If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (27 page)

She blushes a bit before answering him.

‘All I’m saying, Tim, is that I’m here if you need me.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

I’m on the edge of my chair now, holding my breath, waiting on him,
willing
him to tell her how seeing her has made him realize just how huge a mistake he made in marrying the wrong woman. How much he’s pined for her all this time, how incredible it is that she’s come back into his life right now, when he’s at his lowest ebb and needs her most.

‘I mean it,’ she adds sincerely.

‘I know you do. And I also know that you’re one of the few people who I can rely on to help me through this.’

‘Of course.’

‘You know, I couldn’t believe it when you called me out of the blue like that. You were like some kind of angel being sent to me in my hour of need.’

OK, here it comes. Here’s the part where he gently introduces the idea that, in time, down the road, when he’s a little less raw, that maybe, just maybe, she’ll consider taking things to another whole new, wonderful level. Suddenly all the background noise in the restaurant, the chatter, the clinking of glasses and the laughter is really starting to annoy me. I just want to yell at everyone to shut up so I can focus on what’s coming next.

‘Hey, I’m here for you. Anytime you need me, just pick up the phone,’ Fi says, blushing like a forest fire.

‘You know what, Fiona? Seeing you has really made me realize something.’

‘What’s that?’

I hold my breath. The waiter at the table behind us is going through today’s specials so loudly that I want to clock him one for shattering the mood here.

‘I look at you and there you are, single, out there, dating . . .’

‘Yes? And?’

‘And I think, I can’t go back to living that life. I don’t even want that life any more.’

‘So, you said that seeing me made you realize something. Em . . .
what
, exactly?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘Emm . . . you tell me.’

‘That I want to be married, of course.’

‘Ehh . . . to . . . ehh . . . who?’

‘Well, to Ayesha, of course. Who else?’

Chapter Nineteen

KATE

I’m worried sick about Kate, so as soon as Fiona’s date ends, I go straight to see her. It’s still earlyish, and she’s in the living, sorry I mean drawing room, with the TV on, flicking through the channels but not really taking anything in. I know by the glazed look on her face and the way she keeps glancing at her watch every thirty seconds. She looks washed-out and exhausted, tense and strained, and, I’m not joking, you can practically feel the nerves ricocheting off her.

Which can only mean one thing.

I run over to the living-room window, look out and . . . confirmation in bold capitals, if I even needed it. Even though it’s pitch dark, I can see that there’s only one car parked in the driveway . . . Kate’s. Which means Paul never came home. Not in the last twenty-four hours. After everything: the awful row they had back in Galway, Kate finding out that he lied to her about meeting all his developer contacts, when the whole time he was out drinking with Robbie, Briar Rose . . . and Julie. And because I was with Fiona all evening, I’ve no idea what’s been going on in the meantime, if he’s phoned her to explain, or even if he’s on his way home to her now.

But judging by how fraught and strung-out Kate looks, I’d hazard a wild guess that the answer’s no.

Just then, she suddenly springs up, strides to the window and squints out, up and down the avenue where they live. She’s standing right beside me now, and, instinctively, I put my arm around her shoulders. No reaction, which you’d think I’d be kind of used to by now, but I’m not. She just looks so edgy and over-wrought, and it’s killing me that I’m not here for her. Really here, I mean. In the physical sense. Here’s my big sister, really needing me, and all I can do is look on.

Being dead would drive you mental, it really would. Times like this I find myself thinking, what did I have to go and die for, anyway?

Kate goes over to her mobile and hits the redial button. Paul’s mobile I’m guessing. She listens, waits for a bit, then clicks her tongue as it goes straight through to voicemail.

‘Paul, it’s me. Again. This is about the tenth time I’ve tried calling you, and I can’t believe you haven’t got back to me. It’s past ten at night, I’m worried out of my mind here, you have GOT to call and let me know where you are and what’s going on.’

She sounds wobbly and strained and then comes the time-honoured phrase which might as well come with subtitles saying, ‘You’re in big trouble.’

‘We have to talk.’

She clicks off the phone, and goes back to channel-hopping on the TV, with me slumped down beside her, desperately trying to get my head around all this. That he hasn’t come home, and hasn’t even bothered to pick up the phone to his wife. Perfect Paul. The guy I used to hold up as an example of how gentlemanly and adoring some fellas could be. All the years I spent looking at Kate’s life from the outside, and envying her flawless marriage. I’ll tell you something, whoever said that before you judge someone walk a mile in their shoes wasn’t messing.

