Hopes & Dreams

by Claudia Carroll

  She means well, I remind myself, so I force a weak half smile.

  ‘You OK?’ she asks, suddenly concerned and picking up on the nervous tension that‘s practically hopping off me.

  ‘No,’ I say back to her in a tiny voice. ‘I’m about as far from OK as you can get.’

  Thing is, I’m frightened and don’t even know why. Which is ridiculous. I mean, this is Sam, for God’s sake. My perfect boyfriend. Who, granted, may be acting a bit weirdly right now, but who will no doubt return to standard Prince Charming behaviour when this little blip we’re going through is sorted out.

  Anyway, another deep, nerve-calming breath and I trip up the steep, stone steps to let the three of us in through the huge, heavy oak door, mentally reminding myself of his alarm code. It’s an easy one to remember because it’s the month and year of his birthday; 081975. Leo, wouldn’t you know it? High achieving, driven, successful and doesn’t know his arse from his elbow when it comes to women.

  I push the door open and the three of us clamber into the hallway, so vast it could easily double up as a cathedral. As the warning alarm beeps, I head for the security box, which is just to the right of the cloakroom as you go in the door, knowing that I’ve about ninety seconds to punch in the code and deactivate it.

  Meanwhile, Maggie and Sharon are strolling around the hall, gazing upwards like tourists in the Louvre museum.

  ‘Get a load of the ceiling,’ says Maggie, looking weirdly out of place amid all this neo-Georgian splendour in her favourite Hubba Bubba neon pink tracksuit. ‘What did Sam do anyway, have it imported directly from Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad?’

  If they think that’s impressive, I smile smugly to myself as I punch in the alarm code, wait until they get a load of the kitchen, which is so huge, you could have a sit down dinner party for twenty people in it with plenty of room over for dancing on tables later.

  I wait for the beep beep warning noise to stop. But it doesn’t. Which is a bit odd. I try again. Same code, except this time I do it slower in case I made a mistake the first time. I’m positive I did it properly, but for some reason now a computerised red message is flashing up on the alarm box, saying ‘Incorrect code, please retry.’ I know you only get three goes at getting it right, so I take a deep breath and really concentrate this time.

  One by one, I stab in the numbers, then wait with my heart walloping. No joy. I’m just about to break into a sweat when next thing, disaster. The alarm goes off in all its ear-piercing, glass-window-shattering glory. It’s beyond deafening, so much so that I have to stick my two fingers in my ears and mime to Sharon and Maggie to get back outside. The three of us run out to the front garden hands clapped over our ears and mouths agape like three exact replicas of that Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

  ‘WHAT THE FECK DID YOU DO?’ I think Sharon’s screaming at me, but over the alarm racket I just have to lip read her.

  ‘HE MUST HAVE CHANGED THE ALARM CODE!’ I mime back, whipping out my mobile phone to ring him. He doesn’t answer and it’s ridiculous me leaving a message for him because I can’t even hear myself over the unmerciful racket.

  Then more panic sets in. His alarm is monitored, so right now, the alarm company are probably ringing both him and the police to let them know that it’s gone off. In the panic and the pandemonium, we’re all screaming at each other, so completely deafened that I think we’ll end up having hearing difficulties for life … and that’s exactly when a neat little squad car comes trundling up the driveway, blue lights flashing.

  *

  In all the sleepless nights I’ve had since moving back home, and believe me there have been many, I’d sometimes lie awake, staring at Joan’s stupid-looking eight-arm chandelier in the TV room, fantasising wildly about possible reconciliation scenarios between meand Sam. Himarriving in his flashy Bentley to Whitehall, walloping on the front door and shoving his way past Maggie and Sharon, sweeping me up into his arms and back to my old life … always a particular favourite. Him have a screeching go at Maggie for being such a minging cow tome this last while, resulting in Joan’s revolting plates being hurled around the room by the two of them like flowery peach-ringed missiles, also made it into my top five. But never, in my greatest, wildest flights of imagination did I imagine this. That I’d be sitting in Kildare Police Station, with Sharon and Maggie on either side of me, facing some highly embarrassing questioning from one Superintendent McHugh. Who’s a perfectly nice man, kindly in a patrician, fatherly sort of way, but clearly has me written off as some kind of lunatic/stalker/amateur burglar who’s crying out to be admitted to the nearest day care unit.

