by Niamh Greene
She pops another prune into her mouth, just as I’m trying to figure out where I’ve seen that hoody before. Did she use to wear it to the gym, maybe? It looks so familiar …
‘Losing my job was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ Claire goes on. ‘It really is amazing how the higher power works. I mean, I didn’t even believe in any higher power until I was fired and I started to find myself. I’d been living half a life. At last I can see what really matters – do you understand?’
‘I’m not sure I do, no.’ I don’t want to be rude, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. How can being made redundant be a positive thing? Is there something about it that I’m missing? Some up-side I haven’t figured out yet? Because all I can visualize is me sitting slumped in a chair, endlessly searching the newspapers for a job of any description. That’s if I ever find somewhere to live.
Claire is still talking. ‘I mean, if I hadn’t lost my job, I never would have discovered my real passions. You need to get your priorities right, Maggie – it’s now or never. Let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger, are you?’
That’s a bit harsh. I’m not telling her she needs to get her hair seen to, am I? And I certainly don’t need reminding that I’m not a teenager any more – I can tell that just by looking in the mirror every morning. ‘I’m not over the hill yet,’ I say, feeling defensive.
‘Yes, I know, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. But the clock is ticking. If you want to change your life, now is the time. I mean, when we were younger did you imagine that you’d end up an estate agent?’ She pops another prune into her mouth and rolls it around with her tongue.
‘Probably not,’ I say. Does anyone ever dream of becoming an estate agent, though? It doesn’t exactly feature highly on the list of most popular careers – it’s not up there with pop star or actress.
‘What about your art?’ she asks. ‘You always wanted to be an artist when we were at school. You were really good, Maggie. Maybe now’s the perfect opportunity to go back to it.’
I swirl my wine and think about this. It’s true I loved to paint, but it’s not like I could have done it for a living. It was only ever a pipe dream – one I buried a long time ago, along with my burning ambition to marry Jon Bon Jovi. That plan didn’t work out either.
Suddenly it comes to me. I know where I’ve seen that shabby hoody she’s wearing before. It looks suspiciously like the one she used as a blanket for her toy poodle. What was that dog’s name? Charlie, that’s it. Claire sent poor Charlie to the pound when he refused to be house-trained. He used to piddle all over her hand-woven rugs, no matter how hard she tried to teach him to go outside. The final straw was when he did his number twos in her precious Balenciaga handbag. Is it possible that Claire is actually wearing her dog’s bed? I shake my head to get rid of the image of Charlie the poodle chewing insanely on the hoody. Are those tiny little toothmarks I can see on the neckline?
‘Maggie?’ Claire says. ‘Did you hear what I said? Maybe now’s the time to explore what you really want from life. It’s not too late.’
‘Eh?’ I tear my eyes away from her neck and try to concentrate on what she’s saying.
‘I think you should pursue your art. You used to be so good – why not give it another chance?’
‘Artists don’t make much money, Claire,’ I say. ‘And unfortunately I need to keep earning so I can live. Rent isn’t cheap, you know.’
‘But would you like to paint?’
‘Yes, maybe in an ideal world. If I won the lottery, I’d spend every day painting. But it’s not like that’s ever going to happen.’
‘But you want to do it?’
‘Claire,’ I sigh, getting impatient, ‘I’ve just lost my job. I have about five euro to my name and nowhere to live. Painting is the last thing on my mind.’
‘But if you found somewhere cheap to rent, took a sabbatical for a few months, then you could dip your toes back in …’ Claire sounds positively enthusiastic about this idea – she’s read one too many self-help books.
‘Even if I wanted to, it’s not as if there are tons of cheap places to rent, is it?’ I reply. ‘Especially not now I’m unemployed. And, before you suggest it, I’m not going to move back in with Mum and Dad.’
The term buzzes round my head, bouncing off my skull. I’m unemployed. Unemployed. God, I never really believed this would happen to me. What if I can’t get another job? How am I going to live?
