‘What did your one tell you?’
‘Oh please, don’t even go there. Apparently, I’m going to be pregnant by next Christmas and give birth to a girl that’s my great-great-granny’s reincarnated spirit. Pathetic. For the love of God, can we go now? This place pushes the parameters of sanity.’
Right, that’s it, I officially give up. I’m just about to admit defeat and steer her towards first the exit and then the nearest bar, in that order, when something catches my attention.
‘Anything you want in life is yours, if you just ask, believe and receive. It’s as simple and as profound as that,’ a woman with long, red hair, the palest skin I’ve ever seen, and an American accent is saying. ‘Some of the greatest minds throughout history knew this truth. It’s in the oral traditions of some cultures, it’s in philosophies, in literature, and you’ll even find it in religions right down through the centuries. There’s nothing new in what I’m here to tell you.’
You should see her, she looks like an angel and is speaking soft and low, but with such absolute conviction, it stops me in my tracks. And Barbara too, I notice. She’s standing on a sort of podium and almost looks like she’s giving a seminar, with a microphone in one hand and a sheaf of notes in the other. But there’s only one other person in the audience listening to her, a fair-haired girl about my own age.
‘But I’ve been asking for the right man for years now,’ this girl is saying, almost pleading. ‘And all I meet are uninterested, unavailable morons. Now either my emotional sat-navigational system is waaaay off kilter or I’m doing something wrong. And believe me, I will pay good money to be told what that is, so that I can fix it, move on, and who knows? Maybe even find some tiny modicum of happiness in this life.’
Red-haired woman puts the microphone down and steps down from the podium to where the girl is standing. It flashes through my mind that this is actually a nice, sensitive thing to do. After all, there are some conversations you don’t want anyone overhearing. Barbara and I are hovering close, not wanting to seem rude, but at the same time, dying to know what she’ll say.
‘The law of attraction is available to you at any time. It’s working as often as you’re thinking. The question you need to ask yourself is, why am I attracting the wrong kinds of men into my life? What is it that I need to learn here? What’s the universe trying to teach me?’
OK, that’s it, I can’t contain myself any longer. Fair-haired girl doesn’t exactly look impressed with this answer and moves off, so I’m in like Flynn.
‘Excuse me,’ I say in a voice I barely recognize as my own, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearing and . . . well, I can fully sympathize with that lady’s dilemma. I hope you don’t mind the interruption.’
‘That’s OK,’ says red-haired woman, smiling kindly, ‘that’s why I’m here.’
‘Ask, believe, receive? Is that true? Can you explain to me then how come I’ve been asking to meet my husband for what feels like decades now, and there’s still no sign of him?’
‘So, what have you learned?’
God, for a total stranger, this one really has that unflinching, direct eye-contact thing down pat.
‘Ehh, don’t calculate your Weight Watchers points in front of a guy on a first date, and don’t keep asking him what he’s thinking at regular two-minute intervals, or the chances are, he’ll crack. There you go, all my unsuccessful dating years summarized in two concise bullet-points.’
I’m aware that I’m making light of it to cover up how defensive I really feel, plus I’m also conscious of Barbara standing close to me. I’m actually glad of that; I want her to hear this for herself.
‘Then I can help you,’ says red-haired woman, nodding sagely, like she’s seen my type a thousand times before. Which, let’s face it, she probably has. ‘The law of attraction couldn’t be simpler, really. Your thoughts determine your destiny. It’s a well-proven scientific fact that like attracts like. When you talk about dating, all I can hear in your voice is negativity, a woman who is expecting to fail. If you expect failure, then that’s all the universe is going to deliver. A simple mind-switch is all you need to change your entire life, and the choice, my dear, is yours.’
Her words hang there and for a minute I can’t say anything. I’m too busy thinking, could this total stranger actually be right? Am I so busy focusing on how rubbish my love life is, that all I’m creating is even more of that?
Then Barbara’s over, all businesslike with her ‘you just watch me while I put manners on this one’ face.
