If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Even though I’m narky? And I haven’t been treating you right?’

  ‘Still love you.’

  ‘Even though, at the moment, I’m sure I stink like Calcutta at low tide?’

  Vintage James Kane: get around a woman by giving her the little-boy-lost look, then cracking a gag. Albeit a rubbish one.

  ‘Still love you,’ she giggles. ‘Now stop talking and take me upstairs.’

  OK, now . . . actual vomit is beginning to rise at the back of my throat.

  ‘RIGHT, THAT’S IT, THAT’S ENOUGH! You can bloody well STOP that carry-on this instant!’ I find myself yelling at the top of my voice, starting to feel like a voyeur and hating it, and not able to take any more of this crapology.

  ‘What?’ says James, pulling back.

  ‘Nothing, darling,’ says Sophie, puzzled.

  ‘You just told me to stop.’

  ‘Did not.’

  ‘Did, too.’

  ‘OH, WOULD YOU HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF RESPECT FOR THE DEAD,’ I snarl at the pair of them, furious. With myself as well, for being dozy enough to think that the bastard actually loved me and was in tatters without me.

  Blinded to reality in life, and now in bloody death too.

  ‘Sophie, did you just say something about respect for the dead . . . ?’ says James. But there’s no shutting me up now.

  ‘SOME OF US ARE STILL WARM IN OUR GRAVES, I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW, AND HERE’S YOU PAIR ACTING LIKE . . .’

  ‘Can you hear that?’ he says, looking all around him, like there’s a burglar loose in the house.

  ‘Hear what?’ says Sophie.

  ‘Stuff about . . . graves?’

  I do not believe this. Can he actually hear me?

  ‘James?’ I say, tentatively.

  ‘Who is saying that?’ he shouts, half-terrified. ‘Is someone in here?’

  ‘Would you please mind telling me what’s going on?’ says Sophie, the voice getting back to its usual screechiness. A big improvement, by the way, on her sexy voice.

  ‘Tell me you just heard that,’ he shouts at her, panicky now.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘James Kane?’ I say again, slowly and distinctly, and I might as well have added ‘testing, testing, one two three’, on at the end. This can’t be true . . . can it? Can he really hear me but no one else can?

  ‘My name, someone just said my name, Jesus Christ, Sophie, you must have heard that.’

  ‘Heard what? You know, I think you’re still a bit drunk from last night.’

  ‘Who is there?’ James shouts now, heading upstairs, as if he’s about to take on an intruder. In his underpants, armed with a mobile phone, the cack-head.

  My head’s swimming. I mean, no one in angel school even mentioned that this might happen. But now that it has . . . suddenly I get the strongest urge to start messing.

  ‘THIS,’ I say, following him and talking in a deep, slow booming voice, like a scary Vincent Price, ‘IS THE VOICE OF YOUR CONSCIENCE.’

  It’s hysterical. He nearly falls over with fright, then runs back downstairs and starts checking out the living room and kitchen, panicking, looking behind the curtains, then under the coffee table, racing around the place like a lab rat on amphetamines. I’m right beside him, desperately trying not to laugh, hands to my mouth like a megaphone.

  ‘RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU ARE DOOMED, JAMES KANE, DOOOOOOMED I TELL YOU!’

  ‘Sophie, will you for God’s sake tell me that you can hear that!’

  ‘James, I really think that you need to lie down . . .’ she screeches back at him.

  ‘Can you tell her to shut up?’ I say in my normal voice now. ‘Otherwise half-deaf Mrs Brady from next door will be able to hear her.’

  ‘Charlotte?’ he asks to thin air, the picture of terror. ‘Is that you? Are you there?’

  ‘No,’ shrieks Sophie. ‘Charlotte is NOT here, how can she be? It’s ME. Sophie. Your girlfriend. What has happened to the not-insane part of you?’

  James waves at her impatiently to shush, and if you saw the sight of him wandering around in his underpants, ashen-faced and shaking, like he’s waiting on the walls to suddenly start talking to him, you’d crack up.

  ‘James, I’m speaking to you,’ says Miss Screechy Voice.

  ‘Shhhhhh!’

  ‘Don’t shush me! Oh, for God’s sake, is there a brick wall here that I can talk to instead?’

