What If? Read online

  There’s a pause as she considers my dilemma. I’m hoping she’ll come up with something wise and insightful.

  ‘You could always win the lottery and go and visit them all.’

  Hopes dashed. Although, she’s not wrong. You see, my exes are scattered all over the world. Oh yes, I did more to bring countries together than the United Nations.

  I hear a bell ringing in the background at the other end of the line and Kate immediately wraps things up. ‘Hot N Spicy are here, I need to go. I’ll call you later and you’d better be out of your dressing gown.’

  The line goes dead. I replace the handset, finish making my tea and carry it over to the sofa, Kate’s words playing in my mind. Lottery win aside, maybe there’s something in what she says. This is 1999. The last year of the century. How incredible would it be to have turned my life around and go into the 2000’s happy, fulfilled and in love again? Let’s face it, nothing is going to change unless I do something to make it happen. An idea begins to form in my mind. There’s an obvious way to find out if my happy ever after lies with an ex, but where would I start? I suppose I’d do it in chronological order. That would mean going back twelve years to my first love, Nick Russo, and to a time when I still had a connection to the word ‘virgin’, other than the fact that I’ve flown on their aeroplanes…

  2

  Don’t Leave Me This Way – The Communards

  The holiday was booked for the end of June, a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, and the day after I attended the mothership of all that was oppressive in society, St Mary the Blessed Virgin High School in Glasgow, for the last time.

  Actually, school wasn’t that bad. Where else could you hang out with your mates all day, get free ciggies from the guys at lunchtime, and be involved in more daily drama than an episode of Neighbours? The only inconvenience was tolerating the punishments that were regularly meted out to me for answering back, not paying attention, and generally causing affray. But it was all innocent and done in the name of fun.

  My favourite class was French, where my ‘disruptive’ behaviour pushed the highly strung Mr Distell too far and he made me sit behind a filing cabinet for a whole year. It was a great opportunity to catch up with lost sleep.

  As for the work, much as I don’t want to appear conceited, I officially possess the memory of an elephant. Even when I was staring transfixed at John Potts’s thighs in biology, I could still remember every word the teacher uttered. Exams, therefore, were never a problem. Straight A student, straight zero work. Life was bliss.

  I think that’s why I agreed to go on holiday. I wanted to prolong the last year with my school pals for as long as possible. We knew we would all go in different directions afterwards. Sarah Moore, my friend since we were in the womb and our mothers went to antenatal classes together, was going to Edinburgh University to study mathematics. Such a rational subject for a joyfully irrational person. Carol Sweeney, Glasgow’s answer to Kate Moss, was going to London to try to launch her modelling career. Jess Latham, Aberdeen University, reading politics. Politics! She said she chose it because it was sure to include lots of men and dinner parties. And Kate Wilkes, who had been butchering our coiffures for years, finally had a position as an apprentice hairdresser in a trendy Glasgow salon.

  Me? I still wasn’t sure what to be when I grew up, so I’d applied for university just because it seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t have the financial support to study in a different city, so I opted for Glasgow University and was accepted to study English literature. Did I really want to spend four years immersed in Keats, D.H. Lawrence and Shakespeare? I’d rather have my teeth pulled. No, I wanted to travel the world, meet interesting people and rich men who would buy me diamonds while encouraging my career as a kickass boss with a big heart and a philanthropic sideline. Years of reading Jackie Collins novels had clearly had an effect on my life aspirations. In reality, however, I was lacking the finances for an epic, global life adventure, so I applied for Uni and settled for a fortnight with my chums in the centre of the Costa Del Juvenile Delinquent, Benidorm. It was hardly St Lucia, but we were living off our parents. Or at least the other girls were. I’d saved every bloody penny for this holiday. For eighteen months, I’d spent every Saturday clearing tables and serving coffees to loud women in fur coats with diamonds the size of Gibraltar dripping from their fingers, in one of Glasgow’s more ‘upmarket’ department stores. I hated that job. It was bad enough that I had to work on Saturdays when everyone else was hanging out and shopping at Miss Selfridge, but to make matters worse I had to wear a brown A-line overall that made me look an overcooked sausage. Not that it mattered, as I was apparently invisible as I trundled round the tables clearing away the used crockery. That was the thing with the kind of unbearably obnoxious, aloof women who frequented the store, they didn’t acknowledge the presence of anyone who earned less than £100k per year. They would just carry on their conversations whilst I cleaned their tables, oblivious to the fact that I could hear every word they uttered.

