ever temporary stop-gaps, so any kind of interior design seemed like wasted effort.

Aside from a few recent club flyers blue-tacked around the mirror, the bedroom was identical to when she was at school.

The sudden thundering footfall on the staircase caused her head to turn ninety degrees on the pillow, now looking straight up at the ceiling in anticipation.

She listened with dread to the creak of the door handle turning. Her sister Jo’s head peered round, smiling. Hair tied back, sunglasses perched on her forehead.

“So?” she asked, while chewing gum and visibly bouncing, “You ready?”

Zoe stared back in disbelief.

“Ready for what?”

“The party you div. Spectrum!”

The duvet that she pulled up to cover her head, only blocked the light, Jo’s words continued to breach her defences.

Everything was ready she said, their cousin Stu and his friend were waiting outside.

“And what’s more,” said Jo, kicking Zoe’s bed gently with her foot, “his mate’s well fit.”

Zoe uncovered her face and groaned.

“Behave. You’re still married!”

“OK OK. I just said that to get your attention. Come on it’ll be a laugh.”

“My head hurts.”

“Drink your water.”

“I’m tired.”

“Bah. Remember what you were talking about in the taxi last night?”

“No.”

“No more fucking around, life’s not a rehearsal, carpe diem and all that.”

Zoe paused to consider this before replying, “I’m guessing you won’t let me seize tomorrow instead?”

Jo laughed and went over to the window. She mimed success with a single thumb up through the glass.

“OK, OK,” said Zoe getting up, “give me five minutes to phone Nick and jump in the shower.”

The speed at which she could punch out the number was becoming quicker. After several weeks of practice, she no longer needed to refer to the handwritten prompt she kept in her purse.

Sat halfway down the stairs, Zoe pressed the cool flat plastic receiver against her face, desperate to hear his voice.

It rang once, twice, three times, four.

She knew that somewhere in an un-vacuumed and barely habitable house in Southampton, a phone was ringing, relentlessly with no answer.

She let it ring for longer than the shrill bleating could possibly be ignored. And then she let it ring some more.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Zoe whispered into the phone, but the only answer she received was the same ringtone.

The force with which she slammed the phone caused her mum to shout.

“Zoe! Jesus!”

She was sitting on the sofa at the bottom of the stairs nursing her own hangover, wearing tinted glasses and gently sipping a cup of tea. A hand supporting the side of her head, as if it could fall off at any moment.

“Sorr-reee,” said Zoe, before slamming the bathroom door with similar force.

In the shower with the taps on full, she closed her eyes and let the faucet blast her face.

She contemplated the possibility of attending the festival without Nick. Guilt and anger were two equally strong emotions grappling within her conscience.

How could she renege on their weekend plans? But then again, where the fuck was he? Maybe this will teach him not to disappear. Besides, the festival sounded mental.

By the end of her shower she had made a decision.

Essentially it was a dilemma that was easily resolved. Rather than considering all factors, she just focused on what she really wanted to do.

Towel drying her hair she looked in the mirror in her room, leaning in closer to inspect the dark rings around her eyes.

She found it confusing sometimes, to consider the needs of others. Which was clearly selfish, and perhaps irresponsible, but it’s what was needed in order to move on.

Surely she wasn’t alone in that.

She knew this attitude was probably why she’d never had a long term relationship and also why she probably wouldn’t make a very good mother.

However, all these concerns could be shelved, to be worried about at a later date, along with the regret and guilt of not making contact with Nick.

She vowed to make it up to him, maybe take him out for a curry, something like that.

She dropped an arbitrary collection of items into a small handbag with a long strap. Lip gloss, lighter, cigarettes, sunglasses, chewing gum, two valium in foil, another lighter and a small leather purse with a twenty, a ten and some coins.

She kissed her mum goodbye and said she was going out for a while with Stu.

Out on the pavement, dressed in denim mini-skirt, Carhartt t-shirt and shelltoes, Zoe pushed wet hair out of her face and squinted into the sun.

Stuart laughed, “Morning Zo, long time no see. What time did you get home last night?”

Zoe groaned, “I don’t know, it felt late but it was probably ten o’clock or something. You should see Mum, she’s in bits. Wearing her shades indoors, she looks like Roy fucking Orbison. How you feeling?”

Stuart laughed and shook his head slowly, “I’ve definitely felt better. Anyway, this is Gabriel.”

His friend was taller and had a leather string necklace, with a weather-beaten face and friendly brown eyes. Dark hair touched his shoulders and it was several days since his last shave.

He wore scruffy shorts, a black singlet and converse.

“Just call me Gabe.” he said smiling.

“Or we could call you Gay,” said Jo, and Zoe sniggered.

“Grow up will you,” said Stuart.

Gabe turned to him and smiled, “I see what you mean.”

His campervan was a VW vintage, in the traditional orange colour. Sun-faded with minor rust spots. In the back window was a Glastonbury Greenpeace sticker.

Zoe and Jo climbed in and tested the faux-leather bench seat each with a bounce, before settling.

Inside the van, Jo instantly lit a cigarette, but Zoe refused the offered packet with a scrunched nose.

She never smoked before breakfast and Jo wouldn’t normally, but she seemed very perky this morning. Fired up and buzzing with mad energy, she showed no signs of a hangover.

As soon as they turned onto the North Circular she started badgering her cousin.

“Can you turn the music up Stu?”

“Is it too early for a beer?”

“Either of you two got anything to smoke?”

“What drugs you got Stu?”

Eventually persuading him to pass round a small bag of pink speed, clearly far earlier in the day than he had planned.

Zoe reluctantly dipped her finger and gagged as the bitter-sweet crystals fizzed on her tongue, she washed it down with cold Lucozade from the service station.

The cassette tape in the stereo played hard progressive techno with no vocals.

It wasn’t really Zoe’s thing, but barrelling on the motorway with the bright sunshine refracting through the chips in the windscreen, she found herself knocking a knuckle in time with the kick drum.

Soon everyone was nodding to the beat.

Conversation in the van never stopped - shouting over the music and smoking.

Jo spoke the most, telling stories from festivals she had been to years ago, but was frequently heckled by her sister.

“Sorry why are you telling this?”

“That never happened you liar.”

“Yeah yeah, back in the day. Whatever!”

The two boys contributed when they could, but mostly just laughed.

After the tape had been turned over three or four times, it was ejected and switched to the radio.

They sung along to Rod Stewart and Bob Marley, before Gabe found a pirate radio station playing jungle.

Jo and Zoe were bouncing in their seats to the breakbeats and basslines and double-time MCing. Firstly to mock it, but soon just loving it.

The speed went round again and the bag was emptied.

It was only when Gabe pulled to the side of the road to consult a hand-drawn map, that Zoe realised they were nearly there.

Leaving the motorway had barely registered. The surroundings now more rural and green, gone were the dual carriageways and industrial parks.

No other cars passed them and birds flew overhead.

The side door of the van opened and they stepped out into another world.

The colours seemed more saturated, more alive.

A distant thrum could be heard over the hedgerows, a distant noise that confirmed they were close.

Stuart went off to urinate into a blackberry bush, Jo ran into a small clump of trees to do the same.

Zoe looked up to where the trees met the sky and wondered what Nick was doing.

She wished there was a way to reach him. She thought maybe someone at the festival would have a mobile phone, maybe one of the drug dealers.

