31 Falkner Street (9)

‘Your road is really scary.’ Kerry told me. I felt insulted.

‘How is it?’

‘I’ve just seen that big fat scary woman walking across the road with half a door in her hand, what the fuck Lucy.’

‘Yeah, only because she needed to get the door down, there’s a woman who lives there, she’s not right, and she lives with this old man – minging I know – and she keeps disappearing for a couple of days every now and then and he gets locked out. What else are they supposed to do? They’re being kind.’

‘Hmm. Yeah well she said ‘what the fuck are you looking at’ to me, and now I can’t go until she’s gone back into her house.’

‘Are you taking the piss Kerry? She won’t do anything to you!’

‘She might! She was shouting at me in the street because I looked at her, get onto it! I am not going out there now, you’ll just have to tell me when she’s gone.’

Kerry peered out of the bedroom window, presumably checking that the coast was clear. She withdrew her head quickly, face bright red.

I could hear ‘You bastard! Looking at me again! Get down here now! I’ll fucking stare at you, you prick! Etc’. Obviously Jo had caught Kerry looking out of the window. Oh god, Kerry was actually scared. I tried to explain.

‘She’s just had a drink, honestly she isn’t as scary as she makes herself out to be. She never does anything, she’s all mouth.’

‘Can’t believe she’s your friend.’

‘She’s not.’

‘Yes she is, you liar. Laura said you’re always at hers. Drinking. You love her. She’s your best friend in the world.’

‘Shut up! And I think Laura just says a bit too much sometimes, always drinking, Laura’s always bloody out in town and then calling in sick to work.’

‘Yeah but that’s at night, not in the afternoon.’

‘I don’t drink in the afternoon! If it’s my day off I can drink whenever I want anyway. Oh my god, you and Laura are fine ones to talk anyway, grip it, I’m 20, I’m at uni, and I’m working all hours too! And now you’re trying to say I’ve got a drinking problem!’

‘You’re the one who said drinking problem, not me. I just said you drink with Jo.’

‘I don’t like Jo actually’, although I lowered my voice to hiss this bit at her, after all, Jo did live next door. ‘I drink, occasionally, with the others. Who are nice!’

‘Anyway, I have to go to work now. Will you stand at the door with me while I get in my car?’

‘Faggot.’ Although I did.

Kerry was so outspoken and opinionated! I couldn’t believe her! I didn’t like all of her slaggy mates myself, throwing themselves all over lads after they’d had a drink in the clubs in town. And, I reasoned to myself, Kerry is a snob. She half-didn’t like them all because they were the underclass. She’d better get her head on if she was going to be a nurse. Jo could be lovely, as well.

*

A week after I had moved to the street, I turned 20. Having to get up and ready for work without having a pile of nicely wrapped presents to open brought it home to me that I was an adult now and birthdays wouldn’t be special any more. I felt like an adult, and was dealing with it like an adult. At least in work I could get the others to make me cups of tea, maybe. That wouldn’t be so bad.

‘You’d better leave a bit earlier today if you’re going to work.’ Laura called from her room. ‘You’ll need to sort your car out.’

Oh shit, it’s been wrecked. I scrambled to Laura’s room and strained my neck to gaze at my car through her window. Ahh. My little car was festooned with balloons, sellotaped all over it. ‘Happy birthday’ banners covered the windscreen.

‘When did you do that?’ I asked Laura, loved up.

‘Wasn’t me. I got you some flip flops, look.’ She dangled a bag in front of me.

I went outside to my car, sad that I would have to pull everything off and ruin the artwork so that I could drive it. I wanted to show people! I was gobsmacked that someone would make that gesture for me. I heard cackling, and Jo and Paddy poked their heads out of Jo’s front door.
‘Do you like it!’ She shouted. ‘We were sneaking out in the night, we had to wait for you all to go to sleep, you bastards!’ Paddy gave me a bottle of wine and a kiss on the cheek.
‘Thanks guys! I’m all choked up!’
‘Come on then you prick’, Jo shouted at Paddy. ‘We’ll go to sleep now. We wanted to wait up and see your face when you saw it!’
It was 7.30am. They had gone to all that effort for me. I didn’t even mind that they had nicked the bottle of wine from Asda.