The Woman Who Stole My Life Read online

  ‘I’m going to step away now,’ Betsy said, ‘and give you and Dad some alone time.’

  Ryan took the vacated chair and gingerly held my hand. ‘So …’ He looked utterly despondent. ‘Karen will be in tomorrow instead of me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to fly to the Isle of Man to pitch for a project.’

  Since my first day in hospital he hadn’t missed a single visit, but life had to go on.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  It’s okay. It’s fine.

  ‘I’ve got to keep working.’

  I know.

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  I’ll miss you too.

  ‘Oh!’ Something just occurred to him. ‘I can’t find my small wheely case. Where do you think –’ He stopped when he realized that I wouldn’t be able to answer.

  Under the stairs. It’s under the stairs.

  I always packed for his trips. This was the first time he’d had to do it in years.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy a new one, a cheap yoke. It’s grand. When you can speak again you can tell me where it is.’

  ‘Time!’ the nurse called and Ryan jumped to his feet. ‘Come on, Betsy.’

  He gave me a quick peck on the forehead. ‘See you in a couple of days.’

  There was no soppiness. The circles we moved in, displays of spousal affection were regarded with deep suspicion. The rules were that the men referred to their wives as ‘the wife’ or ‘Earache’, and the women complained that their husbands were lazy cretins who couldn’t tie their own shoelaces. On your wedding anniversary you said things like, ‘Fifteen years? If I’d murdered someone I’d be free by now.’

  But I knew how strong Ryan and I were. We weren’t just a couple; we were part of a family of four, a tight little unit. Despite how much we all bickered – and of course we did, we were perfectly normal – we knew that without the others we were nothing.

  Ryan loved me. I loved him. This was the hardest test we’d had in our eighteen years together, but I knew we’d survive it.

  Had it been the mussels in that restaurant in Malahide? Or the prawns in the reduced-price sandwich? They say you should never take chances with shellfish, but it hadn’t been out of date, it just had to be eaten that day. Which I had.

  I was at it again, trying to remember every meal I’d eaten in the weeks before the tingling in my fingers had started, wondering which had contained whatever bacteria had triggered Guillain-Barré in me.

  Could it have been the chemicals I worked with in the salon? Or had I accidentally had a swine-flu jab? They often preceded a bout of GBS. But a swine-flu jab wasn’t the sort of thing that you wouldn’t notice having …

  But maybe it wasn’t food poisoning or chemicals or swine-flu jabs. Guillain-Barré was so very rare that I had to wonder if the cause was something different, something darker. Maybe – as Betsy had hinted – God was punishing me because I wasn’t a good person.

  But I was a good person. Remember that time I’d scraped a car with my crappy parking in a multi-storey car park and, after wrestling with my conscience for a good five minutes and checking to see if there was CCTV – there wasn’t – I’d left my phone number under the windscreen wiper?

  (As it happened, the scraped-car person never rang me, so I had the warm glow of knowing I’d done the right thing without incurring any financial hardship.)

  Maybe the way I’d been not-good was that I hadn’t Fulfilled my Truest Potential – that seemed to be an actual crime these days, according to magazines.

  But as a mother and a wife and a beautician, I had. You don’t have to do something dramatic to Fulfil your Truest Potential. Not everyone can find a cure for cancer. Someone has to make the dinners and sort the socks.

  The burning pain had started in my hip and – I looked at the clock – I still had forty-two minutes to go. I needed to not think about it. Back to my worrying.

  I’d always done my best, I told myself. Even when I made a total shambles of things, like the birthday party where I’d admired a chunky baby girl by saying, ‘Isn’t he yummy! What age is he?’ And then compounded matters by saying, ‘He’s the image of you,’ to a man who wasn’t the baby’s father but the man that everyone suspected the child’s mother had been having an affair with.

  But despite all my rationalization, I had done something bad …

  A crime of omission rather than commission. I’d put it from my mind, but, since I had nothing else to do here in hospital but think, the memory had popped open and the guilt was killing me.

