The Woman Who Stole My Life (14 page)

‘Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you get what you need and sometimes you get what you get.’

Extract from
One Blink at a Time

I was thinking about sex. The way you do when you’re lying in hospital, entirely paralysed.

Ryan and I, we never had sex – I mean, we’d been together eighteen years, be
reasonable
. No one had sex, well, none of the couples I knew anyway. Everyone thought everyone else was at it hammer and tongs, but once you got people drunk enough they’d admit the truth.

I say Ryan and I
never
had sex, but of course we did – once in a while, when we’d been out for the evening and had a fair bit of drink on board. And you know what? It was grand. We had three different versions to choose from and it was always quick and efficient and it suited both of us just fine – with a job and two children, who had time and energy to devote to elaborate sexual shenanigans?

But this was the wrong attitude, the magazines told me: you’re supposed to ‘work at your marriage’. Even before
Fifty Shades of Grey
came along, I felt under pressure to go way outside my ‘sexual comfort zone’.

‘Should we … try stuff?’ I’d asked Ryan.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. We could …’ It was such a dreadful word
I didn’t know if I could say it. ‘We could … spank each other.’

‘With what?’

‘… A table-tennis bat?’

‘Where would we get a table-tennis bat?’

‘… Elverys Sports?’

‘No,’ he said. The discussion was closed and I was relieved. I’d been thinking of buying those little chrome balls, the ones you insert into your ding-dong and leave there for the day. Now I didn’t have to, and with the money I’d saved myself I’d buy a nice pair of shoes instead.

Karen, being Karen, was more determined to keep her sex life zinging, so herself and Enda did some role play where they pretended to be strangers who pick each other up in a bar. She even wore a wig, a black bob. But they couldn’t carry it off.

‘Did you laugh?’ I’d asked.

‘No.’ Karen had seemed uncharacteristically depressed. ‘It wasn’t funny. It was just cringy. In fact,’ she said, ‘seeing him across that bar … Tell me, Stella, were his ears always that big? In normal life, I practically never look at him. And to get a proper gawk at him after so long, well … there was a moment when I felt horrified that I was married to him, to be honest with you …’

I wondered if Mannix Taylor and his Scando-type wife had lots of sex. Maybe they did. Maybe
that
was his hobby, seeing as he didn’t play golf.

Yes, him and his fabulous wife would be the type to put the rest of us to shame.

Georgie Taylor would come home from a hard day of colour-swatching to find her house silent and lit only by candles. Before she had time to be alarmed, a man (Mannix Taylor, of course) would step up behind her, press his body hard against hers and say with quiet authority, ‘Don’t scream.’
A silk blindfold would cover her eyes and she’d be led to a candlelit bedroom, where he’d strip her of her clothes and bind her arms and legs to the bedposts.

He’d brush her nipples with feathers and, agonizingly slowly, drop by drop, trail fragrant oil between her breasts and down to her stomach and further …

Naked, he’d straddle her and toy with her for a long time before finally he entered her and her body burst into orgasm after orgasm.

Well, lucky Mrs Taylor.

‘Tell me more about your family.’ I blinked out the words to Mannix Taylor.

‘Oh … okay. I’ll tell you about my sisters. They’re twins. Rosa and Hero. Hero was called that because she almost died when she was born; she spent six weeks in an incubator. They’re not identical – Rosa is dark and Hero is fair – but they sound alike and all the big things in their lives happened at the same time. They had a double wedding. Rosa is married to Jean-Marc, a Frenchman who’s lived in Ireland for … God, twenty-five years? They’ve two sons. Hero is married to a man called Harry and they also have two sons, almost the same age as Rosa and Jean-Marc’s. It’s absolutely spooky how their lives mirror each other’s.’

‘But tell me about
your
kids.’

A strange expression flickered across his face. He looked wounded and almost ashamed. ‘We don’t have kids.’

That was a huge surprise. I’d spent so much time in my head and in the imaginary life I’d created for him that I’d really believed he had three children.

