If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (18 page)

‘Take a look at Billy Boy’s face, will you?’ I say to James. I’m right at his shoulder now, so there’s just no way that he’s not hearing me. ‘The picture of boredom. He’s actually making the same face that kids do when they’re being force-fed spinach. No offence, but your idea is a pile of shite, and if you want my advice, you’d want to come up with some better ideas . . . like . . .
now
.’

‘Emmm . . . I’m so sorry to interrupt,’ says James, looking grey now, ‘but could I possibly get some water?’

‘Sure,’ says Sir William, looking at him a bit oddly, and waving for the
Batman
butler to come back in.

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you OK, son? You’ve gone very pale, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Fine thanks, just emm . . .’

‘Imagining things, dearest?’ I finish the sentence for him. ‘Just like you did this morning? Oh, now this would be after you slept with your screechy-voiced girlfriend in
our
house, in
our
bed.’

I know he’s hearing me. I know by the way that he clears his throat, then sits intently forward, really,
really
focusing on everything Declan’s saying, as if by just ignoring me, I’ll eventually disappear. Some hope, babe.

Sir William eases himself back into his chair, contemplating the pile of documents in front of him. ‘You see, lads,’ he eventually says, ‘I have to ask myself, is this show the kind of thing that myself and Eloise would want to sit down in front of the telly on a Sunday night and watch? And, no offence or anything, but the answer is no.’

‘See?’ I say to James, right into his left ear to be exact. ‘Told you it was a rubbish idea. I’m hoarse saying it, in fact. I don’t get it, why didn’t you just listen to me in the first place? It’s got nothing going for it. Plus you’re trying to cut corners in all the wrong places so it’ll end up like . . . like
La Bohème
performed by finger puppets. The pilot episode is total crap, too. In fact, the only thing that connects the characters is that their names follow each other on the script. A cat could have coughed a better script out of its bum.’

‘The pilot isn’t crap, it’s a gem,’ James says out loud. I don’t think he meant to, that was just the effect of my taunting him; it just slipped out, probably without him even realizing it.

Both Sir William and Declan turn to look at him in shock.

‘Ah now, son,’ says Sir William, completely taken aback. ‘I never said it was crap, I just said it didn’t grab me by the short and curlies, that’s all.’

‘Sorry, sorry about that, yes, I totally understand, that isn’t what I meant at all . . .’ James says, or rather stammers.

I take a moment and look around the table. Sir William, deeply unimpressed and beginning to suspect that James is losing it, Declan frantically searching through all his spreadsheets and folders trying to whip a last-minute rabbit out of a hat, and James, ghostly pale, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

A kinder, more humane person than me would shut up now, would recognize that these guys are fighting for their professional lives, and would maybe even try to help out. I’ve loads of suggestions that I could have prompted James with, too. Maybe not arty-farty ideas like this one that they’re in mid-pitch for, but other stuff that might have . . . shall we say, broader, mass-market appeal. Declan, I know right well, has nothing else up his sleeve, but then he’s the money man, whereas James is the one in charge of concepts and ‘the company vision’. (His gobshite phrase, not mine.) Anyway, the bastard is always laughing at anything I come up with, dismissing it as ‘lowest common denominator’ TV, although, when it suits him, he’s perfectly happy to filch my ideas and rebrand them as his own, particularly stuff that could be targeted at a female audience.

So I’ve two clear choices here. I could do a Cyrano de Bergerac and prompt James about another pitch, one that’s been at the back of my mind for a long time, and is titled,
God Created Man, But I’d Have Done a Better Job Myself
.

I could, but I don’t.

Because just then, the haunting, ugly image of Screechy Sophie standing in my bedroom, wearing my boyfriend’s shirt, with me barely cold in the ground, comes back to me . . . and that’s all it takes.

‘You should have listened to me about that rubbishy old priest pitch but you didn’t,’ I say to James, and I’m not messing, but now, the beads of sweat are actually rolling down his face and neck. I’m shouting at him now, and I don’t even care. I’m getting so upset that I’m sure the freckles must be hopping off my face, just remembering this morning and the awful shock I got. OK, so this mightn’t be the ideal time or place to have this out with him, but then, do I really care?

‘Too busy lying to me, cheating on me, then moving that over-painted trollop into our house. And what really makes me sick is there you are in public, acting the part of the broken-hearted boyfriend. But here’s the one thing that I just don’t get . . . did I mean that little to you, James? Did I really?’

‘No, no, no . . .’ he says, massaging his temples, like he has the world’s largest brain tumour, and it’s about to kill him.

‘Son, are you sure you’re all right?’ Sir William asks, concerned.

‘He’s . . . been under a lot of stress lately, personal stuff,’ says Declan, trying to salvage the situation. But there’s no shutting me up now.

