Ghosts in the Morning - By Will Thurmann Page 0,33

have to queue or anything. Oh, here’s Tom, come on, let’s go!’

I sighed. I wanted to go home but Graham was there, and he would no doubt be sitting in the lounge, stroking his stupid, wispy moustache and watching some crappy film. Some pathetic action movie, where he’d have the surround sound turned up so high that the room would shake with each explosion. Or worse still, a horror film, with all that unnecessary gore. I hated horror films, they were different to the ones we used to see as kids, the ones where they were clever enough to let your imagination do the work. Now, they just showed gruesome violence, usually against some young, innocent looking girl or girls. Torture porn, I’d heard it called.

‘Oh, what the hell,’ I said and followed Anita, Brad and Tom into a taxi.

***

I hadn’t been to a nightclub for over ten years. The last time was Anita’s hen do. Her first one.

That night we had ended up in a club called ‘L’Auberge du Port. It translated as ‘The Inn of the Port’. An unusual name given that, although it wasn’t too far from the sea – but then, nowhere in Jersey was far from the sea - it was nowhere near any port. I think it may have been something to do with the fact that the club was popular with sailors and fishermen. It was that kind of club; tacky and tawdry, full of leery guys and women who drank too much, or had few morals, or both. It felt like a cattle market with disco lights and hence had earned the dubious nickname of ‘the abattoir’, the French word for slaughterhouse.

We had ended up in there on Anita’s insistence – ‘yeah, I know it’s a bit of a dive, but come on, it’s obvious we’re not on the pull, and we’ll have a laugh. Besides, the DJ’s pretty good’.

It had been a strange night – we had danced round our handbags like throwbacks to another age, we had drunk shots of tequila like over-excited teens on a holiday in the Med, and against all of my usual sound judgement I had ended up in a slow, swaying dance with a guy with lovely, tanned, smooth young skin. He told me was a surfer, and the tequila must have had an effect as I found myself locking my lips onto his and we snogged ever so briefly, before I pulled away and rejoined the girls. I felt a frisson of guilt bubbling beneath the alcohol but a few minutes later I saw the surfer dancing close to another girl, and I promptly dismissed it. I remember heading for the bar – it was my turn to get another round of shots – and I was chuckling to myself, a little edge of elation pulsing through me at my daring snog.

At the bar, I had scrambled for my purse and then suddenly I happened to glance at the man standing next to me. Immediately my blood went cold. It was as if the room had gone silent, the thumping bass stilled. The barman had been on his way to me, but stopped and turned to serve someone else. The man standing next to me was Jonnie, from the care home. He hadn’t changed much; he was still scrawny, and his face still looked emaciated. He still had acne too; red, angry spots peppered his face like shotgun pellet-blast of tomato puree. He recognised me straight away, too, I hadn’t filled out so much then, I still had the semblance of a figure.

For a moment that lasted an age, we stared at each other. Neither of us said a word. Jonnie actually looked scared. I could see him growing redder, his spots glowing even brighter under the fluorescent bulbs, and I wanted to throw the tequila in his face, and to grind the glass into his weaselly cheeks, his nose, his eyes, I wanted him to bleed, and I wondered if he could feel the burning anger that was scorching from my eyes. Eventually, he warily nodded at me, as a sad, nervous look scuttled across his face, and then he was gone, scurrying away into the darkness of the club. Anita had bounded alongside me then, oblivious to the confrontation and had shouted at the barman for more tequila. I carried on drinking but I felt sober for the rest of the night.

‘L’Auberge du Port’ was gone now. It had been torn down