What If?

by Shari Low

  Two weeks later, I threw a party for the staff at the club. I had grown so attached to them, especially Lily, whose eyes were red as she hugged me. I was going to miss them all so much; even Zac the twat.

  Next morning, Phil took me to the airport. I clung on to him, crying my eyes out.

  ‘Keep in touch, Cooper. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, Phil,’ I sniffled.

  As I walked through passport control, I turned and waved. He gave me a bow.

  It was the last time I ever saw Phil Lowery.

  11

  Will Smith – Gettin Jiggy Wit It

  Two things struck me this morning. In all the excitement, trauma and panic of the last few weeks, I’ve somehow lost ten pounds in weight. The only problem is it all seems to have come off my boobs, which are stretching to the floor so badly that I’m throwing out my Wonderbras and looking for a Miraclebra.

  I’ve also been sadly neglecting myself in the beauty stakes. I could lose small children in the hair on my legs and knit a jumper with my eyebrows. As for the bikini area, it looks like no man’s land, which, let’s face it, is exactly what it’s been for far too long. My pores are blocked, my nails are chewed and my hair resembles straw hanging out of a bin.

  I call Carol in a panic. Luckily she doesn’t have an assignment today so she agrees to take me in hand and book us in for a complete overhaul at her favourite beauty salon. ‘Complete Overhaul’ were her words. Luckily, as well as excess hairy bits and a lack of grooming, I also have thick skin.

  An hour later, a stunning blonde with a Claudia Schiffer figure takes my coat as I enter. She’s like a walking advert for this place and I accept that no amount of work is going to make me look like her before I leave here. I immediately flatten down my hair, pull in my stomach and ram my hands into my pockets. Carol spots me eyeing up the distance back to the door as I plan my escape and intervenes.

  ‘Cooper, you look like you’ve been living rough for a month,’ she whispers impatiently. So much for friends being a boost to the confidence. ‘Sit down and behave yourself. You’re just going to have to suck it up and chew the bullet.’

  I know she means bite the bullet but I don’t correct her, realising her mixed metaphors might just be the brightest moment in my day. I decide capitulation is the only answer for now – I can always escape through the bathroom window later.

  As I sit down, Chantal introduces herself as my personal consultant.

  ‘Now,’ she asks, ‘what can we do for you today?’

  ‘I need the works. Throw everything you’ve got at me. I want to look stunning by the time I leave here.’

  I look at Carol for reassurance – she’s grinning at me proudly.

  However, the look on Chantal’s face says that she thinks there’s more chance of her conjuring up a loaf and five fishes, or walking across the local swimming pool carrying a cured leper, than there is of making me stunning.

  We agree a plan. First, the body. She’s going to remove everything with a follicle from my legs, bikini line and underarms, then she’ll sandblast the rest to remove all dead skin. This will be followed by a body wrap to remove radical free toxins (nope, absolutely no idea what that means) from my dilapidated system, before using a tanning treatment to make me glow like a bronzed goddess.

  As for the face, Chantal takes a deep breath before recommending a deep cleanse, a non-surgical facelift, eyebrow shape, eyelash tint, and yet more fake tan.

  The hair is beyond even her considerable talents, so she calls for reinforcements. Jacques, who was probably born Bert, gushes that only a complete reshape with highlights, lowlights and floodlights will do.

  I consider sending Carol home for my weekend bag because I’m obviously going to be here for days. But before I can say anything, they whisk me into a private room at the back of the salon, where I lie back and close my eyes as Chantal gets to work.

  I run through my preparation checklist in my head. Fish and Chips have now been dispatched to their foster home and the lava lamp has pride of place in Mrs Smith’s front room, next to her knitting box and her British Seaside Towns plate collection. It blends right in.

  Arrrrrrggggghhhh! Chantal removes three layers of skin as well as the forest from my lower left leg.

  Deep breath. Try not to cry. Focus on something else. Back to my list.

  My flat is now bereft of personal belongings, as all my worldly goods are crammed on top of kids’ bikes, a lawnmower and a fourteen piece luggage set in Kate’s garage. All that’s left are the essentials – clothes, toiletries, electric hair appliances – that will be coming with me on my adventure.

