What If?

by Shari Low

  Gobsmacked, I opened my mouth to explain to Jack that, much as I was flattered, I couldn’t take him up on his offer, as I was about to get married, and run off to be a farmer’s wife in Ireland, where there wouldn’t be a nightclub or a vice crime in sight.

  He looked at me expectantly.

  Say no, Cooper, say no.

  ‘Jack,’ I began, taking a deep breath, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s a couple of things you should know.’

  My mind was racing.

  Say no, Cooper, say no.

  But… what an adventure it would be. Tom could come with me and we’d be like explorers on one last voyage before settling down to domesticated bliss. It was completely reasonable in my ever changing, excitement seeking mind. If we were going to spend the rest of our lives in Ireland, one more year wouldn’t make any difference. There must be farms in Shanghai. Tom could get a job and we’d have great stories to tell our grandchildren. It was a fantastic idea. He’d love it. I mean, how many times in life did you get an opportunity like this?

  Christopher Columbus took over. I did a quick calculation in my mind and then reeled it off.

  ‘I would only come for a year, I couldn’t come until February, because I can’t leave Ray in the lurch at the club. I need to give him time to replace me. Also, I’d need accommodation, full board, flights and all other expenses paid for my fiancé and I, and on top of that you’d have to pay me twenty grand a year after tax.’ On top of expenses, I reckoned that was a forty or fifty grand package. There was no way he’d go for that.

  He put out his hand and shook mine.

  ‘Done,’ he exclaimed.

  Damn, I should have asked for twenty-five.

  ‘My people will call you tomorrow with the details.’

  He had people. And it seemed I was off to Shanghai to meet them.

  I bit my bottom lip as I showed him to the door, before rejoining Tom in bed. He rolled over and cuddled me, as I lay willing him to wake up so that I could tell him our news.

  It took about twenty minutes for the euphoria to wear off. What if he didn’t want to go?

  I shrugged the doubt off. This was Tom! My soulmate. Of course he’d want to go. He was a kindred spirit who loved adventure just as much as I did. Didn’t he?

  Apprehension set in. I switched on the radio, hoping that would wake him. Bad idea. Queen were belting out ‘Another One Bites The Dust’.

  ‘Who was that you were talking to earlier?’ he asked sleepily.

  ‘Er, it was, em, well, it was my new boss,’ I stammered.

  ‘Your what?’ he asked groggily.

  ‘My new boss. I think I just accepted a job in China.’

  That woke him up. He sat bolt upright. ‘Tell me you’re joking?’

  My optimism drained as his horrified expression told me this might be a harder sell than I’d hoped.

  I tried to explain. It’s only a year. Think of the money, the excitement, the people we’d meet. It would be a whole new chapter for us.

  But no amount of pleading would win him over. He argued every point I made, and the more stubborn and angry he got, the more I dug my heels in.

  It escalated from discussion, to debate to raging argument. That’s when he got out of bed and pulled on his jeans.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Cooper. I just don’t believe you. How could you change our plans without even speaking to me?’ he bellowed. He was furious and turning pink.

  ‘I’m speaking to you now.’

  ‘Yeah, AFTER you’ve accepted the job. You can’t do this. Why would you even want to?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s a brilliant opportunity for both of us,’ I countered, every bit as riled as him. If he wanted me to spend the rest of my life in wellies, then the least he could do was hear me out. I’d agreed to change my whole life for him, and he couldn’t even consider making some temporary adjustments for me?

  ‘But what if I don’t want to go. Will you knock it back?’

  That stunned me into silence. Would I?

  The silence grew longer.

  ‘I guess that tells me everything I need to know,’ he said, pulling on a T-shirt. He grabbed his jacket and picked up his holdall from the floor. He’d only arrived yesterday, so he’d barely unpacked. Part of me wanted to ask him what he was doing, tell him to stop, use calm reason, but I was furious and I’d be damned if I was going to give in on our first full scale blazing row.

  ‘You’re definitely doing this?’ he asked, one more time.

  My fury and frustration were calling the shots as I nodded, then watched him turn and leave the room without another word.

