Free Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener Page B

some?”
    “Because he’s not a wanker.”
    “And I am?”
    “You said it.”
    The emergency band meeting isn’t going quite as well as I’d hoped. Not only has Vince refused to give me any of his chips, he’s also made it quite clear that he doesn’t think very much of my plan.
    “It’s a rubbish plan.”
    “Why is it rubbish?”
    “Because it’s exactly the same plan we’ve been having for the last ten years, that’s why.”
    “It’s not,” I say, pulling a neatly folded sheet of A4 out of my pocket. “Look, I’ve made a list of things to do. Just wait until you see this.”
    I have to say that I’m particularly pleased with the way my ‘to do’ list has turned out. I’ve used a different colour felt-tip pen for each new suggestion, and I’ve also underlined
    what I consider to be the key points in lime-green Magic Marker. It took me the entire length of This Morning to get it just right.
    “Blimey,” says Vince, biting into his cheeseburger and splattering my ‘to do’ list with globs of chilli sauce, ‘it gets worse. Oi, Matty, listen to this.”
    Matty spears another forkful of chips on to his plate and Vince clears his throat and begins to read aloud.
    “Ehem… point number one,” he says, tapping the paper on the table like a pretend news reader ‘get decent… what does that word say? Right, manager, yeah… get decent manager with office in Camden town or similar.
    “Point number two: get some decent live dates instead of just playing for beer at friends’ parties.
    “Point number three: record new demo and send it to various A’n’R departments instead of relying on Sheila at the video shop to tell us if the new songs are any good or not.
    “Point number four: get matching poodle haircuts in the manner of early Bon Jovi videos so that the three of us start to look more like a proper band.
    “Point number five…”
    “Fuck off,” I say, snatching the list off Vince and folding it back into my pocket. “You’re just taking the piss now. It doesn’t say that at all. I was only saying that we should make an effort to look more like a cohesive unit. What? What are you both laughing at? What the fuck is so funny all of a sudden?”
    “You are,” says Vince, wiping his eyes with his serviette. “You with your felt-tip pens and your Magic Markers and your emergency ten-point plans. I mean, when was you actually going to get around to telling us?”
    “Telling you what?”
    Matty makes a violent whipping motion with his arm.
    “About Alison.”
    “What about Alison?”
    “About what she said. About the ultimatum. About the whole six-month thing.”
    TO
    “Whoopah!” says Matty, cracking his arm in the air and slapping his middle finger into his palm with a sharp, neat crack: “Whooopahhh!!” he says again.
    “What are you doing? What is he doing? Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
    “Pussy-whipped,” says Matty. “It’s the sign for pussy-whipped, whoop—’
    “Matty, do that again and you’re a fucking dead man…”
    “All right, cairn down,” says Vince, pulling me back into my seat and offering me his plate. “I think you’d better have one of my curly fries.”
    “I suppose Ruth told you, then?” I say, chewing sulkily on my chip.
    “Yeah, at The Medicine Bar. We came back just after you’d taken Alison home and she told us the whole thing. It was pretty obvious, Danny, all that guff about finding you a job in tele sales and Ruth saying that we were shit and you not even bothering to stick up for us.”
    “I know, you’re right, I should have told her where to go.”
    “So it’s not true, then? You haven’t told Alison that you’re giving up?”
    “Of course not.”
    “But you have agreed to it, though, the six-month limit?”
    “Yeah,” I say solemnly, “I suppose I have.”
    “Right then.”
    “What do you mean, “right then”, what does “right then” mean?”
    “It means at least we know where we stand.”
    Vince