Champagne Kisses (13 page)

‘I’m not sure exactly. My mate Maddie and myself, you know the model chick?’

‘Oh yes, she’s one of your bitches?’

‘Ha. Yeah her, well we were out for a few drinks and we ended up in some kip of a pub. We were both in foul moods, and then we met these nice blokes and it all got a bit bizarre.’

‘What ya mean?’

‘Ah, Maddie just went a bit mental. She got pissed off that I was hitting it off with this guy Robert. I’d totally forgotten his name. Anyway, she didn’t like his mate and in a desperate bid to steal some attention from my fella, she started doing a lap dance with a fecking hoover she found shoved in the corner.’

‘Dirty dancing eat your heart out.’

‘Ha! She can be totally mad. It’s funny now that I think about it, but when your man completely blanked her and continued talking to me, she flipped and dragged me out the door, before I even got a chance to swap phone numbers.’

‘Well, I’ll business card his number to you now, and you can rectify that.’

‘I’m mortified. I couldn’t ring him.’

‘Why, have you had any better offers recently?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Well then, call him, and then don’t forget to call me with the details. See ya.’

‘Here, before you go, don’t suppose you’ve heard of any work going around? I’m fairly stony broke.’

‘I’m afraid not. But I’ll keep my ear to the ground for you.’

‘OK, thanks.’

‘Here, you never know, this fella could just be your winning Lotto ticket.’

That evening, arriving late so I wouldn’t have to buy myself a drink, I found that nice guy Robert looked cuter than I remembered him in the not-so-grotty pub in town where we’d arranged to meet.

As he stood at the bar to order me a glass of white wine I observed his physique from the comfort of a cosy snug.

Checking him out from head to toe with a head tilt that probably made me look like a used-car salesman checking out an ole banger, I was reasonably pleased with what I could see.

Although he was wearing a fairly dodgy navy and red striped rain jacket that looked like something my dad would wear, I did notice what a nice ass he had through his jeans and thought how much happier I was sitting here than in the hallway of my rented house, trying to explain to my landlord that I had no money to pay his rent.

That’s a problem for tomorrow, I thought. I’ll turn off my phone just in case he tries to ruin my date with silly demands for cash.

It’s not like I’d miss any important calls. After all, it
seemed
my fictitious fiancé had forgotten my existence completely.

‘Pity Maddie couldn’t make it for a drink,’ he said with a deadpan stony face as he returned with my wine.

‘Really?’ I asked, slightly worried.

‘No,’ he smiled, ‘I think I’ve enough excitement right here in front of me, thanks very much.’

Over the course of our very pleasant evening, I had learnt that Robert was an architect in a small but progressive firm, and that he was very close to his mother Rose and his brother Stuart.

Daddy apparently died several years previously, and since then apple of his Mammy’s eye Robert drove Stuart and herself to the grave every week for a family reunion and to leave fresh flowers and a packet of ginger nut biscuits.

No joke!

‘He always loved a ginger nut,’ he told me.

Unsure if he was kidding, I remained composed to wait for the punch-line. It never came.

He even had the innocence to say, ‘And you know, every week they’re gone!’

The sarcastic witch in me wanted to ask, ‘Did you ever think it might be rats eating the biscuits?’ But I thought better of it. Instead I nodded and gave encouraging smiles.

Some men can be so easy to keep happy I thought.

I also learned everything there was to know about
rock
climbing. He was fanatical. As were his mates Nigel (whom Maddie had rebuffed), Oscar and Barry. They all seemed very close, like they were cast from the same mould.

I pondered the idea of how I could fit into their clique. As a group we didn’t look good on paper.

They were athletic and religious.

I clearly was neither!

The mother was in fact a devout Opus Dei disciple, which scared the bejaysus out of me as I was more familiar with the work of Doris Day and barely knew the words of Our Father …

Following in her moral footsteps, I was witness to Robert taking a few phone calls from a priest to set up an event that involved helping inner city street kids. The first call made me notice Robert for what a decent skin he was. But by the second, and then the third – like Diana, I was beginning to feel there were three of us on this date.

