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  Back at the table the three of them are talking about someone at their school, a teacher whose son was arrested the night before: he’d been found naked and passed out in the park. They try to explain to me why this is significant, but I don’t really understand what’s so funny or so sad.

  The conversation ebbs. Hannah asks me what I got up to in the day and, for once, I have a decent answer.

  ‘Actually, I went to Manchester,’ I say.

  ‘I hate Manchester,’ Beth says. ‘It’s so fucking up itself.’

  She looks like no one I knew, and speaks without an accent. I glance down at my drink as she smiles.

  ‘Well, yeah, I suppose. But the record shops are good, though,’ I say. ‘And they’ve got a Waterstone’s. And everyone loves Affleck’s Palace.’

  ‘Full of over-priced bollocks, Affleck’s Palace. Those fucking T-shirts with “On the Sixth Day God Created Man-Chester”? The “I Like The Pope, The Pope Smokes Dope” posters? Fuck’s sake. Save me from fucking Mancunians! Save me from baggy jeans and fucking skateboarders!’

  ‘Where did you get that T-shirt?’ I say.

  She lights her cigarette. ‘Manchester,’ she says blowing out smoke. ‘Affleck’s Palace, if you must know.’

  We laugh, all of us. Then she smiles at me behind a crosshatch of smoke.

  *

  ‘You okay back there?’ Miguel said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just stood on my shoelace, that’s all.’

  We righted ourselves in the small antechamber that linked the corridor and the dining space – a kind of decompression area between the darkness and the absolute black. Miguel pushed open the second door and the noise, the raging holler of it, greeted us. I had long since got used to the black pittedness of the darkness, but the insistence and surprise of that noise never failed to unnerve. I’d seen the room just once in the light and had been shocked at its size; lines upon lines of booths, a perfectly smooth and flat plastic floor, its capacity well over three hundred covers. Without that knowledge, however, I would never have guessed at its true size: there could have been hundreds crammed inside, thousands.

  The thirty-seventh floor was the only part of the Valhalla’s East Wing where guests were permitted. Nonresidents were escorted up by a bell hop to meet their hosts, and escorted back down again at the end of their evening. It was the social heart of the building, with a conventional restaurant as well as three differently styled bars, all with modest views of the surroundings. Here in the blind dark there could be senators and rock stars, actors and financiers. It was the perfect expression of the Valhalla: anonymity for those who craved it most.

  Once we were seated in the booth, our ears became accustomed to the noise in a way our eyes never would to the dark. Miguel explained how best to approach the place settings, our hands exploring bowls and glasses, plates and a quintet of cutlery on either side. Miguel put down glasses of iced water and then a glass of sherry next to each one. An amuse bouche would soon be served. I sipped at my drink, listening to the men talk of their new-found blindness, their excitement at the sensual abandon. Even Brooks sounded animated. ‘It is a strange liberation,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think, Miller?’

  ‘Better than being deaf. Can’t imagine anything worse than being deaf.’

  ‘You ever meet my wife, you’d change your mind on that,’ Boulder said.

  ‘You ever meet mine, you’d understand what I mean,’ Miller replied.

  It was something of a script, this kind of exchange. In the company of strangers, we’re compelled to joke, compelled, too, to laugh; anything to lighten the conversational burden. I read that in one of Edith’s books. Better the thinness of jokes that no one finds amusing than sitting in a cloud of silence. Sometimes laughter can be the loneliest of sounds.

  ‘Miguel, are you beside me,’ Brooks said suddenly.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m just setting down your amuse bouche.’

  ‘Stop it. It’s fucking creepy. Like there’s a ghost waiting on the table.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you will become accustomed to it, I assure you. It just takes a little time, is all.’

  ‘Well, can you at least talk when you are serving? I would prefer to know when things are likely to end up in front of me.’

  ‘If you wish, sir. But we are taught to be as unobtrusive as possible. That way it’s more authentic. Waiters do not ordinarily talk as they serve. At least not good ones.’

  Brooks coughed. He leaned into me: I could smell his drink-fudged breath and the cigar.