  His footsteps pounded down the stairs and then came the slam of the front door.

  I raced to the window, to see his back as he stormed away, a black cloud hovering above his perfect head. Tears pricked my eyes and a gobstopper formed in the back of my throat.

  He’ll come back, I thought. Surely he’ll calm down and realise what a great idea it is.

  Luckily, I didn’t hold my breath.

  No, I never did see Tom McCallum again.

  9

  Should I Stay Or Should I Go? – The Clash

  I’m sitting in Kate’s kitchen, dropping cookie crumbs on her spotless tiled floor. We met here for breakfast this morning, but I’ve already scoffed my bacon roll and I’m on my third choccie biscuit and it’s only ten o’clock.

  ‘C’mon, Cooper, spill,’ Kate urges as she does a dive to my feet with a shovel – admirable in her condition.

  ‘Spill what?’ I ask innocently.

  Jess lifts her head from the International Herald Tribune. Since she started working for the government, her choice of reading material has gone seriously downhill.

  Carol puts down her OK! Now that’s more like it.

  ‘Carly, you’re totally distracted and you’re inhaling Hobnobs.’

  I sigh pathetically. ‘Sorry, Kate. I guess I’m just having a bit of a panic.’

  ‘About quitting your job?’ Jess asks.

  ‘No, not really.’

  Kate pipes up, ‘About leaving your flat?’

  ‘No.’

  Carol now. They’re like a tag team. ‘About spending every penny you have and ending up in a cardboard box in Leicester Square?’

  This is getting too graphic. I pause while my overloaded grey matter struggles to formulate a sentence.

  ‘It’s just about the exes. What if they all hate me? I wouldn’t blame them. I was a complete cow to most of them in the end.’

  Kate smiles and gives me a hug. ‘Carly, I’ve known you my whole life, and you always bounce back. That’s what makes you. If this whole thing goes pear-shaped, which I have to say is an odds-on bet, then you’ll have great stories to tell your best friends. Granted, we’ll probably have to visit you in jail to hear them.’

  My laughter interrupts her. I notice that the other two don’t contradict her.

  She goes on, ‘They won’t hate you, Carly. They might not love you to pieces, but they won’t hate you.’

  I hope she’s right.

  I don’t know why I’m being so morose. It’s obviously just a freak pre-menstrual moment.

  That and having to say goodbye to so many people. It’s only a week until I leave and I feel like I’ve spent the last twenty-one days explaining my departure to astonished faces. When I resigned, my boss’s reaction was priceless: ‘But, Carly, how can you contemplate leaving Quilties? You’ve got a great future here.’ I couldn’t believe it – after all, I have no emotional attachment to the world of toilet rolls. I only took the job all those years ago because after all the eardrum damage and sleep deprivation working in nightclubs, I decided I needed a normal Monday to Friday, nine to five job. Selling loo rolls was the only one I was offered that paid enough to keep me in life’s essentials – rent, cigs and chocolate.

  A lifetime of selling toilet rolls or a globe-trotting adventure that might just lead to happy ever after? I stuck with my plan.

  I broke the
news to my mother on the phone – not because I was being a total coward, but because since her divorce from Jack Daniel’s she’s taken to spending most of her life at a health farm, having her bits pummelled. I’m sure she’s shagging an aerobics instructor. I called her at the spa to explain what I’d done. For once, she didn’t take off like a space shuttle on a tirade of disapproval and recriminations.

  She simply said, ‘Well, darling, you only live once,’ before whispering, ‘I’m just coming, Ivan,’ and hanging up. Ivan, the shagging aerobics instructor. It had to be true. I laughed as I replaced the receiver.

  Callum and Michael were even easier to win round. Callum and I had persuaded Michael to come to London for a few days the week before, by telling him that if he didn’t venture out in daylight at least once a month he’d develop scurvy and rickets.

  I love that both my brothers are happy. Callum spends his life travelling for work, but his base is a London flat that he shares with a couple of other models. It works really well because they’re never all there at the same time. And Michael has his own place in the West End of Glasgow, a few miles from the head office of the games software company he works for. He’s always been the baby of the family, so I still can’t get my head around the fact that he’s a fully developed adult who has got his life together. Especially when I don’t seem to have managed that.