As I became increasingly uncomfortable with the phone calls, I began to get freaked out by his laughing and joking with ‘Father Benedict’ in Irish. He casually switched between English and Irish during each conversation, but kept all the jokey stuff in our native tongue.

I wasn’t sure if he did it to show off, or just to be mysterious and mask what he was saying. Either way it bugged me, as of course I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

I might have been proud to be Irish. That didn’t
mean
I actually spoke the language!

It was all very incompatible. Alien, in fact. Robert was so earthy and wholesome in his comfortable mountaineering boots and windcheater. I almost felt like the she-devil in disguise around him.

As I tried to gaze intently into his eyes and appear interested in his charitable banter about refuge centres and soup runs or whatever, I’d find myself just trying to work out whether his eyes were in fact hazel or a muggy freckled green.

I struggled to sound virginal. Obviously
that
was a far stretch, but I enjoyed his genuine sincerity, even though I knew he was far too healthy for me.

He was, after all, just muesli on legs.

Maybe I’d been hanging around with Parker too long, I must have turned into the female version of him … I’d have to find a yellow brick road, and hopefully some bird called Dorothy who would take me to meet a wizard and find me a heart!

Heck, another week … another challenge. It was time for a new Eva. I would have to be proactive in creating some good karma for myself.

If the truth be known, my heart still ached for my wild man from New York. I’d sacrifice everything for another wonderful moment in time with him. Every song on the radio seemed to be written with us in mind, especially any songs by Damien Rice. His voice made me cry as I sang along to the words of ‘Cannonball’.

As I battled to stay focused on the hunk in front of
me
, I remembered I couldn’t afford to buy a round of drinks, so I called it an early night, not entirely sure if I’d ever see Robert again.

He was far from a Mr Maybe, but he’d definitely do as a Mr OK For Now.

The next morning I woke up feeling somewhat melancholy and lethargic. The house felt cold, and in no way invited me out of my bed.

By lunchtime hunger had dragged me up, but I wasn’t to be satisfied with a carton of carrot and coriander soup. I now hungered for company.

On a Friday afternoon my choices were limited so I worked my way through my mobile phone for inspiration. After a few ‘Sorry, no’ texts, good-time Anna agreed to call over. As she worked in some advertising firm that her brother ran, she was always a safe bet to skive off work early.

I told her I wanted to talk about creating a new me, and she said she’d be more than happy to discuss all my problems.

Although she was hard work at the best of times, and only palatable in small doses, I needed someone to moan to.

To her credit she was incredibly witty, but a total mouthpiece. While it was great to listen to her tell you about other people’s fiascos, you always had to be on your guard not to expose your own personal dramas. Though today that’s all I wanted to talk about.

An expert interrogator, she’d strain blood from a
stone
, and no matter how determined you were to remain tight-lipped, Anna would always manage to steal a nugget of intimate information.

More than happy to race over to mine at a minute’s notice, she arrived clutching a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a packet of Maltesers. It was her standard gift. Though she’d never eat or drink either. I think it was her ploy to loosen me for gossip, while watching me get fat in the process.

What a devious bitch!

Anyway, twenty minutes into our ‘wait-till-I-tellya’ I heard a key in the front door. And before I even had a chance to put my wineglass down, my landlord was filling the living room doorway.

‘Miss Valentine,’ he bellowed, ‘you’ve been avoiding me.’

As my heart sank as low as Australia all I could do was drop my head and shelter my eyes in embarrassment. This was the situation that I had been trying to avoid. I just couldn’t believe my landlord had cornered me so soon –
and
with feckin’ Anna in the room.

Fuck!

Knowing the game was up, I conceded defeat by raising my hands in the air, and apologetically saying, ‘Pat, I’m so sorry.’

Not missing a beat, Anna jumped up off the couch as if she’d been poked in the backside with a cow prod, and stuck her arm out in his direction.

‘Hi, I’m Anna,’ she chirped, with the squeakiness of a cheerleader.

