twenty-nine

When we'd finished our performance it took me ages to get back to where Terri and Debbie and Dad were standing at the back of the hall. I was surrounded by people I'd never met before, grinning and telling me how great they thought the gig was. At one point, there were these four girls pressed up tight against me with what Stewy later referred to as 'come and fuck me' eyes. They pinned me in all sides, asking me when the next gig would be and if we'd go up and play another couple of songs just for them. I explained that there wasn't time because Blue Murder had to go on, and they looked disappointed, I mean genuinely disappointed. It was a really weird experience.

I've never been top of the list to be invited to parties. I've never been the first person picked for the football team. I've never been someone that people wanted to sit next to at school. And yet in one sixty second period after that gig I was smiled at talked, congratulated, admired a hundred times more than I ever had been in my entire life up to then.

Of course, I knew it wasn't the real Peter they wanted to talk to; the spotty, awkward, boring Peter. No, it was the singer with Casino Royale they wanted to know; the sweating, writhing, impassioned, midnight-blue-lit wild thing, guitar slung round neck, two hands gripping the microphone in a frenzy of unrestrained, adrenaline-fuelled gyrations. That Peter only existed for thirty minutes (and after that night, even a hundred gigs later, never existed in quite the same way again). Yet, somehow, to other people the illusion persisted beyond the stage.

I guess it's not really me those people were interested in but everything that had surrounded me; the guitars, the amps the lights, the stage, the dancing, the beer and the bouncers. I suppose I was like some kind of capsule into which the essence of that evening had been distilled. Like a glass of coca cola. Mrs Barley once explained it all to me, after I'd queried the use of a scantily clad women with big breasts on a brochure for power tools. She explained that it wasn't sexist but sexy. In advertising, she said, you are never selling products, you are selling sensations.

For example, she said, when you sell a can of coke you are not selling a glass of fizzy liquid, you are selling the sensation of perfectly tanned adonises laughing as they play volleyball on a beach. You are selling the crunch of ice, the purity of a cloudless sky and a cut crystal glass kissed by the swollen lips of a beautiful woman. So, I suppose, at that gig I was the vocal equivalent of that fizzy liquid, and when people looked at me what they saw was not Peter Sharpe, but an embodiment of desirable sensations such as the adrenaline of dancing, the loudness of the amps, the brightness of the lights, and that was why they wanted to get close to me. But, even though I realised how shallow and fleeting their adulation was, it still felt fucking terrific.

By the time I'd eventually got back to where Debbie, Terri and Dad stood, I was clutching two telephone numbers of would-be backing singers (who were just dying to audition for the band). The numbers were scrawled in eyeliner and lipstick on the back of a bus ticket and a till receipt, both of which I thrust deep into my pocket as Debbie wrapped her arms round my neck and gave me a huge kiss. Her T-shirt was damp with sweat and her breasts squished against me so tightly the stab of her nipples left me gasping for breath.

"Hey calm down," I said, embarrassedly. "You're half crushing me to death." Debbie wiped a trickle of sweat from my brow.

"Oh, you're ever so hot," she said in a silly voice as if talking to a toy teddy bear that had been left against a radiator or something.

I looked over Debbie's shoulder at Terri and winked. Terri smiled, tight-lipped and nodded. She downed her pint in a deliberately off-hand way, to show that she didn't really care that Debbie was trying to snog me like an alien nymphomaniac who'd been living on some loveless planet for several centuries. Then she turned away.

I don't think Terri was jealous of Debbie. God no. It was just that like me, she was not used to such open shows of affection. And, normally, we shared an unspoken recognition of each other's fear of intimacy. Therefore she seemed unsure how to react to (and perhaps even felt slightly betrayed by) the physical attention that was so demonstrably being thrust upon me.

I was so caught up in a haze of different thoughts and feelings I didn't realise quite how pissed dad had become until much later when we'd loaded up the van and it was time for him to drive us home.

"How much has he had?" I asked Terri, as dad slapped me on the shoulder for about the five hundred and sixty third time, mumbling, 'marvellous performance' (or, rather, 'marvallush praformansh').

"Only a couple," said Terri.

"At least six," said Debbie.

"What halves?" I said.

Terri shook her head. And Stewy held his hands one above the other, a pint-glass-height apart.

"I'll ring Colin," he said. "He'll come down and pick us up."

