If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (29 page)

‘Go on.’

‘. . . said that if Ayesha had been happy and satisfied with me, then she wouldn’t have needed to look outside of her marriage. So that’s when I really lost it. I shouted at him to step outside so we could settle it once and for all, but he wouldn’t. I went at him, from where he was standing in the doorway, and landed him one clean, hard punch right square in the gob.’

Fiona looks like she doesn’t know what to do or say, so she goes back to putting the glasses back on, then whipping them off again.

‘Gave him a right shiner. I was thrilled. But here’s where the git is so clever. I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t hitting me back, because I’d have killed him, I swear I would have. He just stood there with a smirk across his ugly face. Then I saw why: without me realizing, Ayesha and the kids had already pulled up on the road outside and witnessed the whole bloody thing. Of course, then she wouldn’t let me take the kids, said they were too upset by what they’d seen. So then git-face starts saying that his brother is some hotshot lawyer and that he’ll make sure they apply for a barring order against me. Oh, and that he’ll press assault charges, which shouldn’t be a problem as now he has witnesses. A barring order, Fiona? From going into my own home? I’m at my wits’ end here; I’m at rock bottom. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they do.’

‘Oh, Tim, that’s just terrible,’ says Fi, full of sympathy. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘All I want is to win her back. And I can’t do it alone. Help me, Fiona, please, for the love of God, help me. I know it’s hard to believe, and I know I mightn’t exactly have been husband of the year, but in spite of everything, I love the ground that woman walks on. She’s the other half of my soul, and I’m only sorry I had to go through all of this crap to realize it.’

Another silence as he takes a gulp of coffee, scalds his mouth, curses, then dumps the mug back down again. Fi just looks on with an expression on her face that I can’t make out.

She’s not liking this any more than I am, though, and that’s for sure.

‘So,’ Tim continues, ‘now you see why I had to come round here. I just needed to talk to a friend.’

‘A friend,’ she repeats dully.

It’s like he’s not even hearing her, though.

‘Right, then,’ he goes on, thinking aloud, ‘here’s what I think the best thing to do is. I need to take some time, but when I’ve calmed down a bit, and when she’ll agree to see me again, I need to go round there on bended knee and try to get to see her alone. And then I’ll beg, like I’ve never begged before in my life, for her to take me back. No matter what she asks of me, I’ll do it, if I can just get rid of Rick the Prick and get her back. I’ve no pride left, Fiona, and I don’t even care any more. You’re the only person I could come to for help, so for old times’ sake, I’m asking you now. Will you help me, Fi? To win my wife back?’

They continue talking for a bit, or rather, Tim continues talking while she just listens. Silently, nonjudgementally. Then after a while, she excuses herself and says she’s slipping upstairs to get dressed. On her way up, though, she stops at her computer, where Vet Man’s email is still flickering away on the screen, unanswered.

Discreetly, she clicks on the reply button.

Chapter Twenty-one

JAMES

Everything’s going wrong. Everything. Kate and Paul are ripping each other apart, while Fiona and Tim, who I had such high hopes for, are a total disaster. All he can live, eat, drink, sleep or talk about is Ayesha, Ayesha, bloody Ayesha: how much he loves her and how he’ll do anything to get her back.

The guilt is suffocating me. It’s all my fault. I mean, I’m the one who engineered them back into each other’s lives, and what good has it done? In total despair, I leave them to it, and go back home. Sorry, back to James’s house, I mean. Don’t even know why I’m drawn there, all I can put it down to is that it does my heart good to witness James down on his luck and at rock bottom. Where he belongs.

Next thing, I’m in our, sorry, his, living room and . . . oh, for Jaysus’ sake. Screechy Sophie is here, mid-screech. Another row in full flight. Dear Jaysus, how many more of them am I supposed to witness? Everyone is suffering. Everyone is miserable. And all I can do is look on, powerless.

I’m starting to think that the life of an angel sucks, it really does.

