The Woman Who Stole My Life (11 page)

‘I hear you’ve been showing off your lady chinos!’ Karen is at my front door, her blonde hair blow-dried super sleek.

‘Yes!’ I stand aside to let her in. ‘Thank you so much! I must admit I had my doubts –’

‘Let me stop you right there.’ She makes her way to the kitchen. ‘Is it too early for wine? I suppose it is and, anyway, you can’t have any.’ She flicks on the kettle. ‘Where was I? Oh, right – don’t start thinking you’re okay. The chinos are only a temporary solution. A camouflage. You’re still going to have to lose ten pounds.’

‘Not ten!’ I cry. ‘Seven.’

‘Nine.’

‘Eight.’

‘Whatever. Everyone else,’ she says thoughtfully, ‘when their life falls apart, they lose weight. How unlucky are you?’ She opens and closes a couple of cupboards. ‘Any normal tea bags? I’m not drinking this herbal shit.’

‘Neither am I,’ I say with dignity. ‘The herbal shit belongs to Jeffrey.’

‘Christ, he’s odd. Mind you, so is my son. Do you think we’re carriers for some sort of male oddness? Protein,’ she said, abruptly. ‘That’s what you need. Lots and lots of protein. Forget carbs even exist.’

‘Are those your real eyelashes?’ I ask, desperate to change the subject.

‘These?’ Karen blinks the long, spiky lashes at me. ‘Nothing is my real anything. Everything is fake. Nails.’ She flicks her hands at me and whips them away again in far less than a second. ‘Teeth.’ She opens her jaws in a speedy grrrr. ‘Brows.
Tan. I’ll do eyelash extensions for you.’ She swallows hard and with some effort adds, ‘For cost.’

I shake my head. ‘I’ve had eyelash extensions. They’re a nightmare to live with. You can’t touch them, you can do nothing to upset them. It’s like being in a dysfunctional relationship.’

Karen stares meaningfully at me.

‘It wasn’t dysfunctional,’ I say. ‘It was functional.’

‘Until it wasn’t.’

I’m starting to feel a bit tearful. ‘… Ah, Karen … maybe you should go now?’ Suddenly I remember something. ‘I dreamed about Ned Mount again last night.’

‘What are you doing dreaming about him?’

‘We don’t get any say in who we dream about! Anyway, I like him.’ He’d interviewed me on his radio show when
One Blink at a Time
had come out in Ireland. We’d got on great.

‘Would you …?’

‘No … That part of my life is over.’

‘You’re only forty-two.’

‘Forty-
one
.’

‘And a half.’

‘And a quarter. Only a
quarter
.’

Karen’s gaze roams over my face. ‘It’s about time you got a couple of boosts. Go on. Dr JinJing will be in on Thursday. My treat.’

‘Ah, no thanks …’

Due to a clampdown in the law Karen had had to stop administering injectables herself and nowadays a young Chinese doctor came to the salon every second Thursday and jabbed Botox and fillers into a keen clientele. But I’d seen the results of Dr JinJing’s handiwork and it scared me. Heavy-handed would be the best way to describe it and I knew from experience that bad Botox is worse than no Botox.

I’d had a really good person in New York, a doctor who
understood subtlety. I was able to move my eyebrows and everything. Then I’d made the money-saving mistake of going to a cheaper person and my forehead turned into a sort of overhanging canopy. I looked like a perpetually disapproving Cro-Magnon lady. The two months while I was waiting for the bad Botox to leave my face had felt like a very long time.

‘Are you sure?’ Karen asks, impatiently. ‘I won’t charge you. There’s an offer you don’t get every day.’

‘Honest to God, Karen, I’m fine right now.’

‘Did you hear what I said? I said I won’t charge you!’

‘Thanks. Lovely. Let’s just … not for now, okay?’

‘Instead of thinking, “Why me?” I think, “Why
not
me?”’

Extract from
One Blink at a Time

In my hospital bed, everything changed after the advent of the Blinking Code. My initial communication with the family was to ask Karen to wash my hair, and only a person as undauntable as her could have succeeded – because it was a
massive
job involving plastic sheeting, jugs, sponges and countless basins of water. Not to mention the delicate negotiation of all the tubes in and out of me. Mum, Betsy and Jeffrey assisted, running obediently to the bathroom to empty sudsy water and return with fresh stuff, then Karen blow-dried my hair into soft curls and I could have died with cleanliness.

