Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  I came back downstairs twenty minutes later clean and dressed in a figure-hiding black dress, my hair dripping down my back because I was feeling too sick to blow-dry it. Susie opened her mouth to give out about my hair, but I shushed her.

  “What did people do in the days before hairdryers? Let’s just get on with this. Oh, the drinks . . . I was supposed to make a jug of some cocktail or other to welcome the guests.”

  “All taken care of.” Susie went to the fridge and took out a cling-film covered jug.

  “It’s called Mind-Blower. I made it up myself.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Oh, mostly Malibu.”

  Mind-Blower? The kids could drink Malibu and not get drunk on it – not that they were going to. Ever. I couldn’t even bear to think of Hayley allowing a drop of alcohol to pass her lips, even though she was eighteen. But I wasn’t going to point out the inconsistency to Susie when she’d been good enough to make the drink.

  “Thanks, Susie. I’d taste it, but I know alcohol would have me barfing again.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’ll be Paul and Luke. The contestants should arrive in around fifteen minutes. Susie, just to warn you – these people are . . . unorthodox, I suppose is the word to describe them. If they say anything that you find offensive, can you just let it go over your head so that I’ve some chance of winning the money?”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t cause any trouble.”

  Susie let Paul and Luke in. Luke looked at my wet hair and frowned. I shook my head. He nodded, seemingly happy to leave it at that.

  Peter was the first contestant to arrive. I held my breath as Susie greeted him at the front door, whereupon he told her he was delighted to visit such a charming area – and wasn’t this a beautiful example of a bijou property?

  There was a gut-wrenchingly long silence. I won’t cause any trouble, my eye. I braced myself for Susie to crucify Peter verbally.

  “Thank you, Peter. You’re obviously a man of impeccable taste. Let me take your coat – oh, it’s cashmere, how wonderful – and let’s get you a nice hot whiskey. Terribly cold out tonight, isn’t it?”

  As I greeted Peter, Susie stuck her fingers up behind his back and rolled her eyes. I prayed he hadn’t seen her reflection in the window he was facing, although the camera had surely caught her. Thankfully, he repeated his obviously prepared compliments about Blackbeg and the house, so we were safe.

  I was quite sure landing in an area like Blackbeg was a novelty for him, a story he’d tell over a cigar on someone’s raised and private patio area overlooking Dublin Bay some balmy night. “I made it out alive – I should get myself a T-shirt,” he’d say to hearty laughter. But he was easy company and seemed like a reasonably decent soul.

  I hoped I’d still be saying that about him after I found out how he’d rated my night. If my night went ahead at all. I had visions of being one of those contestants who went down in the show’s history for all the wrong reasons. Throwing up right into the saucepan wasn’t outside the realms of possibility.

  All the other contestants had similarly positive opinions on our house and Blackbeg, which I suspected they’d taken straight from an estate agent’s website that sold very small houses in not so desirable areas.

  “It’s so close to all the local amenities,” Dawn said. (Translation: what an overcrowded area!).

  “You’d never get bored around here if you wanted company,” Jason added. (Meaning: your neighbours are right on top of you, aren’t they?)

  “The house is deceptively spacious really, isn’t it?” Delia offered. (A euphemism for: from the outside, it looks like you’re actually the woman who lives in a shoe who has so many children she doesn’t know what to do, but it’s not as much of a shoebox inside as I thought – and it has a toilet, too!).

  I waited for Susie to tear someone to bits, but she smiled sweetly and fussed over them as if they were royalty.

  The contestants sat around our tiny kitchen table, ready to watch me cook. I handed each of them a copy of my menu. Susie glided over to the kitchen table with a tray.

  “Now, guys. An aperitif for you all – my own secret recipe.”

  I took deep breaths and tried to ignore the nausea that was gnawing away at me, although it was less acute than before. It was time to get started.

