Void

Ch1: You are here

I peer into my glass of flat beer trying to decide if it’s half-full, half-empty or deep enough to drown in.

MissChief321 is twenty-six and from Llandudno. She has long eyelashes and a perfect dentist’s smile, yet no body from the neck down. She loves travel and skiing.

ZoeX88, twenty-three, is a natural blonde wearing a pink necklace and floral skirt. Sunglasses perch on her head.

Gamergurl2020 is a twenty-four-year-old brunette holding a glass of red. She has one silver earring and two brown eyes. Her hair treacles down her white blouse.

Rows of coloured squares shimmer across the screen, sending a pixel-sea over my face.

ZoeX88 lives in the next town.

I gulp more. Women want guys older than them, not twenty-year-old me.

The gloom of a Welsh evening pours through my window. Tiles on the terraced houses opposite are grey. Endless.

My glass is half-empty.

I traipse through the suburbs of Snowdon town to the snug of the Horse and Groom, a backstreet pub near the University of Snowdon campus.

The walls are wood-panelled. Bare bulbs and portraits of famously-dead Victorians hang above a sawdust floor. In one corner are old men at a table, playing dominoes and hunching over their tin tankards. In another corner, Doug’s leather jacket bulges around his bodybuilder chest.

Doug: one of my undergraduate housemates, also twenty, but studying engineering, not sociology.

‘It’s great to be back here, lad,’ he says. ‘Need to make our last year the best.’

I slump opposite him at a table. His jaw’s solid enough to make a boxer weep.

Doug unzips a jacket pocket and starts stacking sugar lumps next to his glass. Black curls coil on his shoulders.

‘Any luck on that site?’ he says.

‘Some interesting profiles, if they’re not fakes. But no, not yet. Anyway, I want to meet someone, not stare at screens. It’ll be even harder after graduation.’

Doug raises his lone eyebrow. He lost his other in an arm-wrestle with a blowtorch.

‘I know it’s as fashionable as chlamydia,’ I say, ‘but I want to love and be loved. What if I never find her?’

‘Freshers’ Ball tomorrow night. 1980s fancy dress.’ Doug lowers the final sugar lump to form a pyramid of crystalline white. ‘Where you met Heather.’

I study a beer mat.

‘She wasn’t the one,’ I say. I drag a pen from my pocket and doodle numbers, letters, hangman. ‘I guess I only stayed with Heather because I thought it’d be easier to find someone else when I was already in a relationship. Like jobs.’

Doug plucks lumps from his sugar pyramid and drops them into his glass. There are explosions of gold bubbles.

‘But it’s our last year at uni. I must find her. The girl for me. Don’t let me grow old and lonely like—’

Pete judders back the snug door. He’s wearing a bottle-green cardigan and clutching a book with Churchill on its cover.

Pete: my second housemate. Seventy years old and a trainee historian.

He strolls over, leaning on table corners for support, and the bare bulbs shine on his balding head.

‘Gentlemen, may I say, it is magnificent to be here once more celebrating what students do best.’

‘Aye,’ says Doug, slurping his lager.

‘I mean studying, Douglas.’ Pete straightens his cardigan. He opens his book and taps a page. ‘Our final year as undergraduates starts tomorrow, so it shall be our last wondrous occasion to assimilate knowledge.’

Doug picks up a beer mat and, with the skill of an engineer, rips it into perfect quarters.

The shreds are like a torn-up exam paper. Why return for the final year? I should be searching for her, not enduring Pete’s prattle. What does he know about love?

‘Education is important,’ says Pete. ‘As are our studies.’ He wags a finger at portraits of Lloyd George, Telford and Brunel on the wood-panelled walls. ‘Consider any famous person and only with great determination did they achieve anything.’

‘I worked over the summer.’ I flip my beer mat over and over. ‘Temping.’

‘You too must now concentrate on academia. Tell me, after all of your lectures, what is the most important truth you have learnt?’

‘Never snore on the front row.’

