by Marian Keyes
‘And your Hugh?’ The sly eyes on her! ‘He is not here to be delighted, is he?’
‘Hugh will be back.’
‘Hugh will leave again when he sees you and your Magnum-fat.’
If I am fat, and I’m not sure that I am – in fact, I don’t know what I am because I’ve entirely lost contact with my body – it’s mostly down to cheese and crisps, not ice cream.
‘Why don’t you come in and talk things out with Sofie?’ I say. ‘I’m not trying to persuade you into anything but you should at least talk face to face.’
‘No.’
‘Can I give her a message from you?’
‘You can tell her she is difficult girl.’ She turns to leave.
‘Urzula, please, wait, hang on …’ But she’s gone.
48
Monday, 17 October, day thirty-five
Monday morning, and it’s actually a relief that the weekend is over.
After Urzula’s dramatic visit, I diplomatically broke the news to Sofie and, although Jackson seemed quietly furious, she was sanguine. ‘I tried my best with her,’ she said.
‘More than your best.’ Jackson, for all that he looks slight and fey, is strong and supportive of Sofie.
‘Nothing more you can do than your best,’ I told her. ‘Not everyone’s cut out to be a mother.’ I wasn’t sure if this was overstepping boundaries but, feck it, Sofie is a sweetie and I didn’t want her feeling this was on her.
The whole thing was so emotionally exhausting that I went to bed and priced a seventeen-day holiday to Argentina and Chile, for all of us including Jackson, sometime next July. I’d picked July because it seemed like a reasonable amount of time for us all to have recovered from Hugh’s return home.
Of course, I know in my heart that we may never recover, but all that’s keeping me going is hope. I guess I was doing the life equivalent of a wish board, and I did it in minute detail – looking up everything: the flights, the hotels, the transfers, everything.
I flew us business class (not first: even in my fantasy, I had some grasp of reality). Instead of selecting the poshest hotel in each city (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santiago) I chose the third fanciest. The girls would stay in regular rooms – and, yes, Jackson could bunk in with Sofie. Hugh and myself would be put up in suites, in the ‘old’ part of the hotels.
All totalled up, it was shockingly expensive. Even when I amended some details – Jackson’s parents paying for his flight, Neeve and Kiara sharing a room, no hotel cars from the airport – it was still extortionate. Nevertheless, it kept me occupied.
In the office my coat is barely off when Tim says, ‘Sharmaine King. I’ve talked with her management. They’ve invited us to pitch.’
I love Tim’s ambition. Usually.
‘Which of us should go after it?’ he asks Alastair. ‘You or me? She’s South African but UK-based, so it’ll be UK-centric.’
Alastair glances my way. ‘Well, Amy’s in London as much as I … Ah, right! Yeah, I’ll take it. Ping me over whatever you’ve got.’
I’m grateful for Tim’s protection but ashamed to be considered a sad sack so I disappear into my work.
Just before lunch, my phone rings. It’s a London number, unknown. I clear my throat, sit up straighter. ‘Amy O’Connell speaking.’
‘Dan Gordon. Representing a party interested in working with you.’
‘O-kaaaay.’ New business is always good. Well, nearly always. ‘May I ask who it is?’
‘Not at liberty. Client wants to meet today. Central London.’
‘I’m afraid I’m in Dublin.’
‘Catch a plane?’
I consider it for a moment. But, no, by the time I got there and had the meeting it would be too late to fly back this evening. Kiara and Sofie need me – it’s bad enough that I’m gone every Tuesday night.
‘How about one of my colleagues?’ I offer. ‘They’re both exceptional publicists.’
‘You handled Bryan Sawyer? Client insists on you.’
Well, it’s nice to be wanted. Unless the mysterious client is Robert Mugabe.
‘I’ll be in London tomorrow,’ I say.
‘Must be today.’
I brace myself for some more persuading, but there’s a click – he’s hung up on me! I stare at the phone, then yell, ‘Manners cost nothing!’
I look up and find Tim, Alastair, even Thamy watching me. They seem shocked.
‘What?’ I demand. ‘He’d hung up, he didn’t hear me.’
