How much did I drink? I can’t remember getting into this room.
Reaching into my jeans pocket, I take out my phone. Dead. At least I’m off work today, but shit, this means I’ll be spending my day off in absolute hangover hell. And, fuck! Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m meeting Griffo’s dad at noon. What time is it now?
I scour the room. The sun shines brightly through the warehouse windows and creates a mirror across the bedside table clock. Squinting, I try to read the time, my eyesight blurring. I close one eye and focus with the other. No use. I swap eyes. Oh, bloody hell, I just want to know what time it is. Everything today is already very, very difficult and I’ve only been awake for five minutes. Snatching the remote, I manage to get the telly on.
Thank God for Sky News. It’s twenty past eleven.
I’ll just have to rock up at Griffo’s dad’s house like this. I could get a Big Mac on the way. Maybe stop off at the Asda and pick up a deodorant and some chewies. It’s not as if Griffo’s dad’ll be shocked – or give a flying fuck – what state I arrive in. Our deal is all about the car.
The carpet beneath my feet is spongey. I enjoy the sensation, appreciating my last moments in this plush room.
Then, the room phone starts ringing again.
I pick up my socks and shoes, my fleece, my wallet, and dart out in my bare feet.
Even waiting for the lift is tiring. My forehead is attracted to the ground; my sinuses are not appreciating my movements. The lift doors open and I shuffle inside, the lights and mirrors over-friendly. I’m pleased to be alone.
Ding!
A couple waiting on the fourth floor join me.
‘Jim,’ the lady says. ‘Morning.’
‘Morning,’ I say, wondering how the bloody hell she knows my name.
‘Heavy head this morning?’ the man asks.
I recognise his voice, his accent. Scottish. Alan. Alec?
Yeah, that’s it. I was speaking to Alan/Alec and his wife last night in the rum bar. They’re here in Liverpool for their silver wedding anniversary, doing the whole Beatles thing. I bought them a bottle of champagne and helped them drink it. They’re both broad and loud, squeezing my personal space, causing my chest to ache. Rosy cheeks and tips of noses confirm they have hangovers too, but their cheeriness agitates me. I just want to get out.
‘How did it go with the girls?’ Alan/Alec asks, rubbing his hands together.
‘Ooh, spill the beans, Jimmy,’ his wife chuckles. She’d been calling me Jimmy; that part is coming back to me, too. Nobody’s ever called me Jimmy before last night. ‘Do tell.’
Tell. If only I could recall.
‘Look at Jimmy’s toes, Al,’ she says, noticing my bare feet. ‘He thinks he’s Paul McCartney.’
Ding!
Ground floor.
And as the doors open, there they are.
Loose curls, bronze tans and all shades of denim, there’s no mistaking the girls from Belfast here for a long hen weekend. I seem to recall there being more than only three of them, but maybe their charisma felt greater than three, or my vision duplicated them. Lounging by the reception desk, they spot me. And my bare feet. I can’t work out if they’re giggling or hissing. What did I do, besides buy them drinks? Hungover or not, I won’t be the bastard to ignore them. I sit down on a strangely low designer chair, my thighs feeling tight, my back needing to crack, and put on my socks.
‘Morning,’ I smile. God, I’m fumbling. Doing two things at once is verging on impossible. ‘Hope you had a good night?’
The three girls reply saying, ‘Grand,’ as if their voice boxes are made of ice.
A haze of events drill through my skull, rattling like a steam train. I play them over and over in my mind, like watching a bad-quality movie on VHS. There was singing, and L-plates, and the barman asking the girls to keep the noise down. It was cold, we were outside, smoking … I was smoking? Oh fuck. That explains my heavy chest, the fur on my teeth, and on her tongue … whose tongue? The L-plates … the bride-to-be … she was dragged away, laughing. Or crying. I bought her a drink, then another. She cried on my shoulder, literally. Did I chat football with the barman? Football? Me? I forgot my room number. I must’ve tried to guess it. Oh God. There were corridors, and walls, and at one point I was on my hands and knees crawling. Did I knock on someone’s door? Oh, Holy fuck.
Those girls are definitely hissing.
At least they got free drinks out of me.
Through blurred vision, I check the hotel bill handed to me in a fancy card. The total to pay makes tequila-tasting vomit shoot up and hit the back of my throat. Swallowing, I have no choice but to hand over my trembling credit card. After what seems like hours of holding onto the edge of the reception desk in silence, five words ring in my ears.
‘Your card has been declined.’
It takes a difficult surge of brain power to work out how to rectify this, but I manage. I ask if I can split the bill by paying with debit card and credit card, to which the answer is, ‘Of course, sir.’ Before relief can register, the words come back to haunt me with an extra tagged on at the end for free.
‘Your card has been declined again.’
Various attempts are made at trying various amounts, until both cards work. Ninety-four quid is paid by debit, the heftier balance maxing out my credit card. One massive conclusion comes crashing down upon my heavy, heavy head; I am officially broke. What had I been thinking? Blowing such an obscene amount of money in just one night? Yeah, I’m sitting on the edge of fifty grand, but it’s not in my hand – or my bank – yet.
I must be way over the limit. Yet driving feels acceptable because some amount of sleep has occurred between the bender and now. However, if the police pull me over …
It’s almost noon. I’m going to have to swerve my Big Mac, which makes me want to weep. Griffo’s dad lives on the Wirral next to a golf course, meaning that to get there, I have to pass through work; the Mersey Tunnel. God, I really need some sunnies. Even the darkest cloud in the sky is too bright for me today: my bed is calling my name; my curtains eager to be closed. How fantastic it’ll be to wake up tomorrow, rested, sober and fifty grand in credit.
Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’ is playing on the radio. The urge comes over me to take a deep breath and sing. It distracts me from the stale alcohol fizzling along my veins, saves me from throwing up. My voice is huskier than usual, more effort required to get the notes and words out, but it feels good.
The entrance to the tunnel is fast approaching.
How strange to be doing this, driving my own car towards it, into it.
Immersed within the tunnel, the radio crackles, signal lost beneath the River Mersey. I stop singing and decide to concentrate. The darkness of the tunnel and its artificial lights are adding to the intensity of my hangover and I have to prepare myself for the daylight that’ll hit me any moment.
Boom.
I glide towards the toll booth, the very one where I answered the unknown number yesterday morning. Gayle Freeman is on the booth. It’s not until I throw my change into the bucket that she recognises me, her eyes and mouth resembling bright marbles in my rear-view mirror.
The Wirral seems sunnier than Liverpool. Patches of grass in the centre of the oncoming roundabout greener, tarmac smoother. Traffic is sparse, tranquility on the other side of the water. The radio signal is clear again, Elbow’s serenade returning, their epic ending going on and on, sounding divine through the nine speakers.