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Frankie Blue's had the same friends since they grew up together in West London. He loves them, he really does - he's just not sure if he likes them any more. Tony the wide-boy, Colin who still lives with his Mum, dependable Nodge - they're starting to feel like a habit that's hard to break. The only thing keeping them together is some weird historical superglue made of banter, beer and nostalgia for their Perfect Day: 14 August 1984. A day in the school holidays, full of sunshine and promise, a day they vowed to commemorate every year - no matter what.
But then comes Frankie's Great Betrayal - Veronica, and marriage. The tensions between his old friends and new life increase, until Veronica's 30th birthday ... the 14th August. Frankie has to choose, between his mates and his mate. He thinks it's all over. It is now ...
'The appeal is in the richness of the tone: a constant upwelling of sadness offset by drollery' - The New Statesman
'The year's finest debut, a rites of passage tale of men, friendship and marriage' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
'A hilarious (but horribly true) account of male friendship' Cosmopolitan
'A breathtaking achievement' Andrew Biswell, Daily Telegraph
So now it's just another Tuesday night on the Goldhawk Road. I'm on my fifth bottle of Staropramen, trying to get well and truly binnered, but my mind feels absolutely unfogged. It's not a matter of wanting. I need to be drunk. Tonight I've got to tell them that I'm leaving them, that it's over, that it hasn't worked out, that I'm selling them down the river.
Diamond Tony, Nodge and Colin are all with me, inside the Bush Ranger, watching the Rangers game on the satellite screen. A hundred other faces are upturned also, mostly male. They have scorched faces from Spanish tans, greased French crops, white lager-foam moustaches, MAI nylon jackets. Stone-washed jeans, white Reeboks, gold earrings, fake Ralphs from the Bush Market. It's all sports casual, surf-wear and over-designed running shoes, Nike Air Maxes up against the Reebok DMX 2000 series. The whole place has an odour of Fosters Ice and Lynx Aftershave. I like it. It smells like home.
Of the four of us - I like to think - only Colin looks typical, a genuine pitch potato. It isn't just the clothes - the baggies, the Rangers/Wasps official sweatshirt, the little rash of old adolescent spots around the mouth, the beer-stained windcheater - but the expression on his face. Rapt, astonished, praying. Caring far too much, for someone thirty years old.
Colin, more than any of us, lives for this, for these moments, in a crowd in front of a green rectangle, destinies being juggled. I see his face shining with tension. Yet, for a moment, he looks five years old as Kevin Gallen strikes at an open goal and manages to send it elegantly dundering fifteen feet past the left-hand post. Colin's small face crumples in bitterness and betrayal, as if some personal unkindness has been deliberately done to him.
He still has QPR posters covering the walls of his bedroom from floor to ceiling, and goes to every match that he can, just as he has since he was fifteen years old. Although normally the quiet and affable one, when he's worked up his emotions get entirely out of control. Sometimes he cries, although he will always hide himself first. Colin has never quite managed to master the public indifference that the rest of us present as our emotional lives.
Right now he is nodding his head back and forth in a kind of fit of disappointment. On one level, Colin, I sometimes think, is a little backward - still living with his mother, never having any girlfriends. But what emotions he does have he invests in the world he limits himself to - his horror videos, his computer, his friends, his football. I think for a moment he's going to cry right now, but to my relief he turns instead and rummages glumly in his packet of crisps. Walkers Double Crunch Chilli.
I can't get lost in the game. I can't care. I've been thinking about Veronica all day. No, I've been thinking about myself all day and wondering about the effect of what I am going to have to say to them.I feel I'm in a pocket of air, watching the whole heaving scene from within a bubble. I catch Tony's face in close-up, as it distorts in profile, rising to meet the screen.
Tony - Anthony Diamonte, otherwise known as Diamond Tony or DT - is laughing loudly. Tony always laughs loudest of the four of us, but this time his determination to compete with the rest of the heaving room has upped its volume. Tony always wants to win everything, even when there's no game being played. He's half out of his chair, giving the wanker sign to Gallen, who has fallen on his knees and is covering his hands with his eyes. The floodlights give Gallen four shadows. Tony's laughter, at this moment, is contemptuous, without humour.
In the reflected light of the screen, his cream-coloured Jil Sander rollneck looks the colour of a pistachio nut. He must be steaming hot in that thing, but he looks absolutely cool and undisturbed by the raging heat. The fact that he is money is apparent even in the smoky half-light. The Mulberry Black Cavalry Twill coat draped over his quarterback shoulders, the bespoke suit, the Patrick Cox shoes, the Oris Big Crown Commander watch. Even his face is money, that Eurotrash look, all olive skin and floppy black hair, big gleaming teeth in a perfect smile. You wouldn't think he was just a barber - sorry, hairstylist - from Shepherd's Bush; you would think he was a matador, or a glamorous extra in an Italian arthouse movie.
Women love Tony. They don't care it's all a fake - the tan, the style, the smile. He's handsome, I suppose. I have to admit that. However much I lie to others - and I do, I do - I try to be honest with myself. It's hard, though I don't know why.
Tony looks very sophisticated, even though he's just a yob, same as the rest of us. More of a yob, actually, because I'm not a yob at all, come to think of it, and neither is Nodge or Colin. Most soccer fans around here stopped being yobs years ago. They read Irvine Welsh and listen to Classic FM, then clock in for work at the print shop or the carpet warehouse. Nothing fits the world any more. Me with my degree, Tony with his thousand pound suits, Nodge and his unreadable books. A cab driver with his nose in Rohinton Mistry, for fuck's sake. It's all hybrid, atomized.
But Tony, for all his cash, is - and don't get me wrong, he's a mate, I love him - Tony is ...
The word that springs to mind is cruel.
No, cruel isn't right. That implies someone who gets a pleasure out of hurting other people, and Tony isn't like that. He just doesn't mindhurting people, if they're in his way. It's nothing personal. He just thinks there are more important things than never hurting anyone's feelings. It's very un-English, I suppose. But then Tony isn't English. He's Sicilian, or at least his parents are. He hates to be reminded of this. Around his neck, the hand and the horns to ward off evil spirits. Solid gold.
Whitbread First Novel Award: Winner 1999
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