Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (2 page)

OK. Lovely Girl number one is Caroline, who is easily and effortlessly the loveliest one of the lot of us. (Although, admittedly, there's not much contest there.) Caroline is stunning; she's amazing; she's just fab. When I grow up, I want to be her. She's my oldest and closest pal, ever since we first met at primary school, when we were both cast as angels in the school nativity play. One hundred per cent pure typecasting in her case.

Two things about Caroline: (
a
) she's led little short of a charmed life and (
b
) in the thirty-odd years I've known her, she has never, not once, ever been in a bad mood. Gorgeous-looking (the image of the blonde one in Abba) as well as smart, she modelled professionally for a bit after college and then did what we're all supposed to do. Got married to her steady, lovely boyfriend Mike (six feet four, a dentist, a rugby player and general all-round lovely guy) and became the ultimate yummy mummy with her two perfect, straight-out-of-a-Mothercare-catalogue babies. They're very rich, outrageously happy and you couldn't even hold it against them. They're both just too
nice
.

And then, drum roll, da-da-daaaaaaaaaa, there's Rachel. Or Joan Collins as we've nicknamed her. The reason being that, although the same age as the rest of us, Rachel has already had two husbands. I'm not kidding. Number one was Parisian, a very cool-looking architect who she met way back when we were all in
college together. They led an über-sophisticated life in a loft apartment on the West Bank, with Rachel point-blank refusing to marry him on the grounds that living together annoyed her mother more.

Now this is where it gets complicated. There's something I need to tell you about our Rachel, a kind of running gag amongst us, which I should explain. We call it the lethal Rachel pheromone. It's almost like a chemical she exudes from her pores which says, ‘I'm not looking for a man; I don't particularly want a man; come any nearer and I'll slit your throat.' But the more she gives this off, the more guys chase after her like a Benny Hill movie speeded up. The irony is, here I am dying for a fella I can call my own and they run a mile from me, whereas all Rachel has to do is snarl at a guy and he immediately turns into her slobbering lapdog. I often wonder, is my desperation and her lack of it something that single men can smell?

So anyway. Back to Paris and husband number one. After years of trying to persuade her that annoying her mother was a really lame excuse for
not
getting married, he handed her an ultimatum. Either we break up, or we get hitched.

I know, I know, normally it's the other way round, women are the ones who are supposed to give men the shit-or-get-off-the-pot-type ultimatum, but this is Rachel's world, not mine. She didn't particularly want to break up, so, while on holiday in Las Vegas, she
impulsively married him Britney Spears-style, at the end of an all-night drinking session, with two cleaners for witnesses. And then the unthinkable happened.

She came back to Dublin for a flying visit to break the news to all of us, but ended up having a vicious row with her mother, who nearly hit the ceiling when she realized that now she'd never get a Jimmy-Choo-clad foot into a mother-of-the-bride rig-out. So, unexpectedly, Rachel decided to hop on the first flight she could get back home to Paris to surprise her brand-new husband.

Big mistake.

Rachel says to this day she can vividly remember racing up all fifteen flights of stairs and breathlessly flinging the door open – to find him in bed with a close, mutual friend of theirs. Stunned, she somehow made her way back to Charles de Gaulle airport only to realize that she had absolutely no money. Nothing. Not even enough to make a phone call. So she did what we'd all do in similar circumstances. Sat on her suitcase in the middle of the concourse, cigarette in hand, bawling.

Second big mistake.

It just so happened that there had been a big match on that weekend, and the airport bar was packed to overflowing with fans on their way home. So, one of them spots this gorgeous damsel in distress (Rachel looks a bit like a 1920s silent movie star: you know,
snow-white skin and dark bobbed hair, kind of like Louise Brooks, except with muscles) and he goes to help. He was a big, beefy New Zealander, who seemed like the answer to her prayers; i.e., he bought her drinks, paid for her flight home and offered to rip number one's head off on her behalf. As far as Rachel was concerned, he came along in such a haze of romance, he may as well have been riding on a white charger. Who could resist? Within a year, she had divorced number one, married number two and then divorced
him
only a few months later.

Could you make this up?

