The Woman Who Stole My Life

by Marian Keyes

  I nodded, tentatively. This was my first time ever to meet someone who described themselves in such a fashion.

  She was quite mesmerizing; she was very long. Everything about her – her limbs, her hair, her eyelashes, even her knuckles – was sort of stretched-looking. She had a mild touch of the Iggy Pops about her.

  Unexpectedly she choked back a laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop looking at you and comparing us.’

  ‘Me too.’ And with that, we were friends.

  ‘Your perfume is –?’ Then I understood. ‘It’s a customized blend, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’ She sounded surprised – as if it was really strange that a perfume wouldn’t be bespoke. ‘There’s a man in Antwerp. He’s – no other word for it – an enchanter. You must come. His waiting list is about six years long, but say you’re a friend of mine and he’ll see you.’

  ‘So you go to Belgium a lot? On buying trips for your boutique?’

  ‘Maybe five times a year.’

  ‘Your neck-thing is beautiful,’ I said. ‘Is that one of your funny Belgian designers?’

  Instantly she was unwinding it. ‘Have it,’ she said. ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘No, really.’ I batted her away with my hands. ‘I wasn’t trying to … Georgie, I’m begging you, please don’t.’

  But there was no reasoning with her. She was up and out of her seat and was draping the scarf-thing on my neck and rearranging my hair around it. Then she sat back down again to admire her handiwork. ‘See! Made for you. Like my husband.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘I’m joking! I don’t care in the slightest. Really, Stella. Mannix and I were all wrong. I’m highly strung. Like a racehorse. Whereas you … you’re … steady. You’re sensible and – oh God, please don’t take this the wrong way, Stella – you’re solid. He needs someone like you.’ She studied me. ‘In your ordinary way, you really are very pretty.’

  I touched the neck-thing. I was deeply miserable about this. I hated her thinking that I’d asked for it. I’d only been admiring the fecking yoke; I was only being nice.

  ‘You could never be described as a classic beauty,’ she mused. ‘But you do have a lovely face.’

  ‘Was this very expensive?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘It depends on what you call expensive. It’s not like it needs to live in a safe. Do you have a safe? No? Well, then, don’t bother, simply keep it in your jewellery box. Promise me you’ll wear it lots. Every day. It’s got jade for protection and I’m sensing you’re going to need plenty.’

  Before I could get derailed by that, she said, ‘It’s just I feel bad for what I said that Christmas night in the hospital. I implied that you weren’t so all that. But at the time we were simply being cruel to each other, Mannix and I. I was losing my husband and … it hurt.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t looking my best. I’d no make-up on and my roots hadn’t been done in months.’

  ‘And at the time I was fucking my meditation instructor,’ she said. ‘Who was, quite frankly, a crashing bore. Spiritual people so often are, don’t you find? I had no right to sneer at Mannix’s romance. So how’s it all going? I hear your son doesn’t approve?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘And you can’t just say, “Get used to it”?’

  ‘He’s my son – I’ve shattered his world and I’ve got to take care of his feelings.’

  ‘And what’s going on with your ex? Is he helpful?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly I felt like crying.

  Ryan and I had agreed that, to give the kids a sense of security, they lived with me during the school week. Every second weekend, they stayed with Ryan, and for those precious two days out of every fourteen, I got to see Mannix properly, to have sex with him, to go to bed with him and wake up with him.

  ‘Sometimes Ryan flakes on the weekends he has custody,’ I said.

  ‘So what happens when you can’t see Mannix? How do you manage for sex?’

  I blushed hot and red. Was this any of Georgie Dawson’s business?

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Stella,’ she said. ‘I should engage my brain before I speak.’

  But she had a point. Although we’d been seeing each other for more than two months now, Mannix and I were struggling with the limits on our time together. Now and again we cracked. There was that Wednesday I pretended to Karen that I had a dentist’s appointment and I raced across town and met Mannix in his horrible, sleazy, single-guy’s apartment for frenzied sex. There was another occasion when Mannix appeared when I was locking up the salon, and he said, ‘I know you’ve got to get home to your kids, but just give me ten minutes.’ And we sat in the empty salon and held hands, and I cried because I was worn out from wanting him and not being able to have him.