  ‘Blind he may be; modest he certainly isn’t,’ Brooks said and I could imagine those lips twisting, the teeth slightly exposed, his tongue just visible. ‘He calls himself a waiter, when he’s no more than a blind man with a tray.’

  *

  It is after the last sitting in the restaurant. The chef is next to me at the bar, too tired to speak, too drunk to keep quiet. He is mumbling about the quality of the meat, how when Drummond’s was still in town, his steaks were the envy of the whole of Cheshire. This is a familiar story, yet unusual as he is the only person I know who acknowledges Cheshire as a distinct entity. Everyone else aligns themselves with nearby cities – Manchester, Stoke, Crewe, Liverpool. Not him. To him, Cheshire is far from a postcard-dull, field-strewn backwater, but a place of which to be proud. He was once featured in Cheshire Life; had his photograph taken with an actress from Coronation Street. Perhaps there is more to it, and perhaps he is right. But now he is drunk and waiting for his wife to collect him, a wife he is cheating on with the sister of the restaurant owner: a secret that everyone knows but will not acknowledge.

  Behind the bar, the head waitress – Sonia, a ringlet-haired flirt with a perky chest and a filthy line in innuendo – is pouring herself a vodka and tonic. In a loud voice she is talking to her underling, Laura, about the behaviour of some of the customers, ignoring the two of us with the thoroughness she employs throughout her shifts. She has been with the restaurant since its brief glory days in the mid-eighties; her reputation is formidable and the list of her suitors extensive. She will not confirm or deny her relationships with George Best, Ian McShane or David Essex, all of whom at one time or another have dined at the restaurant.

  There is a loud knock at the door, and Sonia gives a long, theatrical sigh.

  ‘I wish they wouldn’t do this. I hate them to see me after a shift.’

  She pulls back the curtain and opens the door to find a young woman with her jacket up over her head. The rain is bouncing off the tarmacked street and umbrellas are hurrying by. Sonia is about to say something but the woman is past her already. It is Bethany Wilder and she heads straight for me; the look on her face one of hopeful complicity.

  ‘Hi, Beth,’ I say. The chef looks up from his drink, Laura and Sonia are motionless. ‘This is my friend Beth,’ I say to everyone and they nod. Her face says thank you and she removes her jacket, hanging it on the empty coat-stand.

  ‘It’s pissing down outside,’ she says in explanation. ‘Came down out of nowhere.’ She passes by and sits next to me at the bar. The chef grunts, downs his beer and wanders off towards the kitchen. Beth takes one of my cigarettes and lights it, her hands dampening the paper. ‘Thanks,’ she says in a whisper. ‘I owe you.’ I get up from my seat and make my way behind the bar.

  ‘What would you like?’ I say.

  ‘Whisky, straight,’ she says. ‘Need to warm up after that soaking.’

  I nod and pour the drink; Sonia stops staring and joins us.

  ‘You’re Mike Wilder’s daughter, aren’t you?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ Bethany says, taking the whisky.

  ‘Your dad’s such a lovely man. Haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘He’s been busy,’ she says. ‘He’s a busy man.’

  ‘He sure is that, love,’ she says and picks up a tray of drinks. Beth shoots her a look of venom. Beth’s mascara has run slightly and she has a spot on her chin only half hidden with diluted concealer. I sit next to he
r and she leans in closely.

  ‘She thinks she’s the bollocks,’ Beth says. ‘But she’s just a pair of tits with a tray.’

  *

  The men were laughing and joking, speculating that they were about to be served monkey’s brains or sparrow’s hearts or insects dressed in vinaigrette. The first course arrived and I could only pick at it. A blackness swam in front of me. Bethany’s face, her father’s, the brass surrounds of the restaurant bar. Images came in stark projections, like cinema screens sparking into life then cutting out just as quickly.

  I felt Miguel’s comforting arm on my shoulder as he took away my plate. All four men guessed the dish was lobster bisque with caviar. I congratulated them on the precision of their palates. Miller almost knocked over his wine glass, but managed to steady it just in time. The men’s voices were becoming more difficult to tell apart, their words forming an invisible chorus. I looked in their direction and saw the worn-out face of my father; Mike Wilder’s raw eyes and stubbled jaw; O’Neil’s increasing look of concern.