  ‘And these are your two sisters, you say, Miss Woods?’

  ‘Stepsisters,’ Maggie snaps back. ‘Which means we’re not actually related at all really. Just in case you were thinking that insanity runs in families.’

  ‘What’s of concern to us, Miss Woods, is why a valid key holder wouldn’t be aware of a change in the alarm code.’

  ‘But as I’ve explained to you time and again,’ I insist firmly, ready to leap up and start thumping on the table like they do in all those miscarriage of justice movies, ‘the owner of the house, Sam Hughes, has been out of the country for a while and … you see, the thing is that he must have changed the code before he left.’

  ‘Without mentioning it to the key holder? Seems a bit odd, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘I promise you, Superintendent; this is all just a silly misunderstanding …’

  ‘Jessie just broke up with Sam, you see,’ Sharon chips in and I’m sure she means to be helpful but I actually could strangle her.

  ‘Oh, so then you were in a relationship with the home owner?’

  ‘Emm … yes.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to mention this before? Now why was that?’

  ‘Because … I just didn’t. I mean … that is to say, I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘So what was your reason for calling to his home when he wasn’t there?’

  ‘Well …’ Think, think, think! ‘I didn’t know that he wouldn’t be there you see.’

  ‘Ah for feck’s sake, just come clean, Jessie, will you?’ says Sharon, prodding me under the table. ‘Then we can all get out of here. You see, Superintendent, basically she was trying to get back with him. That was the plan. I know, I thought it was a mental idea all along too.’

  ‘Can I just point out that I’ve never, ever done anything like this before?’ I plead.

  ‘Well your first time was a roaring success,’ says Maggie from out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Look, why don’t you just plead insanity and then we can all get out of here? And by the way, Guard, can I step outside for a cigarette now? I’d nothing to do with any of this and I haven’t even had dinner yet.’

  Then another Guard comes in, a woman this time about Joan’s vintage, who briskly plonks a polystyrene cup full of milky tea in front of the Superintendent and is about to turn on her heel to leave when … disaster … she recognises me.

  ‘Excuse me, it’s Jessie Woods, isn’t it?’

  I nod and manage a watery half smile, thinking Shit, shit, shit.

  Last thing I need is this leaking to the papers.

  ‘I thought it was you. Almost didn’t know you with the red hair. Sorry about what happened to your show and everything.’

  ‘Ehh … thanks.’

  ‘Don’t suppose I could get an autograph, could I?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘It’s not for me, of course. I never watch lowest common denominator television. It’s for my daughter.’

  ‘Oh. Right then.’

  ‘And just to let you know, Superintendent, Mr Sam Hughes has just arrived and is ready to identify Miss Woods now.’

  No, no, no, no, please for the love of God, noooooo. I do NOT believe this.

  But before I have time to gather my thoughts, Sam is being ushered into the tiny questi
oning room, all good humour and bonhomie and radiating his usual bullet-proof self-confidence. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, just instantly identifies the Superintendent as the main man in all of this, and torpedoes straight in on maximum, high-alert charm offensive. It’s Sam at his most gulp-inducingly handsome, dazzling best. A terrible misunderstanding, he beams winningly, flashing a smile that practically pings. Perfectly easy to explain away though. Quite simply, Miss Woods wanted to collect some of her belongings from the house and hadn’t realised that the alarm code had been changed. So awful to have involved the police in all this … such a storm in a tea cup and profuse apologies all round.

  ‘Ah, sure, not at all,’ says Superintendent McHugh good-humouredly, already like putty in Sam’s hands. ‘We just can’t be too careful now can we? And of course when we found Miss Woods at the property with no positive identification on her, we’d no choice but to bring her in for questioning. Standard procedure, we’d do the same for anyone, ha, ha, HA.’

