If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (3 page)

Even if right up until that afternoon, I still loved him so much that it physically hurt, like a stab to the heart. Even if I’d invested so much time and trouble into him being The One that now the sheer climb-down involved was wrecking my head. Yes, all right, so maybe he wasn’t perfect, but then what guy is? As Fiona says, at the end of the day, they’re all bastards; best you can hope to do is try and find a
nice
bastard. And James was perfect for me, or so I thought. The laughs we had together, the silly, private little in-jokes, the mind-blowing sex, the way we seemed to agree on just about everything, even daft stuff like who should win
X Factor
. . .

Seems to be my destiny to be one of those people that nothing ever,
ever
works out for. Electric doors. Self-tanning lotion. ATMs. And now, I can add relationships to the list. Just look at me: I’ve officially become a walking cautionary tale about what happens when you pay attention to the little voice inside your head that whispers, ‘mate for life, mate for life’. Might as well start a support group while I’m at it.

And there’s more. There’s something else. Something I’m trying to haul up from the depths of my mind and can’t . . . but, whaddya know, right there and then James saves me all the bother by saying it straight out for me.

‘. . . please understand, I tried so hard, but there just never seemed to be a right time to sit you down and tell you. You have to believe me. I never set out to fall for Sophie . . .’

And . . . da daa, ladies and gentlemen . . . there it is. I give you . . . The Missing Key. Sophie bleeding Kelly.

I should fill you in.

OK, here goes. Up until the night of the accident, if you’d asked me anything about Sophie Kelly, I’d probably have looked at you and shrugged. She’s one of those people that, although mildly irritating, I really wouldn’t have had that much to say about either way. But after what’s just come flooding back to me like a tsunami, it’s a case of . . . how long have you got?

Right then. For starters, she’s a rubbish actress anyway, and now that I come to think about it, I heard James say so plenty of times. Definitely. I’m not messing, the girl has about all the dramatic ability and presence of a cutlery drawer. Then there’s the small matter of her high-pitched, squeaky voice. Honestly, I’d rather listen to a roomful of computers dialling up an old-fashioned internet connection. In fact, I distinctly remember saying that to James after we saw her last movie, and he categorically agreed with me.

At least I think he did.

I grudgingly have to admit that she is gorgeous, so good-looking that you’d almost think she travelled around the place with her own personal lighting cameraman in tow. She has corkscrew curly blonde hair, big poppy Bette Davis eyes, and is also thin, thin, thin. ‘Look, no carbs!’ thin. So thin that every time I see her, all I want to do is ram lard down her bony little throat. However, if there are two types of women in this world, those who are out to help each other and those who aren’t, then Sophie Kelly definitely belongs to the second kind. You know, the kind of woman who makes you feel that in life’s big VIP aftershow party, she’s invited and you’re not. She’s also Different With Men. And, OK, yes, I have on occasion witnessed first-hand her flinging herself at James like some kind of blow-dried missile in slingbacks, but like the gobshite I am, I used to shrug and write it off. She’s an actress, I figured, he’s a successful producer, and whether I liked it or not, that’s how this business works.

I had no woman’s intuition. No sixth sense. No clue as to what was to blindside me. And therein lay my downfall. In the space of one short day in my life, I managed to lose everything. Lover, boyfriend, home, even my career. Because much and all as I enjoy my job, in spite of Anna driving me scatty half the time, our agency represents Sophie helium-voice Kelly, and there’s just no way on earth I could handle her ringing the office looking for auditions, and me having to pretend to be nice to her. Call me a bad loser, but I’d rather lose a limb. Then there’s all the clients at the agency. Word would spread like wildfire, I knew, because let’s face it, actors have a grapevine that Ernest & Julio Gallo would be proud of.

Pathetic life CV, isn’t it? Twenty-eight years on earth, and I managed to make a complete shagging mess of the whole thing. Honest to God, if there was any justice, I should be hauled up in front of the dating police and have my head impaled on a spike as an example to other single women who put up with crap from men. And what would my defence be? That love makes Andrea Bocellis of us all. Brilliant.

And the laugh is, it took a coma for me to be able to see it clearly.

‘You have to believe me,’ James is still harping on ad nauseam. ‘There just never seemed to be a right time. I never set out to fall for Sophie, but you know how it is. You don’t look for love, love looks for you . . .’

