Charlie and Me

Chapter Three

'Is this it?' Sarah asked.

The minibus was already a cloud of dust as the sun beat down; oh, how I'd missed the sun. Why did I have to live in the one place in the world that was a Mecca for rain, and all year round?

Our residence for the next week was the Corfu Sea Garden Hotel, though it sounded more like random words hobbled together on a translator to me. I didn't remember it quite looking so old in the brochure, either. And that wasn't rustic old, more 1960's ready-to-tear-down old. It was miles from the sea and any semblance of a garden, though at least we were in Corfu and it was a hotel. I hoped.

Sarah took charge, leading us up the crumbling steps and into the shoddy interior. Shouting a foray of broken English at the confused owner, (I never knew how speaking your own language badly could make someone foreign understand) we locate our rooms and before the main event set about some late-afternoon drinking on the balcony.

Club 18-30 had begun; we gladly skipped the welcome meeting when we couldn't find it and decided getting wasted before we went out was obviously the more cash-friendly option. Any excuse.

The place did have a pool, thank God, and from the balcony I'd spied some men. Actual men! From a distance it was hard to tell whether they were rocking the man boobs or not but they were shirtless, meaning they probably weren't from the bowls club.

As the girls cavorted around me, downing shots and mixing their own suspicious-looking cocktails, the thought of meeting more than a handful of guys in the coming week filled me with excitement, anticipation and just a tiny smidgen of fear. Post Darren-the-terrible-DJ, a queue of guys really hadn't been banging the door down. It wasn't like I didn't get the attention but passing my exams, filling in university forms, attending open days (and following the train conductors down the carriages to avoid paying) was all I'd been good for. 

Besides, now Euro 2000 was on all guys wanted to do was watch football on television with their beer guts hanging out and bellowing something resembling a tune. What if all the guys would be more interested in a ball kicked around than staring at the KAVOS ON TOUR GIRLS? I couldn't even remember our proper name; now that had to be the vodka talking, I mean thinking.

I'd better have another one.

Kavos was like Blackpool; all fur coat and no knickers as my nan would say. Bright lights couldn't hide the seedy backdrop that greeted us in the old town; lonely alleys where local guys huddled around scooters, leering at the next victim. I was being paranoid, again; though after that much alcohol I had forgotten my snobby tendencies. Good job considering Fanny's piercing shouts of 'come and get me, boys!' and Sarah's boobs conveniently popping out of her dress. All the time.

So we'd made it. Ten girls from Manchester ready for all the mess and frivolity Kavos could throw at us. We weren't strangers to heavy drinking and fancy dress; Manchester well and truly deserving of its label of party capital of the North. Though on glancing around, I'd never experienced anything quite like this.

What happens in Kavos stays in Kavos.

The tunes were banging; the soundtrack to a generation and the backdrop to my story. The Strip was a mile of bars and clubs offering free shots and the chance to forget your humdrum life back home. Hen parties cavorted around us, guys dressed as sailors jostled to secure our attention; we were the newbies just off the boat and I loved it. The warm night air and party atmosphere were like a drug, fuelling my addiction for a life less ordinary. People screamed, fell over, threw arms skyward and danced like there was no tomorrow. Ibiza who?

We'd left our fancy dress outfits for the last night. It was strictly mini-skirts and short, short dresses this evening. We were in fierce competition with every other group of girls here on their first trip away; what was the point of copping off with an identikit copy of the same guy you met every Friday night at home?

Hannah or Hailey had mentioned a league table for us all, but I'm wasn't interested; not that the other girls had to know. A holiday romance wouldn't go amiss, but nothing too heavy. After landing home I was on the way to uni; having a guy tagging along was definitely not on the agenda.

'Alright love?' came a voice behind me before my bottom was pinched.

'Get off me!' I screamed and leaped out of the way.

'Amber...what is the matter with you? You're supposed to be jumping towards guys, not running away from them,' Kelsey shouted over the din.

The bright lights and deafening music gave a rose-tinted sheen to what was essentially a cattle market; guys ruffling their feathers and puffing out their chests while girls got as wasted as possible and ensured nothing was left to the imagination. Maybe my snobby tendencies weren't as buried as I'd first thought.

Again I tried to get lost in the atmosphere; the hot sticky night, the aroma (if you could call it that) of kebabs on spits and the stench of early evening vomit as we passed a couple of girls already collapsed around their handbags.

'Must be from down south,' Caroline said. 'I need vodka. Ooh, look; free shots!'

We found a couple of bars promising just that; turned out we were obliged to do a couple of dances around the pole first.

'So, where are you girls from then?' he asked at the bar.

Dave was a DJ (why always the DJ's?) from Barking or Bournemouth or somewhere beginning with a B, and drove a Vauxhall Nova; red and everything. You couldn't make it up.

'Manchester. The posh part,' I giggled.

'I'm not doubting that,' he murmured back.

I think he was trying for sexy, but instead I just struggled to make him out above the sound system. Readjusting my silver boob-tube dress (courtesy of the snobby assistant's boutique), I shot him a sincere smile. He was trying his best, even if I had watched him do a line of shots before mustering the courage to saunter over.

Dave was tall and quite handsome, with gel spiking short dark hair. I had to let him off for that. At least it wasn't boy-band curtains. There was nothing wrong with Dave, or any of the other guys currently sticking their tongues down Tina and some of the other girls' throats. He was, just, Dave. This was his first holiday away from the parents, and had already confessed this trip was simply a way to lose his virginity. Which was my cue to exit stage right. And sharpish.

He liked my name, though; said it was pretty, like me. I was almost starting to warm to him,  apart from the virginity quest admission; not that I should've bothered. I was one girl out of a thousand here and after visiting the loo, he was nowhere to be found.

Being out of practice was an understatement. Sarah had already left with a guy to go and 'see the beach.' Yeah, I was sure that was all they were going to do. Cavorting down The Strip linking arm in arm with my girls, we come to the Mojito Bar, lured in by the promise of a drink containing forty shots; in a watermelon.

Kavos was definitely growing on me by the minute.

By three am we were sitting in the medical centre. Cocktails and laughing gas weren't a good mix and Gina had gone arse-over-tit onto the hard concrete outside Mambo's. There'd been blood, and out of the side of her head, but she didn't seem to bothered.

'All part of the fun! They wouldn't have a medical centre here if people weren't supposed to hurt themselves. Isn't that right, Doc?' Gina slurred at the ancient doctor.

No wonder the pain didn't faze her; the watermelon cocktail had definitely sent us all on our way. I'd been drunk from pretty much that point on. The lights and sounds had become a carnival of sensory bombardment. Walking down The Strip everything had spun like I was on the waltzers at Heaton Park; the people and places blurring into one colourful blob. I recall sitting on the floor and laughing insanely before being pulled to my feet and launched over the shoulder of a strapping man in a Dutch football shirt. Wiggling my legs wildly I was promised he'd set me down for the price of a kiss; and that was the last thing I remembered before Gina's accident.

The blood had soon sobered me up and induced vomiting from some of the other girls. Oh, the glamour of Kavos. Caroline had couriered Gina over to the medical centre with me stumbling behind in a drunken stupor while the rest of our party had vanished completely. How typical.

Even though the party finished at seven I was ready for my bed. Leaving Gina and Caroline singing football songs with a lad who'd broken his ankle on the dance floor, I wandered back to the hotel, alone.