A/N: Thank you for your reviews and kind words, hope you carry on enjoying this. Chapter 5 as soon as it's ready, I am busy trying to resist the lure of the edit and delete buttons at the moment.

Chapter Four

Anyone who knew him and was watching him would know just how much he was enjoying himself jigging about in time with the music, well sort of, and twirling the microphone around as he threw it backwards and forwards between his hands before he stuck it under Kiki's mouth to make sure everyone could hear her as she did her bit. Molly was trying hard to be picky, trying to convince herself that Lauren wasn't that great but then had to admit that she was also pretty bloody brilliant at it, lucky cow.

Not that anyone or anything could have got her up there, not even a gun to her head would have persuaded her it was a good idea to make a total tit of herself, even the thought of it was enough to make her want to crap herself. No matter what anyone else told her, her sisters 'n that had always been honest enough to tell her she was absolute rubbish and should give out ear plugs if she was going force anyone to listen to her sing. It was different for him, you could see how he was loving it and how his whole face had lit up when he'd winked at Lauren … . Molly now couldn't think of a single bloody reason why she'd been so keen to join them.

They were at the end by the time she got over to the table and it seemed to her like everyone in the place had got up on their feet and were stamping and yelling out and there was loads of wolf-whistles and shouts of 'encore', although to be honest the encore bit was mainly from their table, but not all, and Molly knew just how much Lauren would be loving this, not that she could blame her, anyone would. They couldn't have another go straight off even if they'd wanted because some crappy Elvis copy-cat had already got up on the stage and was almost stamping his feet as he demanded that they hurry up and let him have his go so that Bossman clapped him on the arm and said something with a smile before he lifted Lauren down.

Molly watched and tried hard not to mind as he put his hand on Lauren's shoulder, the both of them were grinning happily as they got high fived and patted on the back from loads of people. Luckily she'd become a bit invisible in the last few hours so that none of their lot noticed her turning up which was bloody handy because she couldn't think of what to say to him, well them, that wouldn't sound pants. All she could think of was that she was proud of him, something that was definitely one hundred percent inappropriate as her manager at work would tell her if he was there, something he was always telling her.

"You're here, I didn't think we were going to see you tonight, Lauren said you'd gone to the pictures"

He sounded surprised, but then this huge grin spread across his face as if he was really pleased to see her making her smile back with what felt like her first genuinely happy smile of the whole evening.

"I've been. THE PICTURES? No-one calls it that anymore, do they? Well, apart from me Nan"

"And me, it's what we used to call it when I went regularly, God, I haven't been for bloody ages, what did you see?"

Before Molly could answer him, the name had unfortunately escaped her as soon as he'd asked and she couldn't say that the name didn't matter cos the film was bollocks anyway, in case Jamie overheard. Jamie stepped in and answered when she didn't say anything, but he took the opportunity to move himself right up close to her, too fucking close, so that he was now near enough to put his hand on her neck and to lift her hair up as he spoke to the Bossman. She started frantically shrugging her shoulders and twitching her head about trying to make him take his hand off, she couldn't help it and knew for a fact that he must have been able to feel what she was doing, but was choosing to totally ignore it and pretend it was okay for him to be touching her. Molly hated it. It felt as if he was telling everyone that they were together, that they were a couple … something that she would have loved a few short weeks ago.

The way she used to feel about him had kept her from being lonely when she'd needed something to take her mind off things, but all that had disappeared, just like that, so that she was struggling to remember what it was she'd seen in him in the first place and short of telling him to keep his hands to himself and to fuck off out of it she couldn't think how to make things any plainer. Saying something in front of the others would be a bit harsh, even for her, especially as they were all sniggering and making comments about young love and bloody Mansfield was doing these stupid loud sloppy kissing noises up and down his arm which was really getting on her tits. She knew enough to know that if she said anything at all they'd all join in and do it all the more, and even if she had gone right off Jamie it wasn't his fault, he hadn't done anything wrong, it was just her.

"Was it any good?"

Molly shrugged as Jamie started to tell him about it and then looked over her shoulder to give Smurf the evils when he said something about how he wouldn't mind betting that she hadn't seen any of it anyway. Stupid bugger was waggling his eyebrows suggestively and sniggering as he told the others that she'd of been far too busy doing other things.

"Go on then, we all know how bleeding good you are at betting, and I'm not a cretin like you"

Even as she snapped at him she could hear the chorus of "Ooooohhhh" from the rest, so that she wished she'd just ignored him and kept her gob shut because she'd just made everything a whole lot worse. It was bloody odds on now that one of them was going to ask her to prove she'd been watching the sodding thing, would ask her to tell them the plot or who was in it or something and if she said she didn't know they'd all jump to the same conclusion as bloody Smurf, they'd think he'd got it right.

