If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Well, Charlotte Grey, I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

  ‘What? I’m sorry . . . but what did you say?’ I ask, my mind completely baffled. She doesn’t answer me, though, just clips on one of those telephonist headsets, like the one Madonna wore on her Blonde Ambition tour, then starts a conversation with . . . well, with thin air.

  ‘Gabriel? Regina, back here again with an update. Yes, we’ve sent in a replacement angel who got on the case immediately. All taken care of. The cavalry has arrived, so to speak. The charge will get a nasty shock, and certainly won’t feel particularly well for the next few days, but otherwise should pull through, thank God.’

  Then she turns to hiss at me. ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘. . . I beg your pardon, Gabriel, what was that? Oh no, I have her here in front of me. And madam has some serious questions to answer as soon as I’m off this call, I can tell you. Righty-oh. Well then, over and out, and I’ll brief you again shortly.’

  She clicks her headset off her, stands up and walks over to a big bookcase covered in files that’s right behind her desk, with her back to me. A long silence, and now I’m feeling just like I used to in school whenever I’d be hauled up in front of the headmistress for some bit of messing in class. I’m almost expecting her to turn around and tell me she’s ‘spoken to my unhappy parents’. (Our head nun’s one-size-fits-all phrase reserved for when you’d seriously acted the eejit.) And that they’re now on their way in to drag me back home.

  But she doesn’t. Instead she looks at me for a long, long time. A disappointed look, which somehow is far, far worse than if she’d started roaring and flinging furniture at me.

  ‘I told your father this wouldn’t work out, you know. I warned him.’

  ‘Regina, I’m sure you’re furious with me, and I’m sure I managed to make a complete pig’s ear of everything. Just like I usually do. But can I just ask one thing? Is James going to be OK? I’m so worried. I couldn’t believe it when he started popping pills, and on top of the amount of booze he’d drunk, as well . . . I was watching him, so completely helpless and powerless, it was terrifying . . .’

  ‘To light and guard, to rule and guide. Does that phrase ring any kind of bell with you?’

  Her voice is stern now, icy cold and cutting.

  ‘Yes, Regina.’

  God, it’s exactly like being called to the carpet back in school. The rhetorical questions. The grinding embarrassment. I’m hating this, and I just want to get out of here, like, NOW.

  ‘So enlighten me, Charlotte. Where exactly was it that you stumbled on that phrase before?’

  ‘Umm . . . at angel school. We were told that . . . was our . . . emmmm . . . job.’

  ‘Oh good. So your memory is working, then. And you’re not entirely stone deaf.’

  Another thing that reminds me of school. Dry sarcasm. God almighty, throw in train-track braces and pimples, and I’m right back to being fifteen years old again.

  ‘Anything else you learned? That you’d like to share?’

  ‘Emm . . . something about not interfering with free will?’

  ‘I see. Nice to know that you were actually paying attention. But what’s puzzling me about you, Charlotte, is why you heard one thing, then took it upon yourself to go and do the exact, polar opposite. Maybe you’d care to enlighten me?’

  ‘Look, Regina . . . I’m sure what you’re getting at is that I messed up. But, please, I just want to know how James is . . .’

  Regina pulls her swivelly chair out, sits down and reads out a line from what looks like a fax in front of her.

  ‘As I speak, the emergency services are on their way to Strand Road, Dublin, to collect James Kane, where he’ll be rushed to the A & E department at Saint Vincent’s hospital. He’ll undergo an extremely unpleasant stomach-pumping procedure, and will certainly be in pain for a few days, but otherwise, yes, he’ll pull through.’

  A wave of pure relief washes over me.

  ‘Well, if nothing else, that is good to hear. You’ve no idea the fright I got when he started throwing back the sleeping pills, I was yelling at him like a demented lunatic to stop, honestly I really was, but it was like he’d made his mind up that this was what he was going to do, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it . . . I’ve never felt so completely powerless . . .’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me, Charlotte, I saw the whole thing.’

