Chapter One

"Turn away now."

That's what the sign on the window said. It was an honest warning, but people never took heed. I certainly didn't. I saw the lurid light of the blue neon and it drew me in like a moth to a candle-flame.

That club was the source of so much. Pain, joy, love, betrayal, denial, death. You name it, it's been there, and no doubt left it's mark somewhere on the decor.

You see, our bar was one of those bars you pretend you've never heard of before in your life, yet, you know what it is. You know what happens there, and you know exactly where in Soho to find it. You've been there. They've all been there.

The name was enough, I suppose. 'The Magenta Lounge'. Whether or not that was the club's official name doesn't matter. It's what it promised on the other sign, after all, the pink sign, next to the blue 'warning'. 'Night-time cabaret, erotic, girls'. Sounds sleazy, I know, but needless to say, it did bring punters in.

My name is Hayleigh, and I had been there for two years. It had become my home. I lived in one of the spaces above the many, many 'spare' rooms that were in the club building. It wasn't much, but it was home, I suppose. I found the bar by chance, while living a supposed life on the run. I was a rebel. I didn't want to get an everyday job and I sure as Hell didn't want to 'settle down' and raise a family. I had nothing to my name except the fact that I could sing, and my main aim was to find a place that would take me on as a singer in some bar. The thrill of the nightlife combined with my love of singing was flowing through my veins. It had become my dream, my life, my soul.
So...I wanted all of that, and a roof over my head. When I found 'the Magenta', as they affectionately called it back then, suddenly my rebellious life did stop. I befriended a barmaid/prostitute who lived and worked there named Scarlet, and I moved into the top room, just across the hallway from hers. She promised me I'd never have to do 'her' work...I was to remain a barmaid and a singer on one night only, Sunday. Fair deal, I thought...

It was all going smoothly until one night. One Sunday night in '84. The night I met 'the lonely boy'...

I was hanging around behind the bar watching Scarlet serve the punters. A young man came up to the bar, dripping wet from the rain outside and nervously asked Scarlet if he could use the bar's phone. From the sounds of his accent, he was from Liverpool, but there was a distinct hint of another dialect in there somewhere, too. He had an unusual soft voice, and was very polite. Scarlet let him use the phone, and I saw him whisper something into the reciever before putting it down, looking all around him at the other customers. He was of average build and height- taller than me, and had pale peach coloured skin. His hair was a chestnut-brown colour, and was cut short, but was very thick, so made it appear longer than it was. He had a strange sort of fringe as well, a fuzzy set of spiky bangs at the front of his head, which seemed, to me, to have been a popular punk style he'd attempted himself, but had gone wrong. He had brown eyes, with long lashes, which appeared to be decorated with mascara. He had a button nose that seemed to turn upwards at the end in a cute, 'small rodent' sort of way, and his face was covered in little brown freckles. He also had lipstick decorating his lips, which were full and pouting and almost made him resemble a fish of some sort. The lipstick was of a dark grey shade.

"You drinking?" Scarlet called. He jerked his head up to her.

"Oh..no, thank you," He said, coughing, before hugging his long coat close to his body and exiting the bar again. Scarlet sneered. It annoyed her when people came in only to use the phone or the toilets.

"Weirdo," She shrugged, but I kept my eyes on him. For some reason, he seemed very interesting to me. Either that, or I was just nosy.

"Come on you!" Scarlet suddenly said, grabbing my arm, "We'd better get you ready for tonight's show..."

Later that night, as I sang tacky songs to an uninterested audience, I caught glimpse of the man again. This time, he was nestled in one of the bar's alcoves with another man. Though he still looked nervous, something told me that the presence of this other person made him feel safer, more content, though it was not to last. As my show transcended into a more romantic mood and I began to sing a ballad, I saw the two men in the alcove gently kissing each other. The other man was more muscular than the one who'd been in earlier. He had toned arms, and his skin was darker, more tanned, than his partner's. His hair was a light brown colour and was long and shaggy. His eyes were either blue or green, I wasn't close enough to tell, and he too had a little bit of make-up on, just natural tones on his eyes and lips. He had sharp, handsome cheekbones, and appeared to be slightly more 'masculine' looking than the other.

Without warning, the bar's doors burst open and a man with a purple and blue mohawk hairdo ran in. He was carrying a half-empty bottle of vodka and his eyes were wild and intense.

"Camille? Camille?!" He yelled, angrily, spittle flying from his mouth as he did so, "You'd better be in here, Camille!"

The man who had used the phone looked terrified all of a sudden and he grabbed his partner's hand, hissing quietly, "Love, one of them's here! I knew it, I knew they'd come after us!"

