in the distance and hoped it was something to do with motorbikes. The sounds got louder as they led him across the car park and through a gate, before ceremoniously removing the hood. He was slightly disappointed when he looked out over a floodlit track covered with small, four-wheeled dune buggies. But he didn’t want to seem ungrateful and broke into an appreciative smile.
‘Cool,’ he grinned, watching a buggy lift off the ground as it sped over a massive hump and ploughed through a muddy puddle.
This explained why Meryl had asked him to wear old clothes. Maybe it wasn’t motorbikes, but it still looked like a lot of fun.
They headed towards a shelter with a corrugated metal roof and some benches underneath. Meryl approached a weedy teenager with a clipboard; but he was surrounded by drunk blokes who all wore identical T-shirts saying KEVIN JONES STAG WEEKEND 2006.
‘You can’t go out there in that state,’ the teenager was explaining, as five drunken men stared him down.
‘Then we want our money back.’
‘I can’t do that,’ the teen spluttered. ‘It’s in the terms and conditions, but anyone with half a brain cell could have worked out that you can’t turn up drunk at a place like this.’
‘You’re going the right way about getting a slap,’ the largest of the drunks said.
The five men looked like rugby players, and even the smallest one was twice the width of the teenager.
Meryl interrupted. ‘Party of twelve, booked in the name of Spencer.’
‘Tickle my titties,’ one of the drunks spluttered, as he pointed at Meryl. ‘I know you, you’re that Kenyan bird who won the hundred metres in the Olympics. Me sister had a poster of you in her bedroom. How about a kiss?’
Meryl scowled. ‘How about a punch in the face?’
As the man who’d asked for a kiss lunged towards Meryl, the largest of the five drunks shook his head and opened his enormous mouth. ‘She’s too muscly to shag, looks more like a geezer to me.’
Meryl restrained the man lunging at her by grabbing his hand. As his thumb crunched, she wrenched his arm behind his back, then deliberately tripped him up and sent him sprawling towards the giant who’d accused her of looking like a man.
‘I suggest you leave,’ she said tautly.
‘That’s not a nice way to speak to a gentleman,’ the giant said, as he reached around to grab Meryl’s bum and suggestively flicked his tongue in and out.
All her life, Meryl had put up with blokes calling her butch and making jokes about how often she shaved, or how she probably had testicles. She used her powerful physique to give the giant an explosive shove. He stumbled back and lost his footing as he tripped on a kerb stone.
‘Try touching me again and see what you get,’ Meryl shouted.
The other four men looked warily at Meryl as they started backing up towards the car park.
‘Lesbian,’ the giant shouted.
‘If all men were like you I would be,’ Meryl yelled back.
Meryl sounded a touch upset and the eleven cherubs stifled their laughter as she turned towards the teenager with the clipboard. He looked shaken up.
‘You OK?’ she asked.
The kid shook his head. ‘I hate this job. You wouldn’t believe the crap I put up with for minimum wage. I wish I’d got the job at McDonald’s, you get so much less hassle there.’
‘Drunk blokes are all dickheads,’ Kerry said sympathetically.
The teenager shook his head. ‘Hen parties are even worse. Half a dozen women saying that you’re a nice boy and trying to pinch your bum. They’re complete animals.’
James and Kyle couldn’t help giggling.
‘Anyway,’ the teenager said as he looked down at his clipboard. ‘You lot aren’t due on for another twenty minutes, but I owe you one for getting rid of that bunch of idiots, so you might as well grab some gloves and helmets and use their slot to have a couple of extra races.’
*
The dune buggies were less than two metres long. They only had small motorbike engines mounted behind the driver, but their open chassis and aluminium roll cage weighed less than fifty kilos, enabling them to accelerate from dead still to their 30kph top speed in less than three seconds. With rock-hard suspension, tiny steering wheels and seats less than fifteen centimetres off the ground it felt much faster.
‘This is awesome,’ James grinned, flipping up his visor as he stepped out of his buggy and used one of the cloths standing on the edge of the course to wipe