What If?. Shari Low

      We arrived at the apartment in the middle of the night. This was a blessing, as due to fatigue and too much vodka, we didn’t register the full extent of the dump. Whoever had written in the brochure that it slept six, must have presumed that the six were highly intimate and would sleep on top of each other.

      The main room contained an old sofa and two camp beds. Another three camp beds were behind a curtain in what was obviously a large cupboard in a previous life. In the kitchen, there was a one-ring cooker, a mini-fridge, a cracked sink and a colony of ants. As for the bathroom, let’s just say that I was hopeful that there would be showers at the pool and public toilets nearby.

      But we didn’t care. We slumped on to our beds, fully clothed, and were sleeping within thirty seconds.

      We woke the next morning to the sound of trains thundering over our heads, then we realised there were no trains and the noise was our hangovers systematically crushing our brain cells. God, it hurt. Ever sensible, Jess came to the rescue with paracetamols all round and we decided the only cure was a day at the beach.

      In order to deny the ants time to nest on our body parts, we were out of the door in five minutes, looking like we’d slept under a bush.

      We made our way to the beach and parked ourselves in the first available clearing.

      ‘Who needs Glasgow?’ Kate murmured happily, as she slapped on enough oil to lubricate a Ferrari.

      We spent the rest of the day in a semi-conscious state, waking only when one of us yelled ‘Pec alert, pec alert’ as a gorgeous specimen of the male variety passed by.

      It was all very civilised, like an episode of Wish You Were Here. Until later that evening…

      Kate and I retreated to the balcony – in Glasgow it would have been called a window ledge – with two large drinks, to give the others space to get dressed. When they were done, we told them to go on ahead. ‘We’ll meet you in the Scotsman later,’ Kate yelled through the window, naming a pub that we’d passed earlier in the day. We were rubbish tourists. Travel to a completely different country, and head for a bar that was connected to the homeland we’d left less than twenty-four hours earlier. But in our defence, it was playing Simple Minds hits at full volume, and Jim Kerr’s dulcet tones were like some kind of sci-fi mind-warp that we were unable to resist.

      Kate and I took an age getting ready. By the time we were done, we’d tried on twelve different outfits each, reapplied our make-up twice and experimented with more hairstyles than Madonna. We’d also consumed half a bottle of vodka and a gallon of fresh orange. It wouldn’t have mattered what we looked like, we were seeing double anyway.

      We staggered to the Scotsman, stopping at every pub on the way there for a light refreshment. By the time we finally arrived, it was almost midnight. Carol and Sarah were in deep conversation with two of a gang of six lads from Edinburgh.

      I glanced around. ‘Where’s Jess?’

      ‘She’s here somewhere’, replied Carol, gesticulating towards the crowded bar. ‘She must have gone to the loo.’

      Within minutes, Kate and I had succumbed to the general revelry and loud music that blared from the speakers. I found myself dancing with a chiselled Dutchman called Henk. I eventually got bored with the repetitiveness of hip grinding to ‘Boom Boom Boom Let’s Go Back To My Room’, made the infamous toilet excuse and staggered off to round up the others.

      I had to surgically remove Kate from a perma-bronzed Frenchman, before rounding up Carol (singing ‘Hey Big Spender’ on a bar stool), and then Sarah (slumped under a sink in the toilets). Where was Jess?

      Panic set in briefly before total hysteria sobered me up immediately. We searched everywhere. At one point, we even conducted a desperate rummage in the huge bins outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.

      We were getting frantic and maniacally scanning every man in sight to see if he showed any sign of being a homicidal, psychotic kidnapper. We thundered back to the apartment, searching every doorway and dingy alley on the way. All the while, I had a picture of my mother in my head, a knowing, smug look on her face saying, ‘I told you that you’d need the number of the British Embassy, dear.’

      I fumbled for a key as I neared our door, only to be stopped in my tracks. What the hell was that racket? All I could hear was a resounding chorus of ‘Livin On A Prayer’, and it was coming from inside our apartment.

      With still-shaking hands, I opened the door and was confronted by the most ludicrous sight. Three men in sombreros were singing at the top of their voices, another was playing an ancient guitar and yet another was fast asleep with a pyramid of beer cans on his belly and his socks hanging out of his ears. In the middle of this melee was Jess, red curls now expanded by the humidity to the size of a sun lounger, beer can in hand, shouting, ‘Girls, I was starting to get worried about you. Come in and meet the lads.’

      I was struck dumb and rooted to the spot. I struggled to construct a sentence, but somehow nothing seemed to articulate the forty-seven different emotions that were coursing through my brain. Carol stepped in.

      ‘What the fuck is going on, Jess?’ Succinct, but it was better than I could manage.

      Four men looked at us in anticipation. The sleeping beer holder never stirred.

      ‘I met them outside the Scotsman,’ she gushed, having the decency to look mildly ashamed. ‘They’re from Barnsley, and they’ve got nowhere to stay because they got kicked off their campsite. I felt sorry for them and brought them back here. I said they could stay with us. It’s okay, isn’t it?’ she pleaded.

      I was still struggling to regain my power of speech.

      Kate sighed loudly. ‘Sorry, Jess, but we’ve got rules in this apartment,’ she said forcibly. ‘No men allowed.’

      Jess’s face had a look of sheer horror and she was just about to embark on her full Petrocelli mitigation speech when she noticed a smile flickering across Kate’s lips. Carol’s shoulders started to shake and within seconds we were collapsed in a cacophony of laughter and relief. We even woke up Sock Man.

      We stayed up until dawn, drinking and exhausting our repertoire of chart hits from the previous decade. At 6 a.m., we concluded with a rousing rendition of ‘A Kind Of Magic’, before slumping to sleep where we sat. We’d already given up on the idea of allocating beds (ten people in a flat designed for two just doesn’t work) and decided that wherever we could clear a floor space, that’s where we would sleep. I can’t remember who, but at some point, someone butchered Paul Young’s hit and the song of the night became Wherever I Lay My Arse, That’s My Home.

      The Barnsley guys, we surmised in our drunken state, were both harmless and entertaining. Dave was the guitar player, 5’8”, with a cute grin and a wicked line in jokes. Brian and Barry were brothers, who spoke in synchronisation – one brain with extra arms and legs. Ritchie was the heart-throb – tall, dark and devilishly handsome, with a body that had seen one or two dumb-bells in its time. And as for Sock Man, he didn’t so much as open his eyes all night so we decided that from then on he would officially be called, well, Sock Man.