What If?

by Shari Low

  Jess comes to my rescue. ‘Okay, I’m quite sure you’ve thought long and hard about this—’

  I interrupt her. ‘I just thought of it today.’

  She persists, ever hopeful. ‘And that you’ve got the finances to carry it off.’

  ‘I don’t have a bean. It’s all going on my credit cards.’

  Jess winces. Her rescue attempt is running aground. ‘At least tell us you’ve got a plan.’

  I pause, carefully considering what I’m about to say. I know that one wrong word and they’ll have me chained to the table leg until they can talk sense into me.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Look, I know it’s crazy. I know I’ll probably fall flat on my face, but I have to try. I feel like this is a watershed year. We’re careering towards a new century and I want my life to be as happy as it can be. I’m a grown woman and for the last year my sex life has been battery operated, for God’s sake.’ There are a few splutters from nearby tables. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud. Still, I persist, ‘A voice inside me just tells me that this is the right thing to do.’

  Kate sighs. ‘I’ve warned you before about those voices. You’re far too old to have an invisible friend.’

  They’re warming. The edges of their lips are beginning to quiver. In a minute, Jess might even smile.

  I press on. ‘I haven’t met anyone I felt strongly about for a long time and maybe that’s because no one matches up to the guys I’ve been in love with. I just need to be sure that I haven’t made a huge mistake by chucking away someone who would have made me really happy if I’d had the sense and maturity to see it.’

  ‘But every one of them ended badly,’ Carol points out. That’s Carol. She only comes out with a dose of reality once in a blue moon and it’s always when you least expect or need it.

  ‘I know they did, but it was always my fault. Every one of them bit the dust for the sole reason that I bailed or self-destructed the minute I had doubts. In their own different ways, they were all great guys. Maybe I just gave up too soon. And I want to find out if that’s the case.’

  Kate regains her composure and asks again for the plan.

  ‘I’m going to start from the beginning and trace them in order of meeting them. Don’t know why, it just seems logical.’

  Carol goes for pragmatic sarcasm. ‘Oh, yes, we’ve got to keep this logical.’

  I roll my eyes in mock affront.

  Jess intervenes. ‘But how are you going to find them? You haven’t seen some of them for years.’

  Carol jumps back in. ‘Clive says one day we’ll be able to find absolutely anyone and anything just by searching on the internet. One of the companies he invests in is working on it already. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s a mad idea and he’s wasting his money.’

  I brush past her technology update by explaining that I’m going to go to the last place I saw them and take it from there. Not an exact science, but it’s all I’ve got. Actually, going back to where I met them is part of the adventure. I can’t wait to travel again.

  ‘Jesus,’ Kate groans, ‘Cooper, this is real life, not an episode of Cagney & Lacey.’

  I thought she was coming round to the idea. Obviously not.

  ‘What’s the alternative, Kate? Stay here and stay miserable? Okay, talk the pros and cons through with me then. Let’s start with the cons.’

  Kate starts. ‘Con Number One. You’re giving up your career.’

  ‘I bloody hate my job, Kate. When I was a kid, I never dreamt of growing up and riding off to sell toilet rolls. What am I going to say when I get to heaven? “Hello God, what can I get you? Padded, quilted, one-ply, two-ply, white or pink?”’

  ‘Point taken, but you’re successful, Cooper. You’ve climbed up the ladder and now you’re going to slide back down it and land at the bottom.’

  ‘Well, at least I’ll bounce,’ I say petulantly. ‘Have you seen the size of my arse lately?’

  The smiles turn to chuckles and I hope that’s a sign that I’m beginning to win them over.

  It’s Carol’s turn. ‘Con number two. They’re probably all married with kids by now. You could have some extremely irate wives on your hands here.’

  ‘If they’re married, I’ll back off straight away. I’m not doing this to upset anyone, Carol. First sign of a wedding ring and I’ll be out of there.’

  ‘Think that’s what got you into this mess in the first place,’ Kate quips. I ignore her. This is no time for accuracy and perceptive insight.

