Rhino What You Did Last Summer

ROSS O’CARROLL-KELLY

(as told to Paul Howard)

Illustrated by

ALAN CLARKE

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Contents

Prologue

  1. Right back where we started from

  2. On the shores of Lake Ewok

  3. My fifteen minutes

  4. This is my comeback, girl

  5. Ross, His Mother, His Wife and Her Lover

  6. A brand new face for the boys on MTV

  7. A dream is a wish your heart makes

  8. An inconvenient truth

  9. The dreaming days when the mess was made

10. Vegas, Baby

11. Bringing down the house

Acknowledgements

‘We may see the small value God has for riches
by the people he gives them to.’

Alexander Pope

Prologue

The old man looks up at us, over the top of his reading glasses, and says the cunillo is wonderful.

Erika lifts her glass and goes, ‘Happy New Year,’ but I’m too in shock to return the toast. So her and the old man end up just clinking glasses.

‘It will be,’ he goes. ‘It will be now.’

I look at him, then back at her. I don’t see it. I don’t see any resemblance at all. Or maybe I don’t want to see it. It’s one of those shocks that’s, like, too big to take in all at once.

I stand up. Except I don’t actually remember standing up? Let’s just say I find myself suddenly standing up.

He turns to her and goes, ‘Oh, here comes the waiter – have you decided what you’re going to have?’

She’s practically popping out of that black satin bustier, but of course I’m not allowed to even notice shit like that anymore.

I’ve got to get out of here. I stort walking. I hear him call me. I hear her call me as well. But I keep going.

I walk out of the restaurant, out of the hotel and out onto the street. It’s snowing – coming down pretty heavy, in fact.

I get in the cor, turn the key – still in a daze – and point her in the direction of actual Barcelona.

I put my foot down and I’m suddenly tearing along all these narrow cliff roads in the pitch dork with the snow blinding me, not giving a fock – if I’m being honest – whether I even crash?

But then my phone suddenly beeps. It’s, like, a text message from Sorcha, saying that she and Honor are thinking about me and that they’re hoping that we beat Ireland A. She obviously knows fock-all about rugby, but it’s still an amazing message to get and I kill my speed, suddenly remembering everything I have to live for, and realizing at that moment exactly where I’m headed.

What happened back there in the restaurant has made me realize that I need to be with my family. I need to see my own daughter and I need to find out if there’s still a chance with Sorcha. I focked things up there like only I know how. But I need to know if there’s still something there. Because it’s with her and Honor that I actually belong.

I notice a set of lights in my rearview and somehow I know they belong to Erika.

Soon I arrive at the border crossing. The dude operating the barrier can’t believe it’s me. His eyes are out on practically stalks. ‘I hear eet on the reddio,’ he goes. ‘It hees true? We score a try hagainst Island?’

I nod. ‘We also kept them to less than a hundred points,’ I go, which is the bigger achievement.

‘A try hagainst Island!’ he goes. ‘You are hero to all of Handorra!’

He waves away my passport. No interest in even seeing it. I look in the mirror and watch Erika’s lights approach.

‘Dude,’ I go, ‘can you do me a favour? I’m trying to give this bird behind me the slip…’

He’s there, ‘Ha crezzy fan, yes?’

I’m like, ‘Something like that. Can you make sure there’s some kind of paperwork she’s got to fill in? As in, a lot of it?’

‘For you,’ he goes, lifting the barrier for me, ‘effery theeng hees poseeble.’

I put the foot down and off I go again, snaking through the Pyrenees, and I’m suddenly having one of my world-famous intellectual moments, thinking about how much your life can change in the space of an hour. It’s like, there I was earlier tonight, being carried around the pitch shoulder-high, the hero of a – pretty much – country, which I’ve now left behind and will probably never see again. And it turns out that Erika’s my sister.

My mind drifts back to a day, whatever, six, seven years ago, the day her old dear’s divorce from Tim became final. Erika was majorly upset. I called around, supposedly to offer my sympathies, and we ended up going at it like two jailbirds on a conjugal visit.

I snap back to reality, realizing, very suddenly, that the border guard won’t be able to hold her for long – not with her chorms. And not in that bustier.

I put the foot down again.

It takes, like, two and a half hours, but I finally reach the airport. It’s, like, two o’clock in the morning when I pull up outside the main terminal building, throwing the rental cor in a set-down area, not even bothering my hole to return it, just leaving the keys in the basically ignition.

I realize that I don’t even have any baggage. All my clobber’s still back at the aportment.

I peg it in and check the deportures board, my eyes going up and down what to me is just a mass of letters, waiting for two words to jump out at me: Los Angeles. There they are.

LA. The Windy City. Call it what you want – but that’s where I’m headed.

