If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (10 page)

Chidi sighs, and I wish I had the power to read thoughts, because right now she’s probably thinking this is the single most hopeless case she’s ever had.

‘OK, then. I’ll be back in one moment,’ she eventually says to Kate. ‘I just need to get some more rose oil. So, I’ll leave you here to relax.’

‘Fine.’

‘Kate, you heard me. RELAX.’

‘OK, OK.’

She dims the lights, and no sooner has she slipped out the door than I’m over to Kate, sitting on the edge of the bed now, like we used to as kids, when I was pleading for some unwanted, no-longer-loved toy of hers to play with. Usually a doll that she’d have flung away anyway without blinking. She just enjoyed seeing me beg.

‘Kate?’

She turns her head sharply.

‘Kate? It’s me. Don’t get a fright.’

Now she’s up on her elbows, looking puzzled. Oh my God, this is amazing, she hears me, she must. YES! This makes the task ahead SO much easier in every way.

‘I’m here, Kate. Right here.’

I touch her hand, but she doesn’t react. Not a shiver, nothing.

‘Kate? Katy Katy Kate!! Do you read me? It’s Charlotte, I’m here!! Beside you!! Hello, hello helloooooo? Earth to Kate!!’

She’s still looking around her, confused. Then, out of nowhere, I start to hear what she’s hearing, or at least I think I do. It’s a very faint buzzing noise coming from inside the pocket of her dressing gown, hanging on the back of the door. In one bound, Kate’s out of bed and over to the door, towel draped over her. Then she fishes her mobile out of the pocket, buzzing away like a vibrator.

Bugger. That’s what she heard. Not me at all. Which means James is the only one who can hear me. Which, now that I think about it, means I’ve
seriously
got my work cut out for me.

‘Hello?’ she snaps at whatever poor unfortunate just rang her. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, did you have to ring right now?’

I can’t tell you it is, but I’m guessing it’s Perfect Paul, because you could really only cut the snot off your nearest and dearest like that and still live to tell the tale.

‘No, I’m not at home,’ she answers to some unheard question, sitting up beside me on the bed, arms folded, all ears. ‘Why, where are you?’

More mumbling down the other end of the phone.

‘OK . . . well then, you could run into Marks & Spencer and pick up dinner for tonight . . . no, Mum is coming over . . . we’ve already had this conversation, remember? Because it’s not good for her to be on her own. We need to support each other now, more than ever, Paul. You know how upset she is . . . because I
worry
about her, that’s why. Oh for God’s sake, how many times do I have to repeat myself? Yes, I DID tell you about the dinner, several times in fact. Is it my fault you were watching the bloody Premiership at the time?’

A deep, put-upon sigh here, and more mutterings from the other side of the call, while Kate starts massaging her temples, like she’s a migraine coming on.

‘. . . right then, here’s what we need. Chicken fillets . . . the ORGANIC kind, not the cheapie ones, the ones that are oven-ready . . . Paul, are you writing this down? Because I don’t particularly feel like having to traipse back into town for all the stuff you forgot, that’s why. Because that’s what
always
happens on the rare occasions that I ask you to do something for me . . . Fine, thank you. Courgettes. Lemons. Parmesan cheese, pre-grated. Dauphinoise potatoes . . .’ She’s ticking things off her fingers as she works through her mental list.

‘. . . Oh, and something for dessert. Anything . . . no, no, except that. Because cheesecake gives Mum an upset stomach, as you well know . . . there’s no need to get snappy with me, I’m just telling you . . . I am NOT nagging, and you better take that back . . . Because, for bloody ONCE, I’m taking a little bit of time out today, and supermarket shopping doesn’t happen to be part of my agenda, that’s why . . . (
Another big shuddery sigh here.
) . . . having reiki, if you must know . . . because . . . because . . . because it might help, that’s why. Because I’m prepared to try anything. But most of all because I need to try to . . . you know . . . get pregnant . . . to help me feel anything other than what I’m feeling right now. Because I can’t cope with it, with . . . what’s happened . . . and . . . just missing my little sister so much that it’s killing me . . .’

Oh, good God. It’s like the floodgates have opened, and now that they have, the tears won’t stop. She’s sobbing uncontrollably, and I’ve got my arm around her and am cradling her to me, but she doesn’t even realize. I knew it. Knew she was misdirecting anger when she’s actually grieving, and using poor old Perfect Paul as some kind of human punch bag. This is just what she does. I mean come on, no one gets that worked up about organic chickens and cheesecakes from M & S, now, do they?