  ‘Have you seen her breasts lately? I didn’t realise the porn star look was in this season.’

  ‘So I said to Jeremy, Monte Carlo is so passé, it’s St Barts this year and don’t even think about flying commercial.’

  ‘Of course I fake it, darling, otherwise we’d be at it all night and I do need my beauty sleep.’

  They didn’t even stop for breath, never mind to say a courteous ‘Thank you’ for clearing away their debris. Yet perversely, although I detested them, I vowed that one day I’d be able to drape myself in jewels and pay five pounds for a sticky bun. I would watch the way they held their cigarettes, flicked their hair and talked in exaggerated whispers, always with the self-assurance that they were above reproach. Only one thing, I decided, gives that air of confidence – money. I was determined that one day I’d be sitting there in my Janet Regers, underneath my Dior, talking about my rich husband’s failure to achieve an erection. But until then, me and my sausage-shade uniform were working all the hours I could get to save up for a bit of fun in the Spanish sun.

  We left for Benidorm at 10.15 p.m.. In order to thoroughly embarrass us, all our parents insisted on accompanying us to the airport. In my case it was just my mum, as my dad was in the middle of another deep debate with Jack Daniel’s. I’d heard them arguing while I was packing and was relieved when it finally went quiet because that meant he’d slumped into a bourbon induced coma. I learnt when I was young not to get in the middle of them. Instead, I found a way to lock their issues in a box in my mind and escape into books, boys and pals, all the while having the same thought: I. Will. Never. Be. Like. Them.

  All that fighting and staying together even though they brought no joy to each other whatsoever? No thanks. How could two people who must have loved each other enough to take their vows end up like this? If that’s how marriage turned out, I’d pass, thanks. Yes, in hindsight, several engagements later, I can see the irony of that train of thought.

  Anyway, back to my seventeen year old self.

  By the time we got to the airport, my mum was in organisation mode, with an undertone of disapproval. ‘Now, have you got the number of the British Embassy in case you have any trouble? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Remember, don’t speak to any foreign men, they might misunderstand your intentions.’

  I doubted it very much.

  It took us an age to get rid of the menagerie of relatives. We finally managed it by convincing them that we should go straight through to the departure lounge, lest we get trodden on in the stampede of tourists rushing through security at the last minute. We stormed into the duty-free shopping area like it was a competitive trolley dash. There wasn’t a skirt longer than twelve inches or a heel under four, and we couldn’t walk right next to each other because our matching perms were teased, curled and sprayed to the size of beach balls. The only thing that varied was our hair colour. Sarah was a brunette, Kate was chestnut, I was light ash blonde (straight out of a box of d
ye from the chemist), Jess’s mane was fiery red and Carol was the one who put us all in the shade because aside from her natural dark tresses, she was 5’ 10” tall, and made Cindy Crawford look average. Right now, her perfect white teeth were glinting as she adopted the same gleeful expression as the rest of us. We were ecstatic. Two weeks of fun and freedom with not a responsible adult in sight.

  We made straight for the ciggies and alcohol section of the duty-free. Five bottles of vodka, 1,600 Benson & Hedges, and five bars of Toblerone later, we settled down in the bar to await our departure to Alicante.

  Sarah and I were doing our best rendition of Whitney’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, when we were rudely interrupted.