  I lined up four chicken breasts on a plate head to arse then arse to head. When all heads and arses were in place, I threw large chunks of onions and peppers between the breasts, pushed four skewers through the breasts and veg, and then sliced between the skewers, making four kebabs. I repeated the process twice more to make twelve kebabs – two for each contestant (my allocation was going to be put aside for Willie to eat later) and two for Susie, who’d insisted she wanted them, although I gravely doubted she’d eat them when it came down to it. I poured some of the chicken satay mix into a roasting tray, then added the chicken skewers and poured the rest of the mixture over them. Then I drizzled the chicken with olive oil and salt and put them on the top shelf of the oven. When that was done, I half-heartedly rustled together two scanty vegetarian skewers for myself and threw them on another Pyrex dish and into the oven.

  I peeked at the contestants to gauge their reactions. Collectively, they didn’t seem quite as focused as before. My cooking technique was evidently very boring, but I was feeling triumphant at managing to make the starter without feeling too sick. Buoyed by my successful start, I quickly mixed mustard, paprika, cinnamon and coriander together in a bowl and poured in a teaspoon of oil. I slashed the skin and fat of each duck breast several times with a knife and brushed a little more oil over them with a rarely used basting brush that had been in this house for as long as Susie had. I scooped the spice mix out of the bowl with a spoon and poured it onto the duck breasts, pressing it down with the spoon. Then I heated up some oil and transferred the duck breasts into the frying pan, skin-side down.

  “This aperitif is top notch,” Peter said. “Any chance of a refill, Susie?”

  “Of course!”

  Susie hurried over to the table, jug in hand, and refilled everyone’s glasses.

  Meanwhile, I turned the duck breasts over. I chopped up a chilli and put it into a bowl, squeezed a lemon over it, then added some hastily chopped mint, a dollop of honey and an overflowing tablespoon of olive oil. Things were starting to get very sloppy, but the clock was ticking and this was the best I could do.

  I sneaked a look at the contestants. Susie was blocking Dawn and Delia’s view as she refilled their glasses, Peter was more interested in his drink than me and Jason was staring at my arse. Well, if my big arse took his attention away from my lack of culinary skills, I wasn’t going to pull him up on it.

  While the duck was still cooking, I started on the salad. I peeled the skin off five carrots and shaved the rest of the carrots into ribbons, then did the same with a celeriac. I tossed indeterminable amounts of honey, lemon, salt, pepper and olive oil into a plastic ice-cream bowl and stirred them twice before looking at the clock, freaking out and leaving it at that, then poured it over the celeriac to stop it from going brown. I chopped the chicory haphazardly and threw it in on top of the celeriac, then added the carrots and three kiwis I’d gutted and hacked at.

  Meanwhile, the chicken satay was ready. I fired the skewers onto plates, placed a smattering of rocket beside them and distributed them. Then it was time to make my chocolate fondue. I broke up squares of dark chocolate and put it in the microwave with vanilla extract and milk. I took it out, stirred it too vigorously and splashed the mixture all over the sides, then put it back in the microwave for another minute. Then I tipped strawberries, blueberries and blackberries from their packets into a colander and put them under a running tap.

  I glanced at the clock: twenty-seven minutes.

  I looked round to see if everyone had finished their chicken satay. They had and were getting refills from Susie again. I gathered their starter plates quickly and got the duck and salad ready
for distribution. I thought front of house was supposed to serve the plates, but Susie was too busy chatting as she poured the drinks even to look in my direction.

  I took the fondue out when the microwave pinged and stirred the mixture again to check that the chocolate had melted. Once it was smooth, I put the bowl on the left-hand side of a serving platter and stacked the washed fruit on the right. I ran over to the table and placed it right in the middle, ready for consumption when the duck had been demolished.

  The alarm clock rang.

  “Well done, Holly!” Susie said in a very loud voice. “You timed that really well.” She started clapping.

  The others joined in.