‘So, that’s it, then? You’ve nothing else to say to me?’ Sophie is yelling at him, and it’s only then that I notice two packed suitcases sitting neatly at the front door.

James is lying stretched out on the sofa looking like death on a plate. The nesty hair, the same manky jeans and jumper he had on last time I saw him, looking like he hasn’t bothered to haul himself up off the sofa since then, either. To complete the hobo look, he has a blanket pulled around him, and, because I’m close by, he shivers, pulling it closer to him. Right beside him are two bottles of Jack Daniel’s, one empty and one half-empty. He looks like he hasn’t stopped drinking since I last saw him, and, what’s more, that he doesn’t even give a shite.

‘I’m doing this because I do still care about you, you know,’ howls Sophie, standing over him. He’s not even reacting to her, just staring ahead, glazed. Glazed and pissed, that is. ‘But if you think I’m staying another minute under this roof just to watch you drink yourself to death, James Kane, you’ve another think coming.’

No response.

‘I’ve had it with you. I’ve given you every chance, and you’re just behaving like a complete boor.’

Still no reaction.

‘Everyone goes through tough times with work, you know. It’s not like you’re the first person this has ever happened to. I mean, look at me. I went for that musical audition the other day and I never even got a recall. But do you see me wallowing in misery, refusing to even get up off the sofa? No, because I’m a survivor, that’s why. I deal with the knocks and I move on. Just like Liz Taylor.’

Oh yeah? I’m thinking, looking at her big, stupid poodley head. Because what happened to you, and what happened to James is the exact same. Not getting a callback for some dopey musical, and what he’s dealing with: i.e., losing his home, company, career and right-hand man, all within the same few miserable days.

‘James?’ Sophie’s nearly on top of him, now, and I’m starting to worry that her decibel level will actually dislodge plaster from the ceiling. ‘Are you even listening to me?’

No reaction. In fact I wish I could figure out how he’s managing to tune her out, because, God knows, it’d come in very handy.

‘This is it, you know. Because once I walk out that door, there’s no turning back. You can beg and plead all you like for me to give you another chance, but you’ve had your final warning. I won’t take your calls, I won’t ever see you again, and God help me, but if you even dare to come near me in public, I’ll throw a drink over you. Do you understand?’

James just does that thing of rubbing his eye sockets with his palms, but otherwise stays silent.

‘Right, then,’ she says, the penny eventually dropping that he’s not exactly putting up a fight to get her to stay.

Hee hee hee.

‘Well, James, this is it, then. If I can give you one piece of advice before I go . . .’

It’s the first time he’s actually turned to look at her.

#x2018;. . . it’s that you get help. Look at yourself. You’re a complete mess. Drag yourself down all you want, but don’t for a second think you can drag me down with you. Right then. I’m off. Don’t try to contact me, there’s no point.’ With that, she swishes the stupid poodley curls, picks up her cases and opens the hall door.

‘Sophie?’ he calls after her in a gravelly voice, just as she’s about to leave.

‘Yes?’ She’s straight back in, and I get the feeling that all it would take from him is a minor bit of grovelling for her to do an about-turn and agree to stay. And maybe agree to throw a Hoover around the place as well; it’s so filthy, it’s driving me mental.

‘Just before you go . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Throw me over my cigarettes, will you? They’re on the hall table right beside you.’

She doesn’t, though. The only thing she throws is a filthy look, and with a deafening, ‘to hell with you’ door slam, she’s out of there.

I manage to find a tiny bit of the coffee table that isn’t covered in ash or discarded scripts or empty glasses, and sit down beside him, just taking in the whole scene. I’m so close to him, I can smell him, and it ain’t pretty. Hasn’t washed in days by the whiff off him.

‘So,’ is all I can manage to say.

He looks up sharply.