My next request was a solemn promise from Betsy and Jeffrey that they’d stay committed to their schoolwork, and my third wish was for a bit of fun – I was tired of people coming in and staring sadly at me for fifteen minutes, then leaving. I wanted distraction, a laugh, even. I would have given my life for an episode of
Coronation Street
but, as that was out of the question, maybe someone would read magazines to me: I hungered for news of celebrity hook-ups and break-ups, of weight gains and weight losses, of new trends in shoes and beauty.

Then things went a bit skew-ways. Dad got wind that I’d asked to be read to and he arrived, all excited, with a library
book in a plastic bag. ‘A first novel –’ he waved it at me – ‘American chap. Tom Wolfe called him the most formidable novelist of the twenty-first century. Joan put it by specially for you.’

He pulled up a chair and began to read and it was very, very awful. ‘“Tumbling. Tumbrils. Tombolas. Milkful. Bountyplenty. Creamy flesh in overspill. Abundant cascade.”’

Behind him, Mannix Taylor hoved into view.

‘“Flesh. Fleish. A Teutonic truth,”’ Dad read on. ‘“Meat. All that we are and all that we will be. Thin skin-sacks of red water and marbled muscle. Gristle-people –”’

‘What’s going on?’ Mannix Taylor sounded annoyed.

Dad jumped off his chair and turned around.

‘Mannix Taylor, Stella’s neurologist.’ Mannix offered his hand.

‘Bert Locke, Stella’s father.’ Dad reluctantly accepted the handshake. ‘And Stella wants to be read to.’

‘She’s not strong. She needs her energy to heal her body. I’m serious. This stuff …’ Mannix waved his hand at the novel. ‘It sounds heavy. Too much for her.’

Silently, I sighed. He was so high-handed, Mannix Taylor, he made enemies without even breaking a sweat.

‘So what
should
I read to her?’ Dad asked, sarcastically. ‘
Harry Potter
?’

I was chopping an onion. Even if I do say so myself, I was utterly brilliant, like a chef in one of those shows. My nimble fingers were flying along, wielding my very expensive Japanese knife, flashing blue steel through the air. There were people all around me; their faces were blurry but they were oohing and aahing in extreme admiration. With great confidence I shifted my onion ninety degrees and commenced another flurry of chopping, almost too fast for the human
eye to see, then I put down my very expensive Japanese knife.

Now for the money shot. My hands were cupped around the onion, almost in prayer. I gently moved them apart as if they had taken flight and –
voilà!
– the onion just collapsed, chopped into tiny, perfect pieces. Everyone clapped.

Then suddenly I was awake. And in my hospital bed, in my immobile body where my fingers were completely useless.

Something had woken me.

Some
one.
Mannix Taylor. Standing at the bottom of my bed, watching me.

He was silent for so long I wondered if he’d been struck dumb, making a pair of us. Finally he spoke, ‘Do you ever think, “Why me?”’

I looked at him with contempt. What was up with him? Was Saoirse, his imaginary dyslexic daughter, not performing in the top five percentile, despite the extra tuition?

‘I’m not talking about me,’ Mannix Taylor said. ‘I’m talking about you.’ He gestured around at all the hospital paraphernalia. ‘You contracted this extraordinary disease. You can’t imagine how rare it is. And it’s a cruel one … Being unable to speak, being unable to move, it’s most people’s worst nightmare. So. What I’m asking is, do you ever think, “Why me?”’

I took a moment and I blinked. No. I thought lots of things, but not that.

Mannix Taylor reached into the sterilizer beside my bed and took out a pen and a notebook, which someone – maybe him? – had brought in.

‘Really no?’ he asked. ‘Why not?’

‘WHY NOT ME?’

‘Go on.’ He seemed genuinely interested.

‘WHY AM I SO SPECIAL? TRAGEDIES HAVE TO HAPPEN. A CERTAIN NUMBER HAVE TO HAPPEN
EVERY DAY. IT’S LIKE RAINFALL. I GOT RAINED ON.’

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’re a better person than me.’

I wasn’t. It was down to my dad – when I was growing up, he’d totally disabled my self-pity app. Any time I’d tried it, he’d given me a clip on the ear and said, ‘Stop it. Think about someone else.’

‘Ow!’ I’d howl, and he’d say, ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Plato said that. Greek chap.’

Then I’d say, ‘Well,
you
aren’t very kind, giving me a clip on the ear!’

‘While I remember …’ Mannix Taylor produced a book from the pocket of his white coat. ‘I asked my wife to recommend something. She says it’s light, but well written.’ He placed the book into the sterilizer and flicked me a tongue-in-cheek look. ‘See what your dad thinks.’

Ah, don’t make fun of my dad.

