‘What d’you mean – “So what if I asked her out?”’  Chantal’s jaw practically hit the dashboard of Ross’s Mondeo. 

The minute he started the car to convey her home from the Hare & Talent, she’d finally tackled him about the ‘Faith’ topic.  And been flabbergasted by the smug nonchalance of his reply.  He hadn’t even got the decency to deny making moves on the girl, the way your usual brand of philanderer would have done!

Ross shrugged, brushing the gear stick into fifth and coasting up Willenhall Road in his blasé, one-hand-on-the-wheel style.

‘Well what’s wrong with it?  It’s not as though me and you am married, is it?’

‘I know we’re not married, but what’s wrong with being faithful?’

Ross stared at her as though she’d just demanded what was wrong with corsets, or slavery, or houses without electricity.

‘What century are you living in, girl?  The way I see it,’ he explained modestly, ‘I have a special skill – and, as I’ve discovered in these last few weeks, so do you!  We’re both complete belters when it comes to the old horizontal poker game – know what I mean?  And I just consider it my duty – and yours – to share this skill with as many members of the human race as possible.  We’re providing a service really.’

Chantal merely gaped in outrage.  She genuinely hadn’t known chaps existed who were so brazen and unfeeling about their infidelity.  She’d imagined cheating was a clandestine pastime, not juice for broadcast to the cuckolded partner.  This Ross Froggatt was one on his own.

‘Well I’m not servicing no-one!  I’m not like that.’

He let out a smug chuckle.  ‘I am.  I’m a tart!  Always on the lookout.  Last time I pulled was two nights ago, at work.  Wench called Joanne.  She came in the restaurant with her mate, and was well up for it.  So I gave her me phone number.’

‘On a green napkin, no doubt,’ Chantal said bitingly, recalling his ‘here’s one I wrote out earlier’ approach with her.  Ross just sniggered, more amused than ashamed that she’d seen straight through him.  ‘So let me get this straight: you never had any intentions to remain faithful?  This relationship has been a sham right from day one, in other words?’

‘Relationship?’  Ross looked disgusted.  ‘Don’t call it that, I don’t want a relationship.  Not a serious one anyhow.  No commitment, no ties.  ‘You’re not my girlfriend – you’re just a girl I sleep with.’

‘Slept with,’ she corrected.

‘Life’s far too short for monogamy.  But don’t worry,’ he went on soothingly, even having the gall to smile at her, ‘I’d tell you if I ever cheated on you.’

‘Gee thanks, Ross, I’m so grateful!’

‘Isn’t it better to be honest, though, than tell you I love you while shagging around behind your back, like your ex was doing?’

There he went again – painfully on target with his scud-missile tact.  Ross lied when it suited him, but in the main he was breathtakingly, searingly honest. 

Chantal could have clouted herself on the head for confiding in him about Kris.  He’d seemed sympathetic at the time, but she guessed now that was a mere ruse to bed her.  In reality, he’d be more likely to pat Kris on the back and wish him luck with Nat and/or Em.

Chantal stared out of the window, trying to give some philosophical context to her latest love-life blip.  She was a girl generally given to melodrama – but was she actually that devastated?

She’d barely been with Ross two months, and would be lying to say she’d sought a serious relationship with him – the pair of them were not exactly soul mates.  She’d just had this wacky idea that the whole point of going out with someone was that you remained faithful to that individual.  Carefree fun may be preferable at her age to marriage and ‘babbies,’ but Chantal could not have fun with a blatant user who actively pursued other women the millisecond her back was turned.

Though she was almost twenty-one, Ross was only Chantal’s second sexual partner, and to indulge in slapdash flings went contrary to her nature.  To do so would involve pretending to be something she was not.  Chantal was not of the same ilk as Charlotte, who claimed she rarely had less than two boyfriends on the go at once, yet still found time for scores of one-night stands with blokes whose names she never bothered to find out.

‘Oi,’ Chantal yelled, as it suddenly registered that they were way past the Willenhall turn-off, ‘where d’you think you’re going?  My house is that way!’

Ross flashed her a suggestive wink.  He was approaching the huge M6 roundabout, where one could take the second exit to join Junction 10 of the northbound motorway – or the third exit on to the A454 for Walsall and Aldridge.

Aldridge!  Chantal belatedly cottoned on to the message in his perv’s wink.  The cheeky bastard!

‘Bloody hell – you’re heading for the Beacon, aren’t you?  I don’t believe it!  You seriously think I wanna go up there with you after everything you’ve just said?’

Ross patted her knee and started to inch his fingers upwards beneath her little black suede skirt.  ‘C’mon, Chantal, it’ll loosen you up!  Let’s go have some fun, take our minds off frigid Faith – she’s just a stuck-up bitch anyway.’

Chantal, repulsed, prised his hand away and swivelled her legs away to preclude further fleshly contact.  ‘Take me home, Ross Froggatt!  You think the mere sight of your nob will make me forgive and forget everything?  No way!’

‘Aw, it’s your fault,’ Ross wheedled, ‘you got me all hot for it at lunchtime.’

‘Yeah, well now I’ve gone off the boil.  You needn’t think you’ll be getting your leg over me tonight – or ever again!  I want to go home!’

‘Suit yourself.’

Ross circled the enormous island and swung back towards Willenhall.  He wasn’t about to kidnap the wench and rape her.  He didn’t need to.  It was true to say she was the best little screw he’d ever had – were it not for that, he’d have reached his traditional gnat-level boredom threshold and dumped her weeks ago.  He’d stuck with her – albeit not monogamously – for longer than any other girl, but now she was getting on his tits with her whining.  There were plenty more fish for him in the proverbial sea.  Ross – with his maggot – had done enough fishing to know the truth of that.

