Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I SAT ON the floor in my living room, surrounded by the wreckage of my hopes and dreams. Scattered papers on my left side, a pile of used Kleenex on my right. The aftermath of the past day and a half.

The half-empty box of clean tissues took centre stage in front of me, and I plucked out another one so I could blow my nose.

“Callie, have you phoned the florist yet?” my mother called from the kitchen.

I gave a shuddering sniffle and swallowed down another batch of tears. “No, Mum. It’s on the list.”

Along with contacting the rest of the wedding guests, speaking to the caterer, getting hold of the dress designer, cancelling the hire of the vintage Rolls Royce… The list went on.

All I’d done so far was explained to the organisers at the lovely hotel we’d chosen as the venue for our wedding reception that we were no longer getting married.

The lady I spoke to had sounded suitably shocked, but quickly recovered enough to say, “I’m terribly sorry, but with only three days until the wedding, we can’t give you a refund.”

That was the icing on the cake. Cake. The tears fell harder. Of course, now there would be no cake. The beautiful three-tier affair we’d chosen together would probably be distributed at the local homeless shelter, the little bride and groom that were supposed to perch on top consigned to the dustbin.

When I said “we’d chosen,” I meant my fiancé Bryce and me. No, no… My ex-fiancé.

My mother wandered through and put a glass of red wine down next to me.

“Darling, drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

I looked at my watch. “Mum, it’s only ten thirty in the morning.”

“I know, dear, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Was she saying I was desperate? No way! I was off men, forever.

“People will think I’m an alcoholic.”

“No, dear, alcoholics go to meetings. You’d just be a party girl.”

I looked towards the ceiling, praying for divine intervention. It was great that Mum was being supportive and everything, but I couldn’t help wishing she’d do it from the comfort of her own home. That way, I’d be able to mope in peace.

“You’ve got to get right back into the saddle and show that no-good scoundrel what he’s missing,” she continued.

Oh, that was easy for her to say. She’d had plenty of practice. Brenda Shawcross was now on husband number five. Or was it six? She’d married one of them twice, claiming she couldn’t quite make up her mind, and I wasn’t sure whether to count that as one mistake or two.

My father had been hubby number one. He’d stuck around long enough to saddle my sister and me with the names Persephone and Callista, and then taken off for parts unknown. The last time I heard from him, which was eight years ago, he was running a beachside bar on Santorini. The Tango Lounge. I’d googled it, and Trip Advisor gave it two stars.

I’d got the better end of the deal with the name thing, though. At least I could shorten mine to Callie. There wasn’t much you could do with Persephone other than Percy, and no way did Princess P want to get mistaken for a boy. When I was four and my sister was five, she’d begged me to swap names, and I often thought that my refusal had contributed to the chip she’d carried around on her shoulder ever since.

I took a deep breath. Things could be worse. Persephone could be here too. But in a tiny miracle, she’d cried off the wedding. Apparently attending a golf tournament in Quinta do Lago with her oh-so-perfect husband was far more important than watching her only sister get married.

Or not get married, as it turned out.

“Mum, give me a break, would you?”

“Men aren’t worth crying over. Especially that one. I never liked him, you know.”

Oh, now she told me. I’d only been dating Bryce for six years. “He wasn’t that bad. I mean, he had his good points.”

“What were they?”

I struggled to think. Was I defending Bryce or just my own poor judgement? With hindsight, I saw that perhaps he hadn’t been the greatest thing since sliced bread after all, but I hated the thought that I’d wasted six years of my life with an i***t.

Finally, I came up with, “He always left the toilet seat down.”

My mother stared at me, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. So I settled for a bizarre mix of the two, and her eyes widened in alarm.

“Callie, that’s—”

Saved by the bell. Or rather, by the front door opening. I winced as it slammed back into the wall, and a small chunk of plaster fell to the carpet. My friend Kat never could make a quiet entrance.

“Right, I’ve got a bottle of wine, two tubs of Ben and Jerry’s, and a movie. And once we’ve finished laughing at Will Ferrell, I’ve got a lighter to burn Bryce’s stuff,” she announced.

What was it with the wine? And where did Kat think we were going to have a fire? I lived in a second-floor flat for goodness sakes.

My mother, on the other hand, thought it was an excellent idea. “I’ll get spoons. And extra glasses. And we could do with some petrol to make things go up nicely.”

She hustled out to the kitchen, and I tried to be the voice of reason.

“We can’t burn Bryce’s things. What if he wants them back?”

“Well, he should have thought about that before he decided he ‘needed space,’ shouldn’t he?” Kat used her fingers to form little air quotes around the words.

