‘Amy.’ She’s standing up, making an attempt to grab my arm. ‘I was just trying to –’
‘All fine, sweetie.’ I twist my body free. ‘Just my stomach giving me gyp. Gotta go.’
30
Sunday, 18 September, day six
My mouth goes dry. Jesus Christ! I mean Jesus, like, Christ. I’m looking at an exact copy of a navy velvet Dolce & Gabbana dress, like exact, right down to the sequin embellishments. Except instead of it costing eight trillion euro, it’s sixty-five dollars!
I click to enlarge it as much as possible and maybe the velvet looks just slightly flammable but, you know, sixty-five dollars! It would be criminal to pass this up. It’s hard to say exactly when I’d wear it, but who cares? A dress like that, you could wear it anywhere, right? Well, maybe not to work. Or to the supermarket. But everywhere else.
This site is amazing. I should buy dresses for all the girls, really, seeing as everything’s so beautiful and cheap. I could even throw one in for Thamy to thank her for telling me about it.
So what size am I, in this strange Chinese knock-off universe? What does 42 mean? Is it Italian 42? French 42? Chinese 42?
I click for details. There’s a picture of a woman with a tape measure, and the sizes are demonstrated in centimetres. There’s probably a tape measure in the house somewhere but it would mean getting out of bed and I’m happy here, clicking on clothes in faraway lands.
Why must it be centimetres? I know my measurements – which I’m guessing at – in inches. Feck it, I’ll go for a size 40, and if it’s too big, I can return it. Can’t I? Maybe a dodgy site like this wouldn’t make returns easy. Or maybe they would. Don’t they say the Chinese are great business people? Ah, what the hell, it’s only sixty-five dollars, which isn’t much. I’m not sure of the exchange rate but dollars are worth less than euros.
I’m doing it! I input my details, relieved they’ll deliver to Ireland, pay with PayPal, which isn’t declined, thank Christ – and then up flashes, ‘Delivered within sixty working days’. Sixty? That’s two months!
My bubble bursts. I can’t wait two months for this dress. I want it tomorrow. Today, even. I need the happiness now!
I’m cancelling the order, I am, but I click and click and can’t find that option. I’d better contact PayPal. Well, I won’t but I’ll ask Hugh to – Oh! He’s not here.
My disappointment is multi-layered – not only is he perhaps having sex with other women, but he’s not here to help me reverse a rash online purchase. For a moment I’m not sure which I resent more.
Suddenly I feel very low. I’ve just wasted nearly an hour looking at dresses I don’t need, can’t afford, and won’t get for two months. Or is it time wasted? Like, what else would I have done with that hour? At least while I was looking at knock-off dresses I was enjoying myself.
It’s wrong, though, to be lying in bed alone on a Sunday afternoon: I should be engaging with other humans. But I just want to be online, looking at things to buy.
Neeve and Kiara are at home – well, they had been when we’d cleaned the house earlier, so I get up and go down to them.
In the living room, something very loud and crashy is on the TV and sitting on the couch is Baby Maisey. Declyn must have dropped her over. She’s squashed between Sofie – who I’m delighted to see – and Kiara, who are both buried in their phones and totally ignoring her. But Maisey, who adores her girl cousins, is wearing a ‘BEST! DAY! EVER!’ gleam on her pudgy little face.
Kiara spots me. ‘Hi, Mum, y’okay?’
‘What’s that racket?’ I can’t believe I’ve just said that.
Kiara squints at the TV. ‘Planet of the Apes?’
‘Is that the right thing for a toddler?’ I try squeezing Maisey but she shoves me off.
‘Declyn isn’t paying us.’ Neeve appears from behind me. ‘So we can mind her whatever way we like.’
‘Right. Why don’t we all do something?’
‘More cleaning?’ Neeve asks suspiciously.
‘Something nice. Is Maisey’s buggy here? It is? Why don’t we go shopping?’
After a startled silence, Kiara asks, ‘For what?’
‘Clothes! Shoes! Nice things! Come on, we’re in walking distance of the biggest shopping centre in Ireland.’
‘Ah, Mum.’ Neeve slings her arm around my shoulders. ‘Get a grip.’