I miss Honor so much that when I think about her, it feels like I’m having a hort attack. And, if I’m being honest, Sorcha too, even if she’s with an auditor now.

The flight leaves at, like, 7.00 a.m. I order a first-class ticket using my old man’s credit cord – the least he owes me in the circumstances.

There’s, like, a major crowd hanging around the actual deporture gate. As I get closer, I realize that it’s the Ireland A team. They must be going out on a chorter.

Suddenly, roysh, they’re all turned around, looking straight at me, all in their blazers and chinos. We’re talking Keith Earls. We’re talking Jeremy Staunton. We’re talking Johnny Sexton. I’m expecting words like traitor to be suddenly bandied around like there’s no actual tomorrow? But someone – might even be Roger Wilson – storts clapping, roysh, then one by one they all join in and before I know it the sea of Ireland A players has suddenly ported, and I’m being given a guard of honour through the deportures gate.

It’s actually just what I need.

But it’s as I’m reaching the end of the line that I hear her voice. ‘Ross!’ she goes.

Of course, I should keep walking – I don’t know why I don’t? Maybe because I hear one or two wolf-whistles from the Ireland A goys. I turn around. She’s obviously been crying, from the state of her boat.

She goes, ‘Please don’t go!’

I’m there, ‘I need to get my head around this – time, space, blahdy blahdy blah.’

‘Do you think I’m not confused?’ she goes. ‘Do you think I’m not angry? How can I ever trust my mum again?’

I go to turn around. ‘I’m going to spend some time with my daughter and my – still – wife.’

‘I could come with you,’ she goes. ‘We could get to know each other.’

I’m there, ‘Maybe down the line. Right now, I need to get my head straight – see Sorcha, maybe find out if there’s still…’

‘A chance?’

‘I was going to say a sniff. But yeah.’

She suddenly throws her orms around me, buries her head in my chest, then on go the waterworks. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see one or two of the Ireland A players looking at me, obviously thinking, whoa, rather you than me, Dude.

I rub her bare back and tell her she should be wearing more. She pulls away and looks at me, rivers of mascara running down her face, and says she left the restaurant in such a hurry, she forgot her coat.

I kiss her on the forehead and her hair smells of, I don’t know, almonds and dandelions. I feel a sudden and familiar tightening in my trousers and, hating myself, I quickly turn away from her and tell her that I’d love to stay longer, but I’ve got, like, a plane to catch?

1. Right back where we started from

‘How do you like them babies?’ he goes, pointing at his shoes with a rolled-up copy of the Wall Street Journal. ‘John Lobb custom brogues. Want to know what they cost?’

I actually don’t?

‘Four! Thousand! Dollars!’ he goes anyway.

Of course, I just shrug, because it doesn’t matter how good the Toms are – a man wearing a bluetooth earpiece is only five-eighths of a man.

Still, it’s not up to me to tell him.

‘Cillian!’ Sorcha goes. ‘We’re supposed to be showing Ross around the house – not what you’re wearing?’

This isn’t, like, jealousy or anything, but I’ve never worked out what she sees in this tosspot.

I mention – being nice more than anything – that it’s some pile of stones and straight away he has to mention that Beechwood Canyon is one of the most prestigious addresses in the Hollywood Hills.

It’s only focking rented anyway.

‘Madonna used to live, like, up the road?’ Sorcha goes. ‘And Forest Whitaker. And who else, Pookie?’

Pookie? Jesus!

He’s there, ‘Aldous Huxley – if that name means anything to you, Ross,’ pretty much looking to be decked?

They lead me out into this, like, huge entrance hallway. ‘It’s essentially a classic, 1930s-style Spanish villa,’ he goes. ‘Ten thousand square feet. Twelve bedrooms. Sixteen bathrooms. Eight-car garage. Pool. Spa. Home theatre. Four bars. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views…’

I pull a face as if to say, you know – wouldn’t exactly be my cup of tea?

Then they lead me into the kitchen, which Sorcha mentions is – oh my God! – the kitchen she’s, like, always wanted?

The whole gaff is like something off MTV Cribs, in fairness to it.

She’s there, ‘It’s got, like, a gourmet centre island,’ which I can see for myself, ‘with, like, three Sub-Zero refrigerators, an actual chef’s Morice stove, a Fisher and Paykel double-drawer dishwasher and a built-in Nespresso…’

‘It’s a limited edition one as well,’ he goes. ‘You can’t buy them in the shops,’ and then, for no reason at all, he storts doing these, like, stretching exercises. This is a goy, bear in mind, who never played rugby.

‘Oh my God,’ Sorcha goes, ‘I haven’t even asked you about your flight.’