‘May I just point out,’ she thunders, ‘that my friend here runs a highly successful business, so to make out that she’s attracting negativity all around her . . .’
‘Oh, do you? Tell me a bit about your business,’ red-haired woman interrupts, shutting Barbara up.
‘Oh, well, yes, it is doing very well,’ I say, a bit wrong-footed.
‘It’s doing brilliantly, actually,’ says Barbara defensively. ‘Go on, tell her about the contract with the cosmetics company.’
‘Well, you see, we’re up for a huge contract and I won’t know for another few weeks or so whether we have it or not, but I think it’s pretty much in the bag.’
‘You see?’ smiles red-haired lady. ‘Even your tone of voice changes when you’re discussing an area of your life where you feel confident. You absolutely believe that success will come to you, so of course it will. How can it not? Your very thoughts are attracting it to you as we speak. That’s the thing about the law of attraction, ladies, it’s very obedient.’
‘So how come I’m virtually unemployable as an actress then?’ Barbara demands and I can instantly tell this one is really getting to her. ‘Here I am trying to attract a decent gig for myself and . . . big, fat nada.’
‘What are you doing to attract the right part to you?’
‘Everything. I learn the lines, do my homework, turn up and pray very hard that the two-hundred-odd hot chicks in the casting queue ahead of me will all drop dead so the job will be mine. Simple.’
Red-haired woman just looks at her. Doesn’t even raise her voice, nothing.
‘You’re attracting failure because clearly, that’s what you expect. In fact, it sounds to me that you’re so busy focusing on what you don’t want to happen that, in actual fact, all you’re doing is attracting jobs for other people.’
‘Now hang on a minute here, I don’t go into auditions trying to fail.’
‘So what do you think when you’re auditioning?’
‘That here I am, classically trained and reading for the part of a life-sized cigarette in a Nicorette commercial, usually, that’s what.’
‘Can you hear how negative you sound? And all you’re doing is attracting even more negativity towards you. Remember what I said: like attracts like. It’s the most fundamental law of the universe. Now just take a moment to think. There must be some aspect of your life where everything’s going your way, so you need to ask yourself . . . what is it that I’m doing right here, so effortlessly? Then I want you to take those same positive feelings and apply them to your work area.’
‘She attracts fellas like flies to . . . emm . . . manure,’ I blurt out.
Sorry, I can’t help myself. God, I sound like the class swot ratting on my friend to the teacher. I just think this one could really be on to something here.
‘There you go, then,’ smiles red-haired woman. ‘It sounds to me like you ladies need to learn from each other. You need to figure what your friend is doing to attract men so easily. Whereas you,’ she says, turning to a very pole-axed-looking Barbara, ‘need to be as confident and self-believing in your work area as you are in romance. If you walk into every casting with the attitude that everyone around you is far more suited to the part than you, what are you attracting? Unemployment, what else? There’s a saying I often use to anyone who comes to me looking for help: if you want to fly, first of all, get the shit off your wings.’
Hours and hours and waaaay too many margaritas la
ter, Barbara and I are still talking about her.
I mean, was she for real?
Or could there actually be something in what she’d said?
Chapter Two
In which our cunning plan is hatched, parenthesis, thunderclap, sinister laugh, ha, ha, ha, parenthesis . . .
JUST ONE MORE friend to introduce you to and then we’re done, I promise.
‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the youngest-looking, hottest babe I know,’ calls Laura, my oldest and dearest buddy, waving at me from across the swishy, Dublin 4 restaurant where we’re having lunch with Barbara the following Saturday who . . . well, that might just be information overload, I’ll come to what’s she’s up to in time.
Laura first.
‘Look at you, not a line on your face, God bless your collagen levels, that’s all I can say. Honestly, you’re even more like Jennifer Aniston than Jennifer Aniston,’ she says, as we and ooh and ahh, and generally squeal at each other like two dolphins on a nature programme having a dire emergency.
You know, all the normal ladies-who-lunch stuff.