  ‘Will you shuuuuuut uuuuuup!’ he snaps at her.

  ‘You know, if you think it’s OK to speak to me like that, you’re very much mistaken,’ she yells back, adjusting the beret.

  Bloody hell, she’s an awful lot tougher on him than I ever was. A zero-tolerance policy on putting up with all his rudeness. Which, come to think of it, is possibly where I went wrong.

  ‘Charlotte,’ he says, slowly, very slowly. ‘If you’re there, will you say something?’

  ‘All right then, if you insist,’ I say, really starting to enjoy myself. ‘Tell Sophie I’m standing right beside her, and can see for myself that all the rumours are true and that she definitely had a botch Botox job. You can tell by the way the eyelids look droopier than a cocker spaniel’s. Dead giveaway.’

  ‘Sophie has not had a botch Botox job,’ he shouts back, facing the TV, with his back to me, which sets me off in peals of laughter again.

  ‘And ask her is she still breaking in the new nose?’

  ‘That is NOT a new nose!’

  ‘What did you say about me?’ says Miss Screechy. ‘Something about Botox?’

  Oh God, this is turning into a sitcom.

  ‘Furthermore,’ I say, sitting comfortably on the sofa and stretching myself out. ‘At the agency we have rude nicknames for all the clients who annoy us. And hers is Screechy Sophie.’

  ‘Nor does Sophie have a screechy voice!’

  ‘Plus, out of all the actors I know, she is by a mile the single biggest drama queen.’

  ‘That is so unfair . . .’

  ‘You know what they say, “If the tiara fits . . .”’

  ‘EXCUSE ME!’ yells Sophie from the door, with the Bette Davis eyes nearly popping out of her head, looking like the flesh is about to melt off her face at any second. ‘If you think I’m going to stay here watching you screaming at thin air about Botox and insulting my voice then you’ve another thing coming, James Kane. Why don’t you sleep off all the booze, then call me when you’re feeling a little bit more like yourself? You have my number.’

  ‘Still six six six then, is it?’ I call innocently after her.

  ‘Sophie,’ he says, following her to the door, running his hands through his hair and making it even messier. ‘Please, baby, just hear me out. I don’t know what’s going on, I could have sworn I heard . . . look, I dunno what’s happening, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.’

  ‘Of course there is. You’re still pissed,’ she snaps, flouncing back to her Mini Cooper and banging the car door so hard, the windows rattle.

  ‘And another thing,’ I call out from where I’m stretched out on the sofa, unable to resist a parting shot. ‘Tell her that car will for ever more be associated with Mr Bean.’

  Hee, hee, hee.

  Might as well have a bit of fun with this.

  Chapter Five

  FIONA

  Incredible. Unbelievable. In fact, I’m really starting to get into the swing of this whole angelic-realm lark. Declan arrives, and immediately starts briefing James about the meeting he missed this morning, filling him in about some other big investor they have to try and schmooze later on this week. I’m lying on the sofa, bored out of my head and idly wondering how Fiona is . . . and the next thing is . . . I’m with her. It’s that easy. Like I’ve suddenly got this free pass into everyone else’s life. I’m not showing off or anything, honestly; I just thought about her, and somehow, now I’m right here beside her, in the empty staff room at the secondary school where she works, to be exact. Definitely. I’ve been here with her a few times
before and I instantly recognize it by the horrible flowery lino on the floor, which you’d only ever find inside a school run by nuns, not to mention all the statues of the Sacred Heart tastefully dotted around the walls. Not.

  And there’s my girl, sitting in this little individual cubicle all the teachers use whenever they’ve a free period and they’re supposed to be correcting homework but are actually online, or in Fiona’s case at the moment, half-heartedly checking out fellas on one of her favourite websites: www.maybemorethanfriends.com. There’s an unopened, untouched packet of Tayto cheese and onion beside her, which is odd as I happen to know they’re her favourites. Also, even more bizarrely, there’s a photo of the two of us sellotaped to her wall, and just at the exact moment I plonk down beside her, she turns to stare at it. Dear God, just the sight of that slightly bewildered, teary look on her pale, drawn face is making me feel winded, like I’ve physically been punched in the chest. What makes it worse is that this isn’t a girl who ordinarily does emotions; she’s not a high/low person like me, so to see her now, looking all red-eyed and wistful, is breaking my heart.