‘Sorry,’ he said, though I hadn’t actually spoken.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in contact with two neurologists in Texas who’ve worked directly with Guillain-Barré and I’ve information. When your nerve coverings start growing back – and we don’t know when that will be – you may be itchy or tingly or you could be in pain, which might be acute. In which case we’ll look at pain management.’ He paused and said, sounding exasperated, ‘By that, I mean, we’ll give you drugs. I don’t know why we just can’t say that … Anyway. When your movement returns, your muscles will have atrophied from lack of use, so you’ll have to do intensive physical therapy. But your energy will be low so you’ll be able for only small amounts every day. It will take several months before your body and your life feels normal again. Your sister said I was cruel to tell you the truth. I think
not
telling you the truth is cruel.

‘One other thing,’ he said. ‘There’s a test called an EMG that can tell us how badly damaged the sheaths are. It would give a real measure of how long your recovery will take. But the machine in this hospital is broken. I do clinics in another hospital which has a working machine.’

Hope jumped in me.

‘But,’ he said, ‘because you’re in ICU you can’t be taken to another hospital – bureaucracy, insurance, the usual. They won’t discharge you from here, even for a couple of hours. And no other hospital will take responsibility for you.’

A great wail of anguish rose up in me, but it had no place to go so it got shoved back down into my cells. I’d always heard about how crap the medical system was but it was only now that I was caught up in it that I realized how true it was.

‘I’m seeing what I can do,’ he said. ‘But you need to know that an EMG is nasty. Not dangerous, but painful. A series of electric shocks are sent along your nerve lines to measure your responses. From a medical point of view, the pain is a positive; it shows your nervous system is functioning.’

Okay …

‘Do you want me to keep trying?’

I blinked my right eye.

‘You understand it’ll be painful? You can’t be given painkillers beforehand because they’ll compromise precisely what we’re trying to measure. You understand?’

Yes! Feck’s sake, yes! I understand.

‘You understand?’

I shut my eyes because now he was just being a smart-arse.

‘Come out,’ he said. ‘Talk to me. I was just joking.’

I opened my eyes and glared at him.

‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’

I should be using my precious energy to ask him more about the test or about my illness but for the moment I was
sick of the whole business. I bit the bullet and blinked something I’d been curious about since he’d first mentioned his brother. ‘TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FAMILY.’

He hesitated.

‘PLEASE.’

‘Okay. Seeing as you asked so nicely.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Well, looking at it from the outside, my upbringing was …’ Tone of heavy sarcasm. ‘
Gilded
. My father was a doctor, my mother was a looker. Sociable types, both of them, they were always going to parties and to the races – especially the races – and being in the papers. I’ve one brother – Roland, whom you know about, who got the burden of Dad’s expectations. Dad wanted him to be a doctor, like he was himself, but Roland didn’t get the grades. I wanted to be a doctor but I also hoped it would take the burden off my brother. But it hasn’t worked. Roland’s always felt like a failure.’

I thought of the man I’d seen on the telly, being so nice and funny, and I felt sad for him.

‘I’ve two younger sisters,’ Mannix Taylor said. ‘Rosa and Hero, they’re twins. We all went to posh schools and we lived in a big house in Rathfarnham. Sometimes the electricity would be cut off but we weren’t allowed to tell anybody.’

What! I hadn’t seen that one coming.

‘… There was money … weirdness. One day I opened a drawer and there was a fat bundle of cash in it, like thousands. I said nothing and a day later it was gone. Or people would come to the door and you’d hear these tense muffled conversations being held outside on the gravel.’

This was utterly
riveting
.

‘People think it’s glamorous, going to the races and putting ten grand on a horse.’

I didn’t. The very thought made me feel sick with anxiety.

‘But if the horse doesn’t win …’

Exactly!

‘Stuff was always arriving into the house, then disappearing.’ He stopped, deep in thought, then continued. ‘One Christmas Eve my parents came home with a massive painting. They’d been at an auction and they burst in, full of excitement. They couldn’t stop talking about the bidding and how they’d held their nerve and how they’d won. “Never show fear, son,” Dad said. “That’s the key.” They said it was a genuine Jack Yeats and maybe it was … They cleared a place and hung it above the living-room mantelpiece. Two days later a van drew up outside the house and a couple of silent men came and took it away. It was never mentioned again.’

Cripes. Well …

‘They live in Nice now, my parents. The south of France. Less glamorous than it sounds but they make the most of it. They’re a blast.’

More sarcasm?

‘Ah, no, they
are
a blast,’ he said. ‘They love a party. A word of advice – never accept a gin and tonic made by my mum: it’ll kill you.’