by Marian Keyes
It was a divorce petition.
Clodagh opened her front door and recoiled as ‘You bitch!’ was flung at her.
‘Ashling!’
‘Weren’t you expecting me?’
She hadn’t been. All she’d been able to think about was Dylan, that he’d found out and that he’d left her. Somewhere at the back of her head she knew she’d have to talk to Ashling, but she hadn’t been able to think about it yet.
‘So, my best friend,’ Ashling pushed into the kitchen. ‘Did you think of me at all when you were fucking my boyfriend?’
Clodagh was in agony. How could she explain the guilt, the torture? ‘I did think of you, Ashling,’ she said humbly. ‘I did, it’s been so difficult. But you think only people in soap operas have affairs. Ordinary people do, it just happens.’
‘But to me? How could you do it to me?’
‘I don’t know. But you hadn’t been going out with him long, it’s not like you were married or anything, and I’ve been so unhappy, I’ve felt so trapped and like I was going mad –’
‘Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you. You have fucking everything,’ Ashling said wildly. ‘Why did you have to go and take him? You have everything.’
All Clodagh could say was, ‘Sometimes everything isn’t enough.’
‘When did this start with Marcus?’
‘When you were in Cork,’ Clodagh said stiffly. ‘He gave me a note with his phone number –’
‘“Bellez-moi.”’ Ashling was pleased at the surprise on Clodagh’s face. ‘You and most of Dublin got one of those notes. So why did he collect me from the train that weekend?’
Clodagh gave a dismal shrug. ‘Maybe he felt guilty.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He called here to the house on the Monday after. Nothing happened. He just had a cup of tea, then when he was leaving, he washed his cup. It was just a small thing but –’
‘He said “my Mammy trained me well”,’ Ashling chimed in with. ‘Yes, I was fucking charmed by that too.’
‘He loves me.’ Clodagh was defensive.
He probably does, Ashling realized, shards of agony piercing the protective lagging of anger. ‘Then what happened?’
‘He invited me out for a cup of coffee…’
‘And then?’
‘And then… he showed up here again the following day.’
‘When he did more than wash his cup?’ We’re not having this conversation. I’m hallucinating.
Clodagh nodded, avoiding eye-contact.
‘Did you go to Edinburgh with him?’
Once again Clodagh nodded humbly.
‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type,’ Ashling accused, aware that her face was twisted and ugly with pain. How she longed for a smooth, dignified mask.
‘I wouldn’t have thought he was my type either,’ Clodagh admitted. ‘But from the first night I saw him at that comedy place I really liked him. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it.’
‘And what about Dylan?’
Clodagh hung her head. ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know… Look, I’ve betrayed you, our friendship, and that must hurt more than the end of your, um, romance.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Ashling corrected nastily. ‘I mind losing my boyfriend much more.’
Clodagh gazed at Ashling’s pale, angry face and admitted uncertainly, ‘I’ve never seen you like this before.’
‘What? Angry? Well, it’s long overdue.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You’ve done this to me before,’ Ashling said quietly. ‘Dylan was my boyfriend first.’
‘Yes, but… he fell in love with me.’
‘You stole him.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say anything before now?’ Clodagh said, with sudden savagery. ‘You were always such a victim.’
‘So this is my fault?’ Ashling was unpleasant. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. I forgave you for Dylan. But I will never forgive you for this.’
54
‘Dammit,’ she realized. ‘I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.’
She looked around at the bed she was flung in. Her well-overdue-for-a-bath body was sprawled lethargically on the well-overdue-for-a-change sheet. Tissues, sodden and balled, littered the duvet. Gathering dust on her chest of drawers was an untouched arsenal of chocolate. Scattered on the floor were magazines she’d been unable to concentrate on. The television in the corner relentlessly delivered daytime viewing direct to her bed. Yip, nervous-breakdown territory all right.
But something was wrong. What was it?
