The Week I Ruined My Life Read online

  ‘Wow … very healthy,’ he says.

  ‘You took them there today!’ I’m kind of incredulous.

  ‘Ya know it’s a joke. Yer mother’s rented her house in Rathfarnham and is swanning around India when we are desperate for help with the kids.’

  He loves slagging my mum off. Granted she isn’t the most hands-on grandparent but she has every right to travel the world; she has no husband or other children. She is free. I never slag his mother. Janet Devlin is a lovely woman. Life has just exhausted her, so I never expect her to travel down from Belfast to mind my kids. Just like my mother has every right to live her life wherever she wants to now. He has some cheek.

  The will to try to do it has completely vanished.

  ‘I might watch the end of this actually.’ I turn back to Friends, grab the controls from the couch and notch up the volume. I pull the blanket back up to under my chin.

  He stands there and says nothing for what feels like an age.

  ‘I suppose I have to give you money as well for this trip?’ he asks me, his voice full of anger again. His finger now resting in his dimple.

  ‘No.’ Rachel is so tanned. So beach ready. So golden. So independent. Probably I do need to join a gym in the not-too-distant future. Maintenance. Or I’ll be Curly Watts not Naomi.

  ‘So what are you going to do for spending money?’ He pursues his line of questioning. Detective Inspector Devlin.

  ‘I’ll manage, Colin.’ I stare at him now.

  ‘I have no problem giving you spending money, Ali.’ He can sense my temper rising.

  ‘Well, it seems like you do. I don’t want anything from you,’ I say through the blanket that’s now covering my mouth.

  ‘Oh, Little Miss Career Woman, now are we? Angela Merkel what?’ He makes a fist with his left hand and covers his mouth with it stifling a fake laugh.

  ‘Oh, go ’way, Colin, I’m too tired for this.’ I boldly pick up my wine glass and even more boldly I bloody drain it.

  ‘You’re too tired for everything lately, I see. More wine? Maybe you need to pop into the ole AA?’

  ‘Huh?’ I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  He nods to my other hand.

  ‘The old desperate housewife crutch. A glass here, a glass there, a bottle a night, two bottles a night. Sure, you didn’t want to come home, did you? You wanted to stay boozing with the crazy lonely winky woman.’ He flicks the elasticised band on his preposterous Manchester United boxer shorts.

  ‘I wanted to have another glass of wine, yeah, so shoot me. That would have made a whole two glasses in total. That’s a lot less booze than you consume on one of your football trips, I imagine.’ I pull the blanket away from my face now and glare at him.

  ‘What does crazy lonely winky woman think you are? A single woman who can spend all her Sunday afternoon drinking wine and talking shite?’

  ‘Her name is Corina,’ I spit the name at him. I release the three syllables at him like bullets from a gun.

  Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!

  Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!

  Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!

  I hear three gun shots in my head.

  ‘Well, I don’t think Corina has any respect for me or our family if she persuades you to ring me to ask can you stay out all night drinking with her, just cause she has to go home to her empty shithole on South Circular Road.’

  ‘Oh, go away … please!’ I plead.

  He steps back now, holding the door slightly open still.

  ‘Actually, on your way to the AA pop into the Well Woman Centre and ask them to give you a once-over too, give you a lady MOT if you will.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ I stare at Ross and Rachel as they look lovingly into one another’s eyes.

  ‘Check if your parts are still working. You’re always too tired for sex, aren’t you, Ali?’ His voice is raised now and I am alertly conscious that Jade is still awake.

  I throw off the blanket, jump off the couch and ask him quietly to step back in and close the door. Please let us not subject her to another argument.

  ‘I’ll come up now, Colin …’

  He moves away. ‘You’re grand, I’m not begging—’

  ‘But I want to,’ I interrupt. But I don’t, but I do.

  I turn back to the couch and grab the controls, point them at the TV and press. The room falls dark. I reach for my iPhone in my back pocket and use it to light up the room. I just want this family to be all right again.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I whisper.

  He doesn’t refuse me a second time.