‘Maybe there’s nowhere cheap in the city, no,’ Claire looks at me carefully, ‘but have you ever thought about moving to the country? Everything’s much better value there.’
‘The country? Are you mad?’ I snort into my wine.
I’ve been on quite a few pampering weekends in grand country hotels. The spa treatments are always nice enough but forty-eight hours is the maximum I can stand before I start to yearn for the hustle and bustle of the city. Living permanently in the middle of nowhere is unthinkable.
‘It could be the perfect solution to your problem,’ Claire goes on. ‘The pay-off Dermot gave you would last much longer there. You could take some time out, decide what you want to do next, maybe even paint. Who knows what might happen? We only live once, Maggie – life isn’t a dress rehearsal, you know.’
She has definitely been reading too many of those motivational books. I’m hooking her up with Theresa for sure – they can indulge in their self-help heaven together and leave me out of it. ‘No offence, Claire, but that’s crazy talk.’
‘Why? It’s what I’m doing.’
‘Eh? What are you talking about?’
She looks at me levelly, then takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve decided to retrain as a holistic therapist and move to the country.’
I splutter my white wine across the table, narrowly missing splatting her in the eye. A trickle of Chardonnay runs down her cheek instead. ‘You’re what?’ Claire is going to become a holistic therapist and live in the country? That’s insane! Claire has a serious addiction to caffeine. She smokes. She thinks water is for sissies. Or she did until she started this whole detoxing thing. I thought that was just a phase. I fully expected her to snap out of it soon.
‘Yes,’ she says, dabbing the dripping wine from her face with the sleeve of her shabby hoody. ‘I’ve been feeling so fulfilled since I started this journey that I want to move to the next level.’
Oh, God. She really is talking like a lunatic. Is this what happens when you lose your job? This could be my fate too. I’ll be wearing dog-chewed clothes and carrying crystals soon – it’s inevitable.
‘I don’t want to get sucked back into the rat-race. I realize what’s important now – and it’s not money or possessions. So that’s why, before I retrain, I’m going to spend some time in an ashram.’
‘An ashram?’
I gulp down my wine and signal to the barman that I want another. I’ll need something to fortify me for this news. First Dom announces he’s off to Oz. Now Claire says she’s going to an ashram and then moving to the country. What next? Will Dermot pop out of the woodwork and tell me that Yvonne is really a man? Mind you, that wouldn’t surprise me too much – her upper arms are far too toned.
‘It’s a hermitage – where you can practise yoga and meditation.’
‘I know what an ashram is. I just never thought …’ I’m stumbling over my words.
‘What? That I’d want to go to one?’
‘Well, yes,’ I admit.
‘But I do, Maggie – I can’t wait! This is going to be properly life changing.’
‘Right.’ I can’t sound enthusiastic, I just can’t.
‘Aren’t you excited for me?’ A cloud of concern crosses Claire’s face.
‘Um, I guess so. If that’s what you want to do. It’s just that I never thought that going to an ashram would be your sort of thing.’ What I don’t say is that this hare-brained scheme sounds like the type of plan Claire would have laughed at only a few short months ago – didn’t she use to say th
at yoga was a useless waste of time?
‘Well, neither did I, but that was before …’
Claire’s voice trails away while she tries to compose herself. I think I see a tear glinting in her eye and Claire never cries. She’s been known to thump people who cry in public. She whacked me once when we were watching a sad movie and I broke down as the heroine died in a freak tragic accident. The bruise lasted for well over a week. I look into my wine glass and silently wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole. That would be much better than seeing Claire dissolve into snotty emotion.
‘Sorry,’ she sniffs, ‘the journey to your core self can be so emotionally draining. Anyway,’ her voice steadies, ‘once I get back from India, I can get stuck into country life – start afresh.’
Maybe she’s on drugs – that may be why she’s acting so strangely. Perhaps she’s hooked on some sort of over-the-counter painkiller. She did have an awful lot of paracetamol lying round in her flat last time I was there. The addiction could have started after she had her veneers done. I’ll have to talk her out of this nonsense – that’s the only thing to do.