‘Does your unopened letter not signify anything?’

‘What letter?’

‘The one in our house. It has the University postmark, so it may concern your examination results.’

The exams were back in the summer when I thought I might pass my course (briefly) and when I’d last made love to Heather (briefly).

Pete leans towards me. ‘My dear boy, your indolence risks ejection from University.’

Grey foam slides down my glass. ‘It’s our first night together after the summer. There’s time—’

‘No, there is not.’ Pete shuts his book. ‘For after graduation your career shall be quite different. There shall be no more subsidised alcohol, lying in bed until the afternoon or those ridiculous parlour games storing coins in your underpants.’

‘Not even if I work in advertising?’

Pete’s wrinkled fingers crook around his lemonade.

‘Void, have you ever considered a career lasting more than a single day?’

‘No, but your sermons last more than a single day. You’re becoming as predictable as one of your scratched 78s, and just as inflexible. I didn’t plan to hang off the failure cliff. And I know I have to make my final year count.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yeah, I do. I’ve even promised my dad I’ll pass my degree. But it’s . . .’ I shrug. ‘I shudder if I even hear the words “Monday” and “work”. I can’t think of a more terrifying combination.’

‘Clown vampire dentists,’ says Doug.

Doug took to soaking sugar lumps in LSD two years ago. It was around the time he started dating Kate’s purse.

Kate: my third housemate and also our landlady. She’s a part-time psychology postgraduate and research assistant. She’s thirty.

I gaze at my beer-mat scribbles. At numbers, letters and a stick man with a noose dangling over him. Why had Heather ended it? I’m funny. Reliable. Honest. The things women say they want.

The snug door bursts open, wafting the stale air.

Kate is carrying a tray of beers and a packet of peanuts. She curves her scarlet ‘fcuk 24/7’ T-shirt and ripped denim hot pants between the tables, teasing their edges with her thighs. The old men in the corner ogle. Whisper. She slides the tray across our table, demolishing Doug’s sugar lump stockade.

‘Katharine,’ says Pete, ‘you appear somewhat flushed. Where precisely have you been?’

‘Stag party upstairs,’ says Kate. ‘Military theme. Gorgeous uniforms.’ She hips onto a chair next to Pete. She winks at me. ‘The sailors loved my hot pants.’

‘Nautical, but nice?’ I say.

I prise open the peanuts.

‘So, Void. Not that I’m interested, but how’s your relationship?’

The peanuts spill.

‘Heather ditched you?’

‘Over the summer. She asked me if I loved her. I didn’t reply. She started crying.’

‘You’re joking?’ Kate bites her purple lip. ‘How long did it last?’

‘Nine months.’

‘You’re with someone that long, then it finishes, just like that?’

‘My next girlfriend is going to be the relationship.’

‘What, ten months?’

‘No, a lifetime.’

Doug spent the summer in his workshop, playing with his engineering toys, while I read the Highway Code and failed my driving test. Pete studied. Kate enjoyed not listening to my childish jokes.

Kate and Pete leave the pub and, two hours and five beers later, Doug and I blunder outside into a street of terraced houses cuddling each other. The air’s cool.

We chance a shortcut through the darkness of Owen Park, past a renovated Victorian bandstand guarded by traffic cones.

We flop down in an avenue of silver birches discarding last season’s wallpaper.

I hug a stray cone.

We stare upwards, saying nothing.

A comet scratches the sky, competing with the glare of the moon and the glimmer of stars in the cosmic dot-to-dot.

Still drunk and still horizontal, I remember to blink. No degree equals no career. Years clamped by call centre headphones.

I wrench myself up off the ground. ‘Why do I listen to you? You going to answer?’

There’s no reply from the traffic cone.

Doug appears from behind a tree. ‘And?’

‘I’ve had better advice from my beer mat.’

‘Ask a different question.’ Doug zips up his trousers. ‘See you back home.’

I watch him cross the moonlit wilderness.

