Chapter 1

"It was going to be massive, too massive, so I stopped, changed my mind, and now it's just the four of us.
Hope you can come, you will be letting the side down if you don't.
See you soon,
love Anna."

As the train hurtled towards Bristol, Paula re-read this missive, and smiled to herself; life with Anna was never too massive. The two girls had met at university, and shared an instant bond, that had never wavered through many a night of drunken revelry.

When Paula Kirkbright first started at college in Wales, she was introvert and shy, yet three years in the company of Anna Miller, an attractive blonde with a personality that knew no bounds and Paula had developed into a confident, gregarious young lady. The friendship between the two girls was very evenly balanced. Perhaps without Anna, Paula would have got into no trouble at all, yet without Paula, Anna would have gotten into a whole heap more; though at times, it seemed they were both as bad as one another. Coming from a small town as she did, going to visit the big city of Bristol was a new experience for Paula, and she intended to savor the metropolis. Anna's parents had taken their holiday at a very opportune moment for Anna, as her own flat was being redecorated, so she was house-sitting, and - as she said, it also meant that Brenda, the Miller's cleaner would have a big part to play in the aftermath of the party.

The train hurtled on, and Paula smiled to herself, to the astonishment of the young man sitting opposite her in the carriage. He had attempted to break into conversation once or twice, but she had politely discouraged him. Some old habits die hard, and her mother had always warned her about talking to strangers, putting her head back on bus seat covers, in case of nits, and how only prostitutes wore ankle bracelets! Paula had learned, throughout the years that she had spent meeting her friends, and more importantly, new or prospective boyfriends, at the bottom of her road, that to leave the house without a clean hankie was immediate social death. God forbid, should you be run over, and your knickers were more than an hour old. You might as well give up the ghost, and stop breathing before the ambulance reached you.

As a result of the reminders that had haunted Paula up until she went away for three years, Paula was now oblivious to the admiring glances he kept sending her way. Gently massaging the back of her neck which had developed a crick as a result of her not putting it back on the chair rest, Paula was lost in a tide of memories from university. The four girls had shared a house together; herself, Anna, and the remaining two members of the house party, Helen Slater, a Mancunian, with an accent you could cut with a knife, and finally Tara Macneice. Tara was someone very grand in Scotland; her father owned a shooting lodge in the Highlands, and with town houses in Inverness and Edinbrough, she should have been below talking to people like Paula, let alone living with them, or so Paula had though at first. The truth of it was very different. Tara was one of the most down-to-earth, genuine people Paula had met, and whilst she did not object to using her connections to help her friends, she did not shout about her social position to all and sundry, she tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible. The four girls had lived together for three years, and this would be the first occasion they all had to catch up again.

Paula grew slowly aware that the landscape outside was no longer rushing past the window at 100mph, but had actually been sat still for a couple of minutes, and the carriage was empty apart from herself. "Shit," she swore to herself, "shit, shit shit," as she banged her legs on the seat corner, and scraped her knuckles between the table and her case. Paula jumped down onto the platform and went flying into the back of the young man who had sat opposite her all the way from Manchester.

"Are you all right," he asked, confronting the flustered, tall, leggy brunette before him, "Can I do anything to help?"

"Hell," snapped Paula, "Couldn't you move away from the doors, that's how accidents happen, you know!"

"Glad to see you two made friends on the train, it will make things easier later if you two already know each other. Hello Paula, Hi Jack."

Paula whirled round to find Anna stood behind her, arms open and a huge beam on her face, Paula laughed in relief, and walked forward into Anna's arms.

"How long were you stood there?" She asked, sotto voice," Why didn't you stop me?"

"What, and spoil the fun, no way." laughed Anna, "the look on your face, when I said 'Hi Jack' was priceless."

Paula pulled away from Anna and slowly turned round, ready to apologize to Jack, but he had gone, and she just caught a glance of him, as he stepped inside the taxi he had just hailed. As the cab pulled away he smiled at her, and her cheeks flushed. As Anna picked up her case, and started chattering about the forthcoming weekend, Paula resolved to put the event out of her mind. Surely he can't be a very good friend of Anna's, or he would have stayed and talked. Perhaps she wouldn't see him at all over the weekend; she certainly hoped that this was the case, and with this in mind, she turned her attention back to Anna.