‘This is what it’s come to, James.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he says, leaning over and pouring himself out another glass of JD. ‘Now that she’s gone, at least I have the voices in my head to keep me company,’ he says, clinking his glass off the bottle, then taking a huge gulp. ‘Thank you for that unexpected bonus, Mr Jack Daniel’s. Thanks a bunch.’

I’m watching him, numb. I said I’d be here for the final act in his demise and here I am, front-row stalls. Exactly as I’d wished for. Just a shame I can’t feel anything. Not pity or sympathy or anything.

‘James, you know, none of what you’re going through means anything unless you can learn from your mistakes.’

‘Voices in my head moralizing at me now, lovely. Nice touch.’

‘For once in your life, you’ve got to listen. You shafted everyone you came into contact with, me included. You lied, you were horrible to people who were in your corner the whole time, like Declan, you manipulated all around you . . .’

‘Yeah. It’s called being a producer. Get used to it.’

What’s weird is that, right then, he starts laughing. A loud guffawing cackle. Real gallows humour.

For some reason, I’m starting to get frightened, and I don’t know why. Something’s going to happen, I’m just not sure what. All I know is that I’m beginning to be afraid.

I don’t have long to wait.

Another gulp of whiskey later, and he’s up on his feet, unsteady. He knocks over a table lamp and sends it flying on to the floor. Then he kicks it savagely.

Now I’m holding my breath.

Staggering, he somehow makes it to the downstairs bathroom, and suddenly I can breathe again. It’s OK. Panic over. He’s just going to the loo, that’s all.

But he’s not.

There’s a crashing noise, and I follow to see what’s going on. He’s at the bathroom cabinet, but is so plastered drunk, he’s sent the entire contents of it flying. Boxes of Tampax, a few bottles of foundation I’d completely forgotten I even had, vitamin C tablets, Berocca, lavender oil, all go clattering across the tiled floor. Now he’s rooting around, like he’s searching for something.

Oh holy shite.

At the very back of the cabinet, there’s a box of pills belonging to me, from ages ago.

Sleeping pills.

I got a prescription for them about a year ago, after a trip to New York with Kate, to help me get over the jet lag, and I forgot all about them. James clearly hadn’t though: he knew exactly where they were and where to look. He seizes on them, almost goes flying when he trips on the jar of lavender oil, steadies himself, then somehow makes it back to the sofa.

Oh, please, don’t let this be happening . . .

He opens the jar and there’s about a dozen pills left. So he grabs the bottle of whiskey, pops one of the pills into his mouth and slugs it down, with a gulp of Jack Daniel’s.

‘OK, James, stop it, stop it right there. This is a crazy carry-on, what do you want to go and take sleeping pills for? On top of the amount that you’ve drunk? Don’t you realize that’s lethal? You’ve had one, that’s enough, now stop, please STOP.’

He doesn’t, though. He takes another and another and another. Now I’m shouting at him, begging, pleading with him to stop, but it’s like he’s gone to another place where I can’t reach him.

Down and down he swallows more and more, and now I’m hysterical. I’m tearing my hair out, screaming, shrieking, terrified of what’s going to happen, what he’s trying to do to himself . . .

‘Don’t, James! Please stop this! Oh for the love of God, is there somebody who can help me? HELP ME! For God’s sake . . . PLEASE HELP!!’

And, suddenly, like that, I’m yanked out of there.

Chapter Twenty-two

I don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that I’m frightened. Terrified.

Slowly, uncertainly, I open my eyes and . . . find myself sitting all alone in what looks a bit like a bank-manager’s office. Oversized oak desk, swivelly chairs, the works. Honestly, the only things missing are a pile of mortgage application forms, a Bank of Ireland calendar, and bars on the windows. I blink and look all around me, desperately trying my best to take it in. My heart’s still walloping against my ribcage after the fright I got with James, and now I’m starting to get even more panicky. And yet, there’s something about this place that’s giving me the strangest sense of déjà vu.

