The Woman Who Stole My Life (16 page)

At home, Jeffrey is at the kitchen table, crouched over his phone. ‘Dad’s video has had ninety thousand hits. It’s speeding up. And … he’s trending on Twitter.’

I feel myself go pale. Not Twitter, my beloved Twitter.
I’ve
never trended on Twitter. I’m angry and afraid and … yes … 
jealous
.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jeffrey says. ‘It’s only in the blogosphere.’

I nod tentatively. There is nothing ‘only’ about Twitter. Not in my book.

‘Only in the blogosphere,’ Jeffrey repeats soothingly. ‘It’s not in the real world. It’ll never be in the real world.’

At that very moment, my phone rings. Caller unknown. And yet I answer it. Am I insane?

‘Stella Sweeney?’ a woman’s voice asks.

‘Who’s calling?’

‘My name is Kirsty Gaw. I work for the
Southside Zinger
.’

The
Southside Zinger
is a neighbourhood free-sheet, which once featured a front-page headline: ‘Local Boy Breaks Plate’. Parochial would be the kindest way to describe it.

‘I’m calling about your husband, Ryan Sweeney.’ My heart sinks – someone in the
Zinger
must have made the connection between Ryan and me.

‘
Ex,
’ I say, anxiously and very firmly. ‘He’s my
ex
-husband.’

‘So you’re Stella?’ She sounds friendly.

My media training kicks in. ‘No, no, I’m not. Wrong number. Thank you. Thank you very much. Goodbye now.’ I end the call, as politely as is possible.

The awful thing about being sort of famous, I reflect, as I scream into my hands, is that you have to be constantly pleasant. Things are difficult enough without people going round
saying, ‘That Stella Sweeney. Seems so nice. But she’s a right snotty cow!’

‘What?’ Jeffrey asks.

I stare at him with hollow eyes. ‘The
Southside Zinger
. Fuck! Oh fuck!’

‘Please don’t swear, Mom. Anyway, it’s only the
Southside
“Local Lady Loses Eyelash”
Zinger
.’

I look at him with almost-admiration – that was quite funny, for Jeffrey.

My phone goes again. Kirsty Gaw must be ringing back. But she’s not. This is another newspaper, a
real
one: the
Herald
. The name flashes up on my screen and I hold it out to show Jeffrey.

‘They know,’ I whisper. ‘Real people know.’

‘Fuck,’ he says.

‘Now you’re at it!’ Despite everything, I’m pleased to have the moral high ground. ‘You’re swearing.’

‘Not swear
ing
. Just once. I swore just once.’

‘Whatevs.’

‘“Whatevs”,’ he mimics. ‘Listen to yourself.’

My phone rings again – it’s the
Mail
. Then the landline starts ringing. It’s the
Independent
. Then both phones are ringing together. It’s almost like the old days. Voices are leaving messages, and as soon as they hang up the phone starts ringing again. I switch off my mobile and pull the landline connection from the wall.

‘What if they come to the house?’ Jeffrey asks.

‘They won’t.’

But they might. They had, once before, two years ago …

I lean against the sink and let the present dissolve into wobbly, vertical lines as I disappear down memory lane …

… to an 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.

It was
People
magazine. I read dozens of magazines because we got them in the salon, but we didn’t get the US ones, because we didn’t know the people in them – celebrity crash-and-burns were only really interesting when you knew who the celebrity was.

‘Have I seen what?’ I asked.

Betsy slid the magazine in front of me: there was a picture of Annabeth Browning. I hadn’t much interest in American politics but I knew who she was. The wife of the US Vice-President, she’d created a big stir a few months back, when she’d been arrested for ‘driving erratically’ and was found to be banjoed out of her head on prescription medication. The state troopers didn’t realize who she was and the press had got hold of it before the White House had time to cover it up.

A media storm had followed. Naturally Annabeth had had to put on a big public display of remorse by going immediately to rehab. Everyone expected she’d do her twenty-eight days and then snap straight back into her public duties, perky as anything, followed by a glassy-eyed photo-shoot of her with her husband and two children, and an interview with Barbara Walters, in which she described her arrest as ‘the best thing that ever happened to me’.

But instead of returning to public life, she went to live in a local convent. Her approval ratings, which had been going steadily upwards, dropped dramatically. This was going way off script. She’d had her twenty-eight days, what more did she want?