‘Why did you ask me out?’  A peculiar question, perhaps, but she put it to Ross with genuine curiosity as he made the return zoom down the Black Country Route.  It was suddenly of interest, for some reason, what could have drawn Ross to a girl like her.  Possibly it was an insecure need for reassurance that she wasn’t as unattractive and jinxed as she felt right now.  But Ross wasn’t about to be a fount of compliments.

‘You seemed to be staring at me,’ he answered, with that same staggering, irony-free arrogance.

‘I seemed to be staring at you?’

‘Yeah,’ he reflected, totally oblivious to her guppy-gape, ‘and you were female and Luke had put me to serve on your table.’  He was so matter-of-fact; Chantal realised he was actually relating his own twisted recollection of that night rather than deliberately insulting her.  But she’d had enough.

‘Shit, Ross, how much abuse can a girl take?  You make out you’re not too choosy; that you intended to make a move on whatever unfortunate wench you happened to be assigned to for the evening.  And it was not my humongous tits or my blue eyes that so entranced you, but the fact I was ‘staring at you,’ and was so clearly gagging for it that you felt impelled to put me out of my misery!

‘Well let me tell you my version of events – as you might expect, it’s a little different to yours!  Your eyes were out on stalks all night.  You spent so much time goggling at me, it’s a wonder you didn’t trip up and tip a load of tortellini over someone.  Believe me, I wouldn’t have noticed you existed otherwise!  I was there to meet my boyfriend – and, frankly, more fool me for choosing you over him!’

Chantal caught her breath, emotionally.  She’d said too much – and her latter proclamation had definitely winded her.  It felt good, though; an overdue stab at revenge.  Not that it fazed Ross.  Oh, what was the point?  Why was she wasting precious breath on a man whose feelings for her would never run deeper than the gold plate on his identity bracelet?  She was getting all het up but having no effect.  Ross couldn’t give a toss.

‘Look, love,’ he responded, in a bored way, ‘I’m the sort of person who will talk to anybody.  I may not be the most attractive bloke in the world,’ (ten out of ten for observation, Ross!) ‘but I’ve got soooo much confidence!  I meet a lot of people through my work and college, and a lot of those people happen to be girls.  And can I help it if a lot of those happen to be girl I wanna bed?’

‘You’re so bloody full of yourself, aren’t you!  I can’t see why.  The way you talk, anyone would think you owned the Ritz or Maxim’s.  You wait on tables in a fucking Italian restaurant in Dudley, for fuck’s sake!’

Ross rolled his eyes like a nagged-to-death husband.

Kris never used to pull faces like that!

Her ex’s handsome, affable features took sudden shape in Chantal’s mind like an Etch-A-Sketch.

It was the first time in weeks that she’d visualised him so sharply.  She’d consigned the few photos she’d managed to take of him to the pit of her bedroom cupboard (not having quite the heart to bin them altogether), and Ross’s face was the one she woke up beneath nowadays, so where Kris was concerned the old ‘out of sight out of mind’ maxim applied.  This unexpected vision of him caused tears to tickle at her eyeballs.

Chantal had a gutting misgiving that she had jumped to conclusions about Kris and his ‘infidelity.’  Well, not so much jumped to them as skydived – without the assistance of a parachute.

Chantal hadn’t dared log on to The Kult of Kris again, after that nauseating first visit – and certainly dreaded to think what couplings it might gloat of now that Kris was single and free to chase any bit of minge he fancied.  But in fact not a shard of circumstantial evidence had ever linked him to Nat or Em.  It was hardly his fault they’d chosen to declare their lust by means of a lurid website.

Nat and Em were immature, but now Chantal realised she had been equally so.  Immature and presumptuous: taking the Kult girls’ tacky lust, her workmates’ shit-stirring and parents’ cynicism as concrete proof that Kris was dipping his nib in other inkwells. 

What cause, though, now she came to think of it, had he ever given her to doubt his love and faith for her?  He was always dedicating songs to her, paying her compliments and brightening her days with his lovely, pointless, soppy text messages.  And what did she ever do for him? 

The poor guy didn’t deserve a paranoid bint like me. 

Unfortunately, it had to take a hapless affair with stupid Ross to teach her the difference between a respectable lad and a waster with an overactive cock.

‘Don’t start getting all emotional on me, woman,’ Ross snorted as Chantal swabbed away a tear, ‘I can’t be doing with blarting.’

‘I’m not crying over you, tosser.’  She sniffed and turned her streaky face to the side window, which thankfully now looked out upon her estate.  Nearly home now.  Good.

The second Ross stopped outside the Browns’ house, she unsnapped her seatbelt and was out of the door.

‘Goodbye Ross.  Please don’t ever call me again.’

Chantal didn’t turn round as she unlocked the front door and shut it softly (to avoid rousing her parents, who had been at the gig but come home much earlier).  All was silent.  Not so much as a disturbed cheep from Arthur in his sheet-canopied cage.  The only sound outside was the Mondeo zooming away into the night.

Good to see I haven’t broken his heart then, thought Chantal wryly.  He’s not about to come tearing after me, howling ‘Don’t dump me – I love you!’

In the hushed darkness, she was suddenly conscious of her lone status.  She was boyfriendless after six months of back-to-back man activity.  She felt eerily cool about Ross’s departure – he was a scumbag; a fling; a mistake – but, as she padded upstairs and eased off her clothes in slow motion, it was for Kris that Chantal pined.  He’d stood her up that April night – but could she have been more persistent; demanded explanations before substituting him so easily with revolting Ross?  For all her jealousies about Kris’s groupies, and vows to never give him up to some other wench without a battle, it was she whose head had been ultimately turned.  She was a hypocrite and she knew it.  She could kick herself.

