The Other Side of the Story

by Marian Keyes

  The second message was from Mark. ‘You’re good, I’ll say that for you, you nearly had me convinced there. But there’s no need for any of this, Jojo. I’ve already torn up your resignation letter, just come in on Monday, same as ever and we’ll get everything back on track. You’re a partner now, Jojo. And as for you and me, you’re the most important person in my life, the most important person I’ve ever met, we have to work this out, Jojo, we have to, because the alternative is unthinkable –’

  At that point the message time ran out, but the next message was also from Mark, carrying on like he hadn’t been interrupted, ‘– this can all be fixed right now. You and me, Jojo, we can make it all alright. We can make anything alright. You can have your old job back, or the partnership or anything you want. Just say what you want and you can have it…’

  In all there were six messages from him.

  She went to stay with Becky and Andy for the weekend.

  ‘Because you want to be with people who love you,’ Andy said sympathetically, as he opened the door.

  ‘No, because I just bet Mark will call round to my apartment in the middle of the night and lean on the buzzer until I let him in.’

  ‘Have a glass of wine, put your feet up and forget about it all for a while,’ Becky soothed.

  ‘I can’t.’ Right on cue her mobile rang. She looked at caller display. Not Mark, not this time. She hit ‘talk’.

  ‘Hey you, Nathan Frey! Yeah, I did call earlier. I was, like, wondering if you’d had a call from Richie Gant, offering, like, the earth.’

  Jojo took the call into the hall, where she paced back and forth, talking up a storm. Then she came back and collapsed onto the couch. ‘That was Nathan Frey. Looks like Gant’s got to all my authors. All the big ones, anyhow. Gonna spend my weekend doing damage limitation, trying to get them back on side.’

  Her phone shrilled into life again and she dove on it, checked caller display, then said, super-jovially, ‘Mr Eamonn Farrell, how the devil are you?’

  Out to the hall again, her anxiously pacing feet at odds with her upbeat tones. Then she was back. ‘Jesus H! This is a nightmare! Gant is offering such super-low percentages that he’ll barely make any money. He’s just doing this out of spite.’

  Her phone burst into life again.

  ‘Ignore it,’ Becky urged.

  ‘I can’t.’ But when she checked caller display, she clattered the phone back onto the table, as if it burned. ‘Mark again.’

  The phone rang and rang, sounding louder and more insistent with each unanswered peal. The three of them regarded it fearfully, then the ringing stopped and the air hummed with merciful silence.

  ‘Turn it off now,’ Becky begged.

  ‘Sweets, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m still waiting to hear from…’ she counted on her fingers. ‘… eight authors. I put calls in to all my major ones when I found out what Gant was up to. He’s freaked them out with how crap I’m going to be on my own. I’ve got to be available to reassure them.’

  The phone chirruped once, twice.

  ‘A message from Mark,’ Jojo said.

  ‘Are you going to listen to it?’

  ‘I don’t need to. He’s just going to say that he loves me and we can work this out.’

  ‘And you’re not going to?’ Becky asked. ‘Work it out, I mean?’

  Jojo shook her head curtly, then leapt as her mobile rang again.

  She studied the number, then handed it to Andy. ‘Answer it?’

  ‘Mark again?’

  ‘Not his number, but I’ve a feeling…’

  Gingerly, Andy answered. ‘Ah, Mark.’

  ‘Sneaky,’ Jojo told Becky. ‘Must’ve used a phone box.’

  Andy spoke for a short while then hung up.

  ‘Mark,’ he said. ‘Standing outside your flat. He’s been buzzing for the last half-hour. Says he’s going to stay there until you let him in. All night if he has to.’

  ‘He’s gonna have quite a wait.’ She sounded upbeat but she felt shitty. She didn’t want him to be like this.