I’m like, ‘Yeah, the flight was fine,’ pulling up a high stool. ‘Bit wrecked after it.’

‘Have you decided yet what you’re going to do for a carbon offset?’

It’s amazing. I’ve known Sorcha for, like, ten years – been married to her for, what, three and a bit? – and she still knocks me sideways with questions like that.

‘Because what you can do,’ she goes, ‘to pay off your emission debt, is set up a standing order with one of those companies that plant trees on your behalf. That way you can fly and drive with no, like, guilt at all.’

‘I already do,’ would be the wrong thing to say, so instead I just go, ‘Cool,’ cracking on to actually give a fock about, I suppose, world affairs.

She asks me if I fancy a coffee and I tell her I’d actually prefer to see Honor, if I could.

‘Bad news,’ he suddenly goes, ‘we’ve just put her down.’ Sorcha’s like, ‘Cillian!’ and he’s there, ‘Sorcha, if you wake her now, she’ll be awake for the night. And I told you I’ve got that report to read on the high default rates on subprime and adjustable rate mortgages and their likely impact on the US economy.’

Adjustable rate mortgages? I’m thinking, he’s getting decked – I don’t give a fock how much Sorcha likes him.

But then she goes, ‘Ross hasn’t seen his daughter for, like, three months, Cillian. He’s just flown for ten hours,’ and then she turns around to me and she’s like, ‘Ross, come on…’ and she leads me back out into the hall and up this big, winding staircase.

Honor’s is the fourth bedroom on the right. I push the door, but when I catch, like, a glimpse of her curls in the light from the window, I end up just, like, filling up with tears and I have to actually turn away. All I want to do – I don’t know why – is peg it back down the stairs and out of there. But Sorcha grabs me in, like, a clinch and whispers that it’s okay, I suppose I’d have to say soothingly, in my ear. ‘Take your time,’ she goes, running her hand through my hair, so I take a few seconds to, like, compose myself, then I turn around and, with her orm around me, Sorcha sort of, like, slow-walks me over to the bed.

I get down on my knees and watch her tiny sleeping face. She’s so beautiful. ‘I can’t believe how much she’s changed,’ I go, ‘even in that time.’

Sorcha tells me that she still looks like me, which she doesn’t. She’s actually a ringer for Sorcha, but it’s still, like, a really nice thing for her to say?

I stroke her little cheek and go, ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ and she actually opens her eyes for, like, two or three seconds, then closes them again.

I turn around to Sorcha and go, ‘I better let her sleep,’ and Sorcha’s like, ‘Why don’t you come back in the morning? You can take her for the day?’

I ask her if she’s sure and she’s like, ‘Ross, I feel – oh my God – so guilty for taking her away from you,’ and I tell her not to be stupid, then I tell her – because I obviously didn’t want to say it in front of him – that she looks well herself, as in really well, as in really well to the point of pretty much incredible?

She says it’s possible to be practically vegan in LA and that she’s been pretty much existing on mango slices and tempeh sausage patties. She says she also can’t believe how much she underestimated the power of the blender.

I tell her I’m not just talking weight-wise. I’m there, ‘You’re, I don’t know, glowing? The States has always suited you,’ remembering how well she always looked when she came back from her J1er and how it always made me feel guilty for doing the dirt on her while she was away.

She smiles and says thank you. She smells of buttermilk moisturizer and in normal circumstances – you know me – I’d try to throw the lips on her there and then. But I don’t, because, well, I think deep down I know that the reason she looks so amazing is that I haven’t been in her life.

‘Hey, what are you doing tonight?’ she suddenly goes.

I’m there, ‘I was just going to head back to the hotel – basically crash.’

She’s like, ‘Okay, you’re not? I’m going to take you to, like, the best hot dog place in – oh my God – the actual world.’

See, she knows I’m a focker for the hot dogs.

‘You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted these,’ she goes.

We head downstairs and she tells Cillian she’s taking me to Pink’s. And even though he tries to play it cool, roysh, you can tell he’s not a happy bunny? ‘I thought you were tired,’ he goes to me, showing me his entire hand. It’s like playing poker with your focking granny.

I’m there, ‘I think I’m getting my actual second wind.’

‘Well, I’ll come as well,’ he goes, but Sorcha’s there, ‘Er – and leave Honor on her own? Cillian, you said you had work to do. We’ll only be, like, an hour. Two at the most,’ and I make sure to give him a big shit-eating smile on the way out the door.

We’re heading for, like, North La Brea, but Sorcha tells me I can switch off the SatNav because she, like, knows the way? I ask her what she thinks of the cor – we’re talking a BMW 650 convertible – and she goes, ‘How did you even rent this – you don’t have, like, a licence?’ and I laugh and tell her that I borrowed JP’s.

