The Woman Who Stole My Life (28 page)

At 7 a.m. the next morning, Jeffrey and I were straightening up the sitting-room couch, where Mannix had slept, when we heard a car door slamming shut.

Jeffrey glanced out through the window. ‘She’s here!’

Sure enough, a blocky woman, with short hair and a no-nonsense black skirt and jacket, was paying off a taxi driver. She looked like a Greek widow crossed with a bulldog.

‘She’s early,’ I said.

From upstairs came the sound of Betsy squealing, ‘She’s here, she’s here.’

I went to the front door. ‘Phyllis?’

‘You’re Stella?’ She rumbled her carry-on wheely bag up the tiny little path.

I didn’t know whether to shake hands or offer a hug but she saved me the trouble.

‘I don’t do physical contact,’ she said. ‘Too many germs. I wave.’

She raised her right hand and flashed the palm, like she was doing a single jazz-hand. Feeling a bit foolish, I did the same.

‘Let me take your bag.’

‘No.’ She practically shoved me away from it.

‘… Come into the house. This is my son, Jeffrey.’ Jeffrey was standing in the hall; he had put on a white shirt and a tie
for the occasion. ‘No hand-shaking, Jeffrey,’ I said. ‘Phyllis likes to wave.’

Phyllis did her jazz-hand and Jeffrey did the same. They looked like they were greeting each other in a science fiction film.

Betsy came bounding down the stairs like a golden Labrador, her hair still damp and fragrant from her shower. ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she said. ‘I have totally
got
to hug you.’

She draped herself all over Phyllis Teerlinck, who said, ‘If I get the flu, you get the blame and the doctor’s bill.’

‘You are hilaire!’ Betsy said.

‘Would you like a lie-down?’ I asked Phyllis.

She looked at me as if I was insane. ‘Get me some coffee and a place we can talk.’

Then her focus moved past my face and over my shoulder – she’d seen something she liked: Mannix had emerged from the kitchen.

I turned to have a look – he was so sexy I could hardly believe he was mine.

‘You must be Mannix,’ Phyllis said.

‘Phyllis?’ They checked each other out, like a pair of prizefighters about to enter the ring. ‘No physical contact, I hear?’

‘I might make an exception for you.’ She was unexpectedly flirty. (And as Betsy said later, ‘I thought she was like totally lady-gay.’)

‘Why don’t you all go on into the sitting room?’ Mannix said. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’

‘Thank you.’ I was pitifully grateful. Mannix doing even the smallest domestic thing made my heart flutter. To see him boiling the kettle in my kitchen made me believe that there was a future where these things were normal.

In the sitting room, the table was set with plates and napkins. ‘Baked goods!’ Phyllis said.

‘Mannix got them.’ He’d gone out at 6 a.m. to the all-night garage and bought bag-loads of croissants and muffins.

‘You mean you didn’t bake them for me?’

‘Well, I would have, but …’ I hadn’t baked in, like, ever.

‘Mom,’ Betsy said, gently. ‘She’s totally joking.’

To my surprise, Phyllis Teerlinck didn’t have a list of food allergies as long as her arm. She ate a muffin – ‘Damn, that’s good.’ She ate a second, followed by a third, then she produced antiseptic hand-wipes from her bag and wiped the crumbs off her mouth. ‘Where’s that guy with the coffee?’

‘I’m here.’ Mannix had appeared.

‘You went to Costa Rica for the beans?’

Mannix surveyed the detritus on Phyllis’s plate. ‘You eat fast.’

‘I do everything fast,’ Phyllis said. Again with that flirty overtone. ‘So let’s parlay.’ To me, she said, ‘You want these kids here?’

‘Anything I do affects them.’ I was mildly defiant. ‘Of course I want them in on this.’

‘Cool your jets, I only asked. So!’ She produced a sheaf of paper from her bag which I guessed was a printout of my book and she waved it about. ‘We could go a long ways with this. Drop ten pounds and you’ve got yourself an agent.’

‘What?!’

‘Yeah, we need you a little thinner to make you promotable. TV adds ten pounds and all that blah.’

‘But –’

‘Details, details.’ With a swipe of her arm, she dismissed my evident concerns. ‘Get yourself a personal trainer, it’ll be all good.’

‘It will?’ I didn’t like the direction this was going in.

‘Hey,
relax
, it’ll be great. So first we need to fix the terms between you and me. You got the revisions?’ She’d been
emailing through contract amendments until her plane had taken off. Mannix had printed out the final document and it sat in the middle of the table.

‘You’re good with the changes?’ she asked.

‘Um, yes, except you didn’t deal with clause forty-three,’ I said.

‘Which one is that?’ Like she didn’t know.

‘Irish rights. I’d like to keep them.’

She gave a sly laugh. ‘You’re feeling sentimental and I’m feeling generous. Have them, have them.’

She took the bundle of pages, crossed out clause forty-three, initialled it, then slid the contract and the pen towards me. ‘So sign it already.’

I hesitated.

‘It feels momentous?’ Phyllis said. ‘Yeah, go on, take a moment. But it’s not momentous. It’s only stuff.’