  The chronic deprival was exhausting and the only thing worse was the carefully orchestrated, agonizingly awkward meet-ups when I tried to blend my two worlds.

  Carefully, Georgie said, ‘I understand you have to take care of your son’s sensibilities.’

  I began to prickle with unease.

  ‘But,’ Georgie said, ‘take care of Mannix too.’

  This was a friendly warning, this was coming from a good place, but it scared me.

  ‘And how about Roland?’ she said. ‘Isn’t he just the best? That’s the sad thing about a break-up. You have to break up with the whole family.’

  ‘Do you miss them? Aren’t you lonely?’

  ‘I’m always lonely.’ Despite the desolate words, she sounded almost pleased with herself. ‘It’s true, Stella. I am the loneliest woman on earth.’

  ‘I’ll be your friend,’ I said, earnestly.

  ‘You’re already my friend,’ she said. ‘And I’m yours. However, I could have a million friends and it wouldn’t stop the ache here.’ She put her hand on her solar plexus. ‘It’s almost tangible. I feel like it’s a black lump. Both a lump and a yawning emptiness. You know?’

  ‘No.’

  I was fascinated. I’d never really met a depressed person before. Well, not one with such endless self-interest. And yet I really liked her.

  ‘Maybe the three of us could live together,’ I said.

  That made her laugh hard and wave her hand dismissively. ‘I’m so happy that I don’t have to live with Mannix Taylor any longer.’ Quickly, she added, ‘No offence. He’s great. You do know he’s on antidepressants?’

  ‘He said.’

  ‘But he’s not depressed. It’s just the way he is. A glass-half-empty guy. Sometimes he says he didn’t get given a glass at all. But you’re going to love his parents!’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘They’re such fun!’

  ‘But what about the gambling and the paintings they can’t afford and all that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know, I know. But it’s only money, you know?’

  No.

  Hey. Work stuff. World War 3 kicking off

  here. Can’t take the kids this weekend.

  Bummed to have missed it. Ryan xoxo

  Incredulous, I stared at my phone. It was five thirty on Friday evening, the kids were waiting outside the school gates, their bags packed, ready for Ryan to pick them up for the weekend, and he was cancelling? Again?

  Immediately I rang him and it went to voicemail. With fingers shaking with smacky-rage I sent a text, telling him to pick up the next time I rang, or else the kids and I were coming to see him in person.

  ‘Hey, Stella!’

  ‘Ryan? Ryan?’

  ‘Yeah. Crazy here. I’ll be working through the weekend. Emergency.’

  He was lying; he’d never had a weekend emergency when he’d been married to me. The truth was that the kids bored him – when the four of us had lived together, Ryan could flit in and out whenever it suited him, but a whole forty-eight hours being the sole provider of attention and entertainment? He couldn’t handle it.

  ‘Ryan.’ I almost choked. ‘They’re standing outside their school wait
ing for you.’

  ‘Too bad, eh?’

  ‘It’s not like you see them during the week.’

  ‘That’s for their benefit. We agreed. Minimum disruption during the school week.’

  ‘So who’s going to tell them you’re not coming?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘They’re your children too,’ I hissed.

  ‘You made this situation,’ he hissed back.

  He was right. There was nothing I could say.

  ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘that you’re going to have to miss your weekend riding your doctor boyfriend in the sand dunes in Wicklow, but, hey, shit happens.’

  He hung up and I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like my chest was caving in. Trying to manage Ryan and Jeffrey and Mannix was destroying me. I was constantly juggling situations, desperately trying to keep people happy, and the nearer every Friday got, the bigger my dread that Ryan would cancel. I could never relax, never be at ease in my own life, and I had no right to ask anyone to cut me some slack because I’d created this set-up.

  ‘Mannix, I can’t see you. Ryan can’t take the kids.’

  Silent tension flared on the phone.

  ‘Mannix, talk to me, please.’