A lone owl swoops, the only shadow to smudge the night. I clutch the traffic cone. Lurch into the avenue of trees.

The moon shines onto the branches. There’s a strange stillness in the air.

Pete’s right. I must study.

I zigzag around a corner but stumble over exposed roots. I fall into a tree. Palms slap bark. Knees smack.

I drag myself up, eyeballs wobbling. There’s something . . . behind me.

Breathing.

‘Good evening.’

‘You’re . . . a tad early for Halloween,’ I say.

‘Don’t be scared.’

‘Isn’t that what all axe murderers say? If you want money, don’t bother cleaving my skull. I’m a student.’

The figure steps into the moonlight.

Naked?

Ch2: his two hundredth birthday

Officer Flint stopped typing at his desk and reclined in his black leather chair. Through his solitary office window he peered at the Hertfordshire morning beyond the MI7 facility. The pink sky banded in grey was a new day, for opportunity. Flint yawned. Two nights without sleep, he closed his eyes yet saw the kingdom he must never lose: guards with sub-machine guns patrolling perimeter fences; interrogation cells and surveillance cubicles denying time; the red LED of CCTV cameras glowing on security watchtowers. Always on, always ready. Across a screen on his desk his fingers twitched. His watch shone 07:39 hours, +17ºC.

Flint’s wallet contained a photograph of a woman in her thirties. She had blue eyes and deep auburn hair that covered her ears. She was a woman with happiness across her face. Flint stared at her.

Officer Adams entered the office in a white tent of a shirt. ‘You’ve not spent another weekend here? Not on your fortieth? What did your wife say?’

‘Ex-wife.’

Adams surveyed the room. It was spacious yet aspired to be imposing. The ceiling was tiled black with square lights framing a chessboard of limited moves. A monolithic filing cabinet stood opposite a coffee vending machine. On Flint’s desk were in and out trays and a column of interrogation reports. Beside his desk was a bin; a shredder disposed of innocence.

Adams locked onto the bin overflowing with plastic cups and a vodka bottle. ‘Been celebrating your new romantic freedom?’

‘I require coffee.’

‘You could go speed dating—’

‘Shut up. You’re my personal assistant, not my nanny.’ Flint slapped his desk and the column of reports toppled to the floor. ‘Black, three sugars.’

Kneeling, Adams lifted the reports onto the desk.

‘I work in here on a diet of coffee, vodka and Twix chocolate bars because I am an officer of MI7. I am the grade A2, you are the grade B3.’ Flint reclined in his chair until the padded leather massaged his backbone. ‘I do not need my bed, sleep or motherly advice from a subordinate. I do need coffee. Black, three sugars.’

‘That’s if the machine’s been fixed, sir.’ Adams thumbed the order and a skin-thin plastic cup plunged down the chute. The machine hummed, beeped, relinquished its offering. ‘Does it taste normal?’

Flint swilled the coffee. He bent over the side of his desk, retching brown gobs into the bin. ‘Yes, yes, perfectly normal.’

‘Anyway, sir, we have been notified of multiple incidents. One has been formally reported to Snowdon Constabulary.’

Flint wiped his mouth. ‘I do not care about Snowdon Constabulary. Remind them that MI7 has jurisdiction over any sensitive incidents reported to us. They must never become public knowledge. Question. What do we know?’

‘It’s odd. The descriptions of the attackers are identical. But some incidents happened at the same time across different locations. The formal report is about a farmer.’

A new day for opportunity. For promotion.

‘Snowdon Constabulary took a statement from a Geraint Evans, at Manor House Farm in Snowdonia National Park. It mentions beer bottles and pizza boxes. This Evans says he was attacked in a stone ruin.’

‘Prepare my car.’

Ch3: a forfeit, which was usually

obscenely biological

Glass squeaks. Whiff of oil. Eyelids drag back: green glow of my digital clock, window streaking with condensation and a giant lurking shadow.

