by Shari Low
I took the coward’s way out. I took off my engagement ring and placed it on top of my signature.
Dear Joe,
the note read,
I’m so sorry. I need to go home for a while to do some thinking. I’ll be in touch soon. Love you – always,
Cooper x.
PS I’m leaving the ring, so you know I’ll be back.
I rushed to Schiphol Airport and caught the 7 a.m. flight to Glasgow.
I never saw Joe Cain again.
5
High – The Lighthouse Family
I arrive at Paco’s on Chiswick High Road fifteen minutes late due to a wardrobe crisis – pink pedal pushers are NOT for a woman of my curvatures and complexion – and the Number 57 bus driver refusing to go over twenty miles an hour. Chiswick is the most convenient meeting place, given that Kate lives around the corner, I’m only a few miles away, Jess can hop on a direct train from Westminster and Carol is dating a minted bloke who provides a car and driver to take her wherever she wants to go. As I charge into the packed restaurant, it crosses my mind again that I need to ask the others if they know what happened to Sarah, but I get sidetracked by their cheers.
Kate and Jess have obviously filled Carol in on my day’s deliberations, because in front of them all are glasses full of red liquid – the unmistakable murky hues of the Invaded Vagina. I’ve never asked what’s in it and I’m pretty sure now isn’t the time to find out.
‘Cooper,’ Jess greets me, her Glaswegian accent softened by an overtone of posh London. ‘We were just about to call in a search party.’
There are kisses and hugs all round, before I eventually park myself, desperate to fill them in on my latest episode.
Jess, dressed in a classic navy power suit, takes charge as usual. As a political researcher and (secret) girlfriend of Basil Asquith, MP, she’s used to participating in important meetings and keeping things in order.
‘Right then, who’s got anything major to report this week?’ she asks, her red, chin-length bob not even budging as she scans her audience.
Three hands shoot up, including mine, one almost decapitating a passing waiter. Bloody hell, THREE major news items. Normally we’re lucky if there’s one and we just fill the rest of the time with essential tasks like swapping salacious celebrity gossip. Most of that comes from Carol and Jess, with occasional top-ups from Kate. I wouldn’t come into contact with a celebrity unless I tripped over one when I was putting my bins out. I definitely have the least glamorous life in my circle.
‘Marks out of ten for importance, juiciness and trauma value?’ Jess requests.
‘Four,’ Carol replies, through a perfect, rose pink pout. It would be easy to hate her. She hasn’t gained a pound since we were fourteen, and she still has Cindy Crawford’s easy elegance and killer cheekbones. Even more irritating, she can throw on any old thing and achieve the kind of look that would take me a week and a half to put together.
‘Nine,’ adds Kate.
‘Ten,’ I smile gleefully.
There’s a round of surprised faces. We haven’t had a ten since Jess caught her boyfriend in bed with his allegedly erstwhile wife and proceeded to assault him with a table lamp, causing him to flee his home with only his ministerial red box covering his dignity. It is a complicated relationship. Jess definitely isn’t the kind of woman who would entertain an affair, but Basil’s marriage has been over for years, and he and his wife keep up the façade for the sake of his political career and her social standing. Personally, I think Jess should run a mile from the pair of them, but she loves him, so I try not to judge.
We decide to spill in reverse order, leaving the biggest until last. I can barely contain myself so I sip my cocktail to keep my gob otherwise occupied.
Carol starts with a sigh. ‘Clive wants to take me to Antigua for two weeks.’ Clive is Carol’s latest boyfriend. Private-school educated, great connections, family money and he’s invested well in all sorts of technology that I don’t understand, so two weeks in a luxury resort wouldn’t even make a dent in his petty cash.
I almost splurt my drink across the table. ‘And that’s a problem?’
‘Two weeks! Fourteen whole days and nights of Clive. I mean, he’s very nice and all that, but normally I don’t even hang around long enough to brush my teeth in the mornings. It’s usually meet, expensive dinner somewhere fabulous, his place, orgasm, and then I’m out of there.’