  ‘Stella,’ he said. ‘I’m forty-two years of age. I’m serious about this. I’m serious about you. I want to be with you twenty-four hours a day, instead of two nights in every fortnight and sometimes not even that. I’m lonely without you. I spend every night in a horrible rented flat, and you’re four short miles away, sleeping on your own.’

  I said nothing. This was a familiar theme and there were times when I was afraid Mannix was going to give up on me.

  ‘We’re adults,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t have to live like this. You know how I feel about you but I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this weekend stuff.’

  Fear seized my heart. ‘Then you don’t really care about me.’

  ‘You can’t say that. This is real life where there are no blacks and whites. It’s all just grey.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Good as you are at phone sex,’ he said, ‘this is starting to get old.’

  ‘Am I good at it?’ I decided to focus on the positive.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I’m still around?’

  ‘Darling, I’m so sorry I’m late!’ Georgie hurried across the restaurant to where Karen and I were waiting. ‘Blame it on Viagra.’ Georgie gave me a big hug. ‘Yes, I was with my new man, he’d taken two of his little blue pills of delight and the whole thing went on for an epoch.’ She groaned and rolled her eyes, then turned the spotlight of her smile on Karen. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Georgie. And you must be Karen.’

  Karen nodded mutely. She had insisted on this meeting, had practically begged me for it, because she was fixated, to an almost unhealthy degree, on Georgie Dawson. She’d kept saying, in a mock-sad voice, ‘We really should be nice to “the loneliest woman on earth”.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Georgie pulled up a chair and exhaled heavily. ‘I thought he’d never come.’

  ‘I love your bag,’ Karen breathed.

  ‘Thank you,’ Georgie said. ‘Afterwards he asked me to lie in the bath and pretend to have drowned. Welshmen, believe me when I tell you this, they are so kinky.’

  ‘Kinkier than Mannix?’ I asked, just to make her laugh.

  ‘That little choirboy!’ Her eyes blazed with mirth. ‘Oh, Stella, you are a hoot.’

  ‘Is it a Marni?’ Karen was making pitiful stroking gestures towards Georgie’s bag. ‘Can I touch it? I’ve never touched a real one.’

  ‘Haven’t you? But you must have it.’ Instantly Georgie began emptying the contents of her handbag onto the table.

  ‘No,’ I said, in alarm. ‘Georgie, no. She doesn’t want it. Karen, tell Georgie you don’t want it.’

  ‘Oh, there’s my peridot earring,’ Georgie said. ‘I knew it would reappear.’ A pile of stuff began to mount up on the table – keys, a wallet, sunglasses, phone, gum, several thin silver bracelets, a small bottle of perfume, five or six lipglosses, a Sisley compact …

  ‘There you go.’ Georgie gave the empty handbag to Karen.

  ‘Oh, please.’ I buried my face in my hands.

  ‘Stella, it’s only stuff,’ Georgie said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Karen said, clutching the bag to her chest and looking like Gollum with the Ring. ‘It’s only stuff.’

  ‘So how are you, sweet girl?’ Georgie said to me.

  Karen had called over a waiter and asked for a paper bag for Georgie’s belongings.

  ‘Can I apologize on behalf of my sister,’ I said.

  ‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’ Georgie waved away my concerns. ‘Tell me how you are, Stella. How’s your divorce going?’

  ‘Not bad, actually,’ I said.

  ‘Me too!’

  We both burst out laughing.

  It would be five years before Ryan and I were divorced; nevertheless our financial terms were surprisingly harmonious – probably because we owned so little: no stocks, no shares, no pension plan. Our home, with its mortgage, was transferred to me while Ryan got the Sandycove house and its negative equity. As Ryan earned so much more than I did, he agreed to cover all of Betsy and Jeffrey’s maintenance, including school fees, until they were eighteen. Apart from that our financial affairs were completely severed.

  What had proved less easy to agree was the care of Betsy and Ryan.

  ‘We have to talk about custody.’ I’d eyeballed Ryan across my lawyer’s desk.

  ‘Custody,’ my lawyer repeated.

  Ryan’s lawyer jumped in immediately. ‘My client is entitled to see his children. It’s generous enough that he permits you to have full access during the school weeks.’