Three pairs of eyes are trained on me.
‘He was rude,’ I say. ‘He was really rude.’
On my way back from lunch, I exit the lift to the sound of Alastair laughing, the full-on ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. This is followed by an eruption of multiple people’s laughter and I hurry into the office because I’m in the market for something cheery.
Tim and Thamy are crowded around Alastair’s screen. ‘Amy!’ they cry. ‘Come here, you have to see this!’
Over I go and, to my utter astonishment, it’s Mum! It’s her vlog!
I gasp. ‘How do you know about it?’
‘Someone tweeted it to me.’
‘On what?’
I push nearer the screen and see that the vlog has been retweeted more than three hundred times! It’s impossible to overstate how difficult it is to make that happen. I’ve tried so hard with various clients to raise their profile with tweets and vlogs and they nearly all just died in the water.
‘She’s so cute,’ Alastair says. ‘And so funny. She might get Botox when she’s older! That’s absolute gas.’
I’m so proud of her. And of Neeve – that was a flash of inspiration, doing a session with Mum.
‘She’s a looker, isn’t she?’ Thamy says. ‘I can see where you get it, Amy.’
‘Get what?’ I don’t like being patronized.
‘Ah, now!’ they chorus. They’re in wild high spirits from it all. ‘Shur, you’re fabulous.’
‘Imagine having Lilian O’Connell, mother of five, as your mother-in-law!’ Alastair looks at me. ‘How’s that hot sister of yours?’
I side-eye him and go back to my desk. Then I ring Neeve and we shriek with excitement at each other.
‘It only went live this morning!’ Neeve says. ‘It’s been like, wow!’
‘You slay, sweetie.’
‘Oh, Mum …’
‘Ha-ha-ha!’ I’m quite giddy. ‘How about “Well done, darling daughter, I’m most terrifically proud of you”?’
Alastair proceeds to spend the best part of the afternoon watching Neeve’s vlogs and providing running commentaries. ‘Ha! I never knew that!’
‘What?’
‘The difference between dry skin and dehydrated skin. They’re not the same! Who knew?’
I say, ‘Dry is lacking oil and dehydrated is lacking water.’ I’ve watched that vlog too.
‘I wonder which mine is. I’m going down to Space NK to find out.’ He’s halfway out of his chair. ‘I’ll just watch one more before I go.’
Forty minutes later he’s still sitting there.
At one stage I get up and go to the loo, and when I come back Alastair calls across the office, ‘You know she’s done one with Mr Best Sex Ever?’
Tim jerks his head up, Thamy twists her head around from her desk for a better look, and I blanch. ‘Who? Richie Aldin? I know but, Jesus, Alastair, don’t call him that!’
‘How about the Prick You Used To Be Married To?’
‘Better.’
‘Let’s hate-watch it.’
Tim and Thamy have hopped out of their places and, once again, we gather around Alastair’s desk.
And there’s Richie, telling Neeve about what shampoo he uses.
‘He loves himself.’ Alastair is so scathing. ‘So pleased with himself, the pompous arse. Oh, here’s a good bit, listen to this, Amy.’
Richie says, ‘My skin never gives me any bother.’
‘Can you believe that?’ Alastair says. In a comedy voice he repeats,
‘ “My skin never gives me any bother.” As if it’s all down to him, the prick.’
‘I think he’s hot,’ Thamy says.
Off-camera Neeve asks Richie what his thoughts are on Botox.
With a smirk, Richie says, ‘I don’t need it.’
‘But what about when you’re older?’
‘I’ll never need it.’
Alastair splutters, ‘So he can predict the future now, can he? Stay away from him, Amy, because the kind of man he is, he’ll just push and shove till you say yes.’
I don’t know how he can make this assessment on three minutes forty seconds of a chat about SPF.
‘He wants you back?’ Thamy is agog.
‘Well, no, not like that –’
‘Wow. Go for it, he is a FOX!’
Out of curiosity, I say to Tim, ‘What do you think of him?’
Tim’s answer is simple. ‘He won’t stop until he gets what he wants.’
And I laugh and think, Richie Aldin can go fuck himself.
