by Cathy Kelly
But this . . . This is different.
How many times has he asked me about the sleeping tablets and I have lied every time. Every single time.
‘I know,’ he says quietly.
We sit there in utter silence.
‘How?’
‘I know where you keep them,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. Such a hopeless phrase. ‘I thought I could get better myself, deal with the fear, stop taking the tablets but I haven’t and now, it’s going to be awful giving them up. I feel ashamed. Of staying on them and lying to you.’
Again, he says nothing. Then he sits up, turns on his bedside lamp and reaches for his phone.
This is it, I think. It’s over. He’s leaving and we are going to be over because he can’t take being married to a woman who’s addicted to sleeping tablets. A woman who lies.
He spends a few minutes scrolling through his phone and then shoves over till he’s beside me.
‘Right,’ he says in a very calm voice, but the voice he’d use to his mother or even Zed. ‘We’ll do this. It doesn’t sound like fun but if you follow the detox really carefully, titrating down slowly, you can come off them. I’ll help. You know I will.’
And then he holds me and I let myself relax against his chest, shaking, grateful and yet terrified because since I told Dan the truth, he hasn’t once said ‘I love you.’
Still, I’ve told him. That’s got to mean something.
I lie there, scared, and eventually, let tablet-induced sleep claim me.
The next day, we go to see AJ together and Dan and AJ have a long discussion about how this needs to be done. Dan gets a script for a small amount of an anti-anxiety medicine to help me, which he goes into the pharmacy to pick up.
I sit in the car, shamed, feeling like a Hillbilly Heroin addict who has to be kept away from all respectable people and have my anti-anxiety meds bought for me because I can’t be trusted.
‘I never meant it to end up like this . . .’ I start when Dan gets back in the car.
He pats my knee.
‘We’ll get you fixed up,’ he says, again, as if he’s talking to Zed and they’re talking about a dodgy knee after a big run. He never talks to me like that. We are intimate, close: his voice changes when he’s with me.
Except I’ve ruined that forever, I think.
This distant Dan is what I’ve got from now on. It’s my fault.
For the first week, I do not turn into a werewolf, but I feel sick, shaky, anxious and irritable.
‘Mummy has a bug,’ I can hear Dan say blandly to the children. ‘Go in for a snuggle but don’t stay. The doctor says she has to stay in bed.’
As I’m never sick enough to be bedbound, they decide I am truly ill and creep around the house, making as much noise as usual but telling each other, in stage whispers, to ‘be quiet’.
He takes them over to his mother’s a lot, and then over to Scarlett and Jack’s.
‘You didn’t tell them?’ I ask each time, terrified he would.
‘I said you’re sick. You’ve been through enough – you’re allowed to be sick. Your mother, Scarlett and Maura are looking at nursing homes for your dad tomorrow.’
I moan with guilt and misery.
‘I should be with them.’
‘You’ve done enough,’ Dan says firmly. He leaves and closes the door.
Alone, I can cry because I feel alone right now and I’ve done it to myself. I pushed this wonderful man away.
By day eight, I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve managed to watch a couple of Netflix series but only funny things – nothing modern or involving drugs in anyway.
Because I feel so shamed.
Dan is an angel: cooking dinners or reheating things my mother has sent over but I feel so terrified that I’ve lost his love.
My head never stops analysing and over-analysing the situation. Have I lost him forever?
By the second week, I am up most of the time but terribly fatigued because I am barely sleeping.
I’ve tried hot milk, valerian tea and going for a walk round the block in the evening with Dan.
Once, he’d have held my hand when we walked but now, he doesn’t.
Still, he’s walking with me and he still hugs me in bed at night, holding me close but briefly.
Like he can’t bear to hold me too long . . .?
When he turns out his light at night, he used to say, ‘I love you.’
Now, he says nothing.
I still lie in bed at night not sleeping but I don’t get up. This is my bed, I’ve made it and I have to lie on it.
