What If?. Shari Low
shit, shit. I felt a draught as the door opened and then the footsteps of people entering. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be them.
‘Excuse me,’ said the unmistakable voice of my mother to a stunned René, who was still reeling from the fact that one minute I’d been chatting to him and the next I was camouflaged as a table leg. ‘I’m looking for my daughter. Her name is Carly Cooper.’
Silence.
‘Does she live here?’ my mother persisted in her posh ‘telephone or talking to the priest’ voice. I knew what she was doing. She was looking around thinking that the hotel was a dosshouse and all the people in it were obviously fugitives who’d broken their bail conditions.
More silence. Now I knew how criminals feel when they’re cornered by the police. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do except surrender with my hands in the air.
I slowly rose from under the table, banging my head on the way up. I smiled ruefully.
‘Hi, Mum,’ I stammered. ‘What brings you here?’
As reunions go, it wasn’t the warmest. My mum had come on a mission to take me home and had brought my dad and gran in the hope that they’d back her up. That was the first flaw in the plan. My dad was already eyeing the bar and my granny had plonked herself down at a table with two punks sporting blue Mohicans and was telling them about the terrible time she’d had last time she went to the hairdressers for a perm and a silver rinse. Her curls were still a shade of pale purple. She was a giggle, my gran, and I adored her, but that wasn’t enough to get me on a plane home.
I was outnumbered but defiant. I had no intention of leaving. After all, couldn’t they see that I was still in one piece after six months? When I put this point to a foaming-at-the-mouth mother, it was swiftly rebuffed.
‘Look, madam…’ She always called me ‘madam’ when she was severely pissed off. ‘We left you here for six months, thinking that the novelty would wear off and you’d eventually come home, but you obviously prefer living in squalor!’
René looked mortally offended.
‘But this has gone on long enough, so you’re coming with us, young lady, this minute!’
Eventually, after much shouting and arguing, I brokered a deal using powers of political diplomacy that would have made Jess proud.
‘Tell you what, Mum,’ I conceded. ‘Stay for two days and you can meet my friends and see where I work and if you still disapprove, then I’ll come back.’ I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, but I was desperately trying to buy time.
She hummed, hawed, pursed and unpursed her lips, before realising that, short of dragging me out by the hair, it was as close as she was going to get to victory in round one. She reluctantly agreed.
My dad finally found his voice. ‘Do you have to work today?’
‘No, Dad. It’s my night off tonight.’
‘Well then, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go back to our hotel and change, then we’ll meet you back here at eight and you can show us the Amsterdam night life.’
I knew what he was doing. He wanted to go out on the town to see if his closest friend also vacationed in Amsterdam, but I didn’t care. He was offering me a reprieve from my mum’s disapproval. God bless Jack Daniel’s.
They arrived back at eight o’clock on the dot. My mum always was a stickler for punctuality. It was a warm spring evening and in a world of tourists and jaw dropping characters, she stuck out like a sore thumb in her flowery dress and sensible pumps. My granny was wearing her trusty faves – crimplene slacks and her best bingo cardigan – and my dad, in his seamed chinos and polo shirt, looked like he was en route to the nineteenth hole.
‘What do you want to see, Dad?’
‘Why don’t we just have a wander around this area and we’ll see where it takes us?’ He was already slurring slightly.
‘But, Dad, this is the Red Light district.’
‘We’ll see something new then, won’t we?’ he replied with a wink.
My mother snorted her disapproval and I grinned. My dad really was the oldest swinger in town.
We set off down the adjacent streets. It was fairly quiet, the crowds not usually building up until after nine, but already there were some girls sitting in their windows, hoping for early trade. This wasn’t helping my case to stay here at all. My mother wouldn’t last two hours here, never mind two days.
I was on the lookout for a sling to keep her chin off the ground when we suddenly realised that my gran was no longer with us. We searched around frantically and finally saw her about a hundred yards back, staring in a window with a red light above it and a buxom brunette, wearing a leopard-skin bra and G-string, sitting in it. My gran looked like a senior citizen lesbian voyeur.
‘Gran,’ I shouted. ‘Come on. What are you doing?’
She bustled up to us. ‘I was just looking in the window of that lingerie shop, dear. I may be too old to wear it, but I can still admire it,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye.
The rest of us collapsed in hysterics. Even my mum managed a giggle. Thank God Gran hadn’t had her specs checked in ten years. She honestly thought she was looking at a mannequin modelling the latest line in undies.
We wandered on until Gran demanded we stop for liquid refreshment. Needless to say, Dad wasn’t arguing. In the first pub we came to, there was an eclectic mixture of pimps, pushers and tourists sampling the seedier side of the city.
We got drinks at the bar and found a free table. After a few moments of my mother’s silent disapproval, I was relieved when my gran broke the tension by announcing she was going to the loo. Standing up, she was scanning the place for a LADIES sign when a giant of a man wearing a gold rope the size of a tow chain passed her.
‘My, that must have cost a fortune, son,’ she remarked, invoking that Glaswegian theory of life that says it’s perfectly acceptable to speak to everyone you meet and verbalise every thought with no offence intended.
He looked at her like she was insane and thankfully kept walking.
‘He must have some job to be able to afford jewellery like that,’ she whistled.
‘I, erm, think he’s in sales, Gran.’
A frown of puzzlement creased her pan stick foundation. ‘What kind of sales?’
‘I really don’t know. Maybe coke?’ It was one of the most popular drugs of choice among the clubbers around here.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be having any of that,’ she wittered. ‘Those fizzy drinks give me terrible indigestion.’
I put my head in my hands as she spotted the toilets and beetled off. Tears of laughter coursed down my face. She really was priceless. She was also going to land us in serious trouble unless I got her away from this madness. I decided to take them to the Premier Club. At least there we would be safe from my gran’s naive utterings and there would be a better class of reveller for my mother to disapprove of.
As we approached, Chad, the doorman, grinned widely.
‘Hey, Cooper, what you doin’ here, babe? I thought this was your night off.’
‘It is, Chad, but my family have arrived from Scotland and I just wanted to let them see where I work. Can you let Joe know we’re here?’
We went inside and found a table. The act tonight was a Harry Connick Jnr lookalike, who was belting out ‘I’ve got you under my skin’.
‘Oh, I love this song,’ exclaimed Gran as she dragged my dad on to the dance floor, an easy task now that his limbs