  During all of this, I’m completely agog, having forgotten the sheer force of nature that Sam can be. And now that we’re sharing the same airspace again, I’m also silently willing the oxygen to stop my body from shaking. It’s tough though, because as he’s chatting away, a whole kaleidoscope of memories keep flooding back tome, including one particular gem; the first time Sam ever said he loved me.

  We were on a mini-break in Venice, I remember. He was there on business and I flew out to join him for the weekend. We had two blissfully romantic days of pure luxury in the Cipriani Hotel … well, that is to say, it was blissfully romantic in between all of his business meetings. But then, I knew he was going to be busy, Sam’s always busy. Anyway, on our last night, at my insistence, we went on a gondola ride through the city. I had it all planned, I’d even smuggled along two snipes of pink champagne for us to sip while gliding under moonlit bridges through the twisting canals. I’ll never forget it, maybe I was a bit tipsy, but I snuggled up into him and whispered that I loved him so much, that he was the single best thing that had ever happened to me. Then, in the half-second delay before he answered, his iPhone rang and he answered it, telling me it was important and that he had to take it.

  If he doesn’t say it back to me, I remember thinking while he took the call, I will jump into this canal right here and right now. He didn’t. At least not in so many words. But what he did say later on was, ‘I heart you.’ The L-word, he explained, doesn’t come easily to him, which I understood perfectly. I mean, aren’t all Alpha males a bit emotionally retarded when it comes to expressing how they feel? So, ‘I heart you’ became our little private in-joke, which we’d say to each other last thing at night and at the tail end of phone calls if we were apart. And that’s what I’m thinking as I look at him now, all tall and commanding, explaining everything away. I heart you, Sam. So, so much.

  Somehow, it all comes to an end and we do actually get out of there, but the next few, awful minutes are a nightmarish blur. Us being ushered out of the cop shop and blinkingly pouring out onto the street outside. Me, Maggie, Sharon … and Sam.

  ‘Emm, by the way, these are my sisters, Maggie and Sharon,’ I say to him, to break the silence more than anything else, as the tension between us is starting to crackle like an electric current.

  ‘Stepsisters,’ says Maggie, scowling at him and lighting up a fag.

  Sharon, meanwhile, is gazing up at him fascinated, like he’s some kind of alien from another planet. But then there’s not too many blokes with Rolex watches, Prada loafers and Bentleys hanging around Smiley Burger in Whitehall. I throw her a quick flash of a warning look, mainly because knowing Sharon, there’s a fair chance she’d ask him straight out if he’s any single friends he could match her up with.

  Next thing, Sam politely excuses us, then grabs my arm and firmly steers me away from the others and towards where his car is parked, a few feet away. I look up at him, determined to let him speak first. But when he does, it’s not what I expected at all.

  ‘I could have pressed charges back there, you know,’ he says coolly. ‘Trespassing on private property? Letting yourself into my home without my permission? How would you like it if I pulled a stunt like that on you?’

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not how this conversation is supposed go. There are coherent sentences ready formed in my brain. Trouble is, not one them will come out.

  ‘What exactly were you thinking?’

  I manage to stammer out something about the article in the paper about him coming home early from Spain and how rumours were flying around that this meant he wanted to get back with me, but he immediately cuts me off. This is all because of one crappy piece in a gossip column? At my advanced stage of working in the media, don’t I realise that journalists make stuff up? Besides, the only reason he cut his holiday to Spain short was because he was asked to deliver a keynote speech tonight at the K Club on start-up businesses. Which is where he’s meant to be right now.

  On and on he goes, working himself up to a crescendo of quiet, understated fury. Detail always coming before emotion. He’ll get his people onto this straight away, he says and with great luck, maybe, just maybe, it can be kept from being leaked to the papers. And I can hand him back his house keys right here and now so there’ll be no repeat performance of this horrible, horrible evening.

  Sam never raises his voice, ever, and somehow when you’re on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from him, it makes it all the more intimidating.

