Chantal Brown knew she ought to be excited. 

At this moment, six A.M. on a stifling Friday in June, there were young girls asleep dreaming about being in pop groups; perhaps about entertaining awed fields of crowds whose numbers were beyond their mathematics.

Chantal and her group weren’t quite pop stars yet, but they were embarking on an amazing weekend.  The Sandown Festival – the Glastonbury of the unsigned-band world.  In fact, it was difficult to attain an acme of excitement that did the event justice, since a pub-act could have scant comprehension of what an audience that numbered thousands would be like.

But Chantal felt she ought to be at the very least bubbling in the way Faith and Justine and even their parents were.  There were folks who’d have cheerfully donated their right arm to swap places with the All the Rage ladies.  Had they known Chantal’s only wish right now was that she’d been able to manage more than one hour’s sleep last night, they might have thought her terribly ungrateful.  They weren’t to know that the reason this attractive, fortunate girl was jangled with a thousand emotions as she inched into her minibus seat, balancing a leaden rucksack on her knees, was that she’d just flailed and chafed the night away dreading a reunion with a former but much beloved boyfriend.

She’d foisted Kristian Savage to the very bottom drawer of her mind in the last six months, as the girls had rehearsed like the clappers for this huge concert.  But as the Sandown date loomed, his exquisite face had started looming into more of her dreams.

He was like a phantom; a taunting phantom.

See you in Sandown, Chantal!

I’ll have my sexy new bird there, and you’ll have nobody because you are a sad and unlovable sow who’s still lovesick for me after fourteen months!

Chantal still hadn’t been able to answer her own question: was Kristian Savage the lost love of her life, or simply a bog-standard ex around whom she’d hyped a halo because she hadn’t met anyone better yet?

It was humid, even at this dawn hour.  A week of sweaty, sunny weather had been forecast to break on Saturday or Sunday, with thunderstorms set to bash the south coast in particular. 

The girls didn’t care as long as the rain held off for their performance on Saturday.  They’d been given the six o’clock slot – rather a coup for first-timers, but then good old Kev had some sway with the masterminds behind this mega jubilee.  By six, the hordes would be warmed up – and well oiled.  All the Rage would, in turn – hopefully – get them hot for the ABBA tribute who were following them, and Colonel K, the dynamite party band, who were headlining.

The All the Rage tribe had hired a minibus, as the girls’ parents were eager to accompany them on this momentous weekend.

Maurice and Audrey had managed to get a pair of relief managers to cover the pub.  They were loath to miss such a special occasion in their daughter’s career – and their son’s managerial one.

Mo drove the bus, which the others boarded outside the Hare & Tortoise at six a.m.  They joined the M6 at Junction 10, which merged with the M5 at Dudley; this motorway in turn took them down as far as Gloucester, from where they traversed the pretty A-roads and country lanes of Wiltshire and Hampshire to the ferry port at Lymington.

It was ironic that Ken and Shirley Brown should be trekking down to an event which a year ago they’d vetoed their daughter from attending, with Kristian – damning it as an orgy of debauchery where ruffians would be smoking narcotics they couldn’t pronounce.

But then Ken and Shirley had altered since last June.  They’d become good friends with Mo, Audrey, Ron and Pam, which had drawn them out of their reticent shells.

Chantal lolled back into the rigid seat next to Justine and put her sunglasses on.

‘I’m gunna try and catch up on some sleep, Just, OK,’ she said apologetically to her friend.  ‘You don’t mind if I shut my eyes for a bit, do you?’

‘Course not.’  Justine stuffed a folded cardy behind Chantal’s back, like a mother tucking in her poorly child.  ‘Make yourself comfy, hon.  You look a bit rough, to be honest.’

Chantal couldn’t take offence.  Justine had a frank personality, and anyway she was right.  Chantal may have taken pains – even at her unholy get-up time – to make her face up, but no amount of foundation and blusher could camouflage panda eyes and wan, groggy skin.

Chantal allowed her stinging eyelids to droop, even though the clammy heat, rattling motion of the minibus and thrum of chatter around her were hardly conducive to sleep.

I want my bed.  Oh Christ, do I want my bed!

This was like post-hangover jangles, only Chantal hadn’t actually luxuriated in the sweet, blessed taste of alcohol.  She yearned for oblivion.  The sensation of a quilt over her head and a springy mattress beneath her back were all she coveted right now – but bedtime was a light year away yet.  It was a four-hour chug to Lymington, then twenty-five minutes across the Solent and a further half-hour drive to Sandown.

And God knows what emotions will be waiting to churn me up when I get there!

Justine meanwhile glanced around for someone to chat with, but the ‘grown-ups’ were engrossed in their own conversations – about the scenery, and the contents of their sandwiches – while her brother and Faith were having a good snog behind Joe’s ruck-sack.  A Marketing textbook was buried somewhere in Faith’s bag, beneath her knickers and flip-flops – but she was paying lip service to the idea of last-minute swotting.  She was a week into her finals already, and took the ‘If I don’t know it now, I’ll never know it’ approach.

So, lacking conversational company, Justine plugged in her Discman and whacked up the volume on her faithful Spice World CD.

Thus, for individual reasons, the All the Rage members didn’t converse much on their jaunt down to the highest-profile show of their short career.

Meanwhile, on the Colonel K-mobile – driven, with typical care, by Jim Willetts – a raucous, school-trip atmosphere pervaded.  Joy, banter, squabbling, throwing things, Rose twittering and Kara making kitten eyes at the still impervious Jay.

It being their second Sandown, Colonel K were practically veterans.  The exposure the last festival yielded them had cast their reputation way beyond the Black Country.  These boys were busier than ever; their act more extravagant.  They were still just as zany – but zany on a bigger budget.  Kris had even part-exchanged the asthmatic Datsun for a Citroen Berlingo.