Ten more minutes driving and Gabe was turning off the road at a hand painted sign with just one word ‘SPECTRUM’ and an arrow pointing towards the source of the distant thudding drumbeat.

Two men in yellow high-visibility vests and sunglasses lazily opened the wide cattle gate, so the campervan could bobble through to the field where other cars had parked.

After such a long time in the van, the festival was initially a disappointment.

The bouncy castle lay flat without air and around fifty people sat around smoking, while dub reggae throbbed from a towering stack of ageing speakers.

Zoe watched in disgust as a juggler repeatedly failed to keep three clubs in the air.

“Seriously Stu? Is this it?”

“Early days yet,” he said surveying the scene and pulling a large plastic bag of pills from his pocket.

As the sun slowly sunk behind the horizon, the tempo of the music started to ramp up.

More cars filled the neighbouring fields. Ford Fiestas like fairground dodgems driving in all directions, parked haphazardly at angles and on the edge of ditches.

Young girls in short dresses with trainers, hair in bunches. Men in army trousers and baggy t-shirts.

Others in tracksuits and dungarees, climbing the fences and whooping, running towards the source of the noise.

There were still less people than Zoe expected, only maybe three or four hundred, but enough to form a decent mass of dancers, all shuffling in the long grass to house and techno.

She danced with Jo, hugging and play-fighting, bumping into others and scrounging cigarettes from anyone within their radius.

Back in the van they sheltered from a brief rain shower and had nonsense conversations with Gabe and a couple he knew, both wasted and painfully earnest.

The girl was wearing a stupid tea-cosy hat with earflaps and massaged her boyfriend’s shoulders while she spoke to Zoe, very seriously with wide eyes about how the pills were so much better six months ago.

But soon they left, as did Jo, off to find beer with a bare-chested raver called Cliff.

“It’s pretty cool you know, this van.” said Zoe looking around the inside.

The only car she ever owned was an old Renault Five, which she recently sold to the garage for twenty pounds, after it broke down and would cost more money to tow.

“How long have you had it?”

Gabe blew cigarette smoke through the open window.

“It’s not mine, actually belongs to a mate.”

He explained that it was registered to a friend who was working for the summer in San Sebastian in Spain.

Gabe had agreed to drive it down to him, but kept deferring his departure, as he didn’t want to return to the UK as a pedestrian.

“Not sure I can put it off much longer, he keeps leaving angry messages on my answering machine.”

Why didn’t Nick have an answering machine, thought Zoe. Fucking students.

“So Gabe,” she said fixing him with a joke-serious stare, “what do you do when you’re not stealing camper vans?”

He laughed, “Well, the occupation on my dole card says printer, but I haven’t done that for a year or so. Me and Stu keep talking about starting a magazine, but I think we all know that’s not happening.”

“We’ve been planning and scheming for a while now, but the sum collective fruits of our constant bloody nattering was a one-off club night that barely anyone went to.”

“Oh yeah, I think he gave me a flyer for that. Sorry, I was probably busy.”

“Yeah, we got that a lot,” he said with a smile.

He told her how his friendship with Stuart pre-dated school as they lived so close, but Gabe and his family had relocated to Wolverhampton when he was eleven years old.

He had only recently reconnected with Stu, after moving back to London.

He recounted fragmented memories of their childhood adventures - football in the street and BMX ramps.

Zoe listened, but lost the thread numerous times.

She enjoyed the sound of his voice though, it had a faint midland lilt, and the hint of a private school education.

She nodded and laughed in the right places, until he casually mentioned something that made her stop chewing gum for the first time in five hours.

“I met your dad once.” he said.

Zoe glanced at him nervously, “No, you wouldn’t have. He died when I was really young.”

“No yeah, I definitely did. He fixed my bike.”

The candy-floss fog in her head momentarily cleared and she froze open-mouthed for a few seconds.

Gabe continued talking, as if silently urged to elaborate.

“It was when I was about seven, I guess, maybe eight. Stuart suggested that his uncle might be able to rejoin the snapped chain on my BMX.”

“We just knocked on his front door and asked him outright, it was pretty cheeky looking back now.”

“Maybe he felt obliged because Stuart’s dad wasn’t around anymore. But he stopped whatever he was doing and just rolled his shirt-sleeves up and got on with it.”

“‘Let’s take a look shall we?’ he said and flipped the bike over onto its handlebars right there on the pavement.”

“He had big hands and I remember watching how the chain made his fingertips black with grease, but that’s it really.”

“He was just really nice to us... kind of scruffy, but he smiled a lot and he fixed my bike.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” said Zoe, flicking sparks from her lighter.

“I was so sad when I heard he had died. It was only a year or so later. I’m so sorry.”

Zoe exhaled heavily as tears darkened her eyelashes, “Oh, don’t... sounds like you remember more of him than I do anyway.”

She struggled to process this new information.

Until now Gabe was just another face at the party, this connection with her dad made them instantly closer.

It was only usually older relatives who had any memories of him. Someone in her own peer group was unprecedented.

And far too much to process in her current state.

Outside the van, the shapes of surrounding bushes and trees were defined again, as dawn began to dissolve the night.

Soon everything would get ugly, it always did.

Comedowns and sideways glances. Most people would stop dancing and start to disperse, to sit and huddle together and shakily smoke cigarettes and joints with drooping eyelids.

Zoe knew what was coming.

“It’s getting light,” she said, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand, “shall we go for a walk?”

“Good idea,” said Gabe and opened the door for her.

Josh wasn’t completely surprised when Nick didn’t show at the airport. It was fairly typical behaviour - unreliable and fucking useless. He clenched both fists tightly as he watched the hostess at the check-in desk announce the last call for their flight over the tannoy. She spoke into the small silver mounted microphone and her amplified voice echoed around the whole airport.

Out of desperation he called Nick from a public phone, not expecting it to be answered. Nick picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Nick!”

“Oh hi Josh.”

“Nick? What the fuck? Where are you?”

“Yeah, I’m not coming”.

“What?”

“Sorry man, but there’s something I need to do.”

Josh took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead, “Please tell me this isn’t about Zoe.”

There was a pause before Nick’s reply, “Yeah it’s Zoe, she phoned and wants to meet up, tonight. You understand don’t you mate?”

Josh tried to calm himself, he couldn’t process Nick’s stupid bullshit right now, he just had to focus on his own situation. He spoke slowly, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I’m at the fucking airport.”

Nick laughed, “Cos I knew you wouldn’t go, but you should. You’ll enjoy it much more without me cramping your style. Have an amazing time brother, I can’t wait to hear—”

Josh held the phone away from his ear with a straight arm, before slamming the receiver back down.

His half-hearted enquiry about a refund for Nick’s ticket was treated with the disdain it deserved. The hostess with her bright red lips and weird little hat perched at an angle on her hair-sprayed head, calmly stated that the flight had actually started boarding, sir, and if he didn’t shake a leg, there would most likely be two unused tickets for this flight.

There was no time to deliberate whether to go or not, he simply ran to the gate. As he handed over his boarding pass he wondered if the smarter move would have been to loiter in duty free for a while, missing the flight completely would make everything a lot easier. He would be home within a couple hours, eating cheese on toast and watching Neighbours. Instead he was soon on board wheezing and apologising to the air hostesses as they found space in the overhead lockers for his sports bag.