‘I always thought…’ she tried. ‘Youknow, I always expected…’
Abruptly she knew. ‘I always thought it would be nicer than this…’
55
Clodagh thought she was cracking up, she was certain she was. But she had to get dressed and collect Molly from playgroup. Once back, she returned to bed and attempted to take up where she’d left off, but Molly began agitating that noodles be micro-waved for her. With resignation, Clodagh got up again.
She hadn’t been enjoying it anyway – which had come as a big surprise. As a child, she’d watched Ashling’s mother take to her bed and thought that it looked gloriously abandoned. But in practice, lying down feeling unable to cope, riddled with self-hatred and confusion, wasn’t half as much fun as she’d expected.
Since ten o’clock this morning – was it really only this morning? – her entire life had become an out-of-body experience. From the moment she’d heard Dylan’s key in the door, she knew. The gig was up.
She’d paused from her frantic bucking beneath Marcus and cupped an ear to listen. ‘Sssh!’ In a fluid movement he’d rolled off her: frozen and bug-eyed, they’d listened to Dylan mounting the stairs.
She’d had every opportunity to jump from the bed, fling on a robe and hustle Marcus into the wardrobe. Indeed, Marcus had tried to skid out of bed, but she’d arrested him by gripping his wrist tightly. Then she’d waited with horrible calm, the scene set to change her life.
For the last five weeks she’d endured sleepless nights wondering where her affair with Marcus would end up. She’d vacillated between ending it with him and resuming a normal life with Dylan, or fantasizing about a situation where Dylan was magically absent, but without her having actually told him it was over.
But as she listened to Dylan’s footsteps get ever closer, she’d realized that the decision had been taken for her. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she was ready.
The door to the bedroom opened, and even though she knew it was Dylan, his presence shocked her into a stupor.
His face. The expression on his face was so much worse than she’d ever imagined it could be. She was almost surprised at the amount of pain there. And his voice when he spoke was not Dylan’s. There was an Oof to it, as though he’d been slammed in the abdomen. ‘At the risk of sounding like a song lyric,’ he’d struggled for breath with pathetic dignity, ‘how long has this being going on?’
‘Dylan…’
‘How long?’
‘A month.’
Dylan turned to Marcus, who was clutching the sheet to his chest. ‘Would you mind leaving? I’d like a word with my wife.’
Cupping his genitals coyly, Marcus edged crab-like from the bed, snatched up some clothes and muttered to Clodagh, ‘I’ll call you later.’
Dylan watched him leave, then turned back to Clodagh and asked quietly, ‘Why?’ A hundred thousand questions were contained in that one word.
She struggled for the right words. ‘I don’t really know.’
‘Please tell me why. Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it, I’ll do anything.’
What could she say? With sudden certainty, she knew she didn’t want him to fix it. But she owed him honesty. ‘I think I was lonely…’
‘Lonely? How?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t describe it. But I’ve been lonely and bored.’
‘Bored? With me?’
She h
esitated. She couldn’t be that cruel. ‘With everything.’
‘Do you want to fix this?’
‘I don’t know.’
He studied her in long, painful silence. ‘That means no. Do you love this… him?’
A miserable nod. ‘I think so.’
‘OK.’
‘OK?’
But Dylan didn’t answer. Instead, he slid a holdall off the top of the wardrobe, bounced it on to the bed and, slamming drawers open and closed, began flinging in underwear and shirts. Nothing had prepared her for how shocking it was.
‘But…’ she tried, her eyes flicking back and forth, seeing ties, his shaving stuff, then some socks hop into the bag. Everything was happening very quickly.
Suddenly the bag was bulging-full. Then Dylan was zipping it with a high-pitched whizz. ‘I’ll be back for the rest later.’
He swung from the room, and after a panicky second Clodagh dragged on a dressing-gown and ran down the stairs after him.
‘Dylan, I still love you,’ she implored.
‘So what was that all about?’ He jerked his head upstairs.
