‘Hmm, probably not,’ Erin replied. ‘I think we donated them all to charity a few years ago.’
‘Testing… testing…’ A loud feedback whine was quickly followed by complaints from the room and a pillow tossed her way from Tara.
‘We can’t use this either,’ she grumbled. ‘Not if you want the volume above two.’
‘We don’t even need a mic,’ Erin declared. ‘And I guarantee every song ever written is on YouTube as a karaoke version.’
Beth frowned. ‘But without the mic, it’s just someone standing in front of the telly singing. My four-year-old niece does that.’
‘We’ll use it as a prop then,’ Alex suggested. ‘Like a hairbrush when you were a kid.’
‘God, have a mojito,’ Erin insisted. ‘A couple of those and you won’t care.’
Cocktails and karaoke were soon underway at Loughview House, blank cards for writing song requests were making the rounds. The more ridiculous the song, the better.
‘By the way, Erin, I’m vetoing Whitney Houston right now. No offence but “I Will Always Love You” is an absolute mood killer.’
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘As long as you’re not singing Snoop Dogg.’
Beth’s love for old school nineties rap had been legendary while at university, a genre Erin couldn’t stand.
‘It’s rapping, not singing, Grandma,’ she mumbled.
‘Oh, I would very much like to hear that,’ Aiden said, grinning, much to Beth’s delight. She immediately started writing on her card.
With the first few requests in, Tara was up first, excitedly belting out the first few bars of ‘Red Alert’ by Basement Jaxx.
‘This song suits her perfectly,’ Becky said to Christine. ‘I mean not her voice but her energy, you know? It should be her theme song.’
‘Yes,’ Christine replied, watching Tara flounce around. ‘There’s a certain mayhem to it. And her. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.’
‘Mayhem? No, I just meant—’
‘Maybe I should sing something…’
The thought of Christine getting involved made Becky perk up. She’d never seen Christine let loose in a setting like this. Or any setting really. They didn’t do karaoke or pubbing or clubbing or anything Becky once considered the most fun on earth. Christine was almost forty and thought it was uncouth to be doing any of that past thirty. Her friends held small dinner parties, or dined in restaurants, occasionally moving on to a wine bar if they felt somewhat frisky. Although Becky had never said anything, she found Christine’s friends (all older academics) to be incredibly dull. So many thoughts in so many heads and not one of them witty. Becky tried hard to fit in, to take her place at the grown-up table, but really, she’d rather have been anywhere else.
‘I hear your family were travellers, Rebecca. How interesting.’
They had been, about five generations ago on her mother’s side. She’d made the mistake of casually mentioning this to Christine, as well as the fact that her devout family now lived in Valencia. Christine of course took this disclosure as a sign of unprocessed trauma when Becky really couldn’t have given two shits either way.
Still, to Christine’s friends this traveller news was like having their very own caravan-owning, bare-knuckle brawler at the dinner table. Quite the curiosity. Sometimes she felt like she’d been brought along for novelty value.
‘You should absolutely sing,’ she said, handing Christine a piece of card. ‘Did you have anything in mind?’
‘Oh, maybe something a little more lyrically driven,’ she replied.
‘Like Adele? Taylor Swift?’
Christine looked offended. ‘God, no, nothing quite so basic…’
On the other side of the living room, Alex tentatively took the only free seat next to Aiden, who seemed entirely riveted by Tara, dancing wildly in her short black dress. To be fair, those boobs of hers were enough to rivet anyone, but she still felt a little sad that his eyes weren’t on her.Grow up, she told herself.Tara’s his girlfriend, and who wouldn’t want to look at her? She’s beautiful! Stop being ridiculous.
‘Are you singing?’ Alex asked him, now feeling altogether frumpy in her jeans and off-the-shoulder T-shirt.
‘I probably should, shouldn’t I?’ he replied. ‘I don’t embarrass easily, but this is always kinda mortifying.’
‘It’s only us!’ she answered, playfully nudging him. ‘We encourage everyone to be their worst. What would you sing?’