The flight was nearly full, so Nick’s empty seat next to Josh was painfully incongruous. He piled a few magazines onto it, keen to utilise it in some way. He was still sweating from the run as he watched the safety demonstration. As his breathing gradually slowed to a regular pattern, he clicked his safety belt together and thought of Nick, and how much he wanted to punch him. The only person he had ever punched was his brother, usually in self-defence, but punching Nick right now would be immensely satisfying.

Once airborne Josh was keen for any distraction, so he leaned into the aisle for a better view of the big fuzzy screen showing the one scheduled movie. He thought Twister was an odd choice to calm any nervous flyers. The characters screamed at each other and raced after tornadoes in jeeps, all filmed in a jerky hand-held style. And yet he found it strangely enjoyable.

Surprised to discover that alcohol really was free and seemingly unlimited, he drank a steady stream of gin and tonics. Having never flown before he thought this claim was some kind of urban myth circulated by the affluent travellers of the world. It was only when asking for his fifth or sixth that the hostess eventually rolled her eyes.

After the film had finished, a few episodes of Friends played on the screen and Josh laughed out loud several times at things Joey said. He had never laughed at Friends before, he’d barely seen a whole episode. Some kind of nervous energy was keeping him awake and excitable. While all around him people slept wearing Zorro masks, their squashed bodies covered with fleece blankets, snores drowned by the constant buzz of the engines.

He leaned over the vacant seat to the window as they came in to land, the aerial view still a novelty. The indignation of tackling this trip alone was momentarily suspended as the 747 banked round over Queens before dipping into the approach for the runway. He giggled to himself, now a little drunk, before stopping to think what the fuck he was actually going to do when they touched down.

On the train to Grand Central station an African man with a phrase book sat opposite him, his other arm around a giant suitcase wrapped in gaffer tape. Josh sat with his sports bag on his lap and watched Manhattan come in to view. He imagined how Nick would have been, his face pressed against the window, pointing at skyscrapers and quoting Wu-Tang lyrics.

From the platform he crossed the concourse, following signs to the exit. Moving with the flow of other train passengers through the busy station. He glanced up at the ornate ceiling and the iconic windows which were bursting inward with bright summer sunlight. Josh resisted the urge to stop and gape, everyone knows that tourists are the first ones to get mugged or shot. He had read somewhere that in New York there was a shooting every minute. He didn’t quite believe it, but he knew you stand to gain nothing by disputing a fact like that.

Outside on the street his eyes flitted between iconic cliches, flashing don’t walk signs and traffic cops, hot dog carts and yellow cabs. Two young women in business suits walked past chatting, holding pint-size take-away coffees with plastic lids - no one really did that in London and it seemed strangely exotic. Even the bum sat on a step drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag was thrilling. He bought a pack of Lucky Strike and a lighter at a kiosk and stood smoking, pretending to wait for someone, but actually just inhaling his new surroundings, sucking it all in.

Dirty, busy, hot and noisy, it was a lot to process half-drunk without any sleep. His legs seemed to quiver and the cigarette made him feel light-headed. There was a hotel over the road called the Grand Hyatt, he watched as the doorman hailed a taxi for one of the exiting guests. It looked expensive, but he needed sanctuary to gather his thoughts and take a breath, so he joined the crowd by the traffic lights waiting to cross.

The lobby was all gold and white marble with thick carpets and high ceilings. The woman at reception wore a tired smile and welcomed him to the hotel. He tried not to balk when she told him the price per night for a room. She slid a form across the desk and indicated the fields he needed to fill in, providing a branded hotel pen when he said he didn’t have one. She winced uncomfortably when Josh told her he didn’t have any additional luggage.

The room on the 23rd floor was by far the most lavish he had ever stayed in. He showered and then, after checking the price list, drank a cold Rolling Rock from the mini fridge. With a thick white towel wrapped around his waist, he stood staring down at the streets below. The view disappeared after about ten blocks, dissolved by the smoggy heat haze.

Now that he had a base he felt more grounded and less vulnerable. His sports bag was hardly cumbersome but it felt good to ditch it. It was the same bag he had used at school, fake red leather with numerous zippered compartments, the giant Adidas logo on the side had flaked off years ago. He may as well walk the streets of New York with a Tesco carrier bag. He emptied the contents onto the bed and kicked it to the corner of his room.

He resisted the urge to sleep and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring downtown Manhattan, cautiously sticking to well-populated streets. The money he had changed at the airport he kept in his underpants. He stopped occasionally to photograph graffiti that he liked, framing the colourful walls in the viewfinder before snapping, winding on and returning the camera to his pocket, as swiftly as possible. He bought an orange Eastpak rucksack from Foot Locker, then filled it with a couple of skate t-shirts and some fake Oakley sunglasses from an Asian hawker at a stall on Canal Street.

The heat was more oppressive than anything he had experienced before. The digital readouts on the side of buildings said 29 degrees, but it felt like much more. He ducked into three different branches of The Gap, solely for the air-conditioning. Throughout the afternoon he tried four different flavours of ice-cold Snapple from small bodegas, drinking each one in just a few gulps from the wide-mouthed glass bottle.

He had a square Wendy’s burger and then a couple of beers in a large noisy bar close to Grand Central. The girl serving smiled at him and said she liked his accent, he had forgotten he even had one. She had dyed red hair and was wearing a Ramones t-shirt. He wanted to talk to her more and she seemed to pause longer around him than the others, but she was barely still for more than a few seconds. Constantly pouring drinks or flicking off bottle tops with the opener hanging from her jean shorts or shouting at some regulars about the baseball that was on the TV. He left her a ten dollar tip on the counter and went back out to the street.

He felt obliged to do some of the things he had discussed with Nick. One of which was going to the Sound Factory Bar, a nightclub which was notoriously hedonistic, predominantly gay and not really what he felt like doing at all, but he thought the effort should be made, if only to have an answer for Nick when he asked him what it was like. He found the venue with the help of a ripped page of his guide book, but it was clearly too early for much to be going on. He wasn’t charged admission and he sat at the bar alone drinking Heineken and nodding his head to the music. No-one was dancing and the place was half empty. A Hispanic man in a white vest and goatee sat next to him at the bar and asked him a few questions about London, but he seemed as bored as Josh. You’re a couple of hours early honey, he told him, it won’t get going until after midnight. Josh yawned and said maybe he’d see him later, but he knew he wouldn’t.

Walking back to his hotel a wave of immense fatigue crashed over his already rounded shoulders. Dragging heavy feet and barely able to look up, he tallied up the hours he had been awake for. A long day had been stretched into a marathon by the time difference, which in itself was a novel concept for him. He couldn’t remember sleeping on the flight but maybe he did, it had felt a lot quicker than expected. He moved through the streets without acknowledging anything else. The homeless rasta asking for a dime, the young latino couple arguing outside a restaurant, a group of teenagers smoking a spliff, he drifted past them all without even looking in their direction. He was too tired to take in anything else.

Back in his hotel room he managed to remove his trainers, but all other clothing remained as he slept face down on the giant bed. He didn’t stir until he woke at 5am, which felt much more like middle of the day. Sitting on the edge of his bed in yesterday’s clothes he watched the city below slowly revealed in golden tones. His heavy limbs were contradicted by his eyes which were wide and ready for the day.

