If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back

by Claudia Carroll

  Fi blushes a bit, but says nothing.

  ‘So, how come you never wanted to come out with me, instead?’

  An embarrassed silence, but I can guess the answer before she even says it.

  ‘Because of James,’ we say together.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte, don’t be annoyed with me, it’s just, well, you know I’ve always found him . . . a tad challenging to get on with.’

  ‘But then, how come you never wanted to come out with me on our own? You know, on a girls’ night?’

  She sighs. ‘Christ Alive, Charlotte, I could never in a million years say this to you, only that I know I’m dreaming, so none of this is real. It’s just that, even when he wasn’t around, you . . . well . . . you either talked about him all the time, or else you were constantly phoning and texting him to see where he was. I’m sorry, but I just hated seeing you in such a bad relationship. So besotted with a messer who clearly didn’t feel the same about you. Worse part was, the way you’d always stick up for him and make excuses for his crap behaviour, time after time. It’s like, you weren’t madly in love, you were badly in love . . .’

  ‘OK, get the picture, enough already,’ I cut her off, a bit brusquely.

  Mainly because I feel just like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus. Was I that bad? That obsessed with James that I even drove my best friend away? And was it so obvious to everyone around me that I was wasting my time with a complete and utter fuckwit?

  Everyone except me, that is.

  Right, then. Let this be my epitaph. Let the word go forth from this time and place that I didn’t die in vain, because at least now I’ve come back to spread The Word. The gospel for single women the whole world over. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

  Love is blind, but friendship is clairvoyant.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. That hurt, didn’t it?’ says Fi. A deep breath, a big smile and a mental note that this isn’t about me. I’m on the other side of the fence now, and my job is to help my best pal find a loving, warm, gorgeous man who’ll make her happy, just like she deserves. Just like I never got.

  ‘Back to you, hon,’ I manage to say, sounding an awful lot more upbeat than I feel. ‘And that gobshite who just stood you up.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me. I couldn’t get my head around it, Charlotte, I really couldn’t. I mean, for God’s sake, look at me. I live in a flat where the curtains match the duvet covers, how can I be getting stood up in a restaurant? Surely that’s someone else’s life, not mine?’

  ‘You’ve just been romantically challenged, that’s all, but that’s what I’m here to fix, with a bit of luck . . .’

  ‘A lot of luck, more like. Might as well face it, love: up till now, my sad pathetic love life might as well have been sponsored by the people who make Kleenex . . .’

  ‘Honey, you need to take my hand,’ I interrupt firmly. Rude, I know, but I’ve no choice. If Fi and I get stuck into a major chat about her recent dating history, we’ll end up sitting here for the night and then my cunning plan is shot. ‘You could wake up at any second, and we’ve bugger all time to lose.’

  ‘I mean, I just don’t get it. I’m a nice, normal, reasonably OK-looking woman, living in a society where plenty of other nice, normal, reasonably OK-looking women have all been snapped up. So why is there something fundamentally un-marriable about me?’

  ‘Fiona . . .’

  ‘And I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t exactly have exacting standards when it comes to men in the first place. I mean, once they’re single, straight and can use a knife and fork without difficulty, then, hey, they’re in with a shot.’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t half talk a lot when you’re dreaming. Now would you ever shut up and take my hand?’

  She does what I ask and, magically, it works, just like they taught me it would. Next thing, we’re both sitting side by side at the back of a packed church where there’s a wedding in full swing. The sun is beating in through stained-glass windows, an invisible choir is trilling away ‘Panus Angelicus’ and there’s the strongest smell of flowers . . . oh no, wait a minute, that’s just the Clinique Happy wafting up from me. Fiona looks around, a bit dazed, then looks down in horror at what the pair of us are wearing. She’s back in the jam-jar glasses and I’m in a horrible, purple flowery suit with big hair and waaaaaayyyyyy too much blusher. Hard to believe that the crap I’m kitted out in was all the fashion only six short years ago.

  ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ she hisses. ‘I was really enjoying this dream, and now you’re turning it into a nightmare . . . look at my glasses, for God’s sake. Deirdre Barlow from Coronation Street would be mortified to be seen in these.’ She whips them off and waves them in front of me. ‘This is a deeply humbling experience and I don’t know why you’re putting me through it. Can’t believe you even remember I used to wear these.’

  ‘God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.’ I smile back at her serenely, quoting Dad. ‘Besides, if you want to feel a bit better, look at the dress I’m in. It could double up as a cover for a Hummer, no problem.’

  She sniggers, and I nudge her to shut up, as the besuited old geezer in front of us turns around to give us a filthy glare.

  ‘Hey, Charlotte, seeing as how this is all just a dream, any chance you could rustle up Brad Pitt to stroll by? Or one of the Wilson brothers: Luke or Owen, either one of them would do. You know me, I’m not fussy.’

  ‘Just shut up and put your glasses back on, will you?’ I hiss at her. ‘Then take a good, long look at the altar.’

  She does as she’s told, and I swear I can physically see the blood draining from her face.

  ‘Oh shit, and double shit,’ she says so loud that the old man in front has another good glower at us. ‘Tim Keating’s wedding? You decide to take us back to Tim Keating’s wedding? Why would you do that? Did you maybe think it wasn’t icky enough for us the first time around?’

  ‘Just be thankful I didn’t take you back to the reception part, where you’ll recall that you decided it would be a great idea to get up and sing “Evergreen”. After your fifth vodka and tonic, that is. I just didn’t want to inf lict that memory on you out of the goodness of my heart, not that I’ll get any bloody gratitude for it.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get us out of here, Charlotte, quick! Before he sees us!’

  But I’ve brought her here for a very good reason, and there’s no way I’m letting her off any hooks yet.

  ‘Look, I know this may seem a bit weird . . .’

  ‘A BIT weird? Please, I’m redefining weird on a minute-by-minute basis.’

  ‘But if you ask me,’ I whisper, ‘that doesn’t look like a groom that’s deliriously happy to be taking his vows. And you needn’t tell me I’ve been watching too many soaps, either. I haven’t seen any telly at all since . . . well, you know . . .’

  We both focus on the priest and, more importantly, on the bride and groom standing in front of him. The groom, in particular.

  ‘Do you, Tim, take this Ayesha to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?’

  There’s a long, long pause and I shoot a significant look at Fiona.

  ‘I do,’ Tim eventually says, with a resigned half-smile.

  ‘I’ll bet he’s thinking about you,’ I whisper to her. ‘The woman he really wanted to marry, that is.’

  Fiona looks at me like she’s been winded.

  ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ she asks, gobsmacked.

  ‘Bring soulmates together, that’s all.’

  ‘But he’s married! Or hadn’t you noticed? With kids and everything; twins, if memory serves.’

  ‘Like I told you on the wedding day, I give it six years, max,’ I say. ‘And it turns out it was one of the few things in my life that I was actually right about. So, when you wake up from this dream, just remember my words: those six years are now up.’

  I could have added that no one knows her better than
me, and no one else remembers how, whenever she was with Tim, it was like she was lit from within. I could have told her that I know he’s the only guy she ever dated who she still looks for in crowds, even after all this time. But I don’t want to push my luck, so I leave it there. No point in letting her see my grand plan for her just yet, no point in revealing the wizard behind the curtain. Tonight’s just about planting little seeds in her head, that’s all.

  Or should I say, that’s all for now.

  I wait till she’s settled back into another dream, then off I go, on with my angelic work, she sez, feeling fierce smug altogether. It’s gas; by now, I’ve finally accepted that time and space just don’t seem to exist on whatever plane I’m on, but the really amazing part is that I don’t seem to need any sleep, either. Or food. Or to keep running to the loo. All earthly and bodily functions seem to have been completely suspended for the time being. Which would have come in really handy when I was actually alive, but there you go.

