by Marian Keyes
Matt felt shit about Russ, shit about leaving him in the lurch financially, shit about all the times he’d let him down, shit about the one time he’d actually managed to meet him to discuss what they should set up in Vegas for Alex, because he’d suggested nothing.
In a month’s time, the day that they were all supposed to be getting on the plane would roll around and Matt had absolutely no idea what he would do.
But before he had to face that, there was even worse: the work stuff. The day of his first appointment with a bank in Shanghai was hurtling toward him like a rock from outer space and he couldn’t get out of its path.
He was trapped in the most terrible position, with no space to maneuver. It made him think about a prisoner of war in one of those Boy’s Own books he used to read in the old days: the man’s legs had been broken and he’d been put into a cage in which he could neither stand up nor sit down. Matt felt as though, no matter which way he went, he was screwed.
Life was getting dark around the edges. It was like he was moving through a tunnel that was becoming narrower and blacker and more choked and airless, and soon there would be nothing left for him to breathe and no room for him to move.
Day 5 . . .
Lydia’s phone rang. It was Conall.
“Hathaway? Where now?”
“Jakarta.”
“Remind me again.”
“Capital of Indonesia. Look, I don’t know how to tell you this, Lids, I am so, so sorry—”
“You slept with a hooker?”
“No.”
“You’ve given me chlamydia?”
“I’m not going to make it back in time for Poppy’s wedding on Wednesday. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“Settle the head, Hathaway. You’re the one who wanted to go.”
Day 4
“Dzien dobry, Andrei.” Jemima liked to greet those poor Polish boys in their native tongue. A small pleasantry that cost her nothing and might put a gloss on their day.
“Dzien dobry, Jemima. Dzien dobry, dog.” Andrei dropped to his knees and began wrestling happily with Grudge.
“My dear, you seem positively joyous.” For once.
“I’m gettingk married.”
“Congratulations! The lovely Rosemary?”
Andrei nodded and reddened with evident pride. “We are looking for own place.”
Is that a fact?
Jemima said, with interest, “I may be able to help you there. Shortly, my flat will be coming free.”
“You are movingk out? When?”
“In a week or so, I would imagine.”
“Good timingk. We are all going to Gdansk on Friday, Jan, Rosie and I. When we come back, Rosie and I, we could move in then.”
“You’re bringing Rosie to meet your family? How delightful. Now, you’ll like the flat, but there is a condition attached.”
Well, Andrei thought sadly, wasn’t there always?
“You must take care of my dog.”
“That’s condition? That’s all? You cannot take dog to new place?”
“Regrettably, no.”
“And your Fionn man? He will be moving out also?”
Yes, he just hadn’t realized it yet.
“Fionn and Grudge don’t see eye to eye, I’m afraid. Fionn is a grown man. All things considered, it’s clear that Fionn will also be moving on.”
“I like this dog.” Andrei beamed. “Rosie too will like. She likes e veryone.”
“Just one thing. You’re quite sure you and Rosemary wouldn’t like a fresh start in an entirely new location? Far away from Star Street?”
Jemima lifted her chin and maintained steady eye contact with Andrei. Oh yes, she had heard himself and Lydia “at it.” Many’s the time. She might be hard of hearing but not even the stone deaf could have missed their enthusiastic yelping and groaning.
Not that she was passing judgment. That was not the way of the good-living person. But she would like to be sure that Andrei knew exactly what he was doing. She watched as countless emotions flickered across his face, a cocktail of shame, self-examination, absolution, fortitude and, finally, something approaching happiness.
“Thank you for concern,” Andrei said, also lifting his chin and matching Jemima’s steady eye contact with some fairly impressive eye contact of his own. “But Star Street is good. Handy for Luas. When we have babies, we will need bigger place, but for moment is good. How long will lease be? Six months? A year?”
“For as long as you like, my dear.”
Day 4 . . .
The Poles were going! They were going—and not coming back!
They were off on their summer holidays on Friday, which was excellent enough in itself. But big changes were afoot. Jan was returning to live in Poland and—in a shock move—Andrei had got engaged to Rosie, the last virgin in Ireland, and they were moving in together.
Jan related all of this to Lydia with no small amount of smug triumph. “Good girl wins,” he said.
“If Andrei’s the prize, you can keep it.”
“We will pay you two months’ rent,” Jan said, which even she couldn’t find fault with. “Lease is yours if you want.”
She might keep it on, she thought, the location wasn’t bad. But she might move somewhere else. She didn’t have to live in her cupboard any longer because everything had changed. The catastrophe with her mum was still real but, with Murdy and Ronnie on side, she was no longer carrying the burden alone. And now that she wasn’t so afraid, she saw how laughable her money-saving efforts had been. She could never have afforded to pay for a home for Mum, not even if she’d lived under a bridge.
And here came Andrei.
“The groom-to-be,” she said. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
He looked a little shy but undeniably proud.
“You went down on one knee, I believe?” she said. “The last of the great romantics.”