  Back to Jess. ‘Con number three. You could end up with nothing, Carly,’ she says softly, her eyes beseeching me to change my mind.

  I smile ruefully. ‘I haven’t got anything now. At least not anything that matters.’

  They collectively howl in indignation.

  ‘Except you guys,’ I add quickly, before they reach for sharp objects. ‘And my family. But I’ll always have you lot, no matter what happens. Everything else is just “things” and they mean nothing to me. Does my obscenely expensive lava lamp keep me warm in bed at night?’

  ‘Not without the risk of electrocution,’ Kate smiles.

  I sit back. What would I do without my friends? We’ve been together since flares were in fashion the first time. And we’ll still be doing monthly dinners with a crisis before every course when we’re fifty. God knows what our dramas will be then. Judging by the way this is going, I’ll still be single and wailing about my tragic romantic life.

  The desserts come, the waiters concentrating furiously to avoid being so distracted by Carol’s gorgeousness that our selection of sundaes bite the dust.

  Kate looks at the others for psychic consensus and obviously gets it. ‘Okay, babe, we’re behind you.’

  The others nod reluctantly.

  ‘Just think, Cooper, this is worse than the time you decided to convert to Buddhism and sent a letter to the Dalai Lama requesting a personal audience,’ Carol laughs.

  ‘I only did that so that I could meet Richard Gere,’ I retort huffily, still narked by the fact that I didn’t actually get a Pretty Woman moment.

  ‘Or the time that you found out where Liam Neeson was filming and stalked the set hoping he’d notice you,’ Jess adds.

  What are they suggesting? That, in the past, my schemes and plans have been somewhat misguided?

  ‘No, no, no,’ Carol protests. ‘The best one was when you sent that poem to Madonna. You waited months for her to release it as her next single. You even spent the expected royalties.’ Another cacophony of shrieks and giggles.

  ‘How did it go again?’ Carol splutters. ‘I’ll stick with you in the sun and the rain…’ she croons. ‘If you bring the whip and I’ll bring the chains…’

  People are staring at the hysterical women now and Kate is crossing her legs to avert any potential accidents.

  ‘I still can’t believe she didn’t release that,’ I murmur, feigning outrage.

  I get the point though. In the past I’ve been somewhat over-optimistic in my hopes and dreams. But that doesn’t mean I should give up trying.

  Somewhere there’s another life just waiting for me. And before we get to the year 2000, I’m going to find it.

  8

  Let’s Talk About Sex – Salt-N-Pepa

  I threw myself into work after the Doug fiasco, feeling second only to Third World dictators in the villain stakes.

  The consequences of my actions measured eight on the Richter scale of devastation. Every time my mother cast eyes on me, she clasped a damp cloth to her brow and muttered that I had obviously inherited my lack of scruples from my dad’s side of the family. She even took to praying for me at mass. I tried to console her with the thought that Mary Magdalene had been a bit of a tart and God forgave her, but it fell on deaf ears.

  A few weeks after Doug called off the wedding, Callum broke his vow of silence to me only to tell me that his friend had transferred to the Manchester branch of his national car sales chain. I decided the universe was twistin
g the knife. Not only had I desperately hurt and humiliated Doug, but now I’d caused my brother to lose his mate.

  Callum was not happy. I racked my brain to think of a time when he’d been more pissed off with me than this. The only thing that came close was when we were kids and I glued two peanut breasts on to his Ken Doll so that he’d look stunning in a silver lamé frock that I’d made from Bacofoil. It resulted in me being battered over the head with a busty Ken. Somehow that paled into insignificance compared to this.

  As for Mark, well, I didn’t want to be seen within a hundred yards of him so I ignored his calls until they stopped coming. He fell into the ‘men’ bracket and I resolved that I’d rather don an anorak and take up trainspotting than go near another member of the male species. I just hoped that ‘Sally from Edinburgh’ was far enough away that the jungle drums wouldn’t reach her. One devastated relationship was bad enough.

  I worked day and night for ten months, enduring the stares, finger pointing and gossip of the club-goers. My exploits had become legendary. I was mortified and I knew I deserved every bit of the toe-curling embarrassment.