‘United won again.’ Doug faces my window, his two-metre bulk blocking light to shame a solar eclipse. He scans the Victorian terraced houses of Arlington Avenue as a Terminator on guard. ‘Want to know the score?’

I prop my pillow behind my back. The same bed that for the last two years has moulded itself to my body and no one else’s. An ancient mattress where the springs depress so much it curves like a banana.

Socks, jeans and boxes lay scattered across my carpet with bomb-site precision. My bookcase leans: discs of Groundhog Day, Sleepless In Seattle and A Matter of Life and Death share space with curling Empire magazines.

A glass of fruit juice loiters on the carpet.

Doug’s wearing his oil-stained navy blue boiler suit and black boots. ‘You OK, lad?’

‘Can we . . .’ I rub my forehead. ‘Not do the talking thing?’

‘Hangover?’

‘No thanks, already got one.’

Doug steps back from the window. ‘Shouldn’t have attacked my homebrew last night then. Remember what you said to Kate?’

‘Last night is . . . blurred. I have snapshots of the pub. Us in the park. Me falling over. A weird drunken dream . . .’

I wipe my eyes.

My screen sits on my desk in a field of dust. Above it is a Casablanca poster of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, cheek to cheek in each other’s arms. The poster shivers in a draught.

‘But,’ I say, ‘if I said anything indiscreet, it was the beer chatting. It’s much better at it than me. Anyway, Kate will forgive me.’

‘You’re still drunk.’ Doug passes me the glass.

‘If this is her Hawaiian juice we’re going to be wearing rope ties.’

He pulls out something from his boiler suit; he lobs it into the air and catches it.

The oval metal matches one of his prototypes he showed me over the summer. The prototype of a hand grenade.

‘One of twelve.’ Doug taps the side of his nose. ‘My best supplier.’

‘You’re here to show off your new toys?’

He whirls an envelope around like a Samurai sword.

‘Is that it?’ I say. ‘The letter Pete mentioned?’

‘Found it in her cupboard. Hidden behind rice and tuna tins.’

‘Devious. No wonder Kate’s studying psychology.’

The envelope’s dotted with Doug’s fingerprints and, like Pete said, the University of Snowdon postmark. The envelope trembles between my fingers. I don’t know its contents, my destiny or the Man United score.

‘What’s the date?’ I say.

‘Tenth.’

‘Of October. But this postmark’s August the first. Kate’s hidden this for over two months. She’s sabotaging my academic career. It’s not right. That’s my job.’

My hands are sweating. I tear into the envelope. The letter’s white. White, the colour of salvation. The letter’s triple-folded. The University logo’s in the top corner.

Dear Mr A V Wilson . . .

‘And?’ says Doug.

‘It says . . . I have an exam a week today. Monday 9AM. And if I don’t pass . . . oh, I’m out. It’s my own fault. I should have seen the warning signs. Last year my tutor said I was underachieving and not listening to her. I think.’

‘Let’s play one of Pete’s games then. Monopoly?’ Doug stabs at the floor. ‘Downstairs? Take your mind off it.’

‘I’ve promised my dad I’ll graduate. No way am I going to be the first person in my family to fail uni.’

I lean over the bed and my head pulses with the pressure. My fingers find Introduction to Sociology, the Ken Browne textbook I used to amass my entire sociological knowledge, one morning.

I nestle back into my soft reassuring pillows. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Four.’

‘Phew, I thought I’d wasted the whole day. You know, over the summer, well my dad kept banging on about me having a career after graduation.’

Doug engraves ‘MUFC’ into the condensation; the window squeaks again.

‘I have a debt mountain Edmund Hillary couldn’t conquer. But after I graduate I will find a job other than flipping burgers. Which means the Freshers’ Ball must be my last night of fun.’

Doug marches out of my room. He’ll be back.

My red dressing gown swishes on my closing door. I wrap myself up in it and slurp the remains of the juice. I collapse onto my bed.

The letter. The bleakness of each assembled word, solid and black.