It was way too late for her and Kris now, of course.  He hadn’t been in touch at all since that Saturday night, which actually surprised her.  She had phoned him once, on the Sunday, taunted by guilt that she’d been snogging another guy when, for all she knew, Kris’s body might have been mangled in car wreckage. 

It was Kara who picked up and, typically icily, informed her that Kris was out rehearsing ‘for the Isle of Wight trip, you know, it’s very important to him.’

So he was alive then, at any rate.  He never returned her call, though.  Chantal tried a last-ditch text: ‘WHERE WERE U LAST NIGHT?  HOPE YR OK’ – and when that went unanswered she resigned herself, unbelievably readily, to the fact it was truly over.  Well, she had Ross to distract her now.

He’d distracted her so much, in fact, that she’d forgotten how keen Kris had been to meet her that Saturday.  He’d said in his car on that Thursday night that he had something important to chat with her about – and he wanted a posher eatery than Martino’s to provide the backdrop for this discussion.  Chantal recalled this now – and suddenly Kris’s cruel jilting of her didn’t ring true.

Ah well, he was only going to finish with me anyway, she thought dismissively as she crawled into bed and lugged the duvet over her head, I expect he just chickened out of telling me face to face, and thought that by not turning up I’d get the message.

Faith and Joe were in their now traditional ‘joined at the lip’ position when Chantal loped into the pub on Saturday morning.

At the same moment, Justine (she’d gone for the full Mel B today, in top-to-toe leopard print – she’d even curled her hair) entered the bar, purposefully brandishing a notebook and a purple biro.  She was still a bit out of sorts with her friend, but melted the minute she saw Chantal’s doleful face.

Chantal was clad in her traditional blue: the colour of her eyes – and mood at present.  Jeans, a sky-blue vest top, even glittery blue hair slides.  The ensemble somehow gave her a delicate, lonely appearance.

‘What’s up, hon?’ Justine asked kindly – as if she couldn’t guess.

Chantal deposited her indolent body on to a barstool.  ‘I broke up with Ross on Thursday.’

Faith, Justine and Joe exchanged ‘told you so’ glances.  Chantal couldn’t even be bothered getting nettled at their smugness.  Any anger she had was reserved entirely for herself.

‘Well, pet,’ Justine snapped back into blunt mode, ‘I’d like to tell you I’m sorry to hear that – but I’m not, so I won’t!’

Faith, who wasn’t yet fully acclimatised to Justine’s ways, thought that a touch harsh, and shot her a censuring frown.

‘If it’s any consolation, Chantal, I am sorry.  I know I’m partially responsible too.  I felt like the most tactless cow in the world at that wedding.  I spoke never dreaming that was your Ross who tried to get it on with me that night.  I turned him down flat, though – you do understand that, don’t you?’

Chantal grinned at Faith for the first time ever.  It was a cynical grin, but a warm one nonetheless, and it pleased Faith that her bandmate-to-be was at last thawing.  ‘You’ve got better taste than me then, mate!  And it’s saft talk blaming yourself.  The bloke’s just a toerag who can’t keep it in his boxers!’

Chantal had considered issuing an ‘If Faith joins the band, I’m quitting’ ultimatum, but thought better of cutting off her nose to spite her face.  It really wasn’t Faith’s fault that her pleb of a boyfriend – ex-boyfriend – had asked her out.  Chantal believed Faith when she said she’d turned him down.  There was no way a girl like her would be seen dead with a Ross type.

A girl like Chantal ought not to be either, if the truth be known. 

Had he spiked her spritzer with a ‘gullible pill’ in Martino’s that night?  She felt so foolish that he’d caught her on the rebound – if she actually had anything to rebound from.  She’d stupidly panicked; been so fearful of rejection and solitude that she’d pounced on the first man who offered to soften the blow of losing Kris.  But Ross ended up doing precisely the opposite.  He made her miss Kris more – the contrast between the two men was so sharp.

If truth be told, Chantal was not excessively heartbroken – over Ross, at any rate.  She’d done her dutiful sobbing, and kept up the ‘wet weekend’ façade, because it was expected of her; almost etiquette.  To behave otherwise might characterise her as cold or weird, and anyway Chantal was a girl who liked a good wallow. 

Actually, though, other factors upset her more than the physical loss of Ross.  Such as reactions: her workmates’ predictable venom (‘Don’t have much luck on the old lurve front, do we, Chubs?  Never mind – you’ll meet someone one day.  Stranger things have happened!’) and her mom’s disappointment.

The latter, though, ultimately had a very unexpected, positive consequence.

‘Now what d’you wanna go doing that for?’ Shirley had griped last night, when Chantal announced she’d given Ross the old heave-ho.  ‘He’s a decent lad – and the second boyfriend as you’ve had since Christmas.  It don’t do to be too fickle with the chaps, you know!’

Shirley was chopping carrots at the time, with crabby, irritating gestures.  Seeing her standing there all sanctimonious made Chantal yell.  ‘Would you like to know the truth about that “decent lad”; that prat who you consider such a fabulous catch?’ With a frankness long absent from their relationship, she’d acquainted her mother with the precise content of that final car conversation. 

Shirley listened without comment, then amazed her daughter by enfolding her in a hug.  A proper maternal, hair-stroking, hanky-offering hug.  And Chantal loved the safe, soft feeling of being babied.  And she cried.

