Charlie and Me

Chapter Two

The grim foreboding skyline dirtied the train window. Like the backdrop to a particularly   dark Dickensian novel, it was all I'd ever known. Long dormant smoke stacks, derelict factories; this town was dead. Climbing from the ashes would take much more than a shiny shopping centre and limited tram network.

Depression was a state of mind and this place had it bad.

'Deep in thought, Amber? What's with you? We are on the way to hedonism like you can't imagine and you're slumped against the window! Where's your holiday spirit?' Gina said.

'I left it on the estate.'

Gina Renthew was an old friend from school, primary school until she secured a scholarship to Oldham Grammar. I wasn't jealous. Not even. Standing on the train seat with the feather boa strangling her and the bottle of cider fizzing dangerously in hand.

'I'm fine, Gina; just thinking about uni.'

'Yeah, congratulations by the way. I could've gone; they had scouts or whatever from Cambridge at school this year but I couldn't think of anything worse than another three years of studying. Bring on the party I say!' Gina shouted with an added whoop for effect.

The boa was pulling tighter and tighter. I began to doubt why I was ever friends with Gina to begin with. All she did was try and make me feel stupid for not getting into a better school. Trying to dismiss my foul mood, I glanced at our rabble. The pink KAVOS GIRLS ON TOUR JULY 2000 T-shirts were compulsory, just in case anyone was wondering whether we were girls and where we were going; that didn't have to mean I was enamoured with them. A year ago and I wouldn't have thought twice, but now my future no longer included the estate it all felt slightly embarrassing. Snobbish tendencies, bitch on overdrive; what was wrong with me?

Kelsey was immaculate in a trashy way, in a shorter-than-short denim mini-skirt and pretty eyes hidden behind a mass of blonde hair extensions. I'd always been jealous of her eyes. Waving a straw hat, she was warbling at the top of her lungs and pulling faces at the elderly pensioners across the aisle.

Then there was Sarah, Kelsey's older, wiser, sister. She'd pretty much been around the whole of Manchester and back and was starting on Salford, or so I'd heard. She was tall, leggy and enjoyed flashing her boobs a little too much, though only twice so far this morning; poor guy almost fell off his bike at the railway crossing. 

Francine, or Fanny as she preferred was a tom-boy; dark cropped hair and a voice so piercing it could shatter glass. Caroline was quiet until the vodka started flowing, Emma could swear for England as everyone on the train had been privy to, Rachel was a label queen though more Manchester than Milan, and Tina was the pill-popper. I didn't go near that stuff.

And lastly there were the twins, Hailey and Hannah. I did try to tell them apart but since they finished each other's sentences it was safer to treat them as the one person.

That was the girls. Their names may fade over time as we grow apart, get married and one by one swap Ouzo for Ovaltine, but I knew this summer would be the defining moment on the journey towards my future. I just hoped it didn't involve inflatable willys and luminous shots of...I didn't even want to know what I'd just poured down my neck.

'Amber's getting married in the morning!' the girls cried out.

Everyone was singing. The girls had got the whole plane going, informing them of my upcoming wedding to a Greek waiter I'd met a few months before, with this, apparently, my hen do. I did get some free fizz from the air stewardesses and a kiss from each of the guys on an actual stag do. Some of them were pretty cute.

I felt like the estate, my dad, and all my worries were a million miles behind me.