  ‘Emm . . . you did? How?’

  She doesn’t answer me, just swivels her desktop computer around to my side of the desk, so I can see the image on it, clear as crystal. Just like watching telly.

  It’s James. Lying on the sofa, exactly where I left him, except now he’s choking and spluttering. I can’t hear him, but by the look of him, I’d guess he’s calling out for a bucket to be sick into.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I stammer, ‘how are you able to see this? Is it like some kind of live CCTV feed or something?’

  ‘Well, what did you expect, dear? My department is the centre of all ground operations, you know. The only reason it’s made to look like a conventional, more earthly office is so as not to confuse rookies like yourself. Who, frankly, have caused me quite enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘But . . . I don’t get it. James was falling down drunk when I left him . . . how did he manage to call an ambulance?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  Just then, as I look back to the computer screen, I see Sophie coming in from the kitchen, with a wet face-towel which she then gingerly applies to James’s forehead, like a cold compress.

  ‘Screechy . . . sorry, I mean, Sophie came back?’

  ‘Sophie came back. Took a lot of fast work on her angel’s behalf, of course, but we got her there just in the nick of time. It seems she’d forgotten her phone, so her angel prompted her to remember it just when she’d got to the bottom of the road. She turned her car back, let herself back into the house, then found him, with an empty jar of sleeping pills lying beside him. Knowing right well that he’d been drinking steadily for days on end, she thought on her feet, rang emergency services immediately, and now they’re on the way. In the nick of time, too.’

  I sit back, and suddenly I can breathe again.

  ‘So, he’s going to be OK then?’

  ‘As I said, no thanks to you, Missy.’

  ‘Oh come on, that’s a bit unfair. It’s hardly my fault that everything in his whole life went pear-shaped, now, is it?’

  ‘To light and guard, to rule and guide, means just that, Charlotte. Whereas somehow you took that to mean, to wreak havoc, sabotage, lecture and then round it off by having a good old laugh at him.’

  ‘I never did!’

  She rifles through the mound of papers in front of her, picks one, then starts quoting from it.

  ‘Oh really? Incident one. When you first realized your charge had the ability to hear you, you then proceeded to taunt and terrify him, at one point telling him that you were the voice of his conscience and that his life was doomed. Correct?’

  ‘Emm, well . . . OK, so I might have started to have a little bit of fun with him, but, in my defence, it was pretty incredible that he could hear me in the first place. No one warned me about that, no one even said that it might be a possibility . . .’

  ‘Your father’s idea.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes. When you first came here, you were in such a raw emotional state about your break-up, he thought it would help the healing process. If you could somehow communicate with the man you loved and lost, maybe in time, you’d be able to feel pity for him rather than the blind fury, which, if I may remind you, was eating you up when you first arrived here.’

  ‘Oh my God, that was Dad’s idea?’

  I can’t think of anything else to say, my mind’s gone into total meltdown. The funny thing is though . . . in a roundabout sort of way . . . it worked. What Regina’s saying is actually true. I’d just forgotten. How fra
ught and angry and white-hot with rage I was with James when I came here initially, but now . . . now . . . I just feel sorry for him. Somehow along the way, without even noticing, I’ve detached emotionally. And, what’s doubly weird is that, as I’ve witnessed James’s carry-on from this side of the fence, I suppose it’s finally beginning to hit me just how unhappy I was with him, even when I thought things were going well with us. We were so fundamentally unsuited. We’re two very different human beings, and it’s only now that I can see it with any kind of clarity. I spent my entire time with him trying to bash a square peg into a round hole, constantly forgiving all his bad behaviour and convincing myself that I could turn things around for me and him. But the simple fact is, it never would have worked. If Sophie hadn’t come along, if my accident hadn’t happened, and if we’d stayed together, now I’m asking myself . . . then what? What would the rest of my life have been like? Even a thicko like me would sooner or later have realized that James just wasn’t my soulmate and that he was pretty much treading water with me until the big love of his life came along. Either that or else he’d just have had a string of affairs, one after the other, until eventually it would have driven me away. A life of misery was all that awaited me either way, that’s for sure.