‘Now I hope you’ve remembered your passport, Elvis,’ Kris ribbed the littlest band member, who had obtained one especially for last year’s trip, not appreciating that the Isle of Wight was, despite its ‘Isle’ status, part of Britain.  The lad had been gutted that he wouldn’t after all be making longed-for virgin venture abroad. 

Poor Elvis’s goof had supplied the lads with enough material for a whole weekend’s piss-taking – as had his ‘wanted’ poster-esque passport photo, and his middle name, which was Aaron, the same as his Presley namesake.  Not to mention his squealy amazement that ‘The cars droyve on the same soyde of the rowerd as us over ’ere!’

‘Don’t forget they drive on the left in the Isle of Wight,’ Kris reminded him now, ‘so you’ll be all right crossing the road.’

‘They speak English over there too,’ Max chimed in, ‘but don’t worry, Elv – we’ll translate for you!’

Elvis chuckled good-naturedly at this stick about his impenetrable Black Country accent, which sounded like no language on earth.

At Lymington, Jim handed their ferry tickets to the yokel-brogued man in the kiosk, who then directed him to a lane.  Jim pulled up smoothly behind another minibus and switched off the engine, as they had a fifteen-minute wait for the boat.

‘Time to stretch the old legs.’  Kris and some of the others unfurled their bodies from the cramped ‘tin can on wheels’ for a small walk.

‘Oh hell, look who it isn’t,’ said Kara bitchily.  Chantal, awake and a little refreshed from her catnap, had alighted from the van in front and was strolling, arm in arm with Justine, to the ferry port’s tiny shop.

‘Still thinks she’s It, doesn’t she!  Strutting about like she owns the bloody ferry, or something!’  Kara sounded so petty and school-bullyish to Kris, but she was genuinely perturbed by her brother’s reaction to seeing his ex.  She’d really thought – as had Kris until that moment – that he was well over her and not above a spot of ex-bashing.  But he was just staring entranced at her, with a kind of remote torment in his eyes.

Reuniting with past lovers was usually a great illusion-wrecker, and all the more reassuring for it.  It was often a case of ‘Oh well, I can’t tell what I saw in her; now I can move on with my life knowing I’m over her.’

The ribald banter on the bus may have given the impression Kris was back to his easygoing self – but was that a mere façade?  Hell, had the whole of the last fourteen excruciating months he’d been estranged from her been a façade?

Chantal, if anything, now allured him more than ever.  Kris hadn’t even seen her face yet, but the motion of her body in her silky turquoise sundress was compellingly sexy.  A sexiness that was half familiar to him, of course, yet half heightened by the self-assurance Chantal had acquired in the last year.  Kris couldn’t sway his eyes from her.

Chantal must have felt his stare, for something made her pivot right then – in her ocean-coloured dress and sun shades – and catch her breath as she saw his beautiful face and the upsetting expression on it.

So there was no halo after all; no romanticising.  She hadn’t imagined a thing.  He truly was that amazing-looking.  And, if those intense eyes were anything to go by, there truly had been – truly was – love between them.

On the ferry, they avoided each other.  The two parties diplomatically occupied opposite decks.  So as All the Rage tanned their bodies on the bow, Colonel K sat out on the stern, watching the receding mainland.

As soon as their bus rolled off the ferry and hit the sunny lanes of Yarmouth, the girls shared a phenomenal sensation of homecoming that many an Isle of Wight holidaymaker had been known to remark on.  All three of them had been to the island before, on family holidays at varying phases in their childhoods.  This little diamond-shaped haven in the Solent worked its quiet magic on all who sailed there – an attribute not common to many English seaside retreats.

Mo took the scenic coast road to their hotel in Sandown, a touristy town to the island’s east.  His passengers were unusually hushed as they drank in the welcoming vista of Freshwater cove, Blackgang’s wild clifftop heaths, pretty Shanklin and the typically Victorian resort of Ventnor.

Chantal still felt zapped, though.  Her light doze had not proved a hugely effective antidote to six hours of unbroken locomotion, lethargy, stiffness and a sickly taste of hunger in her mouth.  If she gave in to gravity and permitted her eyelids to lower again, she truly thought she’d end up sleeping for a month. 

When the gang checked into the hotel, just shy of noon, Chantal didn’t dare sit on her candlewick-blanketed bed, or even make herself cosy, for fear exhaustion and emotion would swash over her and render her no use to anyone.  She had to keep going for a few hours more yet.  Plus, there was the small matter of a soundcheck to deal with this afternoon.

If the Sandown Festival was the Isle of Wight’s Glastonbury, then its equivalent to Eavis’s farm was Yaverland, a far smaller but still sizeable patch a mile outside Sandown itself, and venue for many a Radio One Roadshow during the 1980s and 1990s.

‘I met Mr Blobby here,’ Chantal reminisced, ‘I came here with my parents when I was about nine or ten.’

The stage, a construction of a scale way beyond the girls’ dancing-on-orange-boxes experience, was set at the base of a sloping bank – every square centimetre of which, according to Stew, one of the army of sound chaps, would by tomorrow lunchtime be teeming with ten-thousand clamouring music fans.

‘No pressure then, girls,’ said Justine with wry hysteria as the three of them clambered aboard the humongous stage for a go at the old ‘One two, one two’ drill on the mics.

They felt so dwarfed up there with all that ludicrous space between them, viewing with rabbit eyes a ceaseless vista that was daunting enough when deserted.  If ever there was a time to develop stage fright, this was it.

‘We’ve got an awful lot of room to fill,’ Faith went into dance captain mode again, ‘we can’t bunch up, we need to think big, occupy every corner of it.’

