The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations

by Paul Carr

  Let me be absolutely clear: I was a complete shit to Karen and I deserved every bad thing that she tried to do to me. In fact, over time, after I came out of witness protection, I had come to grudgingly admire her for taking such perfect revenge: going straight for where I would hurt the most – my ego.

  But for all that admiration, I still had no desire ever to see her again. When I lived in London, even with eight million people in the city, I remained in constant terror any time I walked into a pub, or a shop, or a restaurant, fearing she’d be there. The girl had eviscerated me online; God only knows what she’d do in person.

  Returning to London for a visit, though, I’d started to think differently. For a start, it was ridiculous that I was walking around the city in fear. Karen was a pissed-off ex-girlfriend, not a ninja assassin. Second of all, any anger she had towards me would probably have dissipated now; she’d stopped blogging abruptly a few months earlier, leading me to suppose that she’d found a new boyfriend and decided to give up her campaign against me. And thirdly, the whole thing was my fault. I’d hurt her. Hell, maybe it would be good if I did run into her; maybe it would give me a chance to apologise properly, to her face, like a man. To say ‘Karen, I acted like a dick and I got the comeuppance I deserved. I’m truly sorry for the hurt I caused you.’

  So, when lastminute.com’s secret hotel booking system sent me the email confirming the name of my next secret hotel, and it turned out to be right across the street from Karen’s house, my initial horror quickly turned to resolution. Clearly fate, and lastminute.com, had sent me some kind of sign. It was time to face my demons.

  Unlike most of my ideas, the more I thought about this one the more certain I became. Rather than waiting for the inevitable accidental meeting, I should send Karen an email, telling her that I’d accidentally ended up staying nearby – not across the street, that would just look mental – and suggesting a coffee. No, not an email – that was cowardly. I’d call her: I’d deleted her number from my phone but had kept it written down, just in case.

  Yes, I concluded, calling Karen is the right thing to do. And had I been stone cold sober when I’d concluded it – and had it been, say, the middle of the afternoon, then I would probably have been right. But it wasn’t the middle of the afternoon: it was midnight and I’d just got back to the hotel having spent the evening drinking with Robert.

  She answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice was instantly familiar. I was worried that she’d see my number and not pick up, but judging by her tone – curiosity, rather than concern – I wasn’t the only one who had purged our relationship from their phone.

  ‘Hi, Karen, it’s Paul Carr,’ I said, with possibly a little too much formality.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said.

  This was a good sign. Anything less than ‘go fuck yourself’ was a good sign.

  The conversation started out slow and stilted, as befitted a girl who had created a hate blog having just answered the phone to the object of her hate, at midnight. Oddly, though, once I explained that I was calling to apologise, she became surprisingly civil – chatty, almost.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I almost lied. The truth is, I’d sobered up the moment she answered.

  We talked about her blog, and how it had succeeded in embarrassing me and making me feel ashamed of how I’d behaved. She seemed pleased by that, but not in the gloaty way I’d expected. If anything she sounded grateful. Grateful that I’d learned my lesson and that I’d been forced to think hard about the hurt I’d caused.

  ‘Thank you for the apology,’ she said, ‘I appreciate it.’

  I paused, knowing I should end the conversation there. I’d said what I needed to say and now she could go back to her life with – presumably – her new boyfriend and all would be slightly more right with the world than it had been a few hours earlier.

  And had I been thinking about it stone cold sober in the morning, then that’s probably what I’d have done. But I wasn’t sober – not really – and it wasn’t the morning.

  ‘I’d really like to see you,’ I said, ‘I’ve missed you.’ I really had.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said.

  She was right. I pressed on.

  ‘How about if I came round tomorrow and we had breakfast? I’d really like to apologise properly, to your face.’

  ‘I really …’ then a pause. ‘OK, if you’re really not drunk and you’re not going to wake up at noon and forget this. Which is to say if any of what you’ve just said is true, then come over at ten. Bring bagels. And I’ll listen to your apology.’

  I could have cried.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there, I promise.’

  I hung up. And then I cried; tears poured down my cheeks and I slumped to the floor in a mixture of relief, panic and a weird sense of joy at the possibility of making things better. I walked over to the minibar and poured myself a whisky out of one of the tiny bottles. My hands were shaking. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d ever be able to make things better with Karen, and now I had a second chance. All I had to do was make it to her house by 10 a.m. I drank the entire mini bottle of whisky in one gulp.

  1011

  I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. I squinted at the screen. It was Robert.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ I said, ‘how you doing? You’ll never guess what I did last night?’

  ‘Tell me over lunch,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes, at your hotel?’

  ‘What?’ I sat bolt upright in bed. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘About half twelve, why?’

  Fuck.

  ‘FUCK’.

  1012

  ‘You’re unbelievable,’ said Robert as we sat down to lunch at a French place a safe enough distance from my hotel. I’d tried to call Karen twice but, unsurprisingly, the calls had gone to voicemail after a couple of rings. How could I have been so stupid? I had drunk half the contents of the minibar to ‘steady my nerves’ before finally stumbling into bed and forgetting even to set an alarm.