  Arrrrrrggggghhhh!! She’s moved on to the bikini line. It’s so excruciatingly painful, I decide I might cancel my trip because there’s no way another human being will ever be allowed to touch that area again. I know this girl’s type. She’s the kind of woman who dresses in PVC with a studded collar, spiked boots and a whip and reduces pathetic men to mincemeat by beating them into submission.

  Anyway, back to my adventure. That’s how I’m starting to see this whole idea now – it’s just one great big adventure. Since my panic last week, I haven’t had one moment’s doubt that I’m doing the right thing. I know this makes me sound naive, but I’m just so sure that something great is going to happen. I mean, how bad can it be? So, suppose that I get rejection after rejection? I’ll still have had a year off work, visiting some amazing places and having new experiences. And yes, I’ll be in a chronic financial state at the end of it, but it’s only money. Let’s face it, if this whole thing is a huge flop, then I’ll gladly work three jobs for the rest of my life just to get me out the house.

  Armpits are done. Chantal’s now digging out the sandpaper to give me a good rub-down.

  Back to my ponderings. I’ve got my itinerary all worked out. If I survive today, then I’ll return my keys to the landlord tomorrow morning and head to Kate’s house, where Jess and Carol will meet us for lunch. We’ll spend the afternoon eating, drinking and preparing ourselves for my final ‘going-away’ party at Paco’s tomorrow night.

  Poor Paco doesn’t realise what’s coming. We told him to expect fifty people, but somehow the numbers have escalated and we’re up to eighty-five already. I’m sure I don’t even know half of them. Let’s hope either he overestimates the buffet or we get a stampede of weight-watchers.

  Chantal has now lathered me with foul smelling sticky stuff (I’m not brave enough to ask what it is) and is wrapping me in bandages. I ask if that’s to cover the waxing burns, but she assures me this is the body wrap.

  Back to the plan. The morning after my party, supposing I can lift my head from the pillow, I’ll leave for Scotland. Nick Russo came from St Andrew’s, so I’ve decided to stop at my mum’s for a couple of days, then head to the coast.

  The bandages come off. Thank God. I was beginning to panic that there’d be a fire in the salon, I’d be unable to escape and they’d dig my body out already mummified. There would be an irony.

  Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, St Andrews.

  I’m hoping it’ll take no more than a week to find Nick. St Andrews isn’t a big place, so even supposing I have to stop every resident or knock on every door, I’m bound to get a lead from somewhere.

  Chantal’s pasting on the tanning cream now. I’ve been here for three hours and my body feels like it’s been battered, abused and shrink-wrapped.

  So what happens when I find Nick Russo? Will he rush into my arms like a scene from a bad movie, gushing that he’s never loved another woman and has waited all these years for me to return? Unlikely. Will he look at me blankly and ask what I’m selling? Probably.

  The tanning cream has taken effect. From the neck down, I’m a subtle shade of pepperoni. Miss Whiplash moves on to my face, massaging it with a cleansing cream. I tell her that she’d be quicker using bleach and a sink plunger, but she ignores me.

  I haven’t booked any flights yet because I can’t put a timetable on events. I’ll
just have to play everything by ear. That’s presuming I still have my ears after Chantal has finished with me.

  It’s less than nine months now until the millennium, and I reckon that’s just about the right timescale. It’ll take that long before the credit card companies realise that I’m robbing Mastercard to pay American Express and vice versa. As Kate never stops reminding me, there are other ways I could do this. It would probably be cheaper to hire a private investigator to track them down. Or I could even have a go at doing it from home, writing letters to last known addresses and phoning international directory enquiries to try to track down numbers. I could take a month off work to go and find them, or I could carry on working and just devote my weekends to the search. But all those ideas completely miss the point. I want this to be an epic, life changing adventure. I want to have the experience. I want to shake up my life and see where everything falls. And if I don’t do it now, then I never will.

