Then she kissed me, long and hard, and I didn’t even care that a passing dog walker sucked his teeth at us. It was only when we finally came up for air that I had the thought, Oh shit, now I’m going to have to tell Pete.

32

1984
Meredith

As debut gigs went, the first twenty minutes were pretty much par for the course. Five people in the audience, all of them connected in some way with the band. A few others stuck their heads around the door of the small function room to see what the racket was, recoiled at the wall of sound and retreated.

Samantha had promised to drum up a gang of mates who so far hadn’t materialised, and there’d been no sign of Pete before we left to set up, so I assumed he chickened out and wasn’t coming. I told myself I didn’t care, that it didn’t matter because I had Samantha there, standing right near the front with a pint glass clutched in her long, slim fingers, beaming at me, her auburn hair loose, cascading over her shoulders, and her eyes rarely leaving mine. Even just looking at her turned me on. And in that respect I was glad that Pete was a no-show, because it meant I’d be sharing my mattress with Samantha tonight instead of him.

During our third number, the door opened wider, light spilled in from the saloon bar and a group of eight Goths – five women and three guys – burst in, shuffle-dancing as soon as they were through the door, immediately bringing the room to a dark sort of life. One of them, a short slim woman in combats with a mass of black curls, was far more animated than the others. She leaped on Samantha and hugged her around the neck effusively, her lit roll-up – or was it a joint? – dangling from her fingers.

Back off, bitch, I thought, turning up my snarl and raising my voice to a banshee howl as we launched into a cover of The Cure’s ‘Subway Song’, which only made the black-haired woman jump around to the beat more wildly. I wondered who she was. She and Samantha were obviously old friends, but Samantha hadn’t mentioned anyone specific coming, just ‘some of my buddies from when I lived in Wandsworth’.

She had all sorts of buddies in different places – buddies I knew nothing about. I wasn’t even really clear who she’d been living with in Salisbury when I first met her – she never mentioned them anymore and was irritatingly vague whenever I asked her. Something about someone’s sister-in-law, I recalled.