twenty 

After Terri had blow dried our hair, we walked back home in the rain. Tony wanted to catch the bus but I pretended I didn't have any money on me. I was petrified that someone might recognise me. I always meet people I know on buses.

"How do I look then?" I asked Tony.

"A bit like a clown at the moment" he said. "Your ears have gone all red"

"That bloody needle was too big," I moaned. "I bet my ear'll go all manky now."

"It's probably the brandy," said Tony. "Your nose is red too."

It didn't seem to be raining that hard as we walked the couple of miles from Terri's place to mine. But it must have taken us about half an hour door to door, and by the time we arrived we were both pretty sodden. We jogged soggily up the stairs to my bedroom before anyone could see us and shut the door. I flopped backwards on the bed and looked up at Tony, whose hair hung down over his forehead like sodden straw.

"You look like a fucking scarecrow," I said.

"What about you. You look like Sid Vicious...after he'd been dead for a few weeks. You look like a vampire."

"Shit," I covered my face in my hands and shook my head. "Tell me it's just a dream," I murmured.

"Peter Sharpe was just an ordinary schoolboy," said Tony, doing a fair impersonation of Vincent Price. "Then one day he met Terri the mad witch who lived on the hill. He thought she'd turn him into a new man. But her magic went terribly and tragically wrong. Here him scream as he has his ears pierced. Hear his moan as he sees himself in the mirror. Watch him shudder at the thought of what his mother's going to say. Peter is - Vampire Vicious...the nightmare has only just begun."

"Well you're a great comfort you are" I said.

"Why thank you," said Peter, continuing to sound vaguely like Vincent Price.

I sat up feeling decidedly damp.

"Do you want some stuff to change into?" I asked. "There should be some jeans in the cupboard."

"Thanks," said Tony leaning across the bed and pulling open what my mum referred to as the 'fitted wardrobe' (although it was really just a couple of flimsy doors hung across a recess in the wall). He grabbed the leg of a pair of old jeans and pulled them off their hanger.

"Don't you want to wear them?" he asked.

"No, I'll put my track suit trousers on," I said.

"Quicker to run away in when your mum sees your hair" said Tony.

Grimacing, I slipped my feet into my slippers (novelty ones shaped like huge, blue hairy paws) and went to the bathroom to get a towel. On the way I bumped into John. I tried to duck in through the bathroom door without him seeing me, but I was too late.

"What's happened to your hair?" said John, catching hold of the door.

"Nothing," I said, as we played tug of war with the door handle.

"What's that in your ear," said John.

"Nothing, " I repeated. "Now get off"

John continued to hold onto the door, eyeing my hair with a mixture of mock gravity and barely stifled amusement, the kind of look one gives an infant who has just covered him or herself in poster paint or chocolate.

"Is that supposed to be trendy?" said John, "because it isn't."

"What would you fucking know about it?" I said.

"More then you."

"Yea sure," I said. "Now leave the fucking door alone."

"Make me," said John, pulling even harder on his side of the door handle.

I raised my foot flat against the door to gain some leverage and tugged as hard as I could. With a horrible splintering sound, the handle came away in my hand, bringing with it a large chunk of door (the wood rotted, no doubt, by steam from all those winter showers taken with the window closed).

"Now look what you've done," said John accusingly.

"I didn't do it," I said. "That was you pulling the handle. I told you to let go."

But I was wasting my breath. John was already half way down the stairs with his half of the door handle. I heard him in the kitchen (his voice hissing like a viper) - Peter's had his ear pierced...wait till you see what he's done to his hair...and the bathroom door...the wood's all broken. The words drifted up the stairs, hissing like the gathering winds of a storm breezing through the foliage of an unsheltered shrub (which is a very appropriate analogy, as it happens, as my towelled hair did look rather as if it had been cut by the garden shears of some novice topiarist).

"Peter! Get down here now," the inevitable voice hollered from the kitchen.

Tony came to the bedroom door, to see what all the fuss was about.

"I'd stay in there if I were you," I grimaced showing him what remained of the door handle. "This could turn nasty."

Tony followed me down the stairs at a distance.

In the kitchen, mum was making a salad. Briskly quartered tomatoes lay on the chopping board next to a sprig of spring onions with wispy, soiled roots and fresh green stalks, bound by a blue elastic band. As I made my entrance mum had just started to pull the leaves from a large lettuce.

"Yea?" I said, the word issued from my mouth spiked with defiance.

Mum looked up. She silently surveyed me starting from my black hairy head, working down to my blue hairy slippers and back up to my head again, her lips drawing tight together like she'd just discovered half a slug in her salad bowl. She started to shred lettuce faster and faster as if she were approaching the climax of a chicken plucking contest (or tearing the hairs one-by-one from my head).

Tony peered over my shoulder.

"Hi, Mrs Sharpe," he said.

Mum looked at his hair, noticed our earrings and stopped tearing at the lettuce. She laid both hands flat on the chopping board, her fingers spread wide as she shut her eyes, her whole body flexing like a faith-healer drawing the devil from a sinners shoulders. John looked as if he might be about to say something, but thought better of it. You could have melted down the atmosphere and turned it into fuel rods for a nuclear reactor.

"I think you're leaning on the tomatoes," said Tony.

John giggled.

For a moment when mum picked up the chopping board I thought she was going to tip the lot into the sink and say something about us having to make our own dinner, her stock response to such situations. But instead she held the board on one hand like a cocktail waiter with a tray of drinks. Her body twisting as she drew back her arm and spun slowly forward, her face contorted, like a slow motion replay of a shot-putter tearing a tendon.

"Oh fuck," I said as the chopping board hurtled towards us bowl and all, bits of lettuce and squashed tomato raining down. (Luckily Tony thought I'd said 'duck' and the bowl missed his head by a couple of inches).

"You stupid idiots," screamed mum, picking up her plastic salad tossing fork. "You fucking stupid idiots."

"Upstairs quick," I said, "she's gone mental." We ran up to my bedroom and I slammed the door shut. I braced my back against it. "Quick get the amp over here," I said.

Tony started to drag Bob over the carpet.

"Get a move on," I said.

"It's too heavy," said Tony.

I left my position by the door and grabbed the other side of the speaker cabinet, helping to manoeuvre it forward corner by corner. Above the sound of smashing crockery downstairs I heard the front door go.

"Hurry," I said. "Dad's home."

Downstairs, the shouting got louder. With one final effort we shoved the speaker flush against the door, and squeezed the top of the amp under the door handle. Then, looking (I imagine) like two shell-shocked clowns, we crouched down behind it and waited.