  When the fork hit the floor, Miguel put his hand on my shoulder and a new fork onto the place setting. I thanked him and wondered how much longer this could possibly last.

  Saturday, 7th July 1990, 10.19 am

  She has never been in a limousine before and says so to Hannah as they clamber into the car.

  ‘It’s not a limousine, not really,’ the driver says. ‘Limousines are bigger than this. Bigger by a lot too. This is just an elongated car. For dignitaries, like.’

  The driver is dressed in a gas-blue uniform with a peaked cap and white gloves. He also has a large black beard which has turned brown at the mouth from the pipe he smokes when not on duty. Hannah giggles; Bethany doesn’t. When he turns the key, the car is flooded with music, which he immediately switches off. It is Dolly Parton, and he colours slightly. The car pulls away, the town distant and silent behind the glass.

  ‘How bad do I look, Han? I mean, really?’

  Hannah laughs. ‘You remember that time Rachel Lowell went to that tanning salon?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as I was expecting, to be honest. But my expectations were pretty low. Not as low as your neckline, but …’

  ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’

  ‘For a prostitute, no.’

  Hannah laughs and kicks her feet on the seat in front of her.

  ‘You’re fine, honestly, B. You should see your face, though. Even through the make-up you look horrified.’

  ‘I have a crown and a sceptre. That means I can have you executed. Remember that.’

  ‘Queen of all the Goths, yes,’ she says as they pull up past Harrington Street and then onto Jackson Street. There’s a white van parked outside the ironmonger’s and the driver mutters something into his beard.

  ‘He shouldn’t park there,’ he says. ‘If I were the police I’d have him. I’d have him every time!’ Hannah and Bethany look at each other. They’re still giggling when they arrive at the cricket club.

  *

  The grass is shorn, yellowish and wheaty in the middle, greener at its edges. There is a rope-link barrier around the wicket and an older man by an advertising hoarding for Fusion hairdressers is busy with a roller. There are a few magpies and starlings tentatively pecking at the turf. The pavilion doors are wide open and behind the thin wooden columns, three men in linen suits are drinking from china cups. Women in aprons pass through the doors and back inside holding trays, removing things from the boots of cars. The men are oblivious and keep talking. They only pause their conversation when Bethany, flanked by Hannah and the driver, arrives.

  She approaches them with her hands hitching up her dress. It makes her feel oddly feminine and weak, almost showy – as though she is preparing to mount a horse sidesaddle. The men set down their teacups and the one in the middle holds out his arms in welcome; he is the mayor – once a friend of Bethany’s father, now little more than an acquaintance. He is full faced, ruddy, with a silverfish moustache. He could be from any time in history almost: the kind of Little Napoleon her mother always loathed. It is, as her father often says, a small blessing that Bethany’s mother never lived to meet the kind of people with whom he associates.

  Alongside the mayor is George Fellows, the husband of the town’s Conservative MP, and their usual golfing partner, David Waller, the head of the carnival committee. Both are wire-thin and clean-shaven and are applauding as Bethany walks across the gravel pathway. It makes her feel sick, the nakedness of their gaze. The dress is even worse than she realized; her breasts are exposed in a way that she would never ordinarily countenance.

  At school she wore baggy shirts to hide them, and believed she’d succeeded, until she was fourteen and in a maths lesson a scatter-graph formed a rounded w shape. ‘Look, it’s Bethany Wilder!’ Martin Bilton shouted and the whole class laughed. Bethany went quietly red behind her large spectacles, inwardly raging at them all.

  The mayor kisses her first on the left cheek then the right, his skin smelling of strong aftershave and his breath of the bacon sandwich he has recently eaten. He holds her by the shoulders and looks at her with wide eyes.

  ‘Bethany, you look sensational!’ he says. ‘Amazing!’

  ‘I feel ridiculous. It’s no wonder you couldn’t get anyone else to do this.’

  ‘You volunteered, my dear. You volunteered,’ he says wagging his finger. The two men by his side laugh along with him. She puts her hand across her chest.