  ‘Right,’ bellowed Jess, doing her best Margaret Thatcher impersonation. Not that we were fans. Thatcher had just been voted in for a third term and in our working-class area of the West of Scotland that result was about as popular as sexually transmitted warts. ‘If we’re going to get through the next two weeks without getting arrested or killing each other, we need to set some ground rules.’

  The rest of us groaned in horror.

  ‘Jess,’ countered Sarah, ‘we just got rid of the wrinklies and now you’re going all maternal on us. Calm down and have another vodka.’

  ‘But we’ve got to have some rules,’ persisted Jess, ‘or we could end up spoiling the whole holiday.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Kate interjected.

  ‘Well, for example, I think we should agree that no men are allowed back to the apartment.’

  This was greeted with total silence, save for the clinking of ice cubes as we all felt a sudden need for a large slug of alcohol. It’s not that we were promiscuous. In fact, unbelievably for five seventeen year olds, not one of us had done the whole deed, but we weren’t angels in the penis department. I’d had the same boyfriend, Mark Barwick, on and off all the way through high school (we were currently very much off), and we’d crossed a few lines, but nothing that could risk pregnancy. I had no intention of going any further than that with some stranger in Benidorm, but the whole point of the holiday was to have some uninhibited, unconstrained-by-parental-sensibilities, memorable fun.

  Carol spoke up. ‘I’m not sure I agree with Jess on that one, but I do think we should have some ground rules so that any dodgy stuff gets nipped in the bum.’

  My pal was gorgeous, but she was hopeless with her sayings and regularly had us in stitches when they came out wrong, back to front, or upside down. Or upside backwards, as she would say.

  I nearly fell off my chair. In all the years I had known Carol, she had never demonstrated any sign of having one responsible brain cell, never mind a whole grey matter of them.

  She continued, ‘I propose the rules are as follows: a. We must snog at least one new man every night; b. We must go home only when we can no longer walk due to overindulgence in the falling-down juice, and; c. No full sex, blow jobs only. How does that sound?’

  I don’t think the lady at the next table needed to hear all that, because she suddenly started to choke on her cuppa.

  The rest of us dissolved into hysteria.

  ‘I’ve got another one,’ piped Kate when she regained her power of speech. ‘No cooking, tidying up or washing dishes of any kind.’

  By this time, Jess was a mild shade of puce.

  It was my turn. ‘And remember, girls, if you do get swept off your platforms by an exotic lover, reinforced condoms must be used at all times.’

  The woman at the next table was now requiring resuscitation.

  Jess mumbled, ‘Okay, okay, but no men in the apartment, please.’

  We all nodded furiously, tears rolling down our cheeks.

  ‘Whatever you say, Jess, we’ll do our best,’ I reassured her. And I meant it. Kind of.

  We arrived at the apartment in the middle of the night. This was a blessing, as due to fatigue and too much vodka, we didn’t register the full extent of the dump. Whoever had written in the brochure that it slept six, must have presumed that the six were highly intimate and would sleep on top of each other.

  The main room contained an old sofa and two camp beds. Another three camp beds were behind a curtain in what was obviously a large cupboard in a previous life. In the kitchen, there was a one-ring cooker, a mini-fridge, a cracked sink and a colony of ants. As for the bathroom, let’s just say that I was hopeful that there would be showers at the pool and public toilets nearby.

  But we didn’t care. We slumped on to our beds, fully clothed, and were sleeping within thirty seconds.

  We woke the next morning to the sound of trains thundering over our heads, then we realised there were no trains and the noise was our hangovers systematically crushing our brain cells. God, it hurt. Ever sensible, Jess came to the rescue with paracetamols all round and we decided the only cure was a day at the beach.

  In order to deny the ants time to nest on our body parts, we were out of the door in five minutes, looking like we’d slept under a bush.

  We made our way to the beach and parked ourselves in the first available clearing.

  ‘Who needs Glasgow?’ Kate murmured happily, as she slapped on enough oil to lubricate a Ferrari.