After showering and watching Yo MTV Raps for an hour or so, he skipped the hotel’s buffet breakfast and headed straight to a nearby diner he had seen the previous day. Neon letters and a flashing Pepsi-Cola sign, where single punters ate their food slowly, drinking coffee. The American answer to an English greasy spoon cafe and to his mind a far more authentic place to have breakfast.

He sat at the counter and ate pancakes with crispy bacon and wondered where he could check his emails. The large woman pouring his coffee didn’t even know what the internet was, but she shouted through to the student frying eggs in the kitchen, who said there was a place nearby called the At Cafe. He wrote the address and a small map on a napkin.

It was a short walk until he found it. Dark inside with large plants hanging from the walls. The clientele hunched over terminals were mostly students - long hair, glasses, baggy sweatshirts with university names, like Princeton and Columbia. The air was rich with percolating coffee and burning incense.

Josh entered his password and accessed his email account. There were three messages in his inbox, he opened the most recent first.

Josh scrolled down, skim-reading Nick’s words and then deleted the message from his inbox. The next email was more unexpected.

From: admin@thomasreed.co.uk

Dear Joshua,

I bet you are surprised to get an email from your father. I’m typing it from the IT department at work. I didn’t know how else to reach you and I knew you’d be checking this.

You’ve had a couple of phone calls from a Mr Pullman at Symtech Industries, he seems very keen to make contact with you and wants to discuss a business deal. I asked around at work and they are apparently a legitimate corporation, some of my colleagues seemed surprised I’d even heard of them.

It would appear that you were correct regarding your recent investment and you have exposed your father as an aging dinosaur. It still doesn’t make sense to me, but I am apparently in a minority.

In any case, I think you should phone these Symtech people, this could be quite lucrative. Also on your return you should probably chat with my friend Nigel Benton, he will have some good advice on how to invest this money wisely, and not blow it all on impulsive transatlantic holidays and the like.

Best,
Dad.

An email from his father was unprecedented, Josh’s mouse cursor hovered over the trash can icon, before deciding not to delete it. There was only one other message left in the inbox, which was from an address he didn’t recognise. He had started receiving occasional spam mail recently and was concerned this was another one, but he opened it anyway.

From: ap@symtech.com

Dear Mr Clements,

I have left a couple of messages with your father, but understand you are in New York on a holiday of sorts. We would very much like to get in contact with you regarding two of the domain names that are currently registered in your name. I think we could come to a very beneficial arrangement.

We also have an office in Manhattan if a more spontaneous meeting could fit into your schedule.

Please get back to me asap. I look forward to meeting with you.

Kind regards,
Andrew Pullman
International Business Development Manager
Symtech Industries
London New York Los Angeles

Josh read this last email three times. He leaned back in his chair and read it again. Fuck, he said under his breath. The Indian guy in tracksuit and slippers at the computer terminal next to him, glanced round then turned back again to resume typing, his face inches from the monitor screen.

He printed out this single email, along with a map of the Symtech offices in Manhattan, which he had searched for using Netscape. He paid 25 cents per page to the girl behind the counter, who was chewing gum and reading Vibe magazine, she barely looked up.

Nick woke with a start when Uma Thurman got the adrenalin, but soon drifted off. When he woke again it was ‘I love you honey bunny, I love you pumpkin’ which he thought was the beginning, but maybe that was at the end too. It was hard enough knowing where you were in this film without it being shown on a loop. His eyelids closed again.

He watched the whole section of Christopher Walken talking about the gold watch, then Zoe stirred and they kissed for a while. She put her hand up his t-shirt, softly touching the skin of his chest. Nick thought it might go further, but she laid her head down again to sleep and murmured drowsily.

Gunshots, shouting and other spikes in the audio did not stir them. It was only when the other seats around theirs began to fill, that Nick’s transition to fully awake was complete. Not many empty seats remained by the time Zoe sat up straight on her side of the un-used armrest.

As the opening credits began and the surf guitar music started, Nick wondered how many times he had sat through the movie that day. It was at least three, maybe more. It seemed more of an evening crowd now. He spotted a few in larger groups, supplementing their popcorn with cans of lager.

Zoe giggled silently and squeezed his hand. She leant over close to his ear and whispered, “thanks for being my pillow.”

The remainder of the film was a far more conventional cinema visit. Zoe even went for sweets from the kiosk at one point. Although she was gone for so long, Nick thought she had left him. When she reappeared with a giant-sized bucket of Coke and a large box of Smarties, Nick was so relieved he felt like jumping up and hugging her, but instead just offered a sideways nod and remained focused on the screen.

They watched to the end of the movie and when they finally emerged from the theatre, it was almost dark. The next wave of drinkers were outside of the Soho pubs, half-pissed and laughing loudly. The cycle was beginning again and whereas last night Nick felt part of the surge, he was now a spectator. Stepping aside while others charged headlong into the madness.

Walking slowly to the tube stop, they crossed a street Nick remembered from the previous evening. He still had the photocopied A-Z pages in the back pocket of his wine-stained jeans. His t-shirt probably looked the same, but it felt almost crusty from 24 hours wear, the fabric now abrasive on his skin. He wondered when he would next change it. He may have to buy a replacement at some point.

Zoe said she had “some shit to take care of” and initially Nick thought this meant he should leave, but this wasn’t what she meant, “no no, stay with me… please, if you want to, we’re a team now.”

She only revealed the specifics when they were sitting opposite each other on a busy north-bound Victoria Line tube. About how in her hurry to vacate Grant’s flat, she had left some things behind and needed to pick them up. All of Nick’s counter-arguments that perhaps they should leave it for another day, another day when they’d had more sleep, were waved away by Zoe. She assured him that Grant would not be at home, as he had tickets for some music thing that she was also supposed to attend, and she still had her key.

The deep voice they heard greeting Zoe from within did not really surprise Nick, he had expected the worst and here it was. Nothing in the whole of London was less appealing than what Zoe was trying to convince him to do. Her eyes wide as she mouthed “its okay”, while he hovered in the doorway, with one foot in and one out. Backing out was an option, but it seemed cowardly and pathetic. And yet continuing his entrance, stomping into her ex-boyfriends flat, unannounced at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, was hardly appealing either.

He deliberated until Zoe glanced over her shoulder down the hall, “Come on, Nick, it’s fine.” she beckoned him with her hand, “just wait in the front room for a bit will you, sorry.”

The wooden floors of the hall were polished, framed art prints hung on the off-white walls. A smell of freshly-brewed coffee and dope smoke, emanated from the kitchen, as Zoe leant against the doorframe, facing her ex-boyfriend.

Nick moved down the hall and made eye contact with Grant over her Zoe’s shoulder, as she stood between them. He was sat at a table by the window, in front of a laptop computer. A spiral of smoke came from the ashtray. His light brown hair was shoulder length and he was wearing a linen shirt, loosely unbuttoned. His lips were pursed as he assessed the intruders. Nick felt obliged to offer something, so he did a half wave and said “Alright?” and kept moving towards the front room. Grant stroked his unshaven chin and acknowledged Nick with a nod. His stern expression remained.

In the front room a framed picture of Morrissey hung above the mantelpiece. Shelves of CDs and books and floor-standing speakers, all symmetrically positioned. The sofas were covered in beige fabric and the bay window looked onto a busy Upper Street. It was a bourgeois North London cliche, and yet Nick would swap it for his own Southampton shit-hole any day.