  All weekend and through into the following week, her phone was on fire, but with the wrong sort of calls. Her resignation had – understandably – generated great furore in publishing circles; she had resigned the day her partnership was announced – WHY? Theories abounded. She’d discovered that Richie Gant was the illegitimate son she’d had when she was twelve and given up for adoption (from an editor who specialized in sagas). She’d been having a lesbian affair with Olga Fisher who had taken up with Richie Gant instead (from someone who worked at Virago). She’d been having an affair with Mark Avery, who hadn’t voted for her, then dumped her (from the vast majority of London publishing).

  But far worse than the people exercising their naked curiosity were the calls from her authors. On Tuesday afternoon, there was a call from Miranda England. She was making it official –she was going to Richie Gant. It hit Jojo like a blow from a baseball bat.

  On Wednesday, Marjorie Franks signed to Richie. On Thursday, Kathleen Perry, Iggy Gibson, Norah Rossetti and Paula Wheeler jumped ship and on Friday a trio of thriller-writers went, all of them steady-sellers.

  Every time an author walked, the chances of her making it as a solo agent shrank further.

  Becky said over and over, ‘Why don’t you go back? You could just go back into your job as a partner. A partner, Jojo.’

  ‘I will not collude in that patriarchal system.’ Jojo had learned the word ‘patriarchy’ from Shayna. She liked it. She produced it whenever someone tried to persuade her to return to work. ‘Now that I know what I know, it would be too soul-destroying.’

  But it was way, way tempting.

  And all the time, she was bombarded with messages from Mark; day and night, he emailed, texted, wrote letters, sent flowers and a box of goodies from Jo Malone, he rang on her home phone and mobile and he loitered outside her apartment. Two drunken nights he had leant on her buzzer, each time for over three hours. He stood in the street and yelled stuff at her window. Her neighbours complained and threatened to call the cops if he did it again. She could have called the cops herself but the idea affected her like lemon juice on an oyster. She couldn’t do that to him, it was too fucking sad.

  But far worse than Mark behaving insanely was when he was being smart – when he left messages reiterating that a position of partner was still waiting for her in Lipman Haigh and that a life with him was available any time she wanted. Jesus H, it was enticing.

  His buzz-phrase was, ‘Just say what you want, Jojo, and you can have it.’

  But she could not have the one thing she wanted, and that was to rewrite the past: she wanted Mark to have voted for her and not for Richie Gant.

  It was weird – she knew she was angry with him even if it didn’t feel that way and although she missed him like a limb, there was no way back. Whatever had happened – and she still wasn’t sure exactly what – had contaminated them beyond fixing. It was so over.

  The amazing thing was that, despite him almost stalking her, she never spoke to him or even saw him. And yeah, that made it easier to stick to her guns. She suspected that if they saw each other, she would crumble. Things, right now, were so scary and bad that walking back into the cocoon of her old life, where she was loved and secure, would be just too hard to resist.

  Monday morning

  Her second Monday as a self-employed agent. She felt confident and hopeful, like she was turning a corner.

  The phone rang. It was Nathan Frey’s wife, to say that Nathan’s new agent was Richie Gant.

  Fuccckkk.

  She had only one big author left: Eamonn Farrell.

  She decided to ring Olga Fisher. Over a week had passed and she had heard nothing about when she was coming to work for her.

  ‘Hey, Olga. Have you given notice? When’re you coming to work for me?’

  ‘Don’t be so impertinent. Of course I’ve not given my notice.’

  ‘Hey, you might have told me,’ Jojo said
hotly. ‘I thought you were coming to work for me.’

  ‘But, but my dear girl, the very idea is so patently ridiculous… why on earth would I… Oh!’ On that note of exasperation, Olga ended the call.

  On Tuesday, only two smaller authors walked.

  But Wednesday was Meltdown Day.

  When she switched on her computer, waiting was an email from Eamonn Farrell, saying he had found new representation. She leant her forehead against the screen. That was it, her last big author gone.

  Then the phone rang: Mark. He left a frantic, pleading message for her every morning around this time. But today he sounded different. Like, sane.