"It was fine, you know, it was okay"

As she said it she did the 'this is all so boring I don't want to talk about it anymore' shrug that she'd perfected over the years rolling her eyes at the same time then caught his eye as he raked his teeth over his bottom lip and that look, the one of amusement he seemed to wear whenever he looked at her appeared on his face but then disappeared just as quickly before he turned away and started to chat to Lauren. Molly knew that he knew she hadn't watched the bloody film, but she had no idea how to explain to him that it wasn't what he thought, not that she believed it would matter to him one way or the other, but for some reason it really mattered to her.

-OG-

An hour later and the place had gone from jumping to winding down so that only the most hardened boozers were left together with the staff, the poor buggers who were doing their best to get all of them to fuck off out of it so that they could get off home. Fingers had obviously decided a while back that the evening was well and truly over as far as he was concerned, he'd put his head down on the sticky table and gone off into a deep sleep so that they were all now bickering as to who was going to carry him out of there and how the fuck they were going to get a taxi to agree to take them with him in that state.

Molly had done her best to drown her embarrassment at them thinking she'd been snogging Jamie in the back row by swallowing copious amounts of Vodka, and when that didn't seem to be working quickly enough, had changed her drink of choice to Gin because that seemed to have worked very well for Lauren. She was working hard at acting as if she was having a really good time, as if she was the life and soul of the party and making sure that no-one could see she was having a shit time. She'd thought about having enough booze to try and get herself into the same state as Fingers who didn't seem to be bothered about anything anymore, but unfortunately she was still sober enough to know that if she tried to play catch up she'd most likely end up adding to her spectacularly wonderful evening by puking her guts up.

She was also beginning to get a bit bothered about what was going to happen when they left. Even if it was a bit unreasonable in the circumstances, she could only bloody hope that Jamie was going to make sure she got home, but if he buggered off in a huff, which was a real possibility now that he was ignoring her the way he was, she had no clue how she was going to get there without scabbing a loan from someone, if anyone had got any money left and would lend it to her. On the other hand she couldn't see the Bossman just going off and leaving her there on her own at this time of night, at least she hoped he wouldn't, so if all else failed he'd probably offer for her to share a taxi with him and Lauren, even if he had been pretending that he didn't know her or that she was invisible for the last bit of this fucking disaster of a night out.

She seemed to have done something to upset him, so that they'd sort of fallen out without her even knowing what it was and much as she'd like to ask him what it was she'd done, she couldn't, it would sound bloody pathetic asking him why he didn't want to be friends with her anymore. It would feel like when she was in the bloody playground at school and kids used to say, "Quick, run, here comes Molly", in fact it felt a bit like that already. Anyway, she had this feeling that he'd only deny it, would say she was imagining things, but she wasn't and it'd be dead awkward to sit in a taxi with him and Lauren, who was now so slaughtered she was hanging off him like some sort of bindweed or something.

The last hour had shown her a lot of things she hadn't even really thought about before, about how much she'd loved the way they usually found the same things funny so that they'd laughed together and the way she'd feel his eyes on her sometimes with that look on his face as if she was amusing him so that he'd grin and sometimes he'd look quite serious, and then, when she'd look up and catch his eye, he'd look away, well, she would as well but if she then looked back he'd be looking at her again ….. and the way she'd find herself watching his Adam's apple bobbing up and down when he talked …... But it had all gone to shit tonight together with everything else, and she still had to get herself home from fuck knows where they were, she hadn't got a clue.

In the end Jamie was a lot more of a gentleman than she'd given him credit for and had taken her home in a taxi. He hadn't said a word about coming in for coffee or anything, which was just as well because she had no intention of letting him through the door and he certainly wasn't going to get lucky as Smurf had kept on suggesting with that horrible sleazy snigger of his, if there was one thing that was for sure it was that she was not going to shag Jamie, not at any bleeding price.

He'd put his hand on the wall and leaned in to try and kiss her goodnight and then the stupid sod had put his other hand up to her face and touched it. Being a bit on the short side meant that he didn't have to bend his head that much, but it also meant that she could move hers in plenty of time to make sure that his kiss landed on her ear and not on her mouth and before she'd even thought about it, she'd muttered "Touch me again and you're dead" so that he'd jumped away from her like he'd been shot. He'd left straight away calling out his 'goodnights' as he went and didn't say a word about 'see you soon' or anything like that, so she knew it was most probably the end of a beautiful friendship. He just got the hell out of there as fast as his little feet would carry him without looking back at her once.

