It’s less than nine months now until the millennium, and I reckon that’s just about the right timescale. It’ll take that long before the credit card companies realise that I’m robbing Mastercard to pay American Express and vice versa. As Kate never stops reminding me, there are other ways I could do this. It would probably be cheaper to hire a private investigator to track them down. Or I could even have a go at doing it from home, writing letters to last known addresses and phoning international directory enquiries to try to track down numbers. I could take a month off work to go and find them, or I could carry on working and just devote my weekends to the search. But all those ideas completely miss the point. I want this to be an epic, life changing adventure. I want to have the experience. I want to shake up my life and see where everything falls. And if I don’t do it now, then I never will.
It goes quiet in the room and I tentatively open one eye. Oh, sweet Jesus. Chantal’s coming at me with two probes attached to an electricity supply. Isn’t electric shock treatment illegal? I can’t believe I’m actually paying someone to do this to me.
I block that thought out by returning to the practicalities. I’ve added up the available credit on my cards. Twelve thousand pounds. All of them have the facility to withdraw cash, so when the bills come in, I can just take out money from one to pay another. I have a chilling thought. I wonder if this is illegal? I wonder if running up a huge bill on your credit card when you have absolutely no means of paying it back is a criminal offence? That’s all I need – to be financially destitute and on Scotland Yard’s most wanted list at the same time.
Chantal’s plucking my eyebrows and my nerve endings are screaming with pain. This shouldn’t be done without a general anaesthetic or a bottle of vodka.
I distract my brain with more thoughts about the trip.
I consider the best and worst case scenarios. Worst case is that I end up back in the UK in a year’s time with nothing – no man, no money, no house, no job, no self-respect and a mountain of debt.
I’m desperate to blink, but the eyelash tint would splatter everywhere and I’d spend the next two months with black freckles on my cheekbones.
Best case scenario is that one of the guys turns out to be Mr Happy Ever After and I achieve a life of love, peace and contentment, where the only things I worry about are the guest list for my next dinner party and whether to dress the kids in Baby Gap or Baby Next.
The beauty tag team has made a substitution and Jacques is now fussing around me as Chantal goes off to sharpen her cleavers in readiness for her next victim. I look around for Carol, but apparently she’s buggered off for lunch.
Jacques is applying tinting gel to sections of my hair, then wrapping them in tinfoil. He informs me that when he’s done that, he’ll put me under the dryer to speed up the process.
So, twelve thousand pounds, almost nine months, six guys and a bigger disaster potential than the deterioration of the ozone layer. This is the biggest gamble I’ve ever taken. Remind me to pack a rabbit’s foot, a sprig of lucky white heather, a four leafed clover and a St Christopher’s medal.
Jacques has removed the tinfoil, sheared my locks, dried them and applied enough hairspray to give my hair the flexibility of a motorcycle helmet. He stands back and admires his work, then dramatically sweeps me round to face the mirror.
Oh my God! I look like I’ve been marooned on a tropical island for six months. I’m weather-beaten and my hair looks like it’s never seen a hairbrush in its life. There isn’t a strand longer than an inch and it’s going in more directions than the Labour Party. If you turned me upside down, you could use me to scrub floors.
But the shock renders me speechless, so without complaint, I pay and head for the nearest hat shop via the nearest pub, where a tipsy Carol is chatting up the barman. The look on her face as she bends over, clutching her sides, says it all. I’m about to remind her that it’s all her fault, when I realise that there’s no point – the damage is already done.
If this is an omen of things to come, then I’m in big trouble. Maybe I’d be better trying to track them down by phone after all.
12
I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) – Meatloaf
When the plane landed at Kai Tak airport on a humid early August evening, my grin was beaming. I was twenty-five years old, felt forty-five and couldn’t believe that I had actually survived eighteen months in Shanghai, still relatively sane and in one piece. This was my reward – a whole year in Hong Kong.
I fought my way through baggage and customs and exited into a sea of people. I looked around for the hotel representative who was supposed to meet me. How would I recognise them?
I tried to appear cosmopolitan and nonchalant as I scanned the signs being held aloft. Eventually I spotted it. ‘Carvy Cooler’. It had to be me.
The driver ushered me to a waiting Daimler. I felt like royalty as we headed to the Central area of Hong Kong. The contrast between my arrival in Shanghai and this city couldn’t have been greater. Hong Kong was a blaze of neon lights and a veritable hive of activity. But it was the cars that amazed me. There were more
