CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,65
cabinet. As soon as the two kids heard the door open they belted out from behind the sofa in their pyjamas and demanded Coke.
‘Don’t start you two or I’ll tell Daddy,’ Gemma growled, from halfway up the stairs. ‘You should have been in bed an hour ago.’
‘Is Danny here?’ James asked, as Mel poured vodka and Cokes into plastic tumblers with Flintstones characters on the side.
‘Nah,’ Mel said. ‘He went over to open the club and help the DJ set up.’
Kerry and Dana were both fascinated by the sight of someone their own age who was pregnant, and they cooed over Mel’s bump and asked loads of questions. James let himself get swallowed in a leatherette recliner, holding his drink in one hand while putting a Cookie Monster hand puppet on the other and using it to play peek-a-boo with Gemma’s youngest.
‘You look nice,’ James said, when Gemma came back in a different dress and matching shoes.
‘Getting mashed, getting mashed, getting mashed,’ Gemma chanted to the tune of here we go, here we go, before slugging her vodka and Coke down in one. Then she kissed her kids goodnight and told them to behave for Auntie Mel.
The Outrage club was a ten-minute walk across a housing estate into a deserted industrial park. All the businesses were closed for the night and clubbers were ignoring the No Parking for Clubbers signs and hanging around their cars, getting loaded on supermarket booze before having to pay club prices inside.
The Outrage itself had once been a light industrial unit that made hi-fi loudspeakers, but its transformation into a nightclub had led to a redesign that included a trendy roof garden and fluorescent orange cladding.
‘Weird place to open a club,’ James said.
Gemma nodded. ‘Started off as a gay venue – still is on weekends. They put it out here ’cos there’s loads of chav palaces in town and all the gays used to get battered at chucking-out time.’
James hadn’t been to a club before and he’d imagined a velvet rope and crowds of glamorous people waiting to get in. But this was quarter to eleven on a Wednesday in a small town, so there was just Danny and a couple of hard-looking mates crowding the entrance.
‘James you big homo!’ Danny said affectionately, before slapping him on the back. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Kids won’t go to bed,’ Gemma moaned, after Danny gave her a kiss.
‘Another hour and they’ll crash,’ Danny grinned. ‘Don’t sweat. It’s Mel’s problem; I’m paying her enough.’
As they walked inside, Danny gave them flyers that included free entry and two drinks for the price of one before eleven o’clock. The interior was gloomy, with a floor made from railway sleepers and seventies style furniture. Much of the crowd was under age, mostly sixth-formers and students. James, Dana and Kerry were among the youngest, but far from out of place.
The teenaged DJ was letting a home-made mash-up CD of garage and seventies rock deafen the crowd while he sat on the steps leading up to the stage, drinking from a bottle of Volvic while girls in short skirts stood around lapping up every word he said. James looked on enviously, knowing that only a tin ear and a complete lack of talent stood between himself and a career at the turntables.
*
By midnight the club was heaving with students, twentysomethings and creepy older guys who seemed to think that Ben Sherman shirts were still fashionable. One of them got short shrift when he tried chatting up Kerry.
When the music got too much, the flat expanse of roof provided a quieter area where you could chill out. There weren’t enough seats, so most people stood around, their animated conversations fuelled by expensive booze and cheap drugs.
Dana, Kerry and James had found a table under a heated canopy in the VIP area. Maybe some minor local celebrities had graced it over the years, but on Wednesday nights VIP status belonged to anyone who knew the DJ or one of the bouncers.
James glanced drunkenly at his watch and saw that it was quarter to two in the morning. It wasn’t a particularly cold night, but he was sweaty from bopping downstairs and he got goosebumps every time the wind blew.
They’d all had a good time and James particularly liked the fact that he, Kerry and Dana were all getting along. He’d danced with Kerry and he was content to sit back while they had boring conversations about girl stuff.