This Charming Man

by Marian Keyes

  Marnie was speechless. She looked at Daisy and thought, You are six years of age. Whatever happened to the innocence of childhood? The conviction that the world was safe? But she understood how it was for Daisy. Trying to prevent Verity’s pain by feeling it for her was too much of a responsibility.

  It was her and Grace all over again.

  Daisy sighed again, a big, grown-up sigh. ‘I’ll do what I can, Mum, but I can’t always be there.’

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay. Don’t worry.’

  She pulled Daisy close to her. Now she was carrying not just Verity’s perpetual anxiety, but Daisy’s guilt and resentment.

  How can I protect them from the pain of being alive?

  ‘Mum, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘Am I? Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.’

  She looked into Daisy’s clear brown eyes and thought, I love you so much I crumple with agony. I love you so much I wish I’d never had you. Either of you. You’d be better off dead.

  It took a moment for her to ask herself, not nearly surprised enough: Am I thinking of killing my children?

  She dropped them at the school gates. Most parents walked right into the classroom and delivered the children, like batons in a relay race, relinquishing control of their charges only when they were sure the teachers had a firm grip of them. But she hadn’t time today. In her rear-view mirror she watched the two girls trooping across the yard, in their school uniforms, knee socks and straw hats, weighed down and strewn with lunchboxes, sports kits, backpacks and instruments – a violin for Daisy, the more humble recorder for Verity. Still feeling guilty, she pulled out into the traffic.

  Wen-Yi was watching her. Because of how the light glinted on his glasses, she couldn’t always see his eyes, but she felt him catalogue her every move. It was impossible to remove the form from her handbag and slip it into an envelope: he’d see. At lunchtime she went out, planning to buy an envelope and stamps and post it in an anonymous letter box. But there was a long queue in Rymans. Only one till was operational. A man was buying a huge quantity of items, it looked like he was setting up an office from scratch, and a long time was spent packing his box files and in-trays and lever-arches. First single bags, then double bags. When he eventually tried to pay, it was discovered that the phone line was down. No credit card payments were possible, so he went to the cash-point. When he returned a till roll had to be changed. Other customers were dumping their piles of goods on the counter and walking out, muttering angrily about fuckwits. Marnie was tearful with frustration and rage, but she refused to buckle.

  Finally the new-office-man left and everyone moved up a place but the next customer had an armload of index cards, none of which had bar codes. The boy on the till had to leave his post and accompany the customer onto the shop floor to where the cards had been displayed, because there was no record of them on the system. The pair were gone for an endless amount of time.

  I am being tested I am being tested I am being tested.

  She wouldn’t look at her watch. She couldn’t. Watching time being eaten up drove her insane. Then the man ahead of her said, ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s five past two!’ And she knew she had to get back because, despite abandoning the girls at the school gates, she’d been late again this morning.

  Briefly she considered flinging a tenner on the counter and leaving with the envelopes. But she still hadn’t got stamps – they were kept in the till – and knowing her luck, she would get arrested for shoplifting; it was too much of a risk. In despair, she surrendered her items and the day ended as it began, with Mr Lee’s form still in her handbag.

  ∗

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘… I want to be happy.’ Such a shameful admission.

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have everything… a husband, two perfect children, a house…’

  ‘That’s okay. No judgements.’

  Cognitive Coaching. She’d read about it in a Sunday Supplement. In ten short sessions, it had changed the journalist’s life, dispersing her lifelong feeling of futility and filling her with a warm hum of satisfaction. Immediately Marnie had phoned the number at the bottom of the page, but couldn’t get an appointment with the therapist in the piece – thanks to the positive publicity she was fully booked for the next year. However, a website search had unearthed Amanda Cook in Wimbledon who claimed to offer ‘Cognitive Counselling.’

  ‘Is that the same as Cognitive Coaching?’ Marnie had asked, over the phone.

  ‘What’s Cognitive Coaching?’