"Tara will be coming up later on, she had to stay and greet some Americans for her father, and so she will drive up when they have finished all the murdering." Paula laughed at Anna's description of Mr. Macneice's shooting weekend, but knew that however much Anna slated Tara, they were close really, and Anna had a lot to thank Tara for. In the first year at University, Tara bailed Anna out, when Anna got caught up with a drug dealer at the Union bar. The police were not involved, but only due to Tara's considerable influence with the president of the union, (he was besotted with her), and so she managed to keep Anna's name separate from the event. The whole thing came as something of a shock to Anna who did not even know that Jason was taking drugs, let alone selling them.

"…And Helen is already here, well she is at the house helping Bren bake a mountain of food to keep us going for the weekend. Bren has promised to stay away until Sunday, and although I can now cook for myself - or at least phone for a pizza - she still maintains that I am unable to look after myself for longer than a day, without having a major catastrophe."

Whilst Anna was talking she had been loading Paula's bags into her bright green mini, her trademark car, and the two of them were now weaving through rush-hour traffic back to Anna's parent's town house.

"So just how massive is it going to be then?" asked Paula, "what are we doing tonight, if the party is tomorrow night?"

"Well, we will take it steady tonight, I think. We might take in a club or so, but other than that, I should imagine it would be fairly quiet, getting ready for tomorrow. Perhaps we might go and see some friends of mine, whom I think you will all like; in fact I'm hoping Helen will like one of them. She still seems really cut up about Ed, and perhaps this will take her mind of it, stop her brooding."

"Well, can you blame her," interrupted Paula, "It was a three year relationship that he broke off, because he was bored with her; that kind of thing is bound to mess a girl up a bit. Anyway, I have something to tell you about that, something I overheard Ed telling Mickey, but I don't know whether to tell Helen or not.

"Apparently, he had been seeing someone else on and off for a while, and then she decided she wanted more from Ed than a casual fling, and so came down heavy on him."

"The bastard!" exclaimed Anna "After everything that girl did for him, the louse. Who is it, you do know don't you?"

Paula hesitated; whilst Anna was her best mate, she also had a voice like a fog-horn, and could be as subtle as the bright sunlight on the worst hangover, but Paula had also seen just how distressed Helen was when Ed had broken off the engagement, and felt she had to tell someone else what she had unwittingly discovered ages ago.

"Sarah Tonner."

"Scarer, that miserable, hard-faced bitch! She thought she could get away with murder. Once she finished with Mickey, it was every man for herself!" Anna's voice trailed off into disgusted silence, and Paula frowned, wishing too late that she had never brought the subject up. What with having a go at Anna's friend on the train, and now reminding Anna about her archrival, her holiday had not got off to a great start. She really needed this break too. Since she left university, her History degree had not yet brought about that all fulfilling dream job, that her granddad had always promised it would, and she was currently trying to make ends meet working in bars and pubs, and had only just managed to get the time off, by working twelve hour shifts for the last three days, to make up her times at various different places.

The rest of the ten-minute journey was done in silence, each of the girls deep in their own thoughts. Anna was trying to work out the best way to casually invite the lads round; and Paula was trying to decide whether or not to tell Helen about Ed. Helen Slater was the least outgoing out of the four girls, affectionately known to her closest friends as "plain Jane, super-brain!" yet what she lacked in beauty, she more than made up for in brains. Helen had the enviable ability to become totally enthralled in her books and work, a fact which was considerably abused by the rest of the household as they brought parties, or men, or both home after the bars had closed. After cranking the music right up to window rattling volume, the parties had a tendency only to stop when the floor space lessened as more comatose bodies slid off the 70's retro leather sofa and landed amidst the ashtrays, empty Bud bottles and general paraphernalia that had become part of the design of the carpet.

