‘I insult you,’ says Maggie, folding her arms and slowly turning to glare at me, ‘and then you compliment me? Hmm … can the request for a favour be far behind?’
‘I need a lend of your car. Please. Just for a few hours. And in return, I’ll emm …’ I was going to say ‘… do all your laundry and clean out your room for the next month,’ but I do all that anyway. ‘Well, I’ll find some way to pay you back, Maggie. And that’s a promise.’
She sits back, flinty-eyed, and, for a split second, I get a flash of how terrifying it must be to be stuck in the Inland Revenue office with her, having a tax audit.
‘There are thousands of reasons for me to say no,’ she eventually says. ‘Would you like me to enumerate them all, so you can pick your favourite?’
‘You know what the best bit is?’ sniggers Sharon, a bit disloyally. ‘She only wants your car so she can stake out Sam Hughes’s house. Isn’t that the most mental thing you ever heard? I’d nearly go with you myself for the laugh, Jessie, only Coronation Street’s on tonight and I’ve been dying to see it all day.’
Next thing, there’s a ring at the doorbell and we all stare at each other in shock. No one calls here. No one. Only total strangers who don’t know us.
‘You get it,’ the two of them say to me together.
‘And if it’s anyone looking for either of us,’ adds Sharon, ‘we’re not in. I mean, what kind of a gobshite calls to your house on a Wednesday night, when everyone knows Corrie is on?’
I race down the hallway, muttering PleasebeSampleasebeSampleasebeSam. But when I fling the door open, it’s not him at all. It’s a ridiculously tall guy in white linen shirt and black leather jacket, in his early thirties or so; light, fair-ish hair and thin as a reed, carrying a neat little bouquet of chrysanthemums and carnations, all wrapped up in cellophane. Something familiar about him too. I’m slowly taking him in, like he’s a foreigner whose accent I can’t quite place and he’s staring back at me hopefully, expectantly. As though I should know who he is, but I don’t.
‘Em … I’m really sorry, but I think you might have the wrong house,’ I say as politely as I can, given that I’m in the middle of an emotional meltdown. Perfectly reasonable assumption; I mean, come on, who’d be calling here with flowers?
‘Jessie? Don’t you remember me?’
I squint up at him and while, yeah, there is something vaguely familiar about the light blue eyes, otherwise I haven’t a clue.
‘I’m Steve,’ he says, a sounding a tiny bit disappointed. ‘Didn’t Joan tell you I was going to call?’
Steve, Steve, Steve …?
Oh for feck’s sake, I do not believe it. ‘You’re Steve Hayes?’
‘The one and only,’ he smiles down at me, all delighted.
Oh my God, Hannah’s big brother. I’ve a vague memory of Joan mentioning something about bumping into him recently and him promising to call, but what with everything else that’s been going on, I must have just blanked it out.
‘Hannah’s just living a few streets away from here now, you know,’ he beams just as another trait about him comes floating back to me from all those years ago. I’d forgotten that he’s one of those always happy/good-natured/glass-half-full, /even-tempered people. God, no wonder Maggie and Sharon used to make his life hell. ‘She’s just had another baby, number two. Mad, isn’t it?’ he grins cheekily. ‘I often feel like we’re still just kids ourselves.’
‘Yeah! Yeah, completely mad. Well … you’ve … ehh … changed so much, Steve, I’d hardly have known you!’ The truth too. Last time I saw him I was barely twenty-one, right before I got my first job in Channel Six. His hair was far blonder back then, and he used to wear roundey jam-jar glasses which kind of gave him a look of the Milky Bar Kid from certain angles. Funny how the intervening years have changed him; he’s grown, not so much in height as in stature. The guy I used to know was slightly gawky and unsure of himself, but the Steve standing in front of me now is a man. And a very cool-looking one at that too.
‘Oh, these are for you, by the way,’ he smiles, thrusting the flowers clumsily at me. ‘Just to say welcome back to the estate and that I’m sorry about what happened to you with your job. Like the hair, by the way. Big change to the way you used to look on TV. Very … let me pick my words carefully … yes, got it: very Nicole Kidman.’
