Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Hey, you know the real reason Jerry Hall wouldn’t marry Bryan Ferry?’ says Jamie, trying to lighten the mood, bless him.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Well, would you want to be known as Jerry Ferry?’ By now, Rachel and Caroline have made their way back from the loo, looking just like Krystle Carrington and Alexis Colby from Dynasty, all pencil skirts and shoulder pads. Their faces alone are a dead giveaway.

  ‘You were ages,’ says Jamie. ‘I was nearly going to have to go in there after the pair of you. Any longer and you’d have missed your precious David Bowie.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ says Rachel, sitting down opposite me and taking my hand.

  This also raises the hackles of suspicion on the back of my neck, mainly because Rachel adores David Bowie; she’s been waiting all day for him.

  In fact, she and Jamie are always having great heated debates about the Thin White Duke, although Jamie’s main grievance against him isn’t musical. It’s that he called his son Zowie Bowie. ‘Anyone who’d wilfully do that to an innocent child,’ he says, ‘deserves nothing better than a long career in regional panto.’

  Caroline cuts straight to the chase. ‘Suppose we had just heard something really, really awful and we didn’t know how to tell you?’ she says to me, genuinely concerned.

  ‘We have to tell her. We wouldn’t be proper friends otherwise,’ Rachel snaps.

  ‘WHAT? Tell me what?’

  ‘OK,’ says Caroline. ‘When we were in the loo, I met my neighbour Sarah Daly …’

  ‘Yes? And?’

  ‘And you know how her sister is going out with Peter Hughes?’

  ‘Well, no, but I do now.’

  ‘And you know how his brother plays rugby with Greg?’

  ‘Please, just tell me whatever it was you heard, the suspense is wrecking my head.’ I’ve got a nervous knot in my stomach and I don’t know why. I’m also finding it really hard to keep the impatience out of my voice.

  ‘OK,’ says Rachel, taking up the baton. ‘Well, Sarah was playing Trivial Pursuit the other night with the sister and Peter and a gang of his mates and one of them is on the Leinster team with Greg—’

  ‘No, you’re telling it wrong,’ Caroline interrupts. ‘Peter’s brother Seamus is the one who’s on the team with Greg. Remember? The guy who failed the Leaving Cert three times in a row? Oh, you know who I mean; high eyebrows, low IQ.’

  I know they’re both trying to be helpful and that they mean well, but by now I’m fit to be tied. ‘Girls, it doesn’t matter if Peter’s brother plays in a fly-half position with Ronald Reagan, what did you hear about my boyfriend?’

  They look at each other shiftily.

  ‘He’s going out with Sandra Sweetman,’ Rachel eventually says. ‘For definite.’

  ‘WHAT?!’ Try as I might, I can’t stop the tears from welling. I feel like I’ve just been punched.

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ says Jamie, taking my corner. ‘So you heard this from your neighbour’s sister’s boyfriend’s friend?’

  ‘Ehh, yeah,’ says Caroline.

  ‘Oh well, that’s practically CNN,’ he says sarcastically.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ I sob into my Ritz, ‘Greg said he loved me.’

  ‘What?’ says Rachel. ‘When?’

  ‘The night of his debs in the back of his car.’

  ‘He really said that?’

  ‘Well, I told him I loved him and asked if he felt the same and he didn’t deny it. But then he did go back inside and spent the rest of the night chatting her up.’

  David Bowie is on stage now, singing ‘Modern Love’.

  ‘And this was our song,’ I bawl, like a five-year-old.

  The others have all put comforting arms around me and then the single worst moment of my seventeen-year-old life unfolds. I spot Greg. With Sandra Sweetman. The bar is packed and smoky, but it’s definitely them. As if to confirm their couple status, he’s wearing his Miami Vice pants and she’s wearing the matching white jacket over her ra-ra skirt. She looks all blonde and tiny and is snuggled into him possessively as loads of her bloody student union pals at the bar call them over, offering to buy them drinks.

  All I want to do is crawl under the table and pray really hard for an aneurism or a heart attack or any medical emergency that’ll get me out of this, when Rachel takes over.