I had stopped singing by now as both myself and the people in the bar were more interested in this multicoloured haired intruder and the conflict he would no doubt cause. I stepped down from the stage and over to Scarlet, standing behind her, now somewhat nervous.

"Camille?...get out here. You know it's for your own good!" The man yelled, "Come out here now!"

The muscular man stepped out from the alcove, despite his hand being grabbed by his partner, who whimpered "No, no!" between tears. I was very surprised nobody had stood up to this intruder yet. I was even surprised that I hadn't said anything...though, in the sort of bar I was working in, you learned to be swayed not by aggression.

"Dobry?!" The punk yelled at the brunette, "Stand aside. It's your cowardly little creep of a boyfriend Marcus I'm after..."

"You want him, you'll have to see to me first," The brunette sneered defiantly, though even I could tell that he was scared. He was shivering.
"See to you? Or see you off?!" On his last words, the punk slammed the bottle down onto his head. It smashed and the remaining vodka spilled everywhere. The man was obviously not as brave as he made out. His hand crept to his chest and he clutched at it, crying out with anguish. His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed, his mouth open, a line of bloody saliva dribbling out. At this point, his lover stood up, stricken.

"Fils de putain!" He exclaimed, shocking everyone with the use of French, "How could you?!" He said, his eyes stained with dirty tears, "Y-you even said it was me you were after..."

"I knew this would get to you more," The man laughed, "You dote on that prick...'cause you've probably got nothin' else. No-one else'd have you. You're pathetic, Marcus, you know that? Pathetic." He looked down at the taller man's body and kicked it before dropping the remains of the bottle and walking out.

Scarlet broke the silence.

"I...I'll call the police, yeah?" She suggested, perhaps a little too late, as a flock of people gathered around Marcus and tried to comfort him.

Take this however you like, but, it didn't take me that long to banish the image of the boy's lover being killed from my head.

In the bar, there had been many fights, many arguments. In the early days, the fights would frighten me. I would either stay with Scarlet (I felt safe with her, she was sort of like a guardian to me), or I'd run upstairs to my room and hide for a while because I didn't want to know, I didn't want to see the outcome. Often, I had been told, the outcomes were bad...but of course!

My room was located at the very top of the club. It wasn't much of a home, really...just a small space for me, my bed and my belongings, and, seens as I didn't actually own much, it suited me fine. It didn't even have that good a window. It was a small thing which used to always jam if you shut it, so it was best to leave it open. Just a small pane of glass with a lovely view of the alley behind the club...buildings, bricks and bins.

The walls of my room were painted a dusky pink, with a fuzzy brown carpet. The woodwork was pink, and, as you could imagine, nothing really looked right. The wardrobe was in a corner, was painted green, and, considering the rest of the decor, stood out like a sore thumb. My bed was in another corner, so that if I rolled over to one side during the night, I would smack into the wall. I did that quite a lot in my first few days living at the club. Next to the bed, a bedside table, with a lamp, which had a purple lampshade, and actually, sort of, almost went with the wallpaper. Almost. There was also a clock on the table, and, on nights when I couldn't sleep, it's never-ending 'tick-tock, tick-tock' drove me mad.

There was also a small television in the room, which I hardly watched.

Aside from the wardrobe, bed and bedside table and t.v set, there were my real posessions...the things that made the room mine, that put my stamp on it. One of them was a white (well, it had actually turned an off-white to light-grey from the dust in the air) teddybear that my boyfriend at the time, Peter, who you will be hearing a lot about in this tale, had given to me.

I met Peter in the bar, luckily, when I wasn't such a new recruit, so to speak. I met him on a Saturday. He had ventured into the bar with his co-workers; it was one of their birthdays. They were all journalists, and all seemed very 'trendy', but Peter sparked my interest. He was tall, handsome and ruggedly masculine, everything I wanted in a man...at the time.

He had sandy brown-blonde hair, green eyes, and a toned body- not overly muscular, but definately not scrawny or plump. He seemed intriguing, so I talked to him, flirted with him, and by the end of the night, we were kissing and trading phone numbers. At this point in the story, we had been seeing each other for nearly a month, and I was definately falling for him- though we'd never told each other those immortal words- "I love you". Those words had not spilled from my lips, or his.

Also in my room was a female mannequin that I had found in the alley behind the club. Yes, a very interesting and strange find. It was lying there, arms and legs splayed, headless, in the alley. Had it's plastic body not been snow white, I would have thought it was a dead body (please remember, my room was located at the very top of the club, and therefore, from that height, mannequins can appear to resemble dead bodies, especially to people with imaginations as overactive as mine...). I decided on that sleepless night to rescue it from it's murky tomb. The head, by the way, was in a pile of...well, I'll say water, but you can imagine, so I left it where it was and carried the torso up to my room. Scarlet caught me doing this just as she was turning in to bed. She shook her head but said nothing. How could she possibly judge me?