I laugh nervously, at the back of my mind wondering how the hell I’m going to get rid of him. Sorry, no rudeness intended, but cosy reunions with ghosts from the past are NOT on tonight’s agenda.
‘I’m glad it was you who answered the door, by the way,’ he adds, his ridiculously tall physique taking up most of the frame. ‘Not Maggie or Sharon, is what I mean. If they saw me arriving here with flowers, I’d never hear the end of it. Unless they’ve both changed drastically since the days when I used to live here, that is,’ he adds, winking at me.
I’m only half listening, my mind’s too busy racing, but suddenly the words Maggie and Sharon catch my ear. I look up at him, suddenly all interested as an idea forms in the back of my head. Perfect. A diversion. Couldn’t have asked for better.
‘Yes … you know, they’re both here … and, you know what? They’d be so annoyed if you called over without saying hi. Come on in!’
Before the poor guy knows what’s hit him, I’ve grabbed his arm, swung him into the hall and shoved him in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Jessie,’ he hisses, panic beginning to rise in his voice, ‘you don’t understand, I came here to see you.’
I’m not even focused on him though. I just want to create a distraction and get out of here. Not very nice of me, I know, but it’s all in aid of the greater good. Besides, plenty of time to apologise later.
‘Go on through to the kitchen,’ I call back at him gaily, ‘and will you tell them all that I’ll see them later!’
Thirty seconds later, I’ve grabbed Maggie’s car keys and am sitting in the driver’s seat, reversing out of the garage. I’m almost there … almost home and dry … when suddenly, like two imploding missiles, Maggie and Sharon hurl themselves against the bonnet, Maggie’s mouth frozen in a silent movie expression of horror. I’m forced to brake or else run them over, so I brake; but just as I’m about to zoom off down the road, I lose two crucial seconds trying to figure out the gear stick on Maggie’s manual car.
But it’s two seconds too much.
Next thing, the two of them are in the car beside me, breathing fire and stale Indian food at me.
‘Fecking insane BITCH!’ roars Maggie from the back seat, grabbing a fistful of my hair. ‘Pull the car over or else I swear, you are so DEAD!’
‘Let go of my hair, or I’ll crash your precious car.’
She does what I tell her without further argument.
‘And I’m not pulling over. We’re going on a road trip.’
And there’s nothing they can do about it either. I’m the one in the driver’s seat.
So, here I am, on my way for a romantic reunion with my ex-boyfriend at his palatial mansion house in the country. Just never thought I’d be bringing Laurel and Hardy along with me for the ride.
Chapter Eleven
‘Will you cool the head, for feck’s sake, Maggie?’ says Sharon, fishing around in the glove compartment for a box of Marlboro Lights, then passing the entire box back to her in an effort to calm her down. ‘Can I remind you that it was either this or else stay at home making small talk for the whole night with Stuttering Steve.’
‘That’s not fair. The stutter’s well and truly gone,’ I say.
‘Ah, but sadly the moniker lives forever.’
I actually think that as soon as she realises just what this evening’s alternative was, Maggie does start to calm down a bit. Mind you, this takes about ten miles and fifteen cigarettes. However, I figure that I’m on slightly safer ground with her as soon as she starts having a go at poor, harmless old Steve. But then that’s Maggie for you. A tree hasn’t fallen in the forest until she’s slagged it
off.
‘Christ alive, Steve fecking Hayes,’ she says, sucking on a fag. ‘The very thought of having to entertain that big long string of piss …’
‘He’s in a band now, you know,’ says Sharon. ‘With some eejitty name. The Amazing Few, I think they’re called. Hey, we should go to one of his gigs some night, so we could have a proper laugh.’
‘Well, it’ll cost you. Because you’ll have to pay for the wild horses it’ll take to drag me there.’
Sam’s house is miles, and I really do mean miles, away from Whitehall, well past Kildare town, down a twisty, narrow, secondary road where the houses gradually get bigger and bigger, growing more and more spaced apart, until after a while, you only see a gateway about every five miles or so. Anyway, as soon as we’re through the worst of the rush hour traffic, I drive like a brain-damaged test monkey, not even entertaining Maggie’s demand that she drive instead. Would take way too long with me having to shout navigation instructions at her.
