Closer than Blood: Friendship Helps You Survive

‘So?’ she said to Anita, dropping her eyes again, feeling suddenly flustered. ‘Why should I care who’s in?’

‘I didn’t say you did care,’ Anita answered. ‘I was just saying, that was all. But now you mention it …’ she added, glancing towards the bar and back again and grinning.

‘Are we having a dance then, or what?’ Shirley interrupted, twisting on the banquette so that she was facing more away from the bar now, feeling strangely uncomfortable under Keith Hudson’s continuing scrutiny and still worried that John might be somewhere roundabouts as well.

‘Hold your horses, Shirl!’ Anita said. ‘Let me have a slurp of this, at least. Ah, and don’t look now, but guess who’s coming over …’

Shirley turned around, expecting to see Keith Hudson striding towards her. But it wasn’t. It was his sister, who looked like a mini Marilyn Monroe. It was a look lots of girls tried to emulate, but few managed to achieve. This one did, though. She was really very pretty.

But she also had the same sort of reputation her brothers had, if Anita was to be believed. ‘Watch her, Shirl,’ she whispered now. ‘She’s a bit of a wildcat.’

Not knowing quite what to make of that – what was she going to do? Attack them? – Shirley could only smile and make room on the banquette as the girl, who had that confident look of someone in her early twenties, marched up, said ‘shove up’ and plonked herself straight down between them.

She didn’t speak at first either, but instead delved immediately into a capacious patent leather handbag, plucked out a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out with her teeth. She looked as though she might offer them round, and Shirley hoped she would. The rest of the girls there looked so sophisticated with their cigarettes hanging from their manicured fingers. But no, they quickly disappeared back into Annie’s bag again.

She lit the cigarette using a shiny book of matches, and then took a long drag, carefully blowing out a series of smoke rings through her perfectly painted ruby lips.

Shirley watched in awe, wishing she could do something so clever. But, despite managing the odd secret practice, it was a skill that had so far eluded her. She would definitely have to pinch one of her dad’s Capstans the next time she got a chance so she could practise some more.

Her entrance made, Annie Jagger turned towards her and smiled. Shirley smiled back nervously, wondering what exactly she’d come over for.

‘My brother fancies you,’ she said matter of factly, while tapping the end of her cigarette in the direction of the already over-flowing ashtray. She looked Shirley up and down then; not in a bitchy way, just as if she was working out whether she agreed with him.

‘For some reason,’ she then added, causing Shirley to revise her first interpretation. ‘And he wants to take you out on a date.’

Shirley blinked at her. Fancy sending his bloody sister over to ask for him! So, for all his swagger, Keith Hudson was obviously not as brave as he liked to make out, then.

‘Well, you can tell him no thank you,’ she heard herself saying.

Annie Jagger drew on the cigarette again and blew some more smoke rings before answering. ‘You still seeing him, then?’ she asked finally. ‘That John Arnold lad?’

‘No,’ Shirley began, shaking her head. ‘We’ve split up.’

Annie Jagger nodded knowingly. ‘I should think you would an’ all, love! He’s a wimp, he is, John Arnold. Why’d you want to go out with a wimp when you could be going out with a proper man?’

Shirley stared at her, bristling at the dismissive sneer on her face now. Bar pointing out that ‘proper’ men asked for their own dates, which she didn’t dare to, she wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. But it seemed she wasn’t required to.

‘A lad like our Keith,’ Annie added, sending another inch of ash in the general direction of the ashtray, but missing and showering it on the table and over Shirley’s skirt instead. ‘A proper man, one who was off doing his bit for his country. While John bleedin’ Arnold was hiding behind your flarey skirts, love!’

Now Shirley really didn’t know what to say, and neither, it seemed, did Anita. She’d picked up her glass and was hiding as well – behind her beer. But, even as Shirley blushed, she felt a sudden rush of annoyance. No, he might not have been a fighter, but he wasn’t hiding from anyone – not as far as she could tell, anyway – and at least he’d always behaved like a gentleman towards her. He’d always treated her like a lady, right from day one. Buying her flowers, buying her chocolates, holding doors open for her. So, yes, she might have grown a little bored with him, but that was her business, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t for anyone else to say. Wasn’t for anyone else to be rude about him, either. Especially not this tiny little full-of-herself mouth on legs.

‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ Shirley said, pointedly brushing the ash off her skirt. It was her best one, and that annoyed her as well. ‘You can go and tell your brother that I wouldn’t go out on a date with him if he was the last man on earth.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, Anita looking on nervously, while Annie Jagger sat and glared at Shirley. She then scrunched out her half-smoked cigarette, raised her pencilled-in eyebrows and got to her feet. Shirley wondered if she should stand up as well, just to emphasise the difference in their heights, but then realised Keith’s sister was no longer scowling but smiling. Not that Shirley intended to return the compliment and smile back. Who did she think she bloody was?

Annie laughed then. ‘Ooh!’ she said, stepping delicately out and round to the other side of the table. ‘Game on, then, it is, love? Well, let’s see how long you can resist the Hudson charm, shall we?’

And with that, she sauntered back to her brother at the bar, hips wiggling suggestively as she picked her way through the dancers, soaking up the admiring glances that she was obviously used to gathering, like she was a magnet for every male eye in the room.

It came into Shirley’s head then. The words John had used two years back. He’d got quite cross, too – the day after they’d been in court, it was. Said her and Keith Hudson’s eyes had been just like a pair of magnets. And she’d had to say again and again and again just how ridiculous he was being. And then Keith Hudson had simply disappeared out of her life. And that had been that. Gone and forgotten.

But if that were so, why was she finding it so hard right now not to follow Annie Jagger’s progress back to her brother, just for her eyes to land again, however fleetingly, on his?

‘Jesus Christ, Shirley!’ Anita was spluttering, dragging her attention back. ‘It’s a wonder she didn’t clock you one! She’s a nutcase, she is!’

‘I don’t bloody care,’ Shirley said, picking up her glass and gulping a mouthful of beer down. Her fingers were trembling, which annoyed her even more. ‘She’s not laying down the law to me!’ she huffed as she set it down. ‘I have more than enough of that at home, thanks.’ She then picked up the glass again and downed the rest of the beer in a couple of swallows, before banging it more heavily onto the table. She had no idea if she was being watched but she bloody hoped so, just so she could press her point home and ignore them. ‘Come on, Anita,’ she said, all appetite for dancing now gone, not to mention the dreamy post-Cliff euphoria. ‘It’s getting late and I’m tired. We’re off home.’

‘But it’s only –’ Anita began protesting.

‘You stay if you like,’ Shirley said, leaving the table, ‘but I’m going home. I’m not staying here to be told who I should or shouldn’t be seeing. The cheek of her!’

Anita grabbed the cardigan she’d not long taken off and hurriedly shoved her arms into it as she followed Shirley out, via the far side of the dance-floor.

‘You all right?’ she asked Shirley. ‘Don’t let it get to you. Just take no notice.’

‘Oh, I will be. And I won’t! Who do those bloody Hudsons think they are?’

It was a thought she kept thinking for the entire 45-minute walk home, of necessity. As was their impromptu Cliff Richard and the Drifters sing-along – to quell the butterflies that were now dancing in her stomach.

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