Life and Soul of the Party Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Melissa and Billy’s House-Warming Party

  September 2006

  Nine Months Earlier

  December 2005

  One Month Later

  January 2006

  Three Months Later

  April 2006

  Two Months Later

  June 2006

  Two Months Later

  August 2006

  Three Weeks Later

  September 2006

  Paul’s Funeral

  September 2006

  Three Months Later

  December 2006

  Seven Months Later

  July 2007

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Mike Gayle

  THE LIFE AND SOUL OF THE PARTY

  Mike Gayle

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © Mike Gayle 2008

  The right of Mike Gayle to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 162 5

  Book ISBN 978 0 340 82543 3

  Hodder and Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To the girls. For everything.

  Melissa and Billy’s

  House-Warming

  Party

  September 2006

  Melissa

  It was a Friday just after midday, and Billy and I were lying in bed occupied in two very different activities. Billy had booked the day off work to help out with the arrangements for tonight’s party and was sound asleep, while I, grateful to still be on the summer break from university, lay next to him frantically making a list of all the things we needed to do. So far the list covered everything from remembering to invite our new neighbours right through to a note about defrosting the mini chocolate éclairs. There were other things on the list too: about bottle openers and corkscrews; buying bags of ice and moving furniture; double-checking the master RSVP list and borrowing Vicky’s curling tongs. But it was the first item that made me the happiest: ‘Tell Billy I love him the minute he wakes up.’

  Leaving Billy snoring gently into his pillow I made my way to the bathroom, took a shower and then got dressed for the day. Emerging half an hour later I was surprised to see that Billy was now awake and reading my copy of Grazia.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ said Billy looking up from the magazine. He stretched and yawned. ‘I haven’t missed anything, have I?’

  ‘And what would you do if you had?’

  ‘Nothing much. It’s not like it’s worth crying over spilt milk is it?’ He held out his arms towards me. ‘So come on then, Ms Vickery, where’s my morning kiss?’

  I walked over to the bed and gave him a long, slow kiss, then picked up my notepad from the bedside table.

  ‘I love you, you know,’ I said tearing off the top two pages and handing them to Billy, ‘look, it’s even on my list.’

  Billy looked down at the pages. ‘That’s not very flattering, is it? You need to remind yourself that you love me?’

  ‘No, I have to remind myself to tell you. That’s different.’

  Billy speed-read the list. ‘So what are the things that have got an asterisk next to them?’

  ‘Those are the things that you’re doing while I nip out to the supermarket.’

  ‘Is it always going to be like this living with you? Will I wake up every day from a restful sleep only to be handed a twenty-item To Do List? What am I? Your personal slave?’

  I nodded, straight faced. ‘It was all there in the contract. Or didn’t you bother reading the small print?’

  Billy lunged towards me and we had this weird kind of play fight where Billy allowed me to pin him down before flipping me over, pinning me down in return and torturing me with the threat of breathing in my ear — the one thing he knows that I can’t stand. Inevitably this sort of play fighting led to kissing but just as he attempted to relieve me of my T-shirt I came to my senses.

  ‘Look,’ I said, laughing as I slapped away his hands, ‘the shopping for tonight isn’t going to buy itself, you know,’ and I was up and out of the bedroom before he’d even managed to get off the bed.

  ‘I love you,’ I called back up the stairs, as I opened the front door. ‘Call me if you need anything.’

  It was cold and raining – weather more suited to late November than mid-August. Sad that we wouldn’t be able to make the most of the garden for the party, I put up my umbrella and set off.

  The rain was easing by the time I reached the big Somerfield on Wilbraham Road. Putting my umbrella away I rummaged in my purse for a pound coin for the trolley. For some reason the coin wouldn’t go into the slot properly and I was struggling to force it in when my phone rang from inside my bag. I assumed it would be Billy reminding me to add some essential item to my shopping list so I was sort of surprised when I saw Chris’s name flashing up on the screen on my mobile.

  Thinking that Chris was just calling to tease or torture me as was usual, before he could say a word I barked into the phone: ‘You’d better not be calling to tell me you’re not coming tonight!’ He didn’t laugh.

  There was a long silence and then he said: ‘Listen, Mel, I’ve got some really bad news.’

  ‘What’s happened? It’s not Vicky, is it? Nothing’s happened to the baby, has it?’

  ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s Paul. I’ve just taken a call from Hannah’s mum. Paul was on his way to the Midlands for a conference and was involved in a crash on the south-bound carriageway of the M6. Six people died and Paul was one of them. He’s gone, Mel. I can’t believe it but he’s gone.’