They eyed each other with mutual dislike and there was a pinprick of time when a lunge was possible. Everything froze, the universe hovered on a knife-edge, not a breath was taken . . . then they both turned away.
Now that it’s all calmed down, their individual heartbeats have separated out, and mother of God, what a disaster. They’re so mismatched, it’s like they’re talking two different languages.
Day 3
“Katie? Katie!” She barely recognized Fionn’s voice, he sounded so distraught. “My identity has been stolen.”
“Fionn, where are you?” This must be something to do with his credit card being declined, she’d already decided. He’d probably forgotten to pay the bill.
“I’m at work. There’s another one of me.”
“Spending your money?”
“No! Have you seen today’s Irish Times?”
Katie looked around. They got all the papers in the office. “Danno. Bring us the Times.”
“Page sixteen,” Fionn said.
Katie leafed through the pages and . . . Curses.
The headline shouted, GARDENING? THE NEW ROCK’N’ROLL? It was accompanied by a quarter-page photo of a tousle-haired, unshaven sex god, smiling a big dirty smile and rubbing a courgette with his big dirty hands. But that man was not Fionn.
Instead, it was one Barry Ragdale, the star of Diggin’ It, a new gardening program on RTE, which would commence its run in two weeks’ time. The gimmick was that Barry had once been a bass-player in a band and would play out the closing credits every week.
At once, Katie saw the worst-case implications. For Fionn. And for her.
“Is that why Channel 8 moved me?” Fionn asked.
It could be. They’d probably got wind of RTE’s show and either they hadn’t had the nerve to go head-to-head with the state broadcaster, or they were watching to see how it played out. If it was a disaster, they wouldn’t bother running their version; if it was a flyer, they could coat-tail on Barry Ragdale’s success.
“I’ll tell you something, Katie,” Fionn’s voice was trembling, “I’m s
orry I ever got involved in this whole lousy caper. I was happy in Pokey. Now, I’m jealous and insecure and I hate everyone.”
Katie forced steadiness into her voice. “Fionn, listen to me. There are always going to be other artistes, other people in competition with you. It’s a fact of life and even more so in something as cutthroat as television. You’ve got to play the long game. Wait and see. This Barry Ragdale could crash and burn spectacularly and you’ll be ready to step into his place.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes.” She was good at this. After all, it was her job, calming down artists. Not so good at calming herself down, sadly. “And Channel 8 haven’t pulled Your Own Private Eden. It’s still full steam ahead for Sunday three weeks, right?” That’s not to say they won’t pull it, but why dwell on the negative?
“But what if they do pull it? Then it’s all over for me here and I’ll have to go right back to Pokey.”
“Fionn, you’re jumping several guns. Look at it this way: it’s actually a compliment, another good-looking gardener getting his own show. It shows you’re tapping into the zeitgeist.”
“Oh, right, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s all good.” Well, who knew whether it was or it wasn’t?
“You’re right, Katie, it is all good, especially because if I hadn’t come to Dublin I would never have met you.”
Day 2
At first, it seemed like Matt was simply looking for an alternative route home. After twenty-three and a half frustrating minutes, inching along in traffic that was a smidgen speedier than a total standstill, he abruptly pulled a U-ee and sped off in the opposite direction. Any minute now, he’d do a sharp right turn, then another one and once again he’d be heading toward home. But he didn’t. He put further and further distance between himself and Star Street, and before long he was driving by the river, making for the docklands. He pulled in off the quay, zigzagging through streets that became narrower and narrower, and soon enough he was bumping over cobbles.
He threw the car into the first space he saw, unconcerned that he was on a double yellow—boot the car, do what you like, he didn’t care—and took up his lookout post outside No Brainer Technology.
Thirty-seven minutes elapsed before the lanky, unkempt, poetictype bloke appeared, rushing down the steps, his jeans almost falling off him, his hair tumbling into his eyes, his brown tweedy jacket looking as if it had been recently excavated from a bog where it had slumbered undisturbed for the last 123 years. He was hurrying after a tall, slender girl with an attractive gap between her front teeth. “Wait!” he called, placing a hand on her shoulder, halting her progress. “Steffie, wait!”
Like a dam had been opened, rage roared through Matt.
But wait a minute, I recognize the poet-bloke from Maeve’s memory pools! He’s—
“David!”
Yes, David. Maeve’s old boyfriend, from before Matt. It’s only now that Maeve is letting me in fully and I can get to know all the details of her past.
“David!” The gap-toothed girl’s voice floated over to Matt. “You scared the life out of me!”
David said something that Matt couldn’t hear, then he flung his arm around the girl’s waist, gathered her close and snogged her energetically.
So now he had a girlfriend, Matt thought. She looked like a lovely girl and they seemed happy. And the gas thing was that he could go over there right now—seven or eight strides would do it—and in a few choice sentences screw it all up for them. He could tell the lovely girl a thing or two about David that would have her hightailing it in the opposite direction.