‘I mean, I was so good to you,’ I continue ranting. ‘I put up with all of your moodiness and your arrogance, and it’s only now that I can see things clearly. No one really likes you, you know. Not my friends or my family, and it turns out they were right about you, all this time. They were right and I was wrong. You’re nothing but a self-centred, over-confident, egotistical gobshite. My God, Napoleon probably had a James Kane complex.’

‘This isn’t happening,’ he mutters, swaying in his seat, ‘not now, not here.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, dearest, but yes, this is your worst nightmare. I
am
your worst nightmare. And I don’t even feel remotely guilty for telling you right here and now, because you know what? After the way you’ve behaved, you don’t deserve Sir William and his money. And you don’t deserve a partner like Declan either, who, by the way, will go on to do so much better without you.’

‘I do deserve it,’ he’s half-moaning now, like he’s lost all grip on reality.

‘Oh, and one last thing? Copernicus called. It turns out you’re not the centre of the universe after all.’

I had scarcely realized it, but James is practically gibbering, repeating everything I say over and over. Like Rain Man.

‘I think maybe we should call a doctor,’ says Sir William, who’s standing up now, really concerned. ‘That fella’s not well. Look at him, rambling on about Copernicus and Napoleon. I don’t get it, you pair are normally on top of things, what’s the deal here?’

It’s left to poor Declan to try and do damage limitation, but it’s waaaaaayyyyyy too late.

Because that’s when disaster number three strikes.

Disaster Number Three

With impeccable timing, two particularly vicious-looking Dobermanns come around out of the house, sniffing for trouble.

‘Ah, here’s the lads,’ says Sir William, probably delighted with the distraction, as he takes a fistful of posh finger biscuits and waves them at the dogs. ‘Who’s been my good little fellas, then? Who wants a little treat?’

With that, the pair of mutts are over to him, licking his hand and gobbling down the biscuits.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I half-scream, ‘James, get rid of them!’

I’m actually standing on a chair now, terrified. And, true to form, they smell the fear.

Honestly, if it wasn’t so frightening it would be funny. Me on a chair, screaming for all I’m worth to get them away from me, James rocking back and forth, massaging his temples with the sweat pumping out of him, and the two Dobermanns at my feet, snapping and growling, completely sensing that I’m there.

The rest is a blur. I remember the following in no particular order. Sir William trying to coax the mutts away, unable to understand why they’re barking at thin air. James gulping back water, trembling and shaking and generally acting like he should be in an intensive-care unit and not the garden of a county mansion. Declan frantically gathering up all his files and folders and telling Sir William that they have lots of other ideas they could discuss in the future? Down the line? Maybe? If he’s still interested? Please and pretty please with knobs attached? ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Sir William says non-committally. ‘We’ll all have dinner sometime,’ I remember him saying, dismissing them off-handedly. But you’d need to be a right thicko not to pick up on the clear, underlying implication.

Dinner for you and a CAT scan for your mate.

Next thing, I’m back in the car, safe from dogs and with James at the wheel beside me, clasping on to it for dear life. Trembling, shaking, breathing deeply, in for two, out for four.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK?’ asks Declan through the passenger window beside me. James just nods. He can’t even answer him, he’s that shell-shocked. Like he’s going to turn around at any minute and ask, ‘When, oh when, will the lambs be silent?’

‘Well, I’ll drive behind you, just in case.’ Poor old Declan, always so concerned.

Just then his phone beep-beeps as a text comes through.

‘Oh, it’s from Sir William,’ says Declan, holding out his phone, so I’m conveniently able to see it but James can’t.

It reads thus:

Declan scrolls down and my eyes follow the rest of the message.

He keeps scrolling right down to the very last, killer line.

Chapter Twelve

FIONA

‘Sarah Casey, will you kindly stand up and tell the class what is so funny? If it’s that amusing, maybe you’ll be good enough to share it with the rest of us?’

Fiona is
soooooo
scary in class. I should know, I’m right at the back,
quelle surprise
, having left James to stew in his own juice for a bit, after the unmitigated disaster of this morning. And oh my God, but it’s boring. It’s also stifling hot, sticky, and for some reason, there’s an overpowering smell of cheap perfume mixed with gone-off egg sandwiches and cheese and onion crisps, which immediately brings me back to my own miserable and wasted schooldays. Written on the board is today’s topic: ‘How successful were Stalin in Russia and/or Mussolini in Italy in using the personality cult as an instrument of propaganda?’

My oh my, won’t knowing the answer to that particular conundrum come in handy later on in life.

‘Sarah Casey, I’m waiting. In your own time, please.’