Oh, Kate, Kate, Kate, I think, hugging her tight.

I know you want a child so much that it’s eating you up, and I know that’ll help you heal. And you’ll be a wonderful mum, too. OK, maybe a zero-tolerance one, but there’s no doubt about it, you’ll be great.

I just haven’t the first clue what I can do this end to help. Apart from going in there and magically fertilizing an egg for you.

I am not the bleeding Little Flower.

So what AM I going to do?

Chapter Seven

JAMES

I don’t even know how it happened, but now I’m suddenly back with James again. In the meeting room of Meridius Movies, as it happens, which is in one of those old Georgian houses in the centre of town, except recently it’s been converted inside out. Well, for ‘converted’, read ‘tarted up a bit’, so now it’s all restored pine floors with every spare surface painted white. Lovely, or at least it would be only James insisted on putting a snooker table into the bay window, for no other reason I can think of than to impress boys. Women, myself included, tend to just roll their eyes heavenward at such a shameless display of boy-toyism. Kind of like walking into an elegant, fabulous town house, then, once you’re inside, discovering you’re actually in the Playboy mansion.

James is sitting here with Declan, looking a hell of a lot more sparky than he did first thing this morning. I mean, OK, so he mightn’t exactly look like he was carved by Michelangelo, but you get the picture; in the interim, somehow he’s managed to have a shower and clean himself up a bit. Anyway, from what I gather they’re going through their pitch for some big investors’ meeting they have coming up. Really boring idea too, called
Let He Without Sin
, about an elderly priest with Alzheimer’s who breaks the seal of the confession box and starts telling anyone and everyone who’ll listen about all the sins he heard down through all the decades. Woman in the thirties goes to bed without nightgown shock, and lonesome farmer terrorizes sheep, that kind of thing. I know, yawn, yawn, my, won’t that pack them in at the multiplex. Believe it or not, it’s actually based on a bestselling novel of the same name, written by an ex-priest, who launched the book to great acclaim, then spent what felt like the next two years permanently on the telly plugging it. In fact, when James first optioned the book, I used to get him to read chunks of it out loud in bed to help me fall asleep. Better than half a Mogadon any night for knocking me out for the count.

Back to the meeting, and honestly, it’s like James and Declan are stuck in first gear: they’re crunching out boring, boring budget costings in advance of said investors’ meeting, and it’s the same boring figures that are being bashed out over and over again, till I’m so brain-fried I’d nearly hurl myself out of the window just to get away. What the hell, I’m already dead.

I’m just picking my moment to start a conversation with James, mainly to double-check that he can still hear me, seeing as how no one else seems to be able to, when out of nowhere, in bounces Hannah, Meridius’s TV development executive. A very posh and important title, I know, but basically her job involves wading through the mountainous slush pile of scripts they get sent daily from hopeful screenwriters, sifting the filmable ones away from the dross, then developing the ideas from there to something that we end up watching on TV on a Sunday night and saying, ‘Jaysus, how in the name of God did that crap ever get made?’

Hannah’s worked here for ever, and aged about forty or forty-one, she’s that bit older than everyone else. She’s attractive in a Teri Hatcher sort of way, you know: wears barely-there make-up with tight denims, high heels and Zara tops all the time. She’s also unbelievably discreet about her own personal life. Which, let me tell you, is kind of unheard of in the independent production business: a tiny, close-knit community, where everyone’s private stuff is kind of like a soap opera for everybody else to enjoy. I mean, God alone knows the sheer hours of entertainment James and I must have provided over the years with our many flaring rows and public bust-ups, and you name it. Then there’s Declan, who tries his damnedest to cultivate this hard man ‘rock and roll’ exterior, right down to the leather jackets; always going to gigs of bands you never heard of, with names like the Ting Tongs, and always out late-night carousing, probably as much to keep up with James as anything else. But within the business, everyone knows right well that he still lives with his mammy, and each evening goes home to his dinner on the table, all his washing and ironing done, plus cable telly. Bloody hell, I’d move back in with my own mum tomorrow if I could look forward to that kind of red-carpet treatment.

Sorry. I should have put that in the past tense.

It keeps slipping my mind.