  We spent the rest of the day in a semi-conscious state, waking only when one of us yelled ‘Pec alert, pec alert’ as a gorgeous specimen of the male variety passed by.

  It was all very civilised, like an episode of Wish You Were Here. Until later that evening…

  Kate and I retreated to the balcony – in Glasgow it would have been called a window ledge – with two large drinks, to give the others space to get dressed. When they were done, we told them to go on ahead. ‘We’ll meet you in the Scotsman later,’ Kate yelled through the window, naming a pub that we’d passed earlier in the day. We were rubbish tourists. Travel to a completely different country, and head for a bar that was connected to the homeland we’d left less than twenty-four hours earlier. But in our defence, it was playing Simple Minds hits at full volume, and Jim Kerr’s dulcet tones were like some kind of sci-fi mind-warp that we were unable to resist.

  Kate and I took an age getting ready. By the time we were done, we’d tried on twelve different outfits each, reapplied our make-up twice and experimented with more hairstyles than Madonna. We’d also consumed half a bottle of vodka and a gallon of fresh orange. It wouldn’t have mattered what we looked like, we were seeing double anyway.

  We staggered to the Scotsman, stopping at every pub on the way there for a light refreshment. By the time we finally arrived, it was almost midnight. Carol and Sarah were in deep conversation with two of a gang of six lads from Edinburgh.

  I glanced around. ‘Where’s Jess?’

  ‘She’s here somewhere’, replied Carol, gesticulating towards the crowded bar. ‘She must have gone to the loo.’

  Within minutes, Kate and I had succumbed to the general revelry and loud music that blared from the speakers. I found myself dancing with a chiselled Dutchman called Henk. I eventually got bored with the repetitiveness of hip grinding to ‘Boom Boom Boom Let’s Go Back To My Room’, made the infamous toilet excuse and staggered off to round up the others.

  I had to surgically remove Kate from a perma-bronzed Frenchman, before rounding up Carol (singing ‘Hey Big Spender’ on a bar stool), and then Sarah (slumped under a sink in the toilets). Where was Jess?

  Panic set in briefly before total hysteria sobered me up immediately. We searched everywhere. At one point, we even conducted a desperate rummage in the huge bins outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  We were getting frantic and maniacally scanning every man in sight to see if he showed any sign of being a homicidal, psychotic kidnapper. We thundered back to the apartment, searching every doorway and dingy alley on the way. All the while, I had a picture of my mother in my head, a knowing, smug look on her face saying, ‘I told you that you’d need the number of the British Embassy, dear.’

  I fumbled for a key as I neared our door, only to be stopped in my
tracks. What the hell was that racket? All I could hear was a resounding chorus of ‘Livin On A Prayer’, and it was coming from inside our apartment.

  With still-shaking hands, I opened the door and was confronted by the most ludicrous sight. Three men in sombreros were singing at the top of their voices, another was playing an ancient guitar and yet another was fast asleep with a pyramid of beer cans on his belly and his socks hanging out of his ears. In the middle of this melee was Jess, red curls now expanded by the humidity to the size of a sun lounger, beer can in hand, shouting, ‘Girls, I was starting to get worried about you. Come in and meet the lads.’

  I was struck dumb and rooted to the spot. I struggled to construct a sentence, but somehow nothing seemed to articulate the forty-seven different emotions that were coursing through my brain. Carol stepped in.

  ‘What the fuck is going on, Jess?’ Succinct, but it was better than I could manage.

  Four men looked at us in anticipation. The sleeping beer holder never stirred.

  ‘I met them outside the Scotsman,’ she gushed, having the decency to look mildly ashamed. ‘They’re from Barnsley, and they’ve got nowhere to stay because they got kicked off their campsite. I felt sorry for them and brought them back here. I said they could stay with us. It’s okay, isn’t it?’ she pleaded.

  I was still struggling to regain my power of speech.

  Kate sighed loudly. ‘Sorry, Jess, but we’ve got rules in this apartment,’ she said forcibly. ‘No men allowed.’