‘Hi,’ I say. I point at Flo, ‘She has a boyfriend.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m with him,’ I say, pointing at Finch. He glares at me. ‘Watch out, he’s very jealous. He’ll kick the shit out of you.’ Finch is 5’6, and skinny, and the idea of him kicking the shit out of any one is laughable. So laughable that I snort, my hand beneath my nose to cover it.
‘Shut up, Irina,’ says Finch. ‘She obviously isn’t my girlfriend, and I’m obviously not going to fight anyone.’
‘Can you believe what I have to put up with?’ I pout and walk over to Finch. I pluck a recently rolled cigarette from his fingers and wrap my arm around his shoulder. ‘Light me up, babe.’ Finch lights the cigarette, still frowning at me. ‘Go on, shoo,’ I say to the Star Wars boys. They scuttle back to the club, their obedience to being shooed like dogs, proving both their weakness and my alpha beta hypothesis. Beta male in any form fucks off when I tell him to. Finch gives me a look. I say, ‘Well, I got them to leave, didn’t I?’
‘You’re so awful on coke. I’m going for a piss.’ He rolls his eyes at me.
‘Don’t fucking roll your eyes at me,’ I snap after him. He just ignores me. ‘Hey!’ And then he spins on his heels, with a clenched jaw and a scowl. He takes a deep breath, then seems to decompress.
‘You know what? Never mind,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t matter. They left. Well done.’
‘That was quite mean, Rini,’ says Flo. ‘You know how insecure he is.’ I roll my eyes at her.
‘Oh, come on, I was complimenting him. It’s not my fault he’s never had a girlfriend, is it? There are some men who’d literally snap their fingers off to pretend to be my boyfriend in front of some other blokes,’ I suck on my beer and my cigarette. ‘He’s so fucking overly sensitive.’
He’ll be back. I down my drink.
I drag Flo back inside, where they hoot and clap, because David Bowie is playing; the DJ knows his audience very well. I scowl.
‘YOU’VE GOT A FACE LIKE A SMACKED ARSE, RINI.’
‘WHAT?’
‘I SAID, YOU’VE GOT A FACE LIKE A SMACKED ARSE.’
‘THERE’S A LOT OF WHITE PEOPLE IN HERE, ACTING LIKE THEY DON’T KNOW THAT THEY’RE WHITE PEOPLE, BUT THEY ARE AND THEY LOOK STUPID.’
‘WHAT?’
‘I’M GOING FOR A PISS.’
Flo follows me. She makes a beeline for her own stall, but I grab her by the wrist.
‘Flo,’ I say. ‘Hey, Flo.’ And I beckon her into the stall. ‘Step into my office.’
‘What?’
‘Step into my office. Business meeting,’ I say. She comes in and I slam the door shut behind her and lock it. ‘You’ll be wanting a line, then?’
It’s a tight squeeze; there’s a lot of woman for such a small space. I’m crouched by the toilet – the floor is a bit wet – and sprinkling coke on the seat, chopping and pushing and fixing it into lines with my National Insurance card, which is always my card of choice. My mam found it once, on the floor of my house, and said, why’s your NI card here? And there’s no explanation for that really, no legitimate reason it could possibly be there. Like, yeah I just leave it on the floor. That’s just where it lives, Mam. On the floor. Put it back. I’ll lose it.
‘Aye, go on,’ says Flo. Flo wants a line of coke. Of fucking course Flo wants a line.
‘Do you have a note?’
She does. She has a fiver. I feel safer with the plastic money, I feel less like I’m going to get hepatitis. Cashing up at work with paper money, you feel like you could shake the notes off and salvage a bump, at least. Plastic money, though, it just bounces off. And if you have a nosebleed, it’s not like you’ve ruined a note; you can just rinse it off. I make Flo go first, because she has the note, and I watch her hoover up that line like the sesh gremlin I know she really is. Fuck morals. Fuck ethical drug consumption. What’s that fucking bit in Trainspotting from the posters, you know, from everyone’s room when they’re sixteen, Choose Life, Choose A Job, and all that shit. Choose fucking up. Choose to come into my office and take cocaine because I told you to. Choose to follow me back out to the bar, after we’ve had a line, and drink a shot of tequila.
The thing with Flo, with a lot of people our age: she’s so fucking quick to blame everyone else for her shit, you know? And you do choose these things. You choose to make yourself feel like an absolute fucking spineless, easily led pile of shit with a steaming hangover tomorrow morning. Maybe even tomorrow evening. The night is young, and I have so much cocaine in my bra.
When Finch turns back up, I buy another round of shots, and tell him it’s apology tequila and he has to drink it.
I realise I forgot to piss.
Tequila makes my fingers numb, so I keep dropping my phone in the Uber. We’re heading to Will’s presumably squalid house in Heaton. Student Village, Flo calls it, every time, like she doesn’t live three feet away in Sandyford. I sit in the front, because I’m the only adult, and the only person who can handle talking to strangers for extended periods of time. I order drinks, I order cabs, I make men go away, I make drug deals happen, I get us into places. In the land of the borderline autistic, the man who can make eye contact is king. I’ve known Finch for three years and he’s never looked me in the eye once.
‘How’s your night going, then?’ I ask. I can’t bear the silence. Finch has gone quiet, furiously chewing gum, and Flo is creased; she’s absolutely pissing herself back there, stuffing her fingers into her mouth to try and stop herself from laughing.
‘Just students and stuff. Back and forth, town to Heaton, Heaton to town,’ he says. ‘You going home?’
‘Nah, house party.’
‘Is… Is she okay?’ The driver （Iqbal） nods back at Flo.
‘She’s fine. In fact, I’d be more worried about your man there.’ I point at Finch. ‘Gurning like an absolute twat. Forgot to take his magnesium supplements, now look at him. He’s going to lose a tooth, like that. Have you ever seen Bounce by the Ounce? On YouTube, Bounce by the Ounce?’
‘No… What is that, is it a music thing?’
‘Sort of. It’s a video of this tragic club, somewhere shit. Some shitty town. There’s this bald feller, gurning his tits off. Looks like Gollum, Gollum in a really rough extended cut, Gollum in Middle Earth After Dark, like one bump to rule them all, one bump to line them, one bump to… something, and in the sesh we bind them,’ I say. Flo screams with laughter, stomping her feet on the floor of the taxi.
‘God, you fucking love Lord of the Rings, don’t you?’ says Finch. ‘You only ever talk about it when you’re off your tits and that’s how I know you love it.’
‘She still had an Aragorn poster while we were in college,’ says Flo, gasping between giggles. ‘In 2008.’
‘Fuck off.’ I drop my phone again. Flo laughs more. ‘Hey, since we’re sharing fun facts, did you all know that Flo isn’t actually called Flo? Did you all know she was christened Lauren.’ And Flo’s laughter slows. ‘Lauren, and rebranded before she started foundation, and actually named herself after Florence of the Machine fame? Changed it by deed poll and everything.’