‘In the space of eighteen short months,' she often says, ‘I managed to get married to the two most useless men in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. For God's sake, my first husband's idea of fidelity was to bed only one woman at a time, and my second husband's idea of foreplay was to brush his teeth. So, as far as romance is concerned, that's it, that's my lot, I've had my chips. Love and passion are only for teenagers. I'm standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, staring into the romantic abyss that is single life after thirty-five and you know something else?
I don't care
.'

Now she owns and manages one of the swishiest and most expensive boutiques in Dublin, dresses like a dream, drinks like a dowager, has a mouth like a sewer and is easily the funniest person I know.

I often think that being friends with her is the closest
I'll ever come to living in 1920s New York and hanging around the Algonquin hotel with Dorothy Parker all the time.

The ‘Lovely Girls' club (christened by Rachel) has been on the go for over twenty years now, when the four of us became inseparable back in college. They are my best friends/soulmates/urban family/shoulders to cry on and I would unhesitatingly do anything for any one of them. Well, anything except be on time.

‘LATE!' they chant as I finally spot them and make my way through the throng.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,' I pant breathlessly, ‘actor disaster in work.'

‘Don't tell me, Rob Richards got drunk at lunchtime and made a move on you,' says Jamie who, although he's meant to be working, is perched very companionably between the other Lovely Girls.

‘Eughhhhh!' the rest of us chant in unison.

Rob Richards, I should explain, is a long-serving cast member on the TV soap opera
Celtic Tigers
, which I've only just started to work on. He's been in the show since the very first episode, all of ten years ago, when he was actually quite attractive. ‘At the risk of sounding like a primmer version of one of those spinstery type parts that Maggie Smith always plays,' I say, ‘may I just point out that I only ever kissed him
once
at the studio wrap party and, in my defence, it was Christmas, I was lonely, I had knocked back four glasses of Pinot Noir
on an empty stomach and, well, you know what I always say?'

‘ “Christmas is not for single people,” ' they all chorus, impersonating me very accurately. Well, I can't really give out; it is yet
another
one of my catch-phrases …

‘Laugh all you like, girlies, but it's only the truth. Any festival that makes you think it's a good idea to snog the face off a man you'd ordinarily cross the street to avoid, just because there happens to be a mangy bit of plastic mistletoe hanging from a glitter ball with John Lennon singing “Merry Christmas (War is Over)”, can't exactly be good for you, can it?'

‘She didn't know what she was doing, your honour,' says Rachel theatrically.

‘She could have been kissing Bin Laden for all she knew. Or cared,' says Jamie.

‘Pay no attention,' says Caroline sweetly, playing with a strand of her long, golden hair. (Natural, natural, natural. Honestly. The only time Caroline ever goes near a salon is when she needs to get chewing gum cut out of one of her children's hair.) ‘Anyway, isn't it a kind of rite of passage for working on
Celtic Tigers
? You're not officially part of the show until you've had a squeeze with Rob Richards.'

‘Just because he's Mr Big Shot Household Name doesn't entitle him to some kind of medieval droit de seigneur,' says Rachel crisply. ‘Men like that
have absolutely no difficulty in releasing their inner PUA.'

‘Their what?' I ask.

‘Pick-up artist.'

‘It's a rare occurrence, I know, but don't you just hate it when Rachel is right?' Jamie says.

OK, time for me to get off this highly embarrassing subject … ‘So, anyway, we're filming his big wedding to Glenda tomorrow and the final run-through this evening was a disaster. Neither of them has a clue of their lines. I had to spend the last two hours scribbling them down on three-foot-high idiot boards because everyone else in the office had gone home. I swear, humble and all as a deputy producer's job is, I really don't get paid enough.'

‘OH MY GOWWWWD, Rob Richards marries GLENDA?' Caroline, a stay-at-home mom, is the only one of the Lovely Girls who actually watches the show. ‘I never in a million years thought they'd actually go through with it. I mean, not after he had a one-night stand with Shantania on his stag night and then confessed it to Glenda the next day. And he's not been out of the coma all that long either.'