Then the door bursts open, and the minute I see who’s standing there, suddenly it all clicks into place.

It’s Regina. Marshmallow lady, in a pink suit, with her pudgy pink roundy cheeks and pink-rimmed glasses. Who sent me to angelic training school, and who got me the gig looking after James in the first place. I remember thinking how pleasant and lovely and friendly she was when I first met her. Kind of like a cross between Angela Lansbury and an Aer Lingus hostess. Except she doesn’t look a bit warm and stewardess-like right now. Her face is thunderous as she strides up to the chair opposite me, dumping a pile of papers down on to the desk with a dull wallop.

‘Well, Charlotte Grey, I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

‘What? I’m sorry . . . but
what
did you say?’ I ask, my mind completely baffled. She doesn’t answer me, though, just clips on one of those telephonist headsets, like the one Madonna wore on her
Blonde Ambition
tour, then starts a conversation with . . . well, with thin air.

‘Gabriel? Regina, back here again with an update. Yes, we’ve sent in a replacement angel who got on the case immediately. All taken care of. The cavalry has arrived, so to speak. The charge will get a nasty shock, and certainly won’t feel particularly well for the next few days, but otherwise should pull through, thank God.’

Then she turns to hiss at me. ‘No thanks to you.’

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

‘. . . I beg your pardon, Gabriel, what was that? Oh no, I have her here in front of me. And madam has some serious questions to answer as soon as I’m off this call, I can tell you. Righty-oh. Well then, over and out, and I’ll brief you again shortly.’

She clicks her headset off her, stands up and walks over to a big bookcase covered in files that’s right behind her desk, with her back to me. A long silence, and now I’m feeling just like I used to in school whenever I’d be hauled up in front of the headmistress for some bit of messing in class. I’m almost expecting her to turn around and tell me she’s ‘spoken to my unhappy parents’. (Our head nun’s one-size-fits-all phrase reserved for when you’d seriously acted the eejit.) And that they’re now on their way in to drag me back home.

But she doesn’t. Instead she looks at me for a long, long time. A disappointed look, which somehow is far, far worse than if she’d started roaring and flinging furniture at me.

‘I told your father this wouldn’t work out, you know. I warned him.’

‘Regina, I’m sure you’re furious with me, and I’m sure I managed to make a complete pig’s ear of everything. Just like I usually do. But can I just ask one thing? Is James going to be OK? I’m so worried. I couldn’t believe it when he started popping pills, and on top of the amount of booze he’d drunk, as well . . . I was watching him, so completely helpless and powerless, it was terrifying . . .’

‘To light and guard, to rule and guide. Does that phrase ring any kind of bell with you?’

Her voice is stern now, icy cold and cutting.

‘Yes, Regina.’

God, it’s exactly like being called to the carpet back in school. The rhetorical questions. The grinding embarrassment. I’m hating this, and I just want to get out of here, like, NOW.

‘So enlighten me, Charlotte. Where exactly was it that you stumbled on that phrase before?’

‘Umm . . . at angel school. We were told that . . . was our . . . emmmm . . . job.’

‘Oh good. So your memory
is
working, then. And you’re not entirely stone deaf.’

Another thing that reminds me of school. Dry sarcasm. God almighty, throw in train-track braces and pimples, and I’m right back to being fifteen years old again.

‘Anything else you learned? That you’d like to share?’

‘Emm . . . something about not interfering with free will?’

‘I see. Nice to know that you were actually paying attention. But what’s puzzling me about you, Charlotte, is why you heard one thing, then took it upon yourself to go and do the exact, polar opposite. Maybe you’d care to enlighten me?’

‘Look, Regina . . . I’m sure what you’re getting at is that I messed up. But, please, I just want to know how James is . . .’

Regina pulls her swivelly chair out, sits down and reads out a line from what looks like a fax in front of her.