I used the mannequin, who I named Joaquin for some reason, as a place to put my jewellery and hats-- I draped them over it's posing arms.

On the walls of my room were various posters, most of them of pop stars from the time. My favourite poster, though, was the large one of Marilyn Monroe that hung over my bed. She was a great inspiration to me. She was a creature of pure beauty and seemed so confident in everything that she did, yet, in actuality, I read, was as much a wilting flower as the rest of us, and had very little self-esteem. I found that so unbelievable, yet, strangely compelling, and so, she became an idol of mine. I even, at one point, tried to copy one of her hairdos, but, at the time of this story I am telling you, I wore my hair naturally-- long, light blonde with bad roots, and annoyingly curly.

That was, really, all my room was. Just a small place, nothing much of significance to be found within, but, then again, all it was, to me, was a place to sleep, a roof over my head. I was hardly ever in there, I was usually downstairs working, or performing, or, between shifts or on days off, I'd be wandering through the city, window-shopping or simply relaxing in a cafe or the park. It's only now as I look back upon my situation that I realise it was not much of a life, more of just a silly routine I put myself through because there didn't seem to be anything better for me at the time. Thinking about it now, did I even bother to find anything better?

The nights were all the same, more or less. The same people would come in- the regulars. The boy whose lover had been killed even became a regular. Marcus, you remember his name. Yes, do remember his name.

With Marcus came a new breed of regulars...many, many more men like him. The club wasn't prejudiced, though. Everyone was allowed, straight, gay, bi...as long as they were giving away their good money to be there.

The resident DJ would belt out the latest tunes, and the people would flock in and dance, or buy drinks, get drunk, and whisper insincere "I love you"'s and "you're my best friend"'s to each other. I noticed, as well, that, since the dawn of that most hedonistic of times, the 80s, more drug use was being seen in the club. I had never touched drugs, and never wanted to, but, I did notice it, and on several occasions, had been tempted, but, I shied away. Good thing, too, considering what I'd see people do once filled with whatever-it-was they took. The main 'wonder drug' seemed to be a little-known, at the time, white capsule they called 'Ecstacy'. I would see people take it, I would see Marcus take it, and I would watch with wonder what it would do to them.

They would seem normal at first, but then, without warning, a huge grin would spread across their faces as though they'd all been told that they'd won a million quid. People would embrace each other, hug each other, kiss and act as though they were totally in love with each other, though, it was really just the effect of the drug. There'd be tears and tantrums as, little by little, the pill took over their bodies and poured out their very hearts as it flowed through their veins, forcing them into telling their melancholy life stories.

One night, while I was behind the bar, I kept a good eye on Marcus, as I always did. Whether it was because of what I had seen happen to his lover or just a strange attraction and fascination to him, I don't know, but I always watched him, unseen, endlessly intrigued. I had learnt quite a lot about him, just from observing him. I learned what he liked, what he usually drinked (cola, with either vodka or rum), his routines. We had never spoken to each other at this point, and yet, I felt I knew him. He always came in wearing the same clothes, always black, and occasionally a spot of dark make-up on his eyes and lips, had a drink, then went to dance, always alone. By the end of the night, though, he always seemed drunk, or high, or both, and was always surrounded by a swarming array of people, mostly men. He would then take one of them (I had never seen him choose more than one...) and drag him upstairs to one of the many rooms of the club which were used for...well, take a guess. Scarlet often talked to him, and I thought they were friends, but in reality, she found him to be quite a pitiful joke, though, how a prostitute could condone a man for being promiscuous in the wake of one of his lover's deaths I'll never know.

This night, however, it was different. He was dancing wildly to the insane dance beat of the DJ's tune, as always, but, he looked a little strange. He was pale, and kept falling over his own feet. His usually youthful, rosy cheeks, were white as paper and he kept mopping his brow with a hankerchief as though he were too hot. He danced in between a pair of women who seemed to be new to the club, and flirted with every man that walked his way, it seemed, but, something was wrong. He was usually swelling with charisma, but tonight, he just seemed tired. His eyes were heavy, and not just from the excessive make-up. He staggered around, spilling drinks, bumping into people, and finally, without warning, let out a scream, clutched his chest and fell to the ground.

The song still played, but he lay on the ground, being helped up by nobody. They continued to dance around him, lost to the drugs. I decided to step in. Scarlet took over my shift at the bar as I crossed over to the dancefloor, knelt down beside him, nudged him, and, for the first time, I got to speak to the elusive lonely boy they called Marcus.