‘You’re a bit of a joy-robber,’ Mannix said.

‘Just keeping it real.’

I scribbled my name at the bottom of the document and Phyllis said, ‘Congratulations, Stella Sweeney. Phyllis Teerlinck is your agent.’

‘Congratulations, Phyllis Teerlinck,’ Mannix said. ‘Stella Sweeney is your client.’

‘I like him,’ she said, to me. ‘He’s good.’

‘I’m here all week,’ Mannix said. ‘Try the chicken.’

‘So, you said a publisher was interested …?’ I asked.

‘Blisset Renown. You’ve heard of them? The publishing arm of MultiMediaCorp? There’s a deal on the table for twenty-four hours. They do not want a bidding war. This is a one-shot-only go.’

‘How much …?’

Last night, on the phone, Phyllis had told Mannix it was ‘A lot’, but she wouldn’t name an actual sum and we’d
spent a long time speculating about what ‘A lot’ really meant.

‘Subject to conditions,’ she said, ‘six figures.’

Betsy gasped and I heard Jeffrey actually swallow.

‘
Low
six figures,’ Phyllis said. ‘But I think I can get them up to a quarter of a million dollars. Life-changing, right?’

‘Cripes, yes.’ In a good year, I made forty grand.

‘I could put it out to tender to all the big houses,’ Phyllis said. ‘But the Annabeth Browning factor is risky. She might be good for this book. She might blow it up in all our faces. Impossible to know. Think about it. And while you’re thinking, tell me what’s the relationship with you guys?’ She meant Mannix and me. ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes,’ Mannix said.

‘Okay. Good.’

‘Oh! But not to Stella. To another person.’

‘Okay. Not good.’

‘Not bad either,’ I said, quickly. ‘We’re both getting divorced.’

‘So what’s the delay? Do it now.’

‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘This is Ireland. You have to be living apart for five years. But we’re as good as divorced. Ryan and I have agreed on everything – money, the kids, all of it. So have Mannix and Georgie. And we’re all friends. Great friends. I mean, Ryan hasn’t met Georgie yet, but he will love her. I mean,
I
love her and I should hate her, right? Fabulous-looking ex-wife, well, soon-to-be ex …’ My voice trailed away.

‘So what’s it to be, guys?’ Phyllis said. ‘Blisset Renown? Or you take a chance on the unknown?’

‘I have to decide
now
?’

She leaned forward and said into my face, ‘Yes. Now.’

‘I need more time.’

‘You haven’t
got
more time.’

‘Stop this,’ Mannix said. ‘You’re bullying her.’

‘Tell me about the publisher,’ I said to Phyllis.

‘His name is Bryce Bonesman.’

‘Is he nice?’

‘Nice?’ Phyllis sounded like she’d never heard the word before. ‘You want him to be nice? Yeah? Then he’s nice. Maybe you should meet him.’ She had a little think. ‘What time is it in New York?’

‘Three a.m.,’ Mannix said.

‘Okay. Let me make a call.’ Phyllis hit a couple of buttons on her phone. ‘Bryce? Wake up. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. She wants to know if you’re nice. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha.’

She hung up and said to me, ‘Can you go to New York?’

‘When?’

‘What’s today? Tuesday? Then Tuesday.’

My head was reeling. ‘I haven’t got the money to go to New York on a whim.’

Phyllis was contemptuous. ‘You don’t pay! Bryce Bonesman’s guys pick up the tab. For everything.’ She waved her arm expansively. ‘The kids are invited.’

Betsy and Jeffrey started squealing and jumping around the room.

‘It’s just for a day,’ Phyllis said. ‘You come back home tomorrow.’

‘And Mannix?’ I asked. ‘Is he invited?’

Again, Phyllis looked contemptuous. ‘Of course Mannix. He made this happen. And he’s your partner, right?’

Mannix and I looked at each other. ‘Right!’

Jeffrey abruptly stopped his squealing and jumping.

A long shiny car picked us up and Mrs Next-Door-Who-Has-Never-Liked-Me nearly imploded under the weight of her own bile.

We were driven to an unfamiliar backwater of Dublin airport, where a fragrant charming lady led us down a glossy, glassy corridor into a room with art and couches and a full bar. Our luggage was ferried away and the fragrant lady took our passports and returned them a short time later, with luggage tags and boarding passes. ‘Your bags are checked through to JFK,’ she said.

Jeffrey was squinting at his boarding pass. ‘Are we checked in? We don’t have to queue and that?’

‘All done.’

‘Wow. Are we in business class?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’re in first class.’

Ten minutes before the flight was due to leave, we were put into a black Mercedes – the most expensive Merc on the planet, if Jeffrey was to be believed – and driven about five metres to the plane. At the top of the steps, two female stewards greeted us by name: ‘Dr Taylor, Mrs Sweeney, Betsy, Jeffrey, welcome on board. Dr Taylor, Mrs Sweeney, can I offer you a glass of champagne?’

Mannix and I looked at each other, then started laughing a little wildly. ‘Sorry,’ Mannix said. ‘We’re just a bit … We’d love some champagne.’

‘Come through to the first-class cabin and I’ll bring the champagne in.’