Shirley wasn’t a bad mother – she was good-hearted and moral, as was Ken.  They just both had old-fashioned set ideas – based mainly on appearances and stereotypes – about what people fell into the Decent Sort and Wrong ’Un categories.

Chantal recognised this now, as Shirley rocked her in their tiny family kitchen.  Mom was of a different generation – she ought not to despise her so.  Shirley’s frowzy old apron smelled of a hundred shepherd’s pies – suddenly that seemed so comforting.

‘I’m sorry, bab, he just seemed like a nice chap, that’s all.  Shows how much I know, eh?’

Shirley could see a lot of herself in her only child – this headstrong but vulnerable blonde girl she was now cuddling.  They’d both been selfish and wrong.

‘You still miss Kristian, don’t you?  I s’pose me and your dad never really gave him a chance.  You’re young yet, though, bab.  Plenty of time to meet somebody else.’

Chantal was so touched that yet more tears leaked down her mom’s apron front.

‘If I’m honest,’ Chantal admitted, ‘I was just lonely and desperate.  Maybe I was doing as much using as Ross?’

‘Chaps like that Ross Froggatt ai’ good enough for you, me flower.   Right waster and philanderer he turned out to be.  Yow deserve someone out of the top drawer.’

‘My sentiments exactly!’

She could never be comfortable with Ross.  He had more faults than she was able to overlook.  He was shallower than an amoeba’s swimming pool, and much too flashy (he wore more jewellery than she did). 

There must have been scores of others more deserving of her.  Ross was good for a casual laugh – if that was all you wanted out of life – but nothing more.  Chantal wanted better.  She was sick of apologising for being alive; of feeling guilty just because she aspired to the best in life.

She saw Faith now as a girl to emulate; who didn’t apologise for who she was or what she wanted.  And her tactics had worked – she’d bagged Joe, whom Chantal thought of as an ultra-cool big brother; a man who in her little world was someone to look up to.  She had no idea Faith was a reformed snob who would, until meeting Joe two days ago, have deemed a barman in a Wolverhampton pub anything but cool.

Chantal looked at the girls now and felt a sudden surge of optimism; a real ‘I could conquer the world with these friends’ feeling.  Justine and Faith were wonderful girls – she was lucky to have them, and ought to be rejoicing, not moaning and booing because Faith happened to be one of her bone-brained ex’s attempted conquests.

There was a new determination to Chantal’s voice as she said, ‘What are we waiting for?  Let’s go and rehearse!’

‘Now Chantal,’ said Justine efficiently, unclipping the purple pen from her notebook’s spiral binding, ‘Faith and I have drawn up a little list. We’ve tried to work out songs that best suit our voices and sum up our individual tastes.’

The girls were ensconced in Justine’s bedroom, clutching mugs of a warm honey and lemon beverage Faith had insisted they try (she’d been appalled when Justine started helping herself to Pepsi cans from the pub fridge – ‘Cold fizzy drinks are your voice’s worst enemy!  They freeze up your nice warm vocal chords.’)

‘You and Faith have worked it out?’  Chantal – the new, maturing Chantal – tried to keep her voice neutral and repress her childlike jealousy.

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t set out to go behind your back, but when I got up this morning I discovered that this one,’ Justine bobbed her frizzy head in Faith’s direction, ‘had stayed for breakfast.  Hence we were able to have a bit of a chat before you arrived.  She had rather a hot date with my brother last night, I gather!’

‘Oh, he’s lovely, Just!’  Faith, cross-legged on the carpet, blushed, again untypically goofily.  ‘Got great taste.  He took me to this wicked Italian place out Aldridge way, called Rollo’s.  What they don’t know about spaghetti there ain’t worth knowing!’

‘Bit of a step up from Martino’s then,’ Chantal said wryly.

‘Not half!  Bit of a step up from anywhere I’ve ever been taken on a date, to tell you the truth.’  She hugged her knees joyously, remembering it. 

It was ironic that Faith the snob had been bored on nights out with pretentious students in fashionably scutty pubs; the minute she met someone she’d never have previously considered a catch, she had a magical evening at a genuinely classy restaurant. 

Surprisingly, she had never been taken anywhere like Rollo’s before.  Faith was so intent on giving off worldly airs, it was easy to forget the truth about herself: that she was a working class girl who in fact had only ever eaten spaghetti out of Heinz tins.

Last night had been the most romantic of her life; a date young girls dream of.  Rich, ornamentally presented food; candles dripping pink wax down old wine bottles; soft piano music; ambient lighting; waiters who were attentive but in a discreet way, not like slobbery Ross.  She and Joe gassed the night away, with not a soupcon of first-date nerves.

Joe was so interesting; he had ladles more ambition, spirit and conversation than the boys Faith was used to going out with.  A word that came to mind was ‘positive.’  He wasn’t a whinger; he saw the silver lining in every cliché.

Faith empathised with his anecdotes about some of the grab-a-granny shebangs he’d DJ’d at.  She’d sung at many a similar function – it was actually a wonder they’d never met before.

‘Perhaps we have,’ she suggested, tearing at her wedge of garlic bread, ‘we might have been at the same cheesy wedding reception without realising it!’

‘I doubt it,’ Joe flirted, gripping her gaze with those jade, soulful eyes of his, ‘I’d have definitely remembered someone like you.’

Faith’s tummy was doing acrobatics.  Until then, she’d been bugged by jealousy towards the flocks of girls Joe encountered at these parties.  Not so long ago, she’d have had good reason to, but now he had met her, he knew his eyes would never be tempted to stray from the vibrant, beautiful Faith.

