Read Online Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener - Free Book Online

bear. I sit down and have a cup of tea and a cake with her. I need it, actually. I haven’t had anything but a few dry cornflakes all day.
    Sheila wants to chat. She wants to tell me everything she’s found out about Bruce Lee (which thankfully isn’t very much) and she’s fished out some pictures that she wants to show me of her and her late husband when they were in Antwerp together before the war. Antwerp looks nice. Sheila looks nice, about a foot taller than she is now with dark hair ironed into neat curls, and wide, smiling eyes that look full of hope. She must be about twenty. Her husband looks like a film star, Ronald Colman or someone like that: tall with black hair and a rakish moustache, and he’s got one hand on his pipe and the other resting on the small of Sheila’s back. They look very happy. They look very much in love. They were married for the best part of fifty years.
    “Sheila, do you mind if I ring Alison and tell her that I’m going to be a bit late?”
    “No, of course not, and tell her from me what a very lucky girl she is to have you.”
    “Where the hell have you been? It’s almost eight o’clock. I was about to leave without you.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it had got so late. I’ve been held up at Sheila’s. You wouldn’t believe the state her garden was in. I’m leaving right now.”
    “Well, I can’t wait for you. I told everyone I’d meet them at half past. It’s my party. I can’t turn up late.”
    “OK, OK, I’ll meet you there, then. I’ll come home, grab a quick shower, have a quick shave, phone Vince and Matty to remind them where they’re going, and I’ll meet you there.”
    “Danny, I can’t believe this. Shit, I can’t… look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you when you get there.”
    And then she puts down the phone.
    I go as fast as I can. I run home, jump in the shower, slap on some Black and White, change into my Levi’s and my Carharrt hoody all in twenty minutes flat. I just have to wrap Alison’s presents then I’m done. I just have to find where she keeps the Sellotape then I’m done. It’s not in the drawer with all the take away menus in it. It’s not in the toolbox with the screwdriver set her dad bought us that we’ve never used. It’s not with her office stuff. It’s in the food cupboard. Behind the pickled onions. Of course. Stupid of me.
    I’m done. I ended up buying Alison a silver bracelet that I can’t really afford but I know she’ll really like because she pointed it out to me a couple of weeks ago when we were out shopping for hooded tops. It’s a bit crap, I suppose, getting her something that she’s already seen, but it’ll have to do. I can’t do anything about the flowers now either, but there’s always the guide to Bruges. And the Thomas the Tank Engine cake.
    I leave the presents on the kitchen table and head off to The Medicine Bar. It’s almost nine o’clock.
    Something tells me it’s going to be a long night.
    The second I arrive at The Medicine Bar I have the overwhelming urge to run away. It hits me in the stomach like a bad prawn, and it’s all I can do not to turn on my heels and scarper. I can just make out Alison through the window. She’s sat on a long leather sofa at the back of the room and she’s surrounded by a dozen or so people, most of whom I don’t know. The table in front of them is littered with empty bottles: champagne bottles, beer bottles, wine bottles and towers of sticky shot glasses, and it’s clear that there’s been some serious drinking going on. Alison likes places like this, places you can order a martini dry enough to make your toes curl.
    It looks to me like she’s been holding court. The girls are fussing round her like mother hens, and a slick-looking bloke in a beige Smedley is offering her a smoke and trying to look down the front of her party dress. I want to punch his face in. I want to punch him for wearing beige and ogling my girlfriend’s breasts but