‘An ashram is one thing, Claire,’ I say slowly. ‘That’s only a short-term move. But is relocating to the country such a good idea? It’s a very big step. Can’t you set up as a holistic therapist somewhere in town?’ Or go back to the hedge fund, my inner voice screams.
‘I’ve always wanted to live in the country, Maggie. It’s now or never. Life’s too short not to go for what you want. And this is what I want, I know that. I’ve even found the perfect place to rent on-line. It’s called Rose Cottage.’ She pulls a printout from her patchwork bag and passes it across the table to me. ‘I know it sounds corny, but I always had a dream of living in a little cottage, with roses growing round the door. This place is perfect. I get a really good feeling about it … I can see myself there – do you know what I mean?’
‘Sort of.’ I drain my wine. I’ve heard this sort of thing from clients – they see photos of their dream home in a property prospectus and before you know it they’ve imagined their entire life there. It rarely works out that way, though – not once they step through the front door and realize that the whiff of curry will never leave the carpets or the front room will always be cold and dark, no matter how many lamps they plug in. First impressions can be very misleading.
I cast my eye over the photos. I have to admit, it does look gorgeous. It’s a tiny stone cottage, with sparkling whitewash on the exterior walls and a duck-egg blue half-door. There are even roses creeping round the frame. The windows look like original working sash, and the garden is really pretty, with pink hydrangeas and what looks like an apple tree by the gate. The place couldn’t be any cuter, but all is probably not what it seems. The way the shots are taken, it looks exactly like something from the front of a twee chocolate box, but I know all the old tricks so I’m cautious.
‘This thing could face a main road,’ I say. ‘Usually if a property is photographed up close, like this one is, they’re trying to hide the fact that the front gate opens on to a motorway.’
‘It doesn’t.’ Claire grins. ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere – near a village called Glacken.’
‘There might be a waste-treatment plant next door.’
‘No,’ she laughs giddily, ‘it’s surrounded by acres of fields.’
‘Neighbours from hell?’
‘The nearest neighbour is the main house – that’s where the landlord lives.’
I strain to see anything amiss in this idyllic photograph. There must be something wrong. Maybe they’ve used Photoshop to erase all the imperfections.
‘You can stop looking for negatives. It’s perfect, Maggie.’
‘It can’t be.’ I still don’t believe her. Nothing is ever as perfect as it first appears. ‘Those roof tiles could be asbestos.’
‘They look like they’ve been replaced recently, though.’
‘There’s obviously no heating, then.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course there is.’
‘There must be something.’ I’m not giving up.
‘There’s not. It’s all in really good nick and the rent is negotiable if the tenant gives a hand at the big house for a few hours a week.’
‘Aha!’ I shout. ‘I knew it! What does that mean?’ Giving a hand at the big house? It sounds dubious in the extreme – what kind of a dodgy operation is this landlord running? I’ve heard about those wild swinging parties in country manors.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Claire says. ‘Brush the ponies, walk the hounds, shepherd sheep, whatever it is they do in the country all day, I suppose. Sounds like paradise to me.’
‘Right.’ The landlord wants help with the farm animals in exchange for a rent reduction. I rearrange my features so that Claire won’t see what I’ve been thinking – obviously I’ve spent far too much time in Dom’s company: his depraved mind has rubbed off on me.
‘Yeah, I’ve wasted so much time in that damn hedge fund, feeling miserable in uncomfortable heels and pencil skirts. Now I’ll be free to express myself in a way I never thought possible.’
She gathers her hideous patchwork handbag to her bosom and hugs it joyfully. If this is Claire expressing herself, we’re in serious trouble. But if the photos are to be believed, then she’s right about one thing: this place does look like paradise, the perfect escape from the city grind. If you were into that sort of thing, which I’m not. I’m a city girl through and through and I always will be.
‘So, can you see yourself living there for a while?’ Claire’s eyes gleam.