  When Michael arrived, we headed for Fashion Café. Callum loved it there because he could see himself strutting his stuff on the big screen and Michael liked it because it was near the Trocadero, home of more computer games than Japan.

  We ate all the most fattening things on the menu, then I launched a pre-emptive strike before pudding.

  ‘Guys, I have something to tell you and I want you to promise me that you’ll still love me,’ I announced sheepishly.

  ‘Yes!’ Callum exclaimed. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘What?’ I replied, intrigued.

  ‘You’re gay,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s why you’re such a disaster with men. How cool, a gay sister,’ he mused.

  ‘No, I am not gay,’ I replied laughing. ‘At least not last time I checked.’

  ‘You’re pregnant?’ That came from Michael.

  ‘Nope, not pregnant.’

  ‘Lottery win?’ he countered hopefully.

  I decided to put them out of their misery and blurted out the whole story. Tears formed in their eyes and I was so touched. They’re going to miss me so much, I thought, feeling love and affection welling up inside me. Then I realised that they were tears of amusement as they tried to control outbursts of hilarity.

  ‘Sis, I love you,’ Callum said, melting my heart until he added, ‘but you definitely got the crazy genes.’

  Michael was muttering something about a trade descriptions act. He was twenty-five now, but with his cute curls and Michael J Fox face, he could pass for much younger.

  ‘What are you on about?’ I quizzed.

  ‘I was just saying that older siblings are supposed to be an example to us younger and more innocent in the brood. Look what I ended up with,’ he continued. ‘Two serial shaggers with love lives that are epic carnage.’ I’d be offended if it wasn’t for the fact that he was right. Callum still opted for casual flings and I… well, clearly relationships weren’t my area of expertise. Michael was still talking. ‘Just promise me something. If it miraculously works out, then I want to dance with Kate’s sister, Karen, at the wedding.’

  This was nothing new. Michael had been in love with Karen since they were six and she belted him in the face with her clackers. His nose broke on impact and it’s never been straight since.

  ‘Michael, if it all works out, I’ll pay for you to take her to Majorca for a week.’

  ‘Even you could seduce a woman there,’ Callum barbed, still smarting over the serial shagger comment. Michael took no notice. He was the first to admit that other than a couple of brief flings (the now-legendary ‘Mikey-baby’ girl being one of them), he wasn’t a roaring success in the romance department.

  Now, a week later, hanging out in Kate’s kitchen, the sounds of her throwing up in the downstairs bathroom snap me back to reality. God must be a man to subject females to both periods and pregnancy.

  I sit at the table and try to make a list of the tasks I still have to cover in the next seven days.

  No 1 – Call gas, electricity and phone companies and have all disconnected.

  No 2 – Give lava lamp to Mrs Smith next door (she’s had her eye on it for ages).

  No 3 – Find foster home for Fish and Chips (my goldfish).

  No 4 – Pack up belongings and ship boxes to Kate’s garage.

  No 5 – Find new frock for my leaving party.

  No 6 – Give credit cards a practice run by paying for party frock.

  No 7 – Inform bank manager that due to me losing my mind, I may require a sudden overdraft.

  I recruit Carol for the shopping trip and Jess for the organisation of the removals. I like to play to people’s strengths.

  Kate staggers back into the kitchen, looking pale and faint. I decide to go for it while her resistance is low.

  ‘Kate, darling,’ I ask, tentatively, ‘how would Zoe, Cameron and the bun in your oven like to foster two goldfish?’

  10

  Goodnight Girl – Wet Wet Wet

  The week before I left for Shanghai, I decided to have a quiet night in for many reasons. I’d had five going-away parties the previous week and I now felt the need to tumble-dry my liver. My eyes needed serious attention after bawling them out every night over Tom. I wanted to spend yet another night on the phone, pleading with him to change his mind, in the vain hope that, unlike my previous twenty attempts, this time I’d be successful. And finally, Clive James was on the TV.