This picture in front of me was a fuzzy shot of Annabeth
sitting in a garden – I was guessing it was the convent garden, it looked sort of convent-y – sitting on a bench, reading a book. The headline shouted: ‘WHAT’S ANNABETH READING?’ I studied the photo – Annabeth was letting the blonde grow out of her hair and it suited her.

‘She’s looking well,’ I said. ‘She was too bouffy before. Natural suits her better.’

‘Forget her hair!’ Betsy sounded agitated. ‘Look!’ She tapped a circular close-up of Annabeth’s hand. ‘That’s your book.’

I stared and stared until my eyes started to go funny, but Betsy was right – it
was
my book.

‘How did she get it?’ I was suddenly extremely uneasy. My little book was a personal, privately published thing. And Annabeth Browning wasn’t exactly popular. An unpopular woman publicly reading what I’d written? It couldn’t end well for me.

My brain started working overtime, trying to connect some dots. There were only fifty copies of my book in existence; it had never been for sale; the only people who had it were my friends and family. I tried coming at the issue from the other end – Annabeth was in a convent. Nuns lived in convents. Did
I
know any nuns? Who might have had access to my book?

‘What’s going on?’ Jeffrey had come into the hall.

‘Look at this.’ I thrust the page at him. ‘Do we know any nuns?’

‘Doesn’t your Uncle Peter have a sister who’s a nun …? Hey, look, it’s your book!’

‘I know. How did Annabeth Browning get it?’

‘I dunno. Ring your Uncle Peter?’

‘Okay.’ I shut the front door – I didn’t think we’d be going to Dundrum just yet – and reached for my phone. ‘Uncle Peter? Hello, yes, grand, grand, except, you know my book,
with my little sayings in it from my time in hospital, like, “When is a yawn not a yawn?”’

‘“When it’s a miracle,”’ Peter finished. ‘I do know it. Yessss.’ Was it my imagination or did he sound shifty?

‘Have you still got it?’ I asked. ‘I mean, is there any chance that your sister, the nun – is her name Sister Michael? Could she have it?’

There was a long, long pause. ‘I’m sorry, Stella,’ Peter whispered.

‘What?’

‘We had it in a lovely spot in the cabinet but she was always light-fingered.’

‘Who? Sister Michael? She’s a nun!’

‘How many normal nuns do you know?’

I remembered the ones who’d taught me at school. Psychopaths, for the most part.

‘She just can’t resist nice things,’ Peter said, miserably. ‘She puts herself through hell afterwards, acts of penance and all sorts, but she doesn’t seem able to stop.’

‘Peter, would you be able to find out if she actually took it?’

Peter exhaled heavily. ‘I can ask her. But she lies a lot. Especially if she’s in the wrong.’

‘I see. Okay. Listen, what brand of nun is she?’

‘Why? You’re not going to ring her?’

‘I need to check something. My book is after turning up in the US. In a convent. In …’ I skim-read the piece in the magazine. ‘In the Daughters of Chastity.’

‘That’s her bunch, all right,’ Peter said.

‘How would the book have got to the US? Has Sister Michael been there?’

‘No. But …’

‘What?’

‘… In May, she had a visitor from one of the US convents.
A younger nun. Sister Gudrun. They got caught shoplifting in Boots. They had twenty-one Bourjois blushers on them. Twenty-one! It was almost like they wanted to be caught! I had to go down and bail them out. The only reason the shop didn’t press charges was that Sister Gudrun was a US citizen and Sister Michael cried her eyes out and said she’d never do it again. I think the store detectives thought Gudrun had led Michael astray, but I’d say they were as bad as each other.’

‘Do you think this Gudrun could have taken my book back to the US?’

‘From the carry-on I saw, I’d say anything is possible.’

‘Can you remember what branch, convent, whatever the word is, Sister Gudrun was from?’

‘Of course I remember. Didn’t I have to fill out a thousand forms putting her address on them? She’s from Washington DC.’

‘Thanks. Er, sorry, Peter.’ What a life he had, between glamorous Auntie Jeanette and a sister who was a shoplifting nun.

I felt vulnerable and afraid. Those words I’d said in private were now out there in the world. People would judge me. I’d get blamed for Annabeth Browning no longer being perky and not going on
Barbara Walters
.

Just then the landline rang. Jeffrey, Betsy and I looked at it, then looked at each other. We had an inkling this call was about to change our lives.

I picked up.

‘Stella Sweeney?’

Lie, lie.
But I stammered, ‘S … speaking.’

‘The Stella Sweeney who wrote
One Blink at a Time
?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Hold for Phyllis Teerlinck.’

After a click, a new voice spoke. ‘Phyllis Teerlinck, literary agent. I’m offering to represent you.’

A million thoughts zipped through my head and I settled on, ‘Why? You haven’t even seen the book.’

‘I visited Annabeth. She’s lent it to me for twenty-four hours. Look, you’re having a moment. Right now you might be the most influential woman in the world, but in six days’ time a new
People
will be on the stands. This is your window and it’s closing shortly. I’ll call back in one hour. Google me. I’m real.’

I hung up the phone. Immediately it rang again. I let it go to answerphone. And immediately it rang again. And again. And again.

‘If it is made with love, the imperfect becomes perfect.’

Extract from
One Blink at a Time

‘You have to leave now,’ Nurse Salome said to Mum and Dad. She had my food bag, ready to connect to the port in my stomach.

‘Any chance there’s a turkey leg in that?’ Dad nodded at the bag. ‘It’s not Christmas without a bit of turkey.’

Salome ignored him. There were only two nurses on duty in ICU on Christmas Day and she clearly wasn’t happy to be one of them.

‘You’d hardly know it was Christmas at all, round here.’ Dad gave Salome a look full of blame. ‘No tree, no decorations, not even,’ he said meaningfully, ‘a bit of tinsel.’

About a week earlier, Betsy had brought in some tinsel and wrapped it around the bars of my bed, but it had caused a right commotion. ‘This is ICU! People are grievously ill. Tinsel could harbour bacteria.’

‘We’ll go, so,’ Mum said. ‘Happy Christmas, Stella.’ She was in tears. She cried at every visit. I felt so guilty that sometimes I wished she wouldn’t come. Then I felt even more guilty.

‘Enjoy your Christmas dinner, Dolly.’ Dad threw another dark look at Salome.

About an hour later Ryan came in with Betsy and Jeffrey.

‘Happy Christmas, Mom, happy Christmas,’ Betsy squealed. She was wearing a pair of antlers on her head. ‘Thank you for the voucher.’

I’m sorry it’s …

‘… A little impersonal, yeah?’ she said. ‘But we’ll go shopping together when you’re better. Then it’ll be totally personal.’

‘It’ll be out of date by then,’ Jeffrey said.

‘Stop it!’ Betsy cried. To me, she said, ‘He’s just peed-off because Santa gave him the wrong upgrade.’

Before I could stop myself, I looked at Ryan in a blaming kind of way.

‘We’ll change it tomorrow,’ he said tightly.

‘You think it’s that simple?’ Jeffrey said, equally tightly.

This was a horrible Christmas, totally different to any other. In previous years I’d always gone a bit mad – buying a real tree, covering the house with lights, handmaking the decorations, spending a fortune on gifts and wrapping everything elaborately. Even though Betsy and Jeffrey had long stopped believing in Santa, I still put stockings at the end of their beds and filled them with trinkets and chocolate.

For me, Christmas was all about the kids and it was important to make it magical. Not being able to do anything this year made me terribly sad. It was the hardest thing so far about being sick.

I’d made sure Ryan had done the basics – he’d put up a tree and he bought Betsy her voucher and Jeffrey his phone upgrade – but I hadn’t dared to ask him to do more. He was stretched way too thin as it was.

I’d tried to get Mum to organize stockings for the kids, but blinking really only worked with simple requests; even then I had to know in advance exactly what I planned to
say and I had to use the least number of letters possible. If things went off piste in the middle of a word, it was hard to find my way back to the right path. It was exhausting and the only person who was any good at it was Mannix Taylor.

‘Open my gift to you,’ Betsy said. ‘Open my gift!’ She thrust a small chunky parcel at me. ‘I totally know you can’t but I’m acting “inclusive”, right?’ She tore off a little of the paper. ‘What can it be?’

I could see a brown ceramic foot. My hopes weren’t high.

She kept tearing off the paper until she’d revealed a lopsided dog. ‘I made it in pottery class! Not so perfect, I know, but made with love. Because we all know how much you’d love a dog.’

At that moment, I welled up with so much love for her I thought my heart would burst. She was so sweet and I loved my crooked little dog.

‘I guess I’ll have to take it away.’ She threw an unforgiving look at the nurses’ station; she still wasn’t over Tinsel-gate. ‘But it’ll be there when you come home.’

‘In ten years’ time,’ Jeffrey said sullenly. ‘Here’s my gift. I’ll unwrap it, shall I?’

Sarcastic little feck.

Unceremoniously he ripped off the wrapping paper … and revealed a tuning fork. I didn’t know what to read into it. A tuning fork? But … 
why
?