Yet another line I recognize from some rubbishy TV show you made. One of those ones that was hardly worth the electricity it took to broadcast it. What are you trying to do, anyway, clear your conscience? Or maybe, like the paragon of selfishness that you are, you really only came here to try and make yourself feel better.

Yep, that sounds by far the more likely option.

On and on he goes, remorse itself, apoplexy on a plate, the devil made me do it. Honest to God, if I was to actually listen to the utter crap he’s coming out with, he’d have me believing that Sophie Kelly chased him, hounded him, boiled a few bunnies along the way, and basically bludgeoned him into submission, while the whole time he behaved like a perfect model of fidelity and gentlemanly decorum, blameless as a choirboy, every now and then pleading, ‘Desist from your advances, you harlot, I have a
girlfriend
, I tell you!’ Don’t get me wrong, I’d really
love
to believe him, but I know it’s total and utter shite, so I tune out and sink back down, down, down, letting him ramble on to an empty house.

Wish I could be like Angelina Jolie. You get the impression from her that if Brad Pitt ever left her for someone else, she’d just shrug her shoulders, shove a cigarette through the overblown bee-stung lips, make a blockbuster movie, then move swiftly on with all two dozen of her kids trailing in her wake. Purely to pass the time, I count all the occasions I distinctly remember Kate telling me to dump him. You don’t need to put up with all this crap, she used to say. The guy is pure, liquid man-thrax. But I love him, I’d invariably answer, the ultimate defence of the gobshite. Plus, I happen to like monogamy. For starters, you don’t have to wax as much.

By the time I drift back up, James is still there, still stinking of Burberry and remorse, still rabbiting on.

‘It just sort of happened on that Venice trip for the film festival and now . . . well, I’m pretty certain that she’s the right one for me. I’m so, so sorry, Charlotte, I really am.’

No, actually, I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that I wasted so many precious years on you. Sorry for loving you so much that it hurt, through thick and thin, because, like the trusting eejit that I was, I truly believed that I’d be the one to change you, and we’d spend the rest of our lives together. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to my family and friends and the people who really do love me, and who clearly can’t bear even to share the same airspace as you. And you know what? No matter how bad death is, it can’t be half as bad as lying here and facing up to the fact that my life has been a complete and utter failure in every way.

‘Look at you, lying there so peacefully. I wish I knew what you were thinking.’

Trust me, you don’t.

Then his phone rings and, typical, he answers. I’m just wishing that some nurse would burst in, snatch it from him and give him a lecture about how you’re not supposed to have mobiles in an intensive-care trauma unit for patients with cracked heads when . . .

I do not believe this. It’s her. Sophie bloody Kelly ringing him. Even on the other end of a phone, I can still hear that irritating, high-pitched voice.

‘Sweetheart, hi!’ he says, and his tone has completely brightened. ‘No, you’re not interrupting anything, I’m just wrapping up a meeting now, nothing important.’

The lie just trips off his tongue so easily you wouldn’t believe it.

‘I’m dying to get out of here, actually, and I could do with a drink, so yeah, cool, the Four Seasons for a glass of fizz in half an hour sounds perfect. So . . . hmmm . . . what’s your big mad rush to get off the phone? Aren’t you going to . . . ehh . . . tell me what you’re wearing? Come on, you dirty little tease, you know
exactly
what I mean. Under that sexy little black skirt you’d on this morning? In fact, I’ve a better idea, why don’t we skip the drinks and I’ll meet you at my place right now? Yeah? Oh, baby, you’re the best . . . hey, I love you, too, come on, you know I do . . .’

I think it was that last sentence that was the final nail in my coffin. Because right after that, I remember the following in one terrifying, panicky blur. A monitor attached to me suddenly going into overdrive, buzzers going off, a nurse barking at James to get the immediate family back up here urgently, then a consultant on duty being paged and told there’s an emergency. More doors banging open, more monitors beep-beeping, complete pandemonium, hands all over me, the shock of ice-cold metal paddles on my bare chest. Then a sharp electric jolt so forceful that, for a split second, it makes my eyes open just long enough for me to see Mum standing in the corner crying, with a nurse’s arm around her, comforting her . . . right before my numb, inert body crashes back down again.

More beep-beeping from monitors, but far, far, slower this time.

Scarily slow.

