Hello, Heartbreak Read online

  I’d never really considered myself ‘pretty’ but, then, I’d never considered myself ‘not pretty’ either. Perhaps it was my insecurities that stopped me thinking of myself as good-looking – and not in a fishing-for-compliments way. I swear if Giselle whinged to me that she was a fat minger I’d punch her – I hated when people did that. So, I never complained about my face or body, but I never celebrated them either. But, to call a spade a spade, I looked remarkably better in that photo than I did now. No two ways about it. I inhaled deeply. Well? What was I waiting for?

  I fished out a pink linen ra-ra skirt from a back corner of my wardrobe, checked to see that there weren’t any squatters in it of the moth/spider variety, and laid it out on my bed beside a plain white tank top and a silvery-grey button-down cardigan. I felt mildly overcome with nostalgia. I hadn’t seen these little gems since the Before era. My choice was a little ambitious, perhaps, considering the weather of late, but it was summer. Apparently. Well, it was summer in Ireland, which meant it was really still winter but fewer people looked at you oddly if you went out in public wearing a T-shirt or flip-flops.

  Half an hour later I’d made some fairly radical changes in the hair department. I had two eyebrows again, which felt good, and although I’d lacerated my legs with my deceptively innocent-looking pink razor, they were now silky smooth. I just had to remember to remove the plasters before I left the house – if those bratty kids who hung around Odds and Sods taunted me on my first day, it might sabotage the whole Fresh Start and have me running back to my tracksuit bottoms, begging for forgiveness.

  I lashed on some mascara and counselled myself that, although it might appear otherwise, I did not look like a Goth. It was only one coat, and it probably looked strange to me because I hadn’t worn eye makeup during the day for quite some time.

  As I trotted down the stairs I admired my freshly painted pink toenails as they peeped out from a pair of silver wedges I’d forgotten I owned. I had also forgotten that exposing one’s feet in different open-toed shoes and sandals wasn’t a criminal offence, and that I didn’t have to treat my feet as mere stumps at the end of my legs that had to be hidden in smelly runners or shoved into Irish-dancing brogue-type shoes. To top the whole thing off I’d gone wild and put on a pair of earrings, seeing as this was such a special occasion.

  I went through stages of boycotting my jewellery, on the grounds that none of it was from Tiffany – which wasn’t fair: it wasn’t its fault. My last jewellery-spurning stint had lasted longer than usual, however. So much longer, in fact, that the issue of having to re-pierce my own ears came to light when I finally lifted the boycott this morning. It was worth it in the end when I finally pushed the chosen studs through, but it came with its fair share of pain. In fact, this looking-good lark had been a fairly painful process. Not only did my legs feel like I had been running through barbed-wire assault courses but I also felt as though I’d been shot on either side of my head with sparkly pink bullets.

  ‘Jesus, Izzy? Who’s the new bloke in work?’ Susie exclaimed, dropping her spoon into her bowl of Coco Pops.

  ‘Come off it, Susie – we can’t fit fresh air into our office, let alone a whole new employee.’

  ‘Fair point,’ she said. ‘I’m still convinced you’re developing a hunch from having to squash yourself into your desk.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice. They needed all the wall space they could get for the shelving unit over my head.’

  ‘Seriously, though, Izzy, you look great. What’s going on?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said, a bit self-conscious. ‘I think it’s time for a change. I just feel like I’ve had enough.’ I sat beside her on the couch. ‘I’m fed-up with feeling sad, and I’m the only one who can pull myself out of that.’

  She nodded and I noticed the relief in her eyes. ‘Was it seeing them the other day?’ she asked.

  ‘I guess.’ I shrugged. ‘Made it seem real. And made me feel stupid for giving up my social life over two people who don’t give a shit about me. What have I been trying to prove?’

  ‘You were hurt, Izzy.’

  ‘Yeah. And mortified.’