Chantal, meanwhile, felt silly and ashamed that, at this important rehearsal for such a monster concert, the paramount worry on her mind was whether Kris would appear, and faze her with that tormenting stare again. 

As there were dozens of acts on the bill, their soundcheck times were staggered.  Artistes exemplifying many genres drifted along at various points; some watched All the Rage with attentive fellow feeling; others either took the piss or took no notice.

Chantal knew not when Colonel K’s slot was in the soundcheck schedule.  She despised herself for keeping an eye out for their van – but it thankfully failed to loom.

After a zingy run-through of It’s Raining Men – their ever reliable encore – the girls departed Yaverland for the afternoon.

That evening, they convened with their parents – who had spent their afternoon on the beach and pier, playing crazy golf and scoffing ice creams like typical grockles – for dinner in a restaurant called Barnaby’s, close to the hotel. 

None of them somehow fancied any fare cooked by Mrs Trout, landlady at the guest house to which the festival directors allocated them.  The seaside seediness of the place appealed to the parents’ sense of humour and somehow made the vacation for them, but the ‘youngsters’ were flagrantly unimpressed by what they harshly described as ‘a little dump run by a geriatric.’

While it was true Mrs Trout looked about ninety-four, sported a virulent purple rinse and a moth-eaten pinny, they had to admit she must be a pretty phenomenal woman, for they never set eyes on another member of staff, yet the cooking, waiting at table, cleaning, bed-making and taking of payments for bills were carried out with remarkable dexterity – if not skill.

‘I reckon she’s actually one of sextuplets,’ Joe speculated at dinner that night.

‘Or mutant robots,’ Justine suggested.  ‘They’re built by some manic professor – one has a cooking function, another can vacuum, and so on.’

It was certainly the strangest hotel any of them had stayed in.

Faith and Joe, and the parents, all had double rooms, while Chantal and Justine somehow ended up being assigned to a ‘family room’ which could have slept the Von Trapp clan.  It was a pity, however, that a little more thought had not gone into the decor.  Everything in the room was pink; unfortunately, everything – though equally faded – was a different shade of that colour.  So the magenta lampshades did not so much clash as brawl with the salmon sheets and coral flock wallpaper.  The shower was freezing, and the TV could receive only BBC1. 

The place’s sole saving grace, as far as Chantal was concerned, was that the Colonel K posse weren’t staying there.  She couldn’t bear witnessing Kris and the enigmatic Sarah spoonfeeding each other breakfast, or – if her room was very unluckily situated – having her sleep tortured by that girl’s late-night orgasms.

‘I posted our Karl and Zoe an anniversary card before we came away,’ Shirley was imparting now.  ‘I put your name on it, our Chantal.  Can’t believe it’s a year since they got wed.  Zoe’s got a babby on the way an’ all.’

‘Has she?’  Chantal had decided to take a more mature interest in her family.  The irony wasn’t lost on her that this time last year she’d thrown a hissy fit about missing this very festival to attend cousin Karl’s wedding.  Yet had she been free to come here with Kris, instead of going to the ceremony, she and Justine would never have met Faith, All the Rage would never have existed, Chantal would still be ground down by daily, industrial tribunal-worthy bullying at Sorrell & Genge – and the girls would never have had the kind of year they’d just enjoyed (Chantal might also have never split with Kris, but then Fate’s paths are rarely litter-free).

Sandown was home to a couple of the island’s few nightclubs, but the girls and Joe weren’t tempted.  They had all of tomorrow night to either get celebratorily legless or drown their sorrows, depending on their reception at Yaverland.  Besides, they were zonked, especially poor Chantal – who was dead to the world by ten.

She roused from ten hours of gorgeous, uninterrupted sleep by the less than tantalising odour of Mrs Trout’s rubbery cooking. 

Chantal expected those phallically wangy sausages, with their fresh-from-the-microwave taste, would haunt her until death, but at least she was feeling human today.  Sleep is a fantastic tonic.  Chantal’s tummy might still be doing Riverdance in anticipation of a Savage encounter – but, now no longer droopy and deadbeat, she was at least more equal to coping.

In the chintzy dining room (colour scheme: peach…ish), the festival talk naturally predominated.

‘This is gunna be well bostin’,’ Justine decreed, referring not, obviously, to the vac-pack fry-up in front of her but the day ahead.  Since the other tables were occupied by Sandown acts too, there was a chorus of concurring nods – plus one or two chuckles at her quaint vernacular.

Yaverland empty was a daunting, yawning place; Yaverland covered with ten-thousand bodies was deafening, scary and electrifying.

‘Is there any buzz like this on the fucking earth!’ Faith screamed in the vast sanctum of the artistes’ marquee, which was set at the side of the stage.

Here, looking all famous and important with their VIP passes slung round their necks, they mingled and befriended fellow performers.  There were beanbags to lounge on, and a fridge the size of someone’s bathroom crammed with booze and a very rock ’n‘ roll lack of traditional fridge fare like celery and yogurt.

The festival was a marvellous event, and fast progressing to ‘high spot on the Isle of Wight calendar’ status.  It was hot enough today for a summer jubilee ambiance to pervade – the sky remained forebodingly grey, but the rain refrained.

Nearly all age groups were represented in that clamouring field of heads.  The grassland was speckled with picnickers – with their blankets and family packs of kettle crisps – but also circled by stalls hawking burgers, candyfloss and delectable-smelling fresh-fried doughnuts.

There were no stars here; no household names – that was the whole ethos behind Sandown.  It gave new acts a fabulous opportunity to cut their teeth (‘not literally, unless they turn violent out there’ – one of Kev’s painful little jokes) upon a large and, in the main, supportive audience.  The masses it drew were genial music fans in a holiday environment, so it was all terribly laid-back – well, perhaps not so for the turns awaiting their go on that party-conference-sized stage.