‘Today,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do a run-through of your reflexes, to see if there’s any response. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘We’re trying for a baby, Georgie and I.’

Oh?

‘We’ve been trying for a long time. It’s not going so well.’

God! I didn’t know how to reply.

‘We’re doing IVF,’ he said. ‘It’s a secret. Georgie doesn’t want anyone knowing until it’s all okay. She doesn’t want everyone’s eyes on her, wondering if this time it’s worked. She doesn’t want anyone’s pity.’

I could understand that.

‘So I haven’t been able to tell anyone.’

But he was telling me. Then again, did it matter, seeing as I couldn’t speak and I’d never meet his wife?

‘Well, I’ve told Roland, obviously.’

What was obvious about it?

‘Because he’s my best friend.’

That surprised me a little and Mannix bristled. ‘Roland is a lot more than someone who buys cars he can’t afford,’ he said. ‘He’d do anything for anyone and he’s the best company you could ever have.’

Right, that was me told.

After a short tense silence, Mannix began talking again. It was as if he couldn’t stop. ‘We’ve had two rounds of IVF already. Both times the embryo implanted and both times Georgie miscarried. I knew the stats weren’t in our favour, but still, when we lost them, it knocked us sideways.’

I was shocked by this tragic story; it was so unexpected. I managed to blink, ‘I’m very sad for you.’

Mannix shrugged and studied his hands. ‘It’s far tougher for Georgie – all the hormones she has to be injected with. Then she tries so hard to hold onto the embryo and I can do nothing to help. I feel like a big, useless eejit. At the moment we’re on round three and Georgie is PUPO – Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise. We’re holding our breath.’

Desperately trying to convey encouragement, I blinked out, ‘Good luck.’ Sometimes language was so useless. Even if I’d been able to speak I couldn’t have communicated how much I hoped this would work for him and his wife.

He kept talking. ‘I was forty last year, Georgie this year, and suddenly everything seemed meaningless if we didn’t have kids. We should have started trying earlier, but we were … stupid, delusional. We thought we had more time than we did.’ He lapsed into silence. After a few moments he spoke again.

‘I’d love a big family,’ he said. ‘Both of us would. Not just one or two but five or six. It would be fun, right?’

‘Hard work.’

‘I know. And right now I’d be more than grateful with just the one.’

‘I hope it happens for you.’

‘What’s that thing you once said?’ he asked thoughtfully. ‘“Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you get what you need and sometimes you get what you get.”’

Three days later, he arrived into my cubicle and said, ‘Morning, Stella.’

Immediately I knew that his wife had lost their baby.

I’m sorry.

‘How do you know?’

I just do.
‘I’m very sorry.’

‘We’re going to take a break from trying for a while. It’s so hard on Georgie.’

‘It must be hard on you too.’

He looked absolutely heartbroken, but all he said was, ‘It’s much harder for her.’

Something moved at the edge of my vision – about two metres away was a man.

They say that television cameras add ten pounds to
everyone; but Roland Taylor – for it was him – was the first person I’d ever seen who was actually fatter in real life. He was decked out in a fashionable jacket and his trademark trendy glasses, and even though Karen was always going on about how fat people were fat because they were bitter and angry, this man radiated kindness.

He gathered Mannix into a bear hug and I heard him say, ‘I was talking to Georgie. I’m sorry.’

He held Mannix for a long time, in a solid embrace, and I would have cried if I’d been able.

Then Mannix’s pager beeped, and they broke apart.

‘Hang on.’ Mannix read whatever was written on his pager. ‘Don’t leave. I won’t be long.’

Mannix disappeared and Roland lingered, looking like he didn’t know where to go. I exerted every ounce of my will to pull him in my direction.

He turned towards me and looked at my face. ‘Sorry,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘For interrupting like that.’

I blinked my eyes several times and an expression moved across his face, some sort of recognition.

