The Woman Who Stole My Life Read online

  She lurched towards me and grabbed my arm. Her eyes looked shocked and bright blue. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘That came out all wrong. I know what you’re thinking! But don’t think it!’

  I didn’t need to speak; I knew my fear was all over my face.

  ‘Stella, you and me, we work together, but it’s more than that. We’re friends. I’m so loyal to you. I would never hurt you.’

  I still couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m not saying another girl’s guy is always off-limits.’ She spoke fast. ‘No matter how good a person you want to be, if there’s a spark, there’s a spark, right?’

  I tried to nod, but I couldn’t.

  ‘If a guy’s relationship isn’t doing well and you feel you and him could have something going on, then … maybe I would. But even if I didn’t have this you–me loyalty thing, Mannix is crazy in love with you. I was just having a pity-party for poor little Gilda. I was jealous. Not of you having Mannix,’ she added quickly. ‘Just wishing I could stop meeting assholes and start meeting nice guys.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We ran for three miles. But I still felt rattled.

  As soon as I got home, I went straight to the living room.

  ‘Mannix?’

  ‘Ummm?’ He was transfixed by something on his screen.

  ‘Do you fancy Gilda?’

  He turned to me. He looked surprised. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t fancy Gilda.’

  ‘But she’s young and beautiful.’

  ‘The world is full of young and beautiful women. What’s going on?’

  ‘A long time ago I asked if the last person you slept with before me was Georgie and you said no.’ I couldn’t believe I hadn’t pestered him about it since. ‘Who was she?’

  He was silent for a while. ‘Just a girl. I met her at a party. Georgie and I had already split up and I was living in that apartment you loved so much. It was a one-night thing.’

  I was so jealous I felt like throwing up. ‘“Just a girl”,’ I repeated. ‘That’s a respectful way to speak about a woman you had sex with.’

  ‘What would you like me to say? That she was a stunner, a twenty-four-year-old yoga instructor with massive boobs?’

  I pounced. ‘Was she?’

  ‘I can’t win. Look, I don’t know what age she was. At the time, I was crippled with loneliness. And so was she, I’m guessing. I felt worse the next morning. And I think she did too.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not telling you because I don’t want you to obsess. I hate that you don’t trust me.’

  ‘I don’t trust you.’

  ‘Well, I trust me. And look at it this way – you let me share your home with your eighteen-year-old daughter. Clearly you trust me with her. Stella, I’m not throwing any stones, but you’re the one who left your husband for another man.’

  ‘Ryan and I had already split up.’ I stopped talking because I was lying. ‘Do you think Gilda acts flirty with you?’

  ‘She’s flirty with everyone. It’s her … thing … you know, her modus operandi, her way of getting through the world.’

  ‘I know what modus operandi means.’

  He laughed. ‘I know you do. Here’s how it is: I was with Georgie for a long time and I didn’t cheat. Things got messy at the end and both of us did stuff we’re not proud of. I’m not perfect, Stella. I’ve made mistakes …’

  I stared at him and he stared back at me and I had no idea what he was thinking. At times I found him impossible to read, like I didn’t know him at all.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  My heart started beating faster.

  ‘It’s good news,’ he added, quickly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One Blink at a Time is number four in the Irish best-sellers list.’

  ‘What?’ I was extremely surprised. ‘How?’

  ‘It was published last week. A lot of the articles you’ve written for publication here have made their way there. Even that one for Ladies Day.’

  ‘Really? Well, great.’ This was fantastic to hear, but my mood was a few seconds behind the facts.

  ‘They’ve invited you on a publicity trip next month, but you’re wrecked. On the other hand, you’d get to visit home and see everyone, and there wouldn’t be any stress about who we stay with because Harp would pay for a hotel.’

  ‘What sort of hotel?’ I was dubious. We’d stayed in more than our share of grim, soundproof-free lodgings on the Blisset Renown tour.

  ‘Any hotel we like.’

  ‘The Merrion?’ I gasped. ‘They’d pay for the Merrion? Oh my God. Say yes.’

  He laughed. ‘And the schedule from Harp? They’re asking for less work in a week than Blisset Renown did in a day. They want just one TV appearance – on Saturday Night In.’

