‘There’s no way a little bit of dry rot will cost twenty grand to fix. A couple of grand, at most.’
‘But the bank said –’
‘The bank are just covering themselves. What do you think?’
‘OΚ,’ I said. ‘Do what you have to do.’
To my utter astonishment the vendors accepted the reduced price. How many more signs did I need that this house was meant to be mine? Nevertheless, I got a final-furlong bout of the wobblies: when Anton said, ‘Will we buy it?’ I heard myself wail, ‘No, I’m too frightened.’
‘OK.’
‘OK?’ Surprised, I looked at him.
‘OΚ, you’re too frightened. Let’s forget it.’
‘You don’t mean that, you’re just trying reverse pyschology.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not. I just want you to be happy.’
I looked at him, with suspicion. I thought I believed him. ‘Alright then. Talk me into it.’
He hesitated. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Quick, Anton, before I change my mind again, talk me into it.’
‘Er, right!’ He listed out all the reasons we were meant to buy this house: we had royalty money coming in; my career was on fire and I was bound to get an enormous advance in November; the bank – notoriously cautious – had given us approval; buying this house was better than buying a small place now and having the upheaval of a second move in a year’s time; we didn’t just want a house, we loved this particular house, it was very us. And finally, ‘If everything goes pear-shaped, we can sell the house and get back more than we paid.’
‘What if its value drops instead of increasing and we end up owing heaps of money?’
‘A house like that, in that area? – Course it’ll go up, it’s a no-brainer. We can’t lose. Nothing can go wrong.’
Part Two
* * *
GEMMA
1
It was eighty days since Dad had left. Or not even three months which, when I put it like that, didn’t sound so bad. Not much was going on when suddenly four BIG things happened, one after the other.
The first thing – at the end of March the clocks went forward. No big deal, I know, but wait, that’s not actually the thing, that was just the trigger. Anyway, the clocks went forward and even though I spent most of Sunday changing the time on Mam’s cooker, microwave, video, phone, seven clocks, even her watch, the implications didn’t hit me until Monday afternoon at work when Andrea put on her coat and said, ‘Right, I’m off.’ It was still bright so I said, ‘It’s the middle of the afternoon,’ and she replied, ‘It’s twenty to six.’
Suddenly I got it and nearly choked with terror. The evenings were stretching towards summer; when he’d left it had been the dead of winter. Where had all the time gone?
I had to see him. Nothing to do with Mam; this was about me. Though I rarely left work before seven I was fuelled with such desperate need that not even the combined forces of Frances and Francis could have stopped me.
I jostled my way out of the office, into the car and drove straight over to his work – I wouldn’t go to their apartment for a million quid. His car was in the car park, so he hadn’t left for the day. I watched anxiously over my steering wheel as the staff trickled out. Funny how they weren’t all tubby, I mused. Very few of them actually were and you’d think with all that chocolate lying around… Oh Christ, here he comes. With Colette. Shite. I’d been hoping to catch him on his own.
He was in his suit and looked much as he’d always looked; he was as familiar to me as myself, it was too strange not to have seen him in so long.
Colette’s hair was still highlighted, it didn’t seem like she was letting herself go, now that she’d bagged her man. But on the plus side she didn’t look pregnant.
As they neared me they were chatting in a dismayingly chummy manner. I got out of the car and stepped in front of both of them. It was meant to be kind of dramatic but they were walking quite fast and had almost passed me.
‘Dad,’ I called.
They turned; blank faces.
‘Dad?’
‘Gemma. Ah, hello.’
‘Dad, I haven’t heard from you in a while.’
‘Ah, sure, you know.’ He was uncomfortable. He turned to Colette, ‘Will you wait in the car, love?’
‘Love’ gave me a filthier but swung away towards the Nissan.
‘Does she have to be such a bitch?’ I asked. I couldn’t help it. ‘What reason does she have to be horrible?’
‘She’s just insecure.’
‘She’s insecure. What about me? I haven’t seen you in nearly three months.’