‘I’m cacking me pants,’ Justine demurely informed the others at All the Rage dallied in the wings for their own cue.

She wasn’t the only one.

As Colonel K weren’t due on until late, they didn’t cruise in until nearly five – though Chantal didn’t spare herself a twitchy afternoon, for she spent the hours keeping a guarded eye out for newcomers, wondering when He would show up.

When you know, or have known, someone very intimately, you can recognise them from many metres, by gait alone.  So it was that Kristian’s rangy, stoopy, animaly walk was so distinctive right across the marquee.  Chantal experienced a strange ticking in her throat.  Her heart appeared to be rebounding back and forth against her chest and back, like a squash ball. 

Justine and Faith instinctively and touchingly bunched up around her, as though they could somehow shield their mate from more heartache.

Chantal and Kris (who was still sans any sign of ‘Sarah’) exchanged another loaded look, but the Colonel K clique parked themselves a diplomatic distance away – the marquee being of a thankful magnitude.

All the Rage were in action at six anyway, so their last-minute vocal warm-ups, run-throughs and pant-cackings were a touch more preoccupying than brooding exes.

‘Ladies and gentlemen: All – the – Raaaage!!!!’

And they were on.

All three girls – for their thoughts were often physically attuned – saw peculiar parallels between this and their debut, the Sir Dick’s school concert.  That same mind-emptying terror; the same way they had to really force their feet to move across a stage that seemed ginormous; the same knowledge that this was a momentous episode in their lives.

At the school, though, the roar – and now customary wolfwhistles – that welcomed them were not half so rapturous, nor the atmosphere so charged.  They tingled with it; they could taste it; could see it crackling.  Their tension – just as it did at that school night – dissolved magically and they sang for their lives.

The resultant hour blurred past in a whirlwind.  Shania fused into Anastacia fused into Whitney fused into Kylie.  The warmth of the audience’s reaction enveloped the girls in a tingling halo of glee.  Their smiles were from the heart.  It was by far their proudest moment.

Their set list was a thoughtfully selected melange of party classics and more recent hits – all from the dancier end of their spectrum.  As they were only allocated an hour, they’d had to be ruthless about trimming superfluous songs.

Man I feel Like a Woman – Shania Twain
Stop – Spice Girls
Left Outside Alone – Anastacia
Music – Madonna
Venus – Bananarama
Jump – Pointer Sisters
Hot Stuff – Donna Summer
I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
Rhythm of the Night – DeBarge
Better The Devil You Know – Kylie
It’s Raining Men – The Weather Girls

All the Rage’s sound had matured so much since those early little gigs at the Hare, which all of a sudden seemed terribly naïve and small-scale.  These babes felt like amateur dabblers no longer.  They looked every inch what they were: professional singers.

How do we follow today? was the question they pondered, even as they group-hugged backstage afterwards.  Can we ever be satisfied doing the Hare & Tortoise again, or Brannigans?  Will those places just seem poxy after this?

Chantal couldn’t be so churlish as to not join the others to watch Colonel K’s headlining performance, from the sidelines.

They were watching masters at work.  The atmosphere now was absolutely carnival, and Colonel K tore the field apart.  Teenagers loved them; so did toddlers; so did their grandmas. 

Chantal could barely believe this was the same band she used to follow four times a week.  A year or so away from them, and she was a smitten fan once more: grinning inanely along at the daftness, which seemed like a novelty all over again.

Their costumes were wayer-out than ever.  Kris was still in ringmaster rig-out – only his tailcoat was now leopardskin, teamed with a velvety top hat with two feathers in the brim, as previously modelled by Crazy Harry from The Muppet Show.  Quiet Jim was in combats again; Max in a military style jacket and catsuit; Jay in as little as possible, flexing his taut chest at the women – while smiling little Elvis, having abandoned Austin Powers, was clad like his namesake, in a lurid blue jumpsuit Len would have mugged him for.

For all the lunacy, though, their sound was as tight as Kris’s bum, and they owned the stage with the prowling confidence of jungle animals.

It was Kris, of course, to whom Chantal’s eyes kept boomeranging back.  It was no wonder she’d fallen so hard for him.  He was magnificent.

And he was once mine!

Oh, how she cringed.  His gorgeousness taunted her, and only made the distinction between him and Ross Stir-Fry more laughably stark.  If any of these people, dancing agog to Kris tonight, could have seen oily Ross alongside him and known there was a girl here who had once dumped Kristian Savage, Lord of the Stage, for such a nonentity, they’d have thought her a dead cert for sectioning.

‘Party in the beer tent!’ someone hollered at some hour of the night.

And so, after their parents had long retired to the lumpy comfort of their beds, the band partied like professionals in the so-called VIP beer tent, where free grog was on tap into the early hours.

One could not have placed a pinprick between the performers, hangers-on and – in a few cases – groupies jammed into that tent.  Unlike the critical, nervy atmosphere at the soundchecks, boisterous camaraderie permeated now.  All the Rage traded backslaps and kisses with everyone from York indie punks to an ABBA tribute band from Rhyl.  Everyone except Colonel K.

Chantal became swallowed into the crowd, which mercifully divided her from Kris, frosty Kara and the lads, and after a few jars and congratulations she actually managed to forget about him.

‘Got to go for a piss,’ she grimaced at Justine later, having plaited her legs politely through a half-hour wig-related anecdote from ‘Bjorn,’ alias Colin, from ABBAation.

She did a heavy-bladdered hobble to the artistes’ block of portaloos backstage, and was all ready to dart back when the furious sky exploded with the prophesied thunder, sheet lightning and a rain shower of bath-tap intensity.  Chantal whimpered a few stricken curses.  She was sans brolly, undercover at present but a quarter of a field’s sprint from the beer sanctuary.