He leaned over to read from the chart at the foot of my bed. ‘Your name is Stella?’

I blinked my right eye.

‘I’m Roland, Mannix’s brother.’

I blinked my right eye to show that I knew.

‘Mannix has mentioned you to me,’ he said.

That took me aback.

Looking suddenly horrified, Roland said, ‘Not by name! Don’t worry, he entirely respects doctor–patient confidentiality. All he mentioned was your condition and how you communicate by blinking.’

Well, that was okay and I tried to convey that through my eyes.

‘Hold on.’ He fumbled around in his Mulberry man bag and produced a pen and a piece of paper, probably a receipt, and I blinked out the words, ‘LOVELY TO MEET YOU.’

‘That’s amazing!’ Roland smiled in delight. ‘
You’re
amazing.’ Buried in his face, he had the exact same eyes as Mannix. ‘You’ve just communicated a whole sentence with your eyelids.’

 … Ah, thanks …

He glanced, a little anxiously, down the ward. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone. He should be back soon.’

‘SIT DOWN.’

‘Should I? I’m not intruding?’

Was he mad? At the best of times I was desperate for company and I wasn’t passing up the chance of a few minutes with arch-raconteur Roland Taylor.

‘TELL ME A STORY.’

‘Are you sure?’ Slowly he lowered himself into a chair. ‘I could tell you about a time I met a famous person? Cher? Michael Bublé? Madonna?’

I blinked my right eye.

‘Madonna? Excellent choice, Stella!’ He settled himself in his chair. ‘Well, she’s an absolute goddess.
Obviously.
But sort of … 
tricky
 … We got off to a bad start when I sat on her cowboy hat and rendered it
hors de combat
 …’

As he chatted away about Madonna’s high-handedness, he was more than a little camp. I was guessing he was gay, not that it mattered one way or the other.

I awake from a lovely dream – Ned Mount was in it. Again! He was saying, ‘There are new cakes on the market. They’re made entirely from protein. You can eat as many as you like.’

I spend a few moments nestling in the rosy afterglow, then, seized by horrible anxiety, I remember everything and I lurch for my iPad: Ryan’s video has now been viewed over twenty thousand times.

I can hear Jeffrey loitering on the landing and I call him to come in.

‘You saw?’ He nods at my iPad. ‘It’s a lot but it’s not, like, hundreds of thousands. It could be worse. And there are no new photos.’

‘I’m going to see old Dr Quinn today,’ I say. ‘See if he has any advice about Ryan.’

Dr Quinn has been the family GP for donkey’s years. He knows Ryan and he might be able to help.

‘I’m off to yoga,’ Jeffrey says.

‘Okay.’

I ablute in a half-hearted fashion, then I eat 100g of salmon – I’m back on track after yesterday’s Jaffa Cake debacle. I sit in front of the computer, affix my fake smile to my visage and type ‘Arse’.

I ring the Ferrytown Medical Centre and ask for an appointment with Dr Quinn today. The receptionist gives me short shrift until – just testing things – I say my name and suddenly she sounds impressed and a little bit flustered. I’m given an appointment for later this morning: one of the boons of being an ex-celebrity. I may not be able to swing a table at Noma, but if I’m ever in urgent need of antibiotics, it’s nice to know I’ll be taken care of.

What will I wear? Well, it’s all so simple – my new lady chinos, or … my new lady chinos.

There was a time when my clothes were so complicated that they were given their own spreadsheet. All thanks to Gilda.

She’d arrived one afternoon to my New York apartment for our daily run and found me on the verge of hyperventilating. ‘I can’t exercise today,’ I said.

‘What’s up?’

‘This.’ I gave her my iPad, which contained the proposed schedule for my first book tour. ‘Look at it.’ I was gasping for breath. ‘Twenty-three days, criss-crossing the country. It’ll be snowing in Chicago, it’ll be roasting in Florida and it’ll be pissing rain in Seattle. I have to visit hospitals and be on telly and attend charity dinners, and I have to have the right clothes for every single event. There’s no time off and I’m never in one place for longer than a day so I can’t get any laundry done. I’ll need a suitcase the size of an articulated truck.’