‘Is it that long?’ He shifted in a vague, old-man kind of way.
‘Yes, Dad.’ In a desperate attempt at humour I asked, ‘Don’t you want custody of me? You could have weekend visitation rights, take me to McDonalds.’
But he just said, ‘You’re grown up, you’re your own person.’
‘Don’t you even want to see me?’
They say you should never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to. Of course he wanted to see me.
But he said, ‘It’s probably for the best that we don’t meet up at the moment.’
‘But Dad…’ Grief rose like a wave and I began to cry. People walking past were looking but I didn’t care. The wave became a tsunami. I hadn’t seen my father in three months, I was bawling and choking like a peanut had gone down the wrong way – and he wouldn’t even touch me. I launched myself at him; he stood like a plank and patted me awkwardly. ‘Ah, Gemma, ah don’t…’
‘You don’t love me any more.’
‘I do, sure of course I do.’
With monumental effort, I forced myself to stop the choking, then cleared my throat, briefly getting it together. ‘Dad, please come home. Please.’
‘Noel, we have to collect the kids.’ Colette.
I swung around to her. ‘I thought he told you to wait in the car.’
‘Noel, the kids,’ she ignored me. ‘They’ll be wondering where we are.’
‘You know what?’ I looked at her and pointed at Dad. ‘I’m his kid and I’ve been wondering the very same thing.’
Then I added, ‘So fuck you.’
She studied me, cool as anything. ‘No, fuck you.
‘Two minutes,’ she said to Dad. ‘I’m counting.’ She stomped back to the car.
‘Classy.’
‘How’s your mother?’ Dad asked.
‘Your WIFE,’ I shouted the word around the car park. The few people who weren’t already looking were now. ‘Your WIFE is GREAT. She has a boyfriend. A Swiss fella called Helmut. He has a red Aston Martin with gull-wing doors.’
‘Has she, by the hokey? Listen, Gemma, I have to go now. Geri goes mad if we’re late.’
Contempt was all that was left to me. I looked at my father. ‘You’re a coward.’
In the sanctuary of my car the tears started again. All men are cowards.
And this wasn’t going to be fixed any time soon; it killed me to admit it but Dad and Colette had started to look permanent. So where did that leave me? What about my life?
Mam was doing her best, she really was trying hard to be brave. She’d found a kind of routine, where she used a string of daytime soaps to get her through each day, like a rope bridge over an abyss. She’d started going to Mass again, she’d even gone to a couple of coffee mornings with Mrs Kelly, but she always came back shaking like jelly. It was still necessary for me to stay with her every night.
So what were the chances of her turning around and saying, ‘Gemma, why don’t you take this weekend off? Go out on the piss, pick up a couple of men and get them to ride you into the middle of next week. I’ll be grand.’ No, somehow I couldn’t see it.
No one would do this for me. I thought of Owen, the youth I’d picked up the night of Cody’s birthday (although I had no memory of it). He’d asked me out twice and the second time I’d said yes, but I couldn’t name a day becaus
e I didn’t know how to get it past Mam.
I’d promised to ring him but so far I hadn’t.
2
Second thing – and probably least important of the four – I got a new account at work. The call came the next day – at ten past one, just as I was about to go out to lunch. This was a sign of the way things would continue; some people are super-demanding even when they don’t plan to be. The dyed-in-the-wool diva was Lesley Lattimore, an Irish It girl: in other words she went to lots of parties and spent plenty of money, none of it earned by her. Her dad, Larry ‘Wads’ Lattimore, had made a fortune from dodgy property developing and fleecing Irish tax-payers, but no one seemed to care. Especially not Lesley.
‘I want someone to organize my thirtieth birthday party and I heard you did Davinia Westport’s wedding.’
I didn’t ask if she’d been to Davinia’s wedding; I knew she hadn’t. She was the daughter of an unconvicted criminal and Davinia was way too posh to touch her. But Wads clearly wanted to buy his only daughter a Davinia-style bash.
‘What kind of event were you thinking of?’
