Hopes & Dreams

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Well if the movies of Sandra Bullock have taught me anything, it’s that the opposite of love is indifference. Now you can say what you like, but he was definitely not indifferent to you back there. So from now on, the best thing you can do is to deflect indifference with more indifference. Then you’ll be grand.’

  You’re quite wrong, I think, looking dully at her. The opposite of love isn’t indifference. It’s disembowelment.

  ‘Or else, if you fancied a laugh,’ says Maggie, hauling herself up to go outside for a fag, ‘I could get him audited for you? If there’s anything he hasn’t declared to the Inland Revenue in the last few years, even as much as a pair of jocks, we could make life very uncomfortable for him.’

  I just sniffle by way of a response. Sorry, but it’s all I’m able for.

  ‘Ah for fuck’s sake, Jessie, you’re going to have to snap out of this. I don’t think I can put up with you trailing around the house out of your brains on whatever pills Ma’s been slipping you for the past few weeks. The guy’s a prick and the sooner you draw a line under this the better. Simple as.’

  ‘Yeah and I mean, it’s not like he ever asked you to marry him or anything, now did he?’

  ‘No. No, you’re right. He never did.’

  MAY

  JUNE

  Chapter Twelve

  OK, good news and bad news to report. First, the good: I’m no longer sleeping on the sofa at home any more. I know, miracle. Sharon, in a flush of generosity which I’ll forever be grateful for, took pity on me and said that from now on it would be OK if I crashed out on a makeshift fold-up bed in her room. A vast improvement to sleeping on the bum-imprinted sofa downstairs, let me tell you.

  We’ve become close, Sharon and I. She’s been helping me and I’ve been helping her. Every spare minute we have, we’re online vetting out suitable men for her and weeding, as she puts it, the WLTMs (the Would Like To Meets) from the RAMFs (the Run A Mile Froms). Then, at night, we lie awake giggling and messing and talking about boys and about some of the more eejitty email replies she’s got, usually until Joan wallops on the bedroom door and tells us both to shut up, that we’re keeping her awake.

  So it’s kind of like being a teenager again, minus homework/spots/hopeless crushes on band members/older, unattainable boys in school. I swear to God, this is doing me good on several levels. Renews my faith that love and romance do exist in the cyber world, if nowhere else, for starters. And any topic of conversation that takes my mind off that other matter can only be a good thing, can’t it? We’ve reached an unspoken agreement in the house to draw an iron veil over that bowel-withering event back in April and the general embarrassment of my carry-on, which is probably just as well. Even Maggie, queen of the quip, has left me alone and hasn’t had a go at me. At least not on the subject of He Whose Name Shall Forever Remain Unspoken, that is. On just about everything else, though, she’s the same as she ever was, a wise-arse that looks like she’s about ready to throttle me if I as much as look sideways at her.

  After said event, Sharon told me in no uncertain terms that I’d made the big romantic gesture, it blew up in my face, so therefore it only proved the theory she’d espoused all along. Namely that Sam was never anything more than a big knobhead with no knob. Furthermore, she reckoned that his behaviour towards me that horrible night was exactly the electric shock treatment to the heart which I needed to jolt me back to reality. From then on though, she started to monitor my behaviour and began by stealing my mobile from my handbag and deleting Sam’s number, as well as removing the photo of him and me together on a Caribbean holiday, which I had kept as my little screensaver. Her heart was in the right place, I had to keep telling myself, even though it was a complete waste of time, I’ve had that number memorised pretty much since the day he first gave it to me.

  Then, as we lie in our beds at night, she often tries to get a laugh out of me by imagining all sorts of wild and wacky ‘serves him bloody right’ scenarios. Since we’ve broken up, he’s turned to drugs and has now mortgaged his life away to support his two grand a day habit, is a particular favourite.

  ‘Or, hang one, I’ve a good one,’ Sharon said to me hopefully one night while she stared at the ceiling smoking a fag and I tried to get into one of her Danielle Steel novels. ‘Did you ever think that he might be gay and is only realising it now? I’ve seen it happen before, you know. Toxic bachelors who flit from girlfriend to girlfriend but never settle down; next thing, before you can say Gianni Versace, they’ve gone and shacked up with some skinny-arse David Furnish type.’

