Chapter 2

Back when I was nearly eighteen, we didn't have mobile phones or digital cameras or the World Wide Web. But we never got bored. I'd just finished college and I still hung around with the same crew I'd gone to school with. We went to the park and got drunk. We played a game where there were six of us and at least four bottles of strong wine and we'd all drink as much as we could then take turns to spin on the roundabout in the locked park to see who lasted longest without throwing up. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. We dared each other to run through the graveyard in the pitch dark and enjoyed freaking each other out. We smoked dope when we could get it. We threw house parties. Not just parties, house parties. Banging music, techno and dance. When we weren't running around together I used to get in pubs easily even though I was just a bit too young. At weekends I used to go to London and hit the clubs. It wasn't about sex. I had my thoughts about sex but back then it wasn't something I'd really discovered. I knew how to give a hand job. Well, sort of. I wasn't interested in sex yet. It was all about getting out of my head and getting lost in a blur of laser beams and dry ice and flashing lights. I fell in love with alcohol. Even when it made me throw up on the dance floor and over expensive furniture and over my friends. Everyone was doing something, E, poppers, speed, it was part of the night. For me nothing did it like booze. I totally loved booze. Then one night some prick put pure LSD in my drink - spiked me

and it took me three days to get myself back together. That was when I decided I'd had enough of the club scene. Not that it mattered, I didn't need the clubs. Me and my friends had all we needed in our home town - parties, booze, and even though we didn't have the digital age it didn't matter - we had Acid House.

Back to sex:

I gave my first blow job after a disco on the way home. In the cold, in the bushes, because I was drunk and no, I didn't swallow. I didn't even like the boy all that much, but as I said, I was drunk and all my friends were doing it - having sex - and I wasn't, so I thought I'd better catch up before they thought I was weird. And that was all up to that point.

It was because I was yet to meet a man who would actually light the fire inside me. Until now, all thoughts of desire had merely been smouldering embers that needed firing up. I knew how to have an orgasm, but I didn't know about using fantasy with orgasm to make it amazing.

I did, however, know how to make myself look sexy. Which is a bit ironic considering I was quite a pretty girl, yet I didn't know what to do with myself.

One night my friend Alice phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to go to a local pub with her, it was quite near my house and although I'd been planning a quiet night for once I decided when booze was concerned, I was better off saying yes because then I had more chance of getting nicely drunk. Nicely drunk meaning I wouldn't throw up, just get a bit drunk. Enough to go home, lay on my bed and watch the ceiling as my bed span round - or was that the room spinning round? Either way, it was a pretty cool sensation and one I'd easily get after seven or eight martinis.

So tonight, I decided to look sexy. I had no plans on using that sexiness; it was just something girls did when they had a night out.

In my bedroom I had a white dressing table and a huge, oval mirror. The dressing table was littered with make up and hairspray and perfume and right next to a big, tall window so I had plenty of natural light to put on my make up. In those days it took me something like an hour to get ready. I don't know why - I don't know how it could have taken me that long. (These days I can do full make up and everything I need to do in less than twenty minutes, no matter what look I want to achieve). I'd had a long, hot bath before I got dressed and my skin felt silky and the warm spring air that filtered into my bedroom seemed to sigh off it like tiny breeze-kisses.

I stepped back and looked at myself in the mirror: my hair was warm brown and in a layered, shoulder-length bob. My skin was clear, I needed little foundation back in those days and I'd put on mascara and red lipstick. I looked nice, I couldn't deny that. I had a short black skirt on and a

silky, cream coloured top that was off the shoulder and edged with lace. I put on my black high heel shoes and then layered on my gold: rings, three necklaces, a bracelet and my hoop ear rings. Then I picked up my bag and left the house.

I met Alice outside the pub; she had just got off the bus. I don't recall what we talked about for the next ten minutes but I do know she said "You look really nice!” We walked into the pub. It was getting dark outside and there was a bit of a chill in the air but inside the crowded pub it was bright and warm and smelled of booze and cigarettes and I headed straight for the bar.

Alice said she'd get the first round. She knew my drink by now, martini and lemonade with ice.

She turned towards the bar to order. I turned my head and looked around.

That was the moment I saw him.

I looked at him, he looked at me and for that moment, for a split second, everything around me disappeared and my heart stopped in my chest. I couldn't see anything but him, and although I know now that only I was aware of how I felt, to me at the time, I'd just been hit by love, quite unexpectedly with the speed of an express train and nobody seemed aware of it.

