Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (7 page)

‘So am I. Why would I envy anyone, just because they're married? I have absolutely no desire to come home to lovey-dovey coupleland because I've been there and it's all complete crap. Look at
me
, Amelia. I used to be like you. Idealistic and romantic and believing in the happy-ever-after fairy tale.
This
' – she points threateningly at her own face – ‘is what two husbands have done to me. I am now looking down the barrel at forty and I'm not prepared to compromise my life ever again for any melon-headed man. Sorry, but I happen to like getting drunk on a Saturday afternoon with my friends if I feel like it. I like smoking in bed. I like eating, or not eating, or living on take-outs entirely depending on how I feel. The sad single is a marketing notion pedalled to us by
Hollywood and it doesn't exist and the sooner you realize that the better. Living on your own is cool, and you know it.'

‘Come on, Rach, do you honestly want to end up alone and childless?'

‘Fingers crossed, yeah.'

‘Is that why you're so down on me doing this course?'

‘No, I just don't want to see you getting hurt, that's all. I know you're still getting over the emotional car crash that was
He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken
. And you're doing really well, and we're all so proud of you. So why go delving back into the past and opening up a whole new can of worms? Seems to me you have an awful lot to lose and bugger all to gain.'

I shudder, as I always do, at the mere mention of
He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken
, but I should probably give a tiny bit of background. He's South African, and has now gone back to live in Johannesburg, permanently. Here is how each of the Lovely Girls feels about him, in no particular order.

Jamie: ‘If you'd got married and he'd whisked you back to Stab City with him, mark my words, you'd have ended up living in a mud hut, sending letters home saying, “Please, I beg you, for the love of God, send penicillin.” '

Rachel: ‘Or else you'd be writing, “Dear all, Guess who came to visit our village today? Bob Geldof! With
any luck we should have running water by 2020. PS: My typhoid is clearing up nicely. Am returning the make-up you sent me as my husband says cosmetics are the work of Satan. If you could send some corrugated iron for the roof instead, I'd be very grateful.” '

Caroline: ‘ “Dear Lovely Girls, It's been fifteen years now, why have none of you come out to visit? Could it be because you have to squat over a hole in the ground to go to the loo?” '

Jamie (again): ‘ “Dear all, Unfortunately, I have to return the beautiful Manolo Blahnik sandals you so kindly sent me for my birthday. It's such a shame, as the post took three and a half years to get them here. However, they have deeply offended the tribal elders in our village and anyway, my husband prefers me barefoot.” '

Rachel brings me back to the present, still in full rant-mode. ‘You have such Pollyanna ideas about marriage, Amelia, and it's all utter bollockology. I'm sorry, but you want to track down Greg lying, cheating Taylor? Who didn't so much break your heart as smash it into smithereens? Publicly too, the worst way possible.'

‘I never thanked you, you know.'

‘For what?'

‘For dumping him for me. Wasn't life so much simpler back then?' I mused, topping up our glasses.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, if you fancied a guy, it was all so straightforward. One of us would just go up to him and say, “My friend fancies you, do you want to go out with her?” '

‘Thereby completely eliminating any fear of rejection he might have.'

‘Precisely. And then when dumping time came, which it inevitably did—'

‘Usually after two weeks of sweaty slow sets in Wesley and a couple of snogs.'

‘Your mates did it for you. Or else told you in the toilets that his friend had told them that it was finished. Simple.'

‘It hurt like hell, but it certainly was effective.'

We both start snorting now as the Sancerre really begins to kick in.

‘So what are you up to later?' Rachel asks.

I take another sip of wine. She's so dead-set against the whole idea of me doing this course that she'll probably fly off the handle if she hears what I have planned, but then I figure: What the hell. I'm a grown woman and I'm doing this with or without anyone's blessing.

‘It's homework for the course.'

‘
Homework?
What, do they make you take tests and then grade you?'

‘If you're going to be like that, I'm not telling you.'

‘Sorry, go on.'

‘Well, Ira Vandergelder says that—'

‘How can you even say that name with a straight face?'