I peer into my glass.

Deep enough.

A hinge to the living room door has dropped off. A coffee table tilts on unequal legs thanks to Doug’s turbo chainsaw. On the table a Times crossword leans against an opened packet of biscuits; beneath the table sits Doug’s homebrew barrel I ‘attacked’ last night, after the pub.

‘Good afternoon,’ says Pete from his easy chair. He’s wearing a tweed deerstalker hat and cape.

‘Afternoon,’ I say. ‘So you’re going as him again?’

‘Tonight’s Ball is an eighties night, but it failed to specify which eighties. Therefore I shall attend as Sherlock Holmes, whose first appearance in A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887.’

‘Shame you don’t have a time machine.’

‘Indeed, for the London of the 1880s is almost as intriguing as my specific interest in the Second World War. Moreover, since secondary sources are blighted with inherent limitations, to experience the emotion of conflict first-hand would be perfect.’

Some of Kate’s Mickey Mouse teddy collection line the TV stand behind Pete. Across his lap is a book with Stalin’s photo on the cover.

‘So how is World War Two?’ I say. ‘Let me know if we win on penalties.’

‘That phrase is an aberration the careful historian eschews, for the correct term is the Second World War.’

Despite this being classic Pete pedanticism, he is talking to me. In our first-year together in this house, I once came downstairs and found him slumped in his chair, suffering from sleep apnoea. Or at least I thought he was asleep. It transpired his pacemaker was connecting to Doug’s network and downloading an update.

‘Tea?’ says Pete.

There’s a stench of damp leaves, but Kate’s cactus is the only plant, in a pot on a windowsill of flaking paint. ‘What’s that smell? Is it . . . you?’

‘It is Golden Acorns, a speciality tea with a subtle nuance of the timberland. My palate demands only the most delicate of flavours. Jaffa Cake?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Are you here to apologise for last night?’

I shrug.

‘Your priority should be your studies.’ Pete takes the biscuit. ‘Never tolerate failure.’

‘OK then, how about . . . “deferred success”? Look, I know I sometimes see the road to success as under construction, but I am sorry.’ I sit on the split leather sofa and foam pellets spill out towards Kate’s teddies. ‘Next Monday I have to write a five-thousand word essay in exam conditions. On Karl Marx and his theory of value. I failed last time, so after the Ball I promise to put my studies first. If you’ll help me revise.’

‘As you never break your promises, I shall of course aid your endeavours. Moreover, before we leave tonight I shall regale you with my knowledge of the 1980s.’

Doug strides into the room holding his frayed Counterespionage: Advanced Techniques manual and a pistol.

‘Like it?’ he says.

‘Beretta 92FS?’ I say.

‘Aye, 9mm semi-auto. You’re getting smart at recognising my collection. But you should see my other stuff. Hydrogen cyanide, nitromethane and my lawnmower projects.’

‘You’ve been doing that lawnmower thing for two years.’

‘It’s engineered for combat. Be finished tomorrow.’

‘Yeah and you’ve been saying that for two years. I bet you need more Sellotape and swearing.’

‘Need more beer. Before we go out.’ Doug kicks his homebrew barrel. ‘Hear about Kate’s new motor? Her birthday present is being delivered Wednesday.’

‘Yes,’ says Kate in the doorway, ‘and if anyone even so much as looks at my Mercedes, I’ll have them arrested. Understand?’

Kate’s hair is tied with a white bow. She’s wearing lace fingerless gloves and a black miniskirt and fishnets.

‘Peter, sweetie, I’m trying to look like Madonna but I have a clothing dilemma. Is this my best outfit?’

Pete stares. ‘Katharine, this is the fifth time you have asked and you are indeed magnificent.’

Kate looks me up and down.

‘Void, it’s fancy dress, and we’re meant to, like, be 1980s celebs. Even Doug with his curls is Brian May from Queen, but who are you supposed to be? You look miserable.’