  ‘Where exactly have you seen this before?’

  Someone on the street maybe, I’m thinking? Some local hot gossip I don’t know about?

  ‘On EastEnders. Sorry, when I said I’d seen it before, I didn’t mean in real life. By the way, do you think I’d sound more glamorous to fellas if I changed my name?’

  ‘Changed it to what?’

  ‘Shazwanda.’

  ‘Ehhh … no. Definitely not. Now, goodnight … Shazwanda.’

  *

  Heartache, I’ve decided, is a bit like measles; the later it comes to you in life, the worse it is. But now that the healing has begun, in my quieter, calmer moments, and with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve come to accept the following: if Sam is able to deadhead me out of his life so easily, then our entire relationship was a bit like Communism; good in theory but lousy in practice. Yes, he knew every incarnation of me, from humble runner in Channel Six to weather girl to fully fledged TV presenter. But the one incarnation of me that he couldn’t handle was unemployed loser. Which, when you think about it, says far more about him than it does about me. And my contacting him all the time was, to borrow Sharon’s metaphor, a bit like her relationship with Pot Noodles. Irresistible in the short term, deeply satisfying and nigh on impossible to say no to, but afterwards you’re guaranteed to feel like complete shite and end up hating yourself even more for not having any self-control. Sharon’s very fond of any metaphor that involves food.

  So, anyway, I’ve stopped. No phone calls, no incessant texting; I don’t even read the papers just in case there might be a bit of gossip about him. Like a recovering alcoholic, I’m taking it one day at a time. But right now I’m almost seventy days without contacting him and as far as I’m concerned, that’s one of my proudest achievements.

  Anyway, only middling news about Sharon’s love life to report. After intensive site-trawling, and much gentle guidance on my part, she did eventually whittle all the guys she’d been in regular contact with down to one special someone. A guy called Dave who worked in IT: thirty-five, separated, no kids. Looked cute in his photo, even if it was hard to tell, given just how far he was standing away from the camera. The only tiny point in his disfavour was that, during a late-night email to Sharon, he made the cardinal error of letting it slip that she appeared to watch a lot of TV, whereas he was someone who found real life far more stimulating. It took me several hours to convince her that this was actually a perfectly normal stance and that he wouldn’t necessarily be alone in thinking so. Anyway, they got to a point where they were messaging every day, sometimes several times a day and when the time finally came for them to meet up, she was up to high doh with excitement. Her cunning plan was to meet for dinner somewhere posh in town; a proper, grown-up date, right down to beard rash and love bites to show for it at the end of the night, with any luck.

  Bad idea, I argued, hating that I had to play devil’s advocate, but knowing I’d no choice. You can get to know so much about a person online, but the one thing you can’t ever gauge from a computer screen are the mysteries of human chemistry. Supposing you meet and within five minutes you realise you don’t fancy him. Then what? You end up bored stupid and yet still having to get through a two-hour meal that could end up costing you a week’s wages, that’s what. Or worse, and really I hated saying this, but someone had to; suppose he stands you up and you’re left in a swishy restaurant on your own with a glass of tap water in fr
ont of you? No, far, far better to meet in a coffee shop for the first date. That way, it’s only half an hour and if you do get on, then it’s a doddle to arrange to see each other again. But if you don’t, then you’ve only wasted thirty minutes and the price of an Americano.

  ‘Then there’s the other huge advantage of a coffee date,’ I added smugly.

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘You can tell a lot about a guy from the way he drinks. Example: if he blows on a coffee, chances are he’s ultra-cautious in bed. And if he slurps, then you can bet he’s a sloppy kisser.’

  ‘Jeez, you should do this for a living.’

