What If?. Shari Low
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a long linger over the latest edition of Hello! magazine. I can’t help thinking, ‘What if this is it?’ What if this is the way my life is going to be until I’m having Zimmer races up and down the corridor of my retirement home, flirting with old men and cheating at bingo?
I suppose I owe you an explanation for this sudden outpouring of self-pity.
My name is Carly Cooper. I’m careering towards my thirties at terrifying speed, and I pay an obscene portion of my monthly salary to live in a studio-cum-cupboard in the desirable area of Richmond, near London. I arrived here from my native Glasgow via a multitude of countries, adventures and disasters (mostly due to Mr Rights who inevitably turned out to be Mr Couldn’t Be More Wrongs). I’m 5’8”, with long blonde hair (extensions), blue eyes (coloured contact lenses) and ample curves (in many of the non-supermodel places).
I earn a great salary doing a job I detest and therefore spend every penny of it doing things I enjoy to take my mind off work. I am officially a National Accounts Manager for one of the world’s largest manufacturers of tissue-paper products. Translated, this means that I persuade buyers of large multinational companies to sign annual contracts for the supply of their toilet rolls. Don’t laugh. There’s a future in toilet rolls. They’ll be here long after all this modern technology like CDs and carphones are on a scrap heap somewhere.
I’m officially enjoying the single life with no significant other to answer to. Believe me, to paraphrase Jerry Maguire, I absolutely know that I don’t need a man to complete me. I should just be content being a single, cosmopolitan woman of the world. But unofficially, off the record, and with apologies to my fellow singletons everywhere, I’m bored, fed up and itching to be in a couple again.
I’m beginning to despair of ever finding someone to snuggle up to in front of the TV, and snog the face off when I’ve had one too many glasses of whatever vino is on sale in Tesco. I’ve started fantasising about settling down and having a family resembling one of those nauseatingly happy ones in cereal adverts. There’s no denying the irony of this situation. I spent the first ten years of my adult life avoiding commitment, and now that I’m up for it there are no takers. Karma is a bitch.
My only consolation in this sad existence is my trusty group of girlfriends, who, when they can extricate themselves from their children/jobs/husbands/boyfriends, love nothing more than girlie nights out with nachos, cheap plonk and buckets of salacious gossip.
We’re like family, which is just as well because my when it comes to actual blood relatives, support is thin on the ground. My parents divorced a few years ago, thank God. It’s not that I’d have been opposed to them living in happily married bliss, it’s just that their relationship had all the compatibility and cuddly warmth of a civil war. My mum is a teacher, very sensible, very intelligent and very proper. ‘I definitely found you in a skip, darling,’ she utters dryly whenever I disappoint her in any way, which is depressingly often. She’s lovely really, just as long as we don’t stay under the same roof for long enough for her to remember that she wholeheartedly disapproves of most of my personality traits and the way I’ve lived my life.
My dad, on the other hand, is a salesman. If you need a pension, ISA, zeros, gilts, stocks or shares, then he’s the man. He’s totally incorrigible, unbelievably irresponsible and the life and soul of every party until his friend, Jack Daniel’s, possesses his body and turns him into the kind of aggressive, overbearing bore who makes you hope you got none of his traits in the gene-pool lottery.
Sometimes I wonder what they ever saw in each other. I can only suspect it was a rash decision based on a full moon and alcohol. Their marriage survived years of both shouting and stony silences before they finally threw in the towel. I’ll tell you more about it later, but my brothers and I breathed a hearty sigh of relief when they finally called it a day.
Strictly speaking, us Cooper kids should have scar tissue on our souls after surviving the parent wars, but miraculously we seem to have emerged relatively unscathed. I’m the eldest, and a year later came Callum, who is 6’3”, perfectly formed, with abs that look like a toast rack and a face that adorns billboards up and down the country. And no, having a model for a brother isn’t as great as it sounds. I’m the ‘slippers and starting the diet on Monday’ kind of girl, while Callum is the aftershave guy, the sports car guy, the designer underwear guy. I once overheard a woman on a bus saying that he’s the guy that she would nominate to look for her G-spot and not care if he didn’t find it. Queasiness at that mental image aside, it was a proud moment and I adore the perfect bones of him.
Three years after Callum, Michael came along. Less chiselled than his Adonis of a brother, he’s the sweetheart you can rely on to cheer you up when you’re having a bad day, because his life trundles from one crisis to another. You could lose your job, bury your budgie and forget to tape an episode of ER, yet still his day will be worse. Michael is a computer genius. He spends his days locked in a world of animated psychopaths, perfecting the graphics for the nation’s teenagers to fixate on as they save the world with their PlayStations.
Whereas Callum has no time or desire for a relationship that lasts longer than a weekend, Michael is more likely to crumble into a heap at the first sight of a potential girlfriend. He could write a manual on unrequited love, but his overflowing heart stops him from giving up. Every week there’s a new goddess who’s ‘absolutely, positively and completely right for him in every way’, and every week she spurns his advances and he’s back to square one. He’s been chucked more times than an Olympic javelin. If only they could see that he’s funny, interesting, sweet, giving and he donates 10 per cent of his salary to Save the Whales.
But no, when girls look at Michael, they see a tall, almost good-looking guy, with an eccentric dress sense and ‘Sucker’ tattooed on his forehead. And he unfailingly chooses the ones who will chew him up without even having the decency to warn him that he’s about to be spat out at the speed of a Scud missile. I adore him no matter what the rest of the female population thinks. His goddess is definitely out there, I tell him, he’s just going to the wrong temples.
I speak to Callum, Michael and my closest friend, Kate, every day. Sometimes it’s for two minutes, other times it’s for two hours, depending on the excitement or trauma of the day. Yes, my phone bill’s high, but it’s cheaper than therapy and wine is allowed.
Since the onset of my official midlife crisis, they’ve been on the wrong end of many of my ‘how did I get this life?’ conversations. The thing is, I don’t understand why we weren’t properly prepared for reality when we were young. We were bombarded by propaganda about how girl meets gorgeous guy and they ride off into the sunset together. No one ever tells you men are like knickers – after a time, they get grey and washed out and they can have a tendency to fall down when you least expect it. Or, even worse, you find a perfect pair that you love, only to discover that your shape is changing and they don’t fit any more, no matter how much you try to pull them up.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bitter and twisted man hater. On the contrary, I love them. Perhaps a little too often, granted. Sweeping confession coming up. I’m just going to blurt it out and get it over with. I’ve been engaged to be joined in the holy vows of matrimony no fewer than four times and had two further near misses, before I pulled on my Reebok high tops and did a runner. Metaphorically speaking, of course. If you ever see me jogging, you can be pretty sure it’s because someone is chasing me with a weapon.
It’s just come to me that I could form an ex-boyfriend five-a-side football team, complete with substitute. I realise that to some my serial chucking may seem a tad unstable, heartless, cruel or indecisive, but it was none of these. No, it was down to optimism. You see, no matter how great the guy was, no matter if he was loving, faithful, made me laugh, and set my knickers alight, there was always some incident of conflict or disaster. Whereupon, instead of persevering and trying to make it work, I ended the relationship before careering headlong into the next fiasco. I was just always sure that the next romance would be the perfect one – one that wouldn’t require work, compromise or sacrifice on either side. Naiveté and optimism won the day, time after time. And look where that’s got me.
The ringing of the phone stops me from