‘It wouldn’t be a happy thing,’ Sofie says.
‘You’d be doing it out of sadness,’ Kiara says. ‘Overcompensating, trying to be two parents instead of one.’
It’s too weird when your sixteen-year-old daughter seems wiser than yourself. But if the girls don’t want to go out, that frees up a couple of guilt-free hours to go back online. This time I’ll look at household stuff, rugs, embroidered cushion covers and affordable paintings.
‘Dude!’ Sofie leaps off the couch. ‘You’ve done a smelly thing!’
Maisey is wearing a dangerous smile.
‘A fart?’ Kiara asks. ‘Or an actual poo?’
‘I don’t know!’ Sofie is at the door. ‘And I can’t look.’
Kiara tentatively sniffs Maisey’s bum. ‘Oh, man! You need a new nappy!’
‘I can’t change her,’ Sofie calls from the kitchen.
‘Neither can I,’ Neeve says.
‘I could do it …’ Kiara looks at me with big, sad eyes.
Oh, for the love of God. ‘Gimme the nappy-bag.’
‘If we don’t go, everyone will notice,’ Sofie says.
‘Are we that important?’ Kiara asks.
‘Bitch doing a drive-by with her casserole threw serious shade.’ Neeve is insistent. ‘Mum’s gone viral – so what do we do?’
Obediently Sofie and Kiara intone, ‘We twirl on them haters.’
‘Mum?’ Neeve frowns at me.
‘Um, yes, sorry, Neevey, we twirl on them haters.’
‘We will draaaag that bitch’s ass,’ Neeve promises.
We’re locked in a four-way discussion about going to the cinema club. My responsibility is to keep life as normal as possible but have I the bandwidth to seem happyhappyhappy? Yep, my husband is on a six-month sex holiday but I’m cool about it.
Also, none of my true friends are going tonight. Steevie is still pissed off because of me running out on yesterday’s lunch. Even after I sent an apology, she replied with a pass-agg Grand. Then I texted, to see if she was coming to the cinema and she replied, Busy. I feel a mixture of aggrieved and guilty, but the energy just isn’t there to fully exploit.
Jana isn’t going either, a family thing, and nor is Posh Petra, some disaster caused by the twins.
‘None of us wants to go,’ Kiara says. ‘Which is more important? Taking care of ourselves? Or the opinion of others?’
Such wisdom!
‘Dude, you can wear my hat,’ Neeve says.
Kiara bites back a squeak. ‘The one in the vlog? With the flowers?’
‘That one.’
Kiara wavers. Then, abruptly, her resolve collapses. ‘And maybe the scarf?’
‘I’ll even throw in the gloves.’
‘Yaaaaaaaaas!’
‘Come on now, ladies.’ Neeve claps her hands. ‘Let’s all get in formation!’
They flutter around, grooming each other, swapping coats and fixing hair-dos until Neeve decrees we slay: Kiara is in knee-high Doc Martens, skinny combats, a huge boxy black mohair sweater and the beautiful hat, scarf and gloves on loan from Neeve. ‘If anyone asks you about them,’ Neeve says, ‘you say they’re mine.’
Because Sofie’s clothes are at Urzula’s or my mum’s, Neeve styles her in a denim parka with a bright blue fake-fur hood. Neeve herself wears an oversized boyfriend coat, black jaguar-print leggings and silver brogues, and I’m in one of my prize pieces – possibly the prize-iest of all my pieces: the tightly waisted, swingy-skirted red coat from Dior, which I’d found on the floor in TK Maxx for a price so low I’d thought I was having a psychotic break. I’m wearing it with shiny black knee boo
ts, and Neeve decks me out with berry-coloured lips.
‘Selfie! Selfie!’
The photo is all hair and lips and cheeks and smiles – Neeve looks adorably wicked, Kiara a little solemn and Sofie as cute as a kitten. My heart nearly bursts with love for them.
The four of us stand in the hall, furiously uploading the picture to our preferred social media, then out we go into the cold September evening. We decide we’ll walk and the four of us hold hands and I feel okay.