  ‘Well…’ she tried to find the right word ‘… yes.’ We both started laughing. ‘That’s the only way you can describe it, really.’ She giggled. ‘And, anyway, you’ve been seriously out-humiliated by that poor girl running down Grafton Street naked at two in the morning.’ We burst out laughing again. ‘You’ll get there, Iz. I know you will.’

  ‘Thanks, Suz.’

  ‘And you look fab.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, as a lump formed in my throat. ‘I’d love to return the compliment but, well, I just can’t.’

  ‘I completely understand,’ she said solemnly. She was sitting on the couch in a Liverpool FC jersey, hospital-green pyjama bottoms and stripy bedsocks. I mean, I’m all for experimental fashion, don’t get me wrong, but the jersey was Aidan’s so, you know, enough said. If Armani was his favourite designer, I’d never wear it again. Although that wouldn’t be too much of a chore, given that I couldn’t afford it, other than the lipgloss. But it’s the spirit of the thing that matters.

  I left Susie on the couch and headed into the kitchen. I simply had to have a healthy breakfast or my Fresh Start wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of lasting past lunchtime. All that seemed to be on offer, though, were two packets of cheese and onion crisps, some digestive biscuits, half a loaf of white bread (very bad, we all know about the evils of refined carbohydrates), an unopened jar of chocolate spread (cruel) and an empty Choco Flakes box. Any other morning that might have reduced me to tears, but not today, at the start of my new health buzz.

  Jaysus, I’d love a bowl of Choco Flakes.

  Was it more beneficial, psychologically, to wean yourself gently off the bad stuff? Hmm… I’d check it out later on that shrinks-on-line website. I was going to have to eat something, though. I didn’t want to pass out on the way to work. I’d probably end up in some bus depot in the middle of the country, discovered by the cleaners on the back seat of the top deck, sprawled unconscious and fleeced of my money.

  What were my options? A gnawed carrot, compliments of Dermot? No, that was just gross. I opted instead for the marginally less gross option of a liquorice allsort that had been sitting on the kitchen windowsill for about three weeks. Not a healthy option, I’ll admit, but you know what they say about small portions. It was a nice compromise.

  For some reason the weather was on my side and I wasn’t greeted by the usual torrential rainstorm as I left the house. It actually felt quite warm and the sun was poking itself over the top of a tuft of candyfloss clouds. Bus, my arse! I was going to walk to work! It was only three stops anyway and, come to think of it, I was beginning to feel the strain of being called a ‘lazy bitch’ by my workmates. Especially Eve. She was a mid-thirties, anally retentive, low-fat, low-carb, one-hundred-per-cent-organic, caffeine-free, yoga-obsessed pain in the arse. And I had the untold misfortune of sharing a desk with her. Well, we had our own desks, really, but they were located within a hair’s breadth of each other. At times I felt she could have been a parasite living on my body. A parasite that, over the past few months, had been sucking dry my will to live – and to come to work in the mornings.

  Eve spoke to me and my colleagues as if we were brain-damaged. She bustled about like a schoolmistress, tutting and rolling her eyes at the stupid things that we, her remedial students, were saying and doing. Thank God I liked the rest of the bunch that worked at Lights! Camera! Action! The others made the office almost bearable.

  Lights! Camera! Action! was a small film production company in the city centre. It didn’t make blockbusters or fantastic art-house classics or even low-budget high-quality ones, but it had a steady stream of work on the go. They’d started out making TV commercials in the early noughties – mostly those crappy ones for furniture stores, with flashing photos of couches and voiceovers shouting that you were insane if you didn’t buy your furniture from t
hem. A few years ago they’d moved on to making low-budget movies in the West of Ireland, usually fairly appalling stuff, but the majority of their deals were pre-optioned DVD buyouts, so they always made their money back on top of a small profit.

  I’d joined about a year ago on a work-experience placement after finishing a post-graduate degree in media studies. I’d done a bit of writing and producing and editing as electives during the course, but I hadn’t really settled on which bit of the film industry appealed to me most, and I was hoping Lights! Camera! Action! would point me in the right direction. It hadn’t, and I was still confused. The main thing I’d deduced was that I didn’t want to make annoying furniture ads or dodgy vampire films set in Sligo, and that I did want to get into the creative side of things.