‘Do you want me to tell you or not? Anyway, one of the famous marketing principles they teach at Harvard, apparently, is called creating your best look. Packaging, basically. The product I'm selling is me, so I have to revamp my wardrobe a bit. You know, smarten up. Just like you would for any big job interview.'

She looks at me with that great bit of devilment she gets in her eyes and in a moment all our feuding is forgotten. ‘Well, boy, are you out lunchtime boozing with the right person.'

Another bottle of wine later and not only have I abandoned my car but am standing in my bra and knickers (which, thank God, at least match) in the changing room of Urban Chic, the ultra-cool boutique which Rachel both owns and manages.

The shop is closed by the time we get there, but she opens up, almost sets the alarm off (we're that tipsy), orders me into a changing room and barks at me to strip off. ‘Right. Let me just explain something,' she says, coming in with about five different changes of outfit draped over her arm (none of which I'd ever be caught dead in). ‘There are two basic types of woman in the world. There's the bikini type and then there's the swimming togs type. Now, you're a classic example of a bikini body trapped inside a twenty-five-euro
pair of swimming togs from Marks and Spencer with matching sarong. I always tell my customers that you've officially reached middle age when you find yourself wandering through the ladies' department of M and S and saying, “Oh, look at those slacks, they're really nice.” '

‘Rachel, you're drunk. This is one of those times when only doctors can understand you.'

‘No, no, hear me out,' she slurs. ‘Look at you. FANTASTIC figure. You have the body of a Romanian gymnast.'

‘I'm waiting for the but.'

‘But why do you insist on going around wearing old lady camouflage? There are women out there who would pay a top surgeon any amount of cash to end up with a figure like yours, and what do you go around in? Baggy jumpers and jeans that do absolutely nothing for you.'

She's right. I am a stylist's nightmare, and it's very unlikely you'd ever catch my name on a best-dressed list. Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank et al. needn't lose any sleep on my account.

‘It's just because of work, you see,' I protest feebly. ‘No one on a TV crew dresses up. The office is so casual that if I came in looking glam, they'd probably call security. And then with the early morning location shoots too, ninety per cent of the time it's so cold that I never really care what I look like. I just want to be
warm. Comfort will always win out over fashion with me.'

‘Amelia, listen to me. You know I think this course you're on is a load of horse manure.'

‘I have a vague recollection of you mentioning something about that, yeah.'

‘But there is one thing I can do for you. Protect you from your natural instinct, which is to dress like an Estonian air hostess.'

‘Thanks very much, I'll just leave my self-esteem at the door on my way out.'

‘Shut up and put this on,' she says, thrusting what I can only describe as a costume from the Moulin Rouge at me: a black, corsety-type thing with red-ribboned shoulder straps and a tight leather jacket. With, and I wish I was joking here, a matching black suede miniskirt. It flashes through my head that, in this clobber, I look like I should be fronting the TV makeover show
Pimp My Ride
.

‘Are you kidding me?' I laugh incredulously, sticking my head over the saloon door of the changing room.

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘Let's see now, where will I start. Number one, I am not Beyoncé Knowles and I am not performing in a live stage show in the Point Depot tonight. Number two, nor am I soliciting for business on street corners after hours. Number three, does the phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” mean anything to you?'

‘Just try it on, that's all I'm asking,' Rachel cajoles, disappearing upstairs to the stock room. ‘Shop's empty, no one can see you except me.' A minute later she reappears waving a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. ‘And if you do, there's a glass of bubbly in it for you.'

‘OK, OK,' I say reluctantly, ‘but I'm only doing this cos you got me drunk. And if there's CCTV in here, you are so dead.'

Two minutes later, I emerge from the changing room, in a state of shock. Rachel's absolutely right, the outfit actually
works.
To my astonishment, I don't feel ridiculous or middle-aged or tarty. This feels sexy and funky and …

‘WOW!' Rachel exclaims, circling around me. ‘Oh my God, I am sooooo good at my job! I thought it would work well, but, baby, look at you!! Scarlett Johansson eat your heart out.'

