Free Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener Page A

over to eat, the bottle of Sancerre that we were too hung over to drink, and the decimated Thomas the Tank Engine cake that was all either of us could face. Alison liked her cake. She liked her cake and her guidebook and her silver bracelet and when I explained that her flowers were currently languishing on the windowsill in Sheila’s front room she didn’t seem to mind.
    She put the bracelet on her wrist and kissed me gently on the cheek. I kissed her back. I kissed her mouth and her neck and her fabulous tits and then the hangover horn kicked in with a vengeance and we ended up screwing right there on the sofa.
    She looked incredible. Even with her hair all messed up and smelling ever so faintly of puke, even with mascara clotted in filthy black rings round her eyes, even with cake icing smeared across the edges of her beautiful mouth. I love Alison’s mouth. I love her mouth and her legs and the taste of her cunt and the way her whole body tenses up like a bullet when she comes.
    We stayed on the sofa for a long while after that: curled up in a duvet, sipping hot tea and polishing off the rest of Thomas’s bright green funnel with our hands. She said she forgave me.
    She said it would have been a crap party anyway because she didn’t like most of the people who were there. She made me sit in the damp patch on the duvet by way of a punishment. She made me realise just how much I’m going to miss her.
    I spent the rest of the afternoon watching her pack, avoiding the washing up and drip-feeding her Coke and cupfuls of soluble aspirin. At one point I came up with a unique hangover treatment consisting of aspirin, fresh orange juice, Pepto-Bismol and a whole raw egg but, oddly enough, she didn’t seem overly impressed. I told her what Ruth had said to me the night before. She told me it was all bullshit.
    “I didn’t tell her anything,” she said, rolling her Tshirts between tissue paper so they wouldn’t get creased on the journey, “Ruth just presumed. I only said you were thinking of doing something else, not that you were definitely going to.”
    “So you didn’t ask her to find me a job in tele sales then?”
    “Jesus, no. Are you kidding? I’d rather you spent the rest of your life in a bar mitzvah band than got a job in tele sales
    Thank God for that.
    “So, how about I take you to Waterloo in the morning?” I said when we’d finished forcing her suitcase shut.
    “Bit early for you, isn’t it?” she said carefully. “I’ve got to be there by half nine.”
    “No problem. I’ll get up and drive you. You don’t want to lay out fifteen quid for a taxi when you’ve got me to take you. I mean, there’s no point, is there?”
    “But I’ve already ordered one, for eight thirty, it’s all arranged.”
    “So cancel it,” I said. “They won’t care.”
    “OK,” she said. “I’ll go and do it now.”
    I’m ninety-nine and a half per cent sure she never cancelled that cab.
    My second mug of coffee is going down nicely and I’m beginning to feel a bit more positive. If Alison is losing respect for me then it’s up to me to win it back. It’s up to me to prove that I can do it: that all those years in damp rehearsal rooms and piss-stained dressing rooms haven’t been a complete and utter waste of time.
    We’ve got to pull ourselves together. We’ve got to start taking this thing more seriously. We’ve got to give the band one more Atlantic City-style spin of the dice.
    It’s about time I called Vince and told him about my plan.
    Vince is in a mood with me. I can tell he’s in a mood with me because he won’t give me any of his chips.
    “Come on.”
    “No.”
    “Come on, give us a chip.”
    “No, and they’re not chips anyway, they’re curly fries.”
    “I don’t care what they’re called, just give us one.”
    “No, get your own.”
    “Can I have some?”
    “Course you can, mate… D’you want ketchup on ‘em?”
    “Yeah, nice one.”
    “How come he gets to have