  Right then, my final port of call for the night. To visit someone I’ve been wanting to see for just the longest time, but well . . . other more pressing matters somehow got in the way. It takes a few goes for me to really focus hard on her, because every time I think about her, I start welling up. Or getting wobbly. Or else just bawling. Third time’s the charm, though, and there she is. And it’s just my luck that she’s fast asleep on the sofa, a half-drunk mug of cocoa on the table beside her, and the crossword from today’s paper lying on her knee, with only about three clues left to answer. The cryptic one, not the halfwit one that’s more targeted at eejits like me.

  But then, that’s my mum for you. She’s always been brilliant at crosswords, and claims they’re better than half a sleeping tablet for knocking her out at night. Crosswords, sudoku and solving murder mysteries on telly. (Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot and Inspector Morse are her great role models in life.) In fact, Kate and I often reckon that Mum’s idea of a perfect, blissfully happy retirement is to live in a small cottage in the country, and go round the place solving mysteries before the local police do, eventually gaining the trust and respect of the station sergeant, who’ll start coming to her for advice first, the minute any major crime is committed. Which she’ll solve effortlessly, before anyone has time to start talking about forensics or DNA tests. Just like in an Agatha Christie.

  And that’s when the tears really start. I don’t think I can do this. I love her too much and I miss her too much. She looks so peaceful and serene, dozing away; God knows what the sight of me howling and wailing into her face would do to her. I want to visit her when I’m more in control, when I can talk to her calmly without this block of unbearable pain that’s surging up inside me, just at the sight of her beautiful, pale face. The sobs are choking me now and I know that if she were to see me in this state, I’d only end up upsetting her more.

  I want her to have a happy, comforting dream about me, one where she knows I’m OK, not a shagging nightmare.

  So, instead, I look down at the crossword and my eye falls on 3 Across.

  Verbal expression of strong affection for another, arising out of kinship or personal ties.

  Three words; one with one letter, one with four, one with three, and by a miracle, I think I can guess the clue.

  I try to pick up her biro from where it rolled out of her hand and on to the sofa, before she conked out, but I can’t pick it up. I try again, nothing. My hand’s just gliding clean through it.

  Shit.

  The one time I actually know what the answer is, too; and I want nothing more than for her to sleep soundly, then wake up in the morning with the clue done and somehow just know that it’s a little sign from me.

  The answer, by the way, is ‘I love you’.

  Chapter Ten

  KATE

  Bright and early the following morning, I find her at home, in her pristine bedroom, that’s been interior designed, and feng shuied, and scrubbed and decluttered to within an inch of its life. Kate’s room, in fact Kate’s entire house, always reminds me a bit of the Barbie house she used to play with as a kid: everything you look at is either cream or white, or else comes with a ruffle on it, and I always feel like I’m dirtying the place just by being there. Sullying it by my mere presence. Her ‘no shoes policy’ is actually making me feel guilty for sitting on the bed beside her, fully shod.

  I’d never, in a million years, get away with it if I was alive.

  In fact, I remember one famous occasion, when the house was all newly built and Kate and Paul had first moved in. Anyhoo, she went through about a six-month-long phase of dying to show it off to just about anyone she could. Neighbours, family, friends she hadn’t seen for decades; all you had to do was innocently stroll by her front door and glance in the general direction of the house, only to be dragged in, kicking and screaming, and made to admire the Waterford chandeliers/the kitchen that was carried flat-pack by flat-pack all the way down from Ikea in Belfast/the cashmere rug that no one’s allowed to stand on, not even in bare feet/ the Villeroy & Boch kitchen sink that all dishes have to be washed in first before they’re deemed clean enough to be loaded into the dishwasher. And by the way, I am not making that last one up. I only wish to God I was.

  So Kate had Mum and I over for our inspection trip, and the two of us were sitting nervously in her immaculate, snow-white drawing room, terrified that we might mess something up, and listening nervously to the tick, tick, tick of the reproduction grandmother clock, a wedding present from Perfect Paul’s family, while Kate stuck the kettle on in the kitchen. Eventually, just like in a prisoner-of-war movie, Mum cracked, her will to chat was just too much, so she dragged her repro Georgian high-backed chair over the thick cashmere carpet to where I was sitting in the bay window, too afraid to park my bum on the cream silk furniture, in case I might leave a mark.

