31 Falkner Street (10)

Chapter 10

Driving my car through the Mersey tunnel, back towards Liverpool. Jo is weighing down the left hand side and making it difficult for me to change gear due to the room she is taking up. She refused to sit in the back, and my car has made a horrible scraping sound when I have gone over speed bumps. She keeps telling me that I am a shit driver. Hm. I’m not the one with the ban. That goes for Paddy too, who is sitting in the back. The three of us were off on a road trip until ten minutes ago, wait for it, to visit Jo’s girlfriend Mary in prison. She wanted to introduce us to her, well, I think more likely she wanted a lift to see her; I did happen to notice that she only had one visiting order slip. They had a row on the phone just as I had got on the motorway and I had been firmly advised to turn the car around. Jo is in an absolute fouler. Mary told her she wasn’t in the mood for Jo to visit her, bit cheeky I thought, and that’s when Jo told her in no uncertain terms not to bother her again in that case.

We get back to Falkner street, and Jo orders us both into her house. She pours herself a glass of vodka and we all swallow back a speed bomb. The landline keeps going, on and on and on. What is it with these two? Had they not only spoken 15 minutes ago and both made it clear they didn’t want to see or speak to each other? Thought they were supposed to be in their early 40’s. Thought everyone in their early 40’s was mature until I lived here. Jo loved it. They were always like this with each other, like teenage drama. On, off, on, off, love you, fuck you. Then there was Jo’s bit on the side, Kath, and others. And I was pretty sure that Mary was actually straight and bored in prison. Not just making assumptions there, I got that from different things I’d heard. Like Jo telling us all that Mary had point blank refused to go anywhere near Jo’s lady bits when they were in their cell together.

After the phone had rang non-stop several times, I was fed up. Why did I have to sit in on this? And I had thought we were going on a road-trip, and what’s more I hadn’t even wanted to go. I was rotten the night before because of Jo and hung over when she had forced me up in the morning. And because we had had to leave when she demanded it, I had literally 2 minutes to get ready and looked like shit. Everyone knows when you have snogged someone a few times you have to have your hair done or at least washed, full (natural looking) make up at all times, and not just an old bobbly vest top on with the jeans that make your arse look the biggest out of all your pants. So I was blaming Jo for that too.

‘I’ll get it shall I?’ I sang.
‘No! I’m not in!’ Jo shouted.
‘If I answer it, she’ll think I am your new girlfriend. Hilarious! Hello? I’m sorry, she’s not. Who’s this can I ask? Mary? Who’s Mary?’
As I replaced the phone receiver, Jo looked at me in disbelief.
‘I think she does think that I’m your new girlfriend. She was screaming at me. Did you like that little touch, who’s Mary? Hahaha.’
‘No.’
‘I did, I thought that was well funny. Who’s Mary, haHA.’ I sat on the couch, laughing to myself and repeating the conversation to the room ‘Who IS this, can I ask?’, ‘Who’s Mary? FUCK YOU haha.’

Paddy was laughing along and Jo was stifling a smile. She couldn’t be angry because Paddy was laughing, and she had made me turn the car round. And because she wanted us to go into town and get drunk with her, and if we said no she knew she would end up sitting in her house on her couch with the recliner bit listening to ‘their song’. A moment like this – Leona Lewis.

We would all need a bit more speed and a few cans before we went out though. Should I sort my face and stuff out? I decided to just change my shoes. My heart was racing too much, I was too hyperactive to have a shower and blow dry my hair. If I picked out an outfit, I probably would have ended up in some strange concoction anyway. Besides, it wasn’t even lunchtime, no-one in town would be dressed up and we would only be going into dingy pubs. I had just pissed off a real life murderer to add to all that, and couldn’t waste my numbered days.

Kath and Ella came round to partake in the festivities. Yes, all friends again. Kath had some speed, then Ella did. Then Kath immediately took Ella outside for a ‘talk’, and when they came back in Ella was wearing her default expression of ‘sheepish’. She said that she wasn’t having any more speed, but Kath had another line with Jo in the loo. It was being snorted in Jo’s loo at that point because Les had woken up and was sitting with a glass of bitter and a cigarette which he kept forgetting to flick the ash from. No-one would use drugs in front of Les because he disapproved of it. Drink as much as you may like though, apparently. Someone put Elvis on the CD player and Les put on a little show, rooted in position with one leg shaking away. Then someone put Queen on and Les called Freddie Mercury a ‘horrible auld puff’, thus beginning a screaming row with Jo.

‘But you are a bloody gay, Joanne! I’m not saying there’s owt wrong with it, I’m just saying you are a puff!’
‘You prick! You’re being disrespectful to my whole culture, you bastard! You old prick, I’ll be speaking to Diane after I knock your fucking head off!’
‘Listen you, you might look like a man, but I am a bloody man and I’d have you off. One to the left, one to the right, goodnight and god bless!’
‘Hurry up and die you cunt. Just hurry up and fucking well die. Keep on smoking, Les.’

After Les had huffed off home, glass still firmly in hand, Paddy and I were left to entertain Ella in Jo’s front room as Jo and Kath spent the majority of the next few hours in the loo. There wasn’t enough speed in the world for it. Ella was lovely, if a bit slow, and went on and on about her and Kath. Her tattoo of Kath’s name, how they wanted to get married, how they slept in different beds, how they met, how glad she was that they had moved to Falkner street because she loved us and Jo. I felt myself come down. I felt like a bitch.