Gilda scrolled through the plan.

‘And why is it so illogical?’ I asked. ‘The order of the places I’m visiting? I keep having to double back on myself. Why is it Texas one day and Oregon the next and then Missouri, which
is practically beside Texas? Why don’t I do Texas, Missouri and
then
Oregon? Or here’s another mad one – South Carolina, Seattle, then Florida. Wouldn’t it make far more sense to go to Florida straight after South Carolina, they’re so near to each other, and
then
on to Seattle?’

‘Because,’ Gilda said, gently, ‘you’re not Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle. Not
yet
.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘This is how it is in the beginning for any writer on tour. With the big names, they call the shots; they announce that they’re in town on a particular date and the residents flock to see them. But with a newbie like you, Blisset Renown have to start with the local event, then match you to it. So see here –’ she tapped the screen – ‘the ladies of Forth Worth Texas are having their annual charity lunch on March the fourteenth, so that’s when they want you. You’re no good to them on the fifteenth, right? Because the lunch is over. Then this new bookshop opening in Oregon on March the sixteenth? Local media are lined up to cover it so there’s no point you coming to cut the ribbon three days later when they’re up and running. And the Readers’ Day in Missouri on March the seventeenth? That was firmed up maybe six months ago. For now you’ve got to fit yourself around what the world wants. But that will change.’

Okay, I got what she was saying: there were an awful lot of self-help writers in the world, jostling for the same spot on the telly, the radio and the charity circuit.

‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘You may not feel it, but you are. Book tours are expensive. Big money has to be spent on plane tickets and hotel bills and car services and local publicists. Every writer wants a chance to tour their book and you’re one of the few, the chosen few.’

‘Oh?’ Suddenly discovering I was one of the chosen few
put a different perspective on things. But I still had the problem of my clothes.

‘We’re going out to run now,’ Gilda said.

‘No, I –’

‘Yes! You need to burn off this toxic energy. And when we come back, you show me your wardrobe. I’m sure you’ve already got a lot of stuff that will work. But, to fill the gaps, I’ll call clothes in for you – I know a few people.’

‘People?’

‘Designers. Up-and-coming. Not too expensive. And personal shoppers with very rich clients who order next season’s collection from a look-book. They pay up front, but by the time the pieces arrive in the store they’ve lost interest and often don’t take delivery of them. Those clothes have to go somewhere, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, the clothes are sold on for next to nothing if you ask nicely. And if you know who to ask.’

I was utterly amazed – at all of it. That people paid for clothes but never claimed them. And that it was possible for ordinary people to benefit.

‘There’s nothing bad about this,’ Gilda said. ‘The store has already been paid. So what if the personal shopper gets a little backhander? It’s all good.’

Gilda was true to her word: two days later, she came to the apartment with armloads of designer clothes and I spent the entire afternoon trying stuff on, while she assessed me with brutal honesty.

‘That colour kills you. Discard. Okay, this is better. Boat-line necks are good on you. Try it with the dark skirt and the boots. That’s a go. What about this tunic? Too small. Discard. This dress? Is it day-wear? Is it cocktail hour? It doesn’t know what it is. Discard.’

‘But I love it!’

‘Too bad. Every single piece has to work super-hard. Nothing makes it into your luggage unless it
performs
. Over and over.’

She drew up a grid of every event I was due to attend on the tour and everything I should wear, right down to shoes, underwear, accessories and even nail lacquer.

‘How are you so good at this?’ I asked, in wonder. ‘You’re incredible.’

She laughed lightly. ‘I was a stylist in another life.’

‘How many lives have you
had
?’

In the Ferrytown Medical Centre, I’m shown into old Dr Quinn’s office. ‘Stella,’ he says, seeming a little uncomfortable, ‘I heard you were … er … back in Ireland.’

