It’s actually pretty stressful, she decides, being the one in charge.Holding the fort, as her dad put it.
Martha necks a vodka shot and studies her face in the mirror. Almost instantly, she feels a little better. She feels better still once she’s showered and changed and done her make-up and hair. And her mood continues to improve as she and Fin perform a speedy inventory of the living room, carrying any easily breakable items up to their dad’s studio where they’ll be safe.
Friends start to arrive, lugging rucksacks filled with beer and wine and various spirits. And now music is playing and Martha’s heart lifts as she opens the door to see Izzy, with whom she’s in love. They hug and kiss and Martha pulls her into the living room where the table is already covered in cans and bottles and puddles of spilt drink.
Time’s a weird thing, Martha reflects briefly as Izzy grabs her hand and they start to dance. This day, with her dad fussing and pacing, seemed to stretch for a hundred years. But now the party’s under way, and in a blink it’s midnight. Finand his friends are all crammed onto the sofa, laughing and drinking enthusiastically, a blur of troubled complexions flushed with the headiness of the party. Pablo, who Martha dated briefly, is smoking a spliff in the middle of the living room. Martha wonders for a second whether the smell will linger until morning. So what if it does? They can open the windows; and anyway, her dad won’t care because he bought a gold bracelet for someone who’s not Mum, and he wrote on the gift card:Just a little something for you, beautiful.So fuck him, Martha decides.
That’s why she’s not overly concerned when a bottle of red wine spills onto the floor, bleeding all over the beige rug, or when a group of unfamiliar young men saunter in without knocking. ‘All right!’ Pablo says in greeting. There’s some laughing and jostling, which signals to Martha that it’s okay, they’re friends of Pablo’s. The fact that Pablo steals car parts to order doesn’t concern her. There are no cars in here!
Now the music has changed and is deafening and thumping insistently. Martha panics briefly that the neighbours will hear and might complain to her dad – but it’s too late to do anything about that now. And what’s he going to do anyway? Ground her? Martha necks another shot, accepts a drag on a joint and allows herself a moment’s pleasure that the night is going so well. People are kissing now, in the living room and kitchen, on the stairs and in all of the bedrooms.
The night goes on, and yet more people arrive – to think Martha had worried that no one would turn up! And kitchen cupboards are ransacked, packets of crisps and biscuits torn open. Someone delves into the freezer and starts eating cookie dough ice cream from the tub. Someone else stumbles downstairs to roars of laughter. They’ve been rifling through a wardrobe upstairs and found these hilarious trousers, like old raver’s trousers – yellow with squiggly patterns – and they’ve put them on.
‘Look at these! These are fantastic!’ an unfamiliar boy announces, affecting a raver’s dance in the hallway.
Fin’s friends have surged into the kitchen now, hunter gatherers in search of more alcohol. They have downed all the beers they’d managed to purloin from their own homes and no one will give them anything else. When Fin tried to swipe a bottle of rum, Pablo slapped him on the back of the head.
‘Look!’ Ajay, aged fourteen but looking around ten, waves the slender bottle he’s found in a cupboard.Red wine vinegar.
‘Don’t drink that!’ someone shouts. But in his drunkenness the only word Ajay sees is ‘wine’, and he yanks off the screw top and flings it over his shoulder, into the face of a powerfully built young man drinking vodka from a World’s Best Dad mug. Ajay brings the bottle to his mouth and glugs down the vinegar, a rare vintage with a powerful acidic kick.
The instant he’s finished, his guts clench and he needs the bathroom urgently. He pushes through all the milling people to get to the downstairs loo. But it’s locked. He bangs on the door – a girl yells at him – and then stumbles upstairs, ignoring cries of ‘Hey!’ and ‘Ow!’ as he tramples on feet and legs and some girl’s long blonde hair.
Although Ajay has been to Fin’s house before, he doesn’t know which room is the upstairs bathroom. Not this one, obviously. This is definitely a bedroom – it’s actually Fin’s parents’ bedroom – the clue being that there isn’t a loo in it but abed, a bed that two people are currently having vigorous sex on. Ajay spins out of the room and clatters up some more stairs, his stomach cramping as he bursts into a room filled with more people and computers, like it’s an office or something. In the split second before anyone registers his presence, he sees that there’s weird art on the walls. Not pictures – just massive writing. FREE YOUR SOUL, one reads.
Ajay doesn’t want to free his soul. He wants to find the bathroom as his stomach is heaving and gurgling in an alarming manner. But he doesn’t feel he can ask, as the people in here – all older boys, maybe about nineteen? – are telling him toget the fuck out, what are you doing up here you stupid kid?He gawps at them, wondering what’s going on in here, what they’re doing. Then, amidst their jeers and laughter, Ajay does as he’s been told. He gets out.
Martha, who is still dancing with Izzy, knows nothing of the activities in her parents’ bedroom and her dad’s study. They kiss, and she’s so happy she barely registers the cry as someone falls heavily into the lopsided Christmas tree. Down it crashes, tinsel flying and Martha’s great grandmother’s baubles shattering as it cracks the window and collapses onto the wine-sodden rug.
26
THREE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS
9.20 a.m.
‘Hello, hello! Go away silly man!’ Theo grabbed the B&B landline before Shelley could race to it and now he won’t hand it to her.
‘Theo, please. It might be important. It could be someone calling to book a room, and if they can’t, my friend Michael will lose a lot of money?—’
‘Who’s Michael?’ Still gripping the phone, Theo fixes her with a challenging stare. Breakfast went smoothly and they cleared up with impressive efficiency. Niall offered to help but Shelley assured him that they were fine, and why didn’t he head out to enjoy the beautiful day? The sun was shining brightly and everything was lightly sprinkled with snow. Shelley had just begun to believe that they might actually be pretty competent at this B&B lark.
‘Remember I told you?’ she says sternly. ‘Michael’s the nice man who owns this house. Now please give me the phone.’
Theo laughs. ‘Bye, silly smelly man! Bye bye!’ He jabs at a button and flings the phone down onto the kitchen unit. Shelleygrabs it, switching on her bright and pleasant receptionist’s voice: ‘Hello, can I help you?’ But the call has ended.
Almost immediately it rings again and Shelley answers quickly. ‘Hi there?’ comes the male voice. ‘It’s Michael…’
‘Michael, hi! It’s Shelley. How’s it going down there?’
‘Um… okay. Yeah. Okay. It’s good…’ She catches the tension in his voice. ‘But I, uh… lost my phone…’
‘Oh no! Where are you calling from?’
‘My hotel room. I’m out at Heathrow?—’
‘Any chance of getting it back?’
‘No, unfortunately. I left it on the plane. Totally stupid…’
