Charlie and Me

Chapter One

It was Kavos, the year 2000; and there was nothing more cliché than our girls-only Greek summer getaway. College was done, university loomed and all that was left was to get drunk, pull and hope I didn't come home with a tattoo. And not a really minging one.

This was the summer of Sambuca, dodgy tans, lairy guys, sticky suncream and the worst hangovers imaginable. I was eighteen and due to my rather persuasive group of friends, I didn't have much choice in the matter. I was going, and that was the end of it.

I decided quite early on in life I wouldn't end up pregnant or in prison before my twentieth birthday. I may have successfully wangled myself a place at Durham University but that didn't mean my family, or what was left of it, had anything that resembled moolah to their name. This was the wrong side of Manchester at the start of a new era, a new millennium; and I was counting down the days until I boarded my coach further north.

One more holiday with the girls, one more blow out and I could focus on attending lectures and maybe bagging myself a cute doctor in the process. I was teetering on the precipice of the rest of my life, and time had come to wave good riddance to this particular shitty chapter.

My dad raised Mark and I himself, though dragged up is probably a more accurate description of my childhood. When he wasn't drinking away his earnings at Bernard Manning's world famous social club (I asked my friend from Essex, she'd never heard of it), my dad enjoyed nothing better than dozing in front of the box whilst sporadically kicking the dog.

A spattering of holidays divided the years; seaside stuff not Disneyland, but it was always school that got me through. Yes, my high school was rough with a dash of added delinquency and at least fifteen girls made it onto the maternity ward before the exam hall, but my penchant for reading  secured my place on one of the best literature courses in the country. Books gave me a doorway to worlds I'd never touch, allowed me to explore a landscape so foreign to my own. It was life, illustrated; beyond the confines of boarded terraced houses and Friday night stabbings in the Hare and Hounds.

They'd certainly never heard a Mancunian accent like mine when I attended Durham's open day. It was also the first time I'd ever seen full recycling boxes, never mind full of used Pimms bottles. Civilization; oh how I craved it. The halls of residence were posher than my friend Kelsey's detached, and she'd had a couple of small scenes on Coronation Street.

Just one more summer beckoned, and this slummy life would be beautiful reverie.

The holiday was still two weeks away; two weeks before nine of my best friends and I got lost on the way to the hotel and fell off an inflatable banana in the sea. Kavos was calling, and that meant only one thing. A new wardrobe.

'What you think about this?' Kelsey asked.

A fedora covered her voluminous blonde hair as she tried out a suggestive pose in the shop mirror.

'Not bad. If you were a guy,' I quipped.

We'd been shopping for nearly two hours and I'd had more than enough. My hair was doing its static thing and was in desperate need of a colour. I was thinking fiery red to match my mood, but my usual chestnut brown would probably suffice. Just in case I turned the swimming pool blood red.

Each shiny boutique we entered earned us the obligatory top-to-toe from the assistant; the heinous crime of just being in their presence already committed. That was before I'd put the dress up my top. They must know my boobs weren't really that lumpy.

'Kelsey, what's the point of even being here? I can barely afford the half-price jewellery in this place,' I said, examining an overpriced bracelet before chucking it back onto the display.

'They can't watch us forever; they'll get bored eventually,' Kelsey whispered, kaftan in hand. Soon to be in her bag.

'I'm not being dragged down to Bootle Street Police Station again because you want to look like a reality TV star on a night out. Those people have money. We don't.'

I'd lied on my university application form. I'd skipped over the previous convictions part completely, though being known on the estate was hardly news. Durham University were on a drive to meet their quota of students from deprived backgrounds. They couldn't expect me to turn up fresh faced and clean slated, could they? Even if I had failed to pay for half my wardrobe, I wasn't a walking stereotype or anything.

Kelsey on the other hand, was different. Somehow always evading capture, there was always story to tell or a tear to shed. No one would ever believe she'd grown up on the Milton estate before moving to the dizzying heights of Ash Lane. Funny what being on the books of the local talent agency can do for your family's fortunes.  

I hadn't been back to the Milton since I split with my last boyfriend, Darren. (I don't think mums in 1980 had much imagination when it came to monikers.) He was a part-time DJ, as were most of the lads around here. As it turned out, the Milton wasn't a place I enjoyed spending my time, and he was hardly worth getting attacked for on my walk home. One glance from the window and it was lads on bikes in T-shirts and woolly gloves, gathered in packs, moving like animals on the plains; waved off by their mothers before a hard day's graft entering cars and committing criminal damage.

I was fed up with shopping, bored of browsing the shiny pretty things in the shiny pretty city centre. Four years post the IRA bomb of 1996 and the place had been transformed. Though, as it turned out, I still couldn't afford anything.

'Kelsey, lets just go; that bitch is on the radio to security and I'm hungry. Let's grab some chips before getting the bus.'

'Yous can, I'm staying trim for Kavos,' Kelsey said, and slimmed the tight yellow dress over her curves in the dressing room, including the one around her middle.

'Trust me, no one will care if you've got a muffin-top or not; all the lads will be bladdered anyway,' I moaned.

'Some of us aren't born with a natural botabolism like you, Amber.'

'It's metabolism,' I said, pulling the hat from Kelsey's head.

'Hey; you're the smart one, I'm just pretty.'