  Not that any of this matters, now that I’m dead. It’s just nice to have that clarity that you only get from stepping back from things a bit, that’s all.

  Regina’s far from finished with me, though.

  ‘Incident two. When your charge went to a very important meeting at an investor’s country house to try to raise funds for a television project.’

  ‘Oh . . . yeah, I remember,’ I say, snapping out of my reverie and focusing on her again. ‘Sir William Eames.’

  ‘And what did you decide to do, madam?’

  I think back. Shit. Now I remember.

  In fact, how could I have forgotten?

  ‘Well, now . . . can I just say in my defence . . . that was totally, one hundred per cent not my fault. You see, there were Dobermanns there, two of them, and I have this terrible phobia about dogs, but you know what animals are like, they completely sensed that I was there and started having a go at me . . .’

  ‘That is not what I was referring to.’

  ‘I only meant to say that what happened wasn’t my fault. Well, that is to say, it wasn’t entirely my fault.’

  ‘Did you or did you not begin to goad your charge, telling him that his pitch was rubbish? In the full knowledge that he could hear you, and that you’d ruin any chance he might have had of winning over a would-be investor? Your exact words were, I believe, that a cat could have coughed a better script out of its rear end.’

  OK, I’ve kind of had enough of the lecturing, and now I’m starting to get defensive. Which, with me, is usually only a prelude to full-scale bawling my eyes out.

  ‘Regina, this is the man who ruined my life. And let’s be honest, he’s not exactly a likeable man. But I loved him. I loved him to distraction . . .’

  ‘And he lied and cheated on you. Yes, yes, yes, heard it all before. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think you’re the first woman in history to have been disappointed in love? You know, the strength of a person’s character, Charlotte, comes from adversity. Or as I’m fond of saying to all my angels that pass through here: a woman is a little bit like a tea bag. You don’t know how strong she is till she’s put in hot water. I’m not denying that you went through a hard time with this man, all I’m saying is that we offered you the chance to watch over James, and to prove that you were the bigger person by safeguarding him from this plane. By protecting him and gently guiding. Like you were supposed to. You could have shown him forgiveness and compassion. But no, you decided to wreak havoc instead. Very mature, Charlotte. Nicely done.’

  This shuts me up. But then tough love tends to have that effect on me.

  She’s not finished with me, though.

  ‘Incident three.’

  I groan inwardly, thinking, oh Jaysus, is there more? Can’t I go now?

  Not a bloody hope.

  ‘When James had reached rock bottom, as you call it, how did you decide to help? When he was at his lowest ebb, with his company in trouble, and on the verge of losing his home, what did you do? Took the high moral ground and gave him a good lecture about how his behaviour in the past had led him to this.’

  OK, I have to stick up for myself here.

  ‘But, Regina, I was only pointing out the truth! He shafted people all around him, and that’s why he ended up losing his company. No one, not even his business partner, wanted to work with him any more. His own brother wouldn’t help him out financially. It was like he was being hit by a boulder of karma. All I was trying to do was point out to him that if he’d treated people a bit better, then maybe things wouldn’t have gone pear-shaped on him. That’s all. Honestly.’

  ‘You mean you decided to judge him, like you’ve any right to do that. To play God.’

  ‘Well, if you put it like that . . .’

  ‘Charlotte, there’s only one person around here who gets to play God.’

  I’m gobsmacked into silence. But there’s still more to come. Regina shifts through yet more mounds of files, then opens another one.

  ‘Anyway. Leaving that fiasco for the moment, and moving on from there,’ she says, seizing out a piece of paper and reading from it. ‘Yes, here we are. Your friend Fiona.’

