After she stops screaming, an immeasurable time later, JJ crawls forward a little before stumbling to her feet. Every muscle is knotted fiercely and she has to stop and shake the cramp out of the particularly knotted joints. All at once the tension floods out of her body and she nearly falls over again. She leans against the wall and rolls the back of her head gently against the slightly lumpy whitewashed plaster until the lights stop flashing. She lets out a long, slightly shaky breath. Takes another in. Lets out another, less tremulous rush of air, feeling feeling returning to the parts of her brain that shut down in self-defence earlier.
God, she was hungry.
Some atavistic sensation still lingering from her fired-up animal brain prevents her from walking back the way she came and be sure to go forwards. Sure enough, there is another way out. Just as she is about to open it, she thinks she hears something. She frowns, and cautiously opens the door.
J pauses. Along the new, wider corridor there is a knot of people. Their body language ranges from intrigued to aggressive. Beyond them is a set of stairs. She creeps closer. P and Bri are clutching a struggling white guy with short, dark hair and a pencil-thin beard, dressed in an expensive shade of silvery-white. A gold eyebrow piercing winks dully under the low lights.
“And you, my son,” P is saying in his ear, “To you we are going to give a right royal haranguing.” P turns to Martin. “Haranguing, is that a word?”
“Er, well, yeah, so...”
“Sorry, I meant: is that a noun?”
“A haranguing, I suppose so...”
“Hmm, but could you have the plural?”
“Haranguings?”
“Possibly not.”
Impossibly nasal voice: “Of course, in those days they used to have public haranguings, to which people would flock as a source of entertainment and titillation.”
“Which brings us neatly to the job in hand. A masterful segue.”
“I thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now you, shithead, here’s where it gets really, really interesting for you... actually, where it gets really interesting for us and excruciatingly painful for you.”
“Like I give a shit, you freak.”
“Hush, hush, leave the talking to the grownups, huh?”
Katherine steps forward. “Gentlemen, if I may?”
P and Martin bow. “Why certainly,” says P. “Though I’m no gentleman.”
“Well, quite.” With superb disdain she stalks over to the bloke and peers at him as if from a great height. He goes still, eyes trained on her face. Suddenly she relaxes and adopts a much more friendly manner. She pats him on the arm and he flinches. “Now listen, mate... Steve. Can I call you Steve or is it Stevie...?
“Steven,” he spits.
“Just so, Stevie. Now you’re participating in a custom that is older than a millennium. Older than jousting...”
“... older than bear-baiting...” says Martin.
“... older than,” she leans in close, “cock-fighting.”
Steven has worked out that this is something they’ve done before by now; something to do with the slickness of their dovetailing remarks. Many times before, maybe. Either that or... fuck...
Katherine starts to pace clockwise around the knot of them, and Steven finds his head turning to keep her in view. “Before geeks, before nerds, before chavscum and goths, before squaddies and students, the creative men, the men of peace, those who only warred with words, had their own protection from violence.”
“No-one dares raise his hand to a bard,” says P.
“In Celtic times,” she presses on, “a lord who was miserly...”
“... or arrogant...” says P.
“... or violent...” says Martin.
“... would find himself lampooned in verse...”
“... satired...”
“... vilified in song...”
Her accent starts swinging further west, back home: “Such was the power of these men of words that a well-turned verse was said to cause its recipient to break out in boils. The words lived on in the hearts of the downtrodden, the workers, the servants...”
“... they would sing them in the streets...”
“... repeat them forever under the noses of their oppressors.”
“No-one,” she says, stopping in front of him and leaning close again, “raises his hand to a bard.”
“N-no,” says Steven, despite himself.
“Prepare, you pustular gimp, as we geeks take our revenge the only way we know how...”
“Tell me,” says P conversationally, “is it by your consent that your mother continues to dress you like her catamite?”
“What?”
“Bum-boy,” says Martin, in an informative tone of voice. “Servile boy-faggot.”
“Does your nascent masculinity frighten her?”
“What?! My mum didn’t buy this!”
“No? Funny, I’m sure I saw her stopping over in Envy last week.”
“Who did buy you this pretty piece of packaging?”
“This is fucked-up,” says Steven, struggling to be free.
“Riiiight,” says P. “You come to the party of an openly queer owner of an art studio and get offended when one of the male guests takes an interest. You kick off at him, pushing him around and being abusive. Coz that’s not fucked-up.”
“Hey!” says Martin, “I wasn’t interested!”
“Yeah, right...”
“Yeah - I just wanted to ask where he got his gay clothes from coz it turns out the lads down Exit prefer this white sportswear look to my hopelessly old-fashioned Boho-queer thing.”
“It must be hard,” P presses on, “being the only chav in the village...”
“Fucking... I’ll have you...” The onlookers laugh. P lets go of his arm and moves round to face him. P bends forward to demonstrate the height difference.
“As I recall, you ended up being bitch-slapped by a blonde girl yesterday, hard-act.” P makes a point of looking round in the right direction. Steve flinches again. “And really, darling... you’re so not my type...”
“P’s way out of your league.”
“I prefer my gentlemen out of the closet, frankly.”
“I am not...” he grits his teeth “gay.” Bri laughs, letting go of him. P stalks off a few steps, playing up the rejection.
“That’s a pity,” says J out of the shadows, “coz I hear Gretchen prefers them that way.” She steps forward. “I mean, it was her bought that top for you, wasn’t it?”