25
When life gives you lemons . . . it’s entirely up to you what you do next. Lemonade is good but some days, you do feel like throwing them at someone
From Freya: Learning to Live With It, Freya Abalone’s new TV cookery and lifestyle show
Miss Primrose promises to be at the launch for Freya, my new TV show, which has been given a one-word title in deference to my newfound fame.
‘We’ll only come if we can bring Tinkle,’ says Giorgio gravely, and he, Patrick and Miss Primrose and I all burst into laughter.
‘People will assume Tinkle is called Tinkle because she has no control over her nether regions,’ says Miss Primrose. ‘Plus, you need to get her fixed, boys. Whisper’s totally in love with her and we cannot have another lot of pups.’
‘Just one more litter,’ begs Giorgio who, now that he has delivered one litter of pups, feels he is at one with nature and wants to do it again.
‘We are getting Tinkle spayed,’ says Patrick firmly. ‘She needs a little pal and it will be a rescue.’
‘She’s a rescue herself,’ points out Giorgio, ‘but I never tell her that as she thinks she’s a princess.’
‘Posie’s the same,’ I say, referring to Tinkle’s offspring, one of the two pups I took from the litter, both girls. Posie can’t quite believe she doesn’t have a seat at the table with us. Magic is quite content to sit in her bed.’
‘Teddy will soon fix that,’ Patrick laughs.
Teddy is a bit of a dog whisperer and all our dogs revere her as their queen. Once Teddy truly begins to teach my two new puppies how to misbehave, all the dog training books will be useless.
My mother has taken another of the litter, although Delilah the cat is quite put out by the little bundle of fur that now roams the kitchen and gives my mother solace now that Dad is in a nursing home.
Mum has a step monitor on her watch and she and Bella walk every morning, something which is putting the colour back in my mother’s face.
She visits my father every day, and some days, Eddie comes along and has found a whole contingent of people in the nursing home who also like Nazi Megastructures.
‘This is my son, Lorcan,’ Eddie says proudly to everyone. ‘He loves the Guinness Book of Records too. Ask us anything. Anything.’
And of course, we took two dogs. Because Teddy insisted and she is in charge.
‘What are we all doing?’ says Dan, appearing at the kitchen door where Teddy, Lexi and I are working on a recipe.
We are losing ingredients speedily as Teddy is eating the cherries, while Lexi has found my decorating balls and is making a complex pattern on a jam jar lid that will take an hour to recreate on top of the cake.
We have discussed this new cake and Teddy wants to call it Teddy’s Cake, which may just be its name.
Liam is outside in the garden with the newly vaccinated Posie and her much smaller, and deliciously lazier sister, Magic, and they are playing ball. Or rather, Liam and Posie are playing ball.
Tinkle, Posie and Magic’s mother, is definitely a silky terrier cross while her boyfriend, and therefore father of her many pups, was possibly a Chihuahua. While Posie is all bouncy terrier intelligence with white silky fur like
her mother, Magic is very Chihuahua, a doe-like fawn colour and with the air of an exquisitely tiny haughty queen.
She can easily get upstairs on her own but much prefers being carried.
‘Will we go for a walk with the mad beasts and the dogs along Sandymount Strand?’ says Dan.
Lexi laughs. ‘We’re not mad beasts,’ she says, as he bends to kiss her.
‘I know, Squirt,’ he says.
‘I’ve grown an inch this summer,’ she says.
‘I know.’
September and October have been wildly busy what with the children back at school and Teddy’s iron will coming up against the sweet but equally implacable iron will of her first big school teacher, Miss Murphy.
I’m hectically busy on my blog which is called The Best You Can Do and looks at recipes for when you’re down and has my thoughts – my actual thoughts on life, the universe and everything, rather than fake thoughts.
OK, not all my thoughts.
We all pile into the car and head for Sandymount.