She’s there, ‘Oh my God, you could get into so much trouble for that,’ then she shakes her head, roysh, as if to say, same old Ross, he’s never going to change – thank God.

The queue for hot dogs is up the focking street and around the corner, but it’s good because it gives us, like, an hour to catch up. ‘Like, all the celebrities come here?’ Sorcha goes. ‘I saw Famke Janssen here a few weeks ago and I’m pretty sure Mila Kunis. And my really, really good friend Elodine – Honor goes on, like, playdates with her daughter, Jagger? – she saw Brody Jenner ordering a pastrami reuben. It’s like, Oh! My God!’

I laugh. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I go, ‘because I mean it as an actual compliment – you’ve become, like, so American. You just seem really at home here.’

She smiles, I suppose you’d say, warmly. ‘The only thing I don’t like about LA,’ she goes, ‘is that the water is – oh my God – so hard. Look, my hair’s frizzy – and that’s even after an hour with my GHD…’

I give her, like, a sympathetic look.

‘That’s why all of the stars are getting Evian filtered into their boilers. It said in People that Rhea Durham’s doing it – even though she’s denied it.’

I tell her I can’t believe the size of the gaff they’ve ended up in. ‘Are Pricewaterhouse actually paying for it?’

‘No – it’s, like, a weird one?’ she goes. ‘Bob Soto, who’s, like, the head of the department that Cillian’s been seconded to, his wife is, like, an attorney and it’s one of her clients who owns it. They’ve gone on, like, a cruise for a year and they needed someone to just, like, house-sit? When we saw it, we were just like, Oh my God!’

I’m there, ‘I’d say you were.’

‘I can’t believe you won’t stay with us,’ she goes. ‘You’ve seen it, Ross – there’s loads of room.’

I’m there, ‘No, I’m Kool and the Gang in the Viceroy. Hey, did I tell you I’m in the exact same room where Christopher Moltisanti stayed in The Sopranos?’

‘Oh my God,’ she goes, ‘that must be, like, so expensive.’

I’m there, ‘Fock it – the old man’s paying. The least he owes me when you think about it.’

It’s at that point that I probably should mention Erika. But I don’t – maybe I’m enjoying being around Sorcha too much. Instead, I ask her about work.

‘Well, work-wise,’ she goes, ‘the last few months have been, like, a fact-finding mission for me? Even just walking around Melrose or Robertson, I’ve got – oh my God – so many ideas for the shop back home. Betsey Johnson’s got, like, vertical TV screens playing actual catwalk footage? It’s like, oh my God – why has no one in Ireland even thought about that? Except BTs, obviously.

‘And I’m thinking of having, like, a seating area with huge pink couches – PVC, obviously, not leather. If people are relaxed, they will spend. Elodine told me that and she studied actual retail.

‘And even just the way they talk to you in the shops, Ross. If they see you with, like, two or three items, they come over to you and go, “Do you want me to start a room for you?” And then they, like, compliment you? They’re like, “Oh my God, that is such a good look for you!” I’m going to start saying all of those.’

Then she asks me what’s been happening in my life. I’m there, ‘Well, you know about the whole Andorra thing – a try against Ireland A, blahdy blahdy blah. Let’s just say there’s going to be a lot of teams all of a sudden interested in my services…’

Sorcha’s phone beeps. Except it’s not a phone – it’s, like, a pink BlackBerry? I presume it’s a text from Cillian – still bulling – but she reads it with, like, her mouth open, then tells me that members of the National Restaurant Association are furious with Kevin Federline for appearing in a commercial as a fast-food worker dreaming of becoming a rapper. They say it demeans low-wage restaurant workers.

Of course, I’m left just shaking my head.

‘Oh,’ she goes, ‘it’s this, like, celebrity alert service – Cillian got me a subscription for Christmas. You get, like, all the news and gossip, straight to your phone, as it happens. Even photographs. Oh my God, I have to show you the giraffe-print Escada halter that Jada Pinkett Smith wore to the New York Fashion Fête.’

Luckily, roysh, it doesn’t come to that, because we’re suddenly at the top of the queue. I order, like, a chilli cheese dog with, obviously, fries and I persuade Sorcha to have, like, a Patt Morrison Baja Veggie, even though she says she’s trying to steer clear of guacamole.

We end up sitting in this little, I suppose, yord at the back of the place, at a little white plastic table, wolfing down what I would have to say is the most incredible hot dog I’ve ever tasted.

Sorcha mentions that she’s going to buy Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography again. ‘I was only talking to Elodine the other night about her whole struggle?’ she goes. ‘And I thought, oh my God, I have to re-read it.’

I swat away a mosquito the size of a small bird, then I tell her it’s great to see her. She smiles at me – like old times – and says it’s great to see me, too.