‘Two hundred plus. A princess theme. Think Gothic Barbie,’ she said, so I did and suddenly I needed this job. ‘When can you come to see me?’
‘Today. Now.’
I grabbed some files, which had photos of some of the more imaginative parties I’d done and went along to Lesley’s city-centre, river-view duplex. She had the supergroomed hair, the St Tropez tan, the clothes sheeny with newness, the all-over gloss that rich people have, like they’ve been dipped in lacquer. And of course Lesley had a tiny handbag – confirming my theory that the richer the person, the smaller their handbag. Like, what do they need? Their gold card, the keys to the Audi TT, a tiny mobile and a Juicy Tube. Me, my handbag is the size of an air-hostess’s wheely case, full of work files, make-up, leaking pens, dry-cleaning tickets, half-eaten cereal bars, Solpadeine, diet Coke, Heat and of course my brick of a phone.
Lesley also had the attitude down pat – it shuttled between brusque and extremely rude, passing all points in between – and that, coupled with her gloss, managed to obscure her less-than-average good looks.
You’d be with her for a while before noticing that she was more than a little bit sharp around the nose and chin area. Indeed if she’d been going for a witch theme instead of a princess one she’d have really looked the part. Funny that Wads hadn’t bought her a new chin. However, despite the chip on my shoulder I had to admit we shared a common vision.
‘Why should I hire you?’ she demanded, and I began to list the number of high-profile events I’d pulled together – weddings, conferences, awards ceremonies – then I hesitated, wobbled and played my ace. ‘I have a wand,’ I said. ‘A silver star, backed by lilac fluff.’
‘So have I!’ she cried. ‘You’re hired!’
She ran off and got it, then circled it solemnly over my head and said, ‘I grant you the honour of organizing Lesley’s birthday party.’
Then she handed it to me and said, ‘Say, “I grant you a castle with turrets.”’
Reluctantly I took the wand.
‘Go on!’ she said. ‘I grant you a castle with turrets.’
‘I grant you a castle with turrets,’ I said.
‘I grant you a medieval hall.’
‘I grant you a medieval hall,’ I repeated. I could see this becoming very wearing.
‘I grant you a team of jousters.’
‘I grant you a team of jousters.’
In between each ‘grant’ I had to circle the wand over her head and bring it down on each of her shoulders. The mortifycation was extreme, then she lost interest in the wand and I nearly cried with happiness. Especially as I was meant to be writing down her list of requirements.
And what a list! She wanted a silver empire-line ‘gown’ (her word) with pointy floor-length sleeves, a white ermine cape, a pointy princess hat and silver shoes (pointy, of course). She wanted pink drinks. She wanted silver chairs with curvy legs. She wanted pink food.
I wrote everything down, nodding, ‘Uh-huh, good idea.’ I didn’t address any hard questions, like could the male guests be persuaded to drink the pink drinks or how the hell was anyone meant to dance to a band of lute minstrels. Now wasn’t the time for me to start pulling holes in some of the more impractical parts of her vision. We were still in the warm glow of the honeymoon period and there was plenty of time for screaming matches in the coming weeks – where she’d scream at me and I’d smile mildly – oh, plenty of time.
‘And when do you want to have it?’
‘The thirty-first of May.’ Two months away. To do this properly I’d have preferred two years, but the Lesleys of this world would never be so obliging.
All the same I went away already buzzing with ideas and everything suddenly seemed a lot easier. Bringing in new business always had a good effect – when time was stretching by without me getting the jobs, it was like being deprived of oxygen – but now I was breathing free and clear and it was obvious that this coming Friday night would be perfect for my close encounter with Owen. I could pretend to Mam it was a work do while being able to enjoy a leisurely hangover the following day. I was doing Mam no favours by lying, but I didn’t care. After seeing the togetherness of Dad and Colette, I had to try to change things.
By the time I got back to my desk Lesley had left four messages – she’d had some ‘great’ ideas; the invitations should be delivered personally by a handsome prince; the guests should be given goody bags on arrival – but she didn’t want to pay for them. ‘Ring Clinique,’ she said. ‘And Origins and Prescriptives. Tell them we need free stuff.’