  ‘Jojo,’ he said, ‘I’m going to stop bothering you now. I’m sorry we didn’t manage to work it out, I’ve never been sorrier about anything. We were one inch away from perfection, we were almost there, but I know when I’m beaten. Good luck with everything. I mean that.’

  Then he clicked off and she almost felt the molecules of her phone relaxing after its recent spate of very demanding work.

  This wasn’t some dumbass trick of Mark’s to get her to change her mind. She knew his MO; he had given this his all, it hadn’t delivered the desired results, so he was quitting. Game over.

  This was what she had wanted. She had never intended to go back to him.

  But, like an out-of-body experience, she saw herself, sitting in her apartment on a bleak Wednesday morning in February, with her best friend gone and her career in ruins.

  At that Jojo cried so hard and for so long she barely recognized herself in the mirror. When she stuck her face in a sink of cold water to calm the red swelling she found herself considering just staying there and letting herself drown. For the first time in her thirty-three years she could understand the urge to take her own life.

  For about half a second.

  Then she got it together. Colleagues? Who needs ‘em? Authors? Hey, plenty more where they come from. And another Mark? Plenty of them too, if she could be arsed.

  Lily

  For over a week I lived with the certainty that Anton and I were finished. I held it within me, a hideous knowledge, like being aware of a murder weapon under my bed – unsettled constantly by it, but unable to take the first step.

  My conviction that we were out of time was given extra weight because I had been here before; not in my own life but with Mum and Dad. I knew the worst did happen and it happened every day. Anton and I thought we were special, somehow immune from love’s travails but, in truth, we were nothing out of the ordinary, just another pair of souls who could not hold it steady when the going got tough.

  Nevertheless, I was deeply surprised by Anton’s reaction when I said that I was leaving. I had thought that he was of the same mind as me: that we both knew it was over but were simply going about our business until the appropriate time came. In the weeks since the move, we had been so silent with each other that I genuinely believed we were finished in all but name. I was sure that he would let me go quietly, acknowledging sadly that it was a shame it had not worked out, but that under the circumstances it was a miracle we had stayed together as long as we had, etc.

  But he went wild.

  When Ema had gone to bed that night, I picked up the remote and, without preamble, turned off the TV.

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘Irina has said Ema and I can stay with her for a while. I think we should go sooner rather than later. Tomorrow?’

  I was ready to deliver my little piece about how he could see Ema whenever he liked but I never got to say it because he lost it.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He gripped my wrist so hard that it hurt. ‘Lily?’ he questioned. ‘Lily? What?’

  ‘I’m going,’ I said, faintly. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘No.’ He looked utterly horrified.

  He implored. Pleaded. Took my keys from my bag and stood with his back to the door even though I was not actually planning to leave there and then.

  ‘Lily, please,’ he choked. ‘I beg… implore you to think about it.’

  ‘But Anton, I’ve done nothing but think about it.’

  ‘At least sleep on it?’

  ‘Sleep? I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in months.’

  He rubbed his hand over his mouth and muttered some imprecation; I caught the words ‘please’ and ‘God’.

  ‘What did you think was going to happen to us?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought things would get better. I thought they were getting better.’

  ‘But we never speak to each other any longer.’

  ‘Because we’ve lost our home, a terrible thing has happened. But I thought we were regrouping!’

  ‘We’re not regrouping. We will never regroup. We should not have been together ever, it was wrong from the beginning and it was always going to end horribly. We always knew this.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You persist with looking on the bright side but the reality is that we are disastrous together,’ I reminded him. ‘Look at the mess we’ve made of our lives. We had a lot going for us and we’ve screwed it all up.’ I said ‘we’ but what I really meant was, ‘I had a lot going for me and you screwed it up.’ I did not need to say it; he was no fool, he would have already grasped that.

  ‘We were unlucky,’ he insisted.

