Rules for a Perfect Life Read online

I take the cheque from Dermot and lean in to give him a hug.

  ‘Will you be OK, Maggie? What will you do?’

  He looks so anguished again that I can’t tell him the truth. That I have no idea what to do next. I don’t have Robert to rely on any more. I’m all on my own in more ways than one. Maybe Theresa was right. Maybe I should have stuck with him.

  I try to push this thought from my mind. We weren’t meant for each other, not really, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise now just because I might soon be destitute. Even if it is tempting, just for a split second.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I answer vaguely.

  ‘Maybe she’ll come to Oz with me?’ Dom jokes, and I swat him with my redundancy envelope.

  ‘No chance, baldy,’ I say. ‘What are you going to do now, Dermot?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He runs a hand through his hair and looks pained. ‘Batten down the hatches, I guess. Stay here, man the office and hope things improve. I only wish there was enough business to keep you and Dom on. You two were the best employees I ever had – by a mile.’ His voice breaks.

  ‘Ah, now, Dermot, save all that mush for the reference letter!’ Dom tries to jolly him along. ‘Anyway, I think we all know there was very little work involved – sure weren’t people knocking down the door to buy? All we had to do was hand them a pen to sign on the dotted line!’

  Dermot laughs darkly. ‘You’re right – those were the days. Do you think it will ever get any better?’ He sounds suddenly desperate. ‘Do you think things will improve?’

  I’ve never seen Dermot like this. Usually he’s supremely confident. Never cocky, he was never that – not like some of the estate agents who creamed the market when the going was good – but he was always quietly assured. Now, in the face of financial ruin, he’s an emotional wreck.

  ‘Of course it will, Dermot.’ I do my best to reassure him. ‘Things will be on the up again soon, everyone knows that. You’ll be hiring us back before you know it.’

  ‘Yes, maybe you’re right,’ he murmurs, smiling weakly at us, and I realize with a shock that Dermot has aged at least a decade in the last six months. His eyes are haunted with worry and his hair is greyer than ever round the temples. The stress has really taken its toll on him.

  I stuff the cheque into my pocket. ‘Now pull yourself together,’ I say. ‘It’s time for Plan B.’

  ‘Plan B?’ Dom’s face brightens.

  ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Plan B. Let’s go for a drink to cheer ourselves up.’

  ‘That’s the spirit, Maggie!’ Dom whoops, and Dermot manages a chuckle.

  We’ve always gone with Plan B whenever anything tricky has come up – like when Solid Mahogany Hyde-Smythe has thrown a massive wobbler. We’ve sunk a lot of pints over that pain in the arse.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Dermot mumbles. ‘I’ve a lot to do here.’ He gestures feebly at some paperwork. ‘You two go on – have one for me.’

  ‘Dermot,’ Dom says, ‘I don’t think there’s anything too urgent that can’t wait till later – do you?’

  ‘Well, I have stuff to do …’ Dermot says, but I know he’s tempted – I can see it in his eyes.

  ‘Ah, go on, one little drink won’t hurt. Just the one.’ Dom is very good at wheedling – it’s apparently how he manages to get so many women into bed: he annoys them into agreeing.

  ‘Oh, all right so.’ Dermot laughs weakly, then hauls himself up from behind the desk. ‘You’re a terrible lad.’

  ‘Good man!’ Dom cheers aloud. ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

  He sprints out of Dermot’s office and it’s then that Dermot grabs my hand. ‘Maggie, I’m so, so sorry,’ he says, his eyes moist.

  ‘Ah, Dermot, it’ll be OK.’

  ‘No, I’m not sure you understand …’

  What’s not to understand? I don’t have a job any more, that’s crystal clear.

  ‘It’s about the flat.’

  ‘The flat?’

  ‘Yes … If the developer is handing back the keys to the bank, I’ll have to ask you to move out.’ He swallows, choking back emotion.

  ‘Oh.’ My voice is a squeak. I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘You can come and stay with Yvonne and me for a while, you know, until you get yourself sorted. Yvonne would probably love the female company – you two could talk about stuff … shoes, maybe …’ His voice trails away uncertainly.