  So, for now, I was still there, working as a general dogsbody, which everyone in the industry kept telling me was unbelievably fortunate when soooo many people were trying to get into the business. Hmm. Well, some days I didn’t feel so lucky, let me tell you. Working long hours for not much money, spending weeks on end doing unfulfilling tasks, being shouted at regularly and rebuffing Eve’s constant attempts to convince me that I had substantial learning difficulties did not make me feel like coming over all Kylie. At least it wasn’t just me. The Lights! Camera! Action! office seemed to be a holding-pen for people who knew they wanted to be involved in film, just not in the way they were at the moment.

  Laurence, the financial accountant, was an eccentric failed actor who, after years of brutal rejection by every casting director in the country, had decided he’d better resort to getting what he referred to as a ‘real job’. He’d managed to amass a vicious loan over the twelve-year period he’d spent flirting with thespianism, so after securing only one single acting job in his career – an advert for a shoe polish that could also be used on door handles – he made an effort to appease his bank manager and went back to his roots: a BA in economics. He also dropped his stage name, which, for the record, was Robert O’Niro.

  The two other people who shared our rabbit hutch of an office were Geraldine and Gavin. Geraldine, the production assistant, was in her mid-fifties and more than a little hard to gauge at times. One minute she was as sweet as a missionary nun, the next she’d be thrashing around the place like something out of your worst nightmares – the ones you get if you’ve watched The Hostel while eating cheese just before going to bed. She blamed her mood swings on the menopause and a lazy, inconsiderate husband called Ger. No joke, they were Ger and Geraldine FitzGerald. What are the chances? Quite high, I suppose, if you both grew up in a tiny village somewhere in County Roscommon with a total population of twenty-three, seven of whom, according to Geraldine, were already incarcerated in an old folks’ home. You do the maths.

  Geraldine had been involved in amateur dramatics at the Boyle Community Centre for a good few years before moving to Dublin and had a keen interest in the arts. But, as she said herself, her main reason for working in Lights! Camera! Action! was that she was ‘officially in love’ with George Clooney and he might end up in one of our films. There was more chance of me making Eve godmother to my first child, but everyone had to have a dream and who was I to crush Geraldine’s?

  Apart from being a part-time servant of Satan, Geraldine was pretty cool and I’d grown quite fond of her. She also despised Eve with a passion, so I felt we had a special bond. My way of honouring it was to open a window whenever she was having a hot flush. They say it’s the little things that forge a friendship.

  Gavin was my consistent saviour and companion in the office. In the time I’d been working there, he’d become one of my closest friends. The only disadvantage was that, as a freelance researcher, he was only there about two days a week. The rest of the time I had to fend for myself against the madness and try my best not to act out the fantasy I had of pinning Eve’s head to the noticeboard with the fancy staple gun I’d won for being Employee of the Month back in March.

  Gavin was more than a friend, though: he was my inspiration because he knew exactly what he wanted to do and why he was working there. He wanted to make documentaries. Pure and simple. It was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do. He’d made three before he even started his communications degree. He kept telling me they weren’t documentaries as such, just a series of home videos he’d recorded as a child on the family camcorder. Well, he could say what he liked, but I certainly didn’t know of any other child who had made a trilogy of short films about rounders, British bulldogs and Tip the Can by the age of eight.

  He was also loved-up with a fantastic girl called Kate, and they were every inch the perfect couple. No tantrums, tears, mind games or shagging people behind each other’s backs. If I could have bottled Gavin, I’d have happily injected him.

  Now I prayed that Gavin would be in today. But I had vague recollections of him telling me he wouldn’t be – something to do with Kate? Her graduation, maybe? That was it.