Once there, Lexi runs down the beach with Posie, who likes running, while Liam is left to make do with Magic, who looks as if she wants her own pony and trap to take her further down. Teddy is collecting giant stones into piles and keeps saying, ‘Get these on the way back, Daddy,’ in her usual imperious tone.
It’s a beautifully warm day for late October and I’m wearing a filmy red floral dress Scarlett got for me on one of her vintage shopping trips.
I would never have tried it on because it’s clingy but she says it really suits me.
I also have a small rucksack in case of showers and plenty of poo bags because Magic and Posie think that little offerings from their bowels are what the world is waiting for.
I am happy on so many levels. Happy because I have my beautiful family and my career is going from strength to strength. Or, to use a different phrase, levelled out after a lot of turbulence.
Everyone has bad days and now when I do, I say so. And it’s given me a whole new outlook on life. Turns out lots of people are like me too: convinced we have to be fake happy to get by when after all, whose life is perfect all the time?
I think of my new happiness as a gift: a gift I had to earn by going through pain in the first place. I think about this a lot in the mornings when I walk the dogs because they came into our lives by accident, and have brought us so much. Pain came into my life by accident via what happened to me in the garage, and yet it’s brought me a strength I never knew I had. It’s a strange sort of gift – one that has to take root and grow. But it’s part of me now, part of the family.
My new TV show, shot at speed after I did so much press and publicity after the article about my being mugged and how I recovered from it appeared, is nearly top of the TV ratings, there’s talk of it being bought in the US and it has been bought in the UK. Thanks to more help for me and Lorraine, my cookery book, Recipes for Happiness, is to be worked on also at high speed and because I am getting really good at saying no these days (thanks, Mildred!), I say yes only to the press things I’d like to do.
‘Why did you call her Mildred?’ is what Dan wants to know when I come clean to him about my inner voice.
We talk a lot more since the early days of my coming clean about lying to him but there’s still a tiny wedge between us, to my mind.
‘I can’t explain it,’ I say.
‘Should I call you Mildred in bed?’ he then jokes, pulling me onto the bed and pretending to moan ‘Mildreed, Mildreed, you excite meee,’ so loudly that I try to put a pillow over his face and we both explode laughing.
I cherish these moments: when I think we’re us again, the way we used to be.
He’s not laughing now. He looks serious and I feel slightly sick.
It’s a long time since we’ve all managed a walk like this.
The kids are all a bit away from us and only the dogs are close by.
‘It broke my heart that you hadn’t let me help,’ he says suddenly, looking into the distance.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter.
Is this it? He wants a divorce? Is this how it’s done? Soberly and calmly with the kids running on ahead. No plate-throwing or screeching about how I’d lied to him.
I never thought it would be us. I’ve tried so hard to make things right these past months but I didn’t try when I should have. When I was working so hard at being Freya: Wonder Woman and not letting Dan in.
Nobody’s Wonder Woman. We’re all mortal, all doing our best, trying to carve out time for relationships in the mass of school and work and have we run out of loo roll, again?
We were so good in bed and I thought that was the deal-breaker for men. If you weren’t matched sexually, you were kaput.
But with Dan . . . I thought we were solid and yet I’d messed it all up with my lies. Why did I have to pretend to be perfect to him?
He must have hated it when I told him, hated knowing how much I’d lied to him. But he’d never said a word of reproach to me.
‘Dan . . .’ I begin, and suddenly the rain decides to give it a good lash and I yell at the kids to come back, start extracting coats from my rucksack and say we’ll have to run back to the car.
We’re running but the rain is beating us. Now it’s a wild tattoo and Dan hasn’t moved.
I reach the car with the kids and stow them in, then turning back to where Dan stands about two hundred yards away, raincoat-less, being rained on.
I run back to him, frantic now.
‘Please,’ I say, ‘we can fix it, Dan. Don’t go,’ I say. ‘I am so sorry—’
‘I love you,’ he interrupts and he looks a little bit haunted. ‘But . . .’