  ‘Could I get on it?’

  ‘They’d kill to have you,’ Mannix said. ‘I’ve had a deluge of emails from them.’

  ‘Could Dad meet Maurice McNice?’

  ‘I didn’t know he liked him.’

  ‘Oh he doesn’t, he hates him. But he’d love a chance to tell him. Keep talking.’

  ‘Harp want just one press interview and one book-signing.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘There’s one other thing … Lots of the radio stations are looking for an interview. But, as a favour to me, I’m asking if you’d go on Ned Mount.’

  Ned Mount had been a rock star before he’d been a broadcaster – he’d been in a band called the Big Event – and everyone loved him.

  ‘I’d … ah … you know, like to meet him …’ Mannix said.

  ‘You would? Well, grand.’ I was distracted by my phone ringing. ‘It’s Ryan. I’d better answer it. Hey there, Ryan.’

  ‘Hey there, Life Stealer.’

  I sighed. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I hear you’re coming to Ireland to publicize your joke of a book.’

  ‘How do you know? Nothing is agreed –’

  ‘There’s something you can do for me, Stella – arrange for me to meet Ned Mount. Seeing that you’ve taken my entire life, you can consider this a small reparation, a chance to salve your conscience just a smidge.’

  ‘Okay.’

  As soon as I disconnected, my phone rang again. ‘Karen?’

  ‘You’re coming to Ireland? Nice that I discover it on the radio.’

  ‘It’s not even decided!’

  ‘Whatevs. That’s not why I’m ringing. Something weird’s after happening. You know Enda Mulreid?’

  ‘Your husband? Er … I do.’ I mouthed, ‘WTF?’ at Mannix.

  ‘He wants to talk to you. The next voice you hear will be his.’

  After some crackling and throat-clearing, Enda Mulreid’s voice came on the line. ‘Hello, Stella.’

  ‘Hi, Enda.’

  ‘Stella, this doesn’t sit well with me but I am asking a favour from you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Well, indeed you might say “oh” in an interrogatory fashion. I am behaving extremely out of character and you are, doubtless, surprised. My request is this: if you’re going on the Ned Mount show, may I accompany you? I’m a “long-term” fan. The Big Event was the “soundtrack” to my “youth”. However, it is necessary to state that I could never repay the favour by dint of my position in An Garda Síochána. To give an example, if you got caught breaking the speed limit, I could not intervene to quash the charge. You would simply have to “suck it up”.’

  ‘Enda, if I’m going on Ned Mount, and it’s okay with him, you’re welcome to come and there will be no expectation of anything in return.’

  ‘Perhaps I could get you a gift set from the Body Shop?’

  ‘No need, Enda, no need.’

  I hung up and said to Mannix, ‘The Ned Mount show? We’re going to have to hire a bus.’

  In the flurry of preparing for Ireland, the weirdness with Gilda got washed away. There was just one moment, the day following
our exchange, when I opened the door to her for our Pilates class and we eyed each other warily.

  ‘Hey, about yesterday –’ she said.

  ‘Please, Gilda, I overreacted –’

  ‘No, I’m an idiot. I should’ve thought things through.’

  ‘I’m too sensitive about Mannix. Come in. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’ She stepped into the hall.

  ‘I’m sorrier.’

  ‘I’m the sorriest.’

  ‘No, I am.’

  We both had a little laugh and, all of a sudden, things were okay again. As Mannix had said, the world was full of young and beautiful women. If I regarded them all as threats I’d be utterly destroyed.

  ‘Just know,’ she said. ‘I’m devoted to you.’

  I realized I truly believed her. Even though I paid her, Gilda was my friend and more. She gave me her optimism and enthusiasm and she provided solutions to problems that were way beyond her remit. She demonstrated over and over again how much she cared about me.

  ‘Everything is fine,’ I said. ‘We’re good.’

  ‘Phew. So what about your trip to Ireland? How great is that? I can style your clothes for it.’

  ‘Well, I’m only going for a week and I’m just visiting Dublin and the weather will be consistent, as in consistently awful, but … Oh sorry, Gilda, that sounded ungrateful. Thanks, it would be great if you did my clothes.’