‘Honey, you have
got
to get out more,' said Rachel, shoving an uneaten bowl of tapas away from her. ‘Why is it that everything in here tastes like regurgitated bat vomit?'

‘It's protein only,' Caroline explains helpfully.

‘This is protein? I thought it was house insulant.' Then she picks up an empty champagne flute and waves it threateningly under Jamie's nose. ‘Excuse me, lounge boy? Refills badly needed, please.'

‘Oh, you are so sweet!' Jamie replies, delighted. ‘You really think I could pass for a lounge boy? Because they're only, like, sixteen. God bless Crème de la Mer, that's all I can say. Oh, stay cool, my lovelies, cute guy alert. You know that divine manager I told you about? Here he comes, so just act natural, everyone.'

This has precisely the opposite effect as we all do 180-degree neck swivels to see who he's talking about.

‘Too butch-looking for you, darling,' says Rachel.

‘Whaddya mean, too butch?'

‘I mean, not your type. Not artistic-looking enough.'

‘Oh, please, it's not like he just came in from branding cattle and smoking Marlboro.'

‘Hey, I just don't want you to go out with someone and for people to think you met in a police line-up—'

‘Don't bother finishing that sentence, Rachel,' says Jamie, a bit miffed. ‘I'll just catch the rest of that gag on the
Antiques Roadshow
.'

It may sound like they're on the verge of a feud but, honestly, Jamie and Rachel really are best friends. This is just the way they spark off each other. However, I
judge it a very opportune moment to change the subject. ‘I have news.'

‘So do I,' says Jamie.

‘So do I, but let Amelia go first,' says Caroline with typical niceness. ‘She never gets to go first.'

I take a deep breath, then whip the ‘FATE IS LATE!' ad out of my handbag, carefully spreading it out in the middle of the table for them all to google at. ‘So. What do we think?' I ask hopefully.

The silence alone should have alerted me.

‘You have got to be taking the piss,' says Rachel, scrutinizing it. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you're supposed to track down all your exes and then say – what? What was it about me drove you nuts when we were going out? Now
that's
ironic, Alanis Morissette.'

‘Something like that, yes.'

‘And this is going to help you find a soulmate?' Rachel's on her high horse now. ‘Face it, sweetie. We're your soulmates. Whether you like it or not.'

OK, maybe not the reaction I'd hoped for, but I'll plough on … ‘Thanks very much, two divorces. What do the rest of you think?'

‘Oh, honey,' says Caroline, clocking the hurt look on my face, ‘I know you've been single for a long time.'

‘Yeah,' says Jamie, ‘ever since you broke up with
He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken
.'

The gang all make gestures of sticking their fingers
down their throats and throwing up, at the mere hint of the name Jamie has just conjured up, which I gamely choose to ignore. Not the time, not the place.

‘Apart from him, I've pretty much been single for most of my thirties, bar a few horrific dates which we won't even bother going into.'

Rachel starts to chortle. ‘Do you remember that guy you went on a blind date with who turned out to be in the IRA?'

‘Well, that just shows that I've been a brave little foot soldier,' I reply, wincing a bit at the memory. ‘And that I'm prepared to get out of my cosy comfort zone. I mean, if a girl can't find a husband among the non-paramilitaries—'

‘If daytime television has taught me nothing,' Caroline gently interrupts, ‘it's that the man of your dreams is out there somewhere for you, and that you'll meet him when the time is right. There has to be serendipity about it. I honestly think these things are bigger than us. I really do.'

‘If I was married to a big ride like you are, I'd probably say the same thing,' says Jamie. ‘Look, we all know you really want to be with someone, Amelia—'

‘No, I've been with people. That's
not
what I want. I want to be married. Sorry if this sounds old-fashioned, but
I want my husband
. Look, just say I live to be eighty, then I've already lived almost half my life alone. I'd love someone to share the second half with,
that's all. Yes, it's about having kids before it's too late and all of that, but it's the little things too. You know, just … someone to read the papers with in bed on a Sunday morning and, I dunno … someone who'll give me a hug at the end of a rough day. Girlies, I'm thirty-seven years of age and I've been dating since I was sixteen. I'm officially worn out. Where is he?'