The ugly munter – what is she, following me now?

She’s all, ‘What you’re asking me, I think, is why do I write? And the answer to that is that I can’t imagine not writing…’

I’m, like, shouting at the TV, going, ‘You swamp donkey! You total focking mong!’

‘I know this is going to sound, oh, impossibly celestial,’ she’s giving it, ‘but sometimes it’s as if my fingers are being directed – that I’m merely a cipher for this wonderful story that the universe has determined must be told.’

‘Karma Suits You,’ the dude interviewing her goes. ‘Hey, what a crazy title – what’s it about?’

‘Well, it’s the story of a fifty-something Irish woman who experiences a sexual reawakening – a re-blossoming, if you like – after going through the menopause. She abandons her old, rather repressed life in Ireland and comes to America, where she experiences this rebirth, which is where the idea of karma comes in. And of course she meets all these wonderful men – a fireman, obviously, a two-hundred-pound NBA star, even an elevator repairman – and has all these wonderfully erotic experiences, some of which she would have considered impossible without recourse to heavy pain medication…’

I’m, like, screaming now. ‘You’re a focking disgrace! You absolute focking manatee!’

‘Of course, the full title,’ the other interviewer – who’s, like, a woman – goes, ‘is Karma Suits You – States of Ecstasy. Because during the course of her year, she has – let’s just say – relations with fifty men in fifty different states. And, controversially, fifty different positions. Can I just read out a line from one of my favourites, which is Alaska? This is the scene that ends with the kneeling lotus.

‘He said he was a whale fisherman. She looked at him askance, studying his leathery face, his commanding, callused hands, his entire bearing, straight as a longboat. Her resistance melted like the polar ice cap. Soon, he was exploring her Inside Passage and she was groaning like an age-worn sled dog.’

The audience claps – they actually clap. ‘You’re a focking shambles!’ I’m going.

Suddenly there’s, like, a loud knock on the door, then it bursts open before I get a chance to even get out of the sack. There’s all of a sudden a man stood at the foot of my bed – black, if the truth be told – and he’s wearing, like, a uniform. At first, roysh, I think he’s a cop, but then he says he’s, like, hotel security.

‘Sir,’ he goes, ‘we’ve had a complaint from one or two guests about a ruckus coming from this suite.’

‘A ruckus?’

‘A ruckus, Sir.’

I nod in the direction of the old Savalas. ‘Well, can you actually blame me?’

He turns around, looks at the screen. ‘Regis and Kelly,’ he goes. ‘My wife never misses it. Though I gotta tell you, I think she preferred Kathie Lee…’

‘I’m talking about her, the guest – focking so-called – they’ve got on…’

He sits on the end of the bed. ‘She’s kinda pretty,’ he goes. ‘She Irish?’

I’m like, ‘Pretty? You’ve got to be shitting me – that’s a double-bagger if ever I saw one.’

He’s there, ‘Got nice pins, too. What you got against this lady?’

‘What I’ve got against her is that she happens to be my old dear.’

‘Old what?’

‘It’s, like, our word for mother? And it’s, like, how would you like to see your mother up on the wall there talking filth?’

‘I wouldn’t, I guess. But I gotta tell you, you gotta keep it down, my man. You in the Viceroy now – not the Y. You hearing me?’

I tell him I am.

‘I’m Carl,’ he goes.

A high-five in LA, I’m happy to say, is exactly the same as a high-five back home.

‘No more ruckus – know what I’m saying?’

I’m there, ‘Kool and the Gang, my friend. Kool and the Gang.’

Then he’s suddenly gone.

My phone beeps – a text from, like, Sorcha: OMG ur mum is on live with regis n kelly! u must be omg SO proud.

‘Because I think it’s our duty,’ the stupid hound’s going, ‘and I don’t use that word lightly, as writers to challenge norms, be they sexual, be they… whatever.’

‘Yeah,’ this Kelly one’s going, ‘back in the, er, Emerald Isle…’

‘The Old Sod,’ Regis or whatever he’s called goes.

‘… you’re considered something of an Irish Catherine Millet – would that be fair to say?’

‘I think it would,’ the old dear goes, ‘insofar as we’re both libertines. We both believe in free expression in a sexual context. And in all its forms, whether that’s nihilism, sadomasochism, autoerotic asphyxiation…’

I can’t actually listen to any more of this. I reach down, grab one of my Dubes off the floor and fock it straight at the TV. It bounces off, roysh, and I’m lying there thinking, it’s a good job I don’t wear John Lobb custom brogues, otherwise it would have probably cracked the…

The next thing, roysh – pretty unexpected, I have to say – the TV just, like, falls off the wall and there’s what would have to be described as a loud explosion, we’re talking sparks everywhere.