  Shit one – not that Kate was graduating but that he wouldn’t be in today. I wasn’t sure I could handle a Gavinless day without an enormous amount of chocolate. It was great that Kate was graduating. She’d worked so hard, but it was still difficult to believe she was practically a fully qualified doctor. She was super-chilled and great craic, and I loved her almost as much as I loved Gavin. And, luckily for me, she didn’t have any prejudices against Britney meltdown copycatters either. She’d even told me she would probably have done the same thing if she’d been in the same boat. Dr Kate was a liar, but a nice one.

  Kate the doctor, Gavin the documentary-maker: don’t you just hate sorted people who seem so grown-up? I envied everyone who found their ‘thing’ before they were thirty. I’d probably be some horrific age, like thirty-seven, when I finally had my lightbulb moment and figured out what I wanted to do. What if it was something weird, like farming guinea pigs? People wouldn’t exactly pat me on the back for it. In fact, if I ever did decide to farm, it would be rabbits, not guinea pigs. And I didn’t want to be an office lackey. So that was two things – guinea-pig farmer and office lackey – that I could scratch off my desired career hot list. It wasn’t as if I was completely undecided about my future.

  I hadn’t much time to consider my options lately because Lights! Camera! Action! had been hectic because we were into the last few weeks of pre-production before filming was due to start on a new movie. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? It was anything but. Maybe it was me. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to be interested, but I really couldn’t have given less of a shit about Snog Me Now, You Dublin Whore, which we were co-producing with a London company: ‘An exciting adventure revolving around the lives of a misunderstood drug addict and his one-legged prostitute girlfriend.’ The script was demented, as was the writer/director, who claimed he was ‘going to create a modern-day Dublin-based cutting-edge and hard-hitting version of Pretty Woman’. Excuse me? Sacrilege.

  So that was how my day was shaping up: no chocolate, no Gavin, a lot of Eve, mild starvation due to hopelessly inadequate breakfast, and a substantial amount of oohing and aahing about a film I hated. I might have to restrain myself from skipping the rest of the way to work.

  9

  By the time I arrived at the office I was sweating. I had lost track of time reading the magazine covers in the newsagent when I was supposed to be choosing a cereal bar and had had to run the rest of the way. Well, I kind of ran, but it was more of a maimed-animal scuttle because of the effect my Fresh Start silver wedges had on my capacity for forward motion.

  As soon as I’d put my handbag on my desk I went to the window and leant out in an attempt to cool down, managing to burn my knees on the radiator. Aaargh! Why did they turn it on in June after leaving it off all winter?

  Geraldine was sitting at her desk, nursing a cup of tea and nibbling a blueberry muffin. ‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you today?’ she asked. ‘My, my, my! Don’t you look like a little shiny button this morning!’

  Was that good or bad? Had I gone t
otally OTT with my transformation? Damn, I knew I’d applied too much eye makeup…

  ‘Izzy, you look fantastic!’

  Yay! Being a shiny button was good.

  ‘I love the outfit. God, I haven’t seen you in colour since January. I thought you were going to start wearing a shroud to work. I know you were mourning your relationship with that gobshite Cian but, honestly, love, there were plenty of times I wanted to remind you he hadn’t died. And, pet, I have to say I’m thrilled you finally plucked that slug over your eyes. I didn’t want to say anything, but it was beginning to distract me from my work. Honestly, the phone would ring and then I’d look over at you and… well, anyway. What’s with this super transformation anyway? Have we found ourselves a new man?’

  ‘God, no. This is for me, Geraldine. I have to love myself before anyone else will love me.’

  ‘Oprah?’

  ‘The one where she gets all those whiny women into a circle and they group-hug and chant that affirmation over and over until they’re crying?’

  ‘Well, no one was going to love you with that hideous mono-brow, love, but I’m glad you’re coming out the other end of the Beauty Budget. Laurence named it that, not me, ever the accountant. I liked to call it the Dog Day Afternoons, Mornings and Nights.’

  Way harsh.

  ‘But you have to make an effort, love. Let me tell you, I don’t enjoy wearing thongs, but I do it. The third Tuesday of every month I get out the thong. And I do it for Ger. Big thong man is Ger.’