If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘You’re worse than the bloody Gestapo, you pair,’ Kate snaps at us, realizing that she won’t get a minute’s peace till she comes clean and omits no detail, however trivial.

  ‘Go on, love, give us the full nine one one,’ says Mum, who watches far too many cop dramas for her own good.

  ‘If you must know, the stupid bastard arrived half an hour late for our date, then said he’d come out without his wallet, and would I buy him pints? Then he had the gall to tell me that he was the best offer that I was ever going to get, just because he happens to be studying law at Trinity, and I’m only doing a computer course. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, then he goes and asks me for the lend of a fiver so he could shoot a few frames of snooker with his friends, who all look either like goths or else drug addicts. Bloody shower of losers. So I marched out of there and got the bus straight home so I’d be back in time for Sex and the City. So why aren’t we watching it?’

  Back to the present, and Kate turns over in her sleep, tossing off the duvet cover.

  Right then, time for round two.

  It’s exactly the same scenario, except time’s moved on. Same living room, same woodchip on the walls, same sludgy carpets, except now there’s photos of Dad dotted all round the place and Fiona is sitting on the sofa with me and Mum, all three of us glued to Friends on TV.

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen this one before,’ says Mum, absent-mindedly thinking out loud. ‘Rachel flies to London for Ross’s wedding, but then he says her name in his vows instead of Emily’s, and there’s murder.’

  ‘SHHHHHH, don’t tell us, you’ll ruin it!’ Fiona and I chorus, when Kate bursts in, fresh from another date.

  ‘Ah, there you are, love, how’d it go, with . . . ehh . . . Simon . . . something, oh yes, Walker, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Shut up and no one move,’ Kate snaps, switching off all the lights and pulling the curtains over, just like in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

  ‘What in the name of God is going on?’ I ask, afraid she’ll make us all lie flat out on the floor in a minute. She’s over by the window, though, intermittently peeping out through the curtains and waving at us all to shut up.

  ‘Kate, tell me the truth, did that Simon fella turn out to be a drug baron?’ says Mum, alarmed. After some documentary she saw on Prime Time, her greatest fear in life is that one of us will end up marrying a crime lord. ‘Because your poor father, God be good to him, will spin in his grave if some eejit you pick up in a bar thinks he can start dealing heroin from outside the front gate. If Nuala gets wind of that, I’ll never hear the end of it.’

  ‘He is not a heroin dealer,’ Kate hisses, still peering out into the street. ‘Oh for God’s sake! Will you all keep your heads down, please?’

  ‘Are we going to be in a drive-by shooting?’ Fiona asks nervously. ‘Because, if no one minds, I really need the loo first.’

  ‘He’s a bloody obsessive weirdo,’ says Kate in a stage whisper. ‘I told him I was an asthmatic and . . .’

  ‘You forgot your inhaler . . .’ Mum and I finish the sentence for her. It’s Kate’s standard, failsafe excuse for getting out of a rubbish date.

  ‘. . . But the headcase insisted on driving me home, so I thought I’d wait until his car drove off and he was well out of the way. Then the plan was, I could slip out and head back into town, to Café en Seine so I could meet up with my gang, but would you look at the bloody lunatic? He’s still sitting in the car, parked outside. I mean what’s he planning on doing? Keeping a stakeout going all night to check I don’t go back out again? Honest to God, is there a sign over my head that says “will happily tolerate fixated headcases?”’

  ‘Define fixated,’ Fiona pipes up, all ears.

  ‘Oh, you know, after one date, practically mapping out our whole future. Ordered the meal for me. Nearly went off his head when I took a call on my mobile from another guy in my class. Invited me to his brother’s wedding. In eight months’ time. And now he’s camped outside my front door checking up on me. Stalker Walker, I should call him.’

  ‘Sounds perfectly all right to me,’ says Fiona, as we all turn to look at her. ‘Well, what’s wrong with a fella being attentive?’ This, I should point out, was in the days when we were humble freshers in college, not long before she met the lovely Tim Keating.

  ‘Fiona, the guy practically has me under surveillance,’ snaps Kate.

  ‘Well, I’m just saying. If you’re not interested, maybe you’d set me up. One man’s meat and all that.’

  Kate rolls over again in her sleep, and now I instinctively know it’s time for the pièce de résistance.