The ensuing argument between Grant and Zoe was unbalanced: she whispered, he shouted, she shushed him, he became louder. Nick moved to the window, but still couldn’t escape the raised voices. Grant’s accusations were significant: she still owed him money, she never paid her share of the rent, she smoked all of his weed and she was a liability and a fucking child. It was impossible to hear Zoe’s defence as she was speaking in hushed tones, so Nick was left to mull the unanswered questions.

After a period of silence, Grant entered the room alone and stood opposite Nick. Smoking a just-lit cigarette, he was wearing tracksuit trousers and his feet were bare. He exhaled smoke to the ceiling then looked back at Nick.

“So? What? Are you fucking Zoe now?”

“Er, no.” said Nick staring intently at Morrissey on the wall. In his peripheral vision Grant was facing him, not turning away once. Maybe not even blinking.

“Are you planning on fucking Zoe?”

Nick released a feeble laugh and looked at Grant who was still staring at him, then down at his own dirty trainers on the polished wood floor, “I don’t know… shit.”

“Well, whether you are or not, and whether you’re planning to or not, I advise you to tread fucking carefully man.”

He could hear Zoe at the other end of the hallway, banging cupboards and slamming drawers shut, he wondered how much longer she would take. Looking up to face Grant again he remembered how Zoe’s mum had said he was a bit of a ponce and Nick had to agree. The stupid little goatee beard, the leather string and shitty little silver medallion from Thailand or somewhere. He was a new-age wannabe intellectual, pompous and arrogant, and really not the kind of self-righteous prick you want to come face to face with after a big night. Uptight hippies are the fucking worst.

Nick nodded up, “What is that? Some kind of threat?”

Grant paused and narrowed his eyes, “No threat pal. It’s nothing to do with me anymore. Good fucking luck, that’s all I’ll say.”

It was around ten o’clock by the time they left the flat. Zoe now wearing a denim jacket with a faux-leather blue sports bag over her shoulder, filled with the belongings it had taken her twenty minutes to gather. Twenty awkward minutes where Nick watched the action on the street outside, but thought of nothing except how much he wanted to leave. Meanwhile Grant moved back to the kitchen and bashed aggressively at the keys of his laptop.

There was only an hour left before last orders and The Hope and Anchor was the closest pub. Nick held the heavy wooden door open for Zoe as they entered. It was busy and noisy inside. Saturday night was in full swing for those who hadn’t gone so hard on Friday. A barrage of echoing drunken voices were getting closer to the bell-ringing finale, now the only way to be heard was shamelessly bellowing into the ear or face of your drinking companions. They bought pints of lager and found two empty bar stools in the din, near the back.

Nick took a couple of long gulps and turned to face Zoe. “Well,” he said, almost shouting over the noise, “that was full on.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, leaning into his ear so much that her lips touched it as she spoke, “I was so fucking sure he wouldn’t be home… please don’t be freaked out.” She dropped her bag next to his stool and pointed towards the toilet door, before pushing her way back through the crowd.

The loudest group nearest to Nick suddenly left the pub as one unit, most likely on to a club or party, it was clear their night was far from over. He watched as the stragglers sloshed the remaining drinks down gaping gullets and hurried to catch the others. With his immediate area vacated it felt relatively quiet now. Nick was pleased to have some space to breathe and think. He poured the fizzy lager into his empty stomach and mentally replayed everything Grant had said. Maybe some of it was true, or maybe it was just be sour grapes. No-one enjoys being dumped, truly amicable break-ups are surely a myth. And then there was his phone call with Josh a few days previously, that was littered with more warnings. But then again he never liked Nick’s girlfriends, and the feeling was reciprocated, maybe that’s how it is with best mates. All the signs were fairly negative, red flags maybe, but Nick knew he wasn’t buying a house or picking a pension fund, thank god. In matters of the heart, the brain needed to stay out of the discussion. Romance was not logical, it was instinctive. And on the subject of Zoe, his feelings were unequivocal - he wanted to be with her all of the time.

He watched as she returned to her stool and picked up her drink with a half smile. “Look at me, my eyes are black from crying and I’m a mess. I feel all fucked up from lack of sleep. Emotionally all over the place. And that back there, with Grant, I really didn’t need that. Sorry, bad idea.”

She wiped her eyes with her palm, one at a time. Last night’s eye liner was smudged away to almost nothing. Her lips had lost their colour hours ago.

She told him how she had always hated confrontations. When she was younger the raging quarrels between her mum and sister forced her to seek sanctuary within her bedroom and Michael Jackson loudly on the walkman headphones. Zoe also disputed Grant’s spurious claims on financial matters. She had never paid rent, that much was true, but she had tried many times and he would never accept her money, and said he simply didn’t need it.

“Fucking arsehole to try and use that against me,” she paused to take a drink, “He was… he is, a control freak and a bully. He made me feel small and stupid all the time. But I never did any of those things he said. He’s so out of order.”

She pulled the cuff of the denim jacket over her fist and wiped her nose. “I’m sorry Nick. You don’t want all this, you just want to have a good time, and so do I. What a fucking downer. Please don’t go home, not yet, we can still have fun.”

Nick bit his bottom lip, thinking of a response. He hadn’t spoken at all during Zoe’s outpouring and now struggled to find the right words. His mouth slowly became a smile. “I think we should get some tequilas.”

Zoe giggled and sniffed back any more tears, “Yeah, me too.”

Josh stood at the bar watching the pints poured and wondered if it had been a mistake to drag Nick away from the gloom of his bedroom. Maybe he should have got on a train, gone into London alone, blown some of his money on new clothes or CDs. He thought he’d probably go home after the next drink. Leave Nick on his own to be miserable and stew in his juice, the sulking was really starting to piss him off.

Nick had barely spoken since they arrived, offering only grunts and single words answers. Occasionally having a mini-rant about Zoe, saying “what the fuck” and “I just don’t know what happened,” but mostly just smoking heavily and sighing. Although he did manage to muster the strength to accept another drink every time Josh offered.

The pub was a shitty place on the high street they came to as teenagers. A commercial easy-listening station crackled through the speakers, while a group of three old geezers argued over whether Southampton footballer Matt Le Tissier should be playing for England, a debate sparked by something on the back page of the newspaper. Josh watched them with pity and wondered if he may end up like them one day. Meeting Nick down the local for a Guinness and doing the crossword. At that moment he couldn’t think of anything worse.

Josh paid for the drinks with a twenty pound note. In his wallet were another ten of the same. He had never been so flush, the money seemed limitless and with it came a new confidence. His posture was more upright, more proud. He held eye contact with the barman for slightly longer than he would have previously. The last time he was there he probably paid with a handful of coins.

Nick shouted across the pub for him to get some change for the pool table. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud, the tone more positive. It sounded like his friend had finally turned the corner. And all it had taken was three pints of Carlsberg Export.

Their reign lasted over two hours. They played each other, then took turns to beat anyone who put a fifty pence coin on the side of the table. Nick was eventually defeated by a postman still in uniform, with an incredible long pot on the black, but by then he was playing with one eye shut and his shot selection was increasingly unpredictable. The steady flow of lager had been interspersed with several shots of sambuca. They were well on their way to becoming shit-faced. When it was time to leave, Nick had to pull Josh up from a sofa with both arms.