And she’s not kidding. Carol treats her boyfriends like a session at the gym – a bit of a chore, a few grunts and groans, but the rewards are worth it.
We deliberate her dilemma over our starters. It would be easy to look at Carol’s gorgeous, luxury life and think she has it all. Or that she’s aloof and shallow. Actually, she is pretty shallow, but that’s not a surprise in her world. Underneath, though, she’s just the working-class girl from Glasgow, who grew up on a council estate with a mum who worked three jobs to support her family, and who knows that she has a time limit to capitalise on her exquisite appearance. For all her stunning looks, rich boyfriends, flash cars and first-class flights, she’s just like the rest of us –flawed, complicated and still figuring life out. We decide that she should go. After all, how bad could it be? As long as she takes the latest Jilly Cooper, an empty suitcase for shopping trips and calls us on Clive’s phone bill if boredom sets in, she’ll be fine.
We move on to Kate before Carol gets the brochures out and makes us all sick with jealousy.
To my surprise, Kate looks flushed. This is the woman who copes with two kids, a full-time job, a house and husband and all without breaking into a sweat. A minor earthquake couldn’t break Kate’s stride, so if she’s perturbed in any way, then I’ve got a feeling that it’s something huge. I’m not wrong.
‘My cocktail doesn’t have any alcohol in it because I’m, er, well, might be pregnant again.’
There is a stunned silence.
I look to the heavens for inspiration on what to say. Instead, all I see are wooden beams with what looks like dry rot.
I tentatively ask, ‘Is this good?’
She bursts into tears.
My God, Kate never cries. She’s the emotional equivalent of Gibraltar.
‘It’s just so unexpected,’ she blurts. ‘I thought my days of booties and nappy rash were over. But I am happy, honest. Just a bit shell-shocked. It’s really early, just a couple of weeks but my period hasn’t come and I recognise the signs. I’m hormonal. And emotional. One minute I’m over the moon and the next I want to punch everyone I meet. One of Hot N Spicy nearly got a roller brush surgically inserted today.’
‘What does Bruce think about it?’ Carol probes, Antigua now firmly shoved to the back of her mind.
‘Oh, you know Bruce, he’s delighted. He’s already designing an extension and a hydraulic cot. Poor bloody baby will spend half its life with motion sickness.’
We all laugh, including Kate.
She dries her eyes and raises her glass. ‘Here’s to maternity bras and piles.’
We all join in the toast before descending on her with congratulatory cuddles and kisses, much to the bemusement of the surrounding diners.
Our main courses arrive and everyone ignores them, too busy discussing names for the baby and the pros and cons of having another child.
Cons: less money to go round, lack of sleep, more stretch marks and, statistically, more probability that one of the kids will end up with a criminal record (this is Jess’s little chestnut – she’s obviously been researching crime today).
Pros: more presents at Christmas, someone else to visit you when you’re in a care home and, statistically, more probability that one of them will end up running the country (also Jess’s contribution).
I catch Jess’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She’s doing that thing again where she looks happy on the outside, but her eyes tell me she’s miserable on the inside.
‘What’s up?’ I ask her gently. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure. I
was just thinking that in my present situation, the chances of me having children are up there with winning the lottery and shagging Jeremy Paxman.’
Jess is in that age-old crap situation which, considering she’s the smartest of us all, is quite difficult to fathom – the unhappily unmarried mistress. If Basil Asquith’s constituents only knew what he is thinking when he advocates corporal punishment (being attached to his antique king-size bed with handcuffs), they may take their vote elsewhere. But Jess is inexplicably attracted to him.
Their affair started four years ago, when she took a post as his researcher, and has motored along, fuelled by endless promises to ‘re-evaluate his marital situation’. Meanwhile, Mrs Asquith poses quite happily with him at their country estate in endless editions of House and Garden. The irony is that Jess is gorgeous (she always reminds me of Julianne Moore), successful and fiercely intelligent. She’s also second only to Kate in being grounded and innately sensible. The whole Basil thing is obviously an episode of diminished responsibility from which she’ll recover at any time.