  I smiled and put some food on a plate for myself. Under the rules of the show, the cook ate their meal when they were finished cooking for everyone else. I didn’t think I was capable of eating, but for the sake of posterity I threw a small amount of salad on my plate and hoped for the best. If I told everyone I was feeling below par, they might feel like they had an excuse to mark me down. Speaking of marking, I hadn’t noticed much note-taking going on as I was cooking, but then, it wasn’t as if I’d been able to give that aspect of proceedings my full attention, either.

  “That duck was superb,” Peter said, his voice slurred.

  “Yes, I’m wondering if you took a few of mine home with you last night,” Jason said as he dropped his knife and fork onto his clean plate. “That was as delicious as mine are.”

  Delia and Dawn added their approval. While I was soaking up the praise, Susie appeared with another jug and fresh glasses.

  “Digestifs this time,” she said. “And before you ask what it is, I’m afraid it’s another secret recipe.”

  “It reminds me of a Golden Cadillac, which contains cream, white crème de cacao and liqueur,” Peter said, “but there’s definitely something extra in there, too. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, though.”

  I put on some classical music for the guests to enjoy in the background.

  Peter frowned. “Do you have something a little livelier, Holly? We’re having fun here – let’s not get mellow!”

  “Um . . . let me see.”

  I browsed through a CD collection and found a CD with the word ‘Dance’ emblazoned on it in black marker – an old one of Hayley’s that she’d downloaded and burned onto a disc, by the looks of it.

  “Let’s try this.”

  The sound of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” flooded the room.

  “Quick, come on! Everyone up! Let’s channel the year 2012, when this song came out!” Peter got to his feet and shooed the others into the middle of the kitchen. “Copy me. Right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot.”

  Peter bent his knees and lifted his right foot, then his left, then his right again twice, skipping and bouncing as he did so.

  “Move to the left leg now,” he shouted before lifting left, right, left and left. “As PSY himself says, bounce like you’re riding an invisible horse!”

  I was agog, but the others seemed to think it was completely normal that Peter would know the “Gangnam Style” moves.

  “Pulse your hands up and down, guys – copy me! No, Delia – no smiling! PSY doesn’t smile in the video!”

  Good God. I looked at Paul to make sure I wasn’t dreaming all this. He looked thrilled to bits with the footage that was unfolding in front of him.

  “Here comes the best bit – the lasso! Stick the elbow of your left hand out as if you’re checking your watch, right? Then bend your right arm, stick your fist up and wave that lasso! Move your arm in small circles – yes, that’s it! And again! Now let’s put it all together – legs! Arms – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!”

  “You’d make a great personal trainer, Peter,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

  He was in a zone that was entirely his own. An image of Graham Norton’s character Father Noel Furlong in the TV show Father Ted getting a group of people to dance in a tiny caravan came to mind.

  “Very impressive, guys,” Susie said when Peter finally allowed everyone to stop dancing, “But stand by to see the latest dance – Blackbeg style.”

  Out of nowhere, Susie started throwing shapes that were a mix of dance moves and martial arts – a few karate-chops here, a few high leg kicks there – any of the basic things you’d find in a Blackbeg survival guide, if such a thing existed. Peter was staring at Susie as if he’d died and gone to heaven.

  “You people should send that directly to PSY,” Peter said to Paul when Susie finished up and took a bow. “Show him how it’s done! That was marvellous, Susie. Absolutely amazing. Wonderful—”

  “Oh, we’re only getting started. Does everyone know what the Harlem Shake is?”

  “A milkshake you get in New York?” Jason offered.

  Susie explained that the Harlem Shake was a video that lasted around thirty seconds in which one person danced alone to the song “Harlem Shake” by an artist called Baauer for fifteen seconds, while people around the person either ignored them or seemed to be unaware of their presence. The video would then cut to the second fifteen seconds, which consisted of an entire group of people dancing convulsively.

  Over the course of the next ten minutes, we made a Harlem Shake video – and it wasn’t pretty. The guys were going to regret this when they were sober. But at that point in time, they reacted like Susie had discovered a cure for a rare disease, so brilliant was she for suggesting such a wondrous deed.