  ‘So!’ Ned Mount twinkled at me. ‘Did you pray a lot when you were in the bed in the hospital?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ I stared into his shrewd, intelligent eyes. ‘The way I pray before I look at my credit card bill!’

  Ned Mount laughed, I laughed, the production staff laughed and the twenty or so men who had insisted on accompanying me to the radio interview, and who were watching avidly through the soundproofed glass, they too laughed.

  ‘You were very brave,’ Ned Mount said.

  ‘Ah, I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘Shur, you just get on with things.’

  ‘We’ve been flooded with positive tweets and emails,’ he said. ‘I’ll just read a few out. “Stella Sweeney is a very brave woman.” “I had a stroke last year and Stella’s story gives me hope that I’ll get better.” “I’m loving Stella’s humble, no-nonsense attitude. We could do with a few more like her in this country of whingers and bellyachers.” There are literally hundreds more like that,’ Ned Mount said. ‘And I have to say I echo the sentiments.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, mortified. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So that’s Stella Sweeney, listeners. Her book, which I’m sure you already know about, is called One Blink at a Time and she’ll be signing copies at three o’clock on Saturday in Eason’s, O’Connell Street. I’ll be back after this break.’

  He took off his headphones and said, ‘Thanks, that was great.’

  ‘Thank you. And thanks –’ I flicked a glance at Mannix, Ryan, Enda, even Roland and Uncle Peter, who were all pressing up against the glass wearing clamouring, beseeching looks – ‘for coming out and saying hello to my friends.’

  ‘No bother.’ Ned Mount stood up. ‘And well done again. I don’t know how you endured that time in the hospital. You must be very special.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m off-the-scale ordinary.’ My face blazed with heat.

  ‘Now, brace yourself,’ I said, as he opened the door and the mob of men descended on him. I couldn’t stop smiling as I watched Enda Mulreid earnestly trying to convey to Ned Mount what the Big Event had meant to him – apparently he had lost his virginity to ‘Jump Off a Cliff’. That was something I didn’t need to know.

  Other than hearing unwanted details about Enda Mulreid’s sex life, this trip had been wonderful. Everywhere I went, people turned up in droves and I was celebrated for surviving. One of the reviews called me ‘the Accidental Guru’. ‘You give us hope,’ I kept being told. ‘Your story gives us hope.’

  I went on Saturday Night In, where Maurice McNice described me as ‘the woman who’s been taking America by storm’, which was far from the truth, but for a while I joined in with the fiction and agreed that yes, it felt lovely to be a success.

  Mannix and I stayed in the Merrion, where I ate and drank what I wanted and the only exercise I did was clinking wine glasses with Mannix. For a week I pretended Gilda didn’t exist.

  Of course it wasn’t all positive. One newspaper ran a scathing review, headlined: ‘The poor man’s Paulo Coelho? More like, the bankrupt woman’s.’ And one of the more vicious lines said, ‘It took me longer to read this book than it took the author to write it.’

  Then my appearance on Maurice McNice was savaged by a TV journalist called William Fairey, who said, ‘Yet another self-pitying woman uses her “sad” story to try to flog a couple of her rubbish books to other self-pitying women.’

  Roland – who had come to see Mannix and me in the hotel – took one look at it and laughed. ‘William Fairey is a bitter prick. He’s failed at everything except being bitter. He is so beneath you, Stella. He’s beneath all of us. He’s beyond contempt.’

  In May, Georgie breezed through New York for a couple of days, en route to Peru.

  ‘Why’s she going there?’ Karen asked me, over the phone.

  ‘To “find herself”.’

  ‘Feck’s sake,’ Karen said. ‘The rest of us have to “find” ourselves in the borough we were born and brought up in, but posh girls like her can only find themselves by travelling to another continent and doing yoga on hilltops at dawn. Will she be gone for long?’

  ‘Indefinitely, she says.’

  ‘So who’s running her boutique?’

  ‘The woman who’s been managing it.’

  ‘Well, if Georgie ever needs any help,’ Karen strove to sound like she didn’t really care, ‘ever needs anyone to cast an eye over the figures or anything, I could always do it.’