‘I’m supposed to look miserable,’ I say. ‘I’m Morrissey.’

Brian May, Morrissey, Madonna and Sherlock Holmes infiltrate the glamour of the Students’ Union Freshers’ Ball, via the forty-two bus. A bar on the first floor stretches out beneath flashing neon; students swarm around in columns five deep. Synthesized music pulses off posters of red Porsches, Filofaxes, Pac-Man and mobile phones as tall as my sociology textbook. Overhead are diagonal banners: ‘Welcome to the 1980s!!!’

Kate uses a brutal combination of feminine charm and elbows to battle through the bar queue.

Before we left, Pete didn’t regale me with facts about the 1980s; he enveloped me within a self-perpetuating tornado of economic theory and political ideology. I’m now an expert on Black Monday, the Falklands War and the miners’ strike; I’m a certified master of the so-called ‘Greed Is Good’ decade, when British Gas, British Steel, British Telecom and every other company with ‘British’ in its title was privatised by men in stripy shirts, with bleached blond hair.

Kate lowers our tray of drinks to our table and, for one beautiful moment, we lift our glasses to our last ever Ball.

Students are milling around in 1980s fancy dress, trying to look sophisticated. I’m trying not to imagine being ejected from uni. Trying not to think about where I’ll be a year today and which type of burger I’ll be flipping.

Kate faces us.

‘I’m so going to find me a Richard Gere lookalike tonight,’ she says. ‘Someone in a uniform. Tight, pristine.’ She glares at me. ‘But don’t think a loser like you will find anyone. You know sod all about women.’ Kate stands. ‘You’re my tenant, nothing more.’ She snatches her glass. ‘Bye Peter.’

Pete sips his lemonade.

Doug stacks sugar lumps on the table in a triangular fortress.

There are distant flashes.

‘Who is that peculiar young lady wearing purple leg warmers?’ says Pete. ‘The one holding a Rubik’s Cube and a camera with what appears to be a prophylactic over one ear?’

‘Oh, that’s Sally,’ I say, ‘the Snow photographer. You never met her? Sally takes the photos for the student paper. Wears the condom to relax her subjects. Her dad’s the editor of the Chronicle, so she’s doing the Snow shoots to gain experience. She told me last year she was still waiting for her scoop. She wanted to take photos of alcoholic priests in a Catholic church, but her dad wouldn’t let her.’

‘I am not at all surprised if she wore a prophylactic.’

‘No, you’d like Sally. She’s the great determination type. Has her own darkroom and even uses vintage 35mm cameras. Says the quality’s more authentic.’

Pete watches Sally taking photos of students. He finishes his lemonade with considered gulps.

‘I am grateful for your invitation tonight,’ says Pete, ‘but I do have the final chapter of my dissertation to draft.’

‘Don’t go,’ I say, ‘the Ball’s just started. And it’s our last. Plus you might meet the woman of your dreams.’

Sherlock Holmes doffs his deerstalker.

‘I shall never meet her again,’ he says and sleuths off into the fluorescent sunset.

Doug points to the floor. ‘C’mon.’

We walk down a cement staircase towards the ground floor dancing area. With each step the music rumbles louder.

‘Hear about the comet last night?’ says Doug. ‘Crater should be mega. My mates Gaz, Baz and Daz are going there tonight.’

‘And miss all this?’ I say.

I grip a door handle. It throbs.

I open the door to a shockwave of music and three giant glitterballs above the dance floor. Multicoloured laser beams shimmer into an arena of sweat and perfume, where lads wearing stonewashed Levi 501s confront girls in white ‘FRANKIE SAYS RELAX’ T-shirts. A DJ cranks up the bass and students wriggle like they’re being electrocuted.

I see-saw my empty glass.

My table overlooks the dance floor. It’s dark and humid. The dry ice machine seems to be broken, because a thick cloud lurks on the dance floor at knee height. A blond wearing a pink headband moonwalks into it. Shirts with braces pass by.