Then another message. ‘And Decléor and Jo Malone.’
And one more. ‘Get Lulu Guinness to design the bags.’
3
Third big thing: my date with Owen.
I rang him and said, ‘It’s coal scuttle Gemma. How about Friday night?’
I’d already decided that if he couldn’t manage that, he could go and fuck himself. However he said, ‘What time? Nine?’
I hesitated and he said, ‘Ten?’
‘No, I was thinking more of eight. It’s just that for reasons I can’t go into now, I don’t get out very often at the moment so I need to wring as much enjoyment as I possibly can from the night.’
‘We can make it seven, if that’s how it is.’
‘No, I won’t be finished work in time. Now, where will we meet and please don’t say Kehoes. You’re a young man about town, you know the hot new places, let’s go to them.’
‘All of them?’
‘Like I said I don’t get out very often.’
A thoughtful silence. ‘We’re only in Dublin, not Manhattan, there aren’t that many hot new places.’
‘I know, sorry.’ I tried to explain. ‘I want to go to one of those bars where I’m completely disoriented, especially when I go to the ladies’. I just want to feel I’m living a little, you know?’
‘Then how about Crash? There are lots of mirrors and steps. People are always tripping and walking into themselves.’
Perfect. I’d been meaning to check it out for work anyway.
‘Eight o’clock, Friday night in Crash. Don’t be late,’ I warned.
As I stumbled down the mirrored entrance steps of Crash and saw Owen, he wasn’t as good-looking as I’d remembered when he’d been lying on my bedroom floor that horrible morning – I must have still been wearing beer goggles. Like, he wasn’t bad, just not the criminally young boy-band cutie that I’d remembered.
But… ‘I like your shirt,’ I said. It was a picture of a Cadillac driving down a desert highway. Very cool. ‘And I like your hair.’ Shiny and sticky-up – obviously he’d put a bit of work into it.
‘Thanks,’ he said, paused, then added, ‘I put special stuff in, to make a good impression. Too much information?’
‘No.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’ll have a glass of white wine now.’
I arranged myself on the couch. ‘But every second drink will be a mineral water and before I came out I had a glass of milk to line my stomach so I won’t be making a show of myself tonight like I did that other time. Too much information?’
‘Er, no.’ He went to the bar and the back of his shirt showed the same desert highway, this time with the Cadillac driving away.
Then the Cadillac was zooming towards me again. ‘Your drink.’
He lifted his glass. ‘Cheers. To Gemma’s big night out.’
We clinked, sipped, replaced glasses on the table, then an awkward pause followed. ‘So, ah, how’s the coal scuttle working out?’ Owen asked.
But it was too late, I’d already pounced. ‘Owen, that was an awkward pause and for reasons I can’t go into right now, I haven’t got time to waste on awkward pauses. We’ve got to fast-track this thing. There’s not enough time to get to know each other naturally; we must induce it. I know this sounds mad but could we try to fast-forward through the first three months or so, and get to the comfortable staying-in-and-watching-videos stage?’
He was looking at me a little warily but, to my gratification, said, ‘I’ve seen you without your make-up?’
‘Yes, that’s the idea. And we don’t have sex every night any more.’ Then I began to blush: an out-of-control-forest-fire super-blush, as I realized that we hadn’t had sex at all. Yet.
‘Oh God.’ I put my hands over my fiery cheeks. ‘I’m sorry.’
I wanted to go home. I wasn’t fit to be out and about and I was frightened by my crassness. This wasn’t me, what was happening?
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘I’m not insane, just a bit… under pressure.’
There was a moment when the evening hovered on a knife-edge then Owen looked relieved at my apology and even began to laugh. ‘After the last time we met, I know what you’re like – you’re wild.’
I smiled weakly, not exactly happy with being Kooky Girl, but on the other hand if he already thought I was bonkers, I wouldn’t have to work so hard at acting normal.