After she'd done her usual routine she leaned her back against the door and ended up sliding down till she was sitting on the floor doing an action replay in her head of the absolute fucking nightmare that had been her big night out. She really hadn't intended to be horrible to Jamie, he didn't deserve it and it had never been part of her plan, but she didn't want to be with him either, any more than she wanted to be so fucking jealous of Lauren.

-OG-

"Hello, where did you spring from?" She looked up into a very familiar pair of chocolate brown eyes "What you doing 'ere?"

He was standing near the door having a bit of a chat with one of the regulars when she first saw him and she'd had to look twice in case it was her imagination playing tricks and making her see things, a bit of mistaken identity because she'd spent so much of the last few days thinking about Saturday and what had happened and running things over and over in her head. Everything seemed to have changed and it wasn't as if she could run any of it past Lauren to get some reassurance that they were still mates, because she hadn't come to work last couple of days. Her mum had rung in and said she was in bed, sick, but Molly didn't believe that for a single second. She couldn't still have a hangover from Saturday because it was Wednesday and even if her headache was anything like the one Molly had had and bearing in mind Lauren had drunk far more than her, she was used to them and it would have gone by now anyhow. So it probably wasn't that but Lauren hadn't been in touch or anything, and not only had all Molly's calls gone straight to Voicemail she hadn't replied to any of the texts either so Molly had the strongest suspicion that Lauren was very pissed at her, VERY, either that or she'd been having difficulty dragging herself out of bed, HIS bed.

"I thought I'd come and see what all the fuss was about?"

"Really?"

"Yes, why not, what's so un-fucking-believable about that?"

"Nothing I s'pose" She shrugged "Except … what fuss you talking about and how did you even know about this place?"

Molly had this vague Vodka and Gin hazed memory of an almost closing time discussion about the shit that happens sometimes to ex-army, that they can end up homeless and on the streets or in hostels with alkies and junkies and what a bleeding disgrace it all was. As the lads had got louder and louder with their drink fuelled indignation they'd begun trying to outdo one another about how they'd be making sure it didn't happen to any of them and how they'd always look out for one another, making more and more promises of undying and unlimited support. Bossman had been enjoying it hugely, had been grinning all over his gob and raising sceptical eyebrows as if he wasn't sure of some of the more extreme drunken pledges, that was until he'd caught her eye. The shutters had come down immediately so that she'd known without a shadow of a doubt that she was right and he was bloody mad at her for some reason.

One thing she did know was that she hadn't told anyone about this place for ages or what she did here, she hadn't even mentioned it recently.

"Your boyfriend told me, asked me if I'd heard of it, or ever been here. He said he'd been intending to come and check it out, that he wasn't too happy about you coming here on your own" He paused and looked around so that Molly eyes followed the direction of his gaze and saw just how shabby and run down it looked, something she didn't notice any more "Surprised he hasn't done it already actually, but it seems okay in here, can't say the same about where it is though"

"What boyfriend? I 'aven't got a boyfriend and even if I had, which I 'aven't, it'd be none of his business, would it? I don't need anyone's permission to do anything and I've never told anyone about this place, except for once when I told Lauren's dad but that was only cos he's a bit of an hippie who was going on and on about how it was a disgrace that drug laws made criminals out of people and how that didn't help anyone, so I thought he was going to volunteer, was going to come and check it out for himself, but he never"

"What about Jamie? Are you saying that he's not your boyfriend?"

"Did he say he was, cos he's not and I don't remember you and him talking like that"

"You were too busy getting plastered at the time … and he didn't say that exactly, but Lauren told me …

"I don't give a rat's bum what Lauren said, I've been to the cinema with him ONCE and that was last Saturday. He'd got these tickets for him and Dee and he didn't want to waste one and go on his own and that's it, and the reason I didn't watch the bloody film wasn't cos of what Smurf said, it just weren't my sort of thing. Look, he's her brother and she thinks the sun shines out of his arse, and yeah, I used to like him ….. a lot and I still do like him, he's alright, but just not like that anymore and nothing has ever happened between him and me, he's not my boyfriend, he never has been 'n he never will be, okay?"

"Okay, sorry" He suddenly grinned at her "What films do you like then, what … rom-coms or something?"

The grin on his face as he tried to change the subject told her that their fight, whatever it had been about, was over so that they were friends again, even if he was asking for a bloody ear bashing for being patronising and superior. But that didn't stop her being happy and knowing that when she got back home and had done all her … stuff …. she would just be able to lie in her bed and think about this.

"Yeah, and what's wrong with that? I s'pose clever bugger like you only watches that foreign shit with sub-titles, the ones where no-one knows what the fuck's going on?"

"All the time"