Hannah’s not like the rest of us, though. I don’t know how she manages to do it – keep the lines clearly delineated between work and private life, that is – but the fact is, I know as little about her now as I did the day she first came to work here, years ago. James and I often used to try to fill in the gaps as we’d lie awake in bed at night. We’d have great crack working out all these elaborate fantasy speculations: the best one was that she’d actually been married, but the husband was a huge drug baron and she didn’t realize it till it was too late, then when he died in a gangland shootout in West Tallaght, his multitudinous enemies came after her, so she went on the witness-protection programme and was issued with a whole new identity and sent to work in Meridius Movies, but one fine day, they’d come after her and it would all end up in a bloodbath. A bit like
Goodfellas
, except set in South Dublin. James would then throw in his tuppence-worth: that she was secretly working as a high-class escort girl for extra cash, to keep her in the lifestyle she was accustomed to, and that she’s not at all averse to threesomes. Typical him, always having to introduce sex into the mix.

‘A real mystery woman,’ he’d say admiringly, rounding off the conversation, before we turned out the lights. He fancies her, I’d then think, lying awake in the dark staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. Inevitably, then, I’d slowly fill up with a totally irrational jealousy, followed by a bout of self-hatred for being so possessive over him. I mean, why did he have to have this effect on me? And what was I supposed to do, anyway, follow him into work every day to keep an eye on him? Funny, exactly what I had to go through just to see what a dysfunctional and ridiculous relationship I was in.

‘Dec, just popping out for a latte, want anything . . . ?’ Hannah breaks off, spotting James for the first time. ‘Oh my GOD, I didn’t expect to see you back at the office for . . . well . . . for a good while yet,’ she says, stunned. For a split second I wonder if she’s about to hug him, then I remember . . . she’s just not the demonstrative type. And I’m right, she doesn’t.

‘Thanks, Hannah, that’s really sweet of you,’ says James, looking up from a spreadsheet and smiling at her appreciatively. Not quite his usual full-on, charm-fest grin, given the circumstances, but not too far off it, either.

‘So . . . how are you doing?’ Hannah asks, genuinely concerned.

‘Holding up, you know yourself.’

‘I understand. I really am so, so sorry about what’s happened. And just so you know, we’re all here for you.’

‘Thanks.’ He smiles. ‘That’s good to know.’ I’m not joking, he even manages to eye her up and down while delivering this perfectly innocuous speech, like his uncontrollable flirt-gene just takes over. When you’re James Kane, women are there to have the pants charmed off them, regardless of what might be going on in your private life. Not even bereavement can stop him. Which, quite frankly, is starting to make me so, so angry.

Anyway, Hannah disappears off to do a coffee round, Declan moves on to the even more boring topic of location scouting for the TV series, and now I’m sat right beside James, bum on the big mahogany desk, inches from him, waiting to pick my moment.

He starts to shiver after a bit, so I know he’s sensing something’s up.

Good.

‘Can we get the heating on?’ he interrupts Dec. ‘I mean, is it just me or is it bloody freezing in here?’

‘Ehh . . . it’s just you,’ says Dec, looking worried. ‘It’s the middle of May, it’s not cold.’

Then James’s phone beep-beeps as a text comes through. Declan just looks up from across the table, clearly not impressed by another interruption, but too polite to say so. I’m right beside James, though, and can read the text over his shoulder.

Oh for f*ck’s sake, I do not
believe
this. If I hadn’t already copped who it was from, there it is right in front of me. I look up into the address bar and see one name. Sophie.

‘Anything urgent?’ Dec asks.

‘Eh, no, just Charlotte’s mum wondering if she can call over later to pick up some of her stuff,’ he answers, cool as chilled steel.

And that’s what starts me off. Not that he can lie so easily, without it costing him a single thought, but at his having the brazen bloody neck to drag my mother into it.

Right then. War.

‘Oh Jaaaaaames?’ I’m almost shouting into his ear, like an Avon lady, and the reaction is hysterical: I swear I can nearly see the blood draining from his face.

He ignores me, though, and lets Dec drone on and on about the feasibility of a night shoot in some shopping centre, made to look like it’s daytime, to avoid gang-loads of kids running up to the camera and sticking their tongues into it.

‘I know you can hear me, James, and FYI, I’ve no intention of shutting up,’ I bellow at him, right into his face.

No reaction, just the merest eyelid flicker. Take more than that to put me off my mission, though.