I hang my head, feeling the water making this stupid dress see-through. I’m cold now.
‘Dan, don’t do this,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, I love you and I never meant to lie, I simply didn’t know how to tell the truth: that I was falling apart. I thought I had to be strong . . .’
‘No,’ he says,’ you don’t understand. I can’t forgive myself. You went through all this and I never knew. I should have known and I’ve let you down. That night you told me about the tablets, that was the worst night of my life. I had let you down. I hadn’t been there and you weren’t able to tell me.’
I turn my head up to the rain and let it flow down my face.
‘You let me down?’ I say, loving the feel of the rain. ‘I thought I’d let you down. I love you, Dan Conroy. Love you. I thought you wanted to divorce me.’
‘No! I love you, adore you. I’d be lost without you, Freya.’ He grabs me now and we’re both wet from the rainstorm and then he’s humming crazily, ‘It Had To Be You,’ and I’m laughing, trying to dance with him but I’ve always been a terrible dancer.
‘I—’ I start, and he starts to say ‘I—’ at exactly the same time.
‘I lied,’ I say.
‘We all lie sometimes, and you wanted to get strong by yourself, Freya,’ he says, his head bent to mine. ‘If it had been me, I wouldn’t have shared it all. I’d have tried to man up and deal with it all myself. I know I would.’
‘Really?’
He nods. ‘I love how strong you are, my beautiful wife, but I love all of you. Not just the strong, but the vulnerable, the wet hair . . .’
I laugh. We’re both wet, dripping, in fact. The rain is pelting down.
‘I love your wet hair, too,’ I say. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you better.’
‘Best.’
‘Bestest.’
There’s a distant banging and I see Teddy with her head stuck out the window like a dog.
‘I’m hungry,’ she roars. ‘Ice cream!’
Call yourself a chef, you dizzy thing, says Mildred. You haven’t organised any snacks in the car, have you? Mindfulness is all well and good but you have to thin
k about the future too, you know.
Acknowledgements
I love acknowledgements in books. Not my own – writing those is a nightmare of enormous proportions because I am scared of forgetting someone. I have a head like a sieve. Just saying.
But other people’s . . . thrilling. And there are so many people to thank because contrary to all beliefs, writing is a team effort. Yes, I do the writing but without my family, my friends, my agency, my publishers around the world and you, fabulous readers, this book would be a pamphlet, although I’d have scrubbed the skirting boards and actually knitted (if you can call it knitting) more than a quarter of my light, fluffy blanket. (Thin wool . . . a nightmare!)
So here goes: first thanks goes to my dear friend Marian Keyes, who was first reader, first editor, first person to tell me I am not a moron (we have this conversation every book) and a beautiful human being inside and out.
I would be nothing without the incredible team at Curtis Brown, headed by the ever wonderful Jonathan Lloyd, Lucy Morris, Melissa Pimentel, Hannah Beer, Claire Nozieres, Jodi Fabbri and Sarah Harvey, not to mention all the people who make Curtis Brown such a pleasure to deal with.
In Orion, I could not manage without Harriet Bourton and then Clare Hey, with glorious help from David Shelley, Katie Espiner, Olivia Barber, Sarah Benton, Virginia Woolstencroft, Amy Davies, Lynsey Sutherland, and the rest of the team. The glorious teams in Hachette NZ and Australia keep these books flying like butterflies into the world and when am I seeing you all again?
In Ireland, the team on the road keep me sane so thank you to Siobhan Tierney, Ruth Shern, Joanna Smyth, Elaine Egan, Bernard Hoban, Breda Purdue and Jim Binchy.
Nobody could have a more brilliant publicity firm than the Communications Clinic, headed by my friend Terry Prone, the utterly amazing Aileen Gaskin and Amy Jordan.
Thanks to the wonderful publishers and translators around the world who bring my books into different languages and show that while lives and continents may be different, people are not.