  It goes quiet in the room and I tentatively open one eye. Oh, sweet Jesus. Chantal’s coming at me with two probes attached to an electricity supply. Isn’t electric shock treatment illegal? I can’t believe I’m actually paying someone to do this to me.

  I block that thought out by returning to the practicalities. I’ve added up the available credit on my cards. Twelve thousand pounds. All of them have the facility to withdraw cash, so when the bills come in, I can just take out money from one to pay another. I have a chilling thought. I wonder if this is illegal? I wonder if running up a huge bill on your credit card when you have absolutely no means of paying it back is a criminal offence? That’s all I need – to be financially destitute and on Scotland Yard’s most wanted list at the same time.

  Chantal’s plucking my eyebrows and my nerve endings are screaming with pain. This shouldn’t be done without a general anaesthetic or a bottle of vodka.

  I distract my brain with more thoughts about the trip.

  I consider the best and worst case scenarios. Worst case is that I end up back in the UK in a year’s time with nothing – no man, no money, no house, no job, no self-respect and a mountain of debt.

  I’m desperate to blink, but the eyelash tint would splatter everywhere and I’d spend the next two months with black freckles on my cheekbones.

  Best case scenario is that one of the guys turns out to be Mr Happy Ever After and I achieve a life of love, peace and contentment, where the only things I worry about are the guest list for my next dinner party and whether to dress the kids in Baby Gap or Baby Next.

  The beauty tag team has made a substitution and Jacques is now fussing around me as Chantal goes off to sharpen her cleavers in readiness for her next victim. I look around for Carol, but apparently she’s buggered off for lunch.

  Jacques is applying tinting gel to sections of my hair, then wrapping them in tinfoil. He informs me that when he’s done that, he’ll put me under the dryer to speed up the process.

  So, twelve thousand pounds, almost nine months, six guys and a bigger disaster potential than the deterioration of the ozone layer. This is the biggest gamble I’ve ever taken. Remind me to pack a rabbit’s foot, a sprig of lucky white heather, a four leafed clover and a St Christopher’s medal.

  Jacques has removed the tinfoil, sheared my locks, dried them and applied enough hairspray to give my hair the flexibility of a motorcycle helmet. He stands back and admires his work, then dramatically sweeps me round to face the mirror.

  Oh my God! I look like I’ve been marooned on a tropical island for six months. I’m weather-beaten and my hair looks like it’s never seen a hairbrush in its life. There isn’t a strand longer than an inch and it’s going in more directions than the Labour Party. If you turned me upside down, you could use me to scrub floors.

  But the shock renders me speechless, so without complaint, I pay and head for the nearest hat shop via the nearest pub, where a tipsy Carol is chatting up the barman. The look on her face as she bends over, clutching her sides, says it all. I’m about to remind her that it’s all her fault, when I realise that there’s no point – the damage is already done.

  If this is an omen of things to come, then I’m in big trouble. Maybe I’d be better trying to track them down by phone after all.

  12

  I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) – Meatloaf

  When the plane landed at Kai Tak airport on a humid early August evening, my grin was beaming. I was twenty-five years old, felt forty-five and couldn’t believe that I had actually survived eighteen months in Shanghai, still relatively sane and in one piece. This was my reward – a whole year in Hong Kong.

  I fought my way through baggage and customs and exited into a sea of people. I looked around for the hotel representative who was supposed to meet me. How would I recognise them?

  I tried to appear cosmopolitan and nonchalant as I scanned the signs being held aloft. Eventually I spotted it. ‘Carvy Cooler’. It had to be me.

  The driver ushered me to a waiting Daimler. I felt like royalty as we headed to the Central area of Hong Kong. The contrast between my arrival in Shanghai and this city couldn’t have been greater. Hong Kong was a blaze of neon lights and a veritable hive of activity. But it was the cars that amazed me. There were more Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Mercedes than you’d find in the car park at a state banquet. Hong Kong was built on money. And I was the very girl to spend it.

  The hotel was one of the best on the island. It was a glittering testament to modern architecture, stretching forty floors high and with stunning views over the harbour to Kowloon. I couldn’t believe my luck. What was a girl like me doing in a place like this?