She did have a point, I supposed. And she was only trying to help. Partly because she was my best friend, and partly out of guilt because it was she who’d introduced me to Bryce in the first place. She’d apologised a thousand times for that in the past thirty-six hours, and I kept trying to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault. We’d only been sixteen at the time. How could either of us have known what a Grade A asshole he would turn into?

I still remembered the day I’d first met him. When I’d walked into a meeting of the local amateur dramatics society with Kat, there he was, standing across the room, talking with the director of the play he was about to star in. I’d thought he was terribly sophisticated because he was drinking an espresso. How shallow had I been back then?

He was two years older than me, and I’d almost died of embarrassment when he’d sauntered over and introduced himself. Of course, he’d still been plain old Brian then. The transformation into Bryce had come later, when he decided no serious actor would ever be called Brian Featherstone.

He’d kissed my hand and told me I made him think of the Bard’s Ophelia, and I’d rushed home to look up who Ophelia was. The potential wife of Prince Hamlet! He thought I could be a princess? I’d gone giddy just thinking about it.

After that, it didn’t take much persuading from Kat for me to join the drama group. Bryce had been the shining star, quoting Shakespeare as if he knew the guy personally. Kat tended to have small speaking parts. The lead actress’s sidekick, that sort of thing. Me? I helped to make the props and carry stuff.

Sort of like a rehearsal for life, really.

Three months later, Bryce had finally asked me out. Well, what he’d actually said was, “My pal Andrew’s birthday celebration is on Saturday. I’d be honoured if you would accompany me.”

It didn’t matter that I knew he’d already asked Mandy Smith and she’d said no because she had tickets to a Michael Jackson tribute concert. Bryce wanted me to go with him. Me!

I’d leapt at the chance, put on my best dress and my highest heels, then spent three hours holding onto Brian’s beer glass while he hobnobbed with the up and coming social elite of the town that we lived in. The blisters were worth it.

He’d been my first boyfriend. And, I swore as I sat in a fort made from piled-up tissues, my last. It was at that moment I recalled Ophelia had gone mad in the end. Was that my destiny?

“Stop thinking about him!” Kat brought me back to reality by snapping her fingers in front of my face.

“I’m trying. But Bryce has been my life for six years. There’re reminders of him everywhere.”

“Yes, but we’re going to fix that.”

“Kat, we’re not hauling his stuff to the park and toasting marshmallows over it.”

She pouted. “Fine. But I honestly think it would make you feel better.” She considered the options for a few seconds. “How about just the photos then? We could burn them in the sink.”

“No! It would set the fire alarm off.”

She looked at me like I’d had the best idea ever.

“The fire alarm? That’s brilliant! We’d get a whole truck full of firemen. Like a home delivery of eye candy.”

“I’m going to bed now.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to get out and live life to the fullest without Mr. Four-Syllable-Words holding you back.”

I had to giggle at that. Bryce really had talked that way. He kept a thesaurus on his nightstand and a dictionary in the cupboard next to his box of low-sugar, high-fibre muesli so he could learn a new word every morning.

“So you’re saying I should find a man who only speaks in short sentences?”

“No, I’m saying you should find a man who doesn’t speak at all. He should be doing other things with his mouth.”

My mouth dropped open. “You can’t say that!”

“Why not?”

“My mother’s in the kitchen.”

“She’s been married six times. You think she doesn’t know about these things?”

I wanted to close my ears. I didn’t discuss “these things,” not even with Bryce. He was strictly a missionary man. No variation. I recalled the day when, after reading a particularly graphic romance novel, I’d suggested we might try things with me on top.

He’d stared at me, aghast. “But Callista, you wouldn’t have any comprehension as to what was involved. You’re just not that type of girl.”

And that was that. Discussion over. I just wasn’t that type of girl.

Kat must have noticed my blank expression. “Pack it in!”

“What?”

“You’re thinking again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, sarcasm rising to the fore. “I’ll switch my brain off for a bit, shall I?”

She was oblivious. “I’m not sure you can do that. What you really need is a change of scene.”

My mother hurried back in with a glass of wine in each hand. One red, one white. She handed them both to me, and I was surprised she hadn’t cut out the middlemen and brought the bottles.

“A change of scene? That’s a marvellous idea, Kat. Callie can come and stay with me for a while.”

No, no, no. No way! “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It’ll be no trouble. Your room’s exactly as you left it when you moved in here.”

Just what I needed—boy band posters and an abundance of out-of-date hair products. “Mum, I’ll be fine here.”

“Nonsense, it’s settled. I’ll just go and grab the ice cream.”

As soon as she left the room, I turned to Kat.

“Do something,” I hissed.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but this was your idea. Fix it!”