  So before we knew it, Sharon was going to loads of bother getting ready for her big date. I took full charge of her makeover, something I’d been itching to do for a long, long time, and even bullied her into making an appointment at Joan’s salon to get something done with the awful hair. As if that wasn’t enough, I also plucked every single excess hair from her eyebrows and amazingly, managed to talk her into tackling her moustache, which, after much whinging about how painful it would be, she eventually did. She even treated herself to a brand new pair of jeans and I found a cute little vintage Whistles twinset lurking at the back of Joan’s wardrobe which fitted her perfectly. Then we jointly raided all my stuff in the garage and rummaged out one of my Birkin bags, as well as some costume jewellery earrings and a necklace for her.

  Overall effect? Complete transformation.

  Maggie’s comment? ‘I think you need more accessories. Like a pimp and a lamp post, for instance.’ Then, when Sharon was out of the room, Maggie turned on me, snarling, actually snarling that if anything happened to hurt Sharon, she’d hold me personally responsible. I got defensive, muttering something about how it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all (it’s all the Danielle Steel I’ve been reading), and Maggie’s response was, ‘Oh please. Just look at the state you have her going out the door in. Why don’t you just drop her down the docks in a pair of hotpants?’

  I said nothing to Sharon about this exchange, just silently reminded myself that people always want you to reflect their status in life so they can feel good about themselves. Which has to be the only reason why Maggie’s so threatened by all this. She’s single and therefore wants the whole house to keep her company.

  Joan, on the other hand, was completely fantastic about the whole thing. I actually think the thought of one of her daughters out dating might even have propelled her into one of her good moods. The only slight problem being that a lot of her well-intentioned dating advice clashed violently with mine. Example: me gently guiding Sharon to be funny and warm but still to keep something in reserve, on the grounds that it’s never any harm to cultivate a bit of mystery around guys. Whereas Joan told her, ‘Put on your available face and remember you’ve just had about a twelve-year dry spell, so best to grab whatever you can get your hands on.’

  Then, I was coaching Sharon to keep a close eye on the time, and after about forty minutes, to let on she had to leave. To say she’d a pressing engagement elsewhere, on the showbiz principle that it’s always best to leave ’em wanting more. Whereas Joan told her she was more than welcome to bring him home, so she could get a decent look at him for herself and furthermore, if he fancied staying overnight, she’d even cook him a big fry-up for brekkie the following morning.

  ‘Jeez, could you imagine that?’ Sharon muttered to me on our way out the door. ‘Me bringing the poor eejit back here for the first time and Ma waiting here for us? And you know what she’s like; the nicer she’d be to him, the more she’d frighten him off. Like some kind of giant dating scarecrow.’

  Anyway, I borrowed Joan’s car and dropped Sharon off at Starbucks in Dame Street, right in the middle of town; her nervous as a kitten and me fully immersed in my role as relationship guru, calmly assuring her that I’d dropped a lot of babies in the bathwater in my time and that they’d all been absolutely fine.

  I was so full of high hopes that it all might go somewhere but … disaster. I hadn’t even made it back to Whitehall when my mobile rang. Sharon, in tears, wanting to be collected. Now if she’d been stood up it mightn’t have been quite so bad, but what happened was far, far worse. Your man arrived in, took one look at Sharon, then said he’d forgotten to feed the meter back where his car was parked. And never came back again, the bastard.

  ‘I’ve never felt so humiliated in my whole life,’ she sniffed in between fags on the way home. ‘And I flip fecking burgers for a living. It was like his lips said no and his eyes said read my lips. Useless gobshite.’

  So, basically, it’s one-nil to Maggie.

  I’ll never forget the row that night. Mainly because, for once and most unusually, it didn’t happen to involve me. In fact, I was innocently loading the dishwasher in the kitchen when, from the TV room, I heard the highly unusual sound of Maggie having a go at Sharon. ‘You see? This is what happens when you turn a gobshite like Cinderella Rockefeller into your new best friend. Bet she’s having a right laugh for herself over this. Getting you done up like a dog’s dinner and all for some fella who took one look at you and then ran.’

  ‘Leave Jessie out of it, will you? This wasn’t her fault. How could it have been? Just back off and give the girl a break, will you?’