She visibly shrugs off her melancholy and turns the over-table light so that it shines in my face. ‘Anyway, Cooper, it’s your turn. Spill the story.’
I’d almost forgotten I had something to share.
The others are staring at me in anticipation.
I pause for effect, then reach into my bag and pull out two letters and my purse.
‘This,’ I say placing the first letter down on the table, ‘is my letter of resignation. Goodbye bog rolls.’
I place down the next letter, amused at the three confused faces around the table.
‘And this is a note to my landlord, terminating the lease on my flat.’
Confusion is now approaching astonishment.
‘I’ve decided that by the turn of the century, I’m going to have found the love of my life and the first place I’m going to look is in my past. So these…’ I hold up my credit cards, ‘… are going to take me around the world to find every poor bugger who has ever had the misfortune to have exchanged bodily fluids with me. Ladies, we have a mission. We’re going in and we’re taking no prisoners…’
6
The Only Way Is Up – Yazz and the Plastic Population
I arrived back in Glasgow on a cold January morning, having spent the whole flight in a catatonic state of misery. It must have been obvious because the air hostesses removed all sharp objects from my dinner tray.
I had no idea what I was doing there, where I would go, or what alien life-force had possessed me and transported me back to the very place I had fled only eighteen months before. And I missed Joe already. I wanted to phone him and tell him to come and rescue me, that it had all been a mental aberration caused by bad seafood, or the ozone layer, or something, anything that would excuse the fact that I’d deserted him. I commandeered a taxi and gave the driver my parents’ address. On the way there, we passed my old school and my spirits lifted as I thought of the girls and wondered what they were doing.
I was beginning to relax when we stopped at a junction and I was confronted by a huge billboard with a gorgeous dark-haired female with blue eyes the size of billiard balls lounging on a sofa. A slogan underneath said, ‘Lie on something soft and warm tonight.’ As I pondered it, I looked closer and shrieked so loudly that the driver swerved and narrowly missed a rather well-dressed lady with a poodle.
‘That’s Carol,’ I screamed. ‘She did it, she really did it!’
I could see that the driver was wondering whether to take me to the address I’d given him, or just drop the shrieking girl here and write off the fare.
‘You don’t understand,’ I explained hurriedly. ‘That’s one of my best mates up there.’
‘Of course it is, and my day job is commander of the space shuttle,’ he added dryly.
I didn’t care. I suddenly felt that I was back where I belonged, and excitement was washing away all the doubt and regret.
We arrived at my parents’ and I jumped out, giving the driver a huge tip in case the poodle sued for emotional distress. I rummaged in the back porch for the house key and let myself in. Security isn’t exactly watertight in our street.
My mum was cremating bacon in the kitchen and lost control of her spatula when she set eyes on me. To her credit, she looked pleased to see me and didn’t launch into an immediate interrogation as to why I was there and how had I messed up this time. I had a feeling that would come later.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.
‘Callum and Michael are still in bed and your dad was last seen comatose on the lounge sofa. He’s probably still there unless he’s discovered a pub that opens at 8 a.m.,’ she added, with an automatic tut of disapproval. No change there, then. These two needed a United Nations peacekeeping force.
I bounced up the stairs and through the first door, where Callum lay sleeping in the middle of a room that looked like it had been ransacked. I launched myself at him, doing a belly flop of a landing that ended with a thud that sounded like plaster cracking. Shit, I’d forgotten about the broken leg.
He yelled, ‘What the f—’ before stopping mid sentence, his face lighting up. ‘Carly, babe, you’re back!!!’ He’ll make a great detective.
