New Kid On The Blog

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

Clodagh thought she was cracking up, she was certain she was. But she had to get dressed and collect Molly from playgroup. Once back, she returned to bed and attempted to take up where she'd left off, but Molly began agitating that noodles be microwaved for her. With resignation, Clodagh got up again.

Since ten o'clock this morning - was it really only this morning? - her entire life had become an out-of-body experience. From the moment she'd heard Dylan's key in the door, she knew. The gig was up.

She's paused from her frantic bucking beneath Marcus and cupped an ear to listen. 'Sssh!' In a fluid movement he'd rolled off her: frozen and bug-eyed, they'd listened to Dylan mounting the stairs.

She'd had every opportunity to jump from the bed, fling on a robe and hustle Marcus into the wardrobe. Indeed, Marcus had tried to skid out of bed, but she'd arrested him by gripping his wrist tightly. Then she'd waited with horrible calm, the scene set to change her life.

For the last five weeks she'd endured sleepless nights wondering where her affair with Marcus would end up. She'd vacillated between ending it with him and resuming a normal life with Dylan, or fantasizing about a situation where Dylan was magically absent, but without her having actually told him it was over.

But as she listened to Dylan's footsteps get ever closer, she'd realized that the decision had been taken for her. Suddenly she wasn't sure she was ready.

The door to the bedroom opened, and even though she knew it was Dylan, his presence shocked her into a stupor.

His face. The expression on his face was so much worse than she'd imagined it could be. She was almost surprised at the amount of pain there. And his voice when he spoke was not Dylan's. There was an Oof to it, as though he'd been slammed in the abdomen. 'At the risk of sounding like a song lyric,' he'd struggled for breath with pathetic dignity, 'how long has this been going on?'

'Dylan ...'

'How long?'

'A month.'

Dylan turned to Marcus, who was clutching the sheet to his chest. 'Would you mind leaving? I'd like a word with my wife.'

Cupping his genitals coyly, Marcus edged crab-like from the bed, snatched up some clothes and muttered to Clodagh, 'I'll call you later.'

Dylan watched him leave, then turned back to Clodagh and asked quietly, 'Why?' A hundred thousand questions were contained in that one word.

She struggled for the right words. 'I don't really know.'

'Please tell me why. Tell me what's wrong. We can fix it, I'll do anything.'

What could she say? With sudden certainty, she knew she didn't want him to fix it. But she owed him honesty. 'I think I was lonely ...'

' Lonely? How?'

'I don't know, I can't describe it. But I've been lonely and bored.'

'Bored?' With me?'

She hesitated. She couldn't be that cruel. 'With everything.'

'Do you want to fix this?'

'I don't know.'

He studied her in a long, painful silence. 'That means no. Do you love this ... him?'

A miserable nod. 'I think so.'

'OK.'

'OK?'

But Dylan didn't answer. Instead, he slid a holdall off the top of the wardrobe, bounced it on to the bed and, slamming drawers open and closed, began flinging in underwear and shirts. Nothing had prepared her for how shocking it was.

'But ...' she tried, her eyes flicking back and forth, seeing ties, his shaving stuff, then some socks hop into the bag. Everything was happening very quickly.

Suddenly the bag was bulging-full. Then Dylan was zipping it with a high-pitched whizz. 'I'll be back for the rest later.'

He swung from the room, and after a panicky second Clodagh dragged on a dressing-gown and ran down the stairs after him.

'Dylan, I still love you,' she implored.

'So what was that all about?' He jerked his head upstairs.

'I still love you,' she repeated, her voice more subdued, 'but ...'

'You're no longer in love with me?' Dylan finished harshly.

She hesitated. But she had to be honest. 'I suppose ...'

He shuttered his face. 'I'll be back tonight to explain things to my children. You can stay here in the house for the time being.'

'For the time being?'

'The house will have to be sold.'

'Will it?'

'I can't afford to pay the mortgage on this place and another. And if you think you're staying on here while I'm in some smelly shoebox in Rathmines, you're very much mistaken.'

And then he was gone.

She reeled from shock, from the speed it had all happened at. She'd fantasized about Dylan removing himself from her life, but now that it had actually come to pass it was ugly. Eleven years wiped out in half and hour, and Dylan in such agony. And talking about selling the house! Yes, she was wild about Marcus, but things weren't that simple.

Too stunned to cry, too frightened to grieve, she sat in the kitchen for a long time. A ring at the front door jolted her back to the real world. It might be Marcus.

But it wasn't. It was Ashling.

Clodagh hadn't been expecting her. She certainly wasn't ready for her. And Ashling's uncharacteristic angry hostility compounded the whole horrible mess. Clodagh had always been surrounded by love, but suddenly everyone hated her, including herself. She was a pariah, a scumbag, she'd broken every rule in the book and wouldn't be forgiven.

After Ashling left, then she cried. She crawled back into bed, between the sheets with their smell of abandoned sex. She'd never laundered so much bed-linen as she had in the past five weeks. Well, no need to do it today, nothing to hide any longer.

She reached for the phone and rang Marcus, so he could remind her that they hadn't really done anything wrong. That they were mad about each other, that they couldn't help it, that theirs was a noble entanglement. But he wasn't at work and wasn't answering his mobile, so she had to endure her anguish alone.

This isn't my fault, she repeated again and again like a mantra. I couldn't help myself. But, like a fissure into hell opening, she caught a glimpse of the atrocity she'd perpetrated. What she had done to Dylan was unforgivable. Unbelievable. With shaky speed she grasped the nearest magazine to hand and tried to forget herself in an article about stencilling. But the fissure opened again - worse this time. It wasn't just Dylan she'd fucked over. It was her children. And Ashling.

Her heart beat faster and with a hand slidy with sweat she pressed buttons on the remote