49
Fourteen months ago
Ouch! A spatter of bacon fat had jumped out of the frying pan and fizzed on my arm. The pain dimmed immediately but I couldn’t run the risk of the hot fat speckling my top: it was only just on and the laundry basket was already full.
I pulled off my T-shirt, threw it on to a chair, but the apron wasn’t in its spot, hanging from the radiator. God knows who had done what with it, but there wasn’t time to find another. I’d have to finish cooking the dinner in my jeans and bra, but I barely noticed: my head was full of Josh Rowan.
On our regular lunch last Tuesday – the sixth week in a row that we’d met – he’d suddenly thrown into the conversation, ‘I miss you propositioning me.’
‘Do you! Ah, okay. Ha-ha-ha.’
‘Have you any plans to do it again?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So should I do it instead? Proposition you?’
Right. Well, I’d known this would happen.
And, oh, the thoughts of sex with him. Both of us naked. Him pressing me by my hips on to the bed. Sitting astride me with a giant erection. Playing with me …
Druzie’s flat was empty tonight. I could bring him back there and no one would know.
But this was so dangerous. I was going down a path there might be no way back from.
‘I love Hugh.’
He nodded. It was his turn to say he loved Marcia, but he stayed silent.
And the way he was looking at me … his mouth in a grim line, his eyes ablaze with want, oh-so-serious about this.
He turned his palms upwards, revealing the pale skin of his inner arms and the blue tracery beneath the surface, like a map of a river. The twitching of his pulse was visible and all that vulnerability crushed something tender and painful in me.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but I wish I’d never met you that day in the Black Friar.’ He stared at the table as he spoke. ‘I was doing okay. But when I saw you, searching for your comb and you looked up, and your sweet face and your clothes, it was a shock, Amy, weird, because you’re a one-off but I felt like I already knew you.’
He could be feeding me a line.
‘Then the fierce way you fought Premilla’s case. So many publicists, they say the nice words but their hearts are cold. You, I knew you were kind. I tried harder than I usually would to get the Marie Vann piece pulled. I didn’t like failing but it gave me another chance to see you. I’d have stayed with you that night. I’d have gone to your room the night of the awards. I want you.’
Hearing all this sent thrill after thrill through me. ‘But, look, Josh. If we started a … thing, what would happen?’ Quickly, I added, ‘I don’t mean what kind of sex or …’ I swallowed. I froze, thinking about him naked, sliding himself into me … and from the still, intense way he held my gaze, I was sure that was what he, too, was imagining.
‘Jesus.’ He pressed his hand over his eyes and made a small, strange sound, a cross between a groan and a whimper. Then he looked at me again. ‘You mean, what would happen ultimately? Would you leave your husband? Would I leave my wife? I don’t know, Amy.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘There’s no script here.’
I wanted a script. I needed to know the ending before I could start anything. ‘What about you and your wife? Do you love her?’
‘Sometimes.’ He sighed. ‘But now isn’t one of them.’
‘Does love work like that?’
‘I don’t know about other people, but it’s how Marcia and I seem to do it.’
‘Your other times, did you feel guilty? Did your wife ever suspect?’
‘Yes and yes.’
‘And what happened? Did you tell her?’
‘No. But Marcia’s had her own things.’
‘Things? You mean affairs? She told you?’
‘I guessed. I asked her. Like me, she lied.’
‘And?’
‘I waited for them to run their course.’
‘Josh, I’m out of my depth. I’m …’ I searched for the right words. ‘I’m not like you. Or like your wife. You’re tough. Tougher than me.’
‘I’m not tough. But, Amy, you love your husband, right? Why are you even here?’ Josh leant forward with intent. ‘Here’s what I think you want. You’d like me to say I don’t love my wife, that we’ve already split up and we’re about to tell the kids. You want to magic away all the mess, the other people, the ones we’d hurt. You want Hugh to still be there for you long-term but for a cosmic hall pass to be given, so he’d never know and you’d not feel any guilt. But, Amy, this is real life and real life is messy.’
His words fell into silence. His assessment was spot-on.
I’d wanted a romance, a love affair, and for any sordidness to be conveniently swept away by the force of our passion.