‘No, dearest James, you weren’t imagining things this morning, either. Yes. It’s me. Your beloved Charlotte. Who you’re so, so SO upset about that you’re still taking texts from your new girlfriend.’

He coughs, and stays so unnaturally focused on Declan that now I’m half-wondering if what happened in the house this morning was just some kind of blip and . . . well, maybe he can’t hear me at all any more. Just like Fiona and Kate can’t.

Which effectively means I’m f*cked.

I mean, how am I supposed to wreak vengeance on the bastard, now?

‘Does Declan know about you and Screechy Sophie, by the way?’ I ask, probing, wondering how in hell I can provoke some kind of a reaction out of him. I try to pick up the glass of water in front of him, but nothing, my hand just glides straight through it. Shit. ‘Because I’m sure I can figure out some way of telling him,’ I bluff, pretty certain that if James suddenly can’t hear me any more, then it’s highly unlikely Dec can.

Still nothing. He’s still giving Dec his most laser-like, concentrated look, as if night shoots and budget costings are suddenly the be all and end all of his very existence.

One last try and I know exactly what’s guaranteed to drive him mental. My singing. No false modesty here, but I have, without doubt, one of the worst voices known to man, so bad that whenever we were having a row (i.e., often) all I’d have to do was break into a couple of verses of ‘Let It Be’ by the Beatles, and he’d either lock himself into the bathroom to escape the caterwauling or else concede defeat in whatever argument was blazing. Anything, just to get me to shut up.

I clear my throat, like a Covent Garden soprano about to launch into warm-up.

Right then, at the top of my horrific voice, I start belting out ‘Cabaret’ by Liza Minelli, the only song I know most of the words to. Now, I’m no Simon Cowell, but if by some miracle James
can
hear me, I’d say he’d rather listen to human nails being dragged down a blackboard than what I’m coming out with now.

I’m just at the bit, ‘When I go, I’m going like Elsie’, and am giving it an ear-shattering, diva belt, full throttle, the whole works, when out of nowhere James, white-faced, interrupts Declan.

‘Man, are you . . . ehh . . . hearing something . . . by any chance?’ he asks tentatively.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes!

‘Hearing what?’ says Dec.

‘That. That noise. That horrible noise. It sounds a bit like . . . emmmm . . . singing, actually.’

I’m happily caterwauling right into James’s face the bit about admitting from cradle to tomb not being that long a stay, and it’s hysterical, the louder I get, the paler he gets.

‘Maybe there’s . . . a radio or something on upstairs? Yeah, that’s it . . . a radio,’ he says, hopefully. ‘That . . . emm . . . Hannah might have left on?’

‘Ehh, no,’ says Declan, looking really worried now. ‘There’s no radio anywhere. Are you absolutely sure you’re OK, man?’

‘Never better,’ he lies stoutly. ‘Go on, you were saying about the . . . emmm . . . oh yeah, the costings?’

Right then. I take a big, dramatic pause to refill my lungs so I can really do justice to screeching out the very last bit about coming to the CABAAAAAARRRRREEEEEET!!’ Bingo. Success.

James is up on his feet, green in the face and making an immediate beeline for the door, which he flings open, then listens intently, with his hand to his ear. A bit like a gesture you’d see someone doing in a bad play, only funnier. For the laugh, I stay totally silent now, just to play a little mind-game with the aul bastard.

‘Hello?’ he calls out, from the foot of the windy Georgian staircase right up to the top of the building. ‘Anyone up there?’

Silence.

Declan’s at his shoulder now, really concerned.

‘There’s no one else here, man,’ he says, gently leading him back into the conference room. ‘Hannah went out to get coffees, remember? Don’t you remember her asking you if you wanted anything? You chatted to her, just now. Do you remember? Tell me that you remember.’

Hysterical, he’s actually talking to him like a mental health professional.

Hee hee heee.

‘I could have sworn I heard . . .’ says James, looking bewildered.

‘Totally understandable,’ says Declan firmly.

‘No, you don’t understand . . .’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I think you’ve been through a terrible time, and maybe you should think about going home for a lie-down. I can take things from here. Listen to me. Go HOME. Sleep. Rest. Chill. Relax. Everything is under control.’

‘Not a chance, man,’ says James, shoving past him back into the conference room. ‘I wouldn’t leave you high and dry, especially after me letting you down like I did this morning. It’s not fair on you. I’m telling you, I’m OK. Just . . . thought I heard a voice, that’s all.’