First published 2016
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2016
ISBN: 978 1 78530 043 1 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 78530 039 4 in paperback format
Copyright © Caroline Grace-Cassidy 2016
The right of Caroline Grace-Cassidy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore
For my daughters, Grace and Maggie Cassidy
Follow your dreams girls. . . Always.
Contents
Title Page
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part 2
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
part 1
1
Sunday morning. 1 December. The week before. At home.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I exaggerate the words, slowly rounding them out, mouthing them silently into my mirrors. A conclave of lips, teeth and tongue.
‘What is happening to us?’ I enunciate carefully.
Surveying my reflections carefully in the side-by-side mirrors, I scrutinise the pair of me in our white polka-dot towelling dressing gowns. Both the MDF white, mirrored wardrobe doors are swung slightly open so I can perfectly see me times two. I take another step forward on my spongy beige carpet. I wish at least one of me had the answers. But I don’t. I’m trying to look inside my head. Trying to figure out my own thoughts. Trying to analyse what has gone wrong. My heads fall gently to lean on the glass and my eyes begin to water as I fight them on their primal need to blink.
Am I restless and searching for focus in my marriage? Yes.
Am I really unhappy? No.
Well … no, not really. Not altogether.
However, I am completely confused. I squeeze my eyes shut tight now and I feel the damp of the water inching from eye to cheek. My tongue extends, outstretched to its limit, it blindly finds the salty tear. The tear vanishes but its sour taste lingers on my palate. I’m visualising my age in my mind’s eye. Drawing the numbers in thick black permanent marker behind my eyelids. I pull my head up straight now and stand back, stationary in front of my mirrors, barefoot in my bedroom and squeeze my deep-red-painted toenails into the thickness of the beige. I squeeze so tight it hurts. Cherry Bomb, I think the colour is called. I should know better. I am a grown up. I should feel settled. I should feel content. I should consider myself lucky. I am none of the aforementioned on this murky Sunday morning. The weather outside reports in as dismal and dreary, as winter delivers on its dark dependable consistency. Three and five. I move my head, making the shapes of the numbers. Around and around and across and down and around. It feels almost meditative. I am thirty-five years old. I have two beautiful children, a fulfilling career and a husband.
You will have noticed I didn’t prefix him with a compliment and nor will I recite an appropriate encomium after his name. He’s not a bad man at all, please don’t get me wrong. He is an excellent, loving, committed father and provider, but something has gone drastically wrong between us. Between husband and wife. ‘Till death do us part’ feels way, way too long off. Once my perfect soulmate. One time I couldn’t keep my hands off him. But not now. On this Sunday in early December, our marriage is in real trouble. I have absolutely no desire for him. We cannot find a civil word. There is no common dominator apart from our amazing children. What is commonly known as ‘on the rocks’, I guess? Sing it to me Neil Diamond – sing it to Mrs Ali Devlin.
Right now there is little of anything congenial between us. I don’t know what has happened exactly; I have my suspicions obviously, but not as to how it happened or when exactly it happened. All I do know for sure is that we are drifting like two broken branches, rushing downstream towards a treacherous cataract.
Now might also be the time to mention something else that isn’t helping matters. I have recently started to fancy a guy in work. My friend. My colleague. I’m embarrassed to admit this to myself and I would never admit it to another living soul, but I’ve started to fantasise about him and it’s dirty. Pushing him up against a public bathroom wall kinda stuff. George Michael’s ‘Outside’ lyrics spring to mind. Teenage stuff. Exciting stuff. I cannot get him out of my head.
This is a million miles away from how I feel sexually about my husband. So when I say something’s not quite right between us, you get it now, right? Me, a married mother of two, how could I say such a thing, right? Awful, I know. I totally agree with you. I am ever so slowly, metaphorically ripping, from the bottom up, my marriage certificate. I know that. I keep moving my head.
‘Mom?’ Jade, my eleven-year-old daughter, speaks from my half-closed bedroom door and I snap my eyes open.
‘Yes, love?’ I answer her. Bang back into reality. My Worzel Gummidge Mummy head screws on tight.
‘Seriously, Mom? What’re y’doing in the mirror? And where’re m’grey Hollister leggings with the black stripes down the sides, huh?’ Jade drawls.
‘Er … grey leggings.’ I tip my head repeatedly with my index finger. I must know the answer to this one; I’ve literally finished putting away all the laundry in the house. It comes to me.
‘Ahh … they’re in the hot press but I have just taken them off my radiator so they may still be damp,’ I warn her.
‘But Dad said he’s taking us zip-lining so I need them.’
I look at her slouching in the frame of the doorway. She never used to slouch. Once the most tactile child, she now talks in an American accent and spends hours huddled over an iPad watching videos of random strangers test out random products.