Rather, she was the type of girl men strayed to.  Joe caught several chaps, attached ones included, staring sneakily at her through the candlelight tonight.  She was dressed fit for the Oscars, in a slinky gold halter-neck dress she’d bought yesterday, which emphasised her tall and sexy figure.  She’d pinned her lush curly hair up for once, leaving just a few saucy tendrils to tickle her statuesque neck.  Long slim earrings, a simple necklace and the ubiquitous nose stud were her only jewels.  Her look was so elegant; so ‘less is more.’  Excessive trinkets would only detract from the beauty she’d been blessed with. 

Joe was equally striking, in a black silky shirt and burgundy waistcoat, his brown hair slicked into its usual ponytail.  They made an attractive couple.

‘I’ll have you know, mate,’ Faith pointed at him with a flake of her bread, facetiously to disguise how wobbly he was making her, ‘that I don’t intend being your typical DJ’s other half, who just stands in the corner looking bored and mopey at parties.  I’m gunna get me my own career!’

‘I’m sure you’ll be a triumph at whatever you do.  And when I’m a radio presenter, I’ll make sure I’m first to play all the band’s singles!’

‘I’d hate to speak too soon, but I’ve got a confident feeling about this band.  We could really go places with drive and boldness like your sister’s.’

‘Yeah, life’s certainly never dull with our Just.’  He rolled his eyes affectionately.  That was another trait Faith admired: Joe’s joyous love for his family.

‘I’d have given anything for a brother or sister when I was younger, she said wistfully, ‘I really envy the two of you.’

‘I’d love to do radio eventually,’ Joe imparted later on, ‘love to be a presenter.’

‘Been for any auditions?’

‘A few.  No success yet, though.  At one or two, I’ve got down to the shortlist.  Still, I guess those just weren’t meant to be.  I’ll keep trying.  I used to volunteer at hospital radio in me school holidays, down at New Cross.  Then I did a media studies course at Dudley College before I set up me DJing business – ’

The waiter delivered their desserts then: tiramisu for Faith; Mint Iceberg for Joe – the latter being a sundae mountain of mint choc chip ice cream and meringue chunks, drizzled in crème de menthe and capped with foamy cream.  The smitten pair swapped morsels of each other’s sweets – though drew the line at spoon-feeding, which was such a corny, honeymoony thing to do.

‘This cream reminds me of when I was in Bugsy Malone at school,’ Faith giggled.  ‘The stuff they put in the splurge guns was like this.  Lethal, it was.  I slipped in it once, on stage.  Nearly went arse over tit while I was doing me big My Name is Tallulah number.’

This was a genuinely involuntary recollection evoked by the succulent food, rather just than a brag Faith had shoehorned in.  She used to be forever namedropping about her school roles to enthralled boys, as though she were an old stage actress – ‘You know, my Tallulah is still talked about in theatrical circles today, dahling’ – but with Joe she felt oddly modest.  She wanted him to fancy her, but not think her an arrogant drama-class bitch.  It did Faith good to be impressed by somebody else for a change.

Meeting folks with ambitions – like the girls, and now Joe – was really motivating her.  It taught her that there was more to life than posing, and shopping when she should have been in classes.  She had a perfectly astute brain, yet her life was one long skive.  Or had been until now.

‘I’d love to hear all about the shows you’ve been in,’ Joe said, taking an indulgent spoonful of ice cream.

‘I don’t wanna bore you with it now, Joe.’  Faith waved her wine glass dismissively.  ‘Tell me about your course instead.’

‘Oh, it was ace.’  He immediately grinned fondly, reliving frivolous student life.  ‘We did a bit of video production, and for one of our projects we filmed a spoof of that eighties game show Mr & Mrs!  Don’t s’pose you remember that?  I was one of the “husbands,” my character was called Geoffrey and I had this cheesy hippy outfit on!  I’ve still got the tape somewhere.’

‘And who played your wife?’  Faith was aghast by how dry-throated and jealous she felt of such a girl.

‘My mate Gavin,’ Joe laughed.  Faith took a vast gulp of wine, ridiculously relieved.  ‘He got himself all dragged up, with this huge pair of fake boobs, a hideous wig and this globby pink lipstick I nicked from Justine.  She went ape-shit when she found out!  Anyway, Gav played my wife Wilma, and my other mate Rich played the smarmy host, Hugh Jass!   He had this vile suit on, which I think he’d filched from his dad’s wardrobe.  It was purple, with this massive colour – very 70s!  We made up all these dodgy questions for Rich to ask the “couples” – like: “If Geoffrey farted while out walking the dog together, would he:

a) Blame it on the dog,

b) Blame it on you, or

c) Come clean and own up to it?”

‘Oh happy days!’

‘The night ended with a bang, Chantal,’ Justine divulged with a naughty wink, ‘and this morning began with one too!’

‘Justine!’  Faith’s face was as red as the wine she’d drunk vats of last night.  She grabbed a fluffy white cushion from Justine’s bed and took a swipe at her with it.  ‘Oh, she’s mean to me, Chantal, she really is!’  Faith, behind the cushion, was mock indignant.

Chantal giggled along, enjoying the girls-dorm camaraderie of it all.  It didn’t matter that she hadn’t said much yet; with these two she didn’t feel boring or conscious of her ‘quiet’ status.  She felt warm and included; one of the gang.

‘Well I do sleep in the next room, don’t forget,’ Justine hooted, dodging the low flying cushion attack, ‘and these walls are as thin as bog roll.  Had to plug me Walkman in to drown out the screaming!  I tell you, Chantal, I’d got that Spice World CD turned up so high, it nearly perforated me eardrum.’