  When the guests were eventually willing to stop dancing, it was time for them to go into our sitting room one by one and give their ratings. After a while, we were all called into the sitting room by Luke to find out who’d won. He offered a scroll of paper to the group for someone to read. When nobody took it, I stepped up to read it out.

  “And the winner is . . . oh! It’s, em, me!”

  The guys cheered as if I’d won an Olympic medal. I looked at Luke in confusion. He just shrugged.

  “I didn’t pull any strings for you this time,” he said later when no one was listening. “You’re obviously a better cook than you thought you were.”

  “It was the drink, Luke.” I looked at the contestants over at the coat stand – aka the banister at the bottom of our stairs – struggling to get their arms into their coats. “They’re all out of it!”

  “Your mother knows what she’s doing,” Luke said as he left. “I won’t be accepting any of her cocktails when I come round for that dinner you’re cooking me.”

  “You seriously still want that dinner after what you’ve seen? Take the horror DVDs instead – they’re less scary than my cooking!”

  Susie escorted everyone down the driveway. She came back in with a huge grin on her face.

  “What did you give them?” I asked immediately.

  “The finest vintage brew on the market. The black one, that is.”

  She went to the sink and took out a bottle that had very little contents left.

  “Smell it.”

  “Christ!” I almost gagged, even though I was feeling a lot better. “What’s that? Turpentine?”

  “Poitin.”

  “Where in all that’s holy did you get poitin?”

  “Your dad got it on a trip to Galway five years ago.”

  “You gave the guests five-year-old turpentine?”

  “I gave them poitin and Malibu cocktails, actually.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No, because I didn’t drink that stuff – they did – and that’s why they forgot to mark you down for kitchen sins.”

  She winked. Susie never winked.

  “Susie, this is serious! They’ll all be in hospital for some form of poisoning before the night is out.”

  “Oh, here you go again. There’ll be nothing wrong with them that a few paracetamol won’t sort.”

  “Christ Almighty. I can’t believe this – any of it.” I stared at the cheque in my hand for 1,000 euros.

  “Cash that in the morning. An
d never let it be said I don’t look out for my own.”

  “Thanks for your help. I think you really enjoyed tonight. Did you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, but she was smiling.

  Then she heard Willie’s key in the front door and her smile promptly vanished.

  “Get Willie to help you with the cleaning up,” she said.

  As Willie came through the hall and into the kitchen, Susie left the kitchen through the sitting room and went straight upstairs.

  Suddenly, the night didn’t seem like so much fun any more. Usually their rows happened, dispersed into thin air and were forgotten about in minutes. What was going on here?

  Chapter 42

  31 December 1994 (continued)

  If I’d lived in any other estate, I’d have been getting funny looks as I dragged myself up the road to my house from where I’d asked Damo to drop me off round the corner. Here, nobody I passed seemed put out by the waft of stale fags and booze from the pub emanating from last night’s clothes. No one so much as looked twice at me, Diary, even though my eye make-up was now somewhere around my chin and my skirt was hitching up to my bum cheeks as I walked along, but I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious all the same. I suppose they didn’t call it the walk of shame for nothing. And after what I’d done, I should have been very, very ashamed of myself. So why did I feel so elated, especially as I now had a wedding to cancel a few hours before it happened?

  I felt sick every time I thought of how much I was going to hurt Terry, but spending the night with Damo had shown me how much of a lie everything I’d thought I had with Terry really was. I’d been so stupid to think I could marry him. Even if you brushed aside the fact that I was only eighteen and really should have been concentrating on the college course I’d fought so hard to get, there was the undeniable matter – that I’d been denying for months – of me being in love with someone else. I’d not only wasted Terry’s time, but I’d also wasted so much time that I could have spent with Damo. Well, no more. I was going to end this and go straight back to Damo’s house when I’d sorted everything out.