  For the first time since this earbashing started, I’m actually able to look her in the eye. Confident that I did good work there in bringing Tim back into Fiona’s lonely life again. OK, so it might take a bit of time, given what poor old Tim is going through with his marriage break-up, and OK, so maybe he thinks he wants to get back with Ayesha, but that just goes to show you what mortals know. The fact is, I reintroduced soulmates and surely I can’t get into too much trouble there. Can I?

  ‘In the first place . . .’ Regina starts off, with me staring right back at her, defiantly. Feeling on steadier ground here.

  ‘. . . what made you think you had the right to begin tampering with her life?’

  ‘Well . . . I wanted to help her, of course. She was fed up being on her own and looking for someone to share her life with, looking in all the wrong places, if you ask me.’

  ‘There you go, judging others again. Who are you to say she was looking in all the wrong places?’

  ‘Because . . . she was spending all her time with her face stuck in her computer, and everyone knows that really only gay men are any good at finding love online, so . . .’

  ‘So you decided you’d interfere and cause all sorts of mischief there, too?’

  ‘No! I knew she and Tim were perfect for each other, and all I tried to do was . . .’

  ‘Mess around with her head, plant all sorts of thoughts and dreams about how she’d die alone unless she got back in contact with an ex-boyfriend who she’d long since moved on from? You threatened her. Your best friend.’

  ‘That’s not true, at least, that wasn’t my intention . . .’

  ‘But the worst damage you did, by far, was in trying to steer her away from someone else. Someone far more suited to her.’

  ‘What?’ My head is actually swimming now; I haven’t the first clue what she’s on about.

  ‘This is classified, naturally,’ says Regina, reading from yet another file. ‘But Fiona Wilson is not destined to live her days alone, as in that delightful Charles Dickensesque tableau you chose to paint for the poor girl.’

  ‘So . . . there’s someone out there for her? That’s . . . not Tim?’

  ‘Does the name Gerry Reynolds mean anything to you? No,’ she says, seeing the blank look on my bewildered face. ‘I don’t suppose it would. You’re more likely to know him by his computer username. Loves German Shepherds.’

  ‘Oh my God, the vet guy?’

  ‘Is her actual, true soulmate, as you’d put it. But not only did you do just about everything in your power to keep them apart, you brought Tim
Keating back into her life. Who is destined to get back with his wife Ayesha in, ohh, let’s see now . . . yes, here it is, in about six months’ time, if I’m correct.’

  ‘Tim is meant to stay with Ayesha? You have to be kidding me! She’s not for him, sure, she wasn’t even faithful to him!’

  ‘There you go again. Playing God. Becoming a bit of a habit with you, isn’t it, dear? As it happens, Tim loves his wife and family and will do anything to win them back. Which he will, in good time. He’ll forgive his wife, and they’ll all be as before. Not that you even stopped to think about that.’

  I’m too stunned to even answer her back. Fi’s going to end up with Mr Loves German Shepherds? And Tim’s going to get back with fake-tan queen?

  I got it all wrong. Completely arseways. And I’ve never, ever felt so humbled.

  ‘Sorry, Regina,’ I manage to mutter. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Ignorance didn’t stop you from interfering, though, did it, dear? Moving on from there . . . where did I put that folder, oh yes, here we are . . .’

  I don’t believe it. Now she’s reading from a file with Kate’s name on it.

  Well, I’m OK here, aren’t I? I mean, I couldn’t have messed up too badly with Kate and Paul, could I? Yes, OK, they seem to be going through a rocky patch in their marriage, but all I’m guilty of is trying to make Kate remember why she fell for Paul in the first place. That’s all.

  Regina whips off her pinky glasses and eyeballs me.

  ‘This may come as an unpleasant shock to you, but Kate is not destined to be married for very much longer. In fact, she and her husband Paul are to separate by mutual consent, in . . . emm . . . where did I write it, oh yes, here we are . . . this November, as it happens. Just before Christmas.’

  ‘What did you say?’ For a second I think I’m hearing things. That can’t be true, I don’t believe it. OK, so they might be at each other’s throats, but it’s just a blip, isn’t it? Just temporary not-getting-on and nothing permanent?