  God, if I say so myself, I am really getting good at this.

  Right, then. We’re back in Mum’s living room yet again, except now a few more years have passed, and Mum and I are plonked on the snot-green sofa flicking through interior design magazines, with me trying to talk her into ripping up the sludgy carpet and sanding the wooden floors underneath. Then stripping off the bloody woodchip that’s been there since I was a baby, and setting fire to the corduroy curtains. Or getting a TV makeover show to film the kip, so it can be the ‘before’ on one of those ‘pimp my crib’ shows. Or, as a last resort, just putting a bomb under the place, claiming on the insurance, then heading off to the Bahamas for a fortnight.

  Just then, we hear a key in the front door, and Mum immediately flings the magazines away and throws herself back on the sofa, knuckles clenched and staring rigidly ahead, like she’s strapped into a 747 that’s about to take off.

  ‘That’s them!’ she stage whispers. ‘Her with the new fella! Now I don’t want to jinx it by saying that this could be The One, but I really do have high hopes this time round. So act natural, for God’s sake, will you!’

  Then Kate breezes in, all smiles, and looking even prettier and more relaxed than I ever remember, in tight boot-cut jeans that she never wears any more, with her hair all loose and windswept and casual.

  ‘OK, guys, here he is,’ she beams at us, glowing, then goes back out to the hall outside. ‘Come on in,’ we can hear her coaxing. ‘It’s OK, they won’t bite.’

  ‘This,’ she introduces proudly, dragging a very familiar face in by the hand, ‘is Paul.’

  So far, so good. There’s even a little half-smile on Kate’s face as she turns over, happily settling down into a deeper slumber. I’m just about to take her back to her first few magical dates with Perfect Paul, having cleverly reminded her of the string of morons she dated in the lead-up to meeting him. All those years that she spent spinning like a hamster on the dating wheel until that happy day, not so long ago, when she was at the races with a gang of her friends, and he sidled up to her and gave her a tip for the three-thirty. If the horse loses, he promised, I’ll make it up to you by taking you out to afternoon tea.

  Now Kate has the worst luck with horses of anyone I know, and is always joking that bookies have to write up tickets especially for her and whatever poor unfortunate nag she backs, who invariably is still limping towards the finishing post at ten o’clock that night. However, as fate would have it . . . that one time, she actually won. And then was silently raging, as it meant the afternoon tea offer with her big hunky beefcake stranger was off. But Perfect Paul, true to his name, still insisted he’d bring her out for tea the following day, leaving Kate like a basket case back at home, trying on at least fifteen different outfits before hitting on something suitably chaste for a daytime date, but yet that still hinted at underlying sexiness beneath. Oh, and making me walk around her taking Polaroids, as she doesn’t fully trust mirrors for three-hundred-and-sixty-degree accuracy. All this bother just to meet a fella for a bloody pot of tea, I remember thinking at the time, thinking how old ladyish it all sounded, and half-wondering if this mystery man would turn out to be gayer than Christmas in Bloomingdales.

  But, as usual, when it comes to judging guys, my radar was one hundred per cent wide of the mark. He picked her up on the dot, and . . . wait for it . . . took her to Ashford Ca
stle for the tea . . . In County Mayo. Oh, and did I mention that he flew her there in a helicopter belonging to one of his rich developer friends? Hard to top a first date like that, particularly as, for me and Fiona, first dates usually involved a few warm glasses of white wine in a pub while whoever we were with drank himself into a stupor. Then whoever was the last man standing had to somehow figure out where the nearest Eddie Rockets was on the way home. And that’s only if we were lucky, and he happened to be one of the romantic ones.

  ‘He’s just such a nice guy,’ Kate kept saying over and over again, when she first started seeing Paul. Now, in my experience, whenever a woman describes a fella as ‘nice’ it basically means she’ll break up with him after a week, then spend the next seven years dating alcoholics in leather trousers. But, in this case, I couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d tried. Within two months, they were engaged, and before the year was out, they were married. A real whirlwind if ever there was one, but somehow the speed at which it all happened didn’t matter. Why would it? They were perfect for each other.