‘I still love you,’ she repeated, her voice more subdued, ‘but…’
‘You’re no longer in love with me?’ Dylan finished harshly.
She hesitated. But she had to be honest. ‘I suppose…’
He shuttered his face. ‘I’ll be back tonight to explain things to my children. You can stay here in the house for the time being.’
‘For the time being?’
‘The house will have to be sold.’
‘Will it?
‘I can’t afford to pay the mortgage on this place and another. And if you think you’re staying on here while I’m in some smelly shoebox in Rathmines, you’re very much mistaken.’
And then he was gone.
She reeled from shock, from the speed it had all happened at. She’d fantasized about Dylan removing himself from her life, but now that it had actually come to pass it was ugly. Eleven years wiped out in half an hour, and Dylan in such agony. And talking about selling the house! Yes, she was wild about Marcus, but things weren’t that simple.
Too stunned to cry, too frightened to grieve, she sat in the kitchen for a long time. A ring at the front door jolted her back to the real world. It might be Marcus.
But it wasn’t. It was Ashling.
Clodagh hadn’t been expecting her. She certainly wasn’t ready for her. And Ashling’s uncharacteristic angry hostility compounded the whole horrible mess. Clodagh had always been surrounded by love, but suddenly everyone hated her, including herself. She was a pariah, a scumbag, she’d broken every rule in the book and wouldn’t be forgiven.
After Ashling left, then she cried. She crawled back into bed, between the sheets with their smell of abandoned sex. She’d never laundered so much bed-linen as she had in the past five weeks. Well, no need to do it today, nothing to hide any longer.
She reached for the phone and rang Marcus, so he could remind her that they hadn’t really done anything wrong. That they were mad about each other, that they couldn’t help it, that theirs was a noble entanglement. But he wasn’t at work and he wasn’t answering his mobile, so she had to endure her anguish alone.
This isn’t my faulty she repeated again and again like a mantra. I couldn’t help myself But, like a fissure into hell opening, she caught a glimpse of the atrocity she’d perpetrated. What she had done to Dylan was unforgivable. Unbelievable. With shaky speed she grasped the nearest magazine to hand and tried to forget herself in an article about stencilling. But the fissure opened again – worse this time. It wasn’t just Dylan she’d fucked over. It was her children. And Ashling.
Her heart beat faster and with a hand slidy with sweat she pressed buttons on the remote control until she found Jerry Springer. But he wasn’t enough to distract her from herself – normally the people he had on seemed like cartoon characters with their ridiculously convoluted private lives, but today she didn’t feel any different from them.
She flicked to Emmerdale, then Home and Away, but nothing worked. She trembled with shock and disbelief at her own actions, at the devastation she’d wrought. Then she remembered she’d have to collect Molly from playgroup and had a panicky seizure of paralysis. She couldn’t go out. She really couldn’t. It was impossible.
She couldn’t be on her own and she couldn’t be with anyone else and for a horrible moment she wondered if she was cracking up. This beyond-the-pale thought held her in its grip for a nightmarish while, then she struggled from the embrace of the bed. Cracking up was even more unpleasant than having to face the outside world.
Marcus rang in the afternoon and, in spite of everything, every cell in her body sang as soon as she heard his voice. She was mad about him, in a way that she hadn’t felt about Dylan in years. If ever. Love would conquer all.
‘How’re you doing?’ he asked, his voice full of concern.
‘Shit!’ she half-laughed, half-cried. ‘Dylan’s moved out, everyone hates me, it’s all a disaster.’
‘It’s going to be fine,’ he soothed.
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Hey, I rang you earlier and your phone was off.’
‘Keeping a low profile.’
‘Ashling knows. Dylan told her.’
‘I figured he might.’
‘Will you talk to her?’
‘I don’t think there’s any point,’ he said, trying to disguise his shame. ‘I want to be with you. What can I tell her that she doesn’t already know?’