As he looked away the spell was broken, I was still looking in his direction and then I came back to earth. Someone was shaking my arm.

"Eve."

I turned back to Alice. Oh, yes. I was in the pub. And my drink was in front of me.

Alice glanced over my shoulder then looked back at me with a smile on her face.

"Do you fancy that bloke?"

I smiled and nodded. Fancy was putting it a bit lightly. I was crazy about him and I hadn't even spoken to him yet.

"You should talk to him."

I hesitated. I'd never felt such an attraction to someone before and I swallowed down most of my drink before I replied.

I put the glass on the bar.

"Not yet. I really like him, but he's older than me. I might not be good enough for him."

"Of course you are! Go on, talk to him!"

"When I've had two more of these,” I said, and I finished my drink and ordered a second round.

Those martinis went down all too quick (bit like me on him, if I had anything to do with it!), and I was in the difficult position of being overwhelmed with all these sexual feelings and this pounding in my heart and the frustrating feeling that I simply didn't know what to do about it, knowing nothing other than the fact that I was gravitating like a moth to a flame and if I got burned up in the process I didn't care - this was no crush. I had never known a feeling like it in my life. It can be frustrating having no experience in a situation like that. I'd finished my third drink, ordered a fourth then I picked up my glass, and taking my courage with me, I walked across the room to a corner near the door where the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen in my life was standing. As I approached him he looked at me and I smiled. He had beautiful blue eyes. Actually, everything was beautiful about him. He was handsome, somewhere in his thirties, taller than me, with a shaved head that only accentuated his good looks and a slim, athletic body to die for that I longed to run my hands over. He was wearing a white shirt and black jeans and as I said hello he leaned a little closer and the scent of his skin drove me wild.

"I'm Eve." I said, thinking, do I sound stupid or was that a good introduction? I didn't know, I was just hoping to keep his attention.

"Hello.” He said, and as I looked into his eyes my heart missed a beat again.

"I haven't seen you in here before."

He had glanced away, eyes scanning the crowd for something or someone, I didn't know which but I just wanted him to look at me.

He looked back at me.

"Look, Eve, I'm waiting for someone. I can't really talk right now, but maybe we can chat later...”

And he smiled at me.

"Okay." I said brightly.

Then I went back to the bar and found Alice.

"He's waiting for someone. But he said we can chat later."

"Sounds good to me,” She said, and we left the bar to find a table.

Two hours and several more drinks later she told me she needed to go and wait for the bus. She didn't want to wait till eleven when all the drunks were spilling out of the many bars that dotted the high street.

"Wait with me.” I asked her.

She shook her head.

"Sorry, babe, I got to go now. I said I'd be in before ten. You'll be alright, go and find that bloke you fancy."

I didn't really care at that point. I had a drink in front of me, I was still hoping my handsome man would come back and I was halfway to pissed. I was at the stage where I was happily drunk and the room was not spinning and there was no way I would be throwing up tonight. I sat there and waited for him to come and find me, not bothered that I was now sitting alone.

I drank my drink faster because I had no one else to talk to. I sat there for another ten minutes and then got up and made my way to the bar to get another drink and hopefully catch another glimpse of the man of my dreams.

He wasn't by the door. The place was crowded more than ever and I could hardy move. I pushed my way around the other end of the bar and looked around. I was a little more drunk than I thought I was. I felt a bit wobbly as I turned around.

I didn't see anything. There was no indication of any signs of trouble anywhere. But suddenly,

seeming to come from somewhere behind me (and pretty close to me), I heard a loud noise, a single sound that reminded me of a car exhaust backfiring, only it was louder, and suddenly people were pushing and shoving and panicking.

There were tiny pieces of broken glass littering the floor, it crunched under my shoes as I took a step forward and as I realised my hand was aching I looked down and saw a tiny sliver of glass stuck in the back of my hand. My eyes scanned the room following the trail of glass. On the floor was a man, a total stranger I'd never seen before in my life. He was lying on his side and the rest of the broken glass was still held in his hand.

I just stood there. I heard someone say there had been a shooting. And I still stood there, taking it in, yet not moving nor blinking, still as a statue, as people bumped and shoved me as they ran, but I was still there with my hand bleeding and not knowing what to do. It was scary. I didn't think this kind of thing happened in my town…