Poor old Sarah, the chief messer herself, is actually doing something completely innocuous: reading this week’s
Heat
magazine under her desk, and filling out a questionnaire entitled ‘What’s Your Sex Number?’ Nothing Fiona herself didn’t do in her day. In fact, she got up to an awful lot worse back in college: she was forever being kicked out of lectures for acting the eejit, and on one famous occasion, even turning up pissed out of her head.

There you go, beware of the poacher turned game-keeper, and all that.

Sarah’s
Heat
magazine is duly confiscated, Fiona shoves it into her briefcase, and I know right well she’ll spend her lunchbreak probably filling out the sex number quiz herself. Anyhoo, she tells the class that they’ve got from now till the bell rings to answer the question on the board, and that they’ll all be subsequently graded on their answers. Honest to God, you’d need a heart of stone not to melt at the sight of the pale, drawn faces scribbling their little hearts out about Mussolini and Stalin, the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century and yawn, yawn, yawn.

‘Such a total waste of time,’ I can’t help saying out loud, but no one reacts to me.

No one psychic in the class, then, which I suppose is kind of a relief.

‘Sorry, everyone, but where I’m coming from, there’s nothing more maddening than seeing people wasting time.’ I turn to the poor unfortunate next to me, who has train-track braces on her teeth, smells of Dove deodorant, and is tearing across the page with a biro like her life depends on it. Her name is written at the top of her copybook . . . Oonagh, spelt like that, with two ‘o’s.

‘Come on, Oonagh, do you honestly think it’s going to matter in ten, twenty years’ time that you know all about Mussolini and Stalin and on what exact dates they came to power? Do you think you’ll even remember it the day after you finish your exams? Look out the window, it’s a beautiful sunny day! You should be out meeting boys, hanging out with your friends, having fun and . . . you know, actually
enjoying
the few precious years we’re all given on this earth, instead of stuck in here learning boring crap that you’ll forget all about the minute you get out of the exam hall and set fire to your history books. And that goes for the lot of you, too. Take it from the dead girl: you’ll leave school, and one day you’ll all look back and only regret the things you didn’t do when you were young and gorgeous and free and you had the chance.’

I look around, feeling like I deserve a round of applause, and half-wondering whether or not I should leap up on to a desk and start shouting out ‘
carpe diem
’, like Robin Williams does in
Dead Poets Society
, but, as usual, all my best speeches fall on dead ears. I head up to the front of the class, then something strikes me, and I turn back to talk to the top of all their frantically scribbling heads.

‘Ohh, here’s some unasked-for advice, though, something that no one ever tells you. Much as we all hate the misery and torture of having Irish rammed down our throats, it comes in very handy for when you’re abroad and need to communicate with one of your pals in such a way that no one will understand. Like having a secret code, almost. Mark my words, you’ll all be travelling on the Metro in Paris one day, and you’ll urgently need to tell whoever you’re with to check out the cute fella sitting opposite. If you ask me, that’s really the only Irish vocabulary you need bother your heads with. How to talk freely about foreign guys abroad, in public, at the top of your voice, so they’ll never understand. Trust me on this: get your Irish teacher to teach you phrases like, “Would you say your man opposite is married/gay/seeing anyone?” Or here’s another one, “Please can we get the hell out of this dump of a hellhole, the guy to my left has halitosis and the one on my right thinks we’re a lesbian couple.” Please listen to me, girls, in five years’ time you’ll be glad you did.’

They can’t, of course, so I go up to Fiona and plonk down on her desk, with my feet up, the picture of boredom. She’s on her BlackBerry, discreetly checking her emails under the desk, so no one can see.

‘Hey, hon,’ I say, patting her on the shoulder, although she doesn’t feel it. Not even a shiver, nothing. ‘Just thought of something funny. Remember the time you and me were in Italy on our InterRail hollier, and we were having a full conversation in our rubbishy, pidgin Irish about the general gorgeousness of this really Mediterranean-looking guy on the sun lounger beside us? And you were wondering whether or not he put sand down his Speedos just to impress women? Then he turned round and told us, in flawless Irish, that he was very flattered at our comments, but that he had a girlfriend, and, on a point of order, had never put sand up, down or anywhere near his swimming togs in his entire life. Turned out he came from Belmullet and just happened to be very, very tanned.’

No reaction. Which is kind of weird, after the way James nearly had a coronary every time he heard my voice this morning. In fact, it’s funny to think I could stand up here in my nip and no one would as much as look twice at me. Ho hum.

Total silence in the classroom, apart from the furious scratching of pens on copybooks.

‘Fiona? Fi? Oh, Fioooooona?’

Still nothing. Not that I expected there to be, I was just trying to alleviate the tedium, that’s all. Eventually, I decide to amuse myself by reading the screen on her phone over her shoulder.