  As Chris broke down in tears on the other end of the line I felt myself buckling. My whole body started to shake as a throbbing ball of tightness began to grow inside my stomach. I tried to fight it, to keep it in, but then a noise I barely recognised as human left my lips. As I hit the floor I could feel blood seeping through the knees of my jeans. All around me there was commotion, panicked voices asking me if I was all right as complete strangers helped me to my feet. But no matter how hard I tried to shape the words, the only thing that came out of me was the noise. Over and over and over again as if it was never going to stop.

  Nine Months Earlier

  Ed and Sharon’s New Year’s Eve Party

  December 2005

  Melissa

  Hi, my name’s Melissa . . . Melissa Vickery and this . . . well, this is sort of my story . . . actually that’s wrong. It’s not ‘my’ story at all. It’s our story. The story of me and my friends: Vicky and Chris; Chris’s brother Cooper and his girlfriend Laura; Hannah (a girl who got sucked into the mess we called our lives through no fault of her own); Billy (a boy who got sucked into the mess we called our lives through no fault of his own) and of course it’s the story of Paul, our friend who’s no longer w
ith us.

  What else is this story about? Well, I think at its heart it’s about love and getting older; it’s about the year in our lives where we all made a lot of mistakes and the things we did to try to make them right again; more generally it’s about that feeling . . . that feeling that you get sometimes when you feel as though you’re completely and utterly lost – when you feel as if everyone around has the answer to the meaning of life, apart from you; it’s about those times when we make the right decisions . . . and the times when we make the wrong ones too; it’s about the people in our lives who, though they don’t share our blood or bear our surnames, we think of as family; it’s about those rare glorious moments that sometimes spring into your life out of nowhere that you wish could last for ever. It’s about those moments of unbearable sadness . . . those moments of heartbreaking clarity . . . when you realise just how little time we all really have and how much you regret failing to take the opportunity to tell the people closest to you how much you love them and how much they mean to you. But mostly, this is a story about parties, about those special times when groups of friends, and friends of friends, get together for no other reason than to have a good time.

  New Year’s Eve 2005. It was just after six and I was in my bedroom in the flat that I shared with Creepy Susie, my flatmate/landlady. I call Susie ‘creepy’ because that’s exactly what she was. Despite being ten years my senior, Susie had a creepily large collection of teddy bears and a creepy boyfriend called Steve, who somehow always managed to be lingering outside the bathroom whenever I emerged from the shower. On top of all that, I was pretty sure she snooped around my room when I was out which I’m pretty sure is the very definition of creepy.

  The only reason I put up with Susie’s creepiness was because, as a thirty-four-year-old mature student with no boyfriend and no money, I had no choice in the matter whatsoever. Anyway, having lived in enough nightmare houseshares in the fifteen years I’d been in Manchester, to know that, as bad as Susie was, there were a lot of people out there who could be a good deal creepier.

  My plan for the night ahead was simple: along with my friends Vicky, Chris, Cooper and Laura, I was heading to Ed and Sharon’s house for their annual New Year’s Eve party. As a rule I hated New Year’s Eve and couldn’t think of many things I’d rather do less than celebrate the arrival of yet another twelve months heralding more debt, more university assignments and a greater sense of being left behind by my peers, but I had no alternative. The only thing I hate more than New Year’s Eve itself is the thought of spending it alone.

  Looking down at the bed in front of me I tried to make my mind up about the various potential party outfits I had laid out there. There was a black floaty top and jeans; a green dress I’d bought last summer in the sales teamed with opaque black tights and boots; and a dark blue dress that I was ninety-nine per cent sure I could no longer fit into and green shoes with a bit of a heel. I tried to imagine myself in the clothes without having to go through the trial and effort of actually putting them on but the longer I pored over them, the more I came to realise that nothing I had chosen was quite right. All the clothes seemed just a little bit too showy for a house party . . . which might have been okay for Vicky and Laura – who could pull off ‘showy’ without looking ridiculous – but for me it would look for all the world as though I was someone trying too hard.

  Returning the rejected clothes to the wardrobe, I noticed, lying crumpled across a pair of black pumps that I hadn’t worn in years, a black long-sleeved top that had fallen off its hanger. I picked it up, slipped off my dressing-gown and tried it on. Although it was creased it just sort of felt right so I searched around some more and found a green knitted cardigan I’d bought in Oxfam a couple of months earlier; it went perfectly with the top and, inspired, I made a final trip to the wardrobe and rejected all manner of trousers and skirts and even trouser/skirt combos before closing the door in defeat. That was when I spotted the jeans that I’d been wearing all day. They were lying on the floor by the door. I straightened them out, slipped them on and checked myself in the mirror. I couldn’t believe it. They looked great. The whole outfit was coming together very nicely indeed. Now all that I needed was the right footwear. After some moments of deep deliberation I opted for my Converse baseball boots which I eventually found by the radiator underneath the window swamped by a large mountain of ironing.