Ryan had nothing for me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Just with everything …’

Of course. And what could he give me anyway?

But I had a gift for him, a voucher for Samphire, a restaurant he’d often said he wanted to go to. I’d got Karen to buy it and what I’d really been trying to do was to give Ryan the gift of hope: the day would come when I’d be better and
we’d be able to go there together. I started blinking it out for him, but we got bogged down in the wrong letters. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. Thank you. I really appreciate it.’ He held it against his heart.

‘Time!’ Salome yelled, and they leapt to their feet and scampered away, as if they’d been let out of school early.

The hospital settled down into stillness. All but the acute cases had been sent home for Christmas. No operations had been scheduled, so no one was recovering from surgery. There was only one other patient in intensive care – an older man, a heart attack victim. I could hear his family whispering and weeping around his bed, then they had to leave and it was just him and me.

The whole place felt echoey and empty. I couldn’t even see the nurses. Maybe they were in some back room drinking Malibu and eating sausage rolls, and who could blame them?

Time always went slowly in here but today it was almost at a standstill. I watched the clock dragging away the seconds, taking its own sweet time about it. I just wanted it to not be Christmas Day any more. It was too sad being away from my kids and husband and family. Any other day I was prepared to be brave, but this was too hard.

To pass the time I played with my muscles. By now I could lift my head a centimetre from the pillow and slightly flex my knees. My right ankle could be rotated a little and both my shoulders would twitch on command. Life in my muscles was returning but it was random; there seemed to be no pattern to it.

The big-ticket items would be my voice box or my fingers, but while I was waiting for them to fire up, I exercised the muscles that did work and paid beady-eyed attention to every
other one, poised to swoop on any response, no matter how small.

But it was scary how fast I ran out of energy – if twisting my ankle half an inch exhausted me this much, how would I ever walk again?

By eight o’clock I’d used up all of my distractions. Maybe I could go to sleep and when I woke up it would be tomorrow and Christmas Day would be over. I closed my eyes and willed myself into unconsciousness, and then I heard footsteps, coming from far away, from the entrance to the ward.

They were very loud in the silence.

I recognized the sound. But what was he doing here on Christmas night?

The footsteps got closer and here he was, Mannix Taylor. ‘Happy Christmas.’ Automatically he got out the pen and notebook.

I started to blink, ‘What are you doing here?’

By the time I was two letters in, he said, ‘I thought you might be lonely.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Nice day?’ I asked.

‘Grand,’ he said. ‘Were your family in?’

‘Earlier. You get nice presents?’

‘No. You?’

‘A pottery dog and a tuning fork.’

‘A tuning fork? From your husband?’

‘Jeffrey.’

‘Maybe that’s not so bad; he
is
a teenage boy … Was the dog from your husband?’

‘Betsy.’

‘What did your husband give you?’

I didn’t want to say. I was ashamed.

And this was just too weird. Why was Mannix Taylor here?

‘I went in to see Roland today,’ he said.

‘How is he?’ I took a proprietorial interest in him.

‘Great. Positive. Getting out soon. He said to send his love and undying gratitude to you.’

Well, that was nice.

Something flickered at the edge of my vision – there was a woman standing at the empty nurses’ station. It was so unexpected that I wondered if I was hallucinating. She was watching us and my instinct told me she’d been there for a while.

Her hair was long and dark and her eyebrows were fabulous and she wore a narrow-cut black top and – God! – skinny vinyl jeans.

She was so brooding and still and out of place, I felt she was being beamed in direct from a horror film.

Next thing, she was moving towards me and I was afraid. Mannix looked over his shoulder and when he saw her he tensed up tight.

She crossed the ward in a way I can only describe as aggressively slinky and she looked hard at me, lying helpless on my bed, then she looked at Mannix. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘I mean,
really
?’

I wanted to yelp: You’re not seeing me at my best! If my hair was blow-dried like yours and if I had my make-up on and if I didn’t have a life-threatening illness, you might take me seriously. I may never win Miss World but … No, just leave it at that. I may never win Miss World.

Then she stalked away – and yes, it was a right stalk, a right proper angry, prowly sort of thing – on her long legs.

A strange silence followed.

Eventually Mannix spoke. ‘That was my wife.’

Really?

But your wife is meant to be cool and calm and Scando-
looking. She’s not supposed to be dark-haired and dark-eyed, with magnificent eyebrows and – for the love of God! – vinyl jeans!

‘I’d better go,’ he said. And he went.