‘Yeah, well…’ he shrugs it off. ‘What have you got there?’
‘I raided the girls’ toilets.’ She holds up two carrier bags crammed with clinking bottles. ‘You should have seen their little faces.’
‘Did you kick them out?’
‘No… I felt sorry for them. It was bad luck. I’d just gone down to use the loo.’ She sets the bags down on the table and rummages through them. ‘Look at all this stuff. I feel like Eliot Ness.’ She raises her head again. ‘So what were you thinking about?’
‘Thinking?’ Howard repeats, as if the word is unfamiliar.
‘Just now. You were away off somewhere.’
‘I was wondering why the DJ is playing all these old songs.’
‘You looked sad,’ she says. She lays a finger on his chest and gazes at it, like an electrician into a nest of wiring. ‘I bet,’ she says slowly, ‘you were thinking of the dances you went to, when you were young, and wondering where all the time went, and what happened to all the dreams you had then, and if this life is anything like the one you wanted.’
Howard laughs. ‘Bingo.’
‘Me too,’ she says ruefully. ‘I suppose it’s inevitable.’ She turns her gaze over the hall, where two-personned silhouettes are swaying almost motionlessly to ‘Wild Horses’ by the Rolling Stones. ‘So how did you do, at your Hop?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Howard, eventually this playing-dumb routine is going to stop seeming charming. Did you score? Did you dance a slow-set? Or were you one of the losers watching from the sidelines?’
Howard considers lying, then comes clean. ‘Loser,’ he says.
‘Same here,’ she nods dolefully. Howard rounds on her in disbelief. ‘You? You’re telling me no one wanted to kiss you?’
‘What can I say? I was your classic ugly duckling.’ She looks away. ‘So do you feel like making up for lost time?’
He starts. ‘What?’
She shrugs, inclines her head towards the crowd. ‘I don’t know. Take home one of those little nymphets. I’m sure they’d love some extra lessons from a handsome teacher. They’re all so gorgeous, aren’t they? And skinny – God, none of them must have eaten for a week.’
‘They’re a little young for me.’
‘Take two. Fourteen plus fourteen is twenty-eight.’
‘I have a girlfriend who might object.’
‘That’s a shame,’ she says ambiguously. She clams up, addresses herself to the music, leaving Howard to wonder just what has passed him by. ‘This is such a great song,’ she remarks, and then, forthrightly, to Howard, ‘Would you like to dance?’
Only by a miracle does Howard manage not to drop his paper cup of punch. ‘Here? Now? With you?’
She arches a gamine eyebrow. Howard’s mind is a sea of flying chicken feathers. ‘We can’t,’ he stammers, then adds hurriedly, ‘It’s not that I don’t want to… but, you know, in front of the kids, and everything?’
‘Then let’s sneak out!’ she whispers.
‘Out?’ he repeats.
‘Somewhere no one will see us. For five minutes.’ Her eyes glitter at him like mirrorballs.
‘But what about the… didn’t Greg say…?’ He gestures weakly at the costumed teenagers.
‘Five minutes, Howard, what’s the worst that can happen? Just till the end of this song, it’s practically over anyway… we’ll just go out into the corridor… ooh, we can make Cosmopolitans!’ She views his expression of agonized vacillation, cringing at her like an animal begging to be put out of its misery, and takes his hand. ‘You owe it to yourself, Howard,’ she says. ‘You have to dance at least one slow-set in your life.’
The lights are low and he doesn’t think anyone sees them leave.
‘Wild Horses’ fades into REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’, extending the mass kissing for another three minutes. To a dark corner where a boy in a red Formula One outfit is welded to the mouth of a sexy secretary, a girl in a dress unfortunately resembling an exploding wedding cake totters up. In a trembling voice, she says, ‘Titch?’ Formula One ignores her. She waits a moment, unsure, then taps him on the back. ‘Titch?’
He breaks off and turns round, exasperated. Sexy Secretary, looking daggers at Wedding Cake, wipes a damp chin with her sleeve.
‘Titch, we need to talk,’ Wedding Cake says.
Elsewhere, a thirties gangster with a pencil-moustache adorning her upper lip approaches a sexy GI and a princess. ‘Hey, Alison? – Oh my God, sorry Janine, you look just like Alison from behind!’
‘That’s okay, Fiona! I think Alison’s over there with Max Brady?’
‘Thanks!’ Thirties gangster moves off. Sexy GI’s smile vanishes instantly, and she says to the princess, ‘That bitch, there’s no way I look like fucking Alison Cummins from behind. Her arse is like three times the size of mine!’
‘Fiona looks like a lesbian in that suit,’ the princess says.
‘She’s such a stupid cunt,’ the sexy GI says.
The princess, the GI, the scuba-diver and the Victorian-lady-who-looks-like-a-wedding-cake knew it would be dodgy trying to sneak drink inside so they had three Breezers and a naggin of vodka each before they came in – well, no one actually finished the naggin except Victorian Lady and then she kept falling over on the way up here and they practically had to carry her past the pervy old priest. Still, the princess is quite locked, and the GI is even more locked. In the car park she took two of the pills, and now she’s talking really fast and loud and not making that much sense.
‘Looks like KellyAnn’s finally hunted down Titch,’ the princess says, looking at the scene unfolding in the corner.
‘Oh my God, she’s not going to tell him now?’ the scuba-diver says.
‘What does she think he’s going to do,’ the GI says, ‘stop kissing Ammery Fox and get down on one knee right here in the fucking Seabrook gym hall and say, Oh, KellyAnn, please marry me? I mean, hello?’
‘He’s quite good-looking,’ the princess judges.
‘He’s nothing special,’ the GI says dismissively. ‘He’s a boy, you know?’
A strongman with a handlebar moustache and leopardskin leotard interposes himself between the girls and glances from one to the other, smiling. They gaze back at him with expressions of naked disgust of the kind ordinarily reserved for, say, sex offenders. The strongman withdraws, looking significantly less strong.
‘God, I’m so sick of these fucking boys,’ the GI declares. ‘I need a man.’
‘Me too,’ the princess says.
‘Oh Jesus – Lori, don’t look but that weird fucking Robin Hood thing is completely staring at you again,’ the scuba-diver says.
‘Oh my God, what is his problem?’
‘Maybe I should go over and tell him to stop freaking you out.’
‘Don’t waste the oxygen.’
‘Did you hear anything from Prince Charming?’ the GI asks.
The princess’s face falls.
‘Oh, Lori…’ The GI reaches out and lays a hand on the princess’s shoulder. ‘Don’t let him ruin your night. Switch off your phone and stop thinking about him.’
‘I’m not thinking about him,’ the princess mumbles, hair falling over her face.
‘I suppose he at least might have had some drugs,’ the GI says. ‘God, this thing is so fucking boring. Seabrook boys are such invertebrates.’ She withdraws her hand, wraps her bare arms around herself. ‘I need a shag so badly.’
Near the heart of the dancefloor, Niall/Trudy has been arrested on his way back from the toilets by a heartstoppingly lovely girl dressed as Natasha Fatale, arch-enemy of Bullwinkle the Moose. The girl wants to know where he got his lipstick. Niall, sweating profusely, is not sure how to proceed. Should he tell her he got it from his sister and he doesn’t know the name? Or should he tell her the truth, that he fell in love with it in a little boutique in Sandy-cove village? The heartstopping girl waits expectantly. Niall feels one of his breasts slide inexorably out of his corset.