‘Hey guys!’ is all I hear coming from the thin rectangular electronic device. Obsessed with watching Seven Super Girls, which don’t seem all that super to me, talking about nothing worthwhile. Taking selfie after selfie. Pouting at a camera. Image obsessed. It doesn’t seem to bother Colin, that’s the way the world is now is all he says. I don’t get it so I’m finding it hard to get her at the moment. She recoils from my loving advances all the time lately. Oh, I know she still loves me and I worship the very ground she walks upon but her attitude of late is challenging. If this is eleven then what are the teenage years going to be like? Where is my little girl who couldn’t keep her hands off me? The little girl who wanted to marry me. Me and only me. I can, almost, still smell her little girl, pink satin-soft skin.
‘Marry me, Mummy? Pinky promise, so, so, so promise, so promise?’ four-year-old, bouncing pig-tailed Jade would beg of me, extending her tiny pinkie finger for me to link.
‘I will boo boo, I pinky promise, I so, so, so, promise, I so promise.’ I’d join our pinkies before falling to my knees and we would lock lips and I
was in a little piece of mummy heaven. My nostrils vacuuming up her wonderful body scent. She would stand on my knees, her tiny pink feet gripping into my flesh and I’d take her two hands as she rocked forwards and backwards. Totally safe in her mummy’s hands.
‘I love you, Mummy, so, so, so, so much.’ She’d kiss me again, so hard, on the lips and for as long as she possibly could hold it.
Seems like a lifetime ago that oath … that bond … as I study her bored expression still slouched in the doorframe. Jade is beautiful if slightly on the too thin side – nothing to do with her diet, she eats really well – genetics.
‘Genetically blessed,’ Corina, my best friend, tells me.
I’m not so sure, I’d rather she was a bit stronger.
‘Let me throw them in the dryer for ten minutes. Did you clean the muck off your trainers from running through all that mud after gymnastics?’
It takes her so long to answer questions nowadays. She thinks before she speaks apparently, so as I stand and await her response I look at her. Her long white-blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She looks more like her dad’s side of the family; she has pale skin, a narrow face, a small nose and bright full rosebud lips. Dressed in her freshly ironed pink flannel cream love-heart pyjamas now she looks so young but as soon as she is ready to go out she will look five years older. She is exceptionally pretty. Her baby-blue eyes narrow at me, the sign her answer is ready.
‘Dawwhh, serioooously, Moooom? Obviiiiiously.’
It’s like a song: every vowel is dragged out. She slouches away.
‘I love you, boo …’ I stop myself as I call after her. She has asked me not to call her boo boo any more and I get it: she is eleven; I just forget sometimes. I shut the wardrobe doors gently and turn to the bed. I pull the goose-feathered duvet up and smooth it out with my right hand. Plump up the pillows. It’s a dark purple leaf print duvet set from House of Fraser. Corina had been given a voucher as a thank you from one of her work clients and she’d insisted I use it. I slept alone under it last night; he must have slept on the couch. Again. I have already made the kids beds, their clothes have been put away and the two upstairs bathrooms thoroughly cleaned. Upstairs is done.
You are probably still wondering what am I doing daydreaming about a thirty-six-year-old guy I work with? About Owen O’Neill. Like I said, he is my friend, my work colleague, and this is all sorts of wrong. Fifty shades of wrong. I’m too young for a mid-life crisis. I’d never actually do anything about it, don’t worry. Cop yourself on, Ali Devlin, I tell myself.
I hang up my polka-dot dressing gown and pull on my cream skinny jeans that are draped across our wicker bedroom chair and slide my size five feet into a pair of black slip-on flats that are underneath. I drag a cosy Kilkenny Shop black wool knitted sweater from my chest of drawers, and pull it over my head. I leave my bedroom. It’s becoming a room I’m no longer comfortable in. A room I try to avoid at all costs when the dark drops down. In this room we cannot pretend.
Across the landing I take the leggings out of the hot press. I pick up a wet towel Jade has just draped across the banisters as I feel the leggings. I press them to my cheek. Not really that damp but my beloved late granny, Margaret, still has me so paranoid about damp clothes and them causing chest infections. I fold the towel and return it to the towel rail in the bathroom. I go downstairs and pass into the kitchen, collecting two glasses that have been deserted on the glass hall table as I go. Milk-stained rim.
Colin, my husband of twelve years, is at the table on his MacBook watching some football match at full volume. The kids’ breakfast bowls and his empty coffee cup and cafetiere sit on the countertop awaiting my attention. I can hear the commentators raging about the billions some player cost. They are very cross and agitated. The aforementioned player has obviously let them all down. Poor unfortunate youthful billionaire. Colin doesn’t look up.
‘Damp leggings,’ I say by way of explanation as I put them into the dryer. I don’t think we spoke one word to one another yesterday. Please let today be better. Yesterday I annoyed Colin because I invited Mark’s friend in to play when Manchester United were on the TV in some cup. The boys were running in and out of the room as the whistle blew and the Red Army lost; Colin was in a foul mood.
‘I get one afternoon to myself all week. One lousy free afternoon! Is it too much to ask I get to watch the match in peace?’ he’d sulked.
‘Well, you don’t like Mark out on the road, so I’d no alternative,’ I’d said and he’d gone up to our room with his MacBook to watch the highlights of other rolling balls.