  ‘So, like I was saying, love,’ she said, continuing a conversation we’d been having in the car on the way there. ‘Nuala wants the whole gang of us to go to Medjugorje this summer, after the disaster of Lourdes last year, you know, when she had a list the length of your arm of stuff to pray for, and not one single thing was cured, not even her ingrown toenail, and you know how painful they can be . . .’

  ‘MUM!’ Kate screeched, interrupting us with the tea tray. ‘What are you doing, moving furniture around? That chair does NOT belong there. We already have four imprints on the good new carpet, we do NOT want eight!’

  ‘Can’t wait for her and Paul to have kids,’ Mum muttered darkly to me, much later, on our way home. ‘All I’ll say is, I hope she has five, one after the other, like the steps of stairs, and I hope they’re all boys, really, really messy boys who never wash themselves without being threatened first, and what’s more, I hope each one of them plays either rugby or soccer, and that they come home from practice every day, filthy from rolling around in the dirt and mud. That’d sort madam out quick enough, with her imprints on the carpet.’

  Honestly, there are times when even Mum is a bit intimidated by her.

  Right now, though, Kate’s sitting on the bed, still in her nightie, but with the red hair tied in a neat bun, leaving me looking at her in awe, wondering whether she even sleeps with her hair tied up, so it doesn’t get messy. Probably, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. She’s also having a conversation with Perfect Paul through the door of their en suite bathroom. Well, to be more accurate, a conversation that’s bordering on a row, if you’re with me. The gist of it seems to be that Paul’s just told her he won’t be around for the next day or two, as he’s promised to go to Galway, where all his family live, which is a good three-and-a-half-hour drive away. One of those half-work, half-business trips: he’s supposed to have a business dinner down there with a few work contacts, then meet with banks and solicitors the next morning, so there’s hardly any point in him coming all the way back home, only to face into the long drive down yet again the next day, blah di blah di blah. Paul’s a property developer, by the way, and this would be all in a norma
l day’s work for him. And he loves what he does, and he loves being busy, and he loves making money, but never in a ‘ram it down your throat’ kind of way, like, ‘Oh come here till I show you the new Jackson Pollock etching I just had to have.’ Or, ‘Don’t talk to me about the traffic jams in Marbella these days, sure a second home on the Costa is hardly worth the hassle.’ No, conspicuous consumption wouldn’t be his thing at all, that’d be more Kate’s department.

  In fact, Paul’s one of those naturally street-smart guys who left school at sixteen and went to work on building sites, first as a brickie, then gradually worked his way up and started buying plots of land, taking out bank loans to finance houses he’d then build on them. He has three brothers, who all came in on the act, and pretty soon, at the height of Ireland’s property boom, they were flying. One of the brothers is an electrician, one’s a carpenter, and the youngest is a plumber. So between the lot of them, they’re a kind of building one-stop shop. ‘If you stand still in this country for long enough,’ Paul said to me once, ‘sooner or later, somebody’s going to get planning permission to put an apartment block on your head.’ It was at the time when the whole entire country seemed to be one big building site and, as Mum said, you’d nearly be afraid to leave the garden shed door open at night in case you came down in the morning and someone had opened up a Starbucks.

  Oh, and, for the record, yes, all of Paul’s brothers are as handsome, lovely and down-to-earth as he is, real meat, spuds and two veg kind of guys, but sadly, all are married and long since spoken for, and all happily settled in the west of Ireland with their large and ever increasing hordes of kids. When he and Kate first got engaged after a whirlwind romance, I did of course dutifully check out all his brothers and their romantic availability, natch. Just in case one of them would have been a lovely fella for Fiona. When matchmaking, you always have to have your eyes open. But no joy, not a singleton among them.