I hear a strident, panicky sounding man’s voice bellowing for everyone to clear the room while they defibrillate again, then another, softer nurse’s voice telling Mum, ‘Her heart rate’s just slowed right down, that’s all. Don’t worry about this one, she’s a fighter! And we’re doing everything we can for her.’

Then nothing. Whiteness.

Chapter Two

‘Charlotte?’

My eyes are locked tight. Right now, I’m too afraid to open them. Too afraid of what I might find.

‘Charlotte, can you hear me?’

A man’s voice. Soft and gentle. One I haven’t heard in the longest, longest time.

A shiver shoots down my spine, and suddenly I know exactly who it is.

It’s my dad.

Slowly, disbelievingly, I open my eyes and . . . there he is, right here beside me, reaching out to take my hand. My darling dad, looking better than I ever remember, so fit and healthy and wearing the same old corduroy trousers and big baggy jumper he used to wear whenever he was pottering around the house, doing bits of DIY, and puncturing holes in my mother’s good furniture with a power drill, when he was always at his happiest.

‘Dad?’ is all I can manage to stammer weakly. ‘Dad? Is it . . . is it really you?’

‘Shhhh, come on, pet, it’s OK. You’ve been through a terrible time, but it’s OK now, shh.’

‘But, if you’re here, then . . . then . . . I must be . . .’

‘Plenty of time for that later, pet. For now, all you need to know is that you’re safe.’

I’m barely able to take it all in, and the next thing I know it’s all just too much. Everything comes crashing down on top of me: James and the accident, and the last few awful days, and whatever happened at the hospital just now, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m sobbing helplessly like a child. He folds me in his arms, just as he used to do when I was little, his arms tightly wrapped around mine.

‘It’s OK, Charlotte, I’m here. I’ve been here with you the whole time. And nothing bad will ever happen to you again, I promise, pet.’

Pet. I forgot the way he always used to call me pet. I forgot so much: the smell of him, his soft, gentle voice, the way he always managed to look a bit like an off-duty golfing priest. (Dad found his style back in 1982 and never saw any reason to change it since.) And how much taller and broader he seems, just like in the photo I have of him, taken in his prime, way back in his rugby-playing days, years before he got ill and wasted away to nothing.

‘Dad . . . Dad . . .’ I keep sobbing over and over, half-hysterical, half-overjoyed just to see him again. ‘But . . . but . . . if I’m here with you, then it must mean that I . . . that I just . . .’

I can’t even bring myself to finish that sentence.

But I must be dead, I’ve got to be.

Dear Jaysus. Like things weren’t bad enough?

I think about Mum and Kate and Fiona, and what they must all be going through right now, right at this very moment. And I honestly think the heartbreak and anguish at being wrenched away from them like that will kill me all over again. If I wasn’t already dead, that is.

A fresh bout of crying, but this time it’s so violent, I think the tears might choke me.

‘Shh, shh, pet, you’ve had a shock, that’s all.’

‘Oh, Dad . . .’

‘I’m here now, Charlotte. Just remember everything’s going to be fine.’

‘But . . . I don’t understand, where am I?’

I can’t even see properly, everything around us is just all blurry and blindingly white.

He grips my hand tight.

‘The easiest way for me to describe it to you, is that you’re in a sort of, well . . . assessment area, really, would be the best way of looking at it, pet. Just till it’s decided where’s the best place for you to go, that’s all. The main thing is not to be frightened.’

My mind starts to race. Mainly because whenever anyone tells me not to be frightened, then that’s when I panic. An assessment area? Like . . . like purgatory or something? Suppose they assess my miserable little life, decide I was a crap human being, stamp me with a big F for failure, then send me straight to hell?

‘Oh, come on now, pet, look at you, all worried.’ Dad smiles gently at me, gripping my hand tight. ‘I faithfully promise you, there’s nothing at all to be scared of.’ Then he puts his arm around me reassuringly, which does calm me down a bit. ‘Have a look around for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’

For the first time since I came to . . . whatever this place is, the glaring whiteness that’s all around us starts to dim a bit; slowly, barely perceptibly, things begin to come into focus as my poor, bewildered brain takes in our surroundings. I’m not even a hundred per cent certain where I’ll find myself, either. Maybe, I dunno, standing outside pearly gates with a bearded Saint Peter keeping guard like a bouncer at a nightclub, checking the VIP list to see if I’m on it? Or maybe it’ll be a giant concourse with escalators to all floors, like in a shopping centre, except that some of them will lead up to heaven, while others will go down to the lower depths, where it’s all smoky, with flames shooting out and little red-horned devils with spears running around the place cackling.