  ‘This is it,’ I said, ‘the final straw. I have to stop drinking.’

  ‘After this bottle,’ said Robert, filling my glass.

  ‘After this bottle.’

  1013

  ‘OK, gents, time to make your way outside, please.’

  The landlord of the Albert pub in Victoria had already stacked the barstools on the tables and was now getting twitchy. It was 11p.m. and Robert and I were the last to leave. The pub was near to Robert’s halls of residence – we’d decided to head there after lunch so Robert could show me around – but we hadn’t quite made it there, having been distracted by the pub. We’d spent the whole day talking about Karen and my idiocy. Specifically, I’d spent the day coming up with plans to try to fix things, while Robert had spent the day telling me why each of them was less brilliant than the last.

  He was right – this was now definitely an unfixable situation, and one entirely of my making, again. Karen had given me a window of opportunity to make things better, and I’d got drunk and thrown a rock through it. The only thing left for me to do was to give up.

  And had I been stone cold sober, and had it been the morning, then that’s what I would have done.

  1014

  ‘Mate, this is the worst idea you have ever had. I’ll say this again: I’m only here because I know you’ll do something even more dumb if I leave you alone. But this – what you are doing now – is the dumbest thing you have done in your entire life.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I slurred. ‘I need to do this.’

  Robert was still appealing to my sanity by the time we got out of the cab, and, by the time I reached Karen’s front door, he was all but physically restraining me from pressing the buzzer.

  No answer.

  I buzzed again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Come on, mate, let’s go.’

  But I was determined now, in that way that only the world’s mos
t drunken idiot could possibly be. Behind Karen’s house was an alleyway, except that in the part of London where she lives alleyways are considered terribly common, so behind her house was a ‘mews’.

  I remembered that her living-room window backed on to the mews and figured that, maybe, if I knocked on that, she’d … well, I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

  I walked down the mews – Robert following behind – yelling now – ‘THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA, STOP’. I knocked on the window.

  Suddenly there she was. The back door of the house swung open, and there was the girl who for the past year had been my digital nemesis, but also the girl to whom I owed this apology.

  ‘I …’

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Just leave. Now. I mean it.’

  ‘But, I …’

  ‘And as for you …’ she glared at Robert, ‘I mean, him – him – I expect this drunken bullshit from, but you – you should fucking know better.’

  ‘I tried to stop him,’ shrugged Robert, deciding that this would be the appropriate time to walk back to the main street and have a cigarette. He’d done everything he could.

  ‘I just …’

  ‘Leave now or I’ll call the police. I really mean it.’ She walked back inside, slamming the door. I knew she wouldn’t actually call the police – she was just making a point – but I’d had my chance and I’d blown it. I stood in the mews for a few more minutes, calling through the window. She didn’t reply. She’d probably gone to bed.

  I started to walk back down to Rob. Which is when I saw the blue lights.

  She’d called the police. Of course she’d called the fucking police.

  I sobered up, or at least I thought I did, and decided that the best course of action would be to keep walking, and not to react in any way to the police car that was now slowly driving down the mews towards me. Hopefully, like in films, they’d assume I was just a drunk and cruise right past me. I still hadn’t learned that the way things happen in films is rarely the way they turn out in real life: and, anyway, in this case the police were actually looking for a drunk.

  The police car stopped right in front of me, and two policemen jumped out. Between the flashing blue lights and the speed with which they got out of the car, the police clearly take crazy drunk ex-boyfriends standing outside the houses of girls who live on their own very seriously. That fact actually made me happy, for a second, until I remembered that the crazy drunk ex-boyfriend in this situation was me. And that less than a week earlier I’d been given a caution. This was a complete and utter fucking disaster. Why hadn’t Robert stopped me?

  ‘Are you Paul?’ shouted one of the policemen, even though he was less than five feet away.

  ‘Uh, Paul?’ I said. ‘No, officer. My name’s Bradley.’

  A half lie: Bradley is my middle name.

  ‘Do you have any ID?’

  I reached into my pocket and took out my driving licence. My still-actually-quite-drunk-it-turns-out logic kicked in. ‘See,’ I said, pointing at my middle name on the licence. ‘Bradley.’

  The policeman looked at the licence and then looked at me. He’d seen some dumb lies in his time. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘Paul Bradley.’

  While I was being busted by the first policeman, I noticed Robert was talking to one of the others. They were both nodding, and I swear I saw the policeman laugh. My policeman wasn’t laughing, though, he was on his radio. ‘Yes, Charlie. Alpha. Romeo. Romeo. Paul Bradley. Date of birth 7 December 1979.’

  A pause. His head was tilted towards the radio, waiting for the reply that would seal my fate. I couldn’t make out what the radio operator said but he turned and walked back to his colleague who was now – definitely – sharing a joke with Rob. The three of them stood in their little huddle for maybe half a minute as I just stood forlornly, waiting.