‘As I speak, the emergency services are on their way to Strand Road, Dublin, to collect James Kane, where he’ll be rushed to the A & E department at Saint Vincent’s hospital. He’ll undergo an extremely unpleasant stomach-pumping procedure, and will certainly be in pain for a few days, but otherwise, yes, he’ll pull through.’

A wave of pure relief washes over me.

‘Well, if nothing else, that is good to hear. You’ve no idea the fright I got when he started throwing back the sleeping pills, I was yelling at him like a demented lunatic to stop, honestly I really was, but it was like he’d made his mind up that this was what he was going to do, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it . . . I’ve never felt so completely powerless . . .’

‘You don’t need to tell me, Charlotte, I saw the whole thing.’

‘Emm . . . you did? How?’

She doesn’t answer me, just swivels her desktop computer around to my side of the desk, so I can see the image on it, clear as crystal. Just like watching telly.

It’s James. Lying on the sofa, exactly where I left him, except now he’s choking and spluttering. I can’t hear him, but by the look of him, I’d guess he’s calling out for a bucket to be sick into.

‘I don’t get it,’ I stammer, ‘how are you able to see this? Is it like some kind of live CCTV feed or something?’

‘Well, what did you expect, dear? My department is the centre of all ground operations, you know. The only reason it’s made to look like a conventional, more earthly office is so as not to confuse rookies like yourself. Who, frankly, have caused me quite enough trouble as it is.’

‘But . . . I don’t get it. James was falling down drunk when I left him . . . how did he manage to call an ambulance?’

‘He didn’t.’

Just then, as I look back to the computer screen, I see Sophie coming in from the kitchen, with a wet face-towel which she then gingerly applies to James’s forehead, like a cold compress.

‘Screechy . . . sorry, I mean, Sophie came back?’

‘Sophie came back. Took a lot of fast work on her angel’s behalf, of course, but we got her there just in the nick of time. It seems she’d forgotten her phone, so her angel prompted her to remember it just when she’d got to the bottom of the road. She turned her car back, let herself back into the house, then found him, with an empty jar of sleeping pills lying beside him. Knowing right well that he’d been drinking steadily for days on end, she thought on her feet, rang emergency services immediately, and now they’re on the way. In the nick of time, too.’

I sit back, and suddenly I can breathe again.

‘So, he’s going to be OK then?’

‘As I said, no thanks to you, Missy.’

‘Oh come on, that’s a bit unfair. It’s hardly my fault that everything in his whole life went pear-shaped, now, is it?’

‘To light and guard, to rule and guide, means just that, Charlotte. Whereas somehow you took that to mean, to wreak havoc, sabotage, lecture and then round it off by having a good old laugh at him.’

‘I never did!’

She rifles through the mound of papers in front of her, picks one, then starts quoting from it.

‘Oh really? Incident one. When you first realized your charge had the ability to hear you, you then proceeded to taunt and terrify him, at one point telling him that you were the voice of his conscience and that his life was doomed. Correct?’

‘Emm, well . . . OK, so I might have started to have a little bit of fun with him, but, in my defence, it was pretty incredible that he could hear me in the first place. No one warned me about that, no one even said that it might be a possibility . . .’

‘Your father’s idea.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes. When you first came here, you were in such a raw emotional state about your break-up, he thought it would help the healing process. If you could somehow communicate with the man you loved and lost, maybe in time, you’d be able to feel pity for him rather than the blind fury, which, if I may remind you, was eating you up when you first arrived here.’

‘Oh my God, that was
Dad’s
idea?’