And a plaque outside saying, ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.’

Tell you what I didn’t expect. To find myself in a sort of . . . well . . . old folks’ home, really. Minus the smell of wee and boiled cabbage, that is. I’m not kidding, as my eyes gradually adjust to the light and I get up and stagger around the place, it’s like Dad and I are in some sort of day-care room. He stays sitting on a sofa at the very back, eyes watching me protectively, while the afternoon racing from Cheltenham blares away on the TV. There’s about four or five people here, all glued to the screen, and nobody gives me as much as a second glance. I’m slowly wandering around, totally confused, desperately trying to make eye contact with someone, but they’re all too engrossed in the race, and every now and then one of them goes, ‘Come on, Northern Dancer!’

Plus, apart from Dad, there is no one here under the age of about eighty.

I stumble back to Dad and slump on to the sofa beside him, numb.

‘Did you think it would be fluffy clouds and angels, pet?’ he asks gently, correctly reading my thoughts. ‘Just remember that this is purely temporary, that’s all. You came to us . . . well, let’s just say you came to us before your time.’

‘And I’m . . . I’m just here till they . . . like,
assess
me?’

‘Which, as I say, is nothing for you to worry about.’

‘And . . . well . . . when will that happen?’

He doesn’t answer immediately, just looks at me keenly.

‘All in good time.’

‘But suppose they send me away from you? I mean, you’ve got to belong up in heaven, you never did anything wrong in your entire life. But I did plenty of wrong things and . . . well, suppose they separate us? Suppose you’re sent back up above, and I’m flung down below to fry out the rest of eternity in hell?’

He smiles at my blind panic, and at the teary wobble in my voice, which, oddly, comforts me.

‘It doesn’t work like that, pet. Don’t you trust your old dad?’

‘’Course I do.’ I sob weakly. God, I must sound like I’m about five.

‘Then come and sit down here beside me. We have an awful lot to catch up on, pet.’

I’m not sure how much time passes; it’s bizarre, everything really does seem to stand still here, wherever we are. All I know is that it’s ages later, and Dad and I are still together, totally engrossed in each other’s company, with me a bit calmer now, but still clinging to his hand, terrified I’m going to lose him all over again. And I can’t, just can’t. I am
not
going through that unbearable pain for a second time. I just feel so safe and minded here, with him beside me. Like as long as he’s here, wherever we are, I never have to worry ever again.

For as long as I’m here, that is.

The more we talk, the more gobsmacked I get. It’s incredible. There’s absolutely nothing that Dad doesn’t know about any of our lives since he died, and that was, like, nearly ten years ago. I was eighteen, and I remember thinking that the void he left in my life would never be filled, and that I’d never meet a man who could hold a candle to him. Correct on both counts; it never was and I never did. Wherever we are, you’d nearly swear there was CCTV footage with twenty-four-hour live coverage of what’s going on in all our little lives below, a bit like the command centre at Cape Canaveral.

He’s just extraordinary. He knows all about Kate’s marriage to Perfect Paul, and that she’s desperately trying for a baby; he knows tiny, inconsequential little things like that Mum’s joined a book club, and how she pretends to have read all these literary books, but if they bore her, she cheats by reading the reviews on Amazon, then throws in the odd knowledgeable quote to impress her pals, and just blags the rest. He even knows stuff about Fiona, and I only met her when I went to college, not long after he died.

‘Dad,’ is all I can keep saying over and over again, alternately through sobs then smiles, rubbing his big, rough, red, shovelly hands, terrified that he’ll disappear or beam up or something in a minute. ‘I love you and I missed you so, so much. There’s not a single day I don’t think about you.’

Funny that. I was never able to tell him that I loved him when he was alive, but now that I’ve passed over, there’s no shutting me up.

‘But I’m right here, pet. Even when you don’t realize it, I’m never too far away,’ he smiles softly. ‘Like in that beautiful poem that you read out at my funeral. I’ve never left you, just stepped into the next room, that’s all. I’m always close by. I’ve never stopped watching out for you, and I’m certainly not going to stop now.’