  ‘Fiona?’

  I’m perched on the desk, only inches from her, but she can’t hear me.

  Shit.

  ‘Honey, I’ll give you good money if you throw out that photo. You know perfectly well all evidence of me with the fringe is banned,’ I say cheerily, trying to lighten the mood.

  Still nothing.

  Bugger.

  The one time I actually really do have loads of urgent news to tell her. I mean, Fiona and I have been known to have two-hour-long phone chats slagging off some of the more lunatic ideas that end up on Dragons’ Den, so you can imagine the length of time we’d need to get through this latest twist.

  What’s doubly weird, though, is that I’d swear she’s getting some kind of sense of me, because she hasn’t taken her eyes off that bloody photo. Not once. Oh, this is so frustrating. I know by looking at her that she’s missing me, and I miss her so much it aches, and there she is, thinking I’m the dear departed, and if she only knew that I’m actually right here, at her shoulder, just waiting to work a wondrous miracle on her behalf.

  She picks up the photo now, and props it up beside the computer screen, chin cupped in her hands, just staring blankly at it. A highly offensive snap I might add, taken on an InterRail holiday, the summer we left college. One of those studenty, let’s-rough-it-around-Europe trips that to this day, whenever I’m away, still makes me childishly, pathetically grateful to have an en suite bathroom with a working loo and actual toilet roll.

  We ran out of money in the first week, and basically ended up living off baguettes, bananas and beer while grabbing showers wherever we could in train stations. Believe me, in the photo it shows; I look manky and greasy-haired, Fiona looks exactly the same as she always does, only skinnier and with a peeling red nose. Otherwise, apart from wearing contact lenses instead of jam-jar glasses now, she hasn’t changed a bit: the same big hopeful eyes, same neat blonde, bobbed Victoria Wood haircut, same free-flowing clothes and frilly blouses, and so teeny tiny that all the sixth-years tower over her and look miles older than she does. We often laugh and tell her that the Queen has reinvented her look more often, but Fiona’s very much of the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ school. Plus, when it comes to clothes, she was always a great one for preferring comfort over high fashion any day. Plus there’s another reason why I remember that InterRail holiday as clearly as I do, but more of that anon.

  Anyway, to look at Fiona, and when you factor in that she’s a schoolteacher, you might fall into the trap of thinking that she’s a bit conservative in a nice-old-fashioned-girl kind of way. To quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, big mistake. Huge. When I first met Fiona, not only was she the wildest person I knew, she was the wildest person that anyone I knew knew. If we’d known James back then, I bet she’d even have given him a run for his money when it came to hard-core partying. You just would never have thought it at first glance, that’s all. Sort of like a Batman/Bruce Wayne thing she had going on. By day, she led a normal, ordinary existence; by night she’d drink you under the table, then pour you into a taxi, get you home, then ask you if you fancied a nightcap before you crashed out on the floor.

  Lesson: never judge books by their covers, particularly if they happen to be floor Laura Ashley covers.

  But, somewhere along the way, everything changed. As soon as we graduated, she started working part-time in Loreto College as a HDip, but still managed to maintain a respectable degree of her old wildness: i.e., she’d never let a Friday or Saturday night pass without a decent binge, usually ending up in Renards, and on one famous occasion even getting a lift home at seven a.m. from the poor, bleary eyed fella that owns it, who was swaying with tiredness and probably figured this was the quickest way to get her out of there and him safely home to his own bed. Then, not long after, she was made a full-time member of staff and, all of a sudden, just never had any free time any more. A classic example of someone who’s cash rich, time poor. I was forever blagging her tickets to movies or premieres that James had, and she’d always skite off home as early as she could, pleading that she had a pile of essays to correct for the next day or some school-related time-consuming project that she just had to work on. Not long after, she stopped coming out at all, claiming that it was a total waste of time, time that she didn’t have and that, what’s more, she made far more progress scouring for fellas online than she ever did in clubs, pubs and bars. A huge source of endless rows between us, with me constantly telling her that she’s only one hundred tins of beans and a knitted jumper away from being a survivalist. That’s when I wasn’t worrying myself sick, thinking that the main reason for this massive social about-turn could all be laid firmly at the door of a certain Mr Tim Keating.