I’m like, ‘Holy fock!’

I pick up the phone, dial zero for reception. I’m there, ‘Listen, tell Carl not to bother his orse coming back up – every thing’s cool. By the way, I’ve pretty much broken the TV. Is that likely to show up on the Harry Hill?’

I was convinced that Sorcha was shitting me when I saw them first.

Stilettos for babies.

I asked her was it not, like, dangerous, but she said that girls eventually have to learn to wear designer heels and it’s best if they stort young.

I could have pointed out that Chloe back home has been told she has to have both hips replaced, the result of a lifetime wearing designer heels, but it’s, like, no – I’m actually over here to chill. So I said nothing while she put on Honor’s little red patent pumps – ‘so like my actual Roger Viviers’ – and warned me not to let her walk more than a few steps unassisted.

So we’re sitting in, like, Bornes and Noble in Santa Monica – in the little Storbucks in there? – and it’s nice, roysh, just the two of us, me and my daughter, spending some QT together, watching all the comings and goings.

Sorcha, I should mention, feels it’s important for Honor to get a good grasp of conversational Spanish and Mandarin while she’s still young. She said I wouldn’t believe how important multi-ethnicity is over here. Every time someone passes our table, Honor’s either like, ‘Hola,’ or she’s like, ‘Ni hao,’ and the thing is, roysh, I haven’t heard her say a word in actual English yet.

I’m there, trying to get her to say, ‘Daddy,’ going, ‘Can you say, “Daddy”? “Daddy”! “Daddy”!’

‘Ni hao,’ she just goes. ‘Ni hao ma.’

She’s also, by the way, trying desperately to get her hands on my grande triple shot dulce de leche mocha and I’m thinking, she’s definitely my daughter. I end up giving her one or two little sips, thinking, you know, coffee can’t be any worse for a baby than Toms that cut off the circulation in her feet.

So I’m sitting there, roysh, basically chilling, taking in the whole California experience, when all of a sudden there’s a bird, we’re talking one or two tables away – a ringer for Mandy Moore and that is not an exaggeration? – staring over, which is no big deal actually, because I am looking well at the moment and, as we all know, every bird is a sucker for a man with a baby.

‘Oh my God!’ she goes at the top of her voice. ‘I love her!’ which is always nice for a father to hear.

I’m there, ‘Thanks. She’s basically eighteen months old now – maybe a little bit more.’

It’s only when she goes, ‘She is such an inspiration to me,’ that I realize that who she’s actually talking about is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the book I’m considering buying for Sorcha but am currently using as a coaster. ‘Have you, like, read it?’ she goes.

‘Yeah,’ I go, thinking on my feet as usual. ‘Matter of fact, I’m re-reading it? It’s just I was talking to someone the other day about her whole, I suppose you’d have to say, struggle and I was thinking, Dude, you owe it to yourself to re-read it. And maybe re-read it again after that.’

She smiles at me. She’s got teeth like Chiclets and she’s interested in me – that much she’s making pretty obvious. ‘The bit where she’s forcibly circumcised,’ she goes, ‘I was thinking, oh my God, if I could get my hands on those tribal elders…’

‘Don’t get me storted,’ I go, then of course I haven’t a clue what to say next – I don’t know what the book’s even about? – so I flip it over subtly and stort feeding her lines off the back cover.

‘My own personal feeling,’ I go, ‘is that she has an open mind that has released itself from the old straitjacketed frame of reference of Right and Wrong. I mean, there’s no doubt she is instinctively, deeply anti-authoritarian and – you’d have to say – unlikely to stick to straight ideological themes and shit? She will go on asking difficult questions. I could be wrong – that’s just what I think.’

I thump the table then, just for effect.

No bird has ever looked at me the way she looks at me then – not even Sorcha on our wedding day. She wants me, and she wants me in a major way.

She goes, ‘I know a guy who’s hoping to turn her story into a Broadway musical. I would so love to play her.’

She sort of, like, indicates the chair beside me to ask if she can join me. I’m there, ‘Yeah, coola boola,’ because, like I told you, she’s hot – and wearing half-nothing as well.

‘I’m Sahara,’ she goes, offering me her hand, the one that’s not holding her frap?

I’m there, ‘Sahara? What a beautiful name,’ which it’s not, of course – it’s the name of a casino.

‘It’s actually Sarah?’ she goes. ‘But my agent thought it would help get me roles.’

I tell her I know a bird called Sophie who started spelling her name Seauphie as a way of, like, pissing off her old pair when they were getting divorced. It helps to get, like, a rapport going? Then I’m like, ‘Hang on – did you say agent?’

‘I’m an actress,’ she goes.

