nothing going for him. Insubstantial, Indian (so not even a ‘Paki’, as it turned out), funny accent, class clown and, a greater crime than all of them – and half the reason for the bullying – invariably dressed for school as if off to see the Queen – something the girls decided, once they’d finally met Mr and Mrs Banerjee, was actually on their wish list for both of their sons. They even had a picture of the royal family on their mantelpiece.
And Gurdy’s dreams were only slightly less ambitious. Now seventeen, he’d worked in his dad’s grocery shop on White Abbey Road since he’d left school, but his ambition was to eventually own his own curry shop, no less.
So, yes, an odd friendship, but also a dear one.
‘Wow, Luce!’ he said, pinging away a cigarette as she neared him. ‘You going on the game later, or what?’
He’d scored an unwitting bullseye. It was now a doubly sore point. Not just because of Paddy, but because her dad had said pretty much the same thing earlier – the heels, the ra-ra skirt and off-the-shoulder crop-top designed not for traipsing about Bradford before it was even properly dark, but for the far less disapproving light of a nightclub. It certainly wasn’t the right kind of clothing for sitting on a bench by the bloody cricket pavilion. ‘Shut up, Gurdip,’ she said, aiming a friendly punch at his shoulder, before sitting down. ‘Anyway, what you doing here? I thought we were supposed to be meeting up at the pub?’
‘Meeting a mate for a bit,’ Gurdy told her and she didn’t ask him to elaborate. ‘Meeting a mate’ could mean stuff she didn’t want to know about. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here, for that matter?’
Lucy pulled her cigarettes from her handbag and handed one to Gurdy. ‘Don’t ask.’
He sat down again. ‘Come on, what’s up, duck?’ he asked as she held out her lighter. ‘What gives, divs?’
‘Bloody Paddy Allen! That’s what’s up,’ she said once she’d lit her own cigarette. ‘Honest to God, Gurdy, if I were a bloke, I’d kill him. I hate that horrible bastard. Hate him.’
She turned to him then, recognising his silence for what it was. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you’re okay with him and that but, oh, he gets me so mad!’
Gurdy got on with most people. It was kind of a thing with him. Not so much religious, or because that was how his mam and dad had brought him up, but because the years of bullying had taken their toll. Gurdy was a bit of a people pleaser and if there was one thing Lucy wished she could better drum into him it was that you didn’t have to try and make everyone like you.
But his friendship with Paddy, irritatingly, seemed genuine. Yes, he was better friends with her Jimmy – they’d been in the same class at school, and at one point it looked like Gurdy might do a plumbing apprenticeship with him too – but he spent increasing amounts of time with Paddy, helping him out in his garage (which wasn’t actually Paddy’s garage) and doing God knew what else. She could see nothing good coming from it, but Gurdy actively wanted to work all hours, so he could add to his curry-house-buying stash.
But he was always happy to listen to her rants. ‘Go on,’ he said, nudging her. ‘What’s he done now, then?’
‘Well, as you well know,’ Lucy started, ‘me and Vicky were meant to be going out tonight, weren’t we? And before you say anything, he had no business turning up in the first place. This was planned weeks ago – months ago. And it’s supposed to be a girls’ night, you get me?’ She nudged him back. ‘Present company excepted, of course. But it’s like he thinks he bloody owns her! Like she’s his property or something. Like Emmeline Pankhurst never bloody existed!’
‘Emme-what?’
‘Never mind. You won’t have heard of her. Not off your mam, at any rate. And, of course, Vicky—’
‘—sides with Paddy because that’s what she always does, and you go off on one and have a row with him and off you trot.’
‘God, I know! I know I shouldn’t rise to it, but what else am I supposed to do? Just trot along behind, playing gooseberry while he gropes her? It’s the principle. My Jimmy doesn’t give me any of that sort of nonsense, does he? I tell you, Gurdy, I swear it’s like he really does think he owns her. Doesn’t want her going out on her own having fun in case another bloke so much as looks at her. And she might just look back. You know what I mean? Where’s the trust in that? And, of course, she can’t even see it.’ Lucy crushed her fag out beneath the sole of her shoe. ‘Sorry for ranting on. Anyway, I couldn’t go home, could I? I’m out now and I’m flipping staying out. So I’m glad I found you. You up for some fun?’
‘Bad news, kiddo, I’m skint. My dad’s being a prick – said he’s putting my wages away this week so I can buy some bloody auntie that I don’t hardly know a wedding present.’
‘That’s alright,’ Lucy said, patting her glossy black handbag. ‘I thought I was hitting the town, nightclubs and all, didn’t I? So I’ve got a whole fifteen quid on me. I think that’s enough to get us both pissed, don’t you? Pernods on me, mate,’ she added grimly.
Gurdy had mixed feelings about being out with Lucy when she was in this sort of mood. Though he hesitated to use the word ‘classy’, because that wouldn’t be the right one – particularly given tonight’s tiny, frilly skirt – Lucy was definitely the more posh of his two friends. Where Vicky was starting a hairdressing apprenticeship, Lucy was going up in the world – she was starting next week as a telephonist at a swanky firm of solicitors in central Bradford. But the combination of her annoyance and the fact that she was determined to get smashed made it odds-on that she’d soon leave her posh telephone voice well behind her. He wondered aloud if she should call Jimmy, and let him know her plans had changed now. ‘Don’t you think,’ he suggested, ‘he might want to come down and join us, after all?’
‘No way!’ Lucy said, as he held the door of the Second West open for her. ‘You think he needs any more reasons to hate that cocky bastard? Nah, we’re fine on our own, and the night is still young. And who knows who’ll be in later?’
Hopefully not Vicky and Paddy, Gurdy thought. Still, Luce was buying and, as she said, the night was still young. Then he noticed something that made him grin. ‘Oh, my God, Luce – have you been stuffing your bra again?’ He pointed at her chest, unable to stop himself laughing as she frantically stuffed the toe of a grey-looking sock back down her top.
‘Piss off, Gurdy,’ she whispered as they entered the busy pub. ‘Here, take this,’ she added, handing him a tenner from her handbag. ‘You get the drinks in while I go to the bogs and take them out. I only put them in there because we were supposed to be going to Caverns later, weren’t we? The bouncers there don’t care how old you look so long as you have tits.’
Gurdy took the money and joined the crush at the bar, while Lucy went to the toilets to sort her chest out. It always amazed Gurdy that Western women went to such extraordinary lengths to make themselves look attractive to men. He’d watch the girls doing their make-up and look on in wonder as they transformed their faces sometimes almost out of recognition. His brother, Vikram, who was only a year older than him (but often seemed a world away when it came to such matters) had gone to great effort to try and educate him in these various practices, which he could never imagine his mother having indulged in ever.
‘Women are wily, Gurdip,’ Vikram had explained to him a couple of years back. ‘They wear these things called Wonderbras,’ he’d explained. ‘I swear they make their tits look massive, man! But then when you cop a feel, it’s all padding,’ he’d added, disgusted. ‘All a terrible con – there’s nothing there! I swear, man, don’t be taken in. If they can’t show you their tits up front, in the flesh, chances are they are as flat as chapatis!’
Gurdy had no desire to see anyone’s chest, large or not. Padded or otherwise. In fact, just the thought of it made him wince. Relationships, especially that kind, confused him greatly. His parents, though always polite, barely spoke to each other, and his brother seemed to use