You Only Live Once Read online

  But what to do? Back out and throw the opportunity away, or plough on and hope for the best? I decided on the latter.

  ‘It would be amazing,’ I agreed. And I meant it. Despite never having heard of the The Freaks or The Sneaks or whatever they were called, I had the definite feeling that seeing them with Sarah would be pretty special. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.’

  Leave it with me? I don’t think I’d ever said something so commanding, so self-assured. I have no idea if I managed to pull the sentence off. If I did, then I’m a better actor than I thought I was.

  ‘Ah, brilliant!’ Sarah said. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you my number and you can let me know if you can sort it?’

  Sarah was giving me her number. Just volunteering it. I hadn’t even asked.

  She reeled off the digits, I typed them into my phone, then she said she’d better get on and wheeled her trolley back over to the main desk.

  I was left there, The Sneaks album still in my hand, wondering how on earth I was going to get myself out of this.

  Reboot

  I saw Niall as soon as I went into Reboot Records. He was leaning on the counter, tapping his pen in time to the music and looking bored.

  ‘Oh all right, Grace?’ he said when he saw me. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said, looking up at the whiteboard above his head. This was the board where they kept a list of all the local gigs together with venues and ticket prices. I found The Sneaks easily enough – Concorde 2, the day after tomorrow, just as Sarah had said – but there was a big red ‘Sold Out’ sticker over the price.

  ‘What you looking for?’ Niall said, following my eye line up the board.

  ‘The Sneaks,’ I said.

  Niall laughed. ‘You’re about four months too late in that case. That one sold out about six minutes after they went on sale.’

  I sighed. It wasn’t exactly surprising news. ‘How can they be that good?’

  Niall shrugged and started fiddling with a roll of till receipt paper. ‘Dunno. They’re only OK. They just don’t do many gigs.’

  ‘Can you get me tickets?’ I blurted out suddenly. I immediately wished I’d eased into the request more gently, buttered Niall up with some small talk about how his exams went, or how nice his hair looked or something.

  Niall laughed. ‘Me? You’re joking, aren’t you? I just do the till.’

  I frowned and chewed on my lip for a minute. Then I turned and looked at him. ‘Niall,’ I said seriously. ‘I really, really need to get tickets to that show. It’s not for me. Well, not just for me. It’s for someone else. It’s life and death, basically.’

  I don’t know why I added that. I could think of no plausible way I could justify such a dramatic classification. Luckily Niall didn’t question it. I suppose he was used to dealing with obsessive music fans. He wasn’t to know this was nothing to do with music.

  Niall shrugged. ‘Online, I guess. You won’t find them on eBay or anything because they shut all that down, but people might be selling them informally. Facebook, Twitter, whatever.’

  ‘Right, OK,’ I said, looking up at the list again. It all sounded a bit ambitious. I had a horrible feeling I was going to have to text Sarah and tell her that I hadn’t been able to get tickets after all. And then I might as well tell her I’d never heard of the stupid band. And in fact, had never been to an actual music gig before, unless you count the time I went with Dad and Nan to see a Pavarotti tribute act in St Barnabus church and Nan had sung through the first half and snored through the second half before declaring him ‘totally tone deaf’ and walking out just before the end.

  Niall took my number and said he’d call me if they had any returns but warned me, ‘It’s never going to happen,’ which was at least honest.

  Better than Nothing

  When I got home I searched every conceivable corner of the internet for anyone trying to offload spare tickets for Thursday night. I didn’t want to publicly post that I was looking for tickets in case Sarah saw and realised how desperately I was having to scrabble around to try to fulfil my promise.

  There were people talking about the gig all right – people looking forward to it and people who had been to other gigs and blah blah blah – but no one who could actually get me any tickets.

  I needed to think of a back-up plan. I was just running through the options and wondering if I could take Sarah to an alternative venue to see a different band and somehow persuade her the whole thing had been an enormous administrative error when my mobile rang.

  It was a local number. My first thought was that it was Sarah, calling from the library, although there was no reason why that would be the case.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Grace. It’s Niall. How much do you love me?’

  I paused. What? Had something I’d said during our three-minute interaction about tickets led Niall to believe I was interested in him? Maybe it was because I’d come straight from the library, from Sarah. Maybe I hadn’t shaken off the aura of flirtation and it had somehow spilled into my conversation with Niall. Oh god.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I’ve got a ticket here. Some guy just came to pick his up and it turned out he’d ordered one too many so I refunded him one. I can’t keep it for long because I’m not meant to reserve them but it’s yours if you can pay now.’

  ‘I can pay now,’ I said without thinking. Just one wasn’t ideal but it was fifty per cent of the way there. One was better than none. Probably.

  Twenty minutes later I was back in Reboot Records.

  ‘You know what you could do if you can’t find another one before Thursday,’ Niall said as I paid him for the solitary ticket. ‘Just hang around out the front for a bit. There’s often people trying to offload one last minute.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. This was interesting news. It was a risky strategy but I didn’t have any other options.

  When I got home I texted Sarah.

  Got the tickets

  She replied a few minutes later.

  Oh my GOD!!

  I’ll call you when I finish my shift to arrange!!

  Date Night

  By the time Sarah rang later that afternoon, I’d already decided not to mention the fact that I had technically only managed to source one ticket. If I did, I thought it was likely that Sarah would say that, of course, I must go, and she would miss out this time. Even if I could persuade her to take it, I still wouldn’t be able to go with her, and two people doing the same thing at the same time is surely the most basic of principles for a date.

  I arranged to meet Sarah at Concorde 2 on Thursday evening and that was that. I had arranged a date. An actual date with someone I was actually into, like the spontaneous, life-grabbing, enthusiastic burgeoning lesbian that I apparently now was.

  As 8 p.m. on Thursday approached, I got steadily more apprehensive about how I was going to deal with the fact that there were two of us going to an event with only one ticket between us. I kept telling myself that I would deal with the situation as I got to it – which was, after all, in keeping with my new mindset – but as things stood, I had no idea how that dealing might manifest itself.

  I – spontaneously, of course – bought a cool T-shirt from a vintage place in The Lanes. It was sort of kitsch ironic My Little Pony thing. I thought it would make me look cool, but not pretentiously so. Cool, but with the added bonus of a sense of humour.

  When I got out of the shower, I opened my drawer to find some clean pants, only to find it completely empty. I was used to my supply being low due to Paddy’s fastidious fancy-dress habits, but he’d never cleaned me out completely before.

  ‘Paddy!’ I called, marching across the landing to his bedroom. I pushed the door open. ‘Paddy, have you got my knick— PADDY!’

  Paddy was sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor in front of the small inflatable paddling pool decorated with shells that Dad had bought him. The pool was filled with water and what smelt like wash
ing-up liquid, together with a soaking wet mass of fabric.

  ‘Cleaning them for you, Gracie,’ Paddy explained earnestly. He was stirring his laundry with the giant wooden pencil we’d bought him from the Sea Life Centre.

  ‘Paddy! That’s all my underwear! What am I supposed to wear now?’

  He reached in and took out one soaking pair and held it out to me, soapy water dripping onto his carpet. ‘Here go?’ he said, smiling innocently.

  I ignored his offering and marched into Mum and Dad’s room, struggling to hold my towel up. But alas, Mum’s pants had met a similar fate. There was not a wearable pair of female pants in the entire house and I was forced to seriously contemplate the (surely rather presumptuous) option of going commando on a first date.

  I couldn’t though; I just couldn’t do that. It was unhygienic apart from anything. I had one last option. It wasn’t ideal, but desperate times, desperate measures.

  ‘Ollie!’ I knocked on his bedroom door and then walked straight in. Ollie was in bed, playing his PlayStation. ‘Ollie, do you have any pants that are both clean and not too awful?’