I’m like, ‘An actress?’ showing an actual interest, which is something I’m going to stort doing more of. ‘What are the chances! Well, without blowing my own trumpet here, I’m a pretty big deal myself back home.’

‘Back home?’ she goes. ‘You mean you’re not from California?’

I’m there, ‘Er, my accent?’

She’s like, ‘You don’t have an accent.’

‘Are you shitting me?’

‘No – where are you from?’

‘I’m, like, Irish?’

‘Oh my God, that is so random. I would never have known. So what are you, like, famous for in Ireland?’

‘Well, not just Ireland, I could say. Have you ever heard of a certain game called rugby?’

‘Rug…’

‘Rugby?’

‘I don’t think so.’

I crack my hole laughing. ‘Now I know you’re shitting me.’

She has un-focking-believable Jakki Deggs, in fairness to her, smooth and tanned, and the way she’s dangling her Havaiana on the end of her foot is doing it for me in a big-time way.

I’m there, ‘Would it be rude of me to ask you for your number?’

She opens her mouth, only cracking on to be shocked. ‘I’ll say this for you,’ she goes, ‘you’re confident,’ and I’m there, ‘It has been said,’ flirting my orse off majorly.

She’s there, ‘I bet it has. I only stopped by your table because I’ve just finished reading the same book,’ playing the innocent, of course.

‘You stopped by my table because you were attracted,’ I go. ‘You liked what you saw and you went for it – no one’s judging you.’

She slaps me, sort of, like, playfully? You always know you’re in when they do that. I’m there, ‘So, what are doing Friday night?’

‘What am I doing Friday night?’ she goes, actually embarrassed. ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. I’m having some of my girlfriends over. It’s, like, my television debut? This thing I worked on… I don’t know, do you want to come over?’

I’m there, ‘Well, I’ve no other plans – plus I’ve broken the TV in my hotel room.’

I whip out my phone and she gives me her digits. She says it’ll be me and, like, three girls there and I tell her I like those odds. She laughs. I put my hand on her knee, then she’s suddenly serious again, fanning her face with her hand and saying oh my God over and over again, unable to believe her actual luck here.

But, like I said, think Mandy Moore.

I tell her I hoped she didn’t get the wrong idea when she saw me with my daughter. ‘Don’t worry,’ I go, ‘I’m happily separated – on the way to being divorced. Yeah, she’s with, like, a complete tosser now – he’s, like, an auditor.’

Of course, I end up nearly falling off the chair when she turns around and goes, ‘What daughter?’

I look beside me. My coffee has gone and, more importantly, so has Honor and I pretty much crap my board shorts. It’s like, No! No! No!

The next thing, roysh, I’m literally running around the shop, calling her name at, like, the top of my voice, while at the same time kacking it – and who can blame me? I check, like, Crafts and Hobbies, Architecture, even Humanities and she’s, like, nowhere to be seen.

On the outside, I’m trying to stay calm. I tell Sahara that she couldn’t have gone far – she isn’t walking that long. And she’s in, like, high heels. But then I remember that she’s had a coffee – the guts of a triple espresso – and I realize that she could be anywhere.

Then of course the guilt storts to kick in. I’m thinking about all the people down through the years who told me that this pretty face would eventually be my undoing and how they’d love to see me now, frantically running around Recommended, Judaism and Judaica and – this’ll give you a laugh – Parenting, looking for my actual daughter, who wandered off while I was busy playing Mr Lover Lover.

Sahara, in fairness to her, keeps her head. She asks me for, like, a description, then says she’ll tell security to lock down the store. ‘If she’s in here,’ she goes, ‘we’ll find her – you go check outside.’

Outside? I hadn’t even thought! I literally burst through the doors, out onto Third Street, and stort pegging it up the promenade like an actual lunatic. Every baby I see, I run, like, straight up to them, going, ‘Honor!’ and of course when it’s not her, the parents are looking at me as if to say, ‘Er, weirdo?’

It must be, like, half-a-mile up the promenade that I decide to give up, thinking, there’s no way she could have got this actual far. That’s when I notice this, like, ruck of people gathered around this crowd of buskers playing, like, salsa music. It’s actually out of the corner of my eye that I think I spot a mop of blonde curls somewhere in the middle and I’m literally throwing people out of the way to get in there.

It’s her! She’s standing in front of the band, in her little red shoes, dancing away. And everyone’s laughing and clapping, like they think she’s part of the act?

‘That’s my daughter!’ I go. ‘That’s my actual daughter!’ and I sweep her up in my orms.

‘Hey, Man, I was enjoying that,’ someone shouts and then someone else goes, ‘Asshole,’ but I don’t give a fock now that I’ve got her back, unhormed as well, although her body is sort of, like, twitching in my orms and she keeps, I don’t know, clenching and unclenching her teeth.