  I brush my teeth slowly as he takes the iPad off Jade and closes her bedroom door. As I rinse and spit I hear him whisper to her from the landing, ‘Love you, Jadey.’ It’s been quite a while since he whispered anything like that to me and actually meant it. I only ever seem to hear those words when he’s trying to get something out of me. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time Colin had a kind word to say to me. Trying to calm the anger I feel towards him, I embrace the cold night as I strip naked in my bathroom and then slowly walk into the bedroom closing the door behind me. He is sitting up with his bedside lamp on, the room only illuminated on his side. He’s looking down at his MacBook and he doesn’t look up. I climb in beside him. I feel like we are worlds apart.

  ‘Ya OK?’ he asks me.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I answer him as I wiggle down beside him. The bed is toasty warm. He is naked.

  ‘Wanna take a look at this?’ His breath is heavy as he turns the MacBook to face me.

  He is watching porn. All I see is a poor young woman being violated by two men by way of making her living. I try and watch but all I feel is sorrow for this poor young woman. How old could she be? Nineteen, twenty at most? Eight years older than our daughter. Turned on, I am not.

  ‘Ya like that, Ali?’ he whispers as he leans over and kisses me. Hard. Forceful. Sloppy. He grabs my breasts and drops his head. I feel like he is having sex with the young woman in the video. I want to roar. My whole body feels like it’s being subjugated by him.

  ‘Ohh, Ali,’ he moves up now and moans into my ear. I feel like he is invading me. I try to get on with it, hurry it up.

  ‘Woah!’ He pulls his head up.

  ‘Whatever happened to foreplay?’ he half laughs taking my face in his hands. ‘Maybe I was wrong and maybe you have wanted it as much as me these last few weeks … could be months now even … What are we like? You are so sexy … I love you, Ali …’

  See? See how he only says these words at times like this, which are very rare these days. He ducks down under the covers. I know where he is heading and right now I simply can’t cope with it. I zip my legs up tight. It’s involuntary, I can’t help it.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ He pops his head back up.

  ‘Sorry,’ is all I can manage.

  ‘Sorry?’ He pauses.

  ‘I can’t do this, Colin,’ I whimper and then he flips. It’s not even the porn. How can I be intimate with someone I am fighting with? I physically can’t. I cannot dig that deep.

  ‘Fffffuck this! Fffffuck this shit!’ he thunders.

  ‘Shush, please, Colin,’ I beg. ‘Jade will hear you.’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck who hears me! It’s my house! I can’t live like this any more! I have needs. You are a complete, frigid bit—’ He stops himself.

  I don’t answer.

  ‘You are a fucking useless wife, Ali, you know that!’

  He flings the goose-feathered duvet back and jumps out of the bed and grabs the MacBook and takes it into the en suite bathroom.

  I know he is relieving himself and I am glad.

  I turn over and shut my eyes. I know it’s all wrong of me. I feel so bad, I really do, but I just can’t help it. Why am I feeling like this? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just do it? I know it will all be better if I just do it. How hard can that be? But he makes me unable to physically want him by irritating me so much. I feel physical emotion wit
h my brain not my vagina. Plus, I admit, I just don’t think that Colin should want dirty sex from me any more. I’m the mother of his two children. How does he get off on desperate young women? Can’t he see the fact that in the other room lays a girl not all that much younger? Would it be better if he had showed me a middle-aged woman? I don’t know. I don’t know when I started to feel like this, but I wish to God I didn’t. How can I fix it? Maybe Corina is right, maybe I should look into counselling. It’s only sex, it really shouldn’t be this difficult.

  Owen.

  Owen O’Neill.

  Would I feel like this in bed with Owen? No. I wouldn’t. I know I wouldn’t. And that’s all sorts of wrong. Nothing works with Colin and me any more. It’s broken. I lie still and wait for him to come out of the bathroom. The toilet flushes. Colin’s back. He slips under the covers. I remain motionless.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t want to make love to me any more, Ali, but it really hurts.’ He curls up into the foetal position.

  I cry quietly.

  4

  The week of. Monday morning. The City Arts Centre, Moss Street, Dublin 1.

  ‘Morning, gorgeous!’ Owen O’Neill pushes open the full-length glass door to my tiny office with his outstretched chin, carrying two coffees, one in each hand.

  ‘Morning.’ I jump up to help him. All my thoughts of Colin and last night immediately disappear, as if by magic.