31
Seventeen months ago
So I said, ‘I’m joking,’ and Josh Rowan looked like he wanted to shove me on to the bed and start unbuckling his belt. Then he said, ‘That’s a shame.’ And what he meant was, It’s a shame because I think you’re the hottest woman I’ve met in the longest time and –
‘Mum?’ Kiara’s voice made me jump. ‘What are you doing up here?’
My fuzzy-edged reverie was broken. ‘Lying on my bed,’ I said snippily. ‘What the feck does it look like?’
‘But, like, why?’
To keep reliving the moment when Josh Rowan said, ‘That’s a shame.’
‘I’d a really tough week at work and I’m tired.’
‘Still tired?’
God above, I’ve been lying down for less than an hour and they’re all behaving like I’ve been bed-bound for a month.
‘Yes, still tired. I’m going to have a snooze now. Don’t come back up.’
‘Why are you so mean?’
‘Because I’m tired.’
… and he said, ‘That’s a shame.’
He’d thought it was a shame! That I was only joking about staying in the hotel with him! Which meant he wanted to stay in the hotel with me! In the bedroom! In the bed!
And the thought of me and him naked and him pulling my hair and pressing his hardness against me … It was both thrilling and terrifying.
‘What does he look like, Amy?’
‘Like he’s nursing a secret sorrow.’
‘Oh! That’s so romantic.’
Okay, so I had a crush on Josh Rowan, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, right? But it was a first in all my years with Hugh.
Like, I fancied Jamie Dornan and Aidan Turner and most of the men in the Scandinavian TV series (Hugh called them my ‘Scandilusts’) but this was the first time I’d got properly giddy about an actual real-life man. Some coupled-up women I knew had flings, affairs, one-night stands. Sometimes they even jumped ship from a long-term thing to a man they’d been overlapping with and embarked on a new relationship. It happened. Derry had done it.
But I’d literally never even snogged another man since Hugh and I had got together. The thought was alien. I loved Hugh, the very bones of him. Plus I liked him – which I’d come to realize happened less often in long-term relationships than you’d think. I respected him, appreciated him and felt huge fondness for him. He was a million times my favourite person.
So it was far from normal to find myself alone late at night in a hotel room with a man who was probably a creepy player but who, at that moment, seemed really hot.
Not textbook handsome, nothing like that, but confident and just-macho-enough. It was hard to say what was suddenly so wantable about Josh Rowan. You couldn’t single out his eyes or his cheekbones, none of the usual, but something in the combination of his hangdog features worked.
Also, there was more than a hint of the unreconstructed about him. Definitely not a vegetarian. That was a description I liked and I was using it a lot in my many imaginary conversations.
‘What’s he like, Amy?’
‘Not a vegetarian. That’s what he’s like.’
And the conversations were rapidly becoming more elaborate.
‘What’s he like, Amy, this man who’s in love with you?’
‘A journalist. English. Hot. Not a vegetarian.’
‘Ooooh!’
Every time I thought about Josh Rowan, it felt like stars were sparking under my skin and coursing through my blood. Suddenly a part of my life had exploded into glorious technicolour.
Would we get to see each other again, Josh and I?
He’d called me the morning Premilla’s piece had run. I’d spent the night in one of those hotels at the airport where, if you breathed too close to a bottle of water in the mini-bar, your credit card instantly got charged a king’s ransom.
‘You’ve seen the spread?’
‘It’s great. Thank you …’ I paused, then tentatively said his name ‘… Josh.’ Hearing myself say it felt oddly daring. ‘It’s great.’
‘You off to Ireland now? Have a good weekend.’
‘You too … Josh.’ This time saying his name fizzed me with a powerful little thrill.
‘Bye, Amy.’
‘Bye.’ I didn’t say his name a third time – vaguely anxious about what could happen. I might combust or something.
Maybe we could have a working lunch. I’d suggested that in the past and been rebuffed. Things were different now, we definitely had a working relationship, but then I’d be making the running and those feels weren’t lovely ones: those feels were a little pathetic.
Perhaps it would be best simply to let things lapse.
But no! That drained me of every drop of joy. Quick! Before the joyous feels slithered away completely! … and he said, ‘That’s a shame.’ I savoured the memory of how he’d looked at me before he’d spoken – like he meant it, like he’d fucking meant it!
