The Other Side of the Story

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Let the games begin,’ he said. ‘Tell me all about you, Gemma.’

  Though it had been my idea, I felt embarrassed. ‘I’m thirty-two, an only child, I’m an events organizer which is very stressful but I don’t always hate it, I live in Clonskeagh… what have I forgotten?’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘Toyota MR2. Yes, I thought you’d like that. Now your go.’

  ‘Honda Civic coupe VTi, with all the trimmings, two years old, but in great nick.’

  ‘Good for you. Other info?’

  ‘Leather seats, walnut dash –’

  ‘You’re such a boy.’ I was pleased. ‘I meant details of the rest of your life.’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight, I’m a middle child and Monday to Friday I sell my soul to the Edachi Electronic Corporation.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Marketing.’ A little wearily. ‘Trying to make people buy stuff.’

  ‘Do you have lots of disgusting flatmates?’

  ‘No, I live –’ giveaway swallow – ‘on my own.’

  ‘Right, I’m going to the loo.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  When I came back, I was impressed. ‘Very cunning how the loos were hidden behind the wash-hand basins and mirrors. It took me ages to find them. You chose well. Now let’s move on to relationship history. Two and a half years ago, my best friend stole the love of my life from me, they’re still together and have a child, I’ve never forgiven either of them and I’ve never met anyone else, you might think I sound bitter, but that’s only because I am. And you?’

  ‘Jesus!’ He looked a bit shocked at my onslaught. God, I’d done it again – but he answered, ‘Er, I was going out with someone. A girl.’

  I nodded encouragingly.

  ‘And we broke up.’

  ‘When? How long were you going out?’

  ‘Um…’

  I nodded again.

  ‘We’d been together nearly two years. We broke up just before –’ another giveaway swallow –’Christmas.’

  ‘Less than four months ago? After two years?’

  ‘I’m fine about it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you’re not.’

  And while he insisted he was, I was thinking, But this is excellent! He’ll want nothing from me.

  Over the next three hours and two more disorienting bars I grilled Owen and learned:

  He did tai chi

  He had a ‘thing’ about prawns – he wasn’t allergic, he just didn’t like them

  One of his feet was half a size bigger than the other

  His ideal holiday destination would be Jamaica

  He thought the original ‘Do you love someone enough to give them your last Rolo?’ was far more charming and humane than the current one where the boy tries to get the Rolo out of his girlfriend’s mouth to give it to the better-looking girl who’d just showed up.

  He matched me question for question. ‘What are you most afraid of?’ he asked.

  ‘Growing old and dying alone,’ I said and a little tear escaped. ‘No, no.’ I waved away his concern. ‘It’s just the wine. What are you most afraid of?’

  He thought. ‘Being locked in the boot of a ten-year-old Nissan Micra with Uri Geller.’

  ‘Excellent answer! Let’s go dancing.’

  Hours later, back at his quite-neat-for-a-boy apartment, we wrestled enjoyably in a state of undress on his bed. Of course I thought about Anton, the last man I’d slept with; after him I’d thought I’d never sleep with anyone ever again. Mind you this couldn’t have been more different. Not just in emotional intensity but even physically – Anton was lanky and lean and Owen much more compact. All the same, I wasn’t complaining. Before taking things any further I caught Owen’s wrist and made him look at me, pausing the tiny, delicious bites on my neck, and said urgently, ‘Owen, I don’t normally hop into bed with someone on the first night.’

  ‘I know.’ His hair was wild and he was short of breath. ‘It’s just that for reasons you can’t go into right now, this counts as three months in. Don’t worry. Just enjoy it.’

  He pulled me to him, pressing his excellent hard-on against me and I did just that.

  He awoke as I was climbing into my pants.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I have to go home.’

  He leant and looked at his alarm clock. ‘It’s half past three, why are you leaving? Jesus, you’re not married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the coal scuttle?’

  ‘No.’ A bubble of laughter escaped.

  ‘Wait till the morning. Don’t go.’

  ‘Have to. Will you call me a taxi?’

  ‘You’re a taxi.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll just hail one in the street.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  Another bubble of laughter escaped. ‘Owen, our first row! Now, we’re really up to speed.’

  4

  The fourth thing.

  L H Literary Agency

  4–8 Wardour Street

  London W1 P 3AG

  31 March

  Dear Ms Hogan

  (Or can I call you Gemma? – I feel I know you already!) Thank you so much for your pages, forwarded to me by your friend Susan Looby. My reader and I loved them.

  Obviously the pages are a long way from being a book and the format would have to be decided on – memoir style, non-fiction or a novel. However, I would be interested in talking to you. Please get in touch and we can discuss it further.

  With best wishes

  Jojo Harvey

  Can you imagine? It was Saturday evening. It had been a lovely day, dozing, drinking Alka Seltzers and thinking about Owen, until I felt well enough to get up and pop over to my flat – which, incidentally, had started to smell funny – to collect my post, water the cat, look longingly at my own bed etc., when I get this. Even before I opened it, my mouth was as dry as the Gobi; every letter with a London postmark has this effect on me because – fool that I am – I hope that it might be Anton telling me it’s all been a terrible mistake, Lily is a balding wolf in hippy-chic clothing and that he wants me back. This envelope had a worse than usual effect because it was postmarked London WI and I happened to know (I had begged Cody to tell me) that Anton’s office was around there.

