The Woman Who Stole My Life Read Free Page A

years desperately trying to provide the glamour that Jeanette so clearly craved, asked, ‘What sort of fabulous?’ But Jeanette couldn’t actually say. ‘… Just, you know,
fabulous
.’
    Peter (he later admitted this to my dad) had a dreadful moment when he thought he might start sobbing and never stop, then he was saved from such humiliation by a brainwave. ‘Why don’t we ask Stella to ask Ryan?’ he said. ‘He’s artistic.’
    Ryan was mortified to be consulted on such a mundane project and he told me to tell Auntie Jeanette that she could feck off, that he was an artist and that artists didn’t ‘bother their barney’ on the placement of wash-hand basins. But I hate confrontation and I was afraid of causing a family rift, so I couched Ryan’s refusal in vaguer terms. So vague that an armload of bathroom brochures were dropped off for Ryan’s perusal.
    They sat on our small kitchen table for over a week. Nowand again I’d pick one up and say, ‘God, that’s
gorgeous
,’ and, ‘Would you look at that? So im
ag
inative.’
    You see, I was keeping our little family afloat by working as a beautician, and I’d have been very grateful if Ryan had started bringing in some money. But Ryan refused to take the bait. Until one night he began to leaf through the pages and suddenly he was engaged. He picked up a pencil and some graph paper and within no time he was applying himself with vigour. ‘She wants fabulous,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll give her fabulous.’
    Over the following days and weeks he laboured on layout, he spent hours scouring
Buy and Sell
(these were pre-eBay days) and he jumped out of bed in the middle of the night, his artistic head fizzing with artistic ideas.
    News of Ryan’s diligence began to spread through my family and people were impressed. My dad, who had never been keen on Ryan, reluctantly began to revise his opinion. He stopped saying, ‘Ryan Sweeney an artist? Piss-artist, more like!’
    The result – and everyone was agreed on this, even Dad, a sceptical, working-class man – was indeed fabulous: Ryan had created a mini Studio 54. As he’d been born in Dublin in 1971, he’d never had the honour of visiting the iconic nightclub, so he had to base his design on photos and anecdotal evidence. He even wrote to Bianca Jagger. (She didn’t reply but, still, it shows the lengths he was prepared to go to.)
    As soon as you put a foot into the bathroom, the floor lit up and Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You, Baby’ began to play softly. Natural light was banished and replaced with an ambient gold glow. The cabinets – and there were plenty of them because Auntie Jeanette had a lot of stuff – were coated with glitter. Andy Warhol’s
Marilyn
was recreated in eight thousand tiny mosaic tiles and covered an entire wall. The bath wasegg-shaped and black. The toilet was housed off in an adorable little black lacquer cubicle. The make-up station had enough theatrical-style light bulbs to power the whole of Ferrytown (Jeanette had stipulated ‘brutal’ lighting; she was proud of her skill in blending foundations and concealer but she couldn’t do it in poor visibility).
    When, with a final flourish, Ryan hung a small glitter ball from the ceiling, he knew that the masterpiece was complete.
    It could have been tacky, it skirted within a millimetre of being kitsch, but it was – as stipulated in the brief – ‘fabulous’. Auntie Jeanette issued invitations to family and friends for the Grand Opening and the dress code was Disco. As a little joke, Ryan purchased a one-ounce bag of fenugreek from the Ferrytown health-food shop and chopped it into lines on the elegant hand basin. Everyone thought that was ‘gas’. (Except Dad. ‘There’s nothing funny about drugs. Even pretend ones.’)
    The mood was festive. Everyone, young and old, in their disco-est of clothes, crowded in and danced on the small flashing floor. I, overjoyed that a) a family rift had been averted and b) that