  The only good aspect of having the social life of a hermit was that I saved enough money to move into my own flat, allowing Kate to reclaim her lounge.

  April came and I started thinking about my impending twenty-third birthday. A joyous event, was it not? An excuse for rapturous celebration and copious amounts of good wishes from my fellow human beings? At this rate, I’d be having the party in the phone box at the end of the road.

  I decided that I had to get away to somewhere nobody knew me. Somewhere they didn’t ring bells and cry ‘Plague’ when they saw me coming.

  I approached Ray and begged for a month off. He was going to be the only other poor sod in the telephone box with me, as, unlike the rest of the planet, Ray was actually quite pleased with me. Takings in the club were up by 20 per cent, fights were down to a manageable level (average of two black eyes and a concussion per night) and the roaring trade in illegal substances was now, if not completely wiped out, then at least forced outside the club rather than inside.

  I’d done my job, so after an impressive amount of grovelling, he finally agreed to give me three weeks off. I didn’t want a package tour surrounded by loved-up couples, so I decided that America was beckoning me. I knew no one there, I had no American baggage, so I could just go, mind my own business and stay out of trouble.

  A few days before I was due to leave, we were having a ‘Psychic Night’ in the club. It was my new idea for a Wednesday evening, the only night of the week that we’d previously been closed. Now, nearly two hundred people, 90 per cent of them women, scrambled for tickets every week to see the floor show. It was completely manufactured and more theatrical than spiritual, but everyone loved it.

  First up every night was The Mighty Romano, who would summon spirits from the other side and would pass on messages to the audience. ‘Dave says the money is under the floorboards’ (obviously a drug dealer when he was alive) or ‘Edward says he still loves you and is waiting for you’ (despite the fact that he died of a heart attack whilst shagging his secretary).

  It was all nonsense to me. The only spirits I believed in were gin, vodka and Bacardi and we sold those to the mystic followers by the bucket.

  On this particular night, I was standing at the back of the audience, picking off my nail varnish to relieve the boredom of Mighty’s performance, when a comment triggered my attention.

  Mighty repeated it. ‘I have an old lady called Catherine here. She’s looking for her great-granddaughter.’

  My great-grandmother was called Catherine. Coincidence, I told myself, so were half of the Irish Catholic great-grandmothers in Scotland.

  Mighty Ridiculous continued, ‘She says her great-granddaughter is about to take a trip.’

  I looked around the entranced sea of faces to see if anyone was claiming the message.

  ‘She says to tell you that you’ve lost your way recently, but not to worry. The reason for everything that’s happened will become clear on the trip. It concerns a man, a tall, dark man. She says that he’s the one you’ve been looking for.’

  I was rooted to the spot. Why didn’t I get one of the ones concerning oodles of cash hidden in the rafters? No, I had to get a prophecy that I was about to have an altercation with an age old fictional cliché.

  It’s a load of bollocks, I told myself. Mighty Full of Crap was probably Joe Bloggs, a plumber from Bradford, during the day.

  I saved the whole evening on a mental floppy disc labelled ‘Bullshit’ and stored it at the back of my mind with the other assorted junk. I didn’t have time to dwell on it anyway. The next psychic sent messages from a man on the other side to ‘his Maggie’, and two Margarets in the audience came to blows over who it was meant for. The next medium predicted a woman would meet Tom Jones and she promptly fainted. Ten minutes later, we had a fire alarm and had to clear the room. My point was proven. It was obviously all a load of old tosh, because not one of the psychic stars had seen that coming.

  New York was everything I’d dreamt of and more. I’d seen `When Harry Met Sally’ at least a dozen times and now I was here, in their world, although absolutely resolute that there would be no orgasms, either real or fake. The hotel was opposite Madison Square Garden and had definitely seen better days, but the peeling paint and the dusty rooms gave it a comfortable lived-in feeling, like ten year old slippers.