  As I unpacked, I wondered what the guys would have made of this. Nick Russo would be oblivious, as he’d be too busy looking for a beach to sunbathe, Joe would have dragged me off to the nearest dodgy bar to learn to talk dirty in Cantonese. Doug would have set up a car dealership on the first available plot and blown his savings in five minutes on luxury saloons. Tom, oh God, it still hurt to think about him, Tom would have taken me to a rooftop and danced with me in the moonlight.

  And Phil? I’d have had the best time with Phil. I wished he were with me. We’d have hit the nearest bar, drunk cocktails until dawn, laughed until we ached, met loads of new people and then danced the tango all the way home.

  That reminded me – I had promised to call him the moment I arrived to let him know that I was okay. I rummaged in my bag for my electronic organiser. It was my most essential piece of technology, a little digital contact book that stored the phone numbers and addresses for everyone I knew. Shit, where was it? I couldn’t have lost it – I’d just mastered how to work the damn thing. I’d bought it at Heathrow on my way to Shanghai, forgot all about it, then found it again when I was packing up to leave. I’d spent the next day transferring all my contacts from my old Filofax – the same Filofax that I then shredded because I didn’t have room for it in my case. My whole life was in that little black machine. I turned everything inside out to no avail.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. It was gone. I had no way of getting in touch with him. When he moved out of my room, he’d moved to another expat’s flat in Shanghai, but I couldn’t remember the number or the address. Not that the address would have been any use, as Shanghai didn’t exactly have an efficient directory enquiries service. In fact, it didn’t even have a directory enquiry service. Bugger it. I’d just have to go back on my first leave and track him down. Meantime, there was no point worrying about it because there was nothing I could do.

  I spotted a letter on the dressing table with my name on the front. My heart leapt – it must be a message from Phil and if there was a God, it would have his phone number on it. I ripped it open. Leapt heart returned to original position. It wasn’t from Phil. It was a letter from my new boss, an Australian called Peter Flynn, requesting an audience at nine o’clock the following morning for an ‘induction’ meeting.

  I decided to go on a reconnaissance mission to my new club, ‘Asia’. I dressed in what
I hoped was still a trendy outfit – black mini dress with a gold zip going from breast to thigh, black stilettos, and hair piled high on top of my head in a messy bun. I consulted the mirror but had no idea whether I looked good or not. It was so long since I’d been out somewhere trendy and glam that I didn’t know what was in and what was out.

  I made my way to the basement, the strains of B52’s ‘Love Shack’ guiding me in like a heat-seeking missile. At the door, the bouncers eyed me suspiciously. Was it the dress? Had the zip burst to reveal my wobbly bits to the world? I looked around, but the general public weren’t panicking and fleeing for the exits in distress. No, the zip must still be in one piece.

  ‘Can I help you?’ one of the bouncers enquired.

  I gave him the two second top-to-toe inspection. 6’2” tall. Hair, the colour of Dairy Milk, crew-cut. Brown eyes with eyelashes that you could stir tea with. Square jawline. Sun-tanned. White teeth, crowned and straight. Nose that had been broken. At least twice. Broad shoulders. Defined pecs. Washboard abs that I couldn’t see, but I just knew they were there. Slim hips. This guy was an ‘after’ picture for a health food supplement advert. Could he help me? Let me count the ways.

  I showed him my room key. ‘I’m a guest in the hotel.’

  He scrutinised it and hesitantly waved me in. What was his problem? Why was he looking at me as if I’d stolen the key and was entering under false pretences? I swept by, hoping that I looked aloof and superior, but probably just managing grumpy and irritated.

  I ordered a gin and tonic and stood at the bar scanning the room. It was a huge square, with only pillars punctuating its vastness. The capacity was about three hundred people. In the centre was the dance floor, surrounded by chrome railings separating it from the raised seating areas. On three sides of it were rows of ‘poser pod’ tall tables, each with six bar stools around them. On the fourth side was the slumber area: leather sofas and padded stools with low glass tables. The bar stretched along the wall to the left of the door, providing both direct and waitress service. This was a massive step up in the glamour and style stakes from the club in Shanghai.