We stepped behind the magic curtain and Jeffrey said, ‘Wow! These seats are
huge
.’

I wasn’t a total stranger to luxury travel – at the height of the Celtic Tiger, Ryan and I had flown business class to Dubai. (The whole experience had been brash and blingy, but everyone was doing it at the time; we knew no better.) This, however, was in a different league. The seats were so enormous that there was only room for four abreast, two on each side of the aisle.

‘Okay, Mom.’ Jeffrey suddenly took charge. ‘You go by the window. And I’ll sit next to you. Then Betsy can go over here. And Mannix by the other window.’

‘But –’ I wanted to sit next to Mannix. I wanted to drink champagne with him and experience every second of this together and …

Mannix watched me. Was I going to let Jeffrey do this?

‘I want to sit next to Mannix,’ I said, weakly.

‘And I want to sit next to you,’ Jeffrey said.

All of us froze in a tableau of tension. Even the steward, pushing through the curtain with her tray of champagne, paused halfway in and halfway out. Betsy had her eyes lowered, assuming her default setting that life was perfect, and Mannix and Jeffrey were both watching me. I was suddenly the centre of attention and my guilt, always so easy to trigger, began flowing.

‘I’ll sit with Jeffrey.’

Mannix flashed me an angry look and turned his back.

Jeffrey, smug and victorious, settled in beside me and spent
the next seven hours making his seat whirr up and down, up and down, up and down. Far away, on the other side of the plane, Mannix made tight, polite conversation with my daughter.

At some stage I fell asleep and awoke just before we landed in JFK.

‘Hi, Mom,’ Jeffrey said, chirpily.

‘Hi.’ I felt muzzy-headed and I could hear Betsy laughing very, very loudly.

‘You missed afternoon tea,’ Jeffrey said. ‘We got scones and stuff.’

‘Did you?’ My tongue felt enormous.

The plane touched down, and as we stood up to leave, Betsy grasped me around the neck and gave me a hug that turned into a wrestling move. ‘Hey, Mom,’ she said. ‘Welcome to NEW YORK CITY!’

‘Betsy?’ This was far worse than her usual exuberance. ‘Are you … Oh my God, you’re drunk?’

‘Blame your boyfriend,’ she giggled.

Mannix shrugged. ‘Free champagne. What’s a guy to do?’

The moment we stepped off the plane, we were hustled into a limo. ‘We need to get our bags,’ I said.

‘They’re being taken care of. They get their own limo.’

I swallowed. ‘Right.’

I’d been to New York a couple of times before, once with Ryan, long, long ago, before the kids, when we’d wandered the meat-packing district, looking for inspiration for his art. And again about five years back, on a shopping weekend with Karen. Both of those trips had been budget affairs and this was the complete opposite.

The limo took us to the Mandarin Oriental, to a suite on the fifty-second floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a
view over the entirety of Central Park. There seemed to be endless rooms – dressing rooms, bathrooms, even a fully kitted-out kitchen. I wandered into a bedroom the size of a football pitch and Jeffrey appeared at my side. He scoped out the situation fast. ‘This is the master bedroom,’ he said. ‘You and Betsy can sleep here.’

‘No.’ My voice wavered.

‘What?’ He looked young and surprised and very angry.

I cleared my throat and forced myself to speak. ‘This is my room. Mine and Mannix’s.’

He glared at me with eyes of fire. He looked like he was considering saying something but eventually he set his mouth in a tight line and stalked away across the vast expanse of carpet, almost bumping into Mannix, who came reeling into the room, laughing in delight. ‘Stella, you should see the size of the flower arrangement they’ve sent! And … What’s up?’

‘Would you mind if Betsy and I slept in here?’

‘And what? I’d stay in another bedroom? I would mind.’

I looked at him, silently asking for mercy.

‘Line in the sand,’ he said. ‘Got to happen sometime.’

I lowered my head and I thought: I hate this. I hate it. It’s so difficult. All I want is him. And for everyone to be happy. And for everyone to love everyone and for life to be simple.

‘We won’t have sex,’ he said, a little unpleasantly. ‘Would that make it easier?’

Before I could answer, the phone rang. It was Phyllis.

She had been on the same flight as us, but she’d been in coach. She’d told us that she always flew economy but charged the publisher for business class.

‘Phyllis,’ I said. ‘You should see our suite!’

‘Fancy? Yeah? Don’t get too used to it; you’re only staying one night.’

‘It must be costing a fortune.’

‘Nah. Blisset Renown put a lot of business their way; they’ll have done some deal. And they sent flowers? They sent flowers. Bryce Bonesman’s assistant will be over there tomorrow, soon as you’ve checked out, to take them home to her sad little apartment. So saddle up, he’s looking for a meet.’

‘Who?’

‘Bryce Bonesman.’

‘Now?’ But we’d just got here.

‘What? You thought you were here to have fun? You’re not here to have fun. You and Mannix, a car will pick you up in thirty minutes. Look thin.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. Look promotable. Wear Spanx. Smile a lot. And those kids of yours? A car is coming for them too. To do the sights, all that shit.’