  I soon settled into a routine, rising at seven every morning and wandering up to Central Park. I’d spend an hour walking briskly round the park, watching the early-morning masochists jogging, cycling and roller-skating, before heading to a coffee house on 57th Street for a coffee, a croissant and a gab with the French owner, Pierre. He reminded me of René and caused frequent pangs of longing for Amsterdam and Joe. It was hard to believe that it was almost three years since I’d left there. After breakfast, I’d return to the hotel and change before continuing my on-foot exploration of the city. I systematically worked my way up and down every area – SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, Tribeca, Greenwich Village, taking in the sights, the sounds and trying not to look like a tourist who had everything she owned in the bum bag that was strapped around her waist. I’d read a newspaper story about thefts from hotel safes and I wasn’t taking chances with my travellers cheques.

  At six o’clock every evening, I queued at the discount theatre ticket booth in Times Square to buy a cheap ticket for one of the performances that evening. The Phantom Of The Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats – I saw them all with just a Diet Coke and a hot-dog for company. Scotland, work, Doug and Mark could have been a million miles away as I slurped the ketchup from my bread roll, but I realised, with a sinking feeling, they were getting closer every day.

  One evening, gloomed by the fact that it was only two days until I went home, I took the latest Sydney Sheldon down to the bar and proceeded to launch an all-out assault on the hotel vodka stocks. After an hour or so, the novel was abandoned as the Smirnoff struck up a conversation with the other sad characters sitting alone at the bar. Sometimes my dad’s genes kicked in with a vengeance.

  By midnight, I was leading a rousing chorus of ‘Flower of Scotland’, shouting the words before each line so that the multitude of nationalities could join in. I sounded like a Scottish Television Hogmanay broadcast. I moved on to ‘Scotland The Brave’, ‘The Skye Boat Song’, and was preparing to burst into ‘I Belong to Glasgow’ when the quick reflexes of a passing waiter saved me from certain concussion as I wobbled on my bar stool. The kind soul escorted me to my room and ceremoniously dumped me on the duvet, before returning to the bar, his good deed done for the day.

  Next morning, I woke with a head that felt like the Yankees had been using it for baseball practice. I groggily looked at my watch, surprised to see that it hadn’t been lost or stolen in my stupor of the previous night. Nine o’clock. Well, so much for my early-morning jaunt to the park. Coffee and bacon sandwiches, I tho
ught, and don’t spare the calories.

  I dressed slowly, each movement threatening to relieve me of my stomach. I descended in the lift, face pressed against the cold steel doors for comfort, removing it just in time to avoid falling flat on my face as they flew open at the ground floor. I staggered out and looked around for the exit, having left my sense of direction and memory at the bottom of a vodka glass.

  I stopped in my tracks. Holy shit! I clasped my hands to my head. I was hallucinating. All around me were grotesque figures – men with huge deformed ears, others who were half-human, half-beast, children with two heads dragging mangled limbs. I’d died and gone to hell.

  I looked around frantically, bile rising in my throat. I could see hotel staff behind reception, going about their normal business, not batting an eyelid at this horror in front of them.

  Deep breath, deep breath, stay calm. This was obviously a figment of my imagination. What the hell did I drink last night?

  I edged my way around the foyer, head down, lest I make eye contact with one of the beasts and be beamed up to their planet where I’d be impregnated by a predatory creature. Watching Alien 2 in my room a few nights before had clearly left scars and I was no Sigourney Weaver.

  I occasionally peeked up to see if the monsters had gone, but no, they were getting closer: chatting, milling around, interacting with each other like they were normal beings.

  I finally reached the door, but a huge board blocked it. Standing in front of it, I was deafened by the roar of my beating heart. Panic was rising. I squeezed past the obstacle. I was almost there. The automatic doors gradually opened. Free! I burst out into the morning sun. Holy Sigourney, the relief! I was never drinking alcohol again.

  I turned around to check that I hadn’t imagined it all, but I couldn’t see past the board. The board. What did it say? I squinted, trying desperately to focus, before emitting a cackle so loud that passers-by crossed the street to avoid me. In huge letters it read: