Angels (3 page)

14 / MARIAN KEYES

someone else, an intimate moment shared with a woman other than me. And the moment had been recently.

I felt as if I was falling, that I would go on falling forever. Then, abruptly, I made myself stop. And I knew something else: I couldn't do this. I couldn't bear to watch the downward spiral of my marriage begin to catch other people and spin them into the vortex too.

Shocked into stillness, our eyes locked, I silently beseeched his expression, desperate for him to say something to explain it, to make it all go away. But his face was frozen in horror—the same horror that I felt.

“I—” he managed, then faltered.

A sudden stab of agony shot up into my back tooth and, as though I was dreaming, I found myself leaving the room.

Garv didn't follow me; he remained in the kitchen. I could hear no sounds of him moving around and I presumed he was still standing where I'd left him. This, in itself, seemed like an admission of guilt. Still in my waking nightmare, I was picking up the remote and switching on the telly. I was waiting to wake up.

WE DIDN'T EXCHANGE
a word for the rest of the evening. Perhaps I should have been shrieking for details—who was she? How long?

But at the best of times that wasn't my way, and after all we'd gone through over the past while, I'd no fight left in me.

If only I was more like my sisters, who were great at expressing pain—experts at slamming doors, crashing phones back into receivers, throwing things at walls, screeching. The whole world got to hear of their anger/disappointment/double-crossing man/chocolate mousse missing from the fridge. But I'd been born without the diva gene, so when devastation hit me I usually kept it inside, turning it over and over, trying to make sense of it. My misery was like an ingrown hair, curling farther and farther under my skin. But what goes in must come out, and my pain invariably reemerged in the form of scaly, flaking, weeping eczema on my right arm. It was a cast-iron barometer of my emotional state and that night it tingled and itched so much I scratched until it bled.

I went to bed before Garv and to my surprise actually managed to fall asleep—the shock perhaps? Then I awoke at some indeterminate time and lay staring into the blanket of darkness. It was probably four A.M. Four in the morning is the bleakest time, when we're at our lowest ebb. It's when sick people die. It's when people being tortured crack.

16 / MARIAN KEYES

My mouth tasted gritty and my jaw ached; I'd been grinding my teeth again. No wonder my back tooth was clamoring for attention, making a last, desperate plea for help before I ground it into nothingness.

Then, wincing, I faced the repulsive revelation head-on: Garv and this truffle woman, was he really having a thing with her?

In agony, I admitted that he probably was; the signs were there.

Looked at from the outside I'd conclude that he definitely was, but isn't it always different when it's
your
life that's under scrutiny?

I'd been so afraid of something like this happening, so much so that I'd half prepared myself for it. But now that it seemed that it had come to pass, I wasn't at all ready.

He'd lit up with a glow when he'd noticed “their” chocolates…It had been dreadful to witness. He
must
be up to something. But that was too much to take on and I was back to not believing it. I mean, if he'd been messing around, surely I'd have noticed?

The obvious thing was to ask him straight out and put an end to the speculation, but he was bound to lie like a rug. Worse still, he might tell me the truth. Out of nowhere, lines came to me from a B movie.
The truth
? (Accompanied by a curled lip.)
You couldn't
HANDLE the truth
!

The thoughts kept coming. Could she be someone he worked with? Might I have met her at their Christmas party? I shuffled through my memories of that night, endeavoring to locate a funny look or a loaded comment. But all I could remember was dancing the hora with Jessica Benson, one of his colleagues. Could it be her? But she'd been so nice to me. Mind you, if I'd been having sex with someone's husband, maybe I'd be nice to her too…

Apart from the women Garv worked with, there were the girlfriends and wives of his mates—and then there were my friends. I was ashamed to have even had that thought, but I couldn't help myself; suddenly I trusted no one and suspected everyone.

ANGELS / 17

What about Donna? She and Garv always had a great laugh
and
she called him Dr. Love. I went cold as I remembered reading somewhere that nicknames were a surefire indication that people were up to high jinks.

But, with a silent sigh, I released Donna without charge: she was one of my best friends; I truly couldn't believe she'd do that to me.