A short girl, with big glasses that were usually perched on the end of her nose, which she spent perpetually pushing them back up her face in frustration, Helen had first met Ed at a charity fancy dress night in the union bar. Helen had gone dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and Ed had been playing rugby earlier that day. He spent the night following her round, quoting lines from the film, at her, until eventually, to shut him up as much as anything, she let him buy her a drink. However, it took a lot more than quotes for her to finally believe that the big, popular, handsome rugby player had anything more than a passing interest in her, and so steadfastly alluded his efforts to get to know her better. Ed was obstinate however, and refused to leave her alone, until she had agreed to go out for one drink with her. They quickly became an item, and Helen was in a permanent state of euphoria, constantly looking at Ed as if to reassure her that this man, who could have had his pick from any of the beauty's at Uni, had picked her, the plain-Jane superbrain of their class. When they broke up, it had broken Helen's heart, not only was he the man whom she had given her virginity to, but he had also asked her to marry him, and they had been out to look for rings. When he announced out of the blue that he thought it was all getting to heavy, and that they should perhaps cool down for a little while, Helen was devastated, but when two weeks later he said that he had thought long and hard about it all, and thought it was best if it ended there, because the trial separation had given him enough chance to see that he was bored with the relationship, Helen had taken it very badly indeed, and now Paula was worried that a further shock like this, would finish off her self-confidence altogether. When Helen had come home, absolutely pissed out of her head, Anna had volunteered to go round and hack of his balls and use them as a pair of 'fuck-me earrings'.

For a while, Paula was dating Ed's best friend and fellow rugby player, Mickey, and Helen and Paula would often go and stand outside in the freezing cold to watch a match. Whilst the actual physics of the game had meant little to Paula, Helen had cared enough for Ed to try and understand the rules, and ergo was now as proficient to talk about converting try's and the scrum half's prop as Jonny Wilkinson! When Mickey and Paula broke up, after just six weeks, so did her interest in rugby, and it was with a big sigh of relief that she could go back to her pre-Mickey habit of lying in bed with Tara and Anna and watching children's cartoons on the television on a Saturday morning.

As the car ground to a halt outside Anna's sumptuous home, the two friends smiled at each other.

"Thanks for arranging all this, Annie, its going to be a whirl."

"You betcha it is," Anna promised, "now come in and see the others, or they will think I've kidnapped you."

As Anna helped Paula carry her bags through into the Miller's hall, they smiled at each other. Out of the four girls it was these two who had connected immediately.

"It is good to see you again Annie," smiled Paula, "I didn't think I would miss everyone this much."

No sooner had she spoken then Helen came out to give Paula a hug and welcome, closely followed by the Millers mad Scottie dog, Rufus. Wrapped in a huge apron, Helen's eyes were bright behind her thick lenses, and Paula could smell the delicious smells coming from the direction of the kitchen.

"Brenda has been showing me how to make cheese straws, they smell lovely, but I can't guarantee how good they will be at the other end of the process."

"I'm sure they will be lovely Hel," said Paula "Now is there anyone here who can offer a jet-lagged girl a fag?" Anna laughed as she took Paula through into the conservatory, offering her a silk-cut and a large Jack Daniel's, both of which Paula accepted gratefully.

"Bloody no smoking trains, I've been waiting for this since I got on at York."

Paula smiled at Anna and Helen, who had followed them through, and waved her glass in the air. "I'd like to propose a toast; that this weekend goes off with a bang!"

As she spoke, there was a rapping in the window in the conservatory, and a Scottish voice could be heard issuing instructions to a chauffeur about where to put the Luis Vitton bags and cases that Tara never traveled anywhere without. As Anna organized the welcoming committee, Paula poured a drink for Tara, Gin and lime, her favourite drink, and her thoughts went back to Jack. She had been unnaturally rude to him, and although flustered from the long journey and lack of nicotine, it was still very out of character. Looking back, she realised just how nice his last smile had been, the way his eyes had crinkled at the corners, and all of a sudden she found herself hoping that perhaps he was a good friend of Anna's, and that he may just turn up sometime over the weekend. She was glad now that she had brought that dress that her mother had tried to dissuade her from.

As she turned round to greet Tara, who was complaining bitterly about the fact that her car had broken down, again, Paula smiled. This weekend was still going to be massive, with a bit of luck.