Apparently not. In a bizarre triumph of human nature over survival instinct, Whitmouth is enjoying a boom year of a sort it hasn’t seen since the invention of the package holiday. A phenomenon that proves, once again, the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Becca Stokes, 23 and down from Coventry with a group of friends, sums it up: ‘I used to come here with my mum and dad when I was a kid and I loved it then. And then there’s been all this stuff in the papers, and me and my mates all thought, you know: look at that. I had no idea they had so many nightclubs, and the caravans are dirt cheap. So we thought we’d come down for the weekend, you know? Check it out…
I can’t, she thinks. I can’t encourage people to go there. I’m the hypocrite of hypocrites: writing disapprovingly about a phenomenon I’m helping to foster. It’s not safe. Every time they read statistics like this, see how many people are there, calculate the odds in their heads, they’ll think it’s safe. But he’s still out there. Still mingling in amongst them, and they’ve no idea who he is.
She checks her watch. She can string the features desk along for another hour, and after that every ten minutes is another year off her career. But, she thinks, I can’t do this ‘balance’ thing. They’re all so obsessed with balance that they forget that, sometimes, there is such a thing as simple, black-and-white truth. Whitmouth’s a horrible place. It’s dangerous and seedy and people should know. I can’t let them fool themselves that they can wander around it half-cut. I’ve got a story here.
And a small voice says: yeah, and if I tell it properly, they won’t spike it and I’ll earn actual wordage. And I’ve got to find the cash for that car insurance. Got to. There’s two days left to run, and after that I won’t be able to earn a bloody penny. Sod Whitmouth. Sod balance. I got scared to stupidity last night, and I’m bloody well letting people know. And if that weasel-man reads about himself and doesn’t like it, then maybe he’ll learn a lesson he needs to understand.
She highlights again, cuts until the page is blank. Then she begins:
Women have died in Whitmouth. And on Monday night, I almost became one of them…
Chapter Thirty
The lower half of Ashok’s face is smeared with mayonnaise. He speaks as he chews, and bits of lettuce spray into the night air. ‘I can’t believe they went in without us.’
‘Course they did,’ says Tony. ‘Couldn’t wait to get away from you, you wanker.’
Rav and Jez laugh while Ash flicks him a V. None of them is steady on his feet, and Rav slips off the pavement into Brighton Road, narrowly missing a passing car. It blasts its horn and carries on as they bawl and shake their fists at its receding tail-lights.
‘God, it’s bloody dead around here,’ says Jez.
‘It’s two in the morning,’ says Tony. ‘What did you expect?’
Ash picks the last of the chicken out of his kebab, balls up the paper and drops it on the pavement. ‘Bloody no bloody trainers,’ he says. ‘These cost over a hundred quid.’
‘What?’ says Rav. ‘You got ripped off, mate.’
‘’Koff,’ says Ash, and cuffs him round the back of the head. They stumble on. It’s another mile to the B &B. Other knots of stragglers wander past: people who’ve blown all their money and can’t afford a taxi, people who’ve been turned away from the clubs or got bored in the queues, and others, heading in the opposite direction, who are still hoping that they’ll get in. Tony finishes off the last of his falafel and balls up the bag. Puts it in his pocket. ‘That’s what you’re meant to do with rubbish,’ he tells Ashok.
‘Bollocks,’ says Ash. ‘If they hadn’t got rid of all the waste-bins I’d’ve thrown it away.’
‘Hah,’ says Jez. ‘If your lot didn’t keep blowing things up, they wouldn’t have got rid of them in the first place.’
‘Yeah,’ says Rav around a lager burp. ‘Those Diwali bombings were a bugger, weren’t they?’
The familiar press of booze on bladder is getting beyond a joke. Ashok wishes he’d made use of the filthy bog in the amusement arcade, but the lure of getting those 10ps to drop on the cascade machine had been too great at the time. He glances at Tony and Jez, feels a twinge of jealousy that their heathen upbringing has left them free of inhibitions about letting fly by the empty cashpoint a few hundred yards back. He’s going to need to relieve himself before they get to the B &B. Lager doesn’t agree with him, but you don’t drink vodka-tonic on a stag night if you want to get out unscathed.
They start to pass the boarded-up frontage of a bankrupt ironmonger’s, and he remembers noticing on the way into town that the next lot, before the job centre, is derelict: a mass of builders’ rubble, elder and stinging nettles behind a loose wire fence. That’ll do, he thinks. They can just bloody wait for me.
‘I need a wazz,’ he announces as they reach the fence. Grabs at the wire and gives it a shake. It’s come free of the concrete post to which it was once moored, at this end. He’s obviously not the first home-bound reveller to have this idea. ‘Keep a look-out,’ he says.
‘What for?’ asks Tony. He’s already lighting a Marlboro, smoke hanging in the air above his head. ‘Ladyboy to send in after you?’
Ashok ducks down and squeezes through the gap. The waste-ground is dark, and stinks. It’s clearly functioned as a makeshift toilet for the clubbers of Whitmouth for years. I’m going to have to give my trainers a wash when we get in, he thinks. Just hope I don’t tread in anything solid.
Five yards in, a large elder bush blocks off the light from the street. This’ll do. He picks his way carefully over piles of bricks and broken glass – the last thing he wants to do is lose his footing in this foetid jungle – and steps in behind it. Feels relief simply from unbuttoning his jeans, lets out a groan of pleasure when the beer-scented stream steams out into the night air.
‘Thought you were having a wazz, not a wank!’ shouts Rav. ‘Can’t you wait till we get home?’
The piss seems to last for ever. Ashok shifts his balance, waits as his bladder pumps and pumps. Now the initial stress has gone, he wishes he could stop and hold on to the rest until he’s back in the bathroom at Seaview. He doesn’t like standing with his back to the dark like this, can’t shake the feeling that he’s not alone. He tries clenching his internal muscles, but it’s no good. The stream slows but doesn’t stop and it’ll just take him longer to get done, if he tries.
Street-side, he hears the sound of the fence shifting, then the slide and rattle of careless feet on the rubble he’s just crossed.
‘Where are you?’ Tony’s voice, slurred and overloud.
‘In here,’ he says.
‘Right,’ says Tony. Ashok sees him against the light, then he is standing beside him. ‘Shift over,’ he says.
‘I can’t,’ says Ash.
‘All right then. Don’t complain if your feet get splashed.’
‘Didn’t you just go in the street?’ asks Ashok.
‘Lager,’ says Tony.
The sound of Tony’s zip going down, then suddenly, behind them, something thrashes in the dark, among the bushes against the blank wall of the ironmongery.
Ashok and Tony peer at each other in the dark, sobriety immediate and shocking.
‘What was that?’ asks Tony. His eyes are huge in the shadows.
‘Dunno,’ says Ashok.
‘Just a fox or summat,’ says Tony.
‘Dunno,’ repeats Ashok. ‘Sounded bigger, didn’t it?’
Tony nods, his bladder forgotten. They can hear the others out on the street, laughing and joking about. ‘Come on, you two!’ Rav’s voice drifts through the foliage.
‘Shhh!’ hisses Tony redundantly. They turn, peer into the wasteland. ‘Hello?’ he calls tentatively.