  Looking like the Amazonian giant that she is, even scarier than one of those girls in the Robert Palmer ‘Addicted to Love’ video, she picks up her pint of Fürstenberg and strides over to them.

  Greg blanches a bit under his designer stubble as he sees her thunder towards him at her most intimidating. Even over the noise and David Bowie and all the screaming fans in Wembley, I can still hear her loud and clear.

  ‘Amelia is too sweet a person ever to say this to your face,’ she snarls down at him as the packed bar is eerily silenced, ‘so I’ll do it for her. You are a lying, cheating scumbag and if you ever come near her again, I’ll do this to you.’

  With that, she flings the pint of beer into his face, smashes the glass on the floor and strides back to where the rest of us are sitting, gobsmacked.

  ‘Problem solved,’ she says. ‘Are you OK?’

  I’m too dumbstruck to speak, so Jamie expresses what we’re all feeling. ‘Well, congratulations, Rachel. You just became my personal heroine.’

  Chapter Four

  Who Says Only Mafia Wives Wear Leather?

  In my darkest moments of despair, when I’m seriously thinking that the universe has given up on ever finding me a life partner and wondering if I’m destined to live out the rest of my natural life alone, there’s one bright, shining thought which never fails to fill me with renewed optimism and hope for what lies ahead.

  Caroline and Mike and their perfect, soulmate marriage.

  Caroline and Mike are one of those couples that you just look at in awe and marvel at. He’s as lovely as she is; she adores him and he idolizes her. In fact, he’s put her on a pedestal so high that if Catherine Zeta Jones left Michael Douglas for him, the chances of him even noticing would be slim to negligible. They’re lucky, lucky people and you can’t even begrudge them, not for a moment. If ever I find myself wondering whether I’m better off alone, Caroline and Mike come into my mind and I think: NO. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, true love exists and marriage does work. Spectacularly well, in fact.

  We’re just finishing up brunch when Mike arrives to collect Caroline, carrying a bunch of stargazer lilies, her favourites.

  ‘Well? How are the champagne Sheilas?’ he asks, pecking me and Rachel on the cheek, but only after giving his glowing wife a bear hug and presenting her with the bouquet, as if he hasn’t seen her in weeks instead of only a couple of hours ago.

  Did I mention that, in addition to being both husband and father of the year, filthy rich and great fun to boot, Mike is also incredibly handsome? He’s very tall, broad-shouldered with classic, preppy good looks, bright blue eyes and alert good manners; the type of man who really listens to you and cares about what you’re saying – and it isn’t an act. He’s not only the type of man Ralph Lauren would kill to have in one of his ads, but the yardstick by which I unconsciously measure all future boyfriends/life partners/lovers/quickies/husbands.

  Even Jamie fancies him a bit.

  ‘Actually, we’re remarkably sober,’ replies Rachel. ‘For us.’

  ‘So what’ll you pair get up to for the rest of the afternoon?’ Caroline asks as we all say our goodbyes. I mutter something about having some shopping to do, but before I can say my five favourite words in the English language, ‘seasonal stock reduced to clear’, Rachel has ordered another bottle of Sancerre.

  ‘Feck it anyway,’ she says to me as soon as the happy couple have gone. ‘When you’re out, you’re out.’

  ‘Rachel, can I ask you something?’

  ‘As long as it’s not my real age. As Oscar Wilde says, a woman who would tell you that would tell you anything.’

  ‘Do
you ever look at Caroline and Mike and envy what they have?’

  She almost choked on the Sancerre. ‘Are you mental? Have you been inhaling cleaning products?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I. Why would I envy anyone, just because they’re married? I have absolutely no desire to come home to lovey-dovey coupleland because I’ve been there and it’s all complete crap. Look at me, Amelia. I used to be like you. Idealistic and romantic and believing in the happy-ever-after fairy tale. This’ – she points threateningly at her own face – ‘is what two husbands have done to me. I am now looking down the barrel at forty and I’m not prepared to compromise my life ever again for any melon-headed man. Sorry, but I happen to like getting drunk on a Saturday afternoon with my friends if I feel like it. I like smoking in bed. I like eating, or not eating, or living on take-outs entirely depending on how I feel. The sad single is a marketing notion pedalled to us by Hollywood and it doesn’t exist and the sooner you realize that the better. Living on your own is cool, and you know it.’