  He frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I need to wear your pants. It’s an emergency. Believe me, I would not be asking otherwise.’

  ‘What? No. Don’t be a freak.’

  ‘Seriously, Ol. I need to go out and Paddy has ruined all mine.’ I went over to Ollie’s top drawer and rummaged around. I found a pair that didn’t seem too oversized and flappy, covered in little illustrations of Buzz Lightyear.

  ‘These.’ I held them out. ‘Are they clean?’

  Ollie shrugged. ‘Probably.’

  I returned to my bedroom and put them on, trying not to think about the weirdness of sharing underwear with my big brother. Actually, they were rather comfortable.

  Overcome with misplaced confidence, I decided to have a go with Mum’s liquid eyeliner. Why I thought a first date – if that was indeed what this was – was a suitable occasion for this kind of cosmetic boldness I don’t know and, somewhat predictably, even with the careful guidance of a YouTube tutorial entitled ‘Smokin’ Eyes’, I struggled.

  It was getting both eyes to match that proved the biggest challenge. I could get my eyes to look acceptable on their own, but as a pair they were wonky. And the thing about eyes is that they do tend to present as a pair, ideally speaking. Unless I wanted to spend the evening turning my head rapidly from side to side like a defective robot, showing Sarah only one eye at a time, I was going to have to even them out. And the only way I could see to do this was to keep adding a little more on either side until the thick black lines were roughly equal. By the time I was satisfied my eyes were just about matching, I resembled a sleep-deprived panda.

  I grabbed my new ironic, cool-but-with-a-sense-of-humour T-shirt from the carrier bag on my bed. It was only as I was pulling it on that I noticed the label at the collar. ‘Little Snugglers, age 7–8’. My cool ironic T-shirt was, in fact, a child’s pyjama top. I wavered for a moment, before deciding to pull it on regardless. Maybe Sarah wouldn’t notice. And anyway, I wasn’t exactly spoilt for options.

  I added my jeans to the ensemble and stood back in front of my mirror to take in the full effect.

  I was a sleep-deprived panda with jaundiced limbs in a child’s pyjama top and Buzz Lightyear pants.

  I hoped Sarah would be able to look beyond first impressions.

  Sold Out

  Sarah was already there when I came down the cliff-side steps that led to the entrance to Concorde 2, which is exactly what I’d hoped for when I’d made myself walk three times around my block to make sure I was fashionably, nonchalantly late.

  She was leaning against the railings between the prom and the beach, typing on her phone. She must’ve sensed me approaching because she looked up.

  She smiled and pushed herself off the railings towards me.

  ‘I’m so excited,’ she said, grinning. ‘In fact, I’m so excited I’m almost nervous. Is that mad?’

  Her Welsh accent was particularly noticeable on the word nervous. Ner-vus. I found myself repeating it out loud. ‘Ner-vus.’

  She smiled again. ‘You too, huh?’ Then she laughed. ‘Or are you just laughing at my accent?’

  Oh god. I hadn’t meant to. What kind of way was that to start the evening?

  ‘No, I –’

  Sarah just laughed. And as it happened, I was nervous. Sickeningly so. Although it had precisely nothing to do with how great The Sneaks allegedly were and everything to do with the fact that I was there and she was there and we were one ticket down and I still had no idea how I was going to get the evening to work out without looking like a complete idiot.

  I took the sole ticket in my possession out of my pocket and handed it to Sarah.

  ‘Here you go then. Guard it with your life, et cetera et cetera.’

  She took it from me, gazed down at it for a moment, then said, ‘Come here, you absolute legend,’ and, rather to my surprise, pulled me into a hug.

  I still wasn’t really sure what the dynamic was between us. Officially, we’d been library staff and library patron. We were now apparently socialising so I suppose that took us up one level – to what? Friends? Acquaintances who liked (pretended to like) the same music? But then there was this business with Til claiming Sarah liked me, and I definitely liked her, so was this a date? How would I ever find out?