‘Yes. Yes, indeed, hahaha.’

‘So how can I help you?’

‘Right. Well, you know Ryan, my ex-husband?’

‘… Yes …’

‘He’s gone a bit …’

I launch into the whole Project Karma story and as soon as Dr Quinn realizes why I’m there, he clams up. ‘I can’t diagnose someone else.’

‘But I’m worried about him.’

‘I can’t diagnose someone else.’ He’s quite adamant.

‘Can’t you give me an off-the-record opinion? Please?’

‘… Weeeeelll, he does sound a bit manic.’

‘That’s bi-polar, is it?’

Very quickly Dr Quinn says, ‘I’m not saying he
is
bi-polar!’

‘Could he be having a mid-life crisis?’

‘There’s no such thing … but he
is
in the correct age range. Has he taken up cycling? I mean, obsessively? Buying a lot of Lycra?’

I shake my head.

‘Doesn’t he have someone else to worry about him? Does he have a partner?’

‘No.’

‘A girlfriend, then, if we’re allowed to say the word “girlfriend” these days without inciting the wrath of someone? What’s that thing they say instead?’ He stares into the middle distance for a moment. ‘Fuck buddies, that’s the one.’

‘… Er … “girlfriends” is grand with me. But he doesn’t have one.’

‘And him with a good job.’ Dr Quinn marvels.

‘Don’t get me wrong, he often has a girlfriend, but they’re always about twenty-five and after eight weeks they dump him for being immature and self-obsessed. The latest one departed about a month ago.’

‘I see. That’s … unfortunate. Could you talk to his parents?’

‘I could if you had a medium handy.’

‘I remember now. Deceased.’

Ryan’s mother had died six years ago and his dad had followed within four months.

‘Any siblings?’

‘Just one sister. And she lives in New Zealand.’

Dr Quinn looks almost awed. ‘That’s a long way away. Mind you, they say it’s very scenic. Mrs Quinn would like to go but I don’t know if I’d be able for the flight. Even with the special thrombosis socks.’

‘It’s a long one, right enough.’

‘So the sister isn’t going to be very hands-on in talking sense into Ryan?’

‘No,’ I say gloomily.

‘And he has no other siblings? No? That’s very small for an Irish family from that generation.’

‘There’re only two in my family also.’

‘That’s right. Yourself and Karen. How
is
Karen?’

‘Fine.’

‘Great girl, Karen. Great girl. Great … 
vim
in her. Full of beans. She sorted out Mrs Quinn’s whiteheads.’

‘Is that right …?’ I know
all about
Mrs Quinn’s whiteheads but there’s an unspoken vow of confidentiality between beauticians and their clients. How would a woman like to go to a dinner party and discover it was common knowledge that she had a hairy stomach?

‘You could try getting Karen to talk to Ryan.’ Dr Quinn looks unexpectedly hopeful. ‘If anyone could sort him out, she could.’

‘It’s not really up to her …’

‘I see.’

We sit in downcast silence, then Dr Quinn rallies.

‘And how are you doing, Stella?’ he asks. ‘With all the … er … changes in your life? I don’t mean Ryan, I mean –’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re coping okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, fair play to you. Anyone else, they’d be in here begging for antidepressants and whatnot –’

‘I’m fine.’

I don’t want his pity and I don’t want his antidepressants.

‘Mind you,’ he says, ‘you’re looking well. Nice … ah …’ He nods at my chinos.

‘Chinos,’ I say. ‘Yes. Lady chinos.’

‘Lady chinos? Who would have thought? So anything else I can do for you as you’re here?’

‘Nothing, thanks.’

‘I could take your blood pressure,’ he says, almost wheedlingly.

‘Okay.’ I sigh and begin rolling up my sleeve.

I sit patiently while the cuff on my upper arm tightens and Dr Quinn watches the numbers. ‘It’s a bit high,’ he concludes.

‘Is it any wonder?’