‘Me? What do I have to do with it?’
‘Think about it, Maggie. I’m going to the ashram for three months, but I could sign the lease now and you could live in the cottage while I’m in India. It’s ideal for both of us – you could watch the place for me while I’m away and take a breather from the city at the same time. It’d be the perfect opportunity to chill out for a bit and decide what your next step is going to be. What do you have to lose?’
I look at the photos. The place is nice – she’s right about that. Maybe some time out would do me good. After all, I haven’t had a proper break since Robert and I split up. I could just relax for a while before I try to get another job – a few months probably wouldn’t make any difference either way. Maybe I could even think about changing career direction … look into doing a few retraining courses myself.
‘You don’t have to stay for ever – you can go straight back to the city when I’m finished in the ashram, if you want. There’s no commitment, Maggie – and, of course, I’d cover the rent. You’d be doing me a massive favour.’
I have to move out of Dermot’s investment flat ASAP and I don’t exactly have anywhere else to go. Besides, if Claire pays the rent then my redundancy money will last much longer – there’ll be far less pressure to rush out and get a job, any job, to pay the bills.
‘Just come with me to see it and then think about it, that’s all I ask,’ Claire wheedles.
‘OK,’ I murmur. ‘If you really want me to.’
I suppose I may as well go along for the ride – it’s not like I have much else to do. And going to see the cottage can’t hurt, even if it comes to nothing. The truth is, once Claire sees the place she’ll probably run back to the city with her tail between her legs anyway. She’ll change her mind about this country plan when she realizes that her quaint cottage doesn’t have a power shower or a climate-controlled heat-recovery system – I’d bet my last pay cheque on it.
Rule Four: If you can’t be the sun, don’t be a cloud
‘Go through the third crossroads,’ the deep voice at the other end of the line bellows, ‘and then keep an eye out for the lime kiln.’
I’m on the phone to Edward Kirwan, landlord of Rose Cottage, getting new directions to the house. We’ve become lost in the middle of nowhere on the drive down – all because Claire insisted on disabling the sat-nav in her BMW. She used to live and die by that elec
tronic device, but now she maintains that it’s an unnecessary distraction and we’re perfectly capable of finding the way ourselves. Turns out she has seriously overestimated our map-reading skills.
‘The third crossroads, did you say?’ I repeat, just to make sure I haven’t misheard him. There’s a lot of noise in the background and it’s hard to make out exactly what he’s saying.
‘That’s right,’ he shouts, above the din. ‘Then take the second right after the lime kiln.’
I strain to hear him – the racket is intensifying. I can hear some sort of weird wailing noise. Could it be a wild animal? It’s incredibly loud whatever it is.
‘Do you know what a lime kiln is?’ I ask Claire, suddenly hoping she has a change of heart and decides that living in a country cottage would be hell. From the noise at the other end of the phone it certainly sounds like it is. I should have put this call on loudspeaker so she could hear for herself. I wonder if I could manage to do just that without cutting him off.
‘Yes!’ Claire nods, beaming. She’s in a fantastic mood and has been since we left the city. Her heart is set on this cottage – she’s spent the journey so far telling me that it has everything she’s ever dreamed of in a home: charm, character and an open fireplace where she can burn smelly turf and ‘contemplate her life’. Considering she had a gas fire in her apartment and she’d always thought open fires were a messy inconvenience, this change of heart is staggering. Claire used to love high-end appliances – she got a Nespresso machine a full year before anyone else. Her apartment is a shrine to polished granite surfaces. But now she says she prefers the shabby-chic look. She says she loves lime plaster (whatever that is) and flagstones and she doesn’t care if the cottage doesn’t have a Miele dishwasher. In fact, she says she’s looking forward to getting Cath Kidston rubber gloves. She’s even claiming that washing up is a very soothing exercise – I have trouble believing that, especially since I know she hasn’t washed up in at least twenty years, not since she used to do it for her mother to earn some extra pocket money. Even then, the way I remember it, she used to moan all the way through.