But then, I find myself reasoning, whatever’s going on with Paul, there is at least one tiny granule of hope that I can cling to: maybe this is just a blip, nothing more. I mean, don’t all marriages go through rocky patches? Isn’t it possible, just possible that that’s all that’s going on here? Then I look across at Kate’s stressed face, and it kills me all over again that I can’t be here for her. One hundred per cent here, I mean.

She channel-surfs to the
Late Late Show
where the chat is all about a luxury holiday for two they’re giving away to the Maldives for some lucky competition winners. Suddenly, I get an instant brainwave: oh my God, sure, this is so obvious! Sure, that’s all that Kate and Paul need, a bit of time away together, away from grieving and work and all of her horrors-in-law, and Paul’s obsession with his bloody band! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.

I wait till she eventually switches off the telly, locks up and hauls herself wearily upstairs to bed. Alone. I’m seeing it all so clearly in my mind’s eye: I’ll plant a seed in her head so she dreams about her and Paul on a secluded five-star beach resort, the kind that you only ever read about in the
über
-posh travel supplements. Her with a cocktail in one hand and a trashy novel in the other, him in very tight Speedos looking divinely sexy. Throw in hot sun, a Jacuzzi for two, room service and champagne and you’ve a recipe for the most wonderful setting where they can, I dunno, reconnect with each other and remember why they fell in love in the first place. I haven’t the first clue what’s going on with him, and why he’s behaving the way he is towards Kate, but wouldn’t a second honeymoon set their marriage straight again? That’s all they need, you know, I’d put money on it.

And then I swing back to feeling helpless and useless and utterly frustrated all over again. I mean, why can’t I send her a proper, decent sign? Something that would gently guide her towards, in no particular order, a travel agency, a lingerie shop and somewhere she can get her legs waxed? No joy, though. In fact, poor Kate spends so much of the night tossing and turning I don’t think she gets a wink of sleep at all. I stay with her, watching over her.

Watching and worrying. Eventually, very early the next morning, she does manage to drift off a bit, so I hastily jump in.

Right then, here goes.

Next thing, she opens her eyes and finds herself on a sunlounger, looking out towards a crystal blue sea. It’s baking hot, and she’s wearing big face-covering Posh Spice shades, with a pretty white linen sundress, sipping a cocktail that starts off green at the bottom and changes to peach at the top. She’s also wearing a floppy straw hat, why, I don’t know, because the jammy cow can actually take the sun and doesn’t end up looking like a burnt, gingery, freckly, Duchess of York lookalike, as I do after about four seconds on a beach.

That aside, this is a good start.

Looking bored, she tosses her book aside, sits back and starts looking around her. Then, in that surreal way that dreams have, she starts to hear music. She listens for a bit, then realizes that it’s Paul singing ‘Something’ by the Beatles, her all-time favourite song, the one they had as their first dance at their wedding.

Better still.

She gets up and strolls back to the hotel, which is huge, so she wanders down marble corridor after marble corridor, trying to find him, looking into room after room, calling out his name. The corridor she’s on now suddenly stretches out to about five times its length, with door after door on either side. She’s breaking into a run now, starting to get panicky, flinging each door open, calling out his name, but, somehow, every room she sticks her head into is completely empty. So she goes on running, sprinting, getting faster and faster. The only sound is Paul’s singing getting louder, and the flip, flop of her sandals on the marble floor, racing still more rapidly. But now the marble floor has changed, so it looks like that brown, swirly carpet in the horror film
The Shining
. . .

Shite, no, this is turning into a nightmare!

On and on she runs, and now all sorts of unlikely people are walking towards her and leering at her creepily: Simon Cowell and Nicole Kidman wheeling a buggy. Still the singing is getting louder and louder, till eventually she comes to a door facing her, right at the very end of the corridor. It has a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on it, but she hammers on it and bursts in anyway.

Paul is there all right, sitting up in a king-size bed strumming on his guitar.

With Julie in the bed beside him.

I don’t even have to snap Kate out of it, as just at that exact moment, a key turns in the hall door downstairs.

Phew.

Suddenly she’s wide awake, with beads of sweat covering her pale, drawn face.

‘Paul? Is that you?’ Like a bullet, she’s out of the bed and racing downstairs to where he’s dumping an overnight bag on the hall table.

They look at each other, but neither one speaks. Then he goes back to taking off his jacket and flicking through a pile of mail. Blanking her.

‘Mind the good cream rug, your shoes are filthy,’ she says, out of habit more than anything else. Then she looks mortified at having come out with something so utterly nagging and stupid and completely daft at a time like this. Paul just turns to look at her, kicks the shoes off, sending them flying against the bottom stair, and now it’s like a ‘who’ll blink first’ contest. Like he knows right well there’s a row coming, and is content to sit back and let her strike the first blow.

Which she does.

‘Why didn’t you return my calls?’