He braced himself to move, he clenched his feet and calves to propel himself like a grenade into their lives—go now, go now—and then it was happening. He was walking with purpose and David, with the instinct of an animal sensing danger, saw him. He flickered with something—fear, Matt hoped—but Matt ignored him and focused all his attention on the girl. “I need to talk to you.”
She shrank away and he realized his intensity was frightening her. “Look, sorry—Steffi, is it?” She nodded fearfully and he swallowed hard, as if that would stem the despair. “My name is Matt Geary.”
“Maeve’s husband?” Steffi said.
This was the last thing Matt had been expecting. Incredulously, he asked, “You know about me?”
“David told me.”
Matt turned to look at David, who was smirking smugly, then he looked back at Steffi. “But he didn’t tell you the truth.”
“I did tell her the truth.”
Matt ignored him. “Listen, Steffi, please listen—”
“Hey,” David said. “You can’t simply rock up here and start—There are laws against that sort of thing.”
Laws. Laws. That was what did it for Matt. Suddenly, it all left him, every bit of impetus just drained to nothing, leaving him emptier than he’d thought a human being could be.
He limped away, as if he’d been physically injured. At his departing back, David yelled, “Get a grip on yourself. Get yourself some self-respect, man—and get fucking over it.”
Day 2 . . .
Conall gazed out of the plane window, blind to the housing estates of Dublin circling below him. He’d finally identified the uncomfortable sensation that had been clawing at his gut for the past ten days.
He should have let the Cambodian arm go. It was wildly inefficient, riddled with corruption and cursed with atrocious local infrastructure.
That one mistake had pinballed off myriad other situations and each of them had unleashed a chain of events, fanning out like falling dominoes, and what Conall had ultimately achieved was a bodge job.
He was famed throughout his industry for his slick, surgical work. When he chopped up a company, then put it together again, the scars disappeared fast, and very quickly the taut new version began to seem like the only possible one. No one would have believed that the old, saggy, bloated configuration had ever existed, never mind functioned.
But this time was different. What kept rising to the surface of his mind was that this scaled-down company would never entirely convince. He felt like a plastic surgeon who’d done a breast reduction and forgotten to sew the nipples back on.
He’d let the personal get in the way of the practical. He hadn’t wanted those Cambodian directors to get thrown in chokey, and that reservation had hobbled the fluid, blue-sky thinking that was his talent. He’d eventually come up with a solution but, now that the job was done and dusted and he was almost home, he was hit with a bout of painful perspective.
He’d . . . he tried out the word; it was a new one for him . . . well, he’d failed.
Failed. No one else had guessed, his paymasters in Milan seemed happy enough, but Conall himself knew. And word would get out eventually. Conall Hathaway’s lost it. Too old. Burned out. No longer reliable.
His innards clenched. Failing felt as bad as he’d always feared it might, but he had lived his life with the knowledge that, sooner or later, his judgment would let him down. It was something he’d spent his career on the run from. He’d taken on job after job, needing to stack up triumphs so that when his luck finally ran out, his average success rate would still be stratospheric. Now that failure had happened once, he knew it would happen again. Like when a plane commences a descent, you know the pressure has changed even before the pilot tells you. His unbroken chain of successes had been interfered with, and he had an irrational, superstitious conviction that the direction of his life had been altered and that he had to go where the new path took him.
Adapt! Adapt, adapt! That’s what he needed to do: adapt to survive. And another chunk of awareness floated to the surface. He needed—wanted—someone to help him at work. Only now that this job was over and he was almost home, was it was safe to admit just how hard he’d found it. All those flights, those time-zone changes, the lack of sleep, the information overload . . . Too many times in the last three weeks he’d been seized with the ice-cold conviction that he simply wasn�
��t able for it. Admittedly, he found every takeover frightening, it’s what had made him so good—that level of fear had produced lots of adrenaline—but this had been different. It was madness to have attempted it on his own. An operation as big as that needed several Conalls.
A deputy. There, he’d said the unsayable: he needed a deputy. Someone to share the workload, to bounce ideas off, to assume some of the responsibility. He realized he even had a few candidates in mind, people younger than him, possibly even more cutthroat than he’d been at his prime, and already he was wondering which one he’d choose. But who said he had to have just one deputy? He could have two, even a team, a whole group of outside-the-box thinkers. Together they’d be terrifying.
But the more effective they were, the more it meant that Conall Hathaway, lone troubleshooter, was no more. That person was gone. Whatever the future brought, and it could be all good, it still meant that he was a failure.
What was it going to be like, he wondered idly. Being a failure? To get his adrenaline fix, was he going to have to start mountain-climbing or doing extreme sports, like a Southern Hemisphere person? God, no. He had a vision of himself and Jesse having underwater breath-holding competitions in Float—then he remembered Lydia. Thank Christ. She was extreme enough for anyone.
Finally, the plane was on the ground. Conall unfastened his seat belt and switched on his phone before he was told he could—he might have forgotten to sew the nipples back on but he would never obey their petty rules.
He stood up and stretched elaborately, almost hoping that the steward would berate him, then hit Lydia’s number.
“Hathaway?”
“I’m home. My bed, forty-five minutes.”