Not that you could call either myself or Laura a lady who lunches, not by the longest of long shots. In fact, most days I’m doing well if I manage to wolf down a wrap at my desk in-between strategy meetings at the office. This is just the type of restaurant that seems to bring out the inner diva in all of us. Oh, you know the kind: where they bring fourteen types of bread to the table, when a plain old roll would do, and where they call gravy ‘jus’, and when you ask for water they automatically bring the posh kind in blue bottles that immediately add another eighty euro on to the bill.
God, just listen to me. Age is definitely making me narkier. The only difference between me and my moany Auntie Maisie is a plaid shopping trolley and a tracheotomy.
‘Either you’re lying or else you’re only saying that cos I straightened my hair especially for today, but bless you anyway,’ I say, plonking down beside her and gratefully accepting the wine list she’s thrusting at me.
I’m really delighted to see Laura, I never get to spend enough time with her. She . . . well, she leads this incredibly hectic, full-on life and is never able to come out on the razz at night-time with Barbara and me. (Childcare issues, don’t even GO there.) So, anyway the three of us have this deal. The Saturday after any of us celebrates a birthday, said birthday girl is required to host lunch in the poshest restaurant that her budget will allow. This first commandment of our friendship dates back to when Laura had her first baby, not long after the three of us graduated from college together, and we’ve stuck to it through thick and thin, for richer for poorer, all the way from McDonalds, via Pizza Hut to the super-posh dining-room of Roly’s Bistro which we’re sitting in now.
On me. Ah sure, what the hell.
Plus I am so bursting to tell her about the exhibition we were at, and the law of attraction, and how it’s finally, finally going to turn my love life around – and all the amazing wonders I’ve learned since I last saw her. Oh shit, does that make me sound like a Southern Baptist preacher that’s trying to convert someone on the God channel? Better tread carefully, if so. If you thought that Barbara was a tad disbelieving, then I’m about to introduce you to the Dark Lady of cynicism. Like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, back in college, Laura was even a founder member of the Sceptics Society.
Really, I am not kidding.
‘So, another year older and wiser,’ she says. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Honestly?’
‘The whole truth and nothing but.’
‘OK, put it this way. It’s like Oscar Wilde said, the tragedy of ageing isn’t that you’re old, it’s that you’re young. I mean, look at me. I am now officially old enough to know that there’s more to life than sex and shoes and boyfriends and partying, and yet still young enough to know that they are the best bits.’
And up until yesterday I might have added that, lately, I’ve been seeing damn all of any. But then I always feel a bit guilty for moaning in front of Laura, on the grounds that there’s nothing worse than the failure stench from a lonely, single woman who desperately wishes that she wasn’t. Besides, note to self: now that I’m a new convert to the awesome power and majesty of the law of attraction, I really shouldn’t moan, sorry, sorry . . . ooops, I meant to say . . . attract negativity into my life.
Plus, further note to self: let’s never forget that the second commandment of being a good friend is ‘Thou Shalt not Bore’. So I opt for changing the subject instead.
‘No, you first with the news, babe. So how are things on the home front?’
‘Vicky. Today is your day. We’re here to celebrate your birthday lunch. So by asking that question you’ve just confirmed that the vein in my forehead must now be pulsing like a thunderbolt. Like Harry Potter’s proverbial scar, if you will.’
No kidding, this is actually the way that Laura talks. Sharp, clear and clipped. Witty, even without trying to be. She used to be a lawyer, which might go some of the way towards explaining.
‘Tell me everything, honey. Omit no detail, however trivial,’ I say in what I hope sounds like a sympathetic yet encouraging tone, which, trust me, always works best with her when she’s . . . well, whenever she gets a bit overstressed like this.
‘Ordinarily, I’d prefer to have some alcohol inside me to answer that question, but . . . all right then, seeing as you’ve asked,’ she sighs, shoving her glasses into her hair and palming her tired, bloodshot eyes. ‘Firstly, my dearest eldest son was caught shoplifting last night and at 4 a.m. I was still in the police station trying to troubleshoot. Secondly, my daughter, who’s already behaving like a pre-teen, delivered me an ultimatum over breakfast. It seems the little madam now prefers living with Daddy and his new girlfriend, and that if I don’t stop nagging her, then she’s permanently moving in with them.’