Faith had slept with almost all her boyfriends on the first date, so it wasn’t as though she’d been exceptionally forward with Joe.  The difference with him, though, was that she actually planned making it to a second date.

‘Anyway,’ she changed the subject with mock, House of Commons Speaker sternness, ‘about this song list…’

‘And I was thinking Natasha Bedingfield’s Single would be a good ’un to do,’ Faith reeled off from the purple list.  ‘Thought you might find that quite empowering, Chantal!’  Chantal found this a touch condescending, but let it go in the circumstances.  No point knocking something until she’d tried it.

‘And then there’s In Your Eyes by Kylie…’

‘No!’  Chantal blurted out before she could help herself.  When the other girls stared at her, she continued: ‘It brings back too many sad memories.  It was the first dance me and Kris had together.  Our first kiss too, actually.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Justine kindly.

‘You wouldn’t,’ Chantal stared into her honey-scummed mug bottom, grimacing because she wasn’t yet overly sure about this drink, ‘it was New Year’s Eve.  I didn’t meet you ’til February, did I?’

‘No, course not.’  Justine gave her friend’s arm a tiny squeeze.  She hadn’t been fooled by Chantal’s ‘I’m over Kris’ act, or her rebound-fling with Ross.  Now it was clear from the torment in her deep blue eyes and the fact a mere song could evoke such sore memories, that Chantal was nowhere over cured of her lovesickness.

‘Now I hope I get to do a few of me sad ballads,’ Chantal said in a jokey tone to avoid slipping into maudlin altogether.  ‘These audiences can’t be allowed to boogie too merrily, we’ve gotta wring some emotion out of ’em!’

‘Quite right!’  Faith pounced on the chance to resume the cheerier subject in hand.  ‘Don’t fear, we’ve put Bonnie Tyler down.’

‘Don’t forget Yazoo!’

‘ – and Yazoo.’

‘Some Blondie too.  Chirpier numbers, though, like Sunday Girl and The Tide is High. Don’t want to be a totally miserable cow, do I?’  Chantal grinned slyly at Faith.

At half-past-one, Joe levered the door open and backed in bearing a huge tray of coffees and the ever popular cobs.

All three girls were staggered by the time.  But for Joe’s thoughtfulness, they wouldn’t have even been conscious it was lunchtime and might have continued with their hairbrush-amplified medleys in the mirror until last orders.

None of them had had such a fun, constructive get-together in ages.  Time had become irrelevant.  They’d felt absurdly shy and silly to begin with, though – despite being accustomed to audiences.  Faith thought it amusing how the others naturally looked to her as lead vocalist despite her being the youngest and freshest recruit, and it being really more appropriate that she take the lead from them.

They were all very vocal in the planning stage; the drafting-of-a-set-list phase.  But when Faith proposed: ‘OK then, let’s do a bit of a medley,’ they giggled nervously and none of them knew where to start: Faith because she was the newcomer; Chantal and Justine because they felt a bit self-conscious and amateurish in front of Faith, in the a cappella confinement of Justine’s bedroom. 

So Faith, since she was apparently expected to launch into the opening number, said: ‘How about some Spice Girls then?’ 

This won favour with Justine, of course, but they were all three cognizant with the songs.  They were kids’ stuff; nursery rhyme.  A couple of bars into Say You’ll Be There, and they were away. 

Halfway through, though, Justine segued confidently into Stop, then Chantal took up the thread, into Viva Forever, and so on, until it was as though they’d been harmonising together all their lives.  They experimented with medleys on different themes: disco, for example, or Shania Twain.  When they felt a bit braver, they tried entire songs; unabridged, un-medley-fied.

Even allowing for the fact it was mid-morning, the girls could have been guests at the coolest sleepover party in the world.  Two on the floor, one on the bed, cross-legged, enjoying an off-the-cuff sing-song.  They might as well have just watched a Dirty Dancing video and shared a family-sized tub of Ben & Jerry’s.  But this sing-song was much slicker.  Their voices fused so beautifully – like a bowl of strawberries and ice cream with liqueur poured over.

Then they attempted a spot of in-the-mirror choreography, sniggering like schoolgirls at their un-Fame-like little moves.  Faith gave the others some technical tips about things like voice control and breathing.  She added, as predicted, a polished, sophisticated edge to their sound.

Single was the first number to which they attempted a routine.  And Faith was proved correct – Chantal did find it an empowering one to rehearse.  All that ranting about not needing a man to make you whole.

‘No – only to fill your hole,’ Faith ad libbed, causing them all to corpse in front of the mirror.

Now they realised they were ravenous, and pounced gleefully on the rolls and drinks – except Faith, who pounced gleefully on Joe, in the besotted, tactile way of newlyshag couples.  She used to cringe at couples who felt the world had to witness their snoggy-feely displays – but perhaps that was because she’d never had a boyfriend with whom she wanted to be openly affectionate.  Distance used to be all – treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, and all that.

‘I’ve actually only come up to complain about the noise,’ Joe teased.  ‘The punters keep griping to me that all this cacophonous mewling is putting them off their pies and beers!’

‘Whack him for me, Faith, would you?’  Justine proffered her the ever useful fluffy cushion for such an assault.

‘I don’t think me or Joe have much room to talk about noise after our nocturnal sounds,’ Faith laughed, burying her face in his shirt with mock shame.

‘You knock up a bostin’ sarnie, though, Joe,’ praised Chantal though a mouthful of ham and coleslaw, ‘you’ve got yourself a job as our permanent teaboy if you want it.’