  It was a work thing. I’d been doing a Hollywood wax and I thought I’d got it all off, but as Sheryl – see, I still remembered her name – as Sheryl was getting down from the table I saw I’d missed a bit – and I’d said nothing.

  In my defence I was knackered that day and Sheryl was in a mad hurry because she was getting ready to go on a third date, ergo a first-ride date. (They treated me like their confessor, my clients, they told me everything.) So I let it go.

  And the thing is, it didn’t work out with your man – Alan was his name. Sheryl went on the date and herself and Alan did the deed, but he didn’t text her again and I always wondered if that little piece of unwaxed hair had unravelled the whole business.

  The worry ate away at me until one night when I woke up at a quarter past four and decided that the very next day I was going to track Alan down and beg him to reconsider. My decision felt absolutely right, but by the morning my middle-of-the-night resolve had vanished and trying to find Alan seemed like a nuts thing to do.

  So I had to live with it. The only way I got peace was to tell myself that everyone does things for which they’ll never be absolved. Life isn’t about becoming a perfect person; it’s accepting that you’re a bad person. Not bad bad, like Osama Bin Laden or one of those madmen, but humanly flawed, and therefore dangerous – capable of making mistakes which can cause irreversible damage.

  I’d managed to forget it – it had been about five years ago – but now the guilt was back and wouldn’t leave me alone. What if I’d said, ‘Hop back up there on the table, Sheryl, I missed a bit’? Would Sheryl be married to Alan and the mother of three children? Had I, with my laziness, altered the course of the lives of two people? Was it my fault that three beautiful children hadn’t been born? Were never even conceived?

  Or perhaps Sheryl and Alan just weren’t compatible? Maybe the fact that they didn’t get married had nothing to do with that little clump of hair? Maybe he hadn’t even seen it – Jesus, this was dreadful! There was nowhere to go with my thoughts, they went round and round in circles …

  … My hip felt like it was being held over a fire, I couldn’t ignore the pain any longer. There were still twenty-one minutes to go and I was starting to feel sick. What if I puked? Was I even able to? What if my stomach could vomit but the muscles in my throat couldn’t get it to the surface? Would I choke? Would my throat break?

  I gazed beseechingly at the nurses’ station. Please look over, please see me, please take me out of this agony.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Panic was coursing through me. I couldn’t do this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I couldn’t endure this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  The yellow digital numbers on my heart monitor were getting higher. Maybe when my heart rate got past a certain number an alarm would go off? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  ‘Morning.’ Dr Flappy-coat Mannix Taylor breezed into my cubicle, then pulled up short. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Pain. I flashed with my eyes.

  ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘Where? Oh, for God’s sake!’

  He was gone. Then he was back with Olive, one of the nurses. ‘We need to turn her, to take the weight off her left side.’

  ‘Dr Montgomery said the patient is to be turned every three hours,’ Olive said.

  ‘The patient has a name,’ Mannix Taylor said. ‘And Montgomery might be St
ella’s consultant but I’m her neurologist and I’m telling you she’s in severe pain – just look at her!’

  Olive set her mouth.

  ‘If you need Montgomery’s blessing, ring him,’ Mannix Taylor said.

  Through a haze of pain, I watched this play out. I wasn’t sure it was a good thing to have Mannix Taylor as my champion; he seemed to annoy people.

  ‘Although,’ Mannix said, ‘he switches his phone off while he’s on the golf course.’

  ‘Who says he’s on the golf course?’

  ‘He’s always on the golf course. They’re never anywhere else, him and his cronies. They probably sleep in the clubhouse, in their golf bags, all lined up like little pods, like on a spaceship. Come on, Olive, I’ll take Stella’s top half. You take her legs.’

  Olive hesitated.

  ‘Blame me,’ Mannix said. ‘Say I bullied you into it.’

  ‘They’d certainly believe that,’ Olive said, tightly. ‘Mind her ventilator.’

  ‘Right.’

  I couldn’t believe it was really happening. They lifted me off my hip and rearranged me, so I was lying on my other side. As the pain ebbed away, the relief was blissful.

  ‘Is that better?’ Mannix asked me.

  Thank you.

  ‘How often do you need to be moved? At what point does the pain start?’