‘Sorry about this, love,’ I say to her. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but the thing no one ever tells you about death is that there’s not a huge amount there, in the line of entertainment. So . . . you don’t mind if I read along with you, do you?’

She sneezes, which I take as a, ‘Yes, no problem, Charlotte, work away, feel free.’

As it happens, she’s checking her emails and . . . oh for God’s sake. I do NOT believe this.

There’s one waiting for her in her inbox.

From Mr Loves German Shepherds. Sent at 1 a.m. this morning.

Ooooooh, this had better be good.

‘DELETE!’ I say right into Fiona’s face, but her eyes never leave the screen, not even for a second. ‘Take my advice and delete it now, then run very far in the opposite direction from wherever this git is.’

But she reads on.

‘Fiona,’ I’m insisting at her now, ‘wait till you see, he’ll use the oldest tricks in the book to try and win you round. Mark my words: he’ll tell you he had to take care of his sick granny who mislaid her glass eye at bingo, or else he was about to fly back from Belarus, where he’s building an orphanage for sick kids, to come and meet you last night, when a sudden, freak thunderstorm meant his flight got rerouted to Swaziland, where he’s emailing you from now. FIONA! Please listen to me!’

No joy.

Feck it, anyway. And on she reads.

‘Fiona, he just used the phrase de rigueur. If that doesn’t scream gay at you, I don’t know what will. Gay, gay, gay, gayer than the Christmas window at Brown Thomas, I’ll lay odds on it. Would you please wake up and smell the KY?’

‘OK, so maybe he’s a gay vet,’ I say right into her face, and believe me, it’s beyond weird that she just keeps reading on, not an eyelid flicker, nothing. Weirder still, me talking about her love life in front of thirty adolescent girls.

‘Fi, the fact remains, this is NOT the man for you, babes.’ I’m doing my best to sound all Oprah-esque; you know, wise, yet concerned, but, as ever, nothing doing. Her eyes are racing greedily down through the email now, so, it’s a case of, if you can’t beat them, join them. I hop around to stand right behind her chair, so I can get a better view.

Right. Now Fiona’s scarlet in the face remembering that she told him her alter ego Lexie Hart was a fitness instructor. And that bums, tums and thighs was her favourite class, if memory serves.

Oh, the barefaced cheek of him, I think, furiously sitting back up on the desk again and kicking my legs off it. Using political correctness to win Fiona over. Times like this, there’s nothing I wish for more than to be able to send her some kind of physical sign. I dunno; if I could only get my fingers to work properly and maybe type out a message for her on the keypad of her laptop? Or somehow, get her to turn on her car radio just as a song is playing which she’ll magically know is a coded message from me. Dad does it with Mum all the time, I just wish I had the knack. Although, mind you, I’m not too sure if there even is a song called, ‘Ignore That Stupid Bastard You Met Online, He Stood You Up and He’s No Find.’ Altogether now for the chorus:

The silence is broken as a bell rings in the far distance, next thing it’s like there’s a sudden thunderstorm, with the sound of chairs being scraped back and desks banging. The girls pack up and start tearing off in about twenty different directions, dumping their answer sheets on her desk as they trundle out, with grunts of, ‘Thanks, Miss.’ With the speed of light, the classroom empties, leaving Fiona all alone, looking wistful and forlorn, staring into space and drumming her biro off the desk.

Which means there’s a good chance she believes that cock and bull story about Mr Loves German Shepherds going out last night and doing a James Herriot from
All Creatures Great
and Small
.

Which, incidentally, was Fiona’s favourite programme as a child.

Which clearly means it’s time for me to intervene. And thank God for her that I’m here, that’s all I can say. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder what she’d do if I
wasn’t
around to guide her.

Later on, back in the staff room, Fiona’s in her little cubby hole, face stuck into the computer, when she’s interrupted by Mary Bell, one of the senior maths teachers. A kindly, round-faced, middle-aged woman who I remember Fiona telling me was widowed only last year.

‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ she says, tentatively, as Fi expertly snaps her laptop shut, which means she was probably either on Facebook or else checking out her online horoscope.

‘No, no, not at all, you’re fine.’

‘I just wondered how you were doing, I mean, after what happened to your poor friend Charlotte.’

‘Emm, well, it’s not been easy, that’s for sure . . .’

‘How are her family taking things?’

Oh God, I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear the answer to that one. Not yet. The thought of Mum and Kate being upset . . . no, you know what? I can’t listen to this. It’s just too painful. And somehow, the longer I spend on this side of the fence, the harder it’s getting, even though I’m still seeing them all the time. Suddenly I have to concentrate on breathing. So I leave them to it and drift over to the other side of the room, fingers stuck in my ears, waiting until kind old Mary Bell has moved off and Fi’s back on her own again. Sorry, but even angels feel heartache, too.