  But there’s no calling me Woodsie, like he always does. No ‘I heart you.’ I’m rooted to the spot, staring at him like an imbecile with nothing to say for myself. And still he goes on. Why was I pestering him with phone call after phone call? And harassing Margaret in the office too when she’d quite enough to be getting on with? Wasn’t it obvious that he didn’t want to speak to me? Didn’t I understand what was meant by ‘taking a break’? Then the real killer. The one that makes my heart physically twist in my chest. Maybe, he said, maybe there was a time a few weeks ago after the split when he might have considered a reunion, but now it’s out of the question. Not after this. The subtext being: because who wants to be with some kind of obsessive, house-breaking bunny boiler?

  I don’t even bother defending myself. I just stand there taking it. Like an abused wife who somehow feels it’s all her fault in the first place. Because he’s right. I have behaved like a woman demented. I deserve my carpeting from Axminster. I’m not quite sure how much longer I can stand it without my eyes beginning to seep and I’m determined not to let him see me crying. But as usual, my body lets me down. I hear sobs and realise they’re coming from me. Then, sure enough, the tears start to fall. Big ugly tears too that signal to Sam he should run as far away as possible but under absolutely no circumstances get involved. A second later it’s all over. And I really do mean, all over.

  ‘Gotta go,’ he says brusquely. ‘I was just about to start my speech at the K Club when the call came for me to drive here to troubleshoot this. Little did I guess I’d end up having to deal with all this crapology.’

  He’s leaving. Really leaving this time. Getting into his car to go. Out of my life forever. I’m on the pavement beside him, numbly willing him to say something else to me. Crapology can’t be the last word he ever says to me. It just can’t.

  Next thing, the window of his car glides down and he sticks his head out. His sunglasses are on now, so I can’t make out his expression. Irritation? Annoyance? Or, worst of all, pity?

  ‘Oh and by the way?’ he calls back to me, revving up the car to pull out.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The red hair is bloody awful.’

  *

  Half an hour later, I’m sitting in a pub across the road with Maggie and Sharon. They’re both stuffing their faces with sausage and chips swimming in a disgusting, gloopy-looking oniony gravy while I nurse a brandy, shaking and shivering, looking and feeling exactly like a car crash victim. I don’t even remember much about how we ende
d up here. All I know is that after Sam whooshed off, I felt exactly as if someone had just stuck their fingers down my throat and squeezed right down into my bowels.

  Then I remember Sharon and Maggie’s voices beside me, bickering amongst themselves. Maggie threatening that if she didn’t eat a proper dinner within the next five minutes, that she’d torch down the whole town of Kildare, which with her wouldn’t necessarily be an idle threat. So they linked me, one arm each and dragged me into this pub.

  Anyway, now that the pair of them have eaten and are happily rubbing their tummies waiting for dessert to arrive, they’re both in miles better form and are actually making touching little efforts to drag me out of the deep mire I’ve sunk into. Without even realising it, they’re fully obeying all ex-boyfriend break-up rules. Rule one: they’re both bitching about Sam as much as is possible. Rule two: they even order a second brandy for me. Which, considering I can’t afford to pay for it, is more than kind. It takes ages to come, so long that Sharon snaps at the lounge boy, ‘How exactly is that brandy getting here anyway? By Saint Bernard?’ Also, the pair of them are missing all their soaps just to sit here. Which is the equivalent of diehard soccer supporters missing the FAI cup final, just to put it into context. Even Maggie, who loves nothing more than kicking me when I’m down, is keeping her claws well and truly reined in. Which, just for tonight at least, I appreciate.

  ‘Tell you something,’ says Sharon, ‘I’ve seen Sam Hughes’s photo in the paper loads of times, but up close, he’s not even all that good looking. He has very tufty hair for starters. Even worse than Simon Cowell’s.’

  ‘And the head is nearly a perfect square,’ Maggie throws in. ‘He’s built like a rugby player, but with a really stupid-looking unibrow.’

  ‘And here’s another thing,’ says Sharon, ‘he was really angry. Vicious. White hot anger. Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘How exactly is that supposed to cheer me up?’