‘Is she okay?’ this bird asks me. She’s not that unlike Trista Rehn. ‘Her eyes look kind of spacey.’

‘Yeah, she’s had a coffee,’ I go, then she looks at me like I’m some kind of, I don’t know, monster.

I carry her back up the street, promising to buy her all sorts of shit and grateful, I suppose, that she doesn’t have the words yet to tell Sorcha what happened – certainly not in any language that her mother could understand.

Sahara – Sarah, whatever – is waiting for me at the door of Bornes and Noble. ‘You found her!’ she goes and then, ‘Oh my God, she’s so beautiful!’

I’m shaking my head going, ‘If anything ever happened to her, I’d… well, I don’t know what I’d do.’

She smiles, then leans forward and gives me the most unbelievable kiss on the lips, to the point where I’m suddenly feeling a bit spacey myself. ‘You are such a sweet guy,’ she goes. Then she hands me, like, a bag. ‘I hope you don’t mind – I bought that book for you?’

Sorcha asks me how Honor was yesterday and I tell her fine.

That’s one of the good things about being a lady’s man my entire life – I can lie without even thinking about it?

‘It’s just that it took me – oh my God – hours to get her to sleep last night,’ she goes.

I pull a face like I’m trying to come up with, I don’t know, the answer to a really hord crossword question? Then I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what that could have been.’

I’m just there, bouncing Honor up and down on my knee, going, ‘I think it was just the excitement of seeing your Daddy again, wasn’t it?’

‘Xing qi yi…’

‘Can you say, “Daddy”?’

‘Xing qi er, xing qi san…’

Sorcha suddenly gets a text. She says that – oh my God – actress Julia Roberts and husband filmmaker Danny Moder are going to have a little brother or sister for Hazel and Phin. I just shrug. Then she goes, ‘Oh my God, there’s one about your mum, too,’ and I have to admit, roysh, she suddenly has my attention. ‘Oprah was spotted reading a copy of her book in The Rosebud in Chicago. Oh! My God! That is such a huge deal, Ross.’

I crack on not to be impressed. ‘It’s, like, who even is Oprah – I’m talking in the big scheme of things?’

She laughs and says that an endorsement from Oprah can turn a book into a million-seller overnight.

I shrug my shoulders. I’m like, ‘The thing I don’t understand is when did she even write it? She’s only been in the States, like, a fortnight.’

‘She wrote it when she was in, like, her twenties.’

‘It’s more of her usual porn.’

‘It’s so not, Ross. In fact, I was the one who told her to send it to an American publisher.’

‘You?’

‘About two years ago. I was the first one she ever let read it.’

She always was a crawler when it came to my old dear.

‘She has this amazing line about Florida. He exploded inside her like a first-phase rocket…’

I suddenly cover Honor’s ears. I’m there, ‘Too much information, Sorcha! Too much information!’

She laughs, then takes Honor from me. She says that Cillian’s late, meaning late home from work. I’m thinking that maybe now is the time to tell her about Erika. We’re relaxing beside the pool with a couple of appletinis and I feel like I could say anything to her at this moment.

But I don’t.

Instead, I end up talking about him. ‘I think he feels threatened by me,’ I go.

She’s there, ‘Cillian? Cillian has no reason to feel threatened by you,’ except she says it a little bit too defensively?

I’m like, ‘Some would disagree. What was all that shit the other night about his shoes? John focking Lobb.’

‘Oh my God,’ she goes, ‘there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look your best, Ross.’

‘But he’s an accountant.’

‘Don’t give me that – he happens to be a senior adviser in international risk assessment.’

‘Whatever! It’s not just the shoes anyway. It’s the gaff – he thought he was Puffy showing me around his crib. All he was short of saying was, “This is where the magic happens!” which, I reckon, would have been bullshit anyway.’

She looks at me, suddenly embarrassed, and I immediately know it’s a touchy subject. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she goes.

I’m there, ‘Well, I couldn’t help but notice Prison Break, Season One, on the bedside locker. Boxsets in the bedroom are a definite sign of somebody who’s not getting any.’

‘That’s none of your business,’ she goes, pointing at me, which she only ever does when I’ve hit the nail on the head. ‘You’ve no right to even talk to me about that side of my life. We’re both free agents, can I just remind you? We’ve both moved on.’

Now it’s my turn to laugh. I think she’s just made it obvious that she still misses me in at least one deportment. ‘All I’m saying,’ I go, ‘is that Cillian shouldn’t feel under pressure with me here. He shouldn’t feel like he has to compete with me.’

‘Oh, believe me,’ she goes, ‘he doesn’t.’

not