  ‘We were arrogant and grandiose and foolish.’ (You were.)

  ‘Because we tried to buy a house with money that everyone thought would pony up? What’s grandiose about that? Common sense combined with bad luck is what it sounds like.’

  ‘Reckless and risky is what it sounds like to me.’

  He leant heavily against the door. ‘It’s because of your history, your dad losing the family home. It had a terrible effect on you.’

  I said nothing. It was probably the truth.

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘I hope that eventually we will be friends. But Anton, we’re bad for each other.’

  He looked at me, his face stricken and I dropped my eyes. ‘What about Ema?’ he asked. ‘Us breaking up can’t be good for her.’

  ‘I’m doing this for Ema.’ Suddenly I was furious. ‘Ema is my number-one priority. I don’t want her brought up like I was. I want security for her.’

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ Anton repeated. ‘Very angry.’

  ‘I’m not! But keep on insisting that I am and I probably will be.’

  ‘I don’t blame you for being angry. I could shoot myself for getting it all so wrong.’

  I decided to ignore this. It did not matter what he said, he would not change my mind. Anton and I were finished completely and I actually felt it was necessary for us to part, that we would both be dogged by bad luck, until we had righted the wrong we had committed when I first stole him from Gemma.

  When I told him that, he exploded, ‘You’re just being superstitious. It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘We were never meant to be together, I always knew it would end in disaster.’

  ‘Lily, but Lily…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you say or do,’ I said. ‘I’m going. I have to.’

  He lapsed into beaten silence, then asked, ‘If you’re really going to do this, can I ask one thing?’

  ‘What?’ I asked warily. Surely he would not be crass enough to ask for some form of sex as a farewell gift?

  ‘Ema? I don’t want her to see this. Could someone take care of her while you’re…’ he paused, then choked on the word, ‘packing?’

  He began to cry silent tears and I watched him in wonderment. How had this come as such a shock to him?

  ‘Of course. I’ll ask Irina to take her.’

  Then I went to bed. This was proving a lot tougher than I had expected and the sooner it was over the better. I heard him come to bed and in the darkness he lay his head on my back and whispered, ‘Please Lily,’ but I lay rigid as a crab, until he moved away again.

  I
n the morning, I rang Irina who came, nodded at Anton with something akin to sympathy and took Ema with her. Then I tried to persuade Anton to go out. I did not like him being there, hanging around, looking sick, following me from room to room, watching my actions like he was watching a snuff video. I was not enjoying any of it and his manifest misery made me feel worse. He watched me pack three bags, refusing to pass anything, saying, ‘I want no hand nor part in this.’ But when I struggled to get a holdall from the top of the wardrobe, he muttered, ‘For God’s sake, don’t kill yourself,’ and swung it down for me.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if you weren’t there when I actually go,’ I suggested.

  But no way. He kept trying to talk me out of it, right up to the last minute. Even as I was getting into the taxi, he said, ‘Lily, this is only temporary.’

  ‘This is not temporary.’ I held his eyes. I had to let him know this. ‘Please get used to it, Anton, because this is for ever.’

  Then the car drove away, taking me to my new life, and I know this sounds horribly cruel but, for the first time since I had met him, I felt clean.

  * * *

  For far too long now, I had coexisted with wretched guilt about Gemma. Freedom from it brought delicious relief and almost from the second I left Anton, life began to improve: I got work immediately – via an agency, doing freelance copywriting from home – and this was the sign I needed.

  Irina’s apartment was big and quiet. I worked in the morning when Ema was in playgroup and in the evening when she was asleep. If I needed to work in the afternoon, I had no shortage of babysitters: Dad and Poppy were regular visitors and Ema and Irina got on beautifully. I think Ema’s quarter Slavic side responded to the Slav in Irina and Irina regarded Ema’s round little face as the perfect showcase for the latest Clinique products. I tried to stop Irina but I was not capable of impassioned pleas. Or impassioned anythings.