Somewhat disarmed by her front (that being her snappy introduction, and the pert twins that were wrestling to burst out of her tight Juicy Couture T), his facial expression softened as he explained, ‘I’m Pat. Eva’s disgruntled landlord.’

Reaching for words, my jaw just hung heavy as if I was waiting for someone to pop a pill in my mouth. Seeing this window of opportunity, Anna took her chance to pounce.

‘So would you have many houses out for rent, Pat? Is there good money in it, Pat? Has Eva not been coughing up the readies, Pat? Are you going to throw her out on the street, Pat?’

Stunned by the barrage of questions my rent-starved landlord stood silent for a time, before telling Anna, ‘You’re adorable’ and gesturing me to the kitchen for ‘a quiet word’.

The conversation that followed was short and to the point.

It involved a lot of me saying, ‘No, sorry’, to all of his questions connected with money, before I finally said, ‘OK, I can do that’, which was to his final demand for me to be out of the house by Sunday night. There had been no point in lying to him. I had no savings left. I had been surviving off loose change collected in old jars and what I found by rummaging through old jackets and handbags. All such hiding places had now been raided.

There was no way I could make this month’s rent, and since I had initially sweet-talked Pat into letting
me
stay without a deposit, I had no choice but to vacate immediately.

Feeling like I had been hit by a ton of bricks I wandered back into the living room – my soon-to-be former living room – and poured my woes out to Anna. Before I realized what I’d said, I had divulged just how bad my cash flow was, and how I couldn’t go home to my parents with my tail between my legs, because they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.

After obviously soaking up enough juice, Anna used the excuse of a phone call from her brother to leave me with my problems. She promised to call later, but I knew that was just her way of letting me know she’d want an update.

There was no way she could stay with me now armed with all this hot gossip. She’d need to get out and report it.

Not only had Eva Valentine been dumped after being used for sex, she’d just been evicted from her home.

Surely things couldn’t get any worse?

Or could they?

Actually things could get worse.

I had always suffered badly with period cramps. If there was a special occasion like a birthday or Christmas, though especially if I was away on a bikini holiday, my period would arrive. My time of the month seemed to regulate itself around parties, as if
my
body was trying its hardest to sabotage my ability to have fun.

But I was never going to enjoy today. It was a cold damp Sunday morning and I was sitting in the window of my living room, staring down the road waiting for Maddie to collect me. Me and my two suitcases, my three black bags full of jackets and handbags, and the one brown box I had obtained from the corner shop and into which I had dumped the assorted freebies I had collected in my several years of journalism.

Those lost, forgotten years.

The fact that I had the worst cramps imaginable just added to the glamour of the whole exercise.

I truly never remember being this miserable.

Of course there had been many other times when I had been hysterical with the trauma of a relationship breaking up, but this was just plain ole misery. Now that my bags were packed I just wanted out of the house.

I had said goodbye to each of the rooms and thanked them for looking after me, but now I just wanted to be gone.

Originally Maddie had said she’d pick me up at 10.30, but she was being her trademark late self and her tardiness was doing nothing for my mood.

It was 11.45 before she came screeching up the street, knocking my neighbour’s wheelie bin and all of its rubbish across the road in the process.

Unapologetic, she just barked at me to start filling the boot of her car while she used my loo.

Charming I thought; so much for a shoulder to cry on.

Typically, Maddie returned by the time all the hard labour had been completed.

‘Are you done?’ she snapped, as she jumped in the front seat of her car. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

Stunned by her lack of sympathy, I counted to ten, then a hundred, in my head trying desperately hard to keep my cool.

‘So enough about me,’ I said in my best sarcastic tone. ‘What’s eating you, Miss Narky Knickers?’

Biting her top lip, Maddie let out a big sigh before glancing in my direction and telling me, ‘It’s not all about
you
, love.’

Totally hard-done-by, my temper snapped as I unleashed a tirade of abuse.

‘Eh, no, sorry, actually
today
is all about me, I’m the one whose life has fallen apart. I’m the person who’s just been evicted from their home. I’m the one who’s lost their job and has no prospects. Yes,
today
is all about me!’