  I stared at him mutely.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ He sounded maddened with frustration. ‘This is …’

  It’s not my fault I can’t talk.

  ‘After one hour?’

  I blinked my left eye.

  ‘No? Two hours? Okay. From now on you’ll be lifted every two hours.’

  He put his hand on my forehead. ‘You’re roasting hot.’ He sounded less irritable. ‘You must have been in agony.’

  He was gone again and after a short, angry-sounding exchange with Olive, he was back with a small bowl of water and a towelling wash-cloth. He wiped cool water onto my burning face and used the little towelling nubbles to massage around my eye sockets, to wipe my eyelids and to circle my mouth. It felt biblical in its mercy.

  19.22

  There’s a noise downstairs – Jeffrey must be home. My heart lifts at the idea of another human being in the house.

  I run down the stairs and the sight of my lanky, cranky son fills me with so much love that I want to squeeze him.

  For once he isn’t carrying his child-bride yoga mat. But he’s carrying something else, a shallow wicker basket; it might be called a trug. He’s holding it in the crook of his arm and he looks … unmanly. He looks, yes, silly. He looks like Little Red Riding Hood going to visit her granny.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I strive for a cheerful tone.

  ‘I’ve been out foraging.’

  ‘Foraging?’ Sweet baby Jesus.

  ‘For wild things.’ He lifts what looks like a handful of weeds out of his Little Red Riding Hood basket. ‘Wild herbs and plants. Have you any idea how much food there is growing out there? In the hedgerows? Even in the cracks in the pavements?’

  I’m going to puke. I am. He’s going to make me eat this stuff. My son is a peculiar loner who wants to poison me.

  He notices the shopping bags at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Were you out spending money?’ He sounds as outraged as a Victorian patriarch.

  ‘I needed new clothes. I’ve nothing to wear.’

  ‘You’ve tons of clothes.’

  ‘They don’t fit me any more.’

  ‘But we’ve no money!’

  I pause, choosing my words carefully. ‘We don’t have “no money”.’ Not yet. ‘We have enough to live on for a while. A long while,’ I add hastily. Well, who knew? ‘And when I finish my new book, we’ll be grand.’ If I got a publisher and anyone bought it. ‘Don’t worry, Jeffrey. I’m sorry you’re worried.’

  ‘I am worried.’ He sounds like a fussy old woman. No mention of him getting a job, I notice. But I say nothing. Fair play to me. There’s many a parent who would have.

  ‘While I was out,’ I say, ‘I met Brian’s dad, Roddy. Remember Brian? Maybe you should give him a shout.’

  ‘You want me to have friends?’

  ‘Weeell, our life is here now.’

  Feck’s sake, I feel like saying. It’s not like I’m happy about it either, but I’m doing my best to get on with it.

  Our stand-off is interrupted by my phone. It’s Betsy, calling from New York. Earlier this year she’d got engaged to a rich, handsome, thirty-six-year-old lawyer called Chad – a situation which is another one of Gilda’s legacies: when Betsy finished high school and couldn’t even get a job folding jumpers in Gap, Gilda miraculously swung her an internship in an edgy art gallery in the Lower East Side. One day Chad had come into the gallery, clapped eyes on my daughter and brazenly said he’d buy an installation if she had dinner with him.

  Instantly, they fell in love and, despite all the money Ryan and I had shelled out on Betsy’s education, she immediately gave up ‘work’ and moved into Chad’s massive apartment. They’re due to get married sometime next year and even though she seems very happy, her lack of ambition terrifies me.

  ‘But don’t you get it?’ she’d asked. ‘I don’t want to have it all. It looks exhausting. I want to stay home and have babies and learn quilting.’

  ‘But you’re so young …’

  ‘You were only twenty-two when you had me.’

  ‘There’s a big difference between nineteen and twenty-two.’

  What worried me was her inability to take care of herself if Chad legged it. And the situation had ‘Chad legging it’ written all over it. He was just the type, hamstrung with too much money and a sense of entitlement. He’d marry her but, in five years or ten, he’d leave her for a younger version and Betsy would be cast adrift.