  If Til had been there I would have put these queries to her, and she would have undoubtedly responded with something along the lines of, ‘Shut up talking about it and just get on with doing it,’ so that’s what I decided to do.

  ‘Shall we go in and get a drink or something then?’ Sarah said. ‘Support starts in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, because there was nothing else to say. I looked over in slight panic to where the short woman in a black leather jacket was standing at the door ripping the corners off people’s tickets as she let them in.

  We made our way over.

  ‘Oh, wait a sec,’ I said suddenly.

  Sarah turned to look at me.

  ‘I’ve just seen someone I want to say hi to.’ I waved my arm vaguely in the direction of a few groups of people who were hanging around outside, smoking or perhaps waiting for friends to join them. ‘You go in. I’ll catch you up.’

  Sarah frowned slightly. ‘Oh, it’s OK. I’ll wait.’

  ‘No, no!’ I said, actually putting my hand on her back as if to guide her. ‘I just want to … just got something to talk about …’

  ‘Oh!’ Sarah said, her eyes widening. ‘Oh, I get it. Private chat. Um, OK, cool. I’ll get us a drink.’

  As I watched Sarah make her way in through the door, the short woman tearing her ticket, I cringed and put my hands over my face. This was a brilliant start. Within three minutes of meeting her, I’d basically told Sarah to get lost so I could talk to someone else. Still, I didn’t have time to dwell on how I could’ve handled the situation better. I had a mission.

  I approached the nearest group of people to me. They were three boys, probably a bit older than Ollie, who looked like they’d come in fancy dress as each other. They all had tight T-shirts decorated with thick primary-coloured stripes, black skinny jeans and hair that flopped over their foreheads.

  ‘Um, hi,’ I said, and they stopped talking to look at me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare ticket at all?’

  They all mumbled a range of ‘no, sorry’ type comments before turning back to their conversation. I didn’t have time to hang around. I moved onto the next group. They were older this time, two couples, I guessed by the hand-holding arrangements.

  I repeated my query but, once again, got nowhere.

  I started to panic. This was a sold-out gig. If people had a spare ticket they surely would’ve sold it for a hundred pounds on the internet already. Sarah was in there and soon she’d wonder where I was. She’d think I’d just abandoned her, for my mysterious friend outside who I wanted to have a private chat with.


  Onwards I went. My next target was another group of boys. They were rowdier than the first. Drunk, I suspected.

  ‘’Ello,’ one boy said I’d before I had a chance to say anything. ‘My niece has got those pyjamas.’ He nodded towards my top.

  I was deciding whether to protest that they weren’t pyjamas, or to just ride it out, and agree that yes, I was indeed edgy enough to wear child’s pyjamas to a gig, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sarah step around the side of the building. She had a drink in each hand and she was looking up and down the wall, squinting as she looked into the sun.

  She was looking for me.

  Oh god.

  Busted

  She saw me and smiled a slightly unsure smile.

  ‘You ready?’ she called, making her way tentatively over to me, obviously not sure if I was still in the midst of the private conversation that I hadn’t wanted her present for.

  ‘Um …’ I said.

  The hairy boy spoke next. ‘’Ello,’ he said. ‘I was just complimenting your mate’s pyjamas.’

  ‘Huh?’ Sarah said, and I pulled my jacket over my chest.

  We all stood around awkwardly for a minute. I suppose the boys were wondering if I was going to make my reasons for approaching them known. I suppose Sarah was wondering if I was going to either introduce her to them, or end the conversation and follow her inside. I was wondering what on earth I could do next.

  ‘I’m Sarah,’ Sarah said eventually and held out her hand.

  The hairy man shook it. ‘I’m Jack,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know Grace?’ Sarah asked, all smiles, but no doubt wondering why I was so socially inept that she was having to take control of proceedings.

  Jack blinked. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ Sarah looked at me.