I smothered him with kisses, then went next door to Michael’s room. At fourteen, he had well and truly embraced the teenage life and he was sleeping soundly in his Rambo T-shirt and boxer shorts, with one leg hanging out of the bed. I ruffled his hair and tickled the end of his nose. He thwacked my hand away, still sleeping. I stuck my fingers in his ears. That did it. He opened his eyes and squinted, desperately trying to focus on his attacker. Then recognition dawned and he jumped up, tripped on the duvet and landed spread-eagled on the floor. You’d think I’d been gone for decades, as he climbed up and hugged me so tightly he cut off circulation to my lower extremities. I extricated myself before my toes turned blue. It was the best welcome ever. ‘I missed you, shorty,’ I told him, clinging on, realising I was fighting back uncharacteristic tears.
At which point, he remembered he was fourteen and a teenage boy.
‘Yeah. Eh, me too. Did you bring me a Toblerone from the Duty Free shop?’
I spent all afternoon on the phone to the girls, announcing my return. Thankfully, Jess was already home from Aberdeen Uni for the weekend, Sarah said she’d jump on a train from Edinburgh, Carol had come back for a photo shoot in Glasgow, and Kate was working in the salon but she finished at 6 p.m.. All of which made for the hasty organisation of a full-blown homecoming celebration that evening. It was ridiculous. I kept thinking that only the night before I had been lying beside the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with and now, after abandoning him without explanation, I was planning a night out on the town.
What kind of terrible person was I? It’s just for a couple of weeks, I told myself. You just need some breathing space. He’ll understand. And if I was only going to be home for such a short time then I really should make the most of it.
The guilt lasted about ten more minutes before I immersed myself in the dilemma of what to wear. I wanted to look as stunning as I could manage without liposuction and a breast reduction.
I settled on black skintight trousers (I’d seen Grease twelve times) and a black vest. I pulled my hair up and secured it in a band on top of my head. Four inch stilettos which threatened to disfigure my feet for life completed the outfit and I was ready to go.
The girls had suggested meeting in Winston Blues, a new pub/club that had opened locally whilst I was away.
As I entered, the butterflies in my stomach were doing the twist. I looked around for a familiar face and saw one at every corner. My God, it was like a St Mary’s reunion. It seemed like everyone from my year at school was there and there wasn’t a stranger in sight.
Callum and his mates were sitting in one corner and beckoned me over, but before I could move, I heard the roar of multiple hands doing a drum roll on a tabletop. Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ blare
d from the speakers as I turned to see the source of the racket. It had to be them. The ‘We did Benidorm and survived’ team were dressed to the nines. It was so good to be back.
A gallon of cocktails later, we were on the tables, on bar stools and, for the more sensible amongst us, on the dance floor. Who needed aerobics when we had Slippery Nipples and Duran Duran?
Much later, I made my way to the ladies’ to repair the inevitable damage caused by heat, sweat and drinking multicoloured cocktails. The crowd was dense and as I battled my way through it, I felt like I was storming a picket line. Someone pushed me from behind, obviously in a rush and having a toilet emergency. It was too much for the four inch stilettos. They teetered for a second before collapsing and taking me with them. I was halfway to the ground, trying frantically to land on my bum with some semblance of dignity when a hand reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back up. I looked up into the laughing face of Mark Barwick.
Mark Barwick. The first, second and third love of my life. Actually, we split and got back together so many times we probably made it to double figures. I’d been besotted by his floppy brown hair and huge hazel eyes. I had started seeing him when I was twelve because he reminded me of David Cassidy, but he was more than just a pretty face. He was funny and crazy and full of surprises. Every girl in my class had a crush on him and he loved it. It was a relationship of ‘firsts’. He was the first guy who ever kissed me – a real kiss, with tongues. He was the first guy who ever felt my breasts. He was the first guy who ever told me he loved me. Not that we had full sex – that came later with Nick Russo – but he was the first guy I wanted to marry. Granted, I was fourteen when I decided that, and I’d changed my mind by the following weekend because he refused to come and see Flashdance with me at the cinema.