‘Hi,’ says Sally. ‘You still read Snow?’

‘Sure, but it’s full of crosswords and editorials on debt. Your photos are the best bits.’

‘Take yours?’ Sally aims her 35mm camera and flashgun. Click, flash, motorised whirr. ‘Thanks. This will be in the first issue, the Freshers’ Special. Out Wednesday, after the Fayre.’

A brunette wades out of the dry ice cloud and her hair’s crisscrossed black with moisture. A redhead wearing a rah-rah skirt and hoop earrings takes her slot.

Doug returns with a tray of six beers. Our extensive homebrew sampling before we left mustn’t count. He drains his first beer in one.

So do I.

The DJ boosts the volume and more shoulder pads and mullet hair surge onto the dance floor. Steam rises from the packed bodies. I catch a faint whiff of armpit overtime.

A figure floats through the dry ice. She’s a blonde with wavy hair. She’s a . . . Margaret Thatcher?

Her hair’s a solid swept-back helmet of a wig. She’s wearing giant pearl earrings and a double-breasted blue suit with a skirt well below the knees. Her suit is so tight it’s as if God’s Gorgeous Lab has dripped one stunning molecule into her outfit after another. There’s a floppy bow at the blouse neck but, thanks to shoulder pads, her shoulders are long and straight enough to double as aircraft carriers.

‘It’s me, Billie-Jo,’ she says. ‘You seemed pensive before. Sad. You OK?’

I glance around.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘have I pinched your table?’

‘Perhaps you need counselling?’

‘Er, hi. Who did you say you were? The welfare officer?’

‘I’m doing English. First-year. What about you?’

‘Me? Third-year. Sociology, sometimes.’

Colours shimmer over a handbag strapped to her forearm. It isn’t a clutch bag for lipstick and a compact: it’s a bank-vault of a handbag for gold bars.

She gazes around.

‘I keep getting odd looks,’ she says. ‘Like everyone hates me. Is my hair OK?’

‘You look great.’

‘Must be my outfit then.’ Her suit is blue tweed. She has more curves than a rollercoaster. ‘Why would people hate that? Do you like it? My pussy bow?’

Doug chokes on his beer.

‘Your what?’ I say.

‘Pussy bow blouse,’ she says. ‘It’s so feminine, I love it. I wanted to wear pearls as well, but thought this and a necklace would be too much. I prefer skirts to trousers and do love stilettos, but what girl can dance in those? So, boring low heels it is. What do you think?’

I look at Doug and back to her.

‘I’m not a fashion guru,’ I say. ‘Not even with menswear.’

‘That’s OK,’ she says. ‘But for next time, would you prefer a pearl necklace or the pussy?’

I’m speechless.

Her skin seems pale, with an almost ethereal beauty. She stares deep into my eyes.

‘You’re cute,’ she says.

I’m going to explode.

‘Looking for a dance?’

‘Er, no. Not really. Just looking. Sorry.’

She smiles and her cheekbones tighten to circles.

‘I love a joker,’ she says. ‘What’s your name?’

‘My name? Well, it’s Void.’

‘I like you, Void. Want to dance, 1980s style? Assuming you aren’t in stilettos?’

Doug shakes his head at her.

‘Not too old for a Fresher, are you?’ she says to me.

My beer goggles need adjusting from Fantasy to Reality. She’s mistaking me for someone else. Or chatting to me for a bet.

‘My handbag won’t bite.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Promise.’

Doug raises his glass. ‘Another round?’

Before I can decide, she grasps my hand and we’re under the spinning glitterballs and shouting at each other’s ears. I discover her name really is Billie-Jo. I also discover break-dancing with a beer glass is my worst idea since sending my pregnant cousin that Get Well Soon card. We chat. We laugh. I think I’m swaying. There’s the boom of some 1980s power ballad Pete hasn’t told me about and she swaps my glass for her waist.