  I sighed. ‘What I would like is for your client to stop bailing at the last minute on the weekends he’s supposed to have the kids.’

  But apparently that couldn’t be legally enforced.

  Afterwards, as we stood outside, Ryan said, ‘So that’s our divorce underway. How do you feel? I feel awful sad.’

  I outstared him: he did not feel sad. ‘Ryan, I’m begging you. You have to keep your commitment to the kids on your weekends. And to take them away on holiday for a week when they break up from school.’

  ‘While you’ll be doing what? Going down to your beach house with your neurologist?’

  ‘He’s not my neurologist any more. And I’m entitled to a break. One week, Ryan, that’s all I’m asking. I’ll have them the entire summer.’

  ‘Grand,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll organize something.’

  ‘In a different country,’ I said. ‘Not Ireland.’

  He took the kids to a tacky resort in Turkey, and he went out on the pull every night, having suddenly realized he was a single man, free to have sex with whoever he wanted. The kids spent their evenings confined to the tiny apartment, watching movies on their laptops, and their mornings waiting for Ryan to come home.

  ‘It’s unacceptable,’ Betsy said gravely, in one of her countless phone calls to me.

  ‘What does Jeffrey think?’ I was interested to hear his thoughts on Ryan’s sex life, considering he had such strong views on mine.

  ‘Jeffrey says Dad can do what he likes.’

  ‘Is that so? Because –’

  Jeffrey grabbed the phone. ‘You started it. Dad wouldn’t have any other girls if you hadn’t cheated.’

  ‘I didn’t cheat.’

  ‘He’s making the best of a bad situation.’

  Somehow I knew that Ryan had said those very words to Jeffrey. But I couldn’t afford to get too irate because I got my week in the beach house with Mannix.

  One day, during that blissful week, Mannix said, ‘Could we get a dog?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not right now, obviously. But sometime in the future. I’ve always wanted a dog but Georgie wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘I love dogs too.’ I was excited. ‘But Ryan hates
them so I made myself forget how much I’d love one. What sort would we get?’

  ‘A rescue dog?’

  ‘Definitely. Maybe a collie.’

  ‘Can we call him Shep?’

  ‘Absolutely! Shep it is.’

  ‘We’ll walk the beach here, just you and me and Shep. We’ll be a family. Promise me that one day, after your disaster has struck us and we’ve survived it, that that will happen.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Who knew? But it was nice to be optimistic.

  As soon as Ryan got back to Ireland, he started cancelling weekends again. He also produced a girlfriend, the first of many, all of them virtually identical. Every one of them broke up with him at the eight-week mark.

  The first girl was called Maya – a twenty-something with stencilled eyebrows and eleven earrings.

  Betsy disapproved of her. ‘Did you see her like shoes? They’re so high. Did she like steal them from a drag queen?’

  ‘Just because you look like an Amish.’ Jeffrey had a massive crush on Maya. ‘She’s pretty. She has a tattoo on her bum.’

  ‘She showed it to you?’ It was time for me to be worried.

  ‘She told me. A dolphin.’

  A dolphin? For the love of God. Would it have killed her to be a bit original?

  And so the summer moved on and I lived in a state of constant dread, surviving on little parcels of time with Mannix and waiting for him to decide I wasn’t worth the trouble.

  … Then came that otherwise ordinary day in late August. I’d finished work and had popped home to pick up the kids; we were going to Dundrum to buy stuff for their new school year, which was starting the following week.

  ‘Come on.’ I stood at the front door and shook my keys. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Have you seen this?’ Betsy asked warily.

  ‘Have I seen what?’

  ‘This.’ The photo of Annabeth Browning, the drug-addict wife of the US Vice-President, hiding out in a convent and reading the book I’d written.

  One short phone call later established that Uncle Peter’s sister’s light-fingered friend was, in all likelihood, the reason that the book had shown up DC, and I was seized with fear. Which increased exponentially when the phone rang and it was Phyllis Teerlinck offering to represent me. When she hung up, the phone immediately rang again. I let it go to answerphone; this time it was a journalist calling. As soon as she finished speaking, the phone rang again. And again. And again.