  My head swims as the gravity of the situation hits me full force: I have no job. Working here is all I know – it’s not as if I have a heap of other talents I can fall back on to earn an income. I’ve never even waitressed. Not that there’s a need for waitresses now that the restaurant industry is on its knees too.

  And now I have nowhere to live either. I’m going to be bunking in with my ex-boss. I’m going to be talking shoes with his gold-digger wife. Oh, God.

  A wave of real fear overtakes me and I feel sick. What if I can’t find work? What if I spend the rest of my life on the dole? I’ve got to face facts – no one’s hiring estate agents. No one’s hiring anyone, anywhere.

  ‘Maggie?’ Dermot’s features are creased with concern.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Dermot,’ I say, taking a deep breath and fixing a fake smile to my face. ‘I’ll figure something out. Now, let’s go for that drink.’

  His face crumples in relief. It’s a weight off his shoulders that he doesn’t have to worry too much about me. He’s grateful I have some sort of plan for survival.

  I throw my bag over my shoulder and link my arm through his, trying to quell the fear rising in my chest. Dermot may think I’ll be OK, but the reality is I don’t have a plan at all. In fact, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do.

  Rule Three: Nourish your soul

  ‘This could be the best news ever,’ Claire says.

  ‘And you think that because?’ I take a sip of my wine and try to figure out how losing my job and my home could be a good thing. It certainly doesn’t feel that way.

  ‘Because this gives you the freedom to pursue your dreams – you know, reclaim your inner self,’ she replies confidently.

  ‘Right.’ I grip my glass, a wave of irritation washing over me. If she bangs on about this inner-me stuff again I may just lose it. I love Claire dearly – she’s my best friend – but she lost her high-powered job with a hedge fund a few weeks ago and she’s been on a spiritual voyage of discovery to ‘find her core self’ ever since. It was funny to begin with, but now it’s becoming very, very boring.

  Not for the first time I wonder about getting her and my sister Theresa together – they could have a self-help fest. Maybe with them both off my back, I could just wallow in anxiety in peace, like I want to.

  ‘I’m not convinced you were ever that happy in Hanly’s anyway,’ Claire says meaningfully. ‘I think it stifled your creative side.’

  ‘I was happy there,’ I sigh, ‘perfectly happy.’

  ‘No, you were perfectly settled. There’s a difference. A very big difference.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ These days, trying to decipher what Claire means is a full-time job.

  ‘I mean, you showed up every day, you clocked in, you clocked out, but what were you really getting from it all?’

  ‘Um, the highest residential sales in the office?’

  Dom tried and failed to beat my sales record a million times and Claire is aware of this: why is she acting as if she’s somehow forgotten? She knows how good I was at my job. I surpassed targets, I set records. That was before the market collapsed, of course. After that it didn’t matter how good I was: all my sales skills were irrelevant when the property boom ended.

  ‘Besides that? Besides all the sales, what were you actually achieving?’

  ‘That’s all that really counted, Claire. Commission was always based on sales, you know that.’

  ‘OK.’ She pauses. ‘Let’s look at this problem from a different angle. I’ve been reading a brilliant book recently – the
re was a chapter dedicated to this precise phenomenon, so I know exactly what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Right,’ I sigh.

  Claire is able to quote chapter and verse from dozens of self-help books – it’s as if that’s all she does at the moment. The ball-breaking she used to indulge in, just for fun, is ancient history. Now it’s all loving your fellow man and random acts of kindness.

  ‘So … you were earning commission,’ she says seriously, as if she’s trying to solve some sort of riddle and never shafted half her staff to serve her own professional purposes without a second’s thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  Shedloads of commission when times were good – which, to be fair, seems a long, long time ago now.

  ‘And …’ she continues slowly ‘… what did that commission give you?’

  ‘Duh, Claire! The ability to buy stuff, of course!’ What is she missing here? She knows I always spend all my disposable income … and maybe a little – OK, a lot – more every month. Consumerism is the cornerstone of my existence, for God’s sake. It has been ever since I used to work as a teenager in the corner shop every Saturday.