Too rushed. No time. Just got to get there.
Plus if I did give her the wheel, she’d only turn the car round and head straight for home. I’m like a woman consumed; all reason has completely gone out the window and I honestly think that if I hit one more red light, I’ll end up hyperventilating into a paper bag. As it is, my breath is coming nervously in quick, sharp stabs, my head is starting to swim and my heart’s palpitating so much that I think there’s a fair chance I might throw up. Just at the thought of how Sam will react when he sees me. Of what he might say. Or worse, what he might not say.
Then I make a Herculean effort to cop myself on. Because I’m being ridiculous. Of course Sam will be over the moon that I’ve made all this effort to prove how much he still means to me. It’s just a simple case of one of us having to swallow their pride and take the first step, and in this case the fates decreed that it should be me. I just happened to have more time on my hands than him to make the first move and bloody lucky that I did. In a few hours’ time, we’ll be snuggled up in bed together, drinking champagne most likely, toasting our reunion and having a good old giggle about this. The words in that newspaper article, which I’ve memorised and am now silently repeating like a mantra, are keeping me sane and focused, ‘A reunion is imminent.’
Between heavy traffic and seeming to get every bloody set of traffic lights red, the drive takes the guts of an hour. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I have to put up with Maggie whinging about how hungry she is while Sharon lists out all the TV programmes she’s missing, with particular moaning reserved for the fact that now she won’t get to see Coronation Street.
‘All that was happening on Corrie tonight,’ I snap at her, unable to take much more, ‘is that Kevin was being stalked by his ex-girlfriend who breaks into his house to have it out with him.’
‘Very interesting plot synopsis,’ quips Maggie from where she’s sulking away in the back seat, now in a haze of smoke. ‘Can I eat it?’
‘Well I was looking forward to it all day,’ moans Sharon, who I’m on the verge of slapping any minute now, if she keeps this up for much longer. As soon as I’m safely back with Sam, my solemn vow is to buy the girl a subscription to Sky Plus as a thank you for helping me out with the dole, and maybe then that’ll shut her up.
‘In fact, it was the highlight of my whole TV week and what’s more, you knew that, Jessie Woods.’
‘Well instead of watching someone getting stalked on Corrie, now you get to see the live floor show instead,’ says Maggie and just for a split second I catch a glimpse of her lizard eyes staring at me from the rearview mirror, unblinking. ‘And speaking of which, Cinderella Rockefeller,’ she goes on, ‘suppose he takes one look at you waiting for him like a complete basket case and decides to call the police? Did that ever once filter through your addled brain, before you turned to car theft?’
‘I’m calling in to see my boyfriend, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Ex-boyfriend.’
‘What I’m doing is entirely within the boundaries of the law.’
‘You know, I didn’t like you before this, but at least I respected you. Now I just think you’re a nut job. It’s not the dole you should be applying for, it’s day care.’
‘Why thank you for that, Maggie. Can’t tell you how much your support means to me. For your information though, I happen to be doing the right thing.’
‘Just what the Germans said before they invaded Poland.’
‘Oh I just thought of something else,’ Sharon chips in. ‘If you do get back with him, you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren, “If I hadn’t stalked your granddad and acted like a complete mentaller, then none of you would have ever been born.”’
‘Can you both please stop using the word stalking? I’m not sure how comfortable I am with it.’
‘Well what else would you call it?’ says Maggie. ‘I assume your crackpot master plan is to camp out at the front gate until he shows up?’
‘Or maybe you could scale a ten-foot-high wall to get in?’ Sharon asks hopefully. ‘You know, dodging past hordes of salivating rottweilers and alsatians. Then you could break in through a window and try to dodge the alarm’s laser beams. It’d be cool, wouldn’t it? Like Tom Cruise inMission Impossible.’
Actually, what I’m slightly too shamefaced to admit is that right up until late this afternoon, that was my plan. Like a good cat burglar, I even had it all worked out, right down to which was the best point of entry into the house. Through the French doors round the back, because half the time Sam forgets to lock them … sure I’d be through them in two minutes.