Although he only lived ten minutes walk from the college, Colin (Stewy's brother and house mate) arrived the best part of an hour later. Apparently he hadn't realised that we wanted picking up right away and had finished watching Match of the Day, before setting out.

When Colin eventually arrived and had completed a brotherly slanging-match with Stewy, we all piled into the van. I sat silently in the back between Terri, Debbie and Stewy's base amp, and, as my sobriety slowly returned, worried about whether the hire van insurance would cover other drivers. Dad sat in the front next to Colin, who told him all about the crap nil all draw he'd been watching on Match of the Day (whilst we'd been stood there shivering to death in sweat damp clothes in the college car park).

We dropped Debbie off first. And I don't think she was too pleased about leaving me sitting next to Terri. God knows what she thought was going to happen - that we'd have it off in the two minutes it took to drive up the hill to her house, whilst Stewy and Tony watched, or something? (Mind you, it was very cramped in the back of the van with all those amps and Terri was practically sitting on top of me. And I have to admit it was not unpleasant having the firm warmth of her floral-frocked thigh draped over mine. And if we'd had the van to ourselves for an hour or so, well who knows...?)

When we arrived home, Stewy dropped us off at the bottom of the drive. Me and Tony jumped out of the doors at the back and helped dad as he fell out of the passenger door at the front.

"You all right?" asked Colin.

"Yea, cheers Col," I said. "He'll be OK. We'll make sure he gets plenty of black coffee."

"Best to let him sleep it off," said Colin.

"Yea," I nodded. We smirked at each other.

"See ya," said Stewy.

"See ya," chorused me and Tony, and with one of dad's arms round each of our shoulders, we stumbled up the drive as the van grumbled off into the night.

We were halfway to the front door when mum opened it.

"What's happened? Where have you been?" she said.

She sounded in a right state. Not surprising really, as we loomed, out of the night like a couple of battle-shocked infantrymen struggling with a shrapnel-struck comrade.

"It's OK," I said. "Everything's all right. Dad's just feeling a bit...a bit..."

"Fragile," hissed Tony.

"A bit fragile" I said.

"What do you mean, a bit fragile?" she asked.

I drew in a deep breath. "Look dad had a couple of drinks. Not many, all right. About...well, not more than a pint or so...and....

"It's OK Pete," said dad. "I'll talk to your mother about it." (Or rather, he said, "Ish kay Peach, Isles torture musher bow shit.") Then he tried to pat me on the shoulder for about the five hundred and sixty-fourth time.

"He's drunk, isn't he, " said mum.

The obviousness of her observation, almost prompted me to make some sarcastic jibe; 'Thanks for telling me , Einstein, I wondered why he couldn't talk or stand up. I thought perhaps his legs and tongue had both inexplicably turned to foam rubber.' But I bit my lip and said nothing.

"Well, that's great," said mum. "That just about caps it all." She turned and went back into the house.

We dragged dad into the lounge and dumped him on the sofa. Mum stood by the mantelpiece, her face twitching with outrage like a baboon who's just discovered someone's eaten all his bananas. Dad slipped sideways into a pile of chintz cushions crushing a copy of the TV Times beneath his elbow and burying his head in his arms.

"Look, I'm sorry...," I said.

"Oh, you're always bloody sorry," said mum.

"Well, I never got him drunk." I said. "We couldn't stop him we were up on stage."

"Oh it's never you, is it Peter? It's always someone else left to pick up the pieces isn't it, whilst you run around doing what you like."

"But it wasn't like that mum," I protested. "I didn't want him to drink, but...."

"But what Peter? I've just about had enough buts from you. You're a selfish little sod. I don't know how you managed to charm your way round that Mrs Barley or whatever her name is, but I've had enough. You want to act the bloody fool you can, but you're not doing it in this house."

"Oh piss off."

"What did you say?"

"You bloody heard."

"I suppose that's the way you speak to Mrs Barley is it."

"No."

"Is that way you speak to them at the hospital is it," she asked caustically.

"What hospital?" I said.

"The hospital you've been to when you should have been in college."

"I don't know what you're on about," I said, innocently.

She reached over to the mantelpiece, retrieved a brown window envelope from behind a Royal Doulton statue of Jeremy Fisher and waved it in my face.

"Well what the hell's this then? A bloody Christmas card?"

I shrugged.

"It's a letter from the college, asking where the hell you've been for the last two months."

I snatched the envelope from her and started to read the folded letter inside.

Dear Peter,