“Shit my...” he whispers.
“Stop struggling, darling,” murmurs Katherine, leaning forward again. “More people than you realise come over to the Dark Side. They like it here.”
“You fucking dyke bitch.”
“Hush, baby,” she rests a finger on his mouth. “Or did Gretchen never tell you how much she enjoyed our time together?”
“You’re out of your...”
“When she comes, she kind of hisses and whimpers. I can’t decide if it sounds more like a Chihuahua or a bizarre, little-girl voice...”
Steven’s face is slack.
Katherine is very close and very quiet now. Only J hears what she says next: “Did she... call you Daddy...?”
Steven breaks and runs. They’re pretty sure they can hear him sobbing down the stairs.
There is silence. No-one is quite sure where to look, especially as most of them don’t know what Katherine said.
“Well,” says P, with a rubbing of hands, “that was a one hundred percent successful trip...”
“We just broke a man down to tears,” says Bri, looking extremely dubious.
“Weeeell, I wouldn’t say man.”
“Come on, P, mate, it’s all very well having a laugh...”
“No, mate,” says P, “it’s not all very well. Shouting ‘Yeah, I had your dad last night and he was shit!’ after speeding Ford Cortinas. That‘s all very well. Putting up with crap just because someone said it who knows no better... that’s not. That’s just... fuck it, I’ve lost the thread of my argument.” P pauses for breath. Bri is frowning. “Listen, what he did was wrong...”
“So call him a twat and chuck him out.”
“No, that’s not enough. It really isn’t. We’re supposed to be supine about it. Kath was saying this about women earlier and this is the same thing - we don’t put up with it because we don’t deserve it. We’ve done nothing wrong, and we shouldn’t be blithely taking punishment for our non-crime. Turning the other cheek is all very well, but these cretins don’t learn from that. They just don’t fucking understand.”
“You want to train the unwashed masses.”
“If you want to put it like that.”
“Fight violence with violence?”
“Well...”
“An eye for an eye? It’s the only language his sort will understand.” P looks stricken. “Yeah, mate, you know what I’m talking about. Whose act made you superior to him... to them anyway...?”
“I‘m not a Christian, Bri.”
“So fucking what? I’m not gay and I helped out. Coz Martin’s my mate and he’s a human being first. You didn’t care that a straight Christian bloke was holding that bloke, so why should I?”
“I’m confused, Bri, are you saying I should hand out hugs and leaflets to change people’s ways?”
“I’m just saying there’s carrot as well as stick, you know. Otherwise we become the bullies back.”
“Fuck me, boy’s got philosophy! Got him a liberal socio-thing!”
“It’s hanging around you lot so much.”
“Je... eepers.”
“Thanks,” says Bri, drily.
“Don’t mention it, buddy. Fuck it, come on downstairs and we’ll plan how to save the world together, huh?”
“Is there beer involved?”
“Fucking A. Or vodka.”
Bri sighs. “This Lenten abstinence is wearing on a man.”
“But you swore earlier!”
“What?”
“ ‘Just call him a...’ “
“Oh, twat doesn’t count. Right?” Bri looks around at a group of women wearing very similar expressions. “Aaaaand... let’s forego the ‘why are female genitalia used so often as insults’ debate by means of a grovelling apology? Yeah?”
There is consensus and they head towards the stairs. Kath grins at JJ, who does her best to smile back. Kath’s response to this is to reach around her shoulders and give her a bone-creaking hug.
“You all right, babe? Coz we missed ya!” She has no need for the earlier sharpness, so has abandoned it rapidly - a common trick, this switching which, her friends tend to agree, is all the more scary for the fact that she already has a twin. Their heads are rapidly wreathed in spicy alcoholic fumes and mildly cheese-and-onion bonhomie.
“Yeah,” says Sal, “where did you g... oh..”
“What?”
J remembers that Sal is sober, and Sal looks at J, seeing more than Kath has.
“What happened?” asks Sal, coming round and getting in on the hug, then remembers and pulls back, taking Kath off with her a little way. They are all still standing close, Sal’s eyes flicking over J, top to bottom, left to right, and back to her face.
“It’s not... I...”
“What’s wrong?”
“I, um...”
“Is it Dan? Is that who that text was from? Coz we...”
“We were all like: oooh, text sex!“ says Kath. Sal glares at her while J looks off, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Not Dan,” she says, after a while.
“Then...?” says Sal.
Kath does one of those short, hard sighs. Sal turns to her. “What?” she asks, pointedly.
“It’s just. Look, no offence, girl, coz you know I love you but... I’m at a party, I’m here to party, and there’s... and I don’t really want to be all... sorry, but...” she trails off, obviously hoping everyone’s caught her drift. Sal raises her eyebrows. “I mean... you know what I mean?”
“You might need to be more specific, Kath, or just make a generic excuse and bugger off. One or t’other, frankly.”
Kath screws her face up. After a while, she says: “I left something cooking. Probably.”
“Ah,” says Sal.
J makes a grimace of a grin. “That sort of thing could lead to a bun in the oven... eh?”
Kath considers her. “Weak.”
“Fine.”
Kath has definitely withdrawn from the group by this point. She starts walking backwards towards the stairs and does a little two-fingered salute from her temple. Then her smile fades and she says “Look...” then shrugs a little and turns towards the stairs and is gone.