Plus, for reasons best known to herself, she was mad about Robbie the flake. Unless he was an elaborate red herring, of course.

But there was one thing that convinced me above all others that Garv wasn't having an affair with Donna and that was the fact that she'd told him about her corns. In fact, she'd pulled off her boot and sock and thrust her foot at him so that he could see for himself just how gross they were, and if you're having a passionate fling with someone, you don't do stuff like that. It's all about mystique and impractical bras and round-the-clock upkeep on hairy legs, or so I'm told.

Or what about my friend Sinead? Garv was so kind to her. But it was only three months since she'd been shown the door by her boyfriend, Dave. Surely she was far too fragile for an affair with her friend's husband—and far too fragile for any normal man to make a move on her. Unless it was her fragility that Garv liked.

But wasn't he getting enough of that from me? Why go out for broken crockery when you've got it in absolute smithereens at home?

Beside me, I realized that Garv was awake too—his fake deep breathing was the giveaway. So we could talk. Except we couldn't, we'd been trying for months.

I didn't hear the intake of breath that precedes speech, so I was startled when the ink-dark silence was violated by Garv's voice.

“Sorry.”

Sorry. The worst thing he could have said. The word hung in the darkness and wouldn't go away. In my head I heard it echo again, then again. Each time fainter, until I wondered if I'd just imagined hearing it. Minutes passed. Without ever replying, I turned my back to him and surprised myself by falling asleep again.

18 / MARIAN KEYES

*

*

I busied myself with showers and coffee and when Garv said,

“Maggie,” and tried to stop my incessant motion, I neatly sidestepped him and said, without eye contact, “I'll be late.”

I left, carrying that empty, four-in-the-morning feel with me.

Despite sidestepping Garv, I ended up getting to work late. The contract wasn't on Frances's desk by nine-thirty. She sighed, “Oh, Maggie,” in an I'm-not-angry-with-you-I'm-disappointed way. It's meant to reach the parts a chewing-out doesn't and make you feel shitty and ashamed. However, I appreciated not being shouted at.

Not the reaction Frances was looking for, I suspect.

I felt entirely lost, but at the same time unnaturally calm—almost as if I'd been waiting for a catastrophe and it was a weird sort of relief that it had finally happened. Because I had no idea how to behave in these circumstances, I decided to just follow everyone else's lead and immerse myself in work. Wasn't it strange, I thought, that after such a dreadful shock I was still functioning as normal?

Then I noticed I kept botching the double click on my mouse because my hand was trembling.

For seconds, I'd manage to lose myself in a contract clause, but all the time the knowledge surrounded me:
Something is very wrong
.

Over the years, like every couple, Garv and I had had our fights, but not even the most vicious of those had ever felt like this; the worst scrap had been one of those odd ones that had started out as a muscular discussion over whether a new skirt of mine was brown or purple and had unexpectedly disintegrated into a bitter standoff, with

ANGELS / 19

accusations of color blindness and hypersensitivity flying about.

(Garv: “What's wrong with it being brown?”

Me: “Everything! But it's not brown, it's purple, you stupid colorblind fucker.”

Garv: “Look, it's only a skirt. All I said was I was
surprised
by your buying a brown one.”

Me: “But I DIDN'T! It's PURPLE.”

Him: “You're overreacting.”

Me: “I'm NOT. I would never buy a brown skirt; don't you know the first thing about me?”)

At the time I'd thought I'd never forgive him. I'd been wrong.

But this time was different, I was horribly sure of it.

At lunchtime I just couldn't find it in me to care about my urgent piles of work, so I went to Grafton Street, looking for comfort.

Which took the form of spending money—again. Unenthusiastically, I bought a scented candle and a cheapish (relatively speaking) copy of a Gucci bag. But neither of them did anything to fill the void.

Then I stopped at a drug-store to get painkillers for my tooth and got intercepted by a white-coated, orange-faced woman who told me that if I bought two Clarins products—one of which had to be skin care—I'd get a free gift. Listlessly I shrugged and said, “Fine.”