‘Or I could be your manager,’ he offered, shrugging in that laid-back, non-pushy way of his, which made people instantly trust and relax with him.  He was unlike so many overbearing sorts, who invite themselves to every party and consider their opinion to be fact.  His reasons for volunteering his managerial services were genuinely altruistic.  ‘I mean, not a controlling type of manager, who tells you what colour knickers to wear each day.  I could just help you get gigs at some of my regular places.  Chantal, roll in one hand, mug in the other, nodded approvingly through a slow coffee slurp.

‘You’ll see we don’t get diddled, won’t you, Joe?’  Faith cooed up to him, feeling an unprecedented need to be protected.  ‘You’d fight off any blokes who clamber on stage because they want our bodies?’

Justine made a ‘puke’ face to Chantal at their slushiness – but then conceded to her brother: ‘It’s not a bad idea, though.’

‘No,’ Faith concurred, ‘and maybe if we start getting regular dates, I’ll speak to Kev, see if he could sign us up.  But in the meantime, Joe could help us out with bookings and publicity and stuff.’

‘Yeah, I reckon it’s a great idea,’ Chantal chimed in.

‘Joking apart,’ said Joe, ‘the little bit of you that I heard this morning sounded wicked.  How’s your rehearsal been going?’

‘Oh, brill,’ Justine enthused.  ‘You know that line in the Fame theme that goes “I feel it coming together”?  Well it’s like that!  I think we’ve found our missing link here.’   She gave Faith’s pale shoulder a matey pat.

‘Long as I’m not the weakest link!’

‘A little birdy was telling me, Chantal Brown,’ said Faith much later as the girls, all sung out, were packing up and homeward, ‘that it’s your twenty-first birthday very soon.  And I reckon that Justine and I have a duty to take you out to get seriously pissed.’

Chantal had given deliberately scant thought to her twenty-first, melodramatically assuming she couldn’t possibly enjoy it without a boyfriend.  But something about the way Faith spoke of it now tugged a cord within her.  Her ‘fun’ cord.  Sod men – Faith and Justine would make it a mega celebration!  She was suddenly really looking forward to her big day.

‘Yeah, it’s next Friday,’ she grinned, ‘it can be our first official band night out.’

Faith was greatly heartened by this.  She took it as proof of Chantal’s acceptance of her.  ‘And I happen to know the very place to take an eighties-loving girl to get wrecked on her birthday!’

‘The very place’ turned out to be the Reflex in Wolverhampton – the newest branch in a famous nightclub chain specialising in eighties music.

To someone like Chantal, it was nirvana (and not of the variety spelt with a capital N – that could be found at Blast Off, the weekly indie night at the city’s Civic Hall).

The girls didn’t graduate to the club, though, until they’d eaten their weight in Chinese food and polished off a few Smirnoff Ices at the Imperial, a bustling, buffet-style restaurant in the city.

Over relays of spring rolls and noodles and crispy duck, they make jokey plans to one day get a flat together (‘One of them trendy jobbies at the Merry Hill Centre, then we’ll be able to fall out of bed and go shopping’), giggled about boys, and music – and what to call their newly expanded band.

‘Cuz we’m not Chantal & Justine no more,’ Justine pointed out superfluously.

‘And Chantal, Faith & Justine is a bit of a gobful.’

‘JFC?’

‘Sounds like a fast food outlet.’

‘CFJ?’

‘FJC?’

‘Perhaps we ought to forget the initials idea,’ Chantal grimaced, ‘letters don’t say a lot about what we are.’

‘Unless those letters are T&A,’ Faith sniggered.

Chantal was still working that one out when Justine nominated ‘Faith Hope & Charity.’

‘No, no, no!’  Faith rapped her chopsticks on the table in protest at the wince-worthy pun on her name.  ‘Appalling cliché.  Besides, already been used.’

‘Yeah?’  Justine frowned, trying to recall such a combo.

‘Yeah,’ Chantal, the pop historian, verified, ‘a girl trio, you might know.  In this case, a dodgy early 90s one featuring Dani Behr.’

‘Danny who?’

‘Precisely!  Our career’ll probably last longer than theirs.’

Faith then overheard a pair of girls at a table close by, cooing over some fashion accessory or other.  They were true Dudley wenches – Faith, as a lifelong dweller of that town, could distinguish their slightly shrieky inflection from, say, Walsall or Quarry Bank, or the other subtly different dialects that came under the ‘Black Country accent’ umbrella.

‘Ooh, that’s well smart, tharris,’ squawked one of the pair.

‘Ar, they’m all the rage down in London.’

All the rage, all the rage!

Faith had no idea what article was subject to the wenches’ admiration, for she had her back to them and also that curious aptitude for zoning in and out of conversations, catching only fragments, while following Justine’s simultaneous spiel.

‘We need a handle that sums us up – we’re young, we’re cool, we’re girls, er, there’s three of us!  Come on, Faith, you’m the Marketing student – can you think of a name that markets us?’

There she went again: looking to Faith as a kind of worldly-wise big sis who knew all the answers.  Though, in this particular case, perhaps she did.

Faith daintily put down the half of sesame toast that she’d been pensively crunching while eavesdropping, and said, in that measured way of hers: ‘How about All the Rage?’

Chantal and Justine paused, mid-prawn cracker, both clearly considering it.

‘All the Rage?’  Chantal repeated slowly.  She smiled keenly at  Faith.  ‘Like it!’

‘Me too!’  Justine was obviously excited – she was doing that involuntary little bounce of hers, like a kid in a high chair.  ‘It’s so us!  It’s such a bold name – a real statement about what we want to be.  Nice one, Faith!  All the Rage!  All the Rage!’

