REMAIN THE SAME

-x-

THE BEST FIREWORKS THIS SIDE OF BROMLEY – 3

-x-

It was half past eleven. Spike and Lynda walked briskly down the frosted street.

'Nice of Jeff to let us off early,' said Spike as they walked.

'Mm-hmm.'

'Is it me, or did he seem kinda put-out to you?'

'Not put-out. Confused, perhaps.'

'Yeah.' Spike thought for a moment. 'Odd, though, isn't it?'

'Odd…?'

Spike nodded. 'The switchboard has been jammed for weeks now, New Year's Eve has always been one of the busiest nights of the year for the Samaritans, but tonight… what was it? Five calls?'

'Four,' replied Lynda, 'and two of those were the same wrong number.'

'See what I mean? Odd.' Spike blew on his hands. 'So, we've got thirty minutes left to celebrate the passing of 1993. What are we gonna do?'

'We're going to cover the Town Square Festival.'

'The best fireworks this side of Bromley,' replied Spike. 'How did I guess? And how are we gonna get to the office, pick up a camera and get back to the town square in time, pray tell?'

'Don't need to.' Lynda pulled a camera from her bag. 'Always be prepared.'

'Riiight…' muttered Spike. 'Always be prepared, just in case you're not needed at your night job against all conceivable odds and get to leave early and get your own way without losing face.'

Lynda slowed her pace slightly, and stared at her boyfriend. 'What are you suggesting, exactly?'

'I wasn't suggesting anything.'

'Yes you were. You were suggesting that somehow I did something to the Norbridge Samaritans' switchboard so that they'd get redirected to Maidstone all night just so that we could get out to cover the New Year celebrations, aren't you?'

'Well, at least they got redirected to Maidstone,' grinned Spike, 'I thought you were just gonna cut them off.'

'Spike. I'm not completely cold hearted and self serving.'

Spike linked arms with her. 'You're a cunning, conniving bitch, Lynda Day.'

'Thank you.' She kissed the back of his hand. 'You're not too bad yourself.'

-x-

They were hit with a tide of warmth and light as they turned the corner into the Town Square. They had never seen it so full of people before. The main stage was being set up for the next group, but still music, laughter and chatter came clashing in from all angles – violins, guitars, woodwinds, harps, accordions, voices – a dozen different tunes, but all the same music. There was a small ferris wheel at the far end of the square and small stands selling toffee apples, snacks and various strange drinks peppering the pavements.

Spike scratched his head, surprisingly impressed. 'Well I'll be.'

'What did I tell you?' Lynda started to warm up the camera's flash.

'Hey! There are young people here after all.'

'Very funny.' The blonde girl shuffled up to them both, hands stuffed in her pockets.

'Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Sarah.' Lynda hid her smirk with the camera. 'To what do we owe the pleasure?'

'You call yourself a journalist - haven't you been watching the news?' Sarah sniffed. 'It's snowing a blizzard in the West Midlands, Birmingham's at a standstill. They cancelled all the trains, so I thought I might as well come down here, since you'd made such a fuss. What about you?'

Spike shrugged. 'Turns out we weren't needed tonight. Good thing too, you didn't want to ring in the new year on your own, did ya?'

'I'm not on my own,' replied Sarah.

'All right?'

Spike turned around to see Frazz and Tiddler approaching through the throng. Both were carrying full, steaming paper cups and grinning.

'This is turning into a great party!' Frazz grinned with uncharacteristic enthusiasm and passed his cup to Sarah.

'I found him dancing to a man playing Mull of Kintyre on the bagpipes,' explained Tiddler, 'sounds like his little "get together" became too public and had to be cancelled last minute.'

'And what about your sleepover?' Lynda looked Tiddler up and down. She was dressed in an electric blue minidress, a velvet jacket and was struggling to balance on a pair of high-heeled shoes. The 16 year old's face was covered in make-up and glitter and she reeked of sickly sweet perfume and cigarette smoke.

Tiddler sighed. 'I got confused.'

'Confused? At a sleepover?'

Tiddler rolled her eyes. 'Outside Roxy's, OK? I gave the bouncer my ID and he asked what my birthdate was. And… I panicked. 17th November 1975. See? It's easy to say now…'

'What did you tell him?' Grinned Spike.

'1759.' Tiddler bit her lip as the others burst into hysterics. 'It's a mistake anybody could have made!'

'Telling a nightclub bouncer that you were born halfway through the 18th Century? I'm afraid not, Tiddler…' Lynda wiped an eye as she watched Tiddler down her drink. 'That had better not be alcoholic, young lady.'