‘I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere for a while.’

The voice that startled her was pant-churningly familiar.  Its owner was sprawled, large as life and twice as gorgeous, on a beanbag.  He’d galloped over on the same lavatorial missing as herself and now, resigned to his marooned fate, thought he may as well have a sit-down.

Chantal silently cursed again – her inopportune timing; the bloody weather; the farcical awkwardness of being trapped like this with Him of all people.

I’ve succeeded in avoiding him all weekend – now we’re bloody orphans of the storm together!  Nice one, Fate!

If his exquisite, pained countenance was anything to go by, though, this predicament was at least equally harrowing for Kristian.  And there was no escape for either of them – unless one was to take an insane bolt across the paddy field and be drowned in that brutal rain.

Might as well make the best of it.  No harm in being polite to the guy.

But small talk was far too twee after everything these two had meant to each other.

So Chantal eschewed ‘How’ve you been?’ or ‘Nice weather for ducks’ to pay him a sincere and professional compliment.  ‘You were brilliant tonight.’

Kris seemed thrown by her approach, but responded in gracious kind.  ‘Thank you.  So were you.’

Those eyes!  They brimmed with meaning over his Carling can.  Chantal was dismayed to find herself trembling.  She stood rigid to disguise it, arms defensively folded across her protuberant chest.  She felt uncomfortable and schoolmarmish standing over him like this, but she didn’t dare huddle down with him on the beanbag.  They’d been estranged too long for even that plain of intimacy.

‘You’ve added a few new numbers, haven’t you,’ she blethered.  Talking too much and nervously was a common cover-up for self-consciousness, and her lips were being mobilised by the booze.  ‘Sex Bomb was ace, and that Mavericks one, and – ’  She shut up when she saw Kris gazing oddly at her: a combination of tenderness and a suspicion that Chantal may be on speed.  She laughed self-effacingly, as if to acknowledge what a prat she was making of herself.

Kris relaxed a tad.  ‘I’m glad you’re doing well for yourself,’ he said in a neutral but sincere tone.  ‘I often used to wonder how Chantal & Justine were getting on.  I couldn’t believe it when Kev told me about this hot new girl band he’d got on his books, with you and Justine and Kev’s star act, that girl – with the hair – ’

‘Faith.’

‘Yeah, her.  I wondered how you three got together.  And now he tells me you’re waiting for the Talent Scout call-up too.  We’ve tried for ages to get on that show.’

So he’d been discussing her with Kev then?  Hmm.  The agent hadn’t said a word to her.  But then Mr Light was the soul of discretion when occasion demanded. 

‘We’ve had a pretty amazing year.  I finally gave up my job.’

‘Oh great!  So you’re a full-timer now then?  That’s brilliant.’  Kris recalled poignantly their little chat on the night they got together, at the Dilloway Club, and felt oddly chuffed that it had had some effect.  Not that she was in a hurry to give him any credit for it.  ‘What made you take the plunge then?’

‘The other girls.  Oh, they’re so brilliant, Kris.  They’re the best friends I’ve ever had.  We’re gigging three times a week now.  Getting loads of regulars.  And this has been the most amazing night of my life.’  She cringed a touch at her own babbled overuse of adjectives.  That was two amazings within the measure of a few sentences!  ‘Truly wonderful!  What a buzz!  I can see why you were so keen to play here last year.  You told me I’d end up here one day, didn’t you?  But I never believed you.’

Chantal realised that at some point in this discourse she had ceased to shake.  In fact, from being so churned up about encountering him again, she had eased into a remarkable gear of familiarity.  But then Kris was like that, wasn’t he?  Hadn’t he woven a similar effect over her on a certain New Year’s Eve?

‘There’s lots I told you that you didn’t believe.’

Those eyes again!  They gripped hers for that clichéd ‘second too long’ as he took a deep swig from the can.  He wasn’t pissed, though.  He was trying to lead her up a conversation path that she felt too cowardly to follow him along at present. 

Perhaps more alcohol would help – it was a notorious truth drug, after all.  Thank God for the girls’ cache of alcopops.  She helped herself to another Archers Aqua from the fridge, jemmied the top off with a bottle opener and slugged.  While waiting for it to take effect, she asked: ‘And how are things with Colonel K?’

‘Great.  Same as ever, in some ways.  Max is still me best mate; Jay’s still a babe magnet – still trying to fend off my little sister; Jim’s still the introverted and serious man of rock; Elvis is still, er…Elvis!  And your lot?  I see Justine finally quit smoking.  Haven’t seen her light up once since we’ve been here.’

‘No.  She realised what damage she was doing to her vocal chords.  Stardom was her great incentive.  She still sniffs gallons of Olbas Oil like a flu victim, though!’

‘Yeah, I did notice my head cleared as soon as I wandered backstage this afternoon!’

Another booze-refuelling pause.

‘I had a few sneaks at your website,’ Kris confided guiltily, as it sounded like he was admitting to stalking or something.

Chantal was surprised how flattered she felt.  ‘What, the official one or sad Nev’s breast fest?’

‘Both!  You ought to get out an injunction on that guy!  But seriously, Joe’s site is pretty cool.  The pictures of you are nice.  You look even better than I remembered.  If that’s possible.’  Kris blushed – actually blushed – and rotated the lager can manically in his long hands.  ‘But you do, seriously.  You look sort of happier, more confident.’

She did.  She was in soft blue again tonight – no less than a Karen Millen version of the clingy type of dress he used to tell her she would look ravishing in.  But she hadn’t believed him.  Well it was good to know she wasn’t self-conscious anymore at least (though it hurt Kris to wonder if another chap was behind this metamorphosis).  Still, it was blokily pleasing to see those glorious curves to their best advantage.

Chantal’s hair was longer than he remembered too, and bounced around her face in a wavier style than she used to favour.  It suited her. 