‘Oh Rach, I
love
it! I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but you are going down as the woman who put me back into a mini for the first time in a decade. I don't care what it costs, I have to have it.'

She pours two very large glasses of champagne and hands me one. ‘On the house.'

In her own way, it's almost as if she's atoning for giving me such a hard time about the course earlier. Rachel can be like that. One minute, you're a foil for all of her wisecracks and wittiness and you have to be on your toes like a bantamweight boxer just to keep up
with her; the next, she's being so overwhelmingly generous, you're left with tears in your eyes. Everyone should have a Rachel in their lives. Like I said, it's the nearest I'll ever come to sitting in the Algonquin hotel in 1920s New York, in a flapper dress and a cloche hat, smoking from a cigarette holder and drinking martinis with Dorothy Parker and her vicious circle.

‘Ahh, come on, I really can't accept it as a gift, it's too much …'

‘If you're determined to go on this collision course, at least be beautifully dressed.'

‘Oh, Rachel …'

‘I won't take no for an answer. You can call it an early birthday pressie if you want, but mark my words. If a husband is what you want and if you don't get one looking like that, you never will.'

I twirl around the changing room, high as a kite, giddy on the champagne, feeling hip and trendy and … there's no other word for it …
young
.

‘Just be careful what you wish for, Amelia. That's all I'm asking.'

Tracking down Greg Taylor, or ‘the pig man' as Jamie has nicknamed him (‘he's not quite a pig; he's not quite a man'), turns out to be an awful lot easier than I had anticipated. One big thing I have going in my favour is … this is Dublin. Probably the biggest village in the world. A city where, if you sneeze getting on a bus in Dalkey, by the time you get into Stephen's Green, someone will ask how your terrible dose of pneumonia is.

Everyone knows everyone. Now, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending entirely on your point of view. As Rachel points out, Dublin can suddenly mushroom into a vast, sprawling metropolis if there's someone in particular you
want
to bump into, but rapidly shrinks to the size of a five-cent coin when there's someone you're trying to avoid.

OK. I need to give a bit of back story here. Greg's mother, when I knew him, was a very successful
businesswoman. In the mid-1980s, when recession was rife and people were being made redundant right, left and centre, his father lost his job and had great difficulty in getting another. So his mum stepped up and launched her own, highly lucrative interior-design business, Teri Taylor Designs.

While the rest of the country was shrouded in deep economic gloom (Ireland in the mid-1980s was not a fun place to be), Teri was merrilly kitting out the insides of Rolls-Royces for Arab sheikhs and doing up penthouses in five-star hotels, no expense spared. She was always appearing in glossy magazines giving advice on things like how to choose the correct lampshade colour for a north-facing sitting room, or why a peach bathroom suite with matching patterned border tiles would never, ever date. (Remember, this was at a time when the dado rail was considered the height of sophistication and people still used frilly crinoline dolls to cover up their toilet roll.)

Teri is even credited with being the person who first introduced feng shui to Ireland and at one point in the nineties ran a heavy advertising campaign offering a service whereby she'd come to your house and rearrange your furniture a bit, thereby shifting blocked energy and transforming your life. Or at least, that was the theory.

I can still hear Jamie sneering, ‘So if I move the TV out of my southwest/relationship corner, then I'll find
true love? And she'll make a fortune? So, basically, my loneliness is her conservatory.'

Come Monday morning, still nursing a roaring hangover from the previous Saturday, I arrive at my desk bright and early, coffee in hand, delighted to see that everyone else in the office has already gone over to the canteen for the cast and crew breakfast break.

A bit of privacy. Excellent. Believe you me, this is not a conversation I want anyone to overhear.

I whip out the Yellow Pages and there it is.

TERI TAYLOR DESIGNS
* MAKE YOUR HOME BEAUTIFUL
WITH OUR COMPLETE INTERIOR DESIGN
SERVICE *
* BROWSE AROUND OUR EXQUISITE
SHOWROOMS *
TO AVAIL OF OUR CONSULTATION SERVICE
CALL (01) 43381903/087 8677831