31 Falkner Street (14)

I sat upright in bed, brain whirring round and round in a speed-induced frenzy of half thoughts and feelings of intense guilt that I always got if I stayed still for too long and stopped talking. I wondered if Paddy was asleep too, or if his eyes were shut but head whizzing. I couldn’t see how anyone could sleep through this speed, there was no way of me being able to battle the steady stream of random thoughts with unconsciousness. Drink wouldn’t do it. My heart was pounding slower than it had been a few hours ago, I physically couldn’t stand up to get to the toilet, I couldn’t speak. I was trapped in my own mind for at least the next hour and once again cursed myself for having thought it was a good idea to take so much. I had loved it when everyone had been around me, most of us with our pupils dilated and jabbering on and on. I had felt sadness when the talk had begun to die down, knowing that this was coming and that taking any more wouldn’t stop it. Now I felt like a prisoner.

I thought back to the two main Falkner Street news items of the day. Mark, Stacey and Nina had gone back down South and left Paddy alone in the house with a huge and unpaid gas and electricity debt and a month’s rent to pay the following week. They had only supposed to be going back for a few days to see their parents, and had taken most of their stuff. Paddy had only found out when Mark had texted him to tell him he had enrolled on a course at the local met college. Stacey and Nina hadn’t answered his calls or responded to his texts. He was in the shit. I hadn’t seen him angry before, but when Mark had text him again later in the day asking him to post his playstation 3 down he had hit the roof. But not as much as he wanted to. He could only get angry via a long text message as Mark wouldn’t pick up his phone. I helped Paddy to move all of his stuff into the biggest room of the house. I put a couple of washes for him in my washing machine as when attempted in his, it became clear that it was broken. I even ironed a couple of his work shirts for him and hung them up. He looked like he needed to be looked after. We had walked down to TJ Hughes and he had bought a dish drainer and a pair of curtains. I dug out some stripy throws and some cushions and covered the rotten old couches in the living room in an attempt to make the place a bit more homely. Somehow, it made it look even worse. I opened the back door and a pile of split bin bags fell into the house along with a spider and a rat. Paddy told me that they hadn’t put their bin bags at the end of the alleyway to be collected for a good while and I told him that I wasn’t surprised that the whole street was infested with rats if that was how everyone lived. He started moving the bin bags out of the infested yard space straight away. We didn’t know why we were making efforts to improve the house, we didn’t even know if Paddy would be able to stay there or if he would get evicted. He would definitely struggle to pay the normal rent, but now he had two lots to pay. I didn’t want him to go. In my mind, if he went from the street, even if he stayed in Liverpool, I knew that our relationship – if that’s what it was – would be over. I wasn’t a fool and didn’t expect that it would last long anyway but I wasn’t ready for it to be finished.

We didn’t agree that I would be staying over that night, we didn’t need to because I had stayed over every night lately. But we didn’t dare speak about me moving in. He needed a housemate and I needed a different house, which would have been perfect had we not have been in a new relationship and could possibly split up within days and be living in the same house. It would be bad enough living next door to each other, and having to see him bringing girls home, or if it was awkward bumping into each other in the street and pretending not to see each other. So that wasn’t an option, we would just carry on with me practically living there without living there.

When Jo text us to tell us – tell, not ask – to meet her and Kath at a nearby pub, we decided to go. I felt that Paddy could do with a drink. I spotted them straight away as we walked in the door, two huge women holding hands and squashed up on a large leather corner booth. One dressed as a man, one dressed as a woman, both looking extremely serious. Jo nodded at us grimly and Kath gave a brief half smile. Before we could order a drink or sit down, Jo began to speak.

‘We’ve got something to tell you both’ she began formally, ‘and we need you to listen. You can’t tell anyone else.’ This’ll be shit, I thought as they both glanced at one another still with the formal faces on.

‘We’re together now. We are a couple.’ They squeezed each other’s hands which they had already been holding. So they were together. After two weeks of secretly holding hands under sticky pub tables and pretending that Ella was a bad person to orchestrate it.

‘Ella doesn’t know yet. In a minute we’re going to text her and tell her to get her stuff together and get out.’ Jo continued. She was talking with the tone of voice of someone making a Very Important Speech.

‘And..’ Pause for effect, another look into each other’s eyes. ‘We’re engaged.’

If I’d had chance to get a drink, I would have spat it across the table. I stifled a laugh and thought about what I could say.
‘Engaged? Really!’ I managed. How strange. Like being engaged when you were 6 in primary school. I wondered if they wanted Paddy to be the vicar and for me to make them a daisy chain ring. Was it insensitive to now ask about how Ella would feel, being kicked out for another woman? I decided to just get a drink and drink it down quick. I got Paddy one as well, after all, he was about to be homeless. Could do with some cheering up, just in case Jo and Kath’s good news hadn’t already cheered him up enough.

After a few more rounds and some of the strong batch of Jo’s speed, I was feeling in much better spirits. Jo and Kath’s news suddenly seemed to be exciting and nice – I didn’t have a wide ranging vocabulary when buzzing – and I had forgotten that Ella was probably moving bin bags of stuff as we sat in town, pissed.

When Jo decided that she wanted to go home, we all got a taxi rather than walk the ten minutes back. Jo made the taxi stop off at the off license and bought a lot of vodka. We continued to drink at Jo’s house and Ian and Les joined in. Forgetting their earlier vows of silence, they told Ian and Les about the engagement. Even Ian didn’t throw his arms around the pair of them in congratulations. Whilst giving a perfunctionary ‘oh, right..lovely’, his face seemed to be screaming, what’s happening to Ella then? Les wasn’t so tactile.

‘What do you mean, you’re engaged? I thought you’ He stabbed a finger in the direction of Kath’s face, ‘were engaged to that other one down there? I haven’t seen much of her, but I like her. She’s a top bird.’ He scowled at Jo. ‘I tell you what you are Joanne, you’re a bloody troublemaker, you are.’

Well they didn’t take kindly to that. Ella was the trouble maker. Ella had been hitting Kath. In fact, Ella had made Kath’s life hell for the past four years, and just because Kath hadn’t spoken about it, she was coming across as the bad one, just like Ella wanted. And Les was ignorant. And he was a horrible old fucker.

Well, Les had retorted that Jo and Kath couldn’t even get married because neither of them had a cock, although Jo wished she did. And what the bloody hell were they going to wear on their wedding. Was Jo going to wear a bloody grooms suit?

Yes, Jo said, she was actually.

And a top hat? And a pair of boxies? He said. He told them not to bother asking him to be their best man.

They said there was no way he would have ever been considered to be best man, that he wasn’t even invited to the wedding, and in fact was barred. And furthermore, he was barred from Jo’s house.

But he wasn’t barred. He and Jo calmed down and clinked glasses.

It was only at 6am, sitting up in Paddy’s bed, that I wondered what had happened to Ella.