What If?. Shari Low

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      God, I’d forgotten all about it – our monthly night out. Kate normally reminds me, but I clearly distracted her with my woes earlier. ‘What’s the plan? Can Carol and Kate make it?’

      ‘Eight o’clock at Paco’s and, yes, they’re both coming.’

      Fantastic! I haven’t seen Carol for weeks. ‘I’ll be there, but that’s not why I called. I’ve just been thinking…’

      ‘Don’t do that, you know it gives you a migraine.’

      ‘Sad but true. But anyway – guess who I was thinking about, and it involves sex.’

      ‘Brad Pitt. Patrick Swayze. Tony Blair.’ A pause. ‘Actually, that last one might have been me,’ she admits.

      ‘I thought you came down on the other side of the political divide?’ I tease her.

      ‘I do, but it doesn’t mean I’m not human.’

      ‘Nope, you just have really disturbing taste in men. Anyway, back to me,’ I chuckle. ‘I was thinking about Nick Russo.’

      ‘Nick who?’

      Typical. One of the most important events in my life and one of my best mates has no recollection of it.

      ‘Nick Bloody Russo,’ I reply. ‘Remember, Benidorm, the Invaded Vagina?’

      ‘Good God, Cooper, you need to get out more. What made you think of him after all this time?’

      ‘I’m having a midlife millennium crisis and it’s making me reminisce about past glories.’

      ‘You really do need to get out more. Listen, I’m just heading into a meeting but you can tell us all about it tonight, presuming that your phantom hip loss hasn’t affected your ability to get to Paco’s.’

      My reply was half words, half giggle. ‘It’ll be a struggle, but I’m sure I’ll manage.’

      ‘Excellent. And, mother, remember to wrap up warm – a chill at your age could be life-threatening.’

      I hang up and make another coffee, suddenly cheered by the prospect of a night out where the conversation will revolve as always around men, sex and gossip, with the latest tale of premenstrual trauma thrown in for good measure.

      It’s amazing that we’ve stayed so close all these years, even though we’re all so different. Even more amazing is that we all ended up living in London, a few hundred miles from where we grew up. Our friendships have lasted longer than most marriages. From stilettos in Benidorm to facials in Belgravia (courtesy of one of Carol’s boyfriends, who was richer than most oil states), we somehow manage to alternate our dramas and disasters, so that the other three are always there to pick up the pieces. And, of course, every small cause for a celebration gets treated like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened on the face of the earth – new jobs (all), salary increases (mostly Jess), new men (mostly Carol and me), negative pregnancy tests (Carol), marriage and births (Kate).

      That thought rewinds in my head as something jars with me. ‘The other three.’ There used to be five of us in our teenage gang. It suddenly strikes me that the difference between then and now, apart from a few wrinkles and the need for Wonderbras, is Sarah. We lost touch just a couple of years after that Benidorm holiday. I must remember to ask the others about her tonight. Maybe one of them has heard something through the Glasgow – London grapevine.

      I put my feet up and flick through the copy of Metro I picked up on the tube the other night. I stop at page sixteen where there’s a poignant article about a guy called Joe Brown from Maidenhead. Joe, it seems, discovered he only had a year to live. He embarked on a kamikaze mission and in those twelve months ran up £20,000 worth of debt, doing everything he’d always wanted to do. The Monte Carlo Grand Prix. The carnival in Brazil. Jazz cafés in New Orleans. He did it all. The poor guy died in the end, but despite the sad ending, I know he’s a man after my own heart. It starts the brain cells ticking again. Life really is too short. What if I died tomorrow? There’s so much I still want to do. I want to travel. To meet my soulmate. To find a job I don’t hate and a home that I love.

      A realisation hits me. To achieve any of that, I need a cunning and devious plan to change my life. I’m never going to love my job. And Mr Wonderful, successful but not a workaholic, sensitive but strong, gorgeous but not vain, rich but not flash, is not going to find me sitting in my kitchen eating her second stale croissant of the morning.

      A smile overtakes my lips as an idea starts to form. Joe Brown did it the right way. He lived on his own terms and it’s time I started doing the same. There is less than a year until the new millennium and if I want to get my life sorted out by then, I have to get a move on.

      Within moments, I’ve made my mind up. Sod it. What have I got to lose? I frantically search for my bills box, source of many a tear, and empty it out, searching for my bank statements.

      I know what I’m going to do. I just need the nerve to see it through.

      But first, I need to tell the girls.

      4

      Respectable – Mel & Kim

      I never did go to university. The thought of having to dress constantly in black, wear eyeliner out to my ears and spend my life in the Student Union discussing the scourge of capitalism was too awful to contemplate. Incidentally, I’ve no idea if that’s what University is really like, but I can see now that I painted that picture in my mind because four years at university meant four more years staying at home, and that was the part of the equation that really did fill me with horror. I loved Callum. I loved Michael. But a drunk dad and a highly strung mother who could barely stand the sight of each other didn’t make for a fairy tale existence for the rest of us.

      More importantly, I was desperate for excitement, fun and adventure but didn’t have a clue where to start.

      ‘What should I do, Callum?’ I implored of my sixteen year old brother, as we sat huddled on my bed with four packets of Golden Wonder pickled onion crisps and two Yorkies to sustain us. My younger sibling, Michael, thirteen now and all gangly limbs and freckle-faced cuteness, was lying at the foot of the bed, his head on my shins, but he was wearing headphones, eyes closed as he listened to his favourite Guns and Roses tape on Callum’s old Walkman.

      Callum’s reply came with an eye roll and a shoulder nudge. ‘Give it up, Carly. You’ve been asking me the same thing for weeks and I still don’t know. Just make a decision and go with it.’ Insightful, emotional chats weren’t his strong point. He made up for it with killer bone structure and brooding good looks.

      His argument had merit though. I had been in the same room, having the same conversation, eating the same junk food ever since my mum had grounded me because I wouldn’t go to university. I didn’t even have pals on hand to break me out of domestic jail, because, as planned, Jess and Sarah had both left for their respective universities in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Carol had gone to London to try to get some modelling work, and Kate was working fourteen hours a day as a junior hairdresser. Callum was the only one brave enough to risk my mother’s wrath, not to mention the barbed wire around my bedroom door and the threat of land mines in the hallway, to sneak in to talk to me.

      All I had was a fourteen inch portable TV for СКАЧАТЬ