They bumped and stumbled through the stained-glass doors and straight into the kebab shop next door without any kind of consultation. They each ate a chicken burger slumped in the red plastic bucket seats, their elbows resting on the greasy table top. Nick had a blob of mayonnaise smudged on his cheek when he suggested they get a cab to a new bar across town that served cocktails. Josh wanted to go home and sleep, but he knew that was never going to happen.

They had been drinking for over four hours but it was still only late-afternoon and the high street shops were all open. Some school kids still in uniform at the next table were throwing chips at each other. The owner watched them from behind his counter with glassy-eyed indifference. Behind him the sweaty obelisk of doner meat turned slowly.

Everything after the kebab shop was veiled in a drunken fog. The next morning Josh remembered getting in a taxi and arguing about something, but exactly what it was he wasn’t sure. Nick had repeated his point loudly, “that’s your problem, that is”, but the all-important second part of the accusation was a mystery.

Memory loss had always been a problem for Josh when out drinking, unlike Nick who seemed to remember every detail, no matter how wasted. Even at the back end of a three day bender, Nick was still able to recall the exact time he eventually got home and the precise fare of the cab that got him there. Josh found it very irritating.

The bar had been very dark and considerably busier than the previous place. Men in suits stood in small circles, laughed aggressively and blew smoke to the ceiling, while young women drank sparkling wine, shrieking and snorting. The acoustics of the high ceilings only added to the blurry cacophony.

They were drinking some horrible cocktail that Nick had selected from the menu at the bar. It tasted like a defrosted slush puppy topped up with cheap vodka. Sadly that part of his memory was crystal clear.

They had smoked lots of cigarettes and Nick kept ordering more of the disgusting drinks. He had asked Josh what he was going to do with his money and he had replied honestly that he hadn’t really thought about it. They discussed many different ways he could spend it. Nick suggested that a vintage Rolex would be a prudent investment or a snooker table, but Josh could barely recall anything after that.

Josh didn’t think they got home too late that night, although that was only really a hunch. He awoke the next morning fully dressed, in Nick’s bed. The sun blazed through the exposed window pane and hurt his eyes. Next to him, Nick was star-shaped and stripped to his boxers, snoring like a buzz-saw. Josh sandwiched his head between two pillows and groaned, he felt like shit.

The digital alarm clock next to the bed said 8:08. He coughed loudly towards Nick’s ear without really needing to. He watched his friend stop snoring momentarily, lick his lips and then continue, roaring like an asthmatic lion. A nasal hair protruded from one nostril and there was a white-headed spot on his neck. They had shared a bed many times and Josh had never found it any less disgusting.

Josh rolled over and stared up at the ceiling and thought back to the previous evening. Memories of the noisy second bar and the smoke and the barman juggling his stupid little metal cocktail shaker, were interspersed with an image of a girl in a red suit. She seemed completely incongruous, smiling calmly among the other braying drunken punters. Josh tried to remember more and couldn’t.

He nudged Nick with his knee, “Oi.”

Nick rolled onto his side, facing away.

Josh persevered, “Did we meet a girl in red last night?” he realised he sounded ridiculous, “Or was that a dream?”

Nick made a sound that could have been a laugh. “You don’t remember?” he said, without moving, his voice was a dry croak.

“No dickhead I don’t, that’s why I’m asking.”

Without speaking, Nick reached down to grope around among the mess on the floor. He pulled a folded red envelope from the pocket of his crumpled jeans and tossed it behind him, onto Josh’s lap.

“What the fuck.” said Josh and looked inside the crumpled cardboard. His eyes focused upon two printed plane tickets.

“This says JFK, New York.”

Nick murmured agreement.

“And they have our names on them.”

Nick coughed, “Yes they do.”

Josh checked the date and took a deep breath, “What’s the date today?”

“We leave in a few hours, you should probably go home and get your passport” said Nick and slowly stood, stretching and yawning, before putting a hand down the front of his underpants. “I can’t believe you don’t remember anything about it, that’s mental” he said walking towards the door laughing, “I’m going for a piss.”

Josh searched the small print on the back of the tickets for any information about refunds. His receipt was in there too - a total of 628 pounds. He calculated the price of the individual fare and wondered if Nick planned to reimburse him. Maybe this was discussed last night, but of course he couldn’t fucking remember.

On Nick’s return he explained how it was Josh who first introduced the topic of travel into their conversation. Listing the places they had never visited, which was basically everywhere. New York was at the top of both of their lists. The hip hop and the nightclubs, 40 ounce liquor bottles and philly blunts. Nick had been reciting Nas lyrics, when Josh noticed there was a high street travel agent over the road that still had its light on. Despite being nearly 8pm, the manager was inside catching up on her paperwork, but let them in to hear their pitch.

Two tickets to New York, Josh had apparently requested, leaving tomorrow. She saw the prospect of a quick sale and invited them to take a seat at her desk.

“You were very insistent,” said Nick smirking and laying back down on his bed, “and she was very accommodating.”

“I bet she fucking was,” said Josh shaking his head, “New York?”

Nick smiled at him and quoted from the Stevie Wonder record, “...just like I pictured it... skyscrapers and everything.”

Josh stood up with a groan, it was all a bit much to comprehend. Due to his hangover he was incapable of processing it, but bizarre as it seemed their flight would take off in less than four hours, which didn’t leave much time to get prepared. He looked around for anything he may have left in Nick’s bedroom, before realising that he was still wearing all of his clothes and anything he owned was still in his pockets. They arranged to meet at the check-in desk at Gatwick, then paused to consider their plan and how ridiculous it sounded, before both breaking into laughter. They were at that early giddy stage of a hangover, and basically both still a bit pissed.

Maybe this was one of those occasions when Nick had persuaded him against his judgement, but it works out for the best. Maybe he should shelve his pessimism, or perhaps the common sense, that says this was a stupid idea and a wild waste of money. Surely the financial specifics will be inconsequential in a few years time, but the memories of a trip to New York would last forever. Surely.

These were thoughts in Josh’s head as he sat upstairs on the number 27 bus, sitting in the same seat, but travelling in the opposite direction as the previous day. He was even wearing the same clothes, but was now feeling significantly more wretched. Head pounding and a bilious burn in his esophagus. Strange he thought that he would be boarding a transatlantic flight later the same day. Strange, that was his conclusion. Neither good or bad, just strange. His slowly developing hangover had left him unable to form an opinion more conclusive than that.

Back at his house he ate some toast standing at the kitchen counter. The sink was full of dishes and the bin was overflowing - the place was disgusting. It was in a worse state than his student house. His dad was obviously at work, but he wasn’t sure if his brother Adrian was at home and didn’t care. If it was possible to last until the start of the new term without running into him at all, that would be preferable. The wounds created by the divorce had never really healed, despite about seven years elapsing since it all happened. He found it strange how Adrian maintained an almost malicious resentment for their mother and had never spoken to her since, while even their father now managed to exchange a few functional words when necessary.

Josh’s dad had told him that Adrian was currently “in between consultancy contracts”, meaning he was spending the summer watching televised cricket in his pants and could feasibly flounce into the kitchen at any time, presumably to make some more mess. He had always been a filthy pig. Each time they met, any civility soon collapsed into a familiar argument which Josh was keen to avoid. He quickly pushed a final half slice of toast into his mouth and walked quietly upstairs.

He spent a while hunting for his passport, which was eventually found at the back of his old sock drawer. A few favourite items of clothing were collected and placed in an Adidas sports bag. He wondered if he would regret not taking a suitcase, but as they were only going for five days, he thought he could probably survive without one.