‘Are you, erm, seeing anyone at the moment?’  He had to ask, he just had to.

Chantal shook her head like a bashful six-year-old, far too stunned to risk speech.

‘You’re not still with that waiter bloke then?’

Such relief in his eyes!  So he did love her still!  Time to test the drink’s truth-serum powers.

‘Kris, I am so sorry for what happened that night.  But I thought you’d stood me up.’

‘Hardly – I was about to propose to you!’

Chantal didn’t even attempt to stifle her gasp.  ‘That was true?’

‘Absolutely.  Hence I wanted to go somewhere classy for our date.  I was well miffed you wanted to go to bloody Martino Diner’s.  And of course when I arrived and saw you – you – er – with – that bloke, I thought you must have had a prior engagement with him and that was why you were so keen to go there.  Hey, hang on – ’ Kris frowned, double-taking.  ‘You knew about it?’  It could just be the alcohol, but this was getting a tad baffling.  ‘Hey, come to think of it, how did you know I’d seen you with your amorous waiter?’ 

‘I had a bit of a run-in with Kara on my birthday last year.’

‘Really?  She didn’t tell me.’

‘Yeah, in the Reflex in Wolves.  She told me all about it.  Made me feel dreadful.  I must admit, though, I didn’t believe her.  About the proposal bit anyway.’

‘Why?  Did you doubt my feelings for you?’

‘Well, yes, but, with respect to your sis, I thought she was being malicious.  Trying to make me feel guilty.’

‘So you should have bloody well felt guilty too!  You got off with the bloke.  If you thought I’d stood you up, why didn’t you call me for an explanation – or to give me a bollocking if you really imagined I’d do such a thing?’

‘I did!  I called on the Sunday and spoke to Kara.  She said you were out rehearsing, but she’d see if you wanted to call me later.  When you didn’t, I just presumed you’d dumped me.  I take it from your expression that she didn’t tell you I’d phoned either.’

‘No!’

‘I sent you a text as well, though, if I recall rightly.  Am I to presume that you – ’

‘Didn’t get that either!  Mind you, my phone ran out of battery as I was on my way to you, so the message probably couldn’t get through.  Oh, Chantal, I’d had a bloody awful evening, like you wouldn’t believe.  I’d bought your engagement ring on the afternoon – beautiful ring, it was, if you’re interested to know – then coming out the Jewellery Quarter I got stuck in traffic for hours – well I told you that bit on the night itself, of course – then my phone gave up the ghost.  I finally got to Martino’s about eight – just in time to see you – well…’ he made a ‘you know the rest’ gesture with his hand.

‘Kris, I thought you were going off me!  When you asked to meet me that night, I thought you were gearing up to dump me.  You’d been so quiet for weeks.’

‘I was preoccupied about this gig.  Now you’ve played it yourself, I’m sure you understand how much thinking about it takes over your life?  Yeah?  And then there was the small matter of planning to ask you to marry me.  Something like that also takes up quite a few brain cells, you know!  It’s such a huge commitment.  I wondered whether I was doing the right thing.  We’d only been together a few months.’

‘That’s another reason I didn’t believe Kara.  I thought it was bloody ridiculous that you’d possibly even think of proposing after only four months together.’

‘Am I to take it from that then that you would not have said yes?’  His smile was half cynical, half agog to know her answer.

‘I didn’t say that,’ she responded slowly.  Knowing that Kara had been telling the truth after all made Chantal think seriously for the first time about what her response would have been.  Oh, she’d have said yes, of course she would!  She was impulsive and head over conkers in love.  She’d have adored the young-romance, the Romeo and Juliet-ness of it all.

By today’s standards, twenty-one was young to get engaged, and positively nursery-school age to marry – though she doubted they’d have had the wherewithal to finance nuptials for years yet in any event.

What would she say if he asked her now, though?  She’d grown up in the last year, beyond all measure.  Trouble was, it had taken losing Kris, and being shat on by Ross, to bring about this transformation.

‘I bet your folks would have loved it, wouldn’t they?’ asked Kris teasingly.  ‘I could just see us swanning into their front room during Emmerdale and announcing we were getting wed!  They’d probably have had me shot!’

‘They’re not so anti you now actually – not since they saw how hurt I got by Ross the tosser.’

‘Was that the waiter?’

She nodded.

Would Kris take her back?  She pondered the question as she sipped her less than sophisticated beverage.  They’d never been a sophisticated couple at all, had they, despite their showbiz leanings?  One thing they had been, though, was happy.  Fantastically so.  Could they pick up where they’d left off?

Chantal, she mentally tore into herself, you’re a bloody stupid bitch!  How hard would ‘Sorry, I’m waiting for my boyfriend’ have been to say to Ross that night?

Had she hung on for another hour, she could have called Kris her fiancé.  She’d have no doubt stropped at him for a bit for being late, he’d have taken it all in quietly then sheepishly said: ‘Well actually there is a very good reason why I’m a bit tardy’ – and dived to his knees with an engagement ring aloft!  They’d have ordered a bottle of Champagne from their waiter – Ross – and celebrated their betrothal with two pizzas and, much later, a megatastic shag.

‘So what was the deal with you and this Ross fella then?  Was he on the scene before that night or what?’

‘I just met him that night, I swear!  Oh God, that makes me sound well tarty, doesn’t it?’

‘Well you certainly didn’t hang about with getting to know him, did you!’

‘Kris, as I keep saying, I am so, so sorry.  What can I say, except I was vulnerable.  I honestly thought you’d dumped me.  As I said, I tried phoning you – not that you could help running out of battery – well I suppose you could – but – well, Ross flattered me, I suppose.  Looking back, I can’t believe I fell for all his cheesy chat.  He was only trying to get into my knickers.’

