Chapter 1
Dayie, Vince and Archie had been inseparable since childhood, except for on the rare occasion, such as this one, when Archie tried his hand at chasing skirt. The muse that had thawed his passions on this particular evening was a short-haired girl named Isabel. Enraptured, she stood gazing into his deep blue eyes, along his Roman nose and down his chiseled jaw, nodding as he described in excruciating detail the inner machinations of the Youth Labour Party, waiting for the moment when he’d shut up so she could finally make her move.
“And that’s why change starts with just one person.” The statement sounded conclusive, definitive almost, said in such a manner one would end a boardroom presentation, sparking fresh kindling to the languishing embers of her aspirations. She had only just begun to gasp for the first few breaths of air to utter a flirtatious remark when, like a burst fire hydrant, he launched into a new tirade centred on the current ailing state of the NHS. She shrugged a pair of mental shoulders: it could be worse; he could have been ugly as well as boring.
“Yo! Archie, there you are,” Dayie grabbed Archie by the shoulder and jerked him aside. “You gotta hear this, man.”
“Ah! You dickhead!” His face flushed red, “I had that one in the bag.”
Isabel, who had been standing within earshot, took this as her cue to leave the bag, for a smoke.
“What, were you going to ask her to one of your council meetings?” Dayie scoffed.
“Maybe…” He looked wistfully to the crumpled patch of grass Isabel had once stood upon, peering into a future his friend had so trivially shattered, where they could have gotten a mortgage together and bought a dog named Woof, “If she’d have wanted to.”
“No use in whining about it now; there are more pressing matters.”
