‘Christopher, so glad you could finally join us,’ said Adam.
Christopher set down the drinks. Join them? Wasn’t he already part of the arrangement? Whatever, Adam lunged forward and grabbed one of the beers, pushing the glass against his open mouth. He drank deeply. So deeply that when he set down his glass, half the pint had gone, industrially suctioned into the tank of his belly. He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand and said, ‘Cheers, man.’
All this happened in seconds.
Christopher was about to speak but could not think of anything to say. He realised he was still standing and so slid into the armchair opposite. He picked up his own glass and sniffed it, smelled malt but in the same moment realised to his shame that this drink sniffing would not be considered normal behaviour. He sniffed again, more loudly this time and not near the glass, as if his nose were running a little after the outdoors. After a second or two, when the interval felt right, he took a sip. The foam tickled his top lip and he licked it away. The cool beer washed down his throat. The taste was neither sweet nor savoury, he thought, taking another short gulp. Not bitter either, as the name suggested. Creamy, perhaps, a taste of yeast or bread, yet sharper, and liquid obviously.
Adam had taken off his coat and his Aran sweater, and the tight black T-shirt he wore underneath revealed him to be thin and taut. He lit a cigarette for both the women, then lit his own and shook the match.
‘Shouldn’t light three fags with one match.’ He winked at the women. ‘Bad luck. Comes from the trenches, get your head blown off. Anyway, Christopher, let me introduce you to these two lovely ladies.’
‘Women,’ said the one in the glasses, once she’d taken the cigarette from her mouth and blown the smoke towards the ceiling.
Adam raised his hands. ‘Sorry. Women.’ He slapped the back of his own hand. ‘No more condescending patriarchy bullshit from you, boy.’
‘I’m Alison Jones,’ said the one without the glasses, ignoring Adam. ‘And this is Angela Greaves. Angie. We’re both reading English. Pleased to meet you…’
The women seemed educated – they had that sound to their vowels. Christopher was about to introduce himself, say what he was ‘reading’, when Adam spoke again.
‘And this luscious god of a man is Christopher Harris. He’s tall, as you can see, he’s reading history so he must love the past, but don’t call him Chris because he doesn’t like it.’
‘Hello,’ Christopher said. ‘Delighted to meet you both.’ He held out his hand, as his mother had taught him to do. The first woman, Alison, shook it, then exchanged glances with her friend and smiled. He wondered what that meant, that smile, if anything.
‘Christopher,’ said Adam, picking up his already empty pint glass and wiggling it. ‘Are you going to offer these women a drink or what?’
‘Oh golly. Of course, so sorry.’
‘Actually, I’ll have another while you’re there. This one seems to have gone down without touching the sides.’
* * *
Adam did eventually, as Alison put it, break the seal on his wallet, adding that he should be careful he didn’t kill a family of spiders just by opening it. Perhaps feeling slighted and wishing to prove himself generous, he added food to his turn: two packets of KP peanuts, which he threw on the low table, announcing, ‘Dinner,’ with a stifled belch. He did keep the conversation going, however, asking everyone how they’d celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee during the summer. To much appreciative giggling from the women, he told the story of the disaster of a street party in his road in which two of his neighbours had come to blows over an egg-and-spoon race, and a kid had hit himself in the face with a Swingball bat and had had to be taken to hospital.
‘Wrong choice of uni though,’ said Alison, once the laughter had died down. The statement appeared designed to elicit a question, perhaps from Adam, who was by now apparently glued to her side.
‘How can you say that?’ he obliged. ‘You’ve met me now, what’s wrong about that?’ He grinned.
‘Meeting you’s one thing,’ said Alison. ‘It’s him I don’t want to meet.’
‘The Ripper,’ Angie qualified. ‘Two women killed since we finished sixth form. One of them last month – that Jean Jordan. It’s terrifying.’
‘They’re prozzies though, aren’t they?’ said Adam. ‘Don’t think he goes for ladies like you two – sorry, women.’
‘Prostitutes are women.’ Angie shot Adam a narrow look thick with disdain. ‘And anyway, the one in June wasn’t a prostitute. You know, this is the reason why the police aren’t getting on top of it. This they’re only working girls bullshit. You watch, he’ll kill someone you’d refer to as a normal woman and there’ll be all hell to pay. It’s sexist bullshit, the whole thing.’
Bullshit was the word of the evening, it seemed. Having never heard the term before outside American television dramas, Christopher enjoyed hearing the women say it. Bullshit. The word made him want to cheer and laugh. Fly, even. But the topic of the murderer seemed to have made them all rather serious.
‘We’re like prisoners,’ said Alison after a moment. ‘We’re having to organise ourselves into groups just so we can go to the pub. It’s ridiculous. We need a comprehensive minibus service. I daren’t even take a taxi.’ She looked at all of them in turn. ‘I mean, what if he’s a cabbie?’
Talk slowly returned to the safer ground of music. Alison became more and more engrossed in Adam’s apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of bands. In wonder, Christopher watched his new friend’s arm manoeuvre its way around her shoulder, watched him break the flow only to laugh as her head flew back in amusement at something he whispered into her ear. Christopher’s own head felt strange: as if all the internal parts of it had come loose – his teeth, his tubes, his tongue – and were sliding about inside every time he moved. He worried he had become silent.
‘Are you all right?’ Angie was looking at him, still with the expression of ironic amusement she had worn at the beginning of the evening. Her eyes were brown, he thought. Like his. ‘You’ve gone quite white, you know. Green actually.’
The urge to vomit came then, as if in response.
‘Excuse me.’ He stood, but stumbled. His head spun, the loose components no longer rattling but suctioned fast to the walls of his head, like teenagers on the wheel of death back home. A pressure at his elbow. Angie, two-handed, was steering him through the thick smog towards the doors.
‘Just keep putting one foot in front of the other,’ she said, and it seemed to Christopher that her low voice was kind. ‘That’s it. You’re doing really well. Soon be there.’
Outside, the fresh air hit him like cold water. He felt it splash on his forehead and down the collar of his shirt.
‘My coat,’ he said.
‘I’ve got it here,’ said Angie, urging him to sit on the pavement.
‘I’m going to meet my mother.’ He felt the pavement, cold under his buttocks.