Now he says, ‘You’re putting one thing into the dryer, Ali?’ He looks up at me, stabbing at the volume button on the laptop with his thumb to lower it. The silence is a welcome relief. The beginning of a new argument is not. We cannot seem to converse on anything without arguing any more.
‘They’re still damp, Colin,’ I inform him as I slam the white circular door shut, twist the appropriate dial and press the ‘on’ button. It only takes seconds for it to whirr to life. The grey leggings are thrown around.
‘That’s a ridiculous waste of energy, Ali. Tell her to wear something else.’ Colin Devlin stands. All six foot two of him. Tall, very broad and dressed this morning in a grey Nike tracksuit with black stripes down each arm and leg, and white runners. He has the hoody pulled up. Colin isn’t one for central heating; he thinks a few extra layers are all we need. He has the exact same baby-blue eyes as Jade, floppy light brown hair and a huge dimple in the centre of his chin. A strong jawline. Athletic. I don’t fancy him any more and I just do not know why. There’s obviously something wrong with me because I can see he is clearly gorgeous.
‘Sexy Col.’ Corina calls him that all the time. Corina Martin is thirty-eight years old, three years older than me, and she isn’t married and she doesn’t have any kids and she tells me she is sometimes lonely but her Facebook page would tell me differently. She’s out five nights a week. It’s her occupation, events manager and sometimes PR person, so she always has various events to organise and attend. I think she isn’t lonely at all, I think she’s having the time of her life. She’s taking about getting a shih tzu but that’s just to make me feel better.
‘It’s work, Ali,’ she tells me every Sunday afternoon at our sacred lunches.
‘Facebook isn’t real, you must believe that, everything you see on Facebook – like, I mean, eeevveerryytthiinngg – is planned and approved and pre-mediated and Photoshopped and filtered out of its little social media mind. It’s up there because people want you to see it … always remember that, although it may make you feel like you are prying, being voyeuristic, you’re not – it’s the complete opposite.’
Over our weekly sneaky glass of wine with lunch, she will reiterate over and over again: ‘You have a real family, a real home. I envy you. I want all that too.’
‘Is Mark nearly ready?’ Colin breaks my thoughts of Corina as he moves beside me. I lean against the swishing machine.
The tension between us is almost comedic. I feel itchy and ill at ease with him so close. It’s like we haven’t seen each other for years. Like old lovers reunited, we are emotionally awkward around one another. I have the urge to laugh. Nervous energy. I look down to the dark slate kitchen floor and slip my foot in and out of my shoe. Cherry Bomb is playing peek-a-boo. I don’t ask him why he never came up to bed last night.
‘I don’t know where Mark is, Colin,’ I say slowly. ‘I’ve been upstairs making all the beds.’ I choose my words very carefully so as not to entice an argument.
‘Alllllll the beds, it’s not a hospital ward up there!’ He drags out the word and half laughs. ‘Sounds tough though, three whole beds … aaaaannnnd two of them are singles!’ He makes this noise through his nose as his snorts air out fast, as a racehorse might do after running in the Grand National. He squeezes my arm. It’s a joke, I know that, but he also knows that by saying what he’s saying and the way he’s saying it, he’s win
ding me up. We cannot seem to avoid annoying each other. He removes his hand from my arm, he must feel my tension.
I pick up the bowls and scrape the hardening mass of old Weetabix into the open bin. I move back to the sink, his eyes never leaving me, and I twist on the hot tap to wash the dishes. I stuff in the dark stopper with no chain attached, set the bowls, cup and glasses down gently and add some washing up liquid. I swirl to bubble. The noise of the glasses rattling takes the edge off. I stuff the yellow kitchen brush in and out of them.
‘Really? The breakfast bowls in with the cup and glasses?’ He is staring into the sink.
I say nothing but I remove the offending bowls and I lay them on the draining board to be washed separately. Colin is very fussy about how we wash the dishes.
‘What? Don’t make me feel like some kind of dishwashing freak again … the bits of Weetabix will be floating in the water, Ali.’
‘Yup, fine, that’s why I have removed the offenders and I will wash them separately.’ I wish he would just go away. I do not want Jade to hear us arguing again. I’m surprised I have a tongue left in my head, I’ve been biting it so much these last few weeks. How can you fancy someone who irritates the absolute shit out of you?
‘At least you are speaking, I thought you’d had a mini-stroke yesterday.’ He laughs.
‘That’s not funny, Colin,’ I say.
He shrugs his shoulders, his hood coming loose on his head as he does so. He pulls it down tighter with both hands.
‘So you don’t know where our five-year-old son is then?’ he says now. Then he tut-tuts several times, shakes his head at me and smiles. I’m riled. I don’t want to be. I can’t help it. Why is he doing this?
‘No, I don’t actually – but aren’t you supposed to be minding them today? Wasn’t that the deal – taking them zip-lining? You know I’m going for my Sunday afternoon lunch with Corina later.’
The Week I Ruined My Life Page 1