  So I open it up and it’s on nice, creamy paper but there aren’t enough words on it for it to be a proper letter of prostration from Anton. All the same my eyes rush to the bottom and right enough it’s not from Anton, it’s from someone called Jojo Harvey and who on earth is she? I swallow several times to re-irrigate my mouth and read the letter but instead of being enlightened I’m even more confused. It must be a mistake, I decide. But… she’d mentioned Susan. By surname.

  I decided to ring Susan. It was mid-morning in Seattle and I woke her up, but she insisted she didn’t mind and we were so excited at hearing each other’s voices that it took some time to get to the purpose of the call.

  ‘Susan, listen, I’m after getting this letter. I opened it because it was addressed to me, but it’s something to do with you.’

  ‘Go on.’ She sounded intrigued. ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘Someone called Jojo Harvey, from a literary agency in London.’

  There followed the longest silence. So long I was the first to speak. ‘Susan? Are you still there?’

  ‘Ah… yeah.’

  ‘I thought we’d been cut off. Speak to me.’

  ‘Yeah, look. She should have written to me, not you.’

  ‘I’ll just send it on to you then.’ I was surprised at how defensive she sounded.

  After another silence, she spoke quickly, ‘Gemma, I’ve got something to tell you and you’re not going to like it, at least not straight away and I’m sorry you had to find out like this.’

  They’re the worst words in the world – the ‘I’ve got som
ething to tell you’ configuration. It’s never anything good like, ‘You’ve lost a stone but you don’t seem to have noticed and some one, had to be the one to tell you.’ Or, ‘An eccentric millionaire has bequeathed you a life-altering sum of money and he just wanted to slip it into your bank account without letting you know, but, as a friend, I felt it was my duty to tell you.’ It’s always bad news.

  My stomach had plunged to the centre of the earth. ‘What? Susan, what?’

  ‘You know since I came to Seattle, you’ve been sending me emails?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you know that your dad left your mam and you’ve been making up little stories about them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, look, I just thought they were really funny and I’ve always thought you’d be a great writer and I know you’d never do anything about it yourself and I didn’t really think anything would come of it but,’ and suddenly she stopped sounding hunted and said clear as a bell, ‘I knew you’d never do it yourself.’

  ‘What wouldn’t I do?’ But I knew. ‘You sent my little stories to this agent woman?’

  But this was good, wasn’t it? Why did she sound so hunted? Then she said, ‘Not just the stories.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The emails you’ve been sending me.’

  My memory skittered back over everything I’d sent Susan – Dad leaving Mam, Lily’s book coming out, my carry-on with Owen – and the breath left my body. ‘Not… all the emails?’

  ‘Not all, no not all,’ she was racing through the words. ‘I left out some.’

  ‘Some?’ Some was nothing like enough.

  ‘I left out all the really bad bits, like how much you hate Lily, and…’

  ‘And…?’ I was desperate.

  ‘And how much you hated Lily’s book.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘How you feel about Lily.’

  ‘But you already said that. Did you send everything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was so low it sounded like a crackle of static.

  ‘Oh Susan.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gemma, honest to God, I thought it was the right thing…’

  I began to cry. I should have been furious, but I hadn’t the strength.

  I drove back to Mam’s. ‘Come on,’ she said, handing me a glass of Bailey’s. ‘We’re missing the Midsomer Murders

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  I interfaced with my communicator brick, frantic to read back over what I’d sent to Susan and was currently on some stranger’s desk in London.

  I speed-read through the Sent Items. Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, it was worse than I remembered. All that private pain about Mam and Dad. Worse still was the mean-spirited stuff that it was OK for my friends to know about, but the thought of anyone else knowing about made me itchy with shame.

  5

  On Saturday night and all day Sunday, my mobile rang incessantly, as a mortified Susan tried to apologize. I didn’t pick up any of her calls; I needed a recovery period.

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ she said, several times a message. ‘You’re a great writer but I knew you’d never do anything about it yourself.’

  That’s the trouble with Susan. Just because she went to Seattle and followed her bloody dream, she wants everyone else to do it too. In the good old days (last year) she used to sigh, ‘We’re going nowhere, Gemma,’ and I always said, ‘I know. Nice, isn’t it?’ It was a big enough shock when she did something about her own life but to try to kick-start mine in this way was well out of order.

  Going to work on Monday I was afraid I might gawk. Every time I thought of the agent woman reading about, say, my first night with Owen or Mam’s fake heart attack, I got a hot flush.

  And I realized I should have worked over the weekend, instead of treating myself to a hangover – there were several messages on my voicemail including one from Lesley Lattimore saying:

  She didn’t like any of the three dress designers I’d put her in touch with.

  What free cosmetics had I bagged so far?

  Where was her turreted castle?

  Of course, I’d bagged no cosmetics – it was kind of hard to persuade companies to shell out shedloads of free stuff for an F-list party that no social pages would touch – and I still hadn’t found a turreted castle which was suitable for a party.