  ‘Oh.’ Marnie had assumed that someone in the therapy game would be well up in all the different disciplines. ‘Well, there was a thing in the paper…’

  ‘A word of warning,’ Amanda had said sternly. ‘There are many fly-by-night types in this business. They give themselves a fancy title and –’

  To her alarm, Marnie’s hope had begun to ebb away; she couldn’t allow that, she needed to believe that someone could help her. This woman’s title included the buzzword ‘cognitive’; that was good enough.

  ‘Okay, that’s fine, that’s fine! Can I make an appointment?’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’ Amanda had said. ‘I’m free all day. Or Wednesday?’

  Again, Marnie’s hope had dipped: she would have been reassured to know that this counsellor, therapist, whatever she was exactly, was more in demand.

  For a moment she’d wondered if she should simply go to a normal non-cognitive therapist… But she’d tried them, several of them over the years, and they hadn’t worked. And perhaps this ‘cognitive’ thing was just taking off, perhaps she’d be at the crest of a wave and in three months’ time you wouldn’t be able to get a slot with Amanda for love nor money. So she’d agreed upon an appointment time of 6.15 on Thursday evening.

  ‘I’m just off the High Street,’ Amanda Cook had said. ‘There’s a parade of shops, I’m over the chemist –’

  ‘And you think you’ll be able to help me?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t park outside. It’s permits only. Try Ridley Road – often there are spaces there; well, at six-fifteen there should be, I wouldn’t give much for your chances any time after seven.’

  ‘Okay. And, can I ask…’ She’d wanted to establish Amanda Cook’s exact qualifications, the piece in the paper had advised that – but she lost her nerve. She hadn’t wanted to cause offence. ‘No, nothing, it’s fine. So… um… yes, see you then.’

  As Marnie climbed the narrow dusty stairs to the first-floor office, she wondered about this woman who was going to save her. Like a hairdresser or a yoga teacher, a therapist should be their own best advertisement. If they can’t work their magic on themselves, how is anyone else meant to believe in them?

  Happily, first impressions weren’t discouraging. Probably in her late thirties – although it was hard to tell with the rounder face – Amanda was a cheery woman in a skirt-and-flowing-top combo. She had brown hair, which was neither straight nor curly. Instantly Marnie felt thin and nervy-neurotic in her professional suit and tidy ponytail.

  ‘Come in, my dear.’ A trace of West Country could be heard in Amanda’s voice. Pleasant and warm, and Marnie tried to forget that that accent always put her in mind of halfwits.

  ‘Where did you park?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Ridley Road.’

  ‘Not outside? Because it’s permits only. If you park outside, they’ll buzz up and interrupt the session.’

  ‘Yes. You told me on the phone.’

  ‘Please. Sit down.’ She pointed Marnie to an orange upholstered armchair. On the opposite chair was a half-eaten bag of crisps (prawn cocktail). Amanda swept them to one side and tumbled into the chair.

  Marnie’s positive first impressions were dimming fast and she was in the grip of shameful fat-ist anxiety. It was entirely wrong to judge anyone on their appearance. But she needed Amanda Cook to be a miracle worker and if Amanda Cook really wa
s a miracle worker, would she be so… bulky?

  Don’t think this way. Heart surgeons don’t operate on themselves. Racehorse trainers don’t jump over Beecher’s Brook.

  Indeed, Marnie reassured herself, perhaps it was because Amanda Cook was so very delighted with herself that she was blithely unaware of being – it was difficult to be precise because of the floatiness of the garments – what, maybe three stone overweight?

  ‘I use a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and life-coaching to help you to achieve your ideal life,’ Amanda said. ‘Unlike traditional psychotherapy, where the subject can spend years reliving past hurts, Cognitive Counselling is all about the now. Using a combination of visualization and practical changes, I get very quick results.’

  Such confidence! Even with that hair. ‘Always?’ Marnie asked. ‘Very quick results always?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I fail at everything.’

  ‘That’s just a perception, my dear.’

  Marnie didn’t mean to be picky, but it wasn’t. It was hard fact, proved over and over. ‘You’ve helped people like me?’

  ‘What are people like you?’

  ‘… Hopeless… without hope… that anything can change or get better.’

  ‘Without breaking client confidentiality, I recently diverted a man from suicide.’