  ‘The things a girl will do for the love of her father, eh?’

  ‘We’re very grateful, you know,’ Waller says. ‘After all that’s happened.’

  She smiles and looks back to Hannah, but can’t get her attention. Bethany talks to the men a little longer and then explains that she and Hannah need to go to the toilets. Hannah flicks the Vs as soon as she’s comfortably inside the pavilion. Neither of them laugh, though; something has passed behind a cloud. Bethany wonders whether she can tell Hannah about her plans. About Daniel and Mark and everything.

  They steal out the back and immediately Hannah produces cigarettes. She has a Zippo lighter that Bethany bought her for her seventeenth birthday. They sit on a bench and look out over the crooked trees and bramble hedges, the litter thrown into them: the beer cans and crisp packets, the fag ends and chip wrappers. It is cool and quiet back there, just the sound of the occasional car in the still summer air.

  Hannah talks but Bethany isn’t really listening. Hannah is practical, scientific and ambitious: she does not see the point in travelling, in roughing it. ‘Most people have never even been to Scotland,’ she’s fond of saying. ‘When I’ve been to everywhere in this country I’ll start on somewhere else.’ It’s an attitude Bethany finds both wrongheaded and curiously endearing.

  ‘You okay, carnival queen? You were miles away,’ Hannah says.

  ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘Oh, come on, every girl wants to be carnival queen.’

  ‘So why don’t you do it, then?’

  ‘I’d never fill that dress, that’s why.’

  ‘You could stuff it with paper towels like you used to.’

  They both laugh and the smoke spools between them; then there is just the sound of them sucking on the filter tips of their Marlboros.

  ‘I saw Daniel Jerome last night,’ Bethany says finally. ‘He was coming out of the Carpenter’s with Captain. The one with the hair.’

  Hannah looks over the top of her cigarette.

  ‘Daniel Jerome? I haven’t seen him in ages, the fucking sleaze.’

  Hannah always calls Daniel Jerome by his full name. Bethany is unsure why.

  ‘He’s been on tour, apparently, supporting the Telescopes.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘That what he said.’

  ‘He’s so full of shit.’ Hannah throws her cigarette to the ground. ‘But he is fit. You can’t say he’s not fit. You should have shagged him when you had the chance. I fucking would have done.’
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  ‘No you wouldn’t,’ Beth says.

  She knows this and Hannah laughs. Hannah has not had sex with anyone; her sum total of sexual experience is long sloppy kisses, a groping of her breasts, and once, a rough hand twisting its way inside her knickers. She has had opportunities, she tells Beth often, but the men she desires are older and aloof, those she can drink with, flirt with, but always keep at arms’ reach. She has decided this will change when she goes to university, she will reinvent herself: vampish, confident and in control. Most of the blokes in the town think she’s a dyke and sometimes Beth’s happy to play along.

  Behind them, the head of the carnival committee emerges.

  ‘We wondered where on earth you’d got to, Bethany. It’s time for photographs.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, do get a wriggle on,’ he says. ‘This is the fun part.’

  *

  The fun part lasts over half an hour. Bethany is primped and placed, her face aching from the smiles and the fakery. The photographer has Sonny Mann make-up and raised veins on her hands. She is the local paper’s only photographer and a lousy one at that. Bethany is uncomfortable throughout, just the thought of doing this one last thing for her father keeping her compliant – also the fact that the dress and the layers of greasy make-up make her look completely other. Not even Mark will be able to tell it is her from these snaps.

  Hannah watches from inside the pavilion, her headphones on and a book open in her lap. The sun shines hard and Bethany wishes she was in the shade, or had applied more deodorant in the morning. She is led from one position to another, under the cascading baskets that hang from the woodwork, then by the float that she will ride into town. It has been carpeted with flowers and the name of the local garden centre is displayed on its back.

  ‘Now with the sceptre,’ the photographer says. ‘And now without.’ Bethany drops the sceptre and sees her father’s car pull up. She stands a little straighter. When he makes it over to the float, Bethany is fingering the leaves of a flower and is being asked to blow a kiss.