  ‘Grand.’

  ‘How do I look, Mom? Mannix?’ Betsy asked.

  She stood in the living-room doorway, wearing a minty-green satin ball gown, with workman’s boots and an XL lumberjack shirt. Her hair was wild and uncombed and she’d drawn wobbly lines of thick black eye-pencil right up to her hairline. But nothing could stop her being beautiful.

  ‘You look fabulous, sweetheart,’ I said.

  ‘You absolutely do,’ Mannix echoed. ‘Happy prom.’

  The bell rang and Betsy said, ‘The guys are here!’

  Academy Manhattan’s prom was as touchy-feely as the rest of its ethos: the pupils were ‘encouraged’ to embrace a simple night, with no limos, no corsages, no coupling-up. A neighbourhood Tyrolean restaurant had been filled with long tables and there was no seating plan, so everyone could pile in and no one would feel left out. Apparently the Prom Queen was a boy.

  ‘Come down to wave me off,’ Betsy said. ‘Take lots of photos for Dad.’

  Idling kerbside in the late May sunset was an orange VW camper van which had been hired for the night. It was filled with teenagers, both boys and girls. The side door rattled open and I clicked off shot after shot. From what I could see, only one person had bothered with a tux – a stout girl, with slicked-back hair and vampiric eyes and lips.

  ‘Get in, Betsy, get in!’ Arms reached out to grab her and she tumbled in, and, amid squealing and shrieking, the van drove away.

  Mannix watched them go, a wistful look on his face.

  ‘Are you going to cry again?’ I asked him.

  Betsy had had her high-school graduation ceremony earlier that day, which Mannix had attended because Ryan said he couldn’t afford the flight. As Betsy stood on the stage and accepted her rolled-up parchment and smiled shyly and with pride, I was sure I saw a little tear in Mannix’s eye.

  He denied it, of course, but it was at times like that that I was reminded of how he’d once longed for kids of his own.

  ‘Shep,’ I said to him, as we watched the VW van shoot off down the street. ‘You, me and Shep, walking on the beach. Focus on Shep.’

  ‘Ok
ay,’ he said. ‘Shep.’

  Shep had become our security-blanket word, our comfort word.

  We went back upstairs to the apartment and I said, ‘I’m just going to send some photos to Ryan. Then he’s going to Skype me and go mad about Betsy’s non-glammy outfit.’

  ‘Fuck him,’ Mannix said. ‘She looked great.’

  ‘I’d say he’ll be on in less than five minutes.’

  ‘I give it three.’

  Mannix won. In two minutes, fifty-eight seconds, Ryan’s furious face appeared on screen. ‘It was her prom!’ he yelled. ‘What the hell was she wearing?’

  ‘She’s finding her look. Let it happen.’

  ‘And what did her yearbook say?’

  I swallowed. This was going to be tough. ‘She was voted “Pupil most likely to be happy”.’

  As expected, Ryan went berserk. ‘This is a disgrace!’ he raged from across the Atlantic. ‘This is practically an insult. Who the hell wants to be happy? What about successful? Rich? Powerful?’

  ‘Is happy so bad?’

  ‘Is she still at that nanny lark?’

  Betsy had caused massive upset some weeks back when she’d outlined her future plans by saying she wanted to be a nanny.

  ‘That’s not a career,’ I’d said.

  ‘Oh really?’ She’d shown an uncharacteristic flash of steel. ‘Whose life is it, exactly?’

  ‘Betsy, you need to go to third-level education.’

  ‘Let’s face it, Mom, I’m not the brightest, I mean not academically.’

  ‘You are bright! You’re fluent in Spanish and Japanese. And you’re extremely gifted at Art and Design, your teacher says so. This is my fault,’ I’d said. ‘We arrived too late in the USA to start prepping you for an Ivy League school. We should have come a year earlier.’

  ‘Mom, are you tripping? Even if that made any sense – Ivy League? I’ll never be that person.’

  I couldn’t get a read on Betsy. She was so out of step with the rest of her generation and, indeed, the entire Western world – she lacked the desire that everyone burned with, to find a job that paid shedloads.