  ‘Come on, Rach, do you honestly want to end up alone and childless?’

  ‘Fingers crossed, yeah.’

  ‘Is that why you’re so down on me doing this course?’

  ‘No, I just don’t want to see you getting hurt, that’s all. I know you’re still getting over the emotional car crash that was He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken. And you’re doing really well, and we’re all so proud of you. So why go delving back into the past and opening up a whole new can of worms? Seems to me you have an awful lot to lose and bugger all to gain.’

  I shudder, as I always do, at the mere mention of He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken, but I should probably give a tiny bit of background. He’s South African, and has now gone back to live in Johannesburg, permanently. Here is how each of the Lovely Girls feels about him, in no particular order.

  Jamie: ‘If you’d got married and he’d whisked you back to Stab City with him, mark my words, you’d have ended up living in a mud hut, sending letters home saying, “Please, I beg you, for the love of God, send penicillin.” ’

  Rachel: ‘Or else you’d be writing, “Dear all, Guess who came to visit our village today? Bob Geldof! With any luck we should have running water by 2020. PS: My typhoid is clearing up nicely. Am returning the make-up you sent me as my husband says cosmetics are the work of Satan. If you could send some corrugated iron for the roof instead, I’d be very grateful.” ’

  Caroline: ‘ “Dear Lovely Girls, It’s been fifteen years now, why have none of you come out to visit? Could it be because you have to squat over a hole in the ground to go to the loo?” ’

  Jamie (again): ‘ “Dear all, Unfortunately, I have to return the beautiful Manolo Blahnik sandals you so kindly sent me for my birthday. It’s such a shame, as the post took three and a half years to get them here. However, they have deeply offended the tribal elders in our village and anyway, my husband prefers me barefoot.” ’

  Rachel brings me back to the present, still in full rant-mode. ‘You have such Pollyanna ideas about marriage, Amelia, and it’s all utter bollockology. I’m sorry, but you want to track down Greg lying, cheating Taylor? Who didn’t so much break your heart as smash it into smithereens? Publicly too, the worst way possible.’

  ‘I never thanked you, you know.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For dumping him for me. Wasn’t life so much simpler back then?’ I mused, topping up our glasses.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you fancied a guy, it was all so straightforward. One of us would just go up to him and say, “My friend fancies you, do you want to go out with her?” ’

  ‘Thereby completely eliminating any fear of rejection he might have.’

  ‘Precisely. And then when dumping time came, which it inevitably did—’

  ‘Usually after two weeks of sweaty slow sets in Wesley and a couple of snogs.’

  ‘Your mates did it for you. Or else told you in the toilets that his friend had told them that it was finished. Simple.’

  ‘It hurt like hell, but it certainly was effective.’

  We both start snorting now as the Sancerre really begins to kick in.

  ‘So what are you up to later?’ Rachel asks.

  I take another sip of wine. She’s so dead-set against the whole idea of me doing this course that she’ll probably fly off the handle if she hears what I have planned, but then I figure: What the hell. I’m a grown woman and I’m doing this with or without anyone’s blessing.

  ‘It’s homework for the course.’

  ‘Homework? What, do they make you take tests and then grade you?’

  ‘If you’re going to be like that, I’m not telling you.’

  ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘Well, Ira Vandergelder says that—’

  ‘How can you even say that name with a straight face?’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you or not? Anyway, one of the famous marketing principles they teach at Harvard, apparently, is called creating your best look. Packaging, basically. The product I’m selling is me, so I have to revamp my wardrobe a bit. You know, smarten up. Just like you would for any big job interview.’

  She looks at me with that great bit of devilment she gets in her eyes and in a moment all our feuding is forgotten. ‘Well, boy, are you out lunchtime boozing with the right person.’

  Another bottle of wine later and not only have I abandoned my car but am standing in my bra and knickers (which, thank God, at least match) in the changing room of Urban Chic, the ultra-cool boutique which Rachel both owns and manages.

