What If?. Shari Low

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СКАЧАТЬ of angular perfection, I’d get Channel 4 for about ten minutes at a time, before the screen would go fuzzy again. There were only so many times I could listen to my limited album collection and I’d read every Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, Shirley Conran and Jilly Cooper novel in the library. It was as close to house arrest as possible without turrets and an armed guard, and I was bored rigid.

      ‘Mum and Dad won’t let you stay here unless you go to uni, sis.’

      ‘You’re right, I need to move out, but where? I want to travel, to do something different.’

      ‘How much money do you have?’

      ‘About two hundred pounds.’

      That was a fortune to me, the result of working overtime at the posh café and the fact that my family had all given me money for my birthday a couple of months ago. Well, there was no point buying me clothes, they’d be out of fashion by the time my parents released me from my bedroom. Besides, unless Miss Selfridge started doing a natty line of prison pyjamas, I didn’t have much call for new togs.

      ‘I want to be sensible about this though. I don’t want to blow it and have to come back begging to Maw and Paw Walton downstairs.’ The Waltons was one of my favourite TV shows. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia during the Great Depression, the Walton family consisted of a Maw, a Paw, grandparents, about sixteen kids, and every episode had some kind of tragedy that made my gran and me sob into our chocolate digestives.

      ‘Sensible? None of this is sensible, Carly. Sensible would be uni and a boyfriend called Jeremy who collects stamps. It’s just not you.’

      Callum was right. It was time to be assertive.

      Next morning, I dressed, waited for my parents to leave for work and then charged down to our local travel agent.

      ‘I want to go away,’ I blustered to the insipid looking woman behind the desk.

      Her default customer service setting was clearly ‘patronising and wholeheartedly indifferent’. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said, with treacly condescension, ‘and where would you be wanting to go?’

      ‘I’m not really sure. I want to leave tonight, I want to go abroad, one way, and it’s got to cost less than sixty pounds.’ A travel agent’s nightmare. I could see her visibly inhale, straighten up and sneer all at the same time.

      ‘Well, dear, the only options I can suggest would be by coach and ferry, and there are two leaving from Glasgow today. One is to Paris and one to Amsterdam.’

      I contemplated. Paris sounded great, but wouldn’t it be crowded with couples being nauseatingly romantic and tourists with huge video cameras that make you feel like you’re in the middle of a BBC outside broadcast?

      ‘I’ll have a one way ticket to Amsterdam, please.’ If all else failed, I could always buy a feather boa and get a job as a go-go dancer.

      I’m ashamed to say, I took the coward’s way out. Maw and Paw Walton were informed of Mary Ellen’s defection by a shamefaced John Boy later that night, when I was safely mid-Channel. Callum was a star and persuaded them not to immediately round up a posse and track down their prodigal daughter. I’d left Michael my entire stash of Wham bars, so he was nonplussed by the whole situation.

      I arrived in Amsterdam the following afternoon, exhausted, bedraggled and feeling like I hadn’t washed for a month. I made for the tourist information office and enquired after the cheapest hotel in the city. And cheap it was. Nestled behind the Grand Hotel Krasnapolski on the Damstraat, the gateway to the Red Light district, was the Dam Central Hotel. Or the ‘You’ve got to be damn well joking to call this a hotel’, as it’s better known.

      I humped my bag up four flights of stairs, dodging the holes and empty beer bottles to a room that made the tatty apartment in Benidorm look like the Hilton.

      After unpacking my clothes, I flopped on to the bed, ignoring the puff of dust that rose around me. I kept thinking I should be terrified, but I wasn’t. I was smiling like a Cheshire cat and feeling, well, exhilarated. I felt like the world was at my feet, alongside the ancient carpet that had more holes than a colander and some extremely questionable stains.

      That afternoon, I trawled the streets of Amsterdam, stopping in every café and bar to enquire after work. By early evening, reality had begun to dawn as I absorbed a few unassailable truths. I knew no one in this city who could help me. I had no work permit, so I was officially unemployable. And I wasn’t desperate enough yet to get my kit off and sit in a window.

      I was starting to feel despondent. What if this was a gargantuan mistake? What was I doing in Amsterdam with no job, no friends and only enough money to buy baked beans for a week? How insane was I? The only experiences I’d had of Holland, prior to giving up my whole life to come here, were clogs and bloody tulips. Not a firm foundation for a life altering decision.

      I trudged back to the hotel and had just turned the corner in to the Damstraat when a large gold sign illuminated above an impressive carved door caught my eye. ‘The Premier Club’, it said. It must have been closed when I passed earlier because I hadn’t noticed it. I checked it out. No women in windows trying to tempt business inside. No tacky lights. Just an expensive looking black stone façade and white spotlights that gave it an edge of glamour.

      I was about to walk on by when I summoned one last burst of energy. I marched up to the door, only to be stopped by a bouncer who made Lennox Lewis look undernourished.

      ‘Can I help you, mam?’ he enquired in an American drawl.

      ‘I’m here to see the owner of the club,’ I replied boldly.

      ‘Is he expecting you?’

      ‘Yes, he told me to come here tonight,’ I retorted indignantly.

      ‘Just one second, mam.’ He disappeared inside to return five minutes later. ‘Go right ahead, he’s in the office upstairs.’

      I couldn’t believe the bluff had worked, and I was suddenly wary. That was too easy. What was I doing? I was in the middle of a strange city, no one knew where I was, and I was about to go into the depths of some club that may or may not be entirely shady. If I had any sense, I would run. Flee the scene. Bolt to safety. But, of course, I had none, so I made my way upstairs and knocked tentatively on the first door I saw.

      ‘Come in,’ answered another American voice.

      I entered, trepidation echoing in every step. This guy could be a mass murderer for all I knew. He could be a pimp, a drug dealer or Holland’s biggest trader in white slavery.

      Sitting behind a large black glass desk, the man looked up and I could see the hint of a smile in his expression. He was about thirty-fiveish, broad chested, with hair that was thinning on top, wearing what could only be a designer suit. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way and I instinctively trusted him. Hopelessly naive, eternally optimistic. There was a pattern forming there already.

      ‘I’m Joe Cain.’ His eyes crinkled up at the sides as his smile widened a little. ‘And I may be losing my memory, but I don’t remember asking you to come here.’

      ‘I’m sorry I lied, but I just wanted to talk to you. I need a job.’

      And then, to my eternal embarrassment, I burst into tears. The full waterworks. There were fluids flowing from every facial orifice.

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