  Finally, my policeman came back. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘your friend has explained the situation. Sounds to me like you do owe the poor girl an apology, but this isn’t the way to do it. I’ve spoken to the station and they say there’s no record of you, so as this is your first cockup, and because Robert has promised he’s going to take you home, we’ll leave it there.’

  I couldn’t believe it. No record of me. Obviously the police hadn’t had time to update their records since my arrest. Thank the lord. ‘Thank you, officer,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, mate, let’s get your stuff from your hotel,’ said Robert. ‘I’m checking you in at the student halls. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you leave London.’

  1015

  With the book launch just two days away, I decided that Robert was right: it would probably be a good idea to move into his halls. For one thing I was keen to see for myself what £35 could get you in London, but more importantly I was hoping that Robert would be close enough at hand to stop me should I get any more silly ideas about showing up at Karen’s house.

  As it turned out, the rooms weren’t bad at all – nowhere near up to the standards of a hotel, but far better than I’d expected for £35. Still, having seen Hannah’s reaction to the Easy Hotel, I’d have to remind myself not to bring any girls back from the Gardening Club after-party.

  Hannah, at least, was unlikely to be the girl I brought back. After I’d drunk-dialled her ten times before being arrested, she’d decided that perhaps her initial assessment of me as a drunken dick might not have been entirely off the mark. We hadn’t fallen out exactly, but nor did she have any desire ever to sleep with me again. We settled on being ‘just friends’. Hard to blame her, really.

  I considered writing a post on my blog about how London had forced me to make a brief transition from luxury hotel living to living like a student, but I decided not to. Part of the popularity of the blog, at least according to the people who emailed me about it, was the fantasy element. It’s fun to read about someone travelling the world and living in amazing hotels and having madcap adventures. A £35-a-night student bedroom doesn’t really fit into that narrative.

  I mentioned this to Robert the night before the party, as we sat sharing a bottle of vodka in the student dining room. He was clearly concerned that I was starting to take myself a little too seriously.

  ‘Jesus, mate, when did you start to care about “narratives”? I thought the whole point was you didn’t think about things in advance. That certainly seems to have been the theme for the past couple of weeks.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘but somewhere along the way I seem to have become some kind of cartoon character. People are reading my blog waiting for the next ridiculous fuck-up; that’s what people keep commissioning me to write about too; the hotels, the drinking and the inevitable train wreck. That’s what keeps my readers interested.’

  ‘Your readers?’ Robert handed me the vodka. ‘Just for future reference, do you want me to draw attention to every milestone on your journey towards being a pretentious cock?’

  ‘This is a case in point,’ I continued, gesturing with the vodka bottle before taking a huge swig, ‘I know logically I should give up drinking. It ends in disaster every time. But that’s precisely why I can’t – tomorrow night a bunch of people are going to come to a party celebrating the launch of a book about my disasters. It’s the only thing I’ve ever succeeded at. I can hardly give it up. What would I have left then?’

  ‘Your liver?’

  1016

  The launch party was a huge success, even if I do write so myself. Almost all of the fifty or so guests of honour from the book – those who were still talking to me – turned up, as did a smattering of journalists, my agent and at least fifty people I’ve never seen before in my life. Copies of the book were scattered around – and by the end of the night they had all been stolen, which I took to be a positive sign. On a giant screen, photographs of the various incidents recounted in the book rotated in a slideshow. I was drunk in every single one of the photos.

  Towards the
end of the night, my agent – who I suspect was there out of a sense of duty, rather than because I’m a particularly valued client – took me aside.*

  ‘Good party,’ he said, ‘so, what’s next?’

  ‘Well, a few of us are heading to the Gardening Club to try to find some girls,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said, ‘but I actually meant what’s the next book idea?’

  ‘Oh.’

  This was actually a question that I’d been giving a lot of thought to; not least because now this book was published, I needed something to do with my life. I was making reasonable money from freelance gigs but I’d got a taste for being an author now – all Sky News appearances and quotes from Mil Millington – and was keen to stick with it. I had no shortage of ideas – a novel about British men and American woman, a guide to living in hotels, a cutesy observational book about Brits abroad – but most of them were terrible. I decided on the spot to combine them into one big idea and see if my agent thought any part of it had potential …

  ‘Well, I’ve been travelling around for the past few months, living in hotels – and I’ve spent quite a lot of that time in the US. I thought I might write a novel about the differences between the US and the UK, with a special focus on American women versus their British counterparts. Maybe based in a hotel.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said my agent.

  And he was right; every part of the idea was bad. That’s why I hadn’t sent him a proposal; I knew it still needed work. I needed a fresh angle.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘you’ve been living in hotels? Why? How?’

  I began to tell him about the previous five months. ‘It started when I got a letter from my landlord …’

  … and then I woke up in the corridor …

  … a suite in Vegas for $100 a night …

  … just pretended we were hairdressers …