I say, finishing my pint. ‘Anyone else got any stories they’d like to share or is it alright if I scrounge some money to win back a few on the quizzie?’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Snowy stands. ‘Not so fast, mate.’
‘Ah, what now, lad?’
‘We’ve covered Zara.’ Snowy counts out on one finger. ‘Ish. But this is just the start, Jimbo. We need to know what happened to your car.’
Ah.
The car.
‘Well,’ I start, unsure how to begin. The thought of it all still frazzles my insides like a newspaper being set alight. ‘Zara kind of crashed. Into me. It’s, erm, how we met.’
Snowy’s head is in his hands. Mikey’s mouth is flopped open and Griffo keeps his poker face straight. Something tells me they weren’t expecting that. In fact, I’ve shocked myself. I overlooked how Zara and I met to tell my mates what I liked about her. I feel sick. Not the bad kind of sick, but sick nonetheless.
Snowy’s harping on.
‘Now me mind’s blown here, mate,’ he says, tugging on his short hair. ‘You told Griffo’s dad it got stolen, ’cause Griffo’s dad told Griffo. But you never told me that, did you, mate? When you finally rang me on the way to see your ma in the ozzy, you told me you’d fucked up. “I. Fucked. Up,” you said. And you said the car’d been taken to the pound. So, come on. Spit it out.’
Blowing out my lips, I ruffle my hair and scratch my scalp.
‘It’s in the pound. Illegal parking, no insurance. I don’t wanna talk about it.’
Griffo’s stroking his chin, looking eerily similar to his dad.
‘It’s still rightfully yours, though,’ he says. ‘At least that much is true.’
‘Griffo, what good’s it doing to me half smashed up in the pound?’
‘It’s still rightfully yours.’
‘Yeah, I heard you the first time, mate.’
‘What’s her name?’ Mikey chirps, eyes still glued to Facebook. ‘Zara what?’
‘Khoury,’ I say.
‘Curry?’ Mikey asked. ‘As in curry and chips?’
My voice is croaky, so I clear my throat trying to remember how I saw her name spelt on her passport. ‘No, K-H-O-U-R-Y. I think it’s Lebanese.’
‘Boss … okay, is this her?’
Mikey flashes his phone into my face and yes, there she is, sunglasses on her head and standing on a beach with her arms outstretched, that iconic Dubai hotel shaped like a white sail in the background. Beside her photo is the option to ‘add friend’. I’ve never joined Facebook – I originally thought it would be a stupid fad. And how people seem to use and abuse it makes me want to steer even clearer of it.
‘Mikey, you’re a total stalker,’ I say. ‘Put it away.’
‘All I did was type in her name.’
Snowy grabs the phone to take a look. I insist they all leave me – and Zara – alone.
‘Mikey, you’ve got a mutual friend,’ Snowy says.
‘What?’ Mikey asks, peering over Snowy’s shoulder and trying to get his own phone back.
‘Who’s Leon Taylor?’
‘Snowy lad, gis me phone back.’ Mikey snatches it and looks closely, clicking away and scrolling through. ‘Leon’s a mate I went to uni with. How does he know Zara? Small world, innit?’
‘I swear to God,’ Snowy says, standing up to go to the bar. ‘Every time I get a new Facebook friend, I’ve already got mutual friends with them. Fucking weird. Like the whole world’s interconnected. I befriended this fella in Tenerife when me and Helen took the kids there last year. Turns out our mutual friend is me Aunty fucking Eileen. His ma used to work with me Aunty Eileen’s second husband, Frank. Weird, eh?’
I’ll be honest, I don’t really have much of a clue what they’re talking about, but Snowy and Griffo seem to understand and are sharing similar stories with enthusiasm. I go to the bar instead, ordering a round and putting it on Griffo’s tab. I’ll be getting paid in four days and I’m counting. Good job I’ve got a large bag of pasta in the cupboard at home, although the opened jar of pesto now seems extravagant. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and win some money on the quizzie. I return to the table expertly carrying four pints in my hands and four packets of crisps in my teeth. Mikey’s talking about Leon Taylor.
‘And here’s me, stuck in a freezing cold classroom, giving meself piles from sitting on a bloody radiator teaching little shits about crotchets and quavers, and there’s Leon fucking Taylor in fucking Dubai. I bet his classroom’s got a chandelier. You know what?