Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Alice

It was late and we lay in a line, me, Jazz, Saffron and Katie, all squished into the back room with our eyes on the television. Pretty Woman was playing out but we weren't really watching, passing a bottle of Southern Comfort around as we spoke quietly, sporadically, about nothing in particular.

"So," started Jazz, he took a swig and passed to me, "Saffron," he laboured over the question, dragged it out, "heard from Matty lately?"

"No," she shrugged, he smirked.

"Really? I thought you two were going places..." I took a swig and passed it back to Jazz, who took a swig and turned to her with a smile.

"Because you know Rudy says hes heard a lot about you..."

"Trust me, Matty doesn't know enough about me to surprise Rudy," Saff was dry, and her wry smile didn't quite meet her eyes. I recognised her oh so slightly wounded look as her eyes lingered on the screen. "Kit De Luca is such an icon," she grinned reaching out for the bottle and tipping her neck back. I watched her swallow, mouthful after mouthful with a knowing smirk.

"I love her, more than I love myself" katie sighed dramatically, "I wish I was her,"

"You with you were a prostitute from the 80's..." ,chuckled Jazz, eyebrow cocked as he looked her up and down.

"I wish I was a goddess in a cheetah print bodysuit," she shrugged, turning back to Saffy. "You really don't talk to Matty anymore?" She shook her head.

"Why would I, he's the other side of the ocean, whats he sposed to do for me there..."

"So you're not having phone sex then," I winked, she glared.

"Fuck off Alice," she giggled, "we aren't having sex full stop," at that I laughed and the others laughed too. Saffy just smirked tired and apparently put out.

"Rudy reckons he asks about you all the time,"

"Well he never asks me," she shrugged and struck a chord, but it wasn't one I should have recognised. I recognised the ache in her voice and the grey clouding her eyes as she took a swig and passed back to Jazz.
It was strange because the pain she was selling harmonised with the pain I felt whenever I saw Fliss with Van, whenever I saw one of them pandering to the other.

Whenever Van came back to the venue before a show, having spent all evening by her side, her head in his lap as she slept.
It resonated with the sinking feeling I felt whenever I thought about her and him alone together, sharing moments I'd always known id never share with her.

"So what? You jus cut and run?" I asked slowly.

"If it makes you feel shit," she shrugged, "and it did," I got the impression she was being very brave by admitting that. The slight downward curve in her melancholic smile gave me the notion that she was being more honest with us than she'd have liked, because Saffy was always looking out for the rest of us, she was always happy so that we didn't have to be. Admitting that someone had had the power to take that away from her was unnatural.

"What about when we go home?" Asked Katie, "yous gonna ignore him at festivals and stuff?"

"I don't know," she shrugged, "I'm not gonna go out of me way to graft as our kid would say," she giggled it off referencing Fliss and her strange dialect.

"Speakin of which, how is our kid today?" Yawned Jazz, he'd been out most of the day again, hunting me down and so neither of us had seen her all day.

She'd spent the last three days in and out of sleep and delirium. If she was up she was wrapped up in a blanket with vacant eyes which were always red and made it look like she'd been doing a lot of crying.