Page 43

‘Eurgh. No, they weren’t.’

It had been the most perfect summer Saturday. Temperance, Abel and some friends from their gang of bored teens – Clara, Helen and Tim – decided to sneak off to the granny flat that Tim’s parents rented out in high season. And that they hadn’t realised granny had left stocked with booze when she passed.

They giggled and swigged their way through mouthfuls of apple brandy, bad red wine and something with a homemade label that stripped Abel’s nose hairs when he took a sniff. Feeling pretty pissed and cocky, they set their sights on something bigger.

‘Let’s go out,’ Helen said.

‘Really out out. Like out in Salcombe,’ Clara chimed in.

Tim agreed: ‘Yeah!’

He could never decide which girl he fancied more so he kept his efforts nice and even.

‘But we might not get served: I’m not eighteen just yet. I only managed two rounds in The Fort before they busted me that other time,’ Abel said. ‘And someone might recognise us over there and shop us. I don’t want my mum to kill me before I reach actual adulthood.’

Temperance laughed into the back of her hand, ending with a wet snort of hilarity that caught on around the group.

‘What? What are you thinking, Tee?’

‘Disguises,’ she managed to say through her laughter.

So while Lee had shut up for lunch and taken eleven-year-old Susie back home with her, Temperance and her mates had sneaked in to the store to perfect their ‘over-twenty-one strangers from out of town’ looks. It quickly got out of hand.

When they reached Salcombe, emboldened by sneaky booze and a 1950s tweed suit, Temperance Molland burst into The Fortesque pub, strode up to the bar, slammed her briefcase on a stool and demanded ‘Five pints of Guinness, please!’, stroking her glued-on moustache. Behind her, Clara and Helen wore fake fur stoles and long ropes of plastic pearls, while Tim proudly bore an eighties ski jacket in fluro colours. Abel’s suit was four inches too short in the leg and uncomfortably tight around the chest. ‘We’ll get a table,’ he said gravelly into Temperance’s ear and it sent a weird and new shiver down the side of her neck.

The twenty-something barman waited until the others had sat down, before he leant over the bar to speak to Temperance in a hushed whisper. ‘Don’t suppose there’s any ID in there?’ He nodded to the well-used briefcase, which probably hadn’t been out in the world for a good twenty years.

‘No need, my good man!’ she said in her best Brian Blessed impression. ‘My acquaintances and I are all over twenty-one and in much need of fresh liberation!’

‘Libation?’

‘Exactly so!’

The barman ran his hand through his thick blonde hair. ‘Being an adult with finer tastes, I hate to tell you that our Guiness is off tonight. But what I can offer you is five lemonades. Good sir.’

‘Well, I . . . er . . . yes, we’ll have those, please and thank you.’ Temperance doffed an invisible cap, her vision swaying all over the place. It was hot in this suit and nylon moustache.

She carried the drinks tray over and the others giggled, but with diminished gusto.

‘Maybe we should just leave,’ Abel offered.

‘When we’ve come all this way?’ Clara protested. ‘I’d rather drink lemonade in a pub as a grown-up than drink it on the green like a kid.’

‘Quite!’ Temperance twirled the end of her moustache, and it fell off in her hands.

Abel stuttered a laugh. ‘Lemonade it is, my good fellows!’

They spent a very happy hour in The Fort that afternoon, playing Rihanna on the jukebox on repeat, having two rounds of ‘vodka and soda’ and throwing darts. But they sadly couldn’t club together enough money for any kind of food. The heat under their layers of disguise burbled at their very liquid, very mixed stomach contents.

Temperance went green.

Abel went white.

‘Are you going to . . .?’

‘Are you . . .?’

Temperance broke first, yanking open the briefcase and emptying her entire stomach contents onto the green silk lining.