  Miserable Stinky O’Connor paid me just fifty pence an hour to stand behind the counter and deal with all the grubby kids who piled in to spend their pocket money on sweets every week. The abuse I had to take from those children was mind-boggling – they called me every name under the sun if I didn’t get them their Wham bars fast enough or if their fizzy cola bottles were too sour. Working in Stinky’s was hell and the only way I could get through the day was by promising to buy myself something with my wages – usually fluorescent socks or Jackie magazine. That was until I discovered handbags, of course.

  I think about my handbag collection now. It’s nothing like as vast as Yvonne’s mammoth one – Dermot’s wife should have a PhD in shopping – but it’s tipping along nicely all the same. I have a Mulberry tote and a Lanvin clutch. I even have a baby Paddington with its coveted chunky padlock. The Holy Grail, Chanel, has been out of my grasp so far, but that hasn’t stopped me fantasizing about owning an iconic 2.55. It occurs to me that this dream will never materialize now that I’ll have to stop acquiring unnecessary luxury items. I probably won’t even be able to buy a Chanel knock-off. After all, I’m unemployed. Not to talk of homeless. The thought makes my heart pound so hard in my chest I feel dizzy.

  ‘So,’ Claire is still talking, ‘you liked buying stacks of stuff?’

  ‘Of course – what woman in her right mind doesn’t? It’s hardwired into our genes.’

  I take another sip of my wine and mentally try to close the door on Chanel, which is very difficult when I can still visualize myself sweeping into a five-star hotel with a piece of quilted perfection under my arm.

  ‘Aha!’ Claire takes a swig of her mineral water and nods vigorously, as if she’s made some sort of psychological breakthrough. I tried to convince her to have a wine, but she wouldn’t hear of it – she’s very strict about alcohol intake now. She keeps harping on about her body being a temple and all that crap.

  ‘What’s your point, Claire?’

  ‘My point is – stuff can’t make you happy.’

  Has she lost the plot? Of course it can. My bags make me very happy on a daily basis. ‘I beg to disagree,’ I say.

  I know by saying ‘I beg to disagree’ I sound like something from the eighteenth century, but Claire is bringing out that side of me. It’s not a side I like.

  ‘OK. You have lots of bags,’ she says, as if she’s almost reading my mind. ‘But how does that fulfil you?’

  ‘They make me feel good. They accessorize my outfits.’ Has she completely forgotten how designer stuff can alter your mood? Her Chanel handbag is her prized possession. Or it used to be, until she started all this spiritual mumbo-jumbo. I look at her now and wonder where that bag is. She doesn’t have it with her – today she’s carrying something that looks suspiciously like she may have bought it in a charity shop. And not a cool charity shop where you might see Kate Moss rummaging round either. Some place where everything is mouldy and moth-eaten.

  The bag is a patchwork concoction, with beading and – horrors – tiny little mirrored tiles stitched to the edges. It’s absolutely hideous, and if Claire was in her right mind she’d shove it into the pub fire that’s glowing nicely in the grate beside us. The old Claire wouldn’t have used that bag to put her dirty laundry in. Then again, the old Claire wouldn’t have appeared in public without at least six inches of slap on her face – and from where I’m sitting her skin looks completely devoid of makeup. I’m not sure she’s wearing bronzer, which usually she even wears to bed.

  ‘OK, you look nice. But do all these material goods do anything for your soul?’

  ‘My soul?’ I wonder if she’d consider donating her Chanel to me. After all, it looks like she’s taken a completely different style direction. I’d probably be doing her a huge favour if I offered to take it.

  ‘Yes, your soul,’ she says, and I snap back to the present. ‘Do those bags and other possessions nourish your inner self?’

  I think about that for a minute. OK, they may not exactly balance my chi or whatever Claire is talking about, but they make me feel great about myself and that has to count for something. There’s nothing like holding a perfect handbag – it’s like toting a work of art around with you. At least, that’s how I’ve always managed to convince myself that the extortionate price tags have been worth every penny. Besides, exclusive bags are heirlooms – I’m not buying them for myself so much as passing them on to the next generation. My unborn daughter will thank me for my foresight one day, I know it.