  Poof. Gone.

  He’s nowhere near as classically good-looking as Colin, but he is just incredibly attractive to me. Everything about him interests me. I take the cup he offers me and I return to behind my messy desk.

  This morning he is wearing wrecked-looking, ripped blue denim jeans and white Adidas runners, a black round-neck T-shirt under a black leather biker jacket. Upon his head lies a grey beanie hat. He isn’t shaven. I’ve yet to see him clean-shaven. The thick dark stubble catches my eye as he pulls off the beanie hat and runs his hands over his dark, closely shaven head. The deepest darkest brown eyes I have ever seen pour into mine. He doesn’t have perfect teeth like Colin’s, but they add character to his face, I think. His incisors are pointy and very slightly longer than his front two teeth. Even our teeth are similar and, get this, he is exactly the same height as me when I’m in my high heels.

  ‘What’s the craic? You OK?’ He flops himself into the seat opposite me and lifts the lid off his black coffee. Steam rises to escape. The silver zips from his leather jacket sleeves rattle and then relax.

  ‘Ahh, yeah, I’m OK, I suppose.’ I sigh deeply.

  ‘Sounds like a dark, cold December Monday morning response to “you OK”, all right. Nice shirt, by the way. So I didn’t hear from you at all over the weekend, are you coming to Amsterdam or not? Did Daddy Pig give you permission?’ He is tongue in cheek. Colin and Owen have met each other a few times over the last while at various events in the centre, mainly when Colin has come in to pick me up. Colin isn’t one for the arts, or artists, but they always got on fine. The reason he calls him Daddy Pig is that Colin was still wearing his Happy Birthday, Daddy Pig badge from Mark’s Peppa Pig birthday card to him on his jumper. Owen, having never heard of Peppa Pig, thought this was some sort of critical analysis of Colin’s inner angst with parenting.

  ‘What, this old thaaang?’ I respond in a Southern accent and pull at my brand new Zara shirt. ‘Why thank you, kind sir.’ I pretend to fan myself with the palm of my hand.

  He laughs and slaps his bare knee through the rips. I see speckles of dark hair.

  Then I say, ‘Sorry I didn’t text you back with my answer. Still wasn’t sure I could go but Daddy Pig did give permission and I am indeed travelling this Friday to the land of tulips, sweet Amsterdam. Yippie. Yappie. And Yahooey.’ I remove my plastic lid now and blow into the white hot foamy liquid. He got me a latté. Extra hot, just the way I like it.

  ‘Permission?’ He tilts his head slightly and squints his brown eyes at me before saying, ‘But deadly!’ He seems genuinely delighted and I get a small shiver up my spine.

  ‘Hope our rooms aren’t adjoining, mind you? Bit of “tomfoolery in the middle of the night” buddy-style.’ He puts down his coffee and runs his hands up and down his knees like Vic Mortimer in Shooting Stars. He’s messing.

  ‘Stop that!’ I giggle though.

  Not laugh, giggle. I’m ridiculous.

  He’s so different to Colin in every way. He’s so easy going. Comme ci comme ça. I guess it’s that he’s arty and I am arty. I wasn’t always arty though and this, I believe, could be the real root of the problem. My inner artiness has come out. It had always been there, but hidden. Dormant. In school, I always only really liked English, drama and art. I had devoured Romeo and Juliet and Othello for my Inter and Leaving Certificate exams, whereas all my friends found them torturous, double Dutch. Colin thinks it’s all bullshit, I know he does. I’m not overly arty or snobby about art, I just love drama and music and painting and work that isn’t confined solely to an office desk, I suppose. Expression.

  For a moment I think back to this morning.

  Waking up was just horrendous. Colin’s alarm went off before six and he jumped up immediately. I was already awake and I think he was too. It was pitch dark and bitterly cold.

  ‘Will you be home early tomorrow?’ I asked in a croaked whisper, pulling the blankets back over me from where he had disturbed them.

  ‘Probably,’ Colin muttered, his knees bent as he pulled on his socks.

  ‘Colin …’ I put my hand on his bare back. He jerked away, grabbed his clothes off the wicker chair and left the room.

