The Day I Died. Polly Courtney

       Chapter Nine

      A motorbike screeched to a halt in front of her.

      ‘Look where you’re goin’!’ yelled the man from inside his helmet.

      Jo leaped back onto the pavement and looked around, trying to focus. The vodka had gone to her head and she wasn’t sure where she was, or where she was going.

      Her heel made contact with something. She put her hand out and nearly fell over a sign advertising English Cream Teas. To her left was some sort of fairytale castle and beyond that, a black and gold sign hung over the street with the words ‘Ye’ and ‘Olde’ and something else she couldn’t read. Jo held the vodka bottle up to her face and ascertained that it was indeed empty.

      ‘Just in time for the second half,’ said the barman, nodding towards the giant screen that took up most of the back wall of the pub. He had loose, wobbly jowls and a missing front tooth.

      She slumped on the only available stool at the end of the bar and tried to concentrate as the barman pulled her pint. The pub was packed–or, at least, one end of the pub was packed. Like prayer mats, all seats had been turned to face the giant screen and there wasn’t a man in sight not staring upwards. Jo leaned forwards on her arms, relishing the warmth and the hubbub and the shouting. There might even have been people here who were more inebriated than she was.

      ‘Th’nil-all,’ the barman lisped through the gap in his teeth. Jo smiled politely and sank into her pint.

      The jigsaw was fitting together, slowly, but Jo didn’t like the image that was materialising. The Buffalo Club was a lap-dancing club. She was a stripper. Less than two weeks ago, she’d been making a living by taking her clothes off for strangers. Jo gulped down more beer, repulsed. Presumably she’d been doing it for the money. Perhaps she’d been in debt. Perhaps Roxie was still in debt, she thought. Maybe it was a good thing she had died. It was like an extreme way of declaring yourself bankrupt–declaring yourself dead.

      Another good thing had come out of this, she realised–amongst all the bad things. At least now she knew that she hadn’t been partying with her mates on the night of the explosion. Jo–or rather, Roxie, or Rebecca or whatever her name was–hadn’t lost any close friends after all. Unless, of course, her close friends had also been strippers. Which they might have been.

      Strippers. Jo closed her eyes, picturing Saskia Dawson’s profile picture: the Bambi eyes, the bottle-blonde hair, that pout. Of course. What other profession involved looking so superficial, so flirtatious? Jo wondered how close they had been. The Facebook conversation gave her an idea, but you couldn’t read much into a few lines of text; after all, Jo hadn’t been telling Saskia everything, so maybe the converse was true too. Maybe they’d only just met, and that was why she had Saskia’s name on her hand. Or maybe they’d been best friends, chatting backstage before they went out to get naked. She just didn’t know. Jo beckoned the barman over.

      ‘Thirsty, eh?’ he said, grabbing the empty glass with a look of approval and filling it up. ‘There you go. On the ’ouse,’ he said with a cheeky grin that might have been attractive on someone less flabby.

      Jo tried to thank him and found her words came out in all the wrong order.

      ‘I should probably be warning you of the risks of irresponsible drinking and such like,’ he said.

      She tried to fix him with a look that said ‘leave me alone’.

      ‘But, tell the truth, I like a girl who can sink a pint.’

      Jo claimed her free drink and looked around for an alternative seat. She briefly considered settling on the carpet amongst the legs of the avid fans but decided she was marginally safer at the bar.

      Perhaps