‘I thought it had a nice sort of symmetry about it too – if that’s the right word.’  Faith amazed herself with this intellectual-sounding reasoning.  All she’d done was happen to overhear a pithy phrase at the right time.  ‘Three words for three girls.’

‘We do cover versions, though,’ Chantal sounded the token note of misgiving – reluctantly for she loved the name, ‘can we truly qualify for a title that implies we’re a bit trendy?’

‘I guess groups who do covers are trendy, though,’ said Faith, a touch cynically. ‘Kev says audiences are spoonfed nowadays.  They’re so used to tribute and cover bands, that the demand for new artistes who sit there strumming their own songs just ain’t there anymore.  Folks wanna hear songs they know.  Kev says it’s sad, but admits he’s jumped on the bandwagon by promoting these kind of acts.’

‘S’pose you’re right.  All the Rage it is then!’

Justine hoisted her drink in triumph.  ‘To All the Rage!’

‘To All the Rage,’ they chorused.  Faith, meanwhile, drank an enigmatic toast to the girls on the table behind her.

Faith and Justine had thoughtfully informed the Imperial staff it was their friend’s twenty-first, and when dessert time came a chorus of Chinese waiters trooped out to serenade her with Happy Birthday and place before her what looked at first like a tiny cake but proved, bizarrely, to be a plate covered in nothing but squirty cream.  Diners at neighbouring tables applauded.  Chantal would have been embarrassed were she not pissed.

‘Perhaps the cream is an ancient Chinese custom,’ she pondered its significance.

And then it was off, arm in arm and giggly, to the Reflex.

They made a happy and gorgeous trio.  Chantal was particularly radiant, in the birthday dress Justine and Faith had teamed up to buy her.  They’d presented it to her early, and immaculately wrapped, so she could wear it tonight.  Long, silvery-pink and silky, it was rosy and pretty yet without making Chantal look like an eleven-year-old at a ballet class.  Precisely her taste.  The hue conveniently matched the pink suede handbag from Ken and Shirley – which was surprisingly chic for their taste, and obviously very pricey.

Chantal was having the best birthday ever – which the absence of a card from either Kris or Ross had done nothing to tarnish.

At the Reflex, it was 1983 again, Boy George was the biggest star on the planet, drinks were free down at Club Tropicana, and Kristian Savage and Ross Froggatt were but harmless toddlers with no capacity for heartbreak.  The girls got bladdered and totally abandoned themselves in the music.

‘I didn’t think we we’re quite ready to try the old “Don’t you know who we are?” business with the bouncers,’ Faith yelled over Too Shy by Kajagoogoo, ‘imagine their response if we’d said “We’re All the Rage – take us to your VIP lounge, my good man”!’

But Justine did instruct the nonplussed DJ that ‘All the Rage are in the house tonight’ when she requested a dedication for Chantal.  The guy didn’t proclaim this illustrious posse’s presence, but did dedicate Stand and Deliver to the birthday girl, and present her with the customary pair of pink glittery deeley boppers and bottle of sparkling wine.

‘You could pickle onions in this stuff,’ Justine blenched as they supped yet another toast, beneath a plastic representation of KITT, David Hasselhoff’s talking car from Knight Rider, which protruded from the wall as though embedded, car-crash style.  They still drained the bottle, though, having attained a state of pissedness where their sense of what was digestible had been shot to hell.

By midnight, the girls were being Agadoo’d around the dancefloor by a mob of stag-night lads.

And then, through the knot of blokes, Chantal spotted a familiar blonde bonce at the bar.  It was none other than Kara Savage, with a pack of her only-just-eighteen miniature Barbie mates.  They looked sweet and out of their depth, like little fifth-years at an end-of-term disco.

And, though Chantal really ought to have known better than to expect a welcome mat, she felt so elated and pissed that she jigged over to the Rubik Cube-adorned bar.

‘Kara,’ she hollered over the raucous Black Lace, ‘how are you?  How’s Kris?’

If looks could kill, Chantal would have been on the floor after one rapier glare from Kara’s iceberg blue eyes.

‘How’s Kris?’ Kara snapped, through lemon-peel lips which, being in a noisy club, Chantal had to lean her ear up close to – with the result that that side of her face got spattered with angry spit.  ‘How can you ask such a thing after what you’ve put him through?’

‘What I put him through?’  Chantal was staggered.  ‘He’s the one who stood me up!  I thought he’d dumped me!’

‘I don’t think so!’  Kara’s face was venomous.  ‘He practically broke his neck getting over to fucking Dudley, only to see you getting off with some other bloke!’

‘What the – he saw that?’

‘Oh ar.  Told me all about it.  Came home blarting his eyes out!’  Chantal could do literally nothing but gape like a witless fish.  Kara’s outburst gathered pace, as though she was starting to enjoy her indignation.  ‘And d’you wanna know why he was so late?  He’d been buying you a bloody engagement ring!  He was going to propose to you!  Yeah, that’s shocked you, hasn’t it?  I reckon my brother had a lucky escape, though, if you ask me.’

Standing there in that jam-packed Wolverhampton nightclub, on her twenty-first birthday, Chantal Brown had never felt so shit and guilty and stunned in her life.  Kara’s mates’ eyes were on stalks at this blazing exchange which glimpsed at a world miles out of their little sphere.  Kara herself was upset.  She felt so genuinely incensed on her brother’s behalf, she decided to wrap up her – truthful – outburst with a malevolent and entirely untruthful epilogue.  ‘Kris is happy now, though, thank God!  He’s got a lovely new girlfriend.  Sarah, her name is.  So don’t bother him again, please!’

With a sleek toss of her Pantene-advert hair, she stalked away to the toilets, leaving Chantal agape and distraught.