‘And I gather he succeeded,’ said Kris wryly.

Chantal cringed at how mindlessly stupid she’d been.  How had her head been so turned by someone like Ross?  He was hardly worth leaving home for.

‘He turned out to be a right shit-bag.  We split up after less than a couple of months – he’d been cheating on me right from day one.’

‘They do say that what goes around comes around,’ Kris commented coldly.  He actually felt like lamping the bloke for hurting his precious Chantal, but was determined to maintain an unforgiving façade.  She deserved all she’d got.

‘So how about you then, Kris?’  Chantal asked the question she dreaded.  The words choked her like a troublesome wedge of apple that had gone down the wrong way.   ‘Anyone in your life at present?’  She still hadn’t stopped anyone who might feasibly be Sarah.  Could she dare hope…?

‘Nope.  Been no-one since we split up, in fact.’

Chantal’s spirits sprouted wings at this news, but for self-protection’s sake she tried not to let her glee show.

‘No way!  What about Nat and Em?’

Kris snorted, gratifyingly.  ‘Those old slappers?  They look like a pair o’ Netherton bonk ’osses!’

Chantal giggled despite herself at the Black Country insult.  ‘I thought you were about to dump me for one – or both – of them.’

His pantomime grimace made her laugh again.  She was growing more gleeful by the second.  ‘I haven’t even seen them for ages actually – thank God.  They got bored of stalking me after I told them in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t interested.  They don’t even do the website anymore – must have transferred their affections to some other band.’

‘You’re obviously not “Kult” enough for them anymore!’

‘They probably call me something that just sounds like “Kult”  now!’

‘What about Sarah then?’

‘Sarah?’

‘Yeah.  When I saw Kara that night, she told me you were going out with someone called Sarah, and you were ecstatically happy and – ’  She trailed off again, as Kris’s blank expression told her ‘Sarah’ must have been a spontaneous creation of Kara’s.  Little cow!  Still, I can’t blame her for trying to guard her brother from a slut like me.

‘Chantal, I meant what I said,’ he leaned keenly towards her – as keenly as one can lean forward on a beanbag, ‘there really has been nobody since you.  You were the sweetest thing that ever happened to me.  You brought so much joy to my life.’

‘I thought you’d wanted to be set free –  to date other birds, like Nat and Em.’

‘Come off it, girl!’

She had taken it as read he would be only too relieved of an excuse to escape the shackles of monogamy, and would probably thank her for the sacrifice, but he seemed unable to follow her despondent logic.

‘I thought you’d be better off without me.’

‘What, better off being lonely and bored and without love, as I have been for the last year?’

‘Have you?’

He eased her down to him from her gawky standing position.  To her total astonishment, he’d started crying.

‘Oh Chantal, what a fuck-up we’ve made!’

Their teardrops fused as they held each other in that makeshift dressing room.  At quarter-to-two in the morning, with thunder booming and rain shelling the marquee canvas, this was one of those beautiful, bizarre, anguished episodes that cement relationships.

‘I thought I had nothing until you came along,’ he croaked bleakly.  ‘And I’ve had nothing since – though I’ve made a real effort to forget you.  Can we give things another go?’

This was the first time Chantal had seen him blub, and it actually comforted her, sadistic as that made her feel.  Tears humanised him; he was no longer a demigod atop a pedestal.  Now she knew she was seeing a side to Kristian Savage that he revealed to very few people indeed.

Chantal also realised all at once what a strong position she was in.  Kris may be adored, but he still adored her.  She had harshly underestimated him.  She’d expected to be the loser, the martyr, in all this; her self-esteem was simply too low to accommodate the idea that a man might actually desire a long-term liaison with her.  Yet here was her very own real-life pin-up begging her back!

‘Of course.’ 

She wiped his soggy face and kissed him.  He looked all forlorn and defenceless, and was crying snottily like a little boy.  Chantal felt even fonder of him then – for making her feel strong; for giving such demonstrative proof of his love.

By the time Joe poked his head round the tent flap much later, Chantal and Kristian were a human plait of entwined arms and tongues.

‘I think we’ve found her,’ Joe called to his fellow search party members, Faith and Justine.

‘Bloody hell!’  Justine shook her dribbling head incredulously.  ‘She only came over for a slash!’

The storm continued to blitz the South on the Sunday morning.

The noon Yarmouth-Lymington ferry consequently bobbed across the Solent like a rubber duck – despite this being only a short cruise across a relatively sheltered strip of sea.  No chance of travelling on deck today.  Not that Chantal and Kris objected this time to the confined space of the ferry café.  The more confined the better, in fact, for they were sealing their resumed romance with bouts of necking that put one or two passengers off their sandwiches.

That was until the ferry lurched out to sea, and Chantal knew her mouth would soon be decidedly un-kissable.  Nausea gurgled up, thick and greasy, each time the boat took another terrifying surge through those ferocious waters.

Kris was holding her hand, stroking it, soothing her.

‘It’s OK, Chantal, babby – everything’s gunna be all right – just keep calm.’

He was anxious about her: her face was so hangdog and bloodless.  She managed a wan grin at him, though, because his worry was so touching.  She could just see Ross Froggatt bothering himself to comfort a seasick girlfriend!

Nothing would keep still, though.  It was a lifetime since she’d been motionless, safe, on dry land. 

Finally, convinced she was about to hurl, Chantal raced to the Ladies – swaying wildly off course and bouncing into walls and furniture along the way, because of the floor’s maddening refusal to remain horizontal beneath her feet – ready to poise over the pan.  She rocketed into a cubicle.  And in doing so, slammed the forefinger of her right hand in the door. 

Well it certainly took her mind off her volatile insides!