  But maybe she’d be okay. She’d retrain as a real estate agent, that’s what they all seemed to do, those ex-trophy wives. They hardened up and came into their own. They bought themselves a zippy little TransAm and went on a lot of sunshine holidays and had younger, freeloading, blandly handsome boyfriends whom you suspected of being secretly gay.

  ‘Betsy!’ I say. ‘Sweetheart!’

  Even though we speak nearly every day I’m afraid that she’s ringing with bad news – if word of Ryan’s idiotic project has reached her, then we have a genuine problem on our hands. Or maybe there was something in today’s New York Times about Gilda …?

  But she just chatters away about the new bag she’s bought. ‘Michael Kors,’ she says. ‘And I got three shift dresses from Tory Burch.’

  In the last six months, Betsy’s look, bankrolled by Chad, has undergone a profound transformation.

  ‘I’m going to take my hair down a couple of shades,’ she says. ‘I’m going to be totally blonde.’

  ‘Well … great!’

  ‘What if the lighter colour doesn’t work for me?’

  ‘You can go back to your own colour.’

  ‘But my hair will be totally damaged.’

  ‘You can get treatments.’

  ‘I can,’ she says, chirpily. ‘Anyhoo! How are things with you?’

  ‘Great, yes, great!’ Because that’s what you should say when you’re a mother.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Certain, certain! Okay, talk soon, sweetie. And, ah … and my regards to Chad.’

  ‘Sure.’ She laughs.

  Behind me, I hear the sound of a fork being chinged against a glass.

  I turn around. The kitchen table is set with two platefuls of weeds.

  ‘I hope you’re feeling hungry!’ Jeffrey says. ‘It’s dinner time!’

  ‘My stomach might not be flat but at least I wasn’t going round breaking my legs by simply getting out of a chair.’

  Extract from One Blink at a Time

  ‘I hate my life!’ Betsy declared. ‘And I wish I’d never been born!’ She stomped off away down the ward.

  Christ, she’d changed her tune! Was it only yesterday she’d been
telling me what a precious gift life was?

  I looked enquiringly at Karen and Jeffrey. What’s happened?

  Jeffrey went beet-red and twisted off down from me.

  ‘She got her monthly visitor last night,’ Karen said. ‘There were no tampons in the house. She tried to sneak out to buy some, Ryan stopped her, so she had to tell him.’

  I hated myself: I shouldn’t be lying in this hospital bed; I should be at home taking care of my family. That exchange must have been excruciating for both Betsy and Ryan. Betsy was very private about her body and Ryan got the man-horrors at any reminder that his little girl had become a woman. You should have seen him the day I’d bought her her first bra. ‘She’s too young,’ he’d stuttered.

  ‘But she has breasts,’ I’d said.

  ‘Don’t! Don’t.’ He’d covered his face with his hands. ‘She hasn’t!’

  ‘She was mortified last night,’ Karen said. ‘So was Ryan. You can imagine. But he went out and bought a box of tampons. Wrong brand, of course …’ She paused, and added, ‘But fair play to him. I know I’ve always said he’s a lazy gobshite. But he’s doing well. Cooking and all.’

  I knew Karen’s idea of cooking – if she microwaved a packet of rice she thought she was a candidate for Masterchef.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said, standing up. ‘And get your kids to school. Mum and Dad will be in for the evening visit. Come on, Jeffrey, let’s find your sister.’

  And off they went leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Poor Betsy. At her age, everything seemed so important and dramatic – ‘I wish I’d never been born!’

  Funnily enough, despite the dark places I’d been in over the past month, not once had I wished I’d never been born.

  Maybe it was because death was ever-present on this ward – people died in the beds around me, all the time. Sometimes five or six days could go by without any losses and then two might die in a morning.

  Every time it happened, I was filled with gratitude that I’d been spared.

  Not that my thoughts were always positive – I wished I hadn’t got this strange, terrible disease and I wished I could go home to my kids and to Ryan and to my job – God, how precious they seemed! I wished I didn’t feel so afraid and lonely, but at no time, even when the pain in my hip was bad, did I wish I’d never been born.