  Well, that was impressive.

  ‘You simply need to change your thinking, my dear. Let me take a few details. You live…?’

  ‘Wandsworth Common.’

  ‘Nice. In one of those big houses?’

  ‘Ye –’

  ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘He’s a commodities trader, but –’

  ‘Just getting a feel for you.’ Amanda made a mark in her notebook. ‘And you’ve two children. Girls?’

  ‘Girls, six and five.’

  ‘Now, Marnie, I’d like you to close your eyes, let the world disappear, then please describe for me your ideal life.’

  This was startling. ‘My ideal life?’

  Amanda smiled. ‘Until you know what it is, how can you make it happen?’

  That was a good point. ‘But… I don’t know what my ideal life is.’ And if she was to be totally honest, she suspected that the problem wasn’t her life; the problem was herself.

  ‘You need to get in touch with your dreams,’ Amanda clucked. ‘Be ambitious for yourself!’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Remember, the only limit to our happiness is our imagination.’

  Again, Marnie didn’t want to be pedantic but that statement didn’t actually withstand analysis. This was all so unexpected. She’d anticipated a practical focus on the hard facts of her life as it stood, not this airy-fairy, wishful stuff.

  ‘Unlock your dreams,’ Amanda urged. ‘Surrender to the energy and the right words will come.’

  But would they? She doubted it, oh how she doubted it, but still she longed to be proved wrong.

  ‘Come on, Marnie, don’t be frightened. You’re in a safe place and this is your time.’

  For most of her waking hours Marnie ached with yearning but, strangely, now that she had to articulate it, she couldn’t formulate a single desire. Panic building, she hunted through her thoughts, seeking anything at all. She couldn’t fail at this, surely it wasn’t humanly possible.

  ‘Start small, if you must,’ Amanda said. ‘Just something to get the ball rolling.’

  ‘Okay.’ The ball rolling. She took a deep, deep breath. ‘This is a bit rubbish but I’d like to be able to… fix things. Like make a temporary fanbelt with my tights.’

  ‘Car maintenance?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She quailed before Amanda’s confusion. ‘I was thinking sort of sexy, good in a crisis… but wait, wait! I’ve got something.’ An idea had appeared in her head and she latched on to it with breathless gratitude. ‘I’d quite like to be one of those fabulous women…’

  ‘Fabulous women?’

  ‘… One of those white Africans, from White Mischief, even though I haven’t seen it. Who can fly a plane and ride and track animals.’

  Amanda made another mark in the notebook. ‘Describe for me, please, your day-to-day life as one of these “fabulous women”.’

  ‘Aaah…’ For God’s sake, how could she do that? She hadn’t even seen the bloody film. ‘I… ah… I… never have to cook, wash or iron.’

  Amanda looked disdainful. ‘That’s your ideal life. Come on, Marnie, unleash the dream! You have servants, yes?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Describe an encounter with one of them. Visualize it.’

  ‘Aaaah…’ This was ridiculous. ‘I march into the house. I’m wearing jodhpurs tucked into black leather riding boots… I fling myself onto a divan covered with a zebra-skin and say, “Bring me a huge gin and tonic, Mwaba.” ’ After a moment’s thought, she added, ‘ “Chop chop, Mwaba.” ’

  ‘Excellent. Go on.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he gets it for me and… and… I don’t thank him. I never thank anyone for anything. When I arrive at places, I fling the key of my LandRover at the first person I see and say, “Park it, yah.’”

  This depressed Marnie. Thanking people was the least that one human being could do for another and she had refused to thank poor mythical Mwaba just to get Amanda’s approval.

  ‘What do you look like?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘God, I don’t know.’ This was so difficult. ‘Tall, I suppose. Thin. But I don’t care about my appearance.’ She liked the sound of that. ‘I never condition my hair or wear face-cream, and I make those sleeveless, khaki, long jacket things look good.’

  ‘But you’re beautiful?’

  ‘Oh why not?’

  ‘Are you married? In this ideal life of yours?’