For a second or two, she was so paralysed with shock as that evil pain sliced through her body, that she forgot to breathe.  She just crouched there, doubled up as if reeling from a punch, mouth agape in a silent scream as she mechanically caressed that poor finger.  She honestly thought she was going to die, or at least pass out.  

Then this veil of stupor lifted.  Chantal was sharply slapped with the reality of what she had just done; what she was going through; the tremors of these three surreal days.  A hysterical wail exploded out of her throat; a waterfall of sobs drowned down her face. 

When she sneaked a masochistic glance at her smarting nail, which now looked as though it had been painted with black nail varnish, her stomach took an enormous heave.  She thought that was it then – but still she couldn’t spew.  She gagged over the toilet until afraid she’d choke, but not even the minutest carrot would show.

Finally, Chantal wobbled out of the cubicle and bathed the throbbing digit under the cold tap, which did ease it a touch.

She was sick of staring at toilets and sinks by now, and her tummy was obviously in no hurry to emancipate its contents, so she decided she would be just as well served sitting back down in the lounge, with the others.  She made her way, none too steadily, back to her seat.

But was still unwell.

‘Take deep, slow breaths, in and out, in and out,’ chanted Kris, caressing her clammy hand (the left – he was leaving the right one well alone after even a soft ‘kiss better’ sent shots of pain through that poor nail).  ‘That’s it, sweetheart.  In.  And out.  In.  Out.  Just relax.  You’re doing really well, my love.’

She didn’t feel she was, though.  All she could do was sit pallidly at the table, pliantly allowing herself to be borne along by the waves.  All she could see was her tapering hand, all numb and waxy, clasped in Kris’s strong palm; all she could hear was his Black Country voice enjoining her to breathe, deeply and slowly; slowly and deeply. 

And somewhere in the distance, her mom was patting her shoulder and making similar encouragement.  In the main, though, Shirley was leaving the Florence Nightingale stuff to young Kristian.  Such a caring lad – how we misjudged him!

Chantal’s friends, much as they cared about her, were also happy to let Kris prove what an attentive boyfriend he truly was.

A couple of aggravating little brats giggled behind her, theatrically clutching their bellies and making over-the-top retching gestures.

‘Shurrup,’ Kris barked at the kids.  ‘Ignore them, sweetheart.  You’re doing ever so well.  Just go with it - slowly and deeply, in and out.’

Then she actually did heave.

It was Justine who moved like lightning.  She neatly tipped up her carrier bag, which contained the wrapper for the cherry muffin she’d somehow managed to eat on those undulating seas, and positioned it in front of Chantal’s face just in time.  If the sea wasn’t going to make Chantal sick, the cloying aroma of that bag certainly would. 

It was a vile experience.  Chantal’s body temperature appeared to have plunged to below zero, she was forced to taste Mrs Trout’s rubbery bacon and eggs again, from the wrong direction, her numb little hands were tremouring violently, and – worst of all – she was completely stripped of dignity.  Every pair of eyes in that lounge appeared to be staring mockingly in her direction.  She thought these passengers must have led awfully banal lives, if the spectacle of a young woman vomiting was their idea of entertainment.  Why were none of them under the weather?  That’s what she couldn’t get her head around. 

But as the expression went, it was better out than in.  It was an immense relief to expel all that repulsive ‘stuff.’  Her body was at peace now.  A hush had replaced the disorientating roaring inside her ears.  She was still again, if terribly weak.  The anticipation of a puking fit was always worse than the fit itself.

Poor Kris (he must really have loved her) efficiently discarded the brimful bag and its sloshing contents into a convenient bin. 

It was a mercy this crossing to Yarmouth was only a half-hour endurance test.  Any longer, and Chantal might have descended into insanity and slung herself, lemming-like, into the Channel. 

Chantal had never been so rapturously grateful for the sight of mainland English soil. 

‘Bet you could use a bit of lunch, eh, love, after all that?’  Maurice put a fatherly arm round her shoulders as they all poured down the stairs to the minibuses.

‘Only a little something, Mo.’  She rubbed her enfeebled tummy.

‘Jim,’ Mo addressed his fellow driver, ‘what say you to congregating at a service station?’

‘Yeah, there’s one near Swindon – we’ll have got a few miles under our belt by then.  If we stick close together, we’ll get there at the same time.’

As the minibus slid out on to the land at half-past twelve, an unbelievable kind of stillness seemed to envelop everything.  The world had  been  whirling  crazily around on her axis, and now serenity had been restored.  Even the rain had abated.

Unlike the outgoing journey, there was little banter.  Both convoys were subdued, that nautical ordeal having rather battered the proverbial stuffing out of everyone.

At the Roadchef, the boys, gannets as ever, dived for the fry-up queue.  The girls, who’d had quite enough sausage and bacon experience for one weekend, stacked their trays with tubs of plasticy pasta salad or fajita wraps.  And bottles of water.  Queasiness was dehydrating.

All Chantal felt like, bizarrely, was a pork pie: a great brawny one with Branston at its core.  An overpriced, calorie-laden snack – but to her at that moment, the most beautiful thing in the world.  She wolfed down hunk after hunk, hardly tasting it.  It was heaven.  She scrunched the cellophane into the ashtray and beamed as if she’d just supped her way through five courses at the Ritz.

Kris, opposite her, tore the ring pull from his Fanta can.

‘I’ve still got your engagement ring at home,’ he told her, inching her now pie-free left hand across the table.  ‘It’s true,’ he responded to her incredulous expression, ‘I couldn’t bring myself to take it back somehow.  Now until I get home, will this do?’

Then, finally getting to enact the Martino’s scene that never was, he knelt on the scuffed café floor and, mock-solemnly, placed the aluminium ring on her third finger.

‘Chantal Brown, will you marry me?’

An ovation greeted her ecstatic ‘Yes!’