Then it dawned on me. I still have a set of keys.
Ten minutes later and I’m pulling up to the huge iron security gates outside Sam’s house. Sorry, make that Sam’s palatial mansion. I hit the zapper button on the remote and seconds later the gates glide elegantly open. Sharon’s awed into silence, but Maggie’s not.
‘So, if you lived here, how far away would your nearest neighbour be?’
‘About five miles.’
‘Feck off! So what happens if you have to run next door for a cup of sugar or a jug of milk? Does one just send one’s butler in one’s helicopter?’
The driveway is so long that the house isn’t even visible for a while; all you can see are vast, rolling, immaculately kept, well-manicured lawns on either side of us.
‘Don’t know if Ma would be much into this,’ says Sharon, head out the window like an over-eager puppy. ‘It’s all a bit too under-decorated. Not a pretendy Grecian urn or a statue of a naked angel in sight.’
Then I turn a bend and there it is, glinting in the evening sunshine: Casa Sam. For a second, I see it through Maggie’s and Sharon’s eyes, thinking back to how wowed I was the first time I came here too. It’s the approximate size of a country house hotel, but an uber-posh, five-star one with plenty of room for a golf course in the front garden. In fact, it’s so huge that I remember when Sam first took me here, I debated whether I should leave a trail of breadcrumbs after me so I wouldn’t get lost.
I’m not messing, it looks like a mini-Versailles, right down to the fifteen-pane, full-length sash windows on each of its double-fronted, mock-Georgian sides. There’s even an elegant water feature in front of the main door, which isn’t switched on, but still looks so mightily impressive that Sharon actually starts taking photos on her camera phone.
‘Ma will get great mileage out of these,’ she says to me, by way of explanation. ‘You know how much she loves laughing at other people’s crappy taste.’
There are two cars in the driveway, a Porsche and a BMW Z4, but I still know just by looking that Sam’s not home.
‘So who do those cars belong to?’ says Maggie, hauling herself out of the back seat. ‘The staff?’
‘No, they’re both Sam’s. On weekdays, he always takes the Bentley into work with him.’
‘For feck’s sake. What is he anyway, a rapper?’
‘He’s an entrepreneur,’ I say proud
ly.
What’s weird is that, even though I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to bring Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee along with me for the ride, I’m kind of glad that they can see for themselves first hand the life I actually do lead. OK, so at the moment, I may spend most of my day scrubbing floors and picking up empty pizza boxes, but as a matter of fact, here’s my natural habitat. Sleeping on sofas and washing their dirty knickers isn’t my normal thing, this is. To the manor born. Funny, but Sam tends to role play a bit when he’s down here too, effortlessly slipping into the part of the country squire, right down to the Burberry checked jackets and wellies that have never seen as much as a drop of mud. He doesn’t like too many people knowing this; far preferring the world to think he was born and reared in this mock-Georgian mansion, but the truth is he only bought it about four years ago, when he’d made his first €5 million.
The house isn’t even period either; it was only built about ten years back by a property developer, who spared no expense in getting the best interior designers to fully kit the place out. So although everything is made to look like it’s about 200 years old, it actually comes with all mod cons like underfloor heating and a highly anachronistic indoor swimming pool. And if Maggie and Sharon think this is a sight to behold, wait until they get a load of the place inside. The stone hallway so massive that you could almost have a party in it, the basement wine cellar, the entertainment room, with its own private cinema, Sam even has a bar that serves Guinness on tap. As it is, the pair of them are sauntering around the front forecourt, with Sharon snapping away on her camera phone as Maggie does her best to look nonchalant and not a bit intimidated at all. While standing on a helicopter landing pad.
‘You know what? I could really get used to this lifestyle,’ Sharon laughs over to me, from where she’s wandering around behind the fountain. ‘I mean, I know Sam dumped you and everything, but I still don’t blame you for trying to get him back. I’d do the same myself, even if he was a three-foot-high dwarf with breath like owl droppings.’
Hopes & Dreams Page 17