  A blank. ‘Yes. No. Yes. When I was twenty-one my first husband shot himself, then I divorced the second when I was twenty-seven.’ Suddenly ideas were firing in her head. Maybe she was finally starting to do this thing right. ‘I’m thirty-five now in my ideal life – I mean, I am in my real life too, but I’m still talking about my ideal life – and in the process of divorcing my third husband. I’m having a torrid affair with a much younger man.’ A pause. ‘And a much older man.’ Why the hell not? ‘Not that much older, just a few years. Five. Seven. Yes, seven.’

  Another mark in Amanda’s notebook. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘The weather is always sweltering hot. I get the odd bout of malaria, but it’s just an excuse to drink more gin, because of the quinine in tonic. I say, “Can’t stomach the damn tonic undiluted. Would only sick it up.” My friends are called Bitsy and Monty and Fenella, and it’s the same people everywhere I go. Now and again I fly my own plane to Jo’burg but I’m soon itching to get back to the bush.’ She was on a roll now, finally in the zone. ‘In the bush, we drink our heads off and dinner isn’t ready until eleven at night, at which point everyone is too drunk to eat. We’re not interested in food, but we’re terrified of running out of gin. We watch the skies, wondering when the supply plane will be in with more gin.’

  Amanda had stopped making notes. She simply sat and listened.

  ‘My husband slurs things like, “My beautiful wife.” He’s trying to be ironic, but he’s so obviously in love with me that he simply seems pathetic. I say, “Shut up, Johnny, you’re drunk.” He used to be handsome but now he’s puffy and jowly from the drink. ‘Cold as ice,” he slurs. “Cold as fucking ice.” No one, except my younger man, can keep up with my drinking.’ Marnie took another breath to continue, she was enjoying herself now – and just as quickly she wasn’t.

  Amanda was looking at her with a strange expression, part concern, part something else. Contempt perhaps?

  ‘Well!’ Amanda sat up straight and said, with a pretence at cheer, ‘That’s a tall order, Marnie. Let’s work with what we have. Have you ever lived on the continent of Africa?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘Can you fly a plane?’

  ‘… No.’


  ‘Or shoot a gun?’

  ‘… No.’ Marnie was whispering now. ‘But I do own a sleeveless khaki jacket.’ From her short-lived riding lessons. ‘And I’ve got a four-wheel drive.’

  ‘A four-wheel drive? I bet you do.’ Amanda stared down at her notebook and Marnie realized the look was going on for too long.

  Eventually Amanda raised her head and said, ‘I can’t help you.’

  Marnie froze. Shock muted her.

  She thinks I’m just a spoilt, bored housewife.’

  I’m not a housewife. I have a job. But the words remained unsaid.

  ‘I could take your money, but that wouldn’t be ethical. I won’t charge you for today’s session.’

  Marnie’s face was hot.

  I don’t want to live in Africa. I don’t want to be rude to people. I only said it to please you.

  Her head dipped, Marnie was gathering her bag and putting on her jacket, stunned by whatever had taken place. Could it be that Amanda Cook had judged her by her house in Wandsworth and her – false – soul-destroying aspirations? Could it be that Amanda Cook had simply decided that she didn’t like her?

  Nothing, nothing, I will feel nothing.

  Marnie nodded goodbye to Amanda who was still sitting imperiously in her chair, then she was leaving the room and stopping herself from running down the stairs in case her shaking legs sent her tumbling to the bottom.

  As she re-entered the outside world, the cold night air slapping her flaming cheeks, she realized that she hadn’t noticed any framed diplomas on the walls. Was it possible that Amanda Cook didn’t have any professional qualifications? But instead of making her feel better – at least it hadn’t been a real therapist who had judged her and found her so lacking – it made her feel worse. She had surrendered herself and her mental health to a woman who was perhaps one of the very fly-by-night operators that she had warned Marnie against.

  What kind of idiot was she? How could she think so little of herself that she couldn’t even check that someone had the right credentials?

  Somewhere inside her was a world of shame, but walking fast kept it contained. Listening to the click-click-click of her heels on the pavement was comforting. It meant her legs were moving, even though her knees were watery.