  My baseball boots were almost as frayed and worn-out looking as my jeans. They were a faded brick-red colour and so heavily scuffed that I couldn’t even wear them in the rain because the seam on the right one had a tear in it as I had discovered to my dismay one wet morning. Still, grateful that it wasn’t actually raining I slipped them on, tied the laces and surveyed my new outfit in the mirror one last time. It was depressing. I looked like a student – which wasn’t exactly the look I was going for – but at least I didn’t look as though I was trying too hard.

  I tied my hair back in a ponytail and began searching around my room for my make-up bag which I eventually located underneath a stack of magazines by the side of my bed. Rooting around inside it for an eyeliner that hadn’t spoiled, I tipped the whole lot out on to the bed in frustration and was about to scream when my mobile phone rang.

  ‘Hey, babe, it’s me.’

  It was my friend Vicky.

  ‘Hey, you,’ I replied. ‘How are things?’

  ‘I’ve just put William to bed and told him Mum’s babysitting him tonight and he went off on one as though I was leaving him in the care of the big bad wolf. I wouldn’t mind but I know his gran will spoil him to death like she always does.’

  Of all my friends here in Manchester I’d known Vicky the longest. We met during the first year that I’d spent studying Business and Economics at UMIST before I was kicked off my course for being completely and utterly hopeless. Vicky and I had both lived in the same halls of residence and I’d been drawn to her because, unlike most of the other eighteen year olds I met during freshers’ week, Vicky didn’t act like she was trying to cram several years’ worth of repressed teenage rebellion into seven days of debauchery. In fact, she didn’t act like she was eighteen at all. She seemed older and wiser somehow and even though she’d only been in the city for the same length of time as me she seemed to know the clubs and bars around Manchester like the back of her hand. So, rather than following the student hordes to grotty pubs and clubs playing the same music you heard everywhere in Manchester, thanks to Vicky we ended up in clubs in the depths of rough housing estates, warehouse parties in industrial estates on the edge of the city centre and the kinds of bars you had no chance of finding without being in the know. In short, back then, she had been an education in how to be cool. Fifteen years on, she was married to Chris, mother to William, my four-year-old godson, and hadn’t set foot in a nightclub since the late nineties, but to me she would always be the girl who was too cool for school.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Vicky. ‘About the plans for tonight. Chris and Cooper earlier have decided we’re all meeting at eight in The Old Oak.’

  ‘Why eight? I thought that was when the party started?’

  ‘It is,’ she sighed, ‘but you know what the boys are like. Apparently it’s far too emasculating to arrive at a party at the time actually written on the invitation. Anyway, how does that sound?’

  ‘Fine by me.’ I paused to consider in what tone of voice best to ask the question on my lips, and decided to go with casual indifference. ‘What about Paul and Hannah? Are they coming or not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Vicky. ‘Chris left a message on Paul’s mobile but he hasn’t got back to him yet. I’m sure he’ll turn up though, don’t you think? There’s never been a New Year’s Eve that we haven’t all spent together. And somehow I can’t imagine Hannah is going to change all that.’ Vicky paused. ‘You are okay about him coming, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ I replied. ‘I’ll see you later, then, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Vicky. ‘I’ll s
ee you later.’

  Vicky

  After I put the phone down I had a clear picture of Melissa sitting alone in her tiny bedroom thinking about Paul and Hannah, worrying where her life was going and why, of the two of them, it was Paul who was happy and not her. And as much as I loved Paul as a friend, I couldn’t help feeling angry with him on Melissa’s behalf. It was awful the way things had ended between them. Absolutely awful. And even though five years had passed since they split up, for all the moving forward Melissa had done, it might as well have been yesterday.

  I was there when Melissa and Paul first met. We were both twenty-three, living in that post-student nether world where you’re no longer in full-time education but you don’t exactly feel like a full-time member of the workforce either. Mel and I were living in a house-share in Longsight and spent most of our time buying clothes and music and, above all, chasing boys. One night in November a bunch of us met up for a drink in Chorlton with the plan of moving on to a club night in Hulme afterwards. Just after last orders in the Jockey, one of the girls we were with heard from a friend of hers about a party going on round the corner from the pub and so we decided we’d give it a try; if it was any good we could at least save ourselves money on the cab fare getting over to Hulme.

  I’d never seen so many people crammed into such a small space. Though it was only a small terrace it felt as though the entire population of the pub had come along to the party too. I wanted to leave straight away and probably would have done had I not managed to lose Melissa within moments of arriving. Half an hour later I eventually found her out in the garden talking to a couple of guys in the freezing cold.

  ‘Vicks, this is Paul and Chris,’ she said with a grin. ‘They lured me out here with the promise of a hidden stash of booze.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ protested Paul. ‘It was her banging on about “hidden booze” that lured us out here!’