‘Battery on my phone went dead.’

‘You couldn’t have called the landline? I’ve been worried sick, you know.’

‘Does it matter? Sure, I’m here now, aren’t I?’

‘Of course it matters.’

He continues to stare stonily at her, and there’s another long pause.

Oh God, it’s like I can’t watch, and yet feel compelled to. Because I just have a slow, sickening feeling that hell is about to be unleashed.

‘Do you want some breakfast?’ Kate eventually asks, but then she’s a great one for skating over surface tensions.

‘No, just a shower. I’ve been in the car since seven this morning.’

He brushes past her to go upstairs, and I’m standing there thinking, is that it? No mention of the row the other night? Or of the fact that he spun her a yarn about being with property developers when he was out on the piss with his family and bloody Julie?

Kate lets him get half-way up the stairs before stopping him.

‘You know, I think, Paul,’ she says in an unsteady voice, ‘that you at least owe me an explanation.’

‘Oh, here we go,’ he answers coldly, turning to face her defiantly, arms folded, like he’s waiting for a full-on verbal onslaught.

‘You told me the other night that you were having a business dinner . . .’

‘That’s because I was.’

‘So how come when I called Rose’s, her youngest told me you were all gone down to Sheehan’s pub for the night?’

‘Because that’s where we went after dinner. Jesus, Kate, what is your problem? What are you trying to do anyway, spy on me?’

Right, that’s done it. Gloves off, barriers down, as Kate really lets him have it.

‘Don’t dare speak to me like that, after all the worry I’ve been through . . .’

‘Well, you asked for it, have you any idea how embarrassed I was in front of my whole family after you picked a fight with me back at the house, the night of the party for the fortieth?’

‘After you ignored me for the entire night, you mean?’

‘I was playing with the band, in case you hadn’t noticed. Christ Alive, Kate, do you ever listen to yourself? Do you ever stop to think about anyone other than yourself?’

‘I went all the way down there to be with you, and you didn’t exactly look over the moon to see me, to put it mildly.’

‘I was just surprised, that’s all . . .’

‘Then you leave me all alone with your family . . .’

‘I was practising for the birthday do! Anyway, what’s wrong with my family? Is this what this is really about, Kate?’

‘I think it’s no secret that Rose and Melissa and Sue don’t really like me, and yet I sat with them for most of that awful night just to be there, just so I could support you . . .’

‘Maybe they don’t like you because you don’t make any effort with them . . .’

‘That is so bloody UNFAIR! I make every effort with them . . .’

‘Not what they all say . . .’

‘And what about Julie? How do you think I feel when I see the two of you all cosied up, you playing and her singing together?’

‘You’ve really done it now,’ he says coldly. ‘She happens to be a good friend of mine. If you’re insinuating something, why not come right out and say it?’

Kate stops, as if she’s realizing that she’s beginning to sound irrationally jealous, and that maybe she went a bit too far. So she regroups.

‘All I’m trying to say is that, on top of everything else that I’m dealing with at the moment, I wouldn’t have minded a bit of support from my husband. Is that too much to ask?’

He gives a shrug and doesn’t answer her. As if he’s finally realizing that he’s acting like a complete tosser.

‘It was a stressful time for me,’ he eventually says, but a bit more gently. A bit more like the Paul I know. ‘And I didn’t expect to see you down there.’

Good, thank you, God, thank you, God. This is an improvement.

‘But . . .’ he goes on and I’m not liking that but . . .

‘Seriously, Kate, what exactly is it you want? That I hold your hand every time you’re with my family? On the rare occasions that you actually condescend to visit them, that is.’

Oh shit, shit, shit, nononononono.

That’s really done it now.

‘Have you any idea how hurtful that is?’ she screams back at him, hand clenched tightly on to the banister rail, with him still half-way up the stairs, coolly looking back down at her. I’m sitting in on a stair between the two of them, covering my ears with my hands, feeling hollow and empty and helpless, like a kid whose parents are bickering and not caring about the emotional fallout of the accusations they’re hurling at each other.

Stop this, stop this, please stop this now, before one of you says something you can’t take back . . .

‘I made huge efforts with Rose, and with your other sisters-in-law, but they’ve made up their minds that I’m not one of them, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Well, maybe you just need to spend more time with them. Take the trouble to get to know them. They’re family after all, and family comes first.’

‘I know. Of course I know.’

I look up, suddenly heartened that they actually seem to be agreeing on something.

‘I’m glad you feel that way, Kate. Because given that any bit of construction work going seems to be in the west these days, I think it’s time we looked into getting a place down there. Close to my family, close to work, save me doing this ridiculous drive every time there’s a sniff of a job . . .’