The note he left for his father was written on the back of an envelope he found in the pile of post: “Dad. So I’m going to New York today with Nick. A bit last minute. See you when I get back. Josh.” He re-read it and laughed at how ludicrous it sounded, but he couldn’t think of anything else he could add, so he left it at that.

As they moved through the field, in between parked cars, Gabe went to take her hand, but Zoe just smiled and dug deeper into her tracksuit-top pockets. Long grass wet with morning dew soaked through her shoes. They climbed over a wooden sty and followed the fence along to a gate that opened to the base of a small hill. Slipping and laughing up a muddy path, they reached the top and sat breathless on a fallen tree trunk.

From a higher vantage point, they watched the blurry sun rise over the party. The music now seemingly much quieter due to the distance. No-one was leaving yet, all of the cars remained stationary. The dance floor was reduced to fifty or so hardy souls stepping to the softly pulsing kick drum. Watching from above, Zoe felt detached and the newfound tranquility was a tonic.

Gabe was describing a childhood treehouse, that an uncle had built in some wasteland near his parents house in Hereford. He was mid-sentence when the sound of horse hooves approaching from behind interrupted his story. They both turned to face two men on horseback, trotting slowly towards them. Green waxed jackets and wellington boots. They looked fresh and cleanly shaved, their hair wet and combed back.

“Good morning,” said the first man, formally.

“Morning,” repeated the second.

Their appearance was surreal and completely incongruous. They were the first people they had met in several hours that were neither on drugs nor wearing trainers. Zoe wondered if they were even real.

The horses were of average size, but seemed to tower over her. The men astride the giant animals taller still. Looking up from her log, as if straight to the heavens, her usual poise was strangely lacking, “Um, what the...”

She looked to Gabe, who crushed a barely-smoked cigarette under his shoe before turning to speak calmly, “Morning guys, everything OK?”

The first man seemed to study Gabe’s face for a moment before replying, “Yes, all seems fine so far.” He pulled on the reins to steady his horse.

The other man peered down onto the party in the field at the base of the hill, before adding, “Just doing the rounds. Make sure no-one’s interfering with the cattle.”

“This your farm, is it?” asked Gabe.

“Hmm,” answered the first man without looking at him, “been in the family since the eighteen hundreds.”

Gabe nodded before adding, “Bet they didn’t have parties like this back then.”

A moment of heavy silence hung between them until both men reluctantly started laughing. This released a flow of words about how the organiser had approached them via a connection in the city, asking to use the fallow fields for a one-off party. They then chatted back and forth with Gabe about the weather and the mud in the car park fields and how they didn’t much care for the music. Not once did Gabe stumble over his words or appear at all uncomfortable. He kept the banter going and his drunken charisma never faltered.

Zoe was beginning to understand this was part of his character. Here was someone who always landed on their feet. Not smug or arrogant, just never ruffled. She had met boys like that before and couldn’t deny it was reassuring to be in their presence.

While he chatted with the men, Zoe sat motionless on the log and struggled to process the scene. She could sense Gabe’s movement by her side, he was gesticulating and laughing, but she remained eyes-front and waited for this bizarro scene to pass. The recent revelations about her father, in addition to this current weirdness, especially in the morning light, was almost too much to handle.

Zoe knew all too well about the surreal colours that the glow of dawn will paint your surroundings. After a night spent in the darkness, when your situation and new acquaintances are illuminated for the first time, there is something about that moment of realisation, the sudden clarity, when you realise everything’s gone a bit fucking weird. And it’s not only because you’ve been up all night, or because of the drugs you may have taken, not completely anyway. Zoe had experience in this area and there is definitely something in the tonal range, colour spectrum, or whatever, that makes it very different to the rest of the day.

She focused on the branches of a nearby oak tree swaying woozily in the wind. She thought about Nick, she wondered what he was doing. The intimacy they had shared, now felt alien. Thinking of him as more than a friend felt strange. She knew that this would probably change when she saw him again, but the prospect of that reunion now seemed like something she should delay.

She lifted her trainers onto the rough bark and hugged her knees, forming a ball. It felt like a far less vulnerable shape for sitting on a strange hill at dawn. Looking out across the countryside, the neat neighbouring fields, some green with long grass, others yellow with wheat and barley, the dividing hedgerows and occasional oak tree, it all seemed so familiar and so English and yet completely alien. She stared into the landscape and felt utterly lost.

Gabe touched her shoulder and she jumped.

“You OK Zoe?”

She looked around to see the two horses moving slowly down the hill away from them.

“Yeah sorry,” she said, rubbing her face with both hands, “The lords of the manor were doing my head in.”

They shared a cigarette, while Zoe bit some dead skin from around her thumb nail.

“So what now?” asked Gabe.

“Good question,” said Zoe glumly. Her legs were starting to grow heavy, she wanted a cup of tea. “Back to London I guess.”

Gabe sighed. “Fancy a dance?”

Zoe laughed. “Not really. You?”

“Not really,” he said as he flicked his cigarette end into a bush.

Neither spoke for a minute. Down below, the drums dropped out of the music briefly and then started again. Everybody whooped in unison.

“Jesus,” said Zoe, “I think I’m getting too old for this.”

Gabe snorted and nudged her with his elbow, “Nonsense. How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty,” she said quietly.

“Well I’m twenty four.”

Zoe smiled and looked round to face him, “Then you’re definitely too old.”

He snorted again.

They watched as a girl started dancing on the roof of a car, until she stumbled and climbed back down again.

“Why don’t you come to Spain with me?” said Gabe.

“Shut up.”

“No, why not? I’ve got to leave today or tomorrow anyway and I don’t really want to drive on my own.”

”Get real.”

“What? We can have a night or two in San Sebastian, swim in the sea, get some proper sun, then get a free standby flight back. Unless you’ve got something better on?”

Zoe paused to consider the inevitable comedown back at her mum’s house. Watching shit TV with Jo and drinking Ribena. “Nope, not really,” she said eventually.

“Well there you go then. It’s a no brainer.”

“No brainer,” mimicked Zoe, as a smile crept onto her face.

The prospect of an instant holiday out of nowhere was so thrilling, that any rational counter arguments were easily ignored. It was a wonderfully wild suggestion, at a perfect time of the night when the party had nothing left to offer. All the bones had been sucked dry and no-one would benefit from staying any longer. Zoe knew there was more to life than this and didn’t want to miss it. She quickly transformed from naysayer to someone who couldn’t wait to leave. While she didn’t really know Gabe – at all – his connections to Stu and also her dad, made him feel more like a long-term friend. Or at least he did at that moment, and she was worried that might change if they didn’t act quickly.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go,” she said, nudging Gabe’s shoulder and laughing.

This was the day to seize, plus if they left it any later, she might begin to question her decision.

Back down at the scene of the party it was now a war zone, with bodies lying over each other on the long grass. Some passed out while others followed the drifting clouds with dilated pupils. It was full daylight, but the music of the dancefloor continued pulsing and throbbing. Arching over the DJ booth, the lighting rig of strobes and lasers was now redundant in the daylight.

Finding the others was relatively easy. Stu was smoking a joint with a small group, who were all fish-faced and barely conscious. Jo was sitting on Cliff’s lap wearing a zip-up fleece jacket that wasn’t hers.