  OK, I probably should explain.

  Tim was Fiona’s BIG love, her first boyfriend, who she dated from second year in college onwards, and you just never met a more suited pair. It’s not that often you come across true soulmates, but honestly, these two were the real deal. He was every bit as wild as she was, with Barack Obama/JFK levels of charisma, and even being around the pair of them was the best fun you could imagine. Just like our Fiona, Tim had all the outward appearance of normality, but all you needed to do was scratch the surface to see the latent headcase that lurked beneath his oh-so-conservative exterior. Mad into the Clash, the Cure and the Sex Pistols; back in college he was something of a legend, and was always pulling off wild, mental pranks for the sheer hell of it. Like the time he raided the drama society’s costume department, then went out on the piss with his friends dressed as a very convincing nun. Or, after a night on the tear, when he’d ended up crashing out on some friend’s sofa, the way you’d see him strolling into lectures the next day with two pint glasses full of water in his hands, one for each of his contact lenses. My God, even sitting on top of a bus with him and Fiona was an adventure.

  Then, after he graduated, Tim landed a big, important, flashy job in some pharmaceutical company in London, and off he went. They tried doing the long-distance relationship thing for a while, and thanks to cheapie Ryanair flights and mobiles, did manage to keep things going for a bit. But the long-distance thing eventually took its toll, and, although they stayed friends, they eventually parted company, mutually agreeing it was best if they both went their separate ways.

  In fact, that InterRail holiday is for ever etched in my mind because it was just after the big break-up and I remember being astonished at how incredibly upbeat Fiona was about the whole thing. ‘What was I going to do anyway, marry him?’ she used to shrug at me, when I’d ever-so-gingerly pluck up the courage to ask her how she was doing, usually after a few cheapie East German beers, all we could afford. ‘For fuck’s sake, Charlotte, I’m twenty-one years of age. Who gets married at twenty-one? Cousins and internet brides, that’s who.’

  Anyway, a disgracefully short time after they split up, next thing news filtered bac
k that Tim had got engaged to an Irish girl called Ayesha who he’d met in London, and who was doing some kind of course in TV presenting so she could achieve her ultimate goal of reading the six o’clock news on Sky, or, failing that, doing the same thing, except back home on RTE. When we all eventually did meet this famous Ayesha, I think myself and Fi half-expected her to be like a young Kay Burley: you know, a ferociously intelligent, hard-hitting journalist type. Like a female Jeremy Paxman. But she wasn’t. Not at all. Instead she turned out to be this perma-tanned blonde who’d been to Mount Anville, spent all her summers at Ring learning Irish, and now fancied herself as the next Gráinne Seoige. Nor did she take too kindly to her fella being as pally with his ex as Tim was with our Fiona. More sweet-natured people than me all reckoned this was perfectly understandable, but the rest of us all figured you could practically hear the boooiiinnnggg of his bungee rope rebounding. Fiona and I were invited to the wedding, and Fi was so cool with it that she even got up and sang ‘Evergreen’ by Barbra Streisand at the reception. Now, take it from me, if you can do that with your ex’s new bride looking daggers at you, that’s all the world needs as proof that you’re totally, one hundred per cent over him.

  And therein lies the source of my worry. I often think that, at the time Tim and Fiona broke up, she and I were both just too young to realize what a rare diamond she’d let slip through her fingers. And who knows? Maybe that’s the reason why she hasn’t found anyone else since: he was just such an impossibly hard act to follow. That’s the trouble with being twenty-one. You think the Tim Keatings of this world grow on trees. Anyhoo, not long after his wedding, they sort of lost touch, the way you do. To be brutally honest, we both always suspected Tim’s brand-new wife wasn’t a big fan of having his ex-girlfriend around, and gradually demoted Fiona to a second-, then a third-string friend, and then, within an alarmingly short amount of time, to someone they only ever exchanged Christmas cards with, scribbling across them, ‘Must meet up soon, it’s been ages!’ But never really meant it.