  Now, much as Clive is gorgeous, funny and has a devilishly attractive twinkle in his eyes, I wouldn’t normally make a special effort to catch his show. However, tonight’s programme was entitled Postcard From Shanghai and I wanted to see exactly what I’d let myself in for. Since Jack had offered me the job, I’d read loads of books on China’s second city. ‘The Paris of the Orient’, they called it. Despite my searing heartbreak, I was so excited to be going there. I could picture myself at grand balls, in taffeta and tiara, mingling with ambassadors and other windswept and interesting people.

  As the programme started, I settled down on the sofa with a coffee and a box of chocolate eclairs. The titles rolled and Clive was off investigating the glorious, cosmopolitan, elegant Asian city. Only it wasn’t. It looked grey, dull, overcrowded, dirty, depressing and corrupt. My eyes widened in amazement as he proceeded to show Shanghai in a very different light to the glitter ball I’d imagined. Where were the windswept and interesting people? Where were the ambassadors laden down with trays of Ferrero Rocher?

  I tried to calm down and think rationally. Television programme makers always exaggerated things, didn’t they? Clive James should be ashamed of himself, focusing on one tiny negative aspect of the city and sensationalising it like that, omitting all the fabulous aspects of what I was sure was a vibrant and exciting place.

  Optimism kicked in. It couldn’t be that bad. It was just a one sided view. I would love it, I was sure I would. I had a good mind to write to the government and demand the return of my TV licence. In hindsight, I should have listened to Clive.

  As for my fruitless phone call to Tom, I can’t remember who slammed the phone down first, but there was a tidal wave in the North Sea caused by the resulting earth tremor. Once again, I thought about changing my mind and trading my one-way ticket to Shanghai for a Dublin shuttle, but why should I be the one to compromise? For the purposes of that argument, I conveniently forgot that it was me who had changed the plans in the first place.

  Right up to the last minute, I thought he’d wander through the door, bag over his shoulder ready to go, but no. Flight ticket for one.

  Jack McBurnie met me at the airport late in the
evening. Or should I say the collection of hangars in a big field which masqueraded as Shanghai International Airport. I was excited but apprehensive. I was twenty-three and other than Clive James’ programme, all I knew of China was that I was a fan of the cuisine.

  As we left the airport, a sign on some scaffolding caught my eye. ‘SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. WE ARE A BUILDING.’ Obviously the message had been lost in the translation. It suddenly warmed me. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  We made our way to the hotel, my face pressed against the car window, looking for signs of life. But there were none. It seemed that the city was in almost total darkness. There were very few street lights. The roads were bumpy and seemed to collide in a haphazard fashion, and if the driver of our car didn’t choose a side of the road to drive on soon, then that’s exactly what we would be doing too. It was chaos. Thankfully, there were not many cars to be seen, but the ones that were there were driving with no lights, criss-crossing the roads like they’d drank the fuel instead of putting it in their vehicle. I feared for my life. Had I written my will?

  I glanced at Jack, but he seemed calm and nonplussed by the whole experience. I decided he must be meditating to take his mind off his terror.

  We arrived at the hotel. Based on the airport and the highway systems, I was now expecting a warehouse building containing bunk beds and a canteen, but as we drew up outside it, I gasped. It was stunning. The building rose like a kaleidoscopic palace from the very old and basic structures surrounding it. There were glass elevators going up and down the front of the marble exterior like lasers, stopping at a huge gold entranceway leading to the foyer. Inside, there were fountains and man-made rivers weaving around the reception area and lobby bar. The ceiling was a magnificent atrium, allowing a stunning view of the stars. It was exactly as I dreamt. All I needed now were the Ferrero Rocher.

  I arranged to meet Jack back in the bar an hour later and accompanied the bellboy to my room. I felt a twinge of disappointment as I entered – obviously the staff rooms were the ones that previous guests had wrecked. The Rolling Stones must have stayed in mine because it looked like it had been ransacked. Still, I reasoned, once I’d unpacked my things and rearranged the furniture, it would be fine.