‘And I suppose by “nagging” you really mean trying to coax her to eat a little bit more than one packet of breath fresheners every day?’
I’m actually not messing here; this is a child whose main ambition in life is to out-skinny Nicole Ritchie or one of those ‘sleb’ types you read about in magazines. You know, the ones who all go around Beverley Hills looking like malnourished thirteen-year-olds, toting handbags that probably weigh more than them.
‘Correct. Oh and speaking of my soon-to-be-ex husband, he is now almost four months behind on paying child maintenance. Which means I have to suffer the utter humiliation of going cap in hand to my mother to pay this month’s mortgage. Not to mention next term’s school fees which are also due. Does my self-esteem need any of this, I ask you?’
Well, I did warn you. Laura’s life makes mine seem like a Disneyland infomercial by comparison. I nod supportively, and do my best not to interrupt with insulting yet insightful comments about said soon-to-be-ex husband. With the balance tilted strongly in favour of insulting, on account of the fact that I can’t abide the sight of him.
On she goes. ‘Then for added entertainment value, my darling seven-year-old, who’s still bed-wetting by the way, not only is taking the divorce worse than the whole useless lot of them put together, but I was reliably informed by his headmaster yesterday that lately he’s started mitching off class and, as of this morning, my baby girl . . .’ she pauses here, just to catch her breath, ‘now has a highly infectious case of head lice, picked up from a neighbour’s child while I took my eye off the ball for all of two minutes. So, all in all, how great is it that I’m on Zanax?’
‘Ooh, honey, not good,’ I wince. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Yes, dearest. You could do what you always do and make me laugh.’
‘OK,’ I say slowly, racking my brains for a decent gag. ‘Ehh, well I could try and hire a full-time nanny on your behalf, you know, the sort who’ll hopefully confuse child-rearing with criminal law enforcement.’
Bingo, I’m rewarded with a sly smile, just as Laura’s mobile beep-beeps.
‘Mary Poppins on a minimum wage, that’s what I n
eed,’ she says, fishing around her overstuffed handbag for her mobile and dumping a tub of Sudocrem and a packet of Heinz banana biscuits on the table. It’s a text from her mother, who’s babysitting, to say that a Third Gulf War has erupted in the house over who had the remote control last.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ says Laura. ‘I’m really sorry about this, dearest, but do you mind if I just phone home and really give my babies something to cry about?’
‘Course not, go ahead.’
‘Serves me right for thinking that I could actually skive off for two niggardly hours and, who knows, maybe actually enjoy myself for once,’ she says, furiously stabbing at the speed dial on her phone. ‘This is your day, and look what I’m having to deal with. Just wait till I get home. I can tell you right now, they’re in for a WORLD of pain. Yes, it’s Mummy here, kindly roll your eyes BACK into the forward position,’ she snaps crisply at whatever poor unfortunate child happens to answer. ‘Now go and get Granny for me this instant. WHAT did you just say? Well I hate to disappoint you, but no, you are not a secret agent and you do NOT have a licence to kill your brother . . . hang on, is that the unmistakable sound of a Band-Aid wrapper that I hear being unpeeled?’
Oh dear. Right then, nothing for it but to order a bottle of champagne from the wine waiter (what the hell, when you’re out, you’re out), and let her get on with doing a major damage-limitation number on the home front.
Poor old Laura. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that she doesn’t love and adore her kids, of course she does. It’s just that, well, things haven’t exactly been easy for her of late. In fact, not for a long, long time. Put it this way, if you’d met Laura when I first did, back in school, in a million years you would never have predicted this kind of life for her. No one’s fault, no one to blame, it’s just that things didn’t quite work out for her the way you’d have foreseen.
Do You Want to Know a Secret? Page 2