  ‘And, unsurprisingly, you’re sticking up for her. My my, we’re very matey these days, aren’t we? Sharing the same room, all gossip and chats and trawling the computer together looking for complete tossers you’d run a mile from if you met them down the local. She’s playing you like a violin and you can’t even see it. She’s wormed her way into your life purely so she can get what she wants. And she’s succeeding too; she’s got you to share your room with her and now she has you and me at each other’s throats.’

  ‘You know something, Maggie?’ says Sharon, sounding stronger than I think I’ve ever heard her before. ‘When Jessie first moved in here, we gave her all of our shittiest jobs to do, totally on purpose. And she did them and she never moaned or complained. Not once.’

  ‘Oh please, Jessie Woods and manual labour lead mutually exclusive lives.’

  ‘Would you listen to yourself? Why don’t you just stop being so down on her all the time? And while you’re at it, you can bloody well stop being so down on me too. Because I’m fed up being on my own—’

  ‘You’re not on your own …’

  ‘I’m fed up doing nothing but watching TV night after night and most of all, I’m fed up of being single. I’m only thirty-two for feck’s sake and I’m sick of Ma having a better social life than either of us. I don’t want you and me to end up being two weird old ladies who the kids on the street all call names at and play knick-knock on our door then run away.’

  ‘What is going on with the pair of you?’ I can hear Joan yelling down from the top of the stairs.

  ‘NOTHING,’ they both yell back up in perfect unison.

  ‘Well can’t you keep it down then?’ Joan shouts back. ‘And if there’s blood spilt on a carpeted area, you’ll have me to answer to.’

  A slam of the bathroom door and the row continues, but in lower voices this time.

  ‘It’s like this,’ says Sharon, a bit more calmly. ‘I want a fella and I’m going to do my best to get one and maybe it won’t work out, but at least I’ll have tried. At least I’ll have got my arse up off the sofa and actually tried to get something that I wanted out of life, for a change.’

  ‘I do not just sit here with my arse on the sofa night after night …’

  ‘Maggie, take a look at yourself, will you? There’s so much more you could do with your life. Jeez, you’re the funniest, sharpest person I know and you’re always saying that being a stand-up comedienne would be your dream job, aren’t you? You’d be amazing at it and what’s more you know you’d love it and you could do it in your sleep. But no, you’re content to just crash here on the sofa night after night watching repeats of the same programmes time and again. Well I’ve have enough. I want more.�
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  ‘Hang on here a minute …’

  ‘Because if it’s one thing I have learned from having Jessie around, it’s this. These are the golden years when we prove our mother wrong. And that’s what I intend doing.’

  Door slam. Exit. Just like in a soap opera.

  I was standing in the kitchen, tea towel in one hand, the other hand over my mouth, hanging on to every word. But I could only think one thing. Bravo Sharon.

  *

  More news. About two weeks ago, Emma called over bright and early one morning. She rang first to see if I was free (Me? Not free? Now there’s a laugh) so I gave her directions and an hour later, she was sitting at our kitchen table drinking coffee out of one of Joan’s gakky peach mugs. It was so lovely to see her, I almost had to fight back the tears. We’ve been in touch on the phone, of course, but it was just so sweet of her to take the time and trouble to look me up all the way out here in Whitehall.

  She looked as gorgeous as ever, in one of her neat little newsreader suits with her usual pristine grooming. Tanned and golden too; she and her boyfriend Simon had just come back from a week in Portugal, where they’re planning to spend this Christmas. She invited me to join them, which was more than kind, but short of my winning the lottery between now and then, I’d say there’s zero chance of my being able to go. Bless her, she even admired my new redhead look. But as she chatted on about everyone and everything back at Channel Six, it was beyond weird being reminded of my old life. Of what might have been.

  Anyway, she had a meeting recently with Liz Walsh, the Head of Television, and it’s looking likely that she’ll be given her own talk show to spearhead the late summer/early autumn schedule. Something primetime too, and no one deserves it more. Emma didn’t even condescend or patronise me by commenting on shall we say, my reduced circumstances, just kept telling me that somehow everything would work itself out and in the meantime, she was only on the other end of a phone if I ever needed her.