Tiddler scowled over the brim of her cup. 'I'll drink what I like. I'm 250 years old.'

'What the Bloody Hell are you lot doing here…?' Billy wheeled up to the group irritably.

'Bitching,' answered Sarah.

'Room for two more?'

'Two?'

'Yeah.' Billy smiled, lopsidedly. 'Michael Flatley kicked me out. Said I was showing him up. And then I found somebody banging her head repeatedly on a lamp post and I thought we'd make a pretty good team. She just went to buy herself a flagon of elderflower wine to drown her sorrows in.'

On cue, the bubble-permed, panda-eyed Blonde grabbed one of the handles of his chair for support, a bottle of wine at her lips.

Bar Frazz, who had started to dance again, the group exchanged glances.

'Beano's parents didn't take to you too good, huh?'

Julie removed the bottle from her mouth temporarily and choked. 'Oh they liked me, Spike. They liked me just fine. Only they kept calling me Jill.'

'Is that a problem?'

'It was when Jill turned up,' sobbed Julie. 'Turns out Beano's ex-girlfriend isn't as Ex as he'd told me. I've never looked like such an idiot before in my life!'

'I wouldn't know…' began Lynda, but Spike spoke over her.

'Well! I guess the gang's all here…'

'Almost all,' corrected Sarah.

'That's a point,' added Lynda. 'What time do you reckon it is with Kenny?'

'About 10 in the morning, I think,' replied Billy.

'Yeah,' piped Spike, 'he's probably trying to sleep off a killer hangover about now.'

'Remind me to call him tonight,' Lynda grinned evilly.

'He's not the only one missing,' said Tiddler. 'Surely of all the people whose plans for tonight should have gone horribly wrong by now…'

'Don't jinx it, Tiddler,' interrupted Lynda.

But Tiddler had trailed off of her own accord, distracted by a rowdy bunch pushing their way drunkenly through the throng, evidently merely stumbling from one pub to the other rather than stopping to enjoy the festivities. Lynda followed her eyeline. One of the girls in the other group looked familiar.

'Is that Cindy Watkins?'

Tiddler sneered. 'More's the pity. That girl's like a bad penny. Slapper.'

'Tiddler!' tutted Lynda. 'Cindy's a friend… a friend of the paper. Besides, she's got… problems…' Lynda watched the staggering, cackling girl with dismay. Cindy was everything Colin had described and worse. Her dress was shorter than Tiddler's, low cut and sleeveless, without a jacket. She walked on her ridiculously high heeled boots with the gait of one who was used to them. Her hair was scraped with a masochistic tightness away from her face, which was orange with makeup. There was a bottle in her hand and a lovebite on her neck. The man with his arm around her was well into his 30s.

'She's got problems, all right,' growled Tiddler. 'Lying little cow…'

'Tiddler?' Lynda lowered her voice. 'Is there something going on that I don't know about…?'

'It's finished now. Forget about it.'

'Tidge?'

'Not tonight, OK, Lynda?' Tiddler took another drink. 'Let's not ruin tonight, eh?'

Lynda started to say something but realised that the square had become hushed. There was a large band assembled on the stage, waiting patiently. They were all listening to silence - the silence being played over the PA system. And suddenly a tune began – a simple chiming of the hours on the bells of the Houses of Parliament clock tower. A couple of foreign students cheered, not realising that the tune merely heralded the approach of midnight, and not midnight itself. Somebody hushed them and a tense silence fell again. There was a pause, a glorious pause as they all waited, with so many million others, their spirits standing in Parliament Square, their minds eyes cast upwards at that golden tower. It was like a mass inhalation of breath. The moment at the crest of a wave before it crashes down in crazy abandon. Then came the deep, booming voice of Big Ben himself, and everybody screamed as he counted out the twelve hours. The sky turned bright white and red and green as great colourful spheres exploded above their heads. Her face was grasped between two cold hands and Spike kissed her, then hugged her as Sarah took her hand and joined them all up in a circle. None of them knew the words to Auld Langs Ayne but they muddled through as well as they could at the tops of their voices with the band and the crowd because, for some reason, that felt like an important thing to do. As she tried to sing, and watched the sky rain fake fire on them all, Lynda thought about the year that had passed, and the things she had come so close to losing – two best friends, three if you counted Spike, although the potential loss of Spike was always more worrying than that of any others – her own life, a couple of times, and worse than all of that, her paper. She clutched the hands in hers a little tighter. It wasn't going to happen this year. This year was going to be different. This year was going to be all forwards and no backwards. Everything would be different.