  Then there were messages from the three dress designers. One called Lesley ‘a horrible person’. The second said that Lesley wanted her to make the dress for free in return for publicity. The third called Lesley ‘white trash’. Jayzus.

  I hit the phones in a big, panicky way, putting calls in all over the place – to designers, journalists, cosmetic houses, turreted castles. In the razor-thin sliver of time between me hanging up on one call and beginning another, Cody rang. ‘Cody “Kofi Annan” Cooper calling to intercede. Susan says you won’t talk to her.’

  ‘No, I won’t. This is the worst thing anyone has ever done to me.’

  ‘It is not, you big drama queen. Jesus Christ, you should be gay. Gemma, I’ll say one thing to you and I want you to listen carefully: a literary agent is interested in representing you and you haven’t even written a book. Have you any idea how lucky you are? Thousands of people write books, give up all their free time, break their hearts trying and they still can’t get an agent. But one has just landed in your lap.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Did you just shrug?’

  ‘Sometimes you scare me.’

  ‘Girl, it’s mutual.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You. The way you never do anything any more.’

  ‘Oi, who’s the drama queen now? You know how hard I work. My job is so demanding and even if I say so myself, I’m extremely good at it.’

  ‘That’s right, you’re great at pulling in money for the evil twins so they can buy their farmhouse in Normandy or whatever it is this week. What do you get out of it?’

  ‘I’m on good money and, Cody, don’t call them the evil twins, sometimes they listen in on my calls.’

  ‘Set up on your own.’

  Everyone in the business, it’s their dream to set up on their own. But you need money and potential clients and F&F have hung me up with a contract which means I couldn’t take any existing clients with me. Besides I’d be afraid that F&F would take a contract out on me.

  ‘Maybe some day…’

  ‘In the meantime ring this agent woman. If you’ve any sense.’

  ‘And what if I get published and the whole world reads about my father deserting my mother?’

  ‘Change the details.’

  ‘They’ll still know it’s them.’

  ‘Look, I don’t have the answers. You figure it out.’

  I remained silent and Cody said, ‘Just one more thing. This agent is also Lily’s agent.’

  ‘Lily Wright?’

  ‘How many other Lilys do we know?’

  ‘Why did Susan pick her?’

  ‘Because she hadn’t a clue how to find an agent. This woman was the only one she knew of, so she asked her dad to ask Lily’s mammy who Lily’s agent was.’

  ‘God Almighty…’

  ‘So ring her.’

  ‘If she wants me badly enough, she’ll ring me.’

  ‘She won’t. She’s very busy and in demand.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I wasn’t going to ring Jojo Harvey. If this was meant to be it would happen of its own accord.

  6

  OK, I rang her. I gave it until the following Monday – a full-on, Lesley-Lattimore-filled week – waiting for what was meant to be, to happen and when it didn’t, I picked up the phone and rang this Jojo Harvey.

  It was Monday morning, I’d spent the weekend criss-crossing Ireland, looking at bloody turreted bloody castles, and I needed something.

  It took a few moments for Jojo to remember who I was but once she did she said, ‘Come in and see me.’

  ‘I live in Ireland, it’s not that easy.’
<
br />   She didn’t say she would come to Dublin or that she’d pay my airfare to London. She didn’t want me that badly – I suspected she’d only taken my call because she thought I was someone else – and that triggered unexpected anxiety.

  However, I refused to make a decision to actually go. Again I took the attitude that if it was meant to be, it would happen of its own accord. But to help fate along I tried to get Francis & Frances to send me, by saying loudly outside their office door, ‘God, I hate London, I’m so glad I never have to go there for work. And when you think about it, the opportunities are endless, so many British stars want to get married in Ireland, but the thought of being sent to London to pitch to management agencies just makes my heart sink.’

  However – and why was I even surprised? – they double-bluffed me and on Wednesday morning came the news that they were sending Andrea. Evil fucks. Clearly they are honoured guests to the dark side, they probably have frequent flyer cards. And I’d been given my message: this wasn’t meant to be.

  Fuhgedaboudit.

  So I rang Cody who asked, ‘How’s life in the enclosed order?’

  ‘Not bad. We have nice porridge.’

  He clicked and I knew he was flicking his eyes skywards.

  ‘Do you need to go to London for anything in the near future?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but I hear you do.’

  I gave in. ‘I suppose. Will you come with me?’

  ‘If it means you’ll go and see this agent woman, then yes. When?’

  ‘Some day next week? Wednesday?’

  ‘Fine, I’ll have a migraine that day. Now ring Susan.’

  TO: Susan_inseattle@yahoo.com

  FROM: Gemma 343@hotmail.com

  SUBJECT: Thank you and sorry

  I’m going to see Jojo Harvey on Wednesday and thank you, thank you, thank you for making it happen. You’re right, I’d never have done it if it had been left to me. I’m so sorry for not taking your calls, I wasn’t trying to be mean, I was just a bit freaked. Cody’s coming with me, he’s going to have a migraine and I’m going to have period pains. I’ll ring you when it’s not the middle of the night in Seattle.