Mum returned and plonked a bowl down in front of me. She’d been a little over-generous with her portions. Much as I loved Phish Food and Chunky Monkey, if I ate a pint of each, I’d be sick.

“Eat up, dear. Once you’ve finished, I’ll help you to pack.”

I glared at Kat with murder in my eyes.

“I-I-I’ve had a better idea,” she stammered. “Callie can come and stay with me for a while instead. She’s always said she wanted to do a bit of travelling.”

I’d said nothing of the bloody sort. That was Kat’s brainwave? To go and stay with her? Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they said. Almost literally, because Kat lived in Egypt, and wasn’t it about a thousand degrees centigrade out there?

This was going from bad to worse. I grabbed another tissue and blew my nose. Why couldn’t they both just go home?

“Kat, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

A good question, and one I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t have a fiancé I needed to stay and pander to anymore, plus I worked as a teacher, and we’d just broken up for the summer holidays. Six long weeks of nothingness stretched ahead of me, and Kat knew it.

“There’s nobody to water the plants,” was the best excuse I could think of.

“What, those?” Kat asked, pointing at a sorry looking yucca in the corner, which stood next to an orchid that had seen better days.

“You’re full of good ideas today, aren’t you, Kat?” said my mother. “I’ll take the plants home with me. Dave can look after them.”

Hubby number five/six was a keen gardener. Allegedly. I suspected it might have been a tactical move on his part because every time my mum asked him to do some DIY, he escaped to the potting shed.

“And you’re packed for the beach already,” Kat said. “You just need to pick up your suitcase.”

Gee, thanks for reminding me. Bryce and I had planned to honeymoon at a couples resort in Jamaica. I’d been looking forward to that trip for months, but now the tickets would most likely sit in his wallet, unused. Hmm. I really did want to go to the beach, but did I dare to just up and leave?

My phone rang, and I recoiled in horror as I recognised the ringtone I’d assigned to Persephone. “The b***h Came Back” by Theory of a Deadman. I didn’t want to answer it, but I had to. If I let it go to voicemail, she’d only take it as an admission of defeat.

“Callista.” She used my full name as a greeting.

I returned the favour. “Persephone.”

“Oh, you poor thing. When Mother called me yesterday and said Bryce had left you, I just knew I had to make the time to call this week. You must be feeling truly terrible.”

“I’m not feeling great, no.” I wanted to add, “mainly because you’re on the phone,” but I didn’t dare.

She ploughed on. “I was just saying to Pierre the other week that it was inevitable. I mean, Bryce’s career has been taking off since he got that understudy role in Macbeth. It was only a matter of time.”

“What do you mean, a matter of time?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Well, before he traded up. You have to admit you were punching above your weight, don’t you? Even though Bryce was no Pierre, he still had some class.”

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I tried to think of something to say, but no words would come out. Why did Persephone always have to make me feel so small? She never stopped reminding me of how wonderful her husband was. He was a bloody pastry chef, not the living incarnation of Apollo.

My darling sister must have heard me sniffing, like a shark smelling blood.

“Oh, don’t cry. I’m sure in a month or two, when you feel able to leave the house again, you’ll find someone more suitable.”

Where had she learned to be so mean? I’d never been a violent person, but sometimes, I wanted to cut out her tongue. I’d had enough of her constant put-downs.

“As a matter of fact, I’m just going off on holiday. I might find myself a new man sooner than you think.”

What was I even saying?

Persephone was silent for a few seconds, and then I heard a rather unladylike snort. “Oh, is Kat still there? She hasn’t been filling your head with nonsense again, has she?”

“No, she’s been very helpful. We’re going to Egypt. I’m all packed, and I’m really looking forward to it.”

Hysterical giggles threatened to burst out. Stay calm, Callie. Just breathe.

“Egypt? Well, it’s hardly Mustique, but I suppose even people like you and Kat have to take a break somewhere. Oh, I’ve got to go—Pierre’s calling me. We’re having dinner with the Molinards tonight, and we have to pick up a gateau on the way.”

With that, she hung up.

Kat grinned at me in triumph. “I’ll fetch your case, shall I?”

No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t back out now. Not when I’d told Persephone I was going. My life might have been a mess, but even so, I hated the thought of another “I told you so” phone call from my older sister.

She’d married Pierre two years ago after a whirlwind romance. Their wedding ceremony had been perfect. The sun shone, her dress was beautiful, and nobody got drunk at the reception. They lived in Paris in their perfect apartment on a perfect street with their perfect daughter, Annie.

Nothing ever went wrong in Persephone’s life.

We couldn’t be more different.

I reached for the tissues again.