  Anyway, I’m just about to take Kate back to that happy, loved-up glow she first had after meeting Paul: how she couldn’t eat or sleep or do anything really, except talk about him and leap six feet into the air whenever he called her mobile, which was an average of about sixteen times a day, when . . . oh shit, I do NOT believe it. The phone on her bedside table starts pealing, and suddenly Kate’s wide awake and hauling herself up on one elbow to answer it.

  ‘Hello? Oh hi, Mum,’ she says sleepily, rubbing her eyes. ‘No . . . just dozing. Yeah . . . that’s fine . . . whatever time suits you . . . no, I’ll just hop in the shower, and I’ll be right there . . . I’m glad you rang, I was having the strangest dreams, actually.’

  Here we go, I think smugly. About her nightmare exes which were all a warm-up act to the happy day when she met Perfect Paul, and how, for the first time, she fully appreciates what a wonderful, loving guy she has, and how bloody lucky she is.

  I am SO going to earn angelic brownie points for this one. In fact I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Kate races after him, pausing only to pack a little overnight bag, then puts up with all the brood mares in his family gaping at her, just so she can spend time with her perfect man, all loved-up. Now that she’s been gently reminded of exactly how miserable life was without him, that is. In fact, if I can keep up this campaign of post-hypnotic suggestion for the next few nights, it’ll be candlelit suppers for two for the next month at least, and then, who knows what great joyous news that might soon lead to?

  ‘. . . no, Mum, more like a nightmare,’ she’s saying. ‘I kept dreaming about the time you had that horrific sludgy brown carpet with the woodchip wallpaper and the manky curtains. Eughhh, I need a shower just thinking about it. In fact, scrap that; I need a Silkwood scrubdown.’

  Oh bugger, bugger, bugger.

  Honest to God, I’d have more luck getting a message through to Alcatraz.

  So now what?

  Chapter Eleven

  JAMES

  Big day. Big, big, big, big, day, and to think, I’d almost forgotten. The scary pitch meeting later on this morning to try and cajole money out of their number-one investor, so James can inject it into his rubbishy idea for a TV series. Please don’t get me wrong, after hearing just how badly Meridius Movies is doing, my intentions are nothing more than to sit innocently on the sidelines, witnessing exactly how James and Declan get on. I’ll be an impassive observer and nothing more. Perhaps throwing in the odd insightful comment if I think things aren’t going too well for them. Because, let’s be honest here, their project is complete and utter shite. Anyway, cross my heart, the plan is to help and do good, benevolently imparting wisdom and sage advice from the side of the hedge I now find myself on. Hopefully without giving James a heart attack in the process. He doesn’t deserve it, but there you go. That’s just the kind of considerate and compassionate angel that I am. So, as usual, all I have to do is really concentrate, focus on him and no one else, and next thing I find myself right by his side.

  Oh bugger. And immediately I wish I didn’t. Mainly because he’s on the loo, and now I’m plonked on the side of the bath beside him. With no visible means of escape.

  Feck it, anyway.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, sure I’ll drop back later . . .’ I say. Then he does that hilarious thing of looking sharply around, like there’s a tape recorder hidden behind the cistern or something. I try to get out, but of course, can’t open the door.

  ‘James? It’s me again. Now don’t panic, I’m not here to cause trouble today, I know how important this meeting is for you. Just think of me as a casual observer, that’s all. A bit like a UN weapons inspector. Damn all use to anyone, yet comforting just to know they’re there. But if you wouldn’t mind just getting the door for me, it’s just that I’m not great with physical stuff like door handles . . .’

  His eyes shoot around, all panicky, and getting bulgier by the second. Then he starts doing deep soothing breaths, like in a yoga class. In for two, out for four, in for two, out for four.

  ‘I am having hallucinations caused by stress,’ he mumbles slowly, slowly, slowly, closing his eyes and gently rubbing his face, like the skin’s about to physically melt off it. ‘Exhaustion, strain and overwork, that’s all that’s wrong here . . .’

  It’s actually funny. Him on the loo convinced he’s losing his reason, and me only trying to get out the door and away from him asap.

  ‘James, really it’s OK, I’m here to help, really. Now if you can just let me out . . .’

  ‘A long, long holiday,’ he murmurs, and I’m not messing, he’s actually rocking back and forth as he says it. Like an extra in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. ‘That’s what I need. Way too much has been going on, and no one needs a break like I do. Beach, sun, no phones, no emails, no pressure, no stress, no money worries, no meetings, and most of all NO Charlotte’s voice inside my head, telling me that she’s here, now, in the bathroom with me . . .’