-x-

Everything would be different, from now on. Everything. The world was different… no… it was him that was different… something had gone. Something had been allowed to leave, and something else had been allowed in in its place. Something better. Something warm and gentle.

The girl curled into him stirred lazily.

'What's the time?'

He propped himself up on his elbow, searching for the digital clock on his video recorder.

'Quarter to five.'

The girl grunted vaguely in acknowledgement and tugged the throw tighter over them both.

'You cold?'

'No.'

'You comfortable?'

She snorted a little laugh. 'No.'

'Me neither.'

It was, after all, only a small sofa. It wasn't designed for two adults to be able to comfortably lie on together. Still, he must have nodded off for half an hour or so, since he could remember dreaming.

'Want to go up to bed?'

She shook her head so that her hair tickled his face. 'I don't think my legs work any more, Sir.'

That was a good point. He didn't really think he had the energy to get upstairs either.

He was certain that there had been fireworks outside at some point. Not that he'd particularly noticed. Armageddon could have begun, the sky above him could have split and rained down purple pixies and he would have ignored them. The pixies could have started vomiting gold and diamonds and he wouldn't have spared them a second glance. Something else had found and retained his undivided attention. And it wasn't even to do with money.

He had finally found something better.

He had kissed her and kissed her against that lamp post and he'd found both of them moving their hands to strange places and he had become suddenly aware that there were net curtains twitching and that they really shouldn't keep doing what they were doing out in the street. They had kissed and crashed and stumbled clumsily back towards his house. Frankly, they had only just made it into the privacy behind the front door before something had desperately needed to be done about the whole kissing and fumbling situation. He'd often thought about the loss of his virginity in the past, invented ways in which it might happen, but not once had he imagined the way that the act finally took place. Lonely young men tend not to set their fantasies in the front lobby of their small rented house, and said fantasies tend not to involve having to kick away shoes and umbrellas to make room, or the complete destruction of a set of coat pegs.

He reached up with difficulty and toyed with her bright, fake hair.

There had been fireworks towards the end of that fast, furious encounter at the door, he was sure of it. And as they'd collapsed onto the sofa she'd noticed that midnight had passed, and they'd wished one another a happy new year, and kissed again. And again, and again. And, because they hadn't bothered to take all their clothes off at the front door, they had done so then, and she'd introduced him to a much slower, lazier form of lovemaking.

An attempt to make them both a cup of tea had lead to an experimental and not entirely comfortable session on a kitchen worksurface. But then they'd curled up together on the sofa again and had done it again. He'd decided that, so far, he definitely liked sofa sex the best.

He ran his fingers down the nape of her neck to her shoulder blades, and traced them over the curly tail of the monkey silhouette tattooed there.

'It's no good,' muttered Liz, 'I've tried and I've tried, but I just can't get this damn monkey off my back.' She gazed over her shoulder at his nonplussed expression. 'That was a joke, Sir. I usually use it as an icebreaker at that awkward 'undressing for the boudoir' stage, but we seem to have skipped that bit.'

'You can get laser surgery,' replied Colin, 'if you want to get rid of it.'

Liz sat up and looked down at him. 'You're adorable, did you know that?' She shivered. 'Ah, sod it. Now I have to pee. Guess I'll have to brave the stairs after all.' She stood up, and the throw fell from her body, like a robe tumbling from a Classical Heroine. Except that Aphrodite never cursed loudly at how cold it was, and had probably never had 'Celtic Forever' tattooed onto her right buttock. She turned to him, rubbing her arms against the cold.

'What about you, Sir? You coming to bed?'

Of course he was coming to bed. Of course he was. What a wonderful thing to be asked by a beautiful, naked woman. Not that he had any strength or inclination to do the normal thing one does when a beautiful, naked woman asks you if you're coming to bed. Not for now, anyway. No. No, he would sleep. They would both sleep late into the morning, and then he'd make her breakfast… after he'd cleaned the kitchen surfaces… and then he could quite happily spend the rest of the day christening the top floor of his house as he had done the ground floor that night.

She caught his involuntary smile at the memory.

'What are you smirking at?'

'Just…' Colin sat up himself. 'I think that might have been the best "quiet night in" I've ever had.'

Liz nodded, sagely. 'It was pretty spectacular, yeah.' She paused, halfway out of the room. 'Was it me, or were there fireworks?'

Colin began to follow her up the stairs. 'The best this side of Bromley.'