But he was probably a player … Wait, of course he was a player! How naive was I? The man was married!
Then again, so was I. Did that make me a player too?
No. No, no, no, no, no. In my heart of hearts there was no intention of actually doing anything with Josh Rowan – if there was, wouldn’t I just have had sex with him there and then? After all, there had been a hotel room, a bed, the two of us – there had been nothing at all to stop us – but we’d refrained.
Neither of us were players. Yes: that was the conclusion that suited me best. God, it was only a little flirtation. What was the harm?
He said, ‘That’s a shame …’ He was a loyal man who’d never strayed from feisty Marcia, but was so drawn to me that he couldn’t help himself. He saw things in me that bypassed most people. He didn’t mind that I was short and not-young. He liked my peculiar clothes – he saw them as evidence of a rare, uncommon person.
Reality crashed in. He was a man. With a dick. In a hotel room with a woman. Who had – let’s not forget – suggested they both spend the night there. Yes. I had. Not him – me.
What the hell had I been thinking?
Mixing work and flirting – worst idea ever. But in retrospect I’d had an off-the-scale stressy thirty-six hours: my intense focus on saving Premilla had cauterized all my links with the outside world and I’d temporarily forgotten who I was.
It had just been a stupid giddy thing blurted out in the giddy heat of the giddy moment.
But Freud said there were no accidents, giddy or otherwise. Clearly this had been my subconscious speaking up, articulating what the more polite part of my brain wouldn’t dare admit.
I grabbed my iPad and opened Facebook: time for a little light spying.
Feeling thrilled and ashamed I scrolled down his feed, being extremely careful not to like anything of his.
Then, right before my astonished eyes, Josh Rowan liked something of mine. Yes! It said it! Josh Rowan liked your post! I stared at it, hungry with joy, my knuckles white with concentration. Clearly he was stalking me, just like I was stalking him! Almost immediately it got unliked – just like me, he was trying to cover his tracks. Christ alive! ‘That’s a shame …’
‘You okay?’ Hugh’s voice set my heart thudding.
For the love of God! How hard is it to have some time to myself in my own head, playing with my own happy thoughts? Just for once!
‘Yeah. Grand.’ My voice carried a hint of my resentment. ‘Just on Facebook.’
‘You need anything?’
/> Some uninterrupted time to think my own thoughts would be nice.
‘No. Thanks. I’ll be down in a while.’
… and he said, ‘That’s a shame.’
32
Tuesday, 20 September, day eight
‘If he was going to lose his nerve and come home,’ Druzie says, ‘it would have happened by now.’ It’s Tuesday evening and we’re sitting in her garden, eating cheese. She’s back from Syria for a few days and, in her dusty sand-coloured clothes, she looks like a soldier or a foreign correspondent. Everything about her seems to be the same colour: her short hair is dirty-blonde and her skin is tanned and freckled.
‘He’s been living his new life for a week,’ she says. ‘Getting the hang of it, meeting other travellers, starting to enjoy himself. Too harsh?’
Despite everything, I laugh. ‘Of course. But you’re right.’ In the first few days after Hugh had left I’d thought he really might not be able for the loneliness, for the enormity of what he’d done. But now? He’s gone for the duration.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Druzie asks. ‘You’ve six months, minus a week. You can achieve a lot in that time.’
‘Ah, stop, I’m not you.’
Druzie is never afraid. A Zimbabwean who doesn’t watch television and knows how to fire a rifle, she doesn’t give a shite about societal rules. She’s the first person I’d call if I found myself arrested in a dodgy foreign country.
‘C’mon, what do you want from life, Amy?’
‘Nothing,’ I admit. ‘Apart from Hugh to come home. But the other stuff, bucket list, unfulfilled ambition – not really.’
‘Huh.’
‘Embarrassing, right? I mean, I’d like the girls to be okay. A mother is only ever as happy as her least happy child, and I worry about Neeve because of Richie –’
‘Idiot.’
‘Idiot is right. I worry she won’t ever make an income. It’s rough on her still living at home – she’s twenty-two, she should be out having fun, swiping right. And Sofie, I just want her to be happy.’