I can’t think of anything else to say, my mind’s gone into total meltdown. The funny thing is though . . . in a roundabout sort of way . . . it worked. What Regina’s saying is actually true. I’d just forgotten. How fraught and angry and white-hot with rage I was with James when I came here initially, but now . . . now . . . I just feel sorry for him. Somehow along the way, without even noticing, I’ve detached emotionally. And, what’s doubly weird is that, as I’ve witnessed James’s carry-on from this side of the fence, I suppose it’s finally beginning to hit me just how unhappy I was with him, even when I thought things were going well with us. We were so fundamentally unsuited. We’re two very different human beings, and it’s only now that I can see it with any kind of clarity. I spent my entire time with him trying to bash a square peg into a round hole, constantly forgiving all his bad behaviour and convincing myself that I could turn things around for me and him. But the simple fact is, it never would have worked. If Sophie hadn’t come along, if my accident hadn’t happened, and if we’d stayed together, now I’m asking myself . . . then what? What would the rest of my life have been like? Even a thicko like me would sooner or later have realized that James just wasn’t my soulmate and that he was pretty much treading water with me until the big love of his life came along. Either that or else he’d just have had a string of affairs, one after the other, until eventually it would have driven me away. A life of misery was all that awaited me either way, that’s for sure.

Not that any of this matters, now that I’m dead. It’s just nice to have that clarity that you only get from stepping back from things a bit, that’s all.

Regina’s far from finished with me, though.

‘Incident two. When your charge went to a very important meeting at an investor’s country house to try to raise funds for a television project.’

‘Oh . . . yeah, I remember,’ I say, snapping out of my reverie and focusing on her again. ‘Sir William Eames.’

‘And what did you decide to do, madam?’

I think back. Shit. Now I remember.

In fact, how could I have forgotten?

‘Well, now . . . can I just say in my defence . . . that was totally, one hundred per cent not my fault. You see, there were Dobermanns there, two of them, and I have this terrible phobia about dogs, but you know what animals are like, they completely sensed that I was there and started having a go at me . . .’

‘That is
not
what I was referring to.’

‘I only meant to say that what happened wasn’t my fault. Well, that is to say, it wasn’t
entirely
my fault.’

‘Did you or did you not begin to goad your charge, telling him that his pitch was rubbish? In the full knowledge that he could hear you, and that you’d ruin any chance he might have had of winning over a would-be investor? Your exact words were, I believe, that a cat could have coughed a better script out of its rear end.’

OK, I’ve kind of had enough of the lecturing, and now I’m starting to get defensive. Which, with me, is usually only a prelude to full-scale bawling my eyes out.

‘Regina, this is the man who ruined my life. And let’s be honest, he’s not exactly a likeable man. But I loved him. I loved him to distraction . . .’

‘And he lied and cheated on you. Yes, yes, yes, heard it all before. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think you’re the first woman in history to have been disappointed in love? You know, the strength of a person’s character, Charlotte, comes from adversity. Or as I’m fond of saying to all my angels that pass through here: a woman is a little bit like a tea bag. You don’t know how strong she is till she’s put in hot water. I’m not denying that you went through a hard time with this man, all I’m saying is that we offered you the chance to watch over James, and to prove that you were the bigger person by safeguarding him from this plane. By protecting him and gently guiding. Like you were supposed to. You could have shown him forgiveness and compassion. But no, you decided to wreak havoc instead. Very mature, Charlotte. Nicely done.’

This shuts me up. But then tough love tends to have that effect on me.

She’s not finished with me, though.

‘Incident three.’

I groan inwardly, thinking, oh Jaysus, is there more? Can’t I go now?

Not a bloody hope.

‘When James had reached rock bottom, as you call it, how did you decide to help? When he was at his lowest ebb, with his company in trouble, and on the verge of losing his home, what did you do? Took the high moral ground and gave him a good lecture about how his behaviour in the past had led him to this.’

OK, I have to stick up for myself here.

‘But, Regina, I was only pointing out the truth! He shafted people all around him, and that’s why he ended up losing his company. No one, not even his business partner, wanted to work with him any more. His own brother wouldn’t help him out financially. It was like he was being hit by a boulder of karma. All I was trying to do was point out to him that if he’d treated people a bit better, then maybe things wouldn’t have gone pear-shaped on him. That’s all. Honestly.’