The Debt & the Doormat(2)

‘How can you say that? She already gave me the budget of a poor person! You know how I hate him.’ She juts her jaw out, beginning to sulk.

Edward is her Mum’s current husband. I say current because he’s her fourth. She first married Jazz’s Dad when she was 22 and he was 80 with a heart complaint. He owned a porn empire and was worth an absolute mint. She obviously thought he’d die very quickly, but the old bastard ended up living for another ten years to the grand old age of 90. When he died he left them very rich. Very rich.

Carol didn’t need to marry again. She could have quite happily lived off that money for the rest of her life, but she was quick to give her heart away again. She fell in love with Harry, a playboy that she travelled the world with while Jazz was expelled from several boarding schools. That quickly ended when she discovered his affair with the maid.

Then came Raul, their Spanish villa’s pool boy. She was completely convinced that it was the true thing and insisted he wasn’t after her money. She moved over there and lived happily for a while, drinking Sangria and dancing to Salsa. It only took her a year to realise it was pure lust and he was in fact after her money. She agreed a settlement; small compared to the money she still possessed, and he was on his way.

And now she has Edward. A stern skinny man, who never smiles and lives in a suit. I actually like his dry sense of humour and the way that he makes Carol happy. Since meeting him they’d moved from Chelsea to the Sussex countryside where they bought a fabulous Grade II listed farmhouse. They now spend their days looking after horses and protecting chickens from fox attacks.

‘Look, I’m sorry. But if you ever want to start paying this off you’ll have to start living frugally for a while. A long while actually. I need to just totally take over your life and sort you out.’

‘Oh thanks! If you had your way I’d be living like you, bored and lonely in a flat all on my own.’

‘Hey!’ I say, hurt by her sudden outburst. ‘I’m not bored and lonely. I’m totally happy with my life, thank you very much!’

Since when did she think I was such a loser?

‘Oh purlease! How can you be? You spend most evenings alone. You never want to do anything since you broke up with Stuart and that was nearly a year ago.’

I wince at the mention of his name. She knows the rules – we don't talk about him.

‘That's not true! I wanted to wear my dressing gown all day and eat Jaffa cakes for lunch. I wanted to start drinking in the morning. Don't say that I don't have goals!’

She ignores my attempt at humour and looks at me seriously.

‘You need to start being a bit free. Start living for the moment.’

‘Yeah and you need to start being a bit more trapped in for a while! Stop wasting money. I mean, how did you even get in this mess?’ I pick up one of the many statements and scan it. ‘£89 in Bar Res, £60 in Monsoon, £110 in Threshers. Jazz, most of this is just on clothes and going out getting trashed.’

‘It’s called living,’ she says, looking at me as if I were pathetic not to do this sort of thing.

Well sorry for being responsible.

‘It’s called five grand in debt,’ I snap.

We both shudder from the sound of that number again.

‘Ok, well maybe I’ll start being better with money if you start being worse with it,’ she says, a mischievous glint in her eye.

‘Why would that be of any benefit to me?’ I say smugly, feeling sorry for my clueless friend.

‘Pops, what happened last Saturday night on CSI?’

‘Ok, well Catherine and Nick found a body in an alley and......Alright, I get your point.’

‘Look, the only way I’m going to change is if you promise to as well,’ she says, running her hands through her knotted hair. I suddenly feel un-nerved. ‘You’re throwing your life away, sitting around waiting for Mr Right to come crashing through your living room on a white horse.’

White horse, how dramatic. And I’d much prefer a Porsche.

‘Ok...what would I have to do?’ I ask, my stomach fluttering with sudden fear.

‘Easy. We swap lives.’

‘We swap lives?’ I say, displeasure showing in my voice.

‘Yep. We swap houses and start living each other’s lives. Each of us can’t make a single decision without asking the other first what we should do. And we have to do what the other says, regardless of whether we like it or not.’ She leans back and smiles triumphantly as if this is the best idea she’s ever had.

‘So wait a minute. If I say that you have to stay in and watch DVD’s for a whole week you would?’

‘Absolutely,’ she nods. ‘Just like if I said you needed to go out and get drunk every night you would.’