Marcus had spent the past five weeks justifying his involvement with Clodagh by saying that Ashling was neglecting him. But, in truth, his feelings were more complex. He hadn’t been able to credit his luck with Clodagh. She was so beautiful and he certainly preferred her to Ashling. But he’d been very fond of Ashling and was needled by his shitty behaviour. The last thing he wanted to do was confront his own cavalier carry-on by having a question-and-answer session with Ashling.
Far better to focus on the positive. His voice intense with desire, he asked Clodagh, ‘Can I see you?’
‘Dylan’s coming after work. To talk to the kids. Christ, it’s hard to believe…’
‘But how about when he’s gone? I could spend the night. After all, there’s nothing to be afraid of now, is there?’
Her heart soared. ‘I’ll call you when he’s gone.’
‘Right, ring me at home. Ring three times, then hang up, then ring back. That way I’ll know it’s you.’
Dylan arrived after work. He was different. No longer obviously in pain, but angry.
‘You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?’
‘No!’Did she?
‘Yes, you did. You’ve been behaving really weirdly.’
Maybe she had been, she acknowledged.
‘Have my children seen you in bed with that prick?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Well, they better not. Not if you want any access to them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m going to get custody of them, you don’t stand a chance. In the circumstances,’ he added, unpleasantly.
His words and the hard expression on his face suddenly brought home to Clodagh how deadly serious this situation was. It was a side to Dylan that she wasn’t familiar with.
‘Jesus Christ, Dylan,’ she exploded, ‘why are you being such a –!’ She stopped short of calling him a bastard. Why wouldn’t he be a bastard, all things considered?
He seemed amused by her frustration – if it was possible for someone to laugh and sneer simultaneously.
She was reminded that Dylan was a businessman. A very successful one. A man who played hardball. Maybe he wasn’t going to roll over and play dead just because she wanted him to. Dylan had always treated her with tenderness and love, she was finding this abrupt change hard, even if she was responsible for it.
‘I’m going to get custody,’ he repeated.
‘OK,’ she
said humbly. But even as her face was meek, her head was whirring. He’s not getting my children, no way.
‘Right, I’m going to talk to them.’ Dylan went into the room where Craig and Molly were watching telly. They obviously sensed something was wrong because they’d been bizarrely subdued all afternoon.
When Dylan emerged he said coldly, ‘I’ve just told them I have to go away for a while. I need time to think what the best way to deal with this long-term should be.’ He rubbed his hand over his mouth and suddenly he looked exhausted.
But Clodagh’s aching compassion for him vanished when he added, ‘I could tell them their mother is an adulterous bitch who’s ruined everything, but it would do more harm than good, I’m told. Right, I’m going. I’m at my parents’. Ring me –’
‘I will –’
‘If there’s anything up with my children.’
She watched him hug them fiercely, his eyes clenched shut. This was so fucking awful. This time yesterday things couldn’t have been more normal. She’d made stir-fry for dinner, Craig had spat it all back out on to his plate, she’d watched Coronation Street, she’d nagged Dylan into changing a light-bulb, Molly had smeared her bedroom wall with peanut butter. In retrospect it seemed like a golden era, untouched by pain or worry. Who would have thought that so quickly their lives would be thrown up in the air and utterly rearranged, mired in bitterness?
‘Bye.’ Dylan closed the front-door behind him. She’d seen him pack his bag, he’d told her he was leaving, but she hadn’t been able to imagine it until presented with it as a fait accompli.
This isn’t happening, she thought as she stood in the hall. This isn’t happening.
She turned away from the door and found Craig and Molly standing gazing at her in silence. Shamed, she turned away from their questioning eyes and reached for the phone.
She listened to Marcus’s phone ring and ring, then click into answer-machine mode. Where was he? Then she remembered that he’d asked for her to ring, hang up, then ring again. Reluctantly she did so – it made her feel like a type of outlaw.
On the second set of rings, Marcus answered and instantly her pain lessened and was replaced by a soaring, giddy sensation.