  ‘Well, they nourish something,’ I say defiantly. ‘I feel brilliant when I carry them.’

  I don’t mention that I’ve felt increasingly uncomfortable flaunting them recently, though, what with the recession. Since the whole world began its economic downslide, it’s seemed a bit crass to cart designer bags around. Now it looks like I might have to sell them all anyway, just to pay the bills. Why didn’t I ever save for a rainy day? Why?

  Claire cocks an eyebrow at me, as if to imply that what I’ve just said is shallow and completely inappropriate, considering the financial crisis the world is facing. She’s become so politically correct since she lost her job and started believing crystals could heal. Just as I’m thinking that, she takes one from her bag and presses it into my hand. ‘Here, take this, keep it close, it’ll help,’ she says, a weird I-am-wise expression pasted on her face. Claire’s been very keen on looking and acting wise recently – it’s unnerving: she used to specialize in snarling when she worked in the hedge fund. Snarling and decking people. She once discovered that a colleague had hacked into her email account and she lamped him – he was out cold, slap bang in the middle of the third floor. Now she’s gone all other-worldly. And what is it with the weird sing-song voice? She almost sounds like one of those self-hypnosis tapes that help you stop smoking.

  I’m starting to wonder if Claire and I have anything in common any more. Maybe I should have called Lisa instead. She still loves to shop. And she’d be happy to tell me my life was screwed, without insisting I give up my precious Prada handbag.

  ‘Let’s talk about Robert for a minute,’ Claire says now, munching a prune from the packet that’s stuffed surreptitiously into her pocket. She’s already told me in very graphic detail how, combined with her increased intake of roughage, prunes have significantly improved her bowel habits and that if I followed her lead I’d have tons more energy and my skin would lose its grey tinge. I could even see her wincing when I devoured my bag of cheese and onion – I’m almost sure she muttered something derogatory about trans-fats under her breath.

  The prunes are really off-putting. If the barman knew what she was doing would he confiscate them? It does say that only food purchased in the bar can be eaten here. Maybe I should give him a wink and a nod. It might be worth it just to get rid of them – even the sight of her chewing is turning my stoma
ch.

  ‘What does Robert have to do with anything?’ I really don’t want to talk about him.

  ‘Well, you broke up with him because he wasn’t your soul-mate, right?’

  Claire used to scoff at the notion of soul-mates. Anytime she even heard the expression she’d fume that the theory was complete rubbish and anyone who believed there was just one person out there for them was deranged. Now she seems to be taking the concept seriously – so much about her has changed that it’s hard to keep track.

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree. At least she hasn’t mentioned the jelly-baby thing. Not like Theresa. She’s happily beaten me over the head with that for the past few months. Theresa can’t fathom how anyone could ever leave a perfectly good specimen of a man over a jelly-baby, of all things. She thinks what I did was ludicrous – especially after all she’s been through with Malcolm. She reckons that until I have a couple of forceps deliveries and a husband who couldn’t change a nappy if his life depended on it I won’t know what hardship is.

  ‘Yes, and that was the right decision,’ Claire goes on. ‘You need to strip your life back to improve it – look at me, I’ve never been happier!’

  She’s getting into her stride: her eyes have gone a bit glassy. I just hope she doesn’t try to tell me she’s been taken over by some celestial being like she did a few weeks back. Now, that was embarrassing.

  I take a long hard look at Claire, as she asked me to. Her previously blow-dried, glossy mane of hair is now scraped back into a very unflattering ponytail – the kind of ponytail that sarky gossip magazines would call a Croydon face-lift. I can tell from the tiny grey springy hairs at her temples that she hasn’t seen the inside of a hairdresser’s salon for quite some time. She’s wearing a scruffy hoody top that she wouldn’t have worn to bed when she was a hedge-fund manager. Less than three months ago she would have sneered at someone like her in a pub. All in all, she’s in a bit of a state and nothing like her normal groomed and pristine self. Ironically, she seems to have no clue she looks so strange – or if she does she doesn’t care.