Page 55 of Don't You Forget About Me

There’s deafening screaming and the rest of the pub is split between those who’ve abandoned their drinks to watch and those who’ve simply abandoned their drinks, got up and left. We may well not get these people back again. The Wicker is in the reputation-making phase. This is a disaster.

I have to intervene. For self-interest if nothing else – I can’t have Lucas walk in to find me standing watching some bloke with his wang out. I could be sacked. ‘Well, Devlin, that girl I said was best suited to Hooters? She had a fella wafting his hot rod round the place within minutes of being left in charge.’

Esther’s words ring in my ears.‘Don’t come back with one of your amusing stories where everything is a huge mess but it isn’t your fault. No incidents. I don’t want there to be incidents and excuses.’

This is exactly that, isn’t it?

Thor has unbuttoned his cape and is swinging it around over his head, like a matador facing a bull.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, ducking round the bar and scuttling out, feeling extremely foolish, as Thor turns towards me, finger framing a crotch thrust by way of ‘hello’. I feel like I’ve wandered in from a National Trust garden to the Magic Mike XXL show in Vegas.

‘Excuse me? You can’t do this here.’

‘GREETINGS, MAIDEN OF EARTH!’

‘I’m not joking, you have to stop. I’m going to turn the music off, OK?’

I move past him towards the table and Thor throws his cape over my head, around my front, and uses it to pull me towards him.

‘Have you heard of ASGARD?’ he bellows, in that daft voice he’s putting on.

‘Let me go! Look, please, you can’t do this here—’

‘Well, ladies – I am ASS HARD!!’

With one powerful yank, Thor pulls me towards him using the cape and I’m crushed against his armour, arms trapped by my sides, while he grinds and shimmies against my rear.

‘Let me go!’

He won’t let me go, the barmaid caught in his cape now being a flamboyant improvisation in his act.

And all of a sudden, this goes from an embarrassing, inconvenient predicament to a frightening one. I know this feeling surging up inside me, I recognise it like an old enemy.

The end of the world panic attack that caused me to run from the exam hall at the end of my first year at university and never go back.

The loss of control, the suffocation …

The more I wriggle and thrash, the funnier the stripper thinks it is to keep a hold of me, and it’s no use. I’m becoming hysterical in the claustrophobia. He’s not going to listen, he’s not going to stop … I push and push and wail until he loosens his grip, momentarily.

It gives me a second or two where I have some mobility in my right arm and I draw it forward free of the cape, gather my might and elbow him in the face. I have no idea how to do this, I’ve never hit anyone, so I do a best guess. He drops the cape and I fall forwards to the floor, with a hard, humiliating bang to both wrists.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?!’ he shouts, in a Sheffield accent now. He has blood trickling from his nose.

He grabs me up by the shoulders, pulling me into a sitting position, and for a moment I think he might be helping me up, until I realise it’s a far more aggressive approach than that.

My breathing is shallow and my whole body is shaking, awash with fight or flight adrenaline. His fingers are digging into me and I can tell by the tension rolling off him in waves that he wants to hit me but is also aware lamping a woman might be a bad career move.

‘Get off her!’ I hear a voice by the door.

Help at last. Thank God. Although, oh no: it’s Lucas. He strides across the room, Keith bumbling at his heels, brushes Thor to the side, offers his hand and hauls me up. ‘Are you alright?’ he says.

I mumble I am. I don’t want to need rescuing by him.

‘Fuck her, look what she did to me!’ Thor says, wig lopsided, proffering a hand that’s full of blood. It does look terrible. I had no idea I could hit that hard.

‘What are you doing in here?’ Lucas says.

‘I’m a male entertainer. I didn’t know you had psychos working here.’

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