Sixteen Shades of Crazy. Rachel Trezise

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      It was a little after ten when the speed kicked in, dopamine rising to greet it; the time of night when life seemed full of possibility. Ellie was beginning to believe she was some sort of chemical Cinderella, blessed with wit and mystique. Big Barry was three-quarters of the way through the set-list Sellotaped to his sound desk. He’d been using the same one since he’d started the job in the late Eighties, only ever deviating to play the current number one. Rhiannon sprang to her feet when the piano intro to ‘I Will Survive’ began, drink splashing out of her glass. She headed for the walkway in front of the stage, extended chest bouncing against her ribcage. She stood facing the DJ, tight skirt preventing any real dancing, go-go boots slipping on the carpet, the other customers glaring at her. Generally, people either tolerated or detested Rhiannon. Any friends she’d ever had, she’d pissed off years ago.

      ‘Come on, girls,’ she said, shouting back at the table. She clapped her hands, the brass wall plates behind her shaking. This was the way Rhiannon moved; eyes screwed closed in devotion, hands held an inch away from her face, fatty palms smacking together, the slapping noise reverberating around the room. She stole Big Barry’s microphone and held it in her clenched fist. ‘Come on, girls,’ she said. ‘I wanna fuckin’ dance.’

      Siân lowered her eyes and sipped from her half-glass. ‘It’s your turn,’ she said, hissing across the table at Ellie.

      Ellie shook her head; she didn’t want to dance, not with Rhiannon. A gust of energy had just detonated in the small of her back, driving tiny particles of euphoria around her throbbing bloodstream. She was having a lovely time just sitting down; she didn’t want to waste a minute of it.

      Siân pushed herself out of her seat. ‘I come out at night to get away from the kids, not look after her. Why has it always got to be me?’ She flicked her long hair, folded her arms, walked slowly towards Rhiannon.

      A small blonde woman came in carrying a chair from the games area. She placed it at the edge of the table, struggling not to hit anyone with any of its stocky legs. Ellie didn’t recognize her. She’d never seen her before. But Marc obviously had. He was beckoning her with his waving hand, smiling and shouting into her ear, using a folded beer-mat to wipe Rhiannon’s wine spills from the table. Soon, a man followed, a tall, skinny man with a mop of dark, tangled hair. He sat next to the woman and nodded perfunctorily, eyes the colour of coal. It was hard to tell how old he was; mid-thirties – older than Andy, younger than Rhiannon; a scattering of black stubble around a pouting, mauve mouth. There was a thick silver belcher chain resting on his collarbone and dark circles under his eyes, the colour of smudged kohl. Ellie gawped at him until he opened his cigarette packet and counted what he needed for a flash, running a clean fingernail along the top of the corks. He threw some on the soggy surface of the table and balanced a further two in the V of his fore and middle finger.

      ‘Anyone?’ he said – an accent, not Welsh, but familiar. He looked quickly at each of the faces around the table, but if he thought anything at all about them, his stoic face hid it. Ellie waited until all of the loose cigarettes were taken and then clipped one from his hand. She thanked him, but he ignored her, tossing the last one into his mouth, holding it between alabaster teeth while he lit it with the ferocious flame of his chrome Zippo. Ellie suddenly felt conscious of her appearance. She was no Cinderella. She had a round, plain, pale-skinned face, framed by dull brown hair, not platinum-blonde like her siblings or even golden-blonde like the woman he was with.

      Rhiannon reappeared, jostling against the table, tipping more drinks. ‘What’s the matter with ewe, ewe fuckin’ sourpuss?’ she said. She slammed her body into the space next to Ellie. ‘That’s what speed is for, mun, dancing.’ She pointed at Andy. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘E’s home now. Ewe can get ewer oats tonight.’ She lifted the egg cup to her moustachioed mouth and downed the modicum of wine left inside. ‘Next time he goes away, ewe wanna tell ’im to leave ewe a dildo. Marc bought me iss massive pink rampant rabbit, din’t ewe, love? Wouldn’t fit in ewer ’andbag, El.’

      Ellie blushed, embarrassed not by Rhiannon’s crudeness, but by her memory of her quickie with Andy, the pair of them scrambling around the bedroom, tripping over one another’s clothes. The thought had seemed heady a few moments earlier, but now it felt like a burden.

      Rhiannon turned to the new faces at the table, looked the strange man square in the eyes, said, ‘Where’s my fag ’en, mush?’ He took another cigarette out of his packet and passed it across the table. Rhiannon grabbed it and popped it into her mouth, leaned forward and waited for him to light it for her. She dived headlong into conversation, her screechy monotone blaring over the music, her twisted body preventing Ellie’s joining in. It was useless to try to talk over Rhiannon, so she sat back on the bench, stole intermittent glimpses of him as he answered Rhiannon’s relentless questions, his lips swiftly fastening and unfastening. Rhiannon was still leaning towards him, head inclined, steadily pushing her cleavage into his view. After a while she started touching, smoothing her hand along his forearm, slowly at first, and then faster, squeezing at his skin. Siân was staring at him too, her forefinger hooked in her mouth, stupefied by his beauty or his oddness or his audacity, it was hard to tell what. Nobody new had turned up at the Pump House since the last Millennium.

      After a while Ellie became impatient, hungry for the man’s attention. She thought up jokes to tell him. Something her friend Safia had said at work the day before had amused her, not for its content but for Safia having repeated it; something about Jeremy Beadle measuring the size of his penis. ‘He decided it wasn’t very big,’ Safia’d said, ‘small in fact; although on the other hand it was effing massive.’ Ellie’d almost pissed herself. It was obviously something Safia had heard the print boys say, and without fully grasping its meaning had memorized, intending to impress Ellie. But was it good enough? Maybe if she thought of an alternative character – she didn’t want to admit to ever having watched someone as naff as Jeremy Beadle. Ordinarily she wouldn’t admit to owning a television, but she couldn’t think of anyone who was cool and had a shrunken hand. Suddenly Andy coiled his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her close to him. They stared at one another, the balls of their СКАЧАТЬ