She couldn't believe her luck, and when she suggested the most expensive stuff—serums in tiny bottles—again I lifted and slumped my shoulders and said, “Sure.”

I liked the idea of a free gift; I found the idea of a present very consoling. But back at work, when I opened my present, it was a lot less exciting than it had looked in the picture: funny-colored eye shadow, a mini-mini-mini tube of foundation, four drops of eye cream, and a thimble of vinegary perfume.

Anticlimax set in, then, in an unexpected reprieve of normality, came guilt, which swelled big and ugly as the afternoon lengthened.

I had to stop spending money
. So as soon as I could reasonably leave, I hurried back to Grafton Street 20 / MARIAN KEYES

to try and return the handbag—I couldn't return the Clarins stuff because I'd already tried the free gift—but they wouldn't give me a refund, only a store credit. And before I'd made it back to the car, my eye was caught by yellow flowery flip-flops in a shoe-shop window and, like an out-of-body experience, I found myself inside, handing over my credit card. It wasn't safe to let me out.

That evening I went to a work thing and did something I didn't usually do at work things—I got drunk. Messy drunk, so bad that on one of my many trips back from the loo, when I met Stuart Keating, I ended up lunging at him. Stuart worked in another department, and he'd always been nice to me; I can still see the surprise on his face as I zoomed in on him. Then we were kissing, but only for a second before I had to disengage.
What was I doing
?

“Sorry,” I exclaimed and, appalled at myself, I returned to the party, picked up my jacket, and left without saying good-bye to anyone. From across the room Frances watched me, her expression unreadable.

When I got home, Garv was waiting, bolt upright, like an anxious parent. He tried to talk to me, but I mumbled drunkenly that I had to go to sleep and lurched to the bedroom, Garv in hot pursuit. I stripped off my clothes, letting them lie where they fell, and climbed between the sheets. “Drink some water,” Garv said, and I heard the clatter as he put a glass on my bedside table. I ignored it and him, but just before I sank into the merciful oblivion of sleep I remembered I hadn't taken out my contact lenses. Too tired, drunk, whatever to get on my feet and go to the bathroom, I slipped them out and plopped them into the handily placed glass of water, promising myself I'd rinse them good and proper in the solution in the morning. But when morning came my tongue was Super Glued with dryness to the roof of my mouth. Automatically I stretched out my hand for the glass of water and gulped it in one go. Only when the last of it was racing down my throat did I remember. My contact lenses. I'd ANGELS / 21

drunk my contact lenses.
Again
. The third time in six weeks. They were only monthly disposables, but all the same.

And the following day, as luck would have it, I lost my job.

I wasn't exactly sacked. But my contract wasn't renewed. It was a six-month contract and since I'd moved back to Dublin from Chicago it had already been renewed five times. I had thought renewing it again was a mere formality.

“When you first started here,” Frances said, “we were impressed with you. You were hardworking and reliable.”

I nodded. That sounded like me all right. On a good day.

“But in the last six months or so, the standard of your work and commitment has dropped dramatically, you're often late, you leave early…”

I listened, almost in surprise. Of course I'd known that in my
head
, stuff hadn't been great, but I'd thought I'd done a pretty good job of presenting a convincing business-as-usual facade to the outside world.

“…you've clearly been distracted and you've taken ten days' sick leave.”

I could have leaped to my feet and given a speech telling Frances why I'd been distracted, where I'd been on my ten days' sick leave.

But I remained sitting like a plank, my face closed. It was no one's business but mine. Yet, paradoxically, I felt she should have seen that something had been very wrong over the past months and made allowances for me. I've had more rational moments, I suspect.

“We want people who care about their work—”

I opened my mouth to protest that I did care, until I realized, with a shock, that actually, I didn't give a damn.

“—and it's with regret that I have to tell you that we are unable to renew your contract with us.”

It had been years since I'd been fired. In fact, the last time had been when I was seventeen and baby-sitting for a neighbor. I'd smuggled my boyfriend in when the children had gone to bed because a house with no adults in it had been too much to resist. But the horrible son—appropriately enough 22 / MARIAN KEYES