  I had waited until I heard his car reverse out of the driveway before I padded down barefoot and turned the heating on. I grabbed a cup of tea and brought it back up to the warmness of my bed. When I’d finished I got up and put the kids’ uniforms on the radiators to heat before waking them early and making them grilled rashers on toast.

  I know Jade senses the tension, no matter how hard I try to carve that smile into my face. I am a mess. I am a woman who’s in danger of losing her husband, but more importantly, of breaking up a family. I can’t seem to control it. It’s spiralling. Colin works hard for us, I know he does. I feel a lunge in my heart. Is he really to blame or is it all me? I can’t expect him to change. He shouldn’t have to; he is still the man I married.

  Owen puts his poly-coated paper cup down on my desk.

  ‘Hang on, I need to open the skylight window in the studio to dry the kids’ paintings fully before they all arrive off the bus.’ Owen drags me back but as he takes his leave, I’m back inside my head to scrutinise my husband.

  Like I said, Colin doesn’t really get ‘The Arts’. He thinks this job is all a bit of a laugh really. Nonsensical. A thing to keep me amused. He likes Owen but deep down thinks he’s slightly odd. He said so himself.

  ‘All those arty people are a bit odd, are they not?’ Colin asked me the first time I took him to see an installation piece in the centre’s gallery. You see, I changed and Colin didn’t. I evolved a new interest, he didn’t. No one’s fault.

  ‘I mean, I’d love to stand in a white room and splash blobs of paint on the walls all day and get paid for it, but I can’t. I have to go out to work for a living,’ Colin informed me on another occasion.

  ‘That is work. That is the artist’s work,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, I’m in the wrong business, so.’ He’d more scoffed than laughed.

  He just didn’t get it. That’s not me being a snob; I understand he doesn’t get it.

  I don’t get lots of things too. I don’t get his fascination with Manchester United now that he is a grown man. Or how he can spend hours watching football results pop up on Sky Sports. Transfixed by them. Nor do I get why the female presenters on Sky Sports are made to dress like they are going to a summer wedding not to work. Nor do I get how he can scream insults and threats at players that couldn’t care less about him. I don’t get that he can’t see it’s all a money-making racket, a m
ulti-million-pound business and these supporters are the mugs paying those grotesque, excessive, vulgar wages. I don’t get how he can waste so much of our money on it.

  Just like he doesn’t get blobs of paint on canvas are a work of art.

  Just like he doesn’t get how Lenny Abrahamson’s film Room is a masterpiece. Owen and I have spent hours and hours going over every detail of that film. Talking over one another with excitement and admiration.

  Colin thought it was shite.

  Listen, I don’t want to end my marriage over differences of sporting or creative opinions. I don’t think I want to end my marriage full stop. I know I don’t want to ruin my kids’ lives. I realise it doesn’t seem like that, but I can’t help how I am feeling, can I? It’s not a conscious thing. The chemistry is gone. It’s dead in the water. How do I get it back? How do I get us back? My mind takes me back further as I await my artist to return.

  Hand on heart, we really were love’s young dream. After sixth year, we literally collapsed into one another like Noah and Allie in The Notebook. We were so instantly and intensely involved with each other and therefore neither of us got amazing results in our Leaving Cert exams. Not surprisingly, I could not get my head into studying when it was crammed full with this incredible new boyfriend. But we decided to go to a vocational college together and we both enrolled in a marketing diploma course in Rathmines Town Hall and we both got in. I never really knew what I wanted to do except marry Colin and have his babies. We were completely smitten with one another. After a year in college I dropped out when I got offered a job in Buy For Less, a free ads magazine, taking the calls from people and wording the ads for the items they wanted to sell; it was fine but it was just a job. Colin finished out the two-year diploma and went to work for Hallmark, the big greeting card company, out on the road.

  Back then I didn’t have work ambition. I just had no clue what really interested me apart from Colin Devlin. I knew I adored going to the movies, reading books and seeing plays whenever I could, but they were just my hobbies, right? They had nothing to do with any job I may ever get. No one paid you for that stuff. I had no head for figures, or anything scientific. To be honest my careers guidance teacher had no clue what area to point me in. On one occasion she basically told me to find myself a rich farmer!