‘And Mum and Kate, too?’

‘Come on, pet, do you honestly think I’d let my three best girls out of my sight even for a moment?’

No, no, of course he wouldn’t. He adored us all so much, and was always happiest when it was just ‘we four’ as he used to say, all together. Suddenly I remember being eight years old and nagging him incessantly to let me get the bus to school, so I could be a proper, grownup ‘big’ girl. He eventually gave in, but I’ll never forget him driving behind the bus in his car, just to make sure that I was OK. Then there was the time, aged fourteen, I begged to be allowed to go to Wesley, the local disco, with the rest of my pals. Oh, the teenage mortification; not only did he drive me there, he walked up to the DJ and politely asked if he’d mind keeping an eye on me for the night.

Always minding, always protecting, never letting go.

‘I often send you little signs.’ He smiles, giving my hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Just to let you know that I’m right here. Your mum’s by far the most open to that, though.’

‘How do you manage that?’ I ask, thinking . . .
signs
? Isn’t that just a bit . . .
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
?

‘Lots of ways, you’d be surprised. Sometimes I can suggest things to her, random thoughts, like hypnotism. The easiest thing, though, is to wait till she’s asleep, and then have a proper chat with her while she thinks she’s dreaming. She’s got so open to that now; all I need do is give her a wee nudge every now and then to remind her to put out the bins, or to lock that back door which she’s always forgetting about. “Is there oil in your lamp?” I’m always asking her.’

I’m all lumpy-throated now. That was a phrase he often used; his worried way of asking us if we were prepared for all eventualities and emergencies when outside the front door and away from his watchful gaze. You know, stuff like: have you enough petrol in the car/ cash in your purse/a first-aid kit if travelling/have you allowed time for TWO punctures if you’re going to the airport? (Because once, back in the seventies, honest to God, this actually did happen to him, and decades later he still never let any of us forget it. Or did you allow for an extra hour if you’re on the way in to do a big exam? The list was endless.

‘Or sometimes, if your mum’s a bit low, I get her to turn on the radio so she can hear . . .’

‘. . . “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You”,’ I sob, smiling at the same time. ‘I know, she’s always hearing that song, and she says it reminds her most of you.’

My eyes are welling up again, just thinking about how much he idolized Mum. The way he’d light up whenever she’d walk into a room, even after they’d been married for nearly thirty years. I don’t think I ever once heard them having a row. Dad would never argue with her. He’d just roll his eyes to heaven and let her have her own way; at the end of the day, anything that made her happy, made him happy. Gas to think that they met back in the days when your relationship compatibility test went along these lines: ‘You mean you like
soup
? That’s incredible, I like soup too!’ And yet, it worked out for them. In every relationship, there is the lover and the loved, and that’s pretty much the way it was for them. Mum’s outgoing and sociable, whereas he was always more ponderous and thoughtful, the supporting player to her star turn. Visitors would call to the house, and he’d sit quietly, as happy to be entertained by all her funny stories and anecdotes as guests were. If you didn’t know him well, you’d almost think he was a bit stand-offish, as often happens with people who are just more comfortable with silence than with talking shite the whole time. Which, believe me, frequently happens in a family with three women.

Then, when he got really sick and had to have round-the-clock care, I remember how he’d cling to Mum’s hand and tell her over and over that marrying her was the best thing he ever did in his life. Bloody throat cancer. How could a man who never looked at a cigarette in his whole life get throat cancer? And what made it worse was the way he bore it with such dignity and humour. I was the one who was angry, so angry that I even took up smoking for a bit, just to piss off God.

Mum almost fell apart after he died; he’d protected her so much. None of us knew just how much till he was gone. All her happily married life, he’d done everything for her: she’d never had to drive herself anywhere or pay a bill, or deal with the banks, or even think about practical little things like changing plugs or applying for passports, or any of that malarkey. In the years since he’s gone, though, little by little she’s begun to do so much better. Egged on by me and Kate, she’s slowly grown independent. She has her own little circle of rock-solid friends now, a lot of whom are widows too. The Merry Widows Kate calls them, and they all take trips abroad together: weekends to London for a bit of shopping, and then a pilgrimage every summer, to Lourdes or Knock, or basically anywhere that Our Lady ever appeared. She goes to plays and Mass and meets her pals regularly in each other’s houses for sherry and long, cosy chats.