I might as well admit it. ‘I want to feel … desired, like you’re crazy with want for me.’
‘As it happens, I am.’
My mouth went dry. ‘I want you not to have done it before. I know. I’m pathetic. And hypocritical.’
‘I could have lied and you’d think I was a better man than you do.’
‘I want to be all cool about you and your other … others. But I’m not. I feel like a … hick. Unsophisticated. I want to know details but I despise myself for it.’
‘Okay, I’ll tell you. One lasted about six months, then she met someone else. Another was with a twenty-something and it finished up because I couldn’t take her …’ He fell into thought. ‘Her chirpiness.’
That fitted with the facts I’d gleaned.
‘But this, with you, Amy?’ he said. ‘I can’t take another lunch. I want more.’
So did I. But was I able?
‘Can I think about it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t take too long.’
Was that a threat? Should I get huffy? I decided no. ‘What if I decide to not … go ahead?’ I asked. ‘Will we still see each other?’
‘No.’
Oh.
‘I mean it, Amy. I can’t handle any more of this.’
Maybe I should have been offended – True Love Waits and all that – but I appreciated his grown-up honesty.
Since then, indecision was eating me from the inside out. I’d been waking in the early hours, flip-flopping from one stance to another. I’d decide I’d definitely go to a hotel with him and see what happened. Then a load of guilt would avalanche on top of me because I truly loved Hugh and had always seen us growing old together.
But the draw to Josh was powerful and I’d quickly find myself, once again, planning to sleep with him.
What if I got caught? The thought scared me witless. I didn’t want to hurt Hugh and I didn’t want my marriage to end. Also, what did I really know about Josh? We’d spent a good deal of time together but I’d done most of the talking.
I knew he was hot.
Yeah, I knew he was hot all right!
And over and back I wavered.
Wh
at I’d really love would be some sort of disaster where Josh and I got abandoned in a remote place – help would eventually come, that was always on the cards, but while we were waiting, we could behave as badly as we liked.
Meanwhile my sleepless nights had me dragging myself through my days, exhausted and worried-worried-worried, the lining of my stomach worn away by the acid of anxiety.
As Tuesday rolled around, I still hadn’t decided, so I didn’t meet him. But now, eleven days since I’d seen him, as I stood at my hob, frying rashers, I knew I needed a resolution. Today. Right now. Because if this to-ing and fro-ing kept on in my head, I’d go insane.
So I made my choice: no more Josh.
I’d send him an email on Monday. It was a bad idea to see him in person: it would only kick everything off all over again.
Ending it was the right thing to do. Eventually I’d be grateful. But right then I felt how the Little Match Girl must have felt when her last match went out. Pop went all the colour and joy and thrill, and suddenly everything was grey and cold and sad.
‘What’s going on?’ Hugh’s voice came from behind me.
‘Rasher sandwiches for dinner.’ I didn’t turn around. ‘They need to be used up today.’
‘No, I meant …’ He appeared at my side. ‘What’s happened to your clothes?’
‘Oh. I thought my top might get spattered.’ I clattered the fish slice around the pan.
‘But look at you.’ He slid himself between me and the hob. His hands were on my waist and his voice was filled with wonder. ‘Cooking rashers in your foxy bra. You’re like some fantasy woman.’
I glanced down. My bra was red satin. I’d only worn it because all the others were in the overflowing laundry basket.
‘You probably know the football scores as well.’ He swept my hair over one shoulder and buried his face in my neck.
‘It’s July, the season hasn’t started yet.’ I shook him off me.
‘See what I mean? Which other woman would know that?’ He groaned and slid his hands up over my ribcage and under my breasts. ‘Oh, Amy.’
‘Hugh.’ I twisted sideways out of his hold. ‘I’m trying to cook.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Holding my gaze, he reached behind himself and, without looking, found the switch for the cooker. His hand lingered on it for a second or two, then still looking into my eyes, he slowly and deliberately flicked it from on to off. Instantly the red light of the hob disappeared. ‘Whoops,’ he said, widening his eyes with mock surprise. ‘Power cut.’