‘Why the hell would I need to go out and get drunk every night?’

‘Chick, it's time,’ she says, smiling sympathetically. ‘You need to get back to the old you.’

‘What do you mean, the old me? I’m the same person.’ I cross my arms.

‘Come on chick. Before...him, well you were so much fun. You were a force to be reckoned with. It's like you were a hurricane and now you’re just a gust of wind.’

‘Thanks for the imagery,’ I say sarcastically, smiling despite myself.

‘Seriously though chick. You’ve become a shadow of yourself. Stu…I mean...he was too busy keeping you down. He took over. Before you met him you used to rule your own world and you were great at it.’

‘I’m fine,’ I snap sharply, wishing she’d just shut up. She's the one with the problem.

Yet she starts me thinking. I mean she’s totally getting the raw end of the deal. I’m going to be so tight with her money she’ll have that debt paid off in no time and in return I just have to go on a few nights out. I can just go along with it and pretend to her it's a project for me if it makes her happy.

And maybe I could do with a change. I think about my current evenings spent slobbing in my gravy stained velour tracksuit bottoms while I eat a family sized Dairy Milk and consume at least one bottle of wine. Some evenings I even finish it off with a shot of Night Nurse just so that I’ll be able to get to sleep through the pathetic tears.

‘Ok, it’s a deal.’

‘Deal.’ She shakes my hand with a wide smile on her face.

I shiver as I suddenly feel I may have made a big mistake....





Chapter 2




The bright sun wakes me up, a dazzling white ball shining brightly through the window. I scrunch my eyes up trying to block out the pain from my banging head. It's as if an angry obese elf is sat on it, bitch slapping me repeatedly. My mouth is as dry as a Nun’s vagina, yet I seem to still have dribbled all over my purple silk cushion. Well, if it wasn’t ruined before now it definitely is. I sit up and wince from the pain in my lower back. How did I end up on the sitting room floor?

‘Morning buttercup,’ Jazz sings bounding into the room holding two mugs of tea.

Why is she shouting? Or talking to me at all? She knows the rules in the mornings. I open my mouth to speak but my mouth is so dry nothing really comes out apart from a croak better suited to a frog. I feel just as green and slimy.

‘Here.’ She hands a mug over to me.

Thank God. I drink it quickly, burning my tongue but not stopping. I hope the sugar will wake me up and stop me feeling like I want to hug the toilet bowl for the rest of the morning. I try to ignore the fact that its not in my normal china tea cup, which I see on the coffee table full of wine.

‘How are you walking and talking?’ I ask in a gravelly voice, noticing her sparkling skin and bright eyes.

‘You know me. I’m out a bit more than you, my little hermit friend.’ She pats me on the head like a dog. ‘You just can’t handle it anymore.’ She throws her head back and laughs.

I grunt in response. Talking is too much effort at the moment. I think I’m going to crawl into bed and stay there for the rest of the day. Thank God it’s Sunday.

‘So anyway, I’ve packed a bag for you. There’s all of your toiletries, bras, knickers, make up and all that. But I’ve decided that you have to wear my clothes and shoes.’

I stare at her in disbelief, rubbing my forehead as if that will help me gather my thoughts.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

She must have lost her mind. I suppose too much Tequila can do that to someone.

‘The deal, remember?’ She looks back at me as if I’m mentally retarded.

I close my eyes and try to trace back my mind. I can remember drinking wine and singing I Will Survive at the top of our lungs, but then it all goes a bit hazy and then nothing. Actually, now I remember her saying something about debt. Yes, she’s in some debt. And she said we should swap lives. Yes that's it. I said I would if it made her feel better.

‘Now I remember. But remind me...what exactly are the terms?’

‘Well, I’ve written a list.’ She holds up my notepad and moves discarded naan bread from the sofa so she can sit down.

Eugh. We got another Indian. I’m seriously gonna have to tell Raj to stop delivering to me. Yet I’m impressed by Jazz; she’s already becoming so responsible. I don't think I’ve ever seen her write a list, apart from that time she wrote top ten celebrities she’d like to shag.