  The shop is closed by the time we get there, but she opens up, almost sets the alarm off (we’re that tipsy), orders me into a changing room and barks at me to strip off. ‘Right. Let me just explain something,’ she says, coming in with about five different changes of outfit draped over her arm (none of which I’d ever be caught dead in). ‘There are two basic types of woman in the world. There’s the bikini type and then there’s the swimming togs type. Now, you’re a classic example of a bikini body trapped inside a twenty-five-euro pair of swimming togs from Marks and Spencer with matching sarong. I always tell my customers that you’ve officially reached middle age when you find yourself wandering through the ladies’ department of M and S and saying, “Oh, look at those slacks, they’re really nice.” ’

  ‘Rachel, you’re drunk. This is one of those times when only doctors can understand you.’

  ‘No, no, hear me out,’ she slurs. ‘Look at you. FANTASTIC figure. You have the body of a Romanian gymnast.’

  ‘I’m waiting for the but.’

  ‘But why do you insist on going around wearing old lady camouflage? There are women out there who would pay a top surgeon any amount of cash to end up with a figure like yours, and what do you go around in? Baggy jumpers and jeans that do absolutely nothing for you.’

  She’s right. I am a stylist’s nightmare, and it’s very unlikely you’d ever catch my name on a best-dressed list. Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank et al. needn’t lose any sleep on my account.

  ‘It’s just because of work, you see,’ I protest feebly. ‘No one on a TV crew dresses up. The office is so casual that if I came in looking glam, they’d probably call security. And then with the early morning location shoots too, ninety per cent of the time it’s so cold that I never really care what I look like. I just want to be warm. Comfort will always win out over fashion with me.’

  ‘Amelia, listen to me. You know I think this course you’re on is a load of horse manure.’

  ‘I have a vague recollection of you mentioning something about that, yeah.’

  ‘But there is one thing I can do for you. Protect you from your natural instinct, which is to dress like an Estonian air hostess.’

  ‘Thanks very much, I’ll just leave my self-esteem at the door on my way out.’

  ‘Shut up and put this on,’ she says, thrusting what I can only describe as a costume from
the Moulin Rouge at me: a black, corsety-type thing with red-ribboned shoulder straps and a tight leather jacket. With, and I wish I was joking here, a matching black suede miniskirt. It flashes through my head that, in this clobber, I look like I should be fronting the TV makeover show Pimp My Ride.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I laugh incredulously, sticking my head over the saloon door of the changing room.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Let’s see now, where will I start. Number one, I am not Beyoncé Knowles and I am not performing in a live stage show in the Point Depot tonight. Number two, nor am I soliciting for business on street corners after hours. Number three, does the phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” mean anything to you?’

  ‘Just try it on, that’s all I’m asking,’ Rachel cajoles, disappearing upstairs to the stock room. ‘Shop’s empty, no one can see you except me.’ A minute later she reappears waving a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. ‘And if you do, there’s a glass of bubbly in it for you.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ I say reluctantly, ‘but I’m only doing this cos you got me drunk. And if there’s CCTV in here, you are so dead.’

  Two minutes later, I emerge from the changing room, in a state of shock. Rachel’s absolutely right, the outfit actually works. To my astonishment, I don’t feel ridiculous or middle-aged or tarty. This feels sexy and funky and …

  ‘WOW!’ Rachel exclaims, circling around me. ‘Oh my God, I am sooooo good at my job! I thought it would work well, but, baby, look at you!! Scarlett Johansson eat your heart out.’

  ‘Oh Rach, I love it! I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but you are going down as the woman who put me back into a mini for the first time in a decade. I don’t care what it costs, I have to have it.’

  She pours two very large glasses of champagne and hands me one. ‘On the house.’

  In her own way, it’s almost as if she’s atoning for giving me such a hard time about the course earlier. Rachel can be like that. One minute, you’re a foil for all of her wisecracks and wittiness and you have to be on your toes like a bantamweight boxer just to keep up with her; the next, she’s being so overwhelmingly generous, you’re left with tears in your eyes. Everyone should have a Rachel in their lives. Like I said, it’s the nearest I’ll ever come to sitting in the Algonquin hotel in 1920s New York, in a flapper dress and a cloche hat, smoking from a cigarette holder and drinking martinis with Dorothy Parker and her vicious circle.