She says she noticed me earlier, presumably when I was upstairs with the others. I should be flattered. I am; I have my own stalker. Yet I know I’ll soon be surrounded by her girlfriends. They’ll point at me and snigger and tell Billie-Jo she’s won her bet by enticing a guy even while dressed as Margaret Thatcher. I don’t care; she’s friendly and sweet and lovely. Wow. An impossibly friendly, sweet and lovely Margaret Thatcher. And, right now, she’s with me.

Students surround us in the dry ice cloud. Some bounce through it like decapitated heads on a trampoline. Time disappears. After a while we cuddle in hypnotic strobe lights. Or am I leaning on her? Beer scaffold?

There’s more chatter. More of her laughter at my lame jokes. One moment of perfection slurs into the next until I’m sweating as an orphan in a toy shop on Christmas Eve.

Midnight sneaks off and we flow outside with the crowd. The night air cools my hot forehead. My ears are ringing. We walk-talk off campus. Hold hands. There’s a light drizzle, an autumnal mist. We retreat to an open-air bus shelter that stinks of discarded cheesy pizza.

Nowhere near the Students’ Union and nowhere near sober, I blink into life.

‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a bus shelter like this?’ I say.

‘I took a wrong turn. I was looking for a nuclear bunker.’

‘Oh, you’re the romantic type?’

‘Void, you have no idea how exciting concrete is to a girl. There’s nothing like it, except the inside of a bus shelter or coal-fired power station.’

‘I’m guessing Margaret Thatcher was only inside a coal-fired power station to shut it down.’

Billie-Jo twirls her handbag in the rain. It’s black and shiny.

‘Why do I feel as though I’ve known you for ever?’

‘Because,’ she says, ‘we’re similar. We love positivity and care about others. We share a sense of humour. Plus both Morrissey and Margaret Thatcher were once rabid socialists.’ She’s smiling, but her damp wig isn’t. ‘And we share a strong emotional connection. I felt it when I saw you and it’s grown as we’ve chatted. Wait, that’s wrong. One was a socialist and one was rabid. Yes, that’s right. Like my outfit? You can see it better out here.’

A street light bathes the contours of her suit. Despite her out-of-date clothes, there’s an elegance about her. A natural warmth.

‘You have an exquisite body,’ I say, ‘up there with somebody and anybody.’

‘I love a funny guy. I do like you. Want to kiss me?’

‘I feel the connection too but we’ve just met. I’m not that kind of boy. Perhaps if we start dating I’ll submit a formal request. In writing, addressed to you and copied to your dad and everything.’

She clasps my hand.

I turn and offer her my cheek.

‘I’m not that kind of boy either,’ she says. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’

‘Kiss me in this bus shelter?’ The rain’s bouncing off the tarmac. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I do have a rule never to be intimate on a first date. And what if the bus arrives? Or a lecturer turns up? That would be terrible. They might talk to me.’

‘If we don’t kiss, I’ll have to break the promise about my handbag.’ She leans in. ‘It’s carnivorous when released. Loves a three-course meal of liberals.’

Her lips engulf mine; I guzzle a cocktail of adrenaline, anticipation and cheesy pizza fumes.

‘Well OK,’ I say, ‘maybe more guideline than rule?’

People appear through the layers of rain, in a bus shelter on the opposite side of the road.

Billie-Jo pats my thigh.

‘Don’t,’ I say.

‘Why not?’

‘It feels wrong. Not here. Not in public.’

She squeezes my bum.

‘No, you shouldn’t. You mustn’t. You’ll make me rabid.’

She giggles.

I gulp. Retreat into the bus shelter shadows.

She cuddles me. Kisses me again.

Only now, I want her to. Need her to.

Soft kisses spark between our lips. Her tongue darts in and out of my mouth and I fight memories of old girlfriends and toothpaste commercials.

I shut my eyes. Swallow vast breaths. This is glorious. This is perfection: Margaret snogging Morrissey. This evening must never end. Nothing can spoil this.

Click, flash, motorised whirr.