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a dull thumpety thump on the bathroom door, and now it’s my turn to nearly get a heart attack. Then . . . I do NOT believe this . . . an all-too-familiar screechy, breathy voice.

  ‘Jamie, sweetheart? Are you OK in there? You’re doing that thing of talking to yourself again, and you’re worrying me.’

  More door thumping, getting insistent now.

  ‘Am I hearing things?’ I say, completely and utterly gobsmacked. ‘Or are you telling me that . . .’

  ‘Pressure can manifest in many strange and unusual ways,’ says James, eyes closed, still swaying. ‘But remember, I’m a tiger. I’m a tiger, I’m a tiger. I thrive on pressure. I eat nerves and shit success.’

  ‘Jamie?’ says Little Miss Screechy from outside. ‘Answer me, will you? You’re starting to give me a fright. This is like a repeat of yesterday evening all over again. And what are you going on about tigers for?’

  I turn to look at him, and I’m only raging the bastard can’t see the expression of horror and disgust that must be carved in stone on my stunned face.

  ‘Are you honestly telling me that Sophie stayed here? She actually slept the night here? In our bed? In our room?’

  I can barely stammer the words out, but, if I needed actual proof, James then hops off the loo, pulls up his trousers, flings open the bathroom door, and there she is, Screechy Voice herself. She’s wearing one of his white shirts and nothing else, bare legs immaculately fake-tanned and waxed, and toenails freshly pedicured, with all the blond confidence you’d normally only see in a Tommy Hilfiger ad. Bed sheets in total disarray and the T-shirt and jeans she had on yesterday strewn carelessly across the floor. Just in case I really needed it hammered home to my poor, disbelieving eyes.

  Oh, for f*ck’s sake.

  For a split second I actually think I’m going to be sick. Instead, I slump back down against the bathroom door, in total and utter shock. I mean, yes, I knew James was a comp
lete cackhead, but I at least thought, out of respect for my memory, he’d cooled things off with his girlfriend. For form’s sake, if nothing else. But what happens? I take my watchful gaze off him for one bloody night and he moves Miss Screechy Voice in. After the row I witnessed between the two of them on the street last night. After seeing, with my own two eyes, him practically leaping into a taxi just to get away from her. She must have trailed after him, landed on the front doorstep, somehow inveigled her way around him and, true to form, he bloody well let her. Unbelievable, just unbelievable.

  Did I say that I was going to try to help him at this big meeting? Because, I’m terribly sorry to disappoint and all that, but there’s just been a major change of plan.

  About half an hour later, James is behind the wheel of his flashy little black Porsche. (Well, what else would you expect him to drive? Honest to God, their ad might as well say, ‘Buy a Porsche. The Choice of Wankers.’) I’m right beside him, in the passenger seat, not a word out of me, just staring furiously ahead, tight-lipped and still in shock. I never would have thought that ghosts could behave snottily, but there you go; it seems you never stop learning, even beyond the grave. James and Screechy Voice parted company back at the house, our house, in our front garden, with her waving him off, like she already lives there, insisting she’ll see him later on and that she’s so sure the meeting will go well that they can really celebrate in style tonight.

  I just stood there looking at the two of them, still stunned, thinking that, after this, I honestly won’t be happy until I see James’s whole life go up in smoke.

  It’s at times like this I really wish I had the use of my limbs, if only just to give her car tyres a right good kicking, and then to knee him in the goolies. And don’t tell me the pair of them haven’t asked for it.

  Anyway, at ten fifty-nine on the dot (this, believe me, is not a meeting you’d want to be late for) we finally arrive, after about a forty-minute drive all the way to County Kildare, via countless twisty turny lanes. Pretty soon, the houses gradually turn into mansions and their gardens, sorry, their grounds, seem to be so vast that each one is about eight miles away from the nearest neigh-bours, separated by high fences with granite walls all around the perimeter. I know rich people are different to the rest of us, but it does make me wonder the lengths you’d have to go to if you were unfortunate enough to run out of milk late at night, and had to drive five miles to your nearest Spar, or else brave security gates, CCTV cameras and probably a horde of ravenous guard dogs at a neighbour’s house, just so you could borrow a carton of Avonmore from them.