Neither Jo or Stu wanted to leave, and both seemed unfazed that Zoe and Gabe were planning to. Stu said he could get a lift back to a tube stop at the end of the line, Uxbridge he thought, maybe, but he promised to make sure Jo was with him when he did. Jo just waved a hand and said “yeah whatever,” and went back to kissing Cliff. Zoe was mildly vexed about the arrangement, but it was no less ludicrous than driving to Spain, so she went with it.

After wheel-spinning in the long muddy grass and a multiple-point manoeuvre turn to squeeze past an already dented Renault Five, Gabe finally exited the gate and turned out of the field. Zoe watched him change gear with a giggle, like he was doing something wrong. He put on a pair of John Lennon sunglasses from the glove box and pushed the tape of hard house back into the stereo. He was nodding to the beat as he saluted an elderly driver who let him pass first, down a narrow bush-lined country road.

Zoe reclined the seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. Her white trainers were muddy and covered in grass. “Sorry, do you mind?” she asked, after she’d done it.

“Fuck no,” he replied, “it’s not mine.”

They both laughed and she put two cigarettes in her mouth and lit them, before passing one to the driver.

The separate legs of the journey were discussed, roughly calculating the length of the entire trip. It all just seemed like a caper, Zoe didn’t really mind, it could have been thirty minutes or three weeks. At that point in time, the concept of adventure was the only relevant factor, everything else was mere specifics. The M4 into London, then M25 and M23 down to Dover, before the ferry takes them to France, then beyond that, it really wasn’t important to her.

She felt the kind of wild liberty she had been aching for since before her split with Grant. The time spent with Nick was great, she loved being with him, he was her partner in crime. Maybe she’d meet up again on her return, but she couldn’t think about that until later. Not that she was really even sure how she felt about Gabe, but that wasn’t important then either. To Zoe he felt like a cousin, sort of. An extension of Stuart, just much better looking and funnier. She had always felt an affinity with Stu, and the sentiment had been easily transferable to his best mate.

Conversation flowed easily between them. Anecdotes intertwined and overlapped: “Yeah that’s like the time...” “Wow I was there that night, do you remember...” “So do you know so and so?” “Shit that’s so mad” etc.

A bottle of Evian refilled with lukewarm tap water was all there was to drink, which did nothing to quench the dry nothingness of chewing the same piece of gum for seven hours. But Gabe was keen to remind her that this austerity wouldn’t last. Tomorrow when they got to France, they would be drinking the finest Beaujolais and feasting on incredible stinking cheeses.

They made a brief stop to pick up her passport and Zoe was forced to endure an awkward encounter with her mum. She tried not to reveal her plans without actually lying, attempting to appear calm and coherent, while her dark twitching eyes said: I’ve been up all night and I’m not thinking straight. She flew around the house grabbing things at random and slamming cupboards, like she was working against the clock.

“Going away for a couple of days Mum, I’ll be back soon.”

“What do you mean ‘going away’? Where and with who?”

“Nothing to worry about mother,” she said holding up a pack of Jaffa Cakes from the kitchen, “can I take these?”

“What? Yes of course,” her mum followed her upstairs and into her bedroom. “Look Zoe wait, slow down. Nick has phoned like five times. Poor bloke is beginning to sound quite desperate. I don’t suppose you’re going to see him?”

“Probably not,” said Zoe and paused briefly before selecting several of her favourite music tapes from the shelf. She had to keep going, stopping to think about it properly, or worse still discussing it with her mum was not an option.

“Probably not,” repeated her mum sarcastically, before looking out of the window. “Who’s that outside in the hippy van? Is that Stewart’s friend?”

Zoe stuffed a couple of t-shirts, a skirt and some underwear into a white plastic bag. “Yes,” she said without looking, “it’s Gabe.”

“Gabe? Is that his real name? And where’s Stu and where’s my other daughter?”

“They’ll be back later, probably.” She moved down the stairs and through the hall, followed by her mum. “Sorry mum, got to go, love you.” They hugged and then Zoe slammed the front door shut behind her.

Back on the road and halfway to Dover, the mood was more subdued. Any party buzz had been consumed by mid-afternoon tiredness. Gabe struggled to keep his eyes open and focused. He drank three cans of coke and smoked constantly. Zoe also battled narcoleptic waves of sleep, nodding back awake multiple times. To boost morale she reminded Gabe of the cheese and wine they would be enjoying tomorrow, but neither seemed as enthusiastic as before.

She felt immense relief when the large blue road signs started featuring a small boat icon. They followed directions to the car ferry, along with a convoy of considerably more prepared holiday-makers. Roof-racks and caravans. Families in hatchbacks with GB stickers, sleeping bags and pillows squashed against the back windows, ready to explode when the boot opens.

Soon the enormous vessel was in sight, a huge floating metal lump with pipes and chimneys, every inch of it painted white. Above the road flashing arrows channelled the traffic into lanes for boarding. Incredibly there was a sign for vehicles without tickets and so Gabe was able to pay with cash at a little toll booth. A fat man in a high-vis waistcoat counted the coins grumpily.

“What’s this? Last minute holiday or summat?”

Gabe simply murmured a reply, neither of them awake enough to counter with a quick response, as they surely would have done twelve hours earlier.

The canteen on board was the main communal area, rows of formica brown tables attached to small disk-like orange seats. Long metal dishes of fried food and sliced cheese sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, were illuminated by yellow lights. Punters slid their wooden trays along the service counters noisily, piling items on at random.

Zoe nibbled her way through half a bag of Quavers, while Gabe slept. His long dark hair dropping onto the table top. With his face down, Zoe stared at the top of his head and tried to remember what he even looked like. His right ear was just visible, a small silver ring pierced the top. She hadn’t noticed that before.

All around children were arguing with siblings, nodding to walkmans or buried in comics. Parents drank cans of Carlsberg or tea from polystyrene cups. Zoe knew that they were the only representatives from their certain demographic. A fact only compounded by the descending paranoia from lack of sleep. The crashing fear was inevitable, luckily most of the other passengers were too caught up in the start of their holidays to notice a pair of frazzled drifters.

She asked the friendly-looking dad at the next table if she could please possibly buy a packet of Rothmans from his just-purchased carton of 200. He gave her a pack and told her not to worry about the money. He called her ‘love’ and then winked. She thanked him with a thin smile and went out on deck to smoke.

Blown and buffeted by the ferocious wind, she stumbled then steadied herself with one hand on the cold metal railing. Her hair swirled like Medusa and the roaring noise was disorientating. After several attempts, she finally lit her cigarette within the shelter of a tightly cupped hand.

No land could be seen in any direction, Zoe looked all around her, only the shimmering horizon was visible. Ahead lay the future and behind her was the past, both softly lit by the setting sun. Such a contrast to the sensory overload chaos of the here and now onboard the ship.

The boat was starting to rise and fall like the world’s slowest biggest roller coaster, while she stood unsteadily and reassessed her situation. She barely had any money and no real idea of what she was actually doing. She didn’t know exactly where San Sebastian was and was unsure if a free standby flight was even an actual thing. The guy asleep inside at the table was little more than a stranger. And the cigarette she was smoking was way too strong.

But stay focused on that beautiful golden future up ahead, she thought, it will be OK soon.

She flicked the half-smoked Rothman overboard and wiped the sea spray from her face. Even in the thundering winds she could tell that her hands were shaking.