Memoir - Week 7
Although Harry and I had become separated, we kept meeting up
before separating again like little blobs of oil gradually adjusting to the
water’s surface. When we did meet up we’d consolidate, updating each other with
anecdotes about the night’s proceedings.
After a couple of hours,
Erin announced she and some of the girls were heading over to a club across the
road. Erin did ask me and Harry if we’d like to join them, but I said no –
weirdly – normally it would have been the logical thing to do, no question. But
this night reality was a little unusual and I remember thinking if this was
meant to be, it will be, leave it alone. So, like hacking their way through
dense scrub, Erin and two or three other girls inched their way through the
King ‘O’s crowd, and into the hands of fate I fell. Yet somehow I felt
reassured I would see Erin before the night packed its bags.
My instincts proved to be correct and I sighed a silent relief. Erin returned with a couple of
the girls an hour or so later – her face displaying happiness that I had not left the pub. We started chatting again. Before long, Harry and I were
once more standing shoulder to shoulder, almost at the exact same spot when Erin
and Carol had first entered. Only this time, a jumbled group consisting of Erin and
most of the university girls, with a couple of drunken strangers thrown in, had
formed in front of us. By now my lips had been intermittently pulling on a lit cigar, and
my mouth gulping down a frothy beer.
Then it happened in a brief moment. The words suddenly danced
their way off my tongue into Erin’s ears. I turned to Erin.
