our high mortgage, the cost of running two cars, Garv's addiction to CDs, and my addiction to face creams and handbags, funds just didn't run to flat screens.
“Cheer up, it probably broke when it fell off the wall. And one day soon you'll be able to afford one of your own.”
“Do you think?”
“Sure I do. As soon as we finish furnishing the house.”
This seemed to do the trick. With a slight spring in his step, he helped unload the shopping. And that was when it happened.
He lifted out my box of go-on-you-devil truffles and exclaimed,
“Hey, look!” His eyes were asparkle. “Those chocolates again. Are they following us?”
I looked at him, looked at the box, then back at him. I hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about.
“You know ,” he insisted skittishly. “The same ones we had when—”
He stopped abruptly. My brow furrowed with curiosity, I stared at him. He stared back at me and, quite suddenly, several things occurred at once. The playful light in his eyes exited, to be replaced with an expression of fear. Horror, even. And before the thoughts had even formed themselves into any order in my consciousness, I knew . He was talking about
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.
CHAPTER TWO
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
“Cheer up, it probably broke when it fell off the wall. And one day soon you'll be able to afford one of your own.”
“Do you think?”
“Sure I do. As soon as we finish furnishing the house.”
This seemed to do the trick. With a slight spring in his step, he helped unload the shopping. And that was when it happened.
He lifted out my box of go-on-you-devil truffles and exclaimed,
“Hey, look!” His eyes were asparkle. “Those chocolates again. Are they following us?”
I looked at him, looked at the box, then back at him. I hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about.
“You know ,” he insisted skittishly. “The same ones we had when—”
He stopped abruptly. My brow furrowed with curiosity, I stared at him. He stared back at me and, quite suddenly, several things occurred at once. The playful light in his eyes exited, to be replaced with an expression of fear. Horror, even. And before the thoughts had even formed themselves into any order in my consciousness, I knew . He was talking about
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.
CHAPTER TWO
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
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