Halfway through the interval Rachel was ready to talk. Arms around my neck, she whispered ‘What the fuck do I do now?’.
Rachel was a genuinely nice girl. Sporty, competitive, but always played by the rules. The cruel confidence I had seen in Laura made me worry about what might be in store for my girl in the next round. Could she tough it out? I now knew that Laura would not flinch when she had the opportunity to hurt Rachel. Suddenly I found myself questioning whether Rachel could respond in kind. What was I thinking? How the hell had I led her into this situation without knowing if she had the killer instinct that was so badly needed here? If she didn’t, I had to get her out of there soon for her own safety.
That’s when I said it. “This is it, babe. You’re in a proper catfight now. You have to hurt her, or she's going to hurt you. Can you do it? If not, we may as well head home”.
Kev and Laura heard, for sure, and they heard Rachel’s determined response too. ‘We’re not fucking going home’. She got to her feet, pushed me aside and started prowling opposite her opponent, saying nothing but fixing Laura with a glare that said she was going nowhere. Laura stared back, unfazed. Fuck, it was terrific.
“Still two minutes till the next round,” said the geek, afraid that they were going to launch themselves at each other before he was ready. You could tell they wanted to, so me and Kev instinctively went to place ourselves between them.
Kev cupped his hand over Laura’s ear and said in a low voice ‘Get into her head, Laur. Fuck this bitch up in her head and then she’ll crumble’. He didn’t intend for anyone else to hear it. Rachel didn’t catch it, but I did.
“What the fuck, Kev?”, I said turning round, shocked by his language.
He looked over, embarrassed at being overheard. “Come on mate”, he shrugged. “You talk to yours and I’ll talk to mine”.
“You sure you want to do this?” I whispered to my girl.
“Fuck yes. Get out of my way”.
Until then, I had never heard Rachel utter the word ‘fuck’ as an expletive – only when she was referring to intercourse. Now she’d said it four times in the last five minutes. She was fired up.
“One minute”, the geek reminded us.
Still standing opposite each other, Laura looked at the hand-shaped welt she had left on Rachel’s thigh and grinned with satisfaction, chuffed with her work, nodding her head in the direction of the damage.
“I got more where that came from”, she laughed, raising her eyebrows and looking for a reaction. Rachel stood her ground, returning the stare, steeling herself.
Me and Kev returned to the bed-perch. The atmosphere had soured between us, and he was aware of it. “No hard feelings, mate, yeah?” I shook my head, saying nothing.
Rachel clenched her fists, Laura flexed her neck and we were ready to go again.
The fight becomes a blur for me at this point. I know that as soon as the whistle went, Rachel charged Laura and closed her two fists around her opponent’s ringlets. Laura, backed up against the wall, applied the same tactic. My recollection is of both girls standing, locked in a hairpulling stalemate, each trying to overwhelm the other by pulling their hair to the ground. If they did let go of each other, they soon found themselves back in the same position. This was slow, nasty, attritional stuff - excruciating for fighters and partners alike. Their breathing became increasingly laboured and small squeals emanated from both as each one tried to gain the upper hand. As heads ground together, inaudible threats were muttered both ways. After the fight, I asked Rachel what was said, but she couldn’t remember. Animosity took root. If anyone had the better of it, it was Rachel, who succeeded in pulling her opponent down further than she was being pulled down herself.
“Come on Rach!’, I yelled. ‘You’ve got her hurt. Put your weight on her and tire her out!”
Laura’s sturdy legs were strong beneath her, though. Grimacing through the pain, she stayed on her feet, continuing to pull on Rachel too.
“Dig deep, Laur!”, exhorted Kev.
It was an ugly, hurtful, visually unspectacular round – but when the whistle blew, tempers frayed. Whatever they had been muttering to each other had ratcheted the tension. Laura let go straight away and exploited the opportunity to slap a surprised Rachel in the face, hard, with her free hand. Rachel came straight back, connecting flush with a peach of a faceslap. Laura stumbled sideways and fell. In a flash, me and Kev were off the bed to keep them apart. Maybe we should have let it continue, but we were both so wedded to our cherished format that we didn’t want this thing turning into an all-out scrap. I have often wondered what would have happened if we had let it.
Equal amounts of brunette and black strands lay in clumps on the duvets as testament to the damage inflicted in those three brutal minutes. Rachel’s eyes were watering when I got her back to the corner but there was quiet satisfaction from both of us at the way she had handled herself. Maybe she really could ‘cat it out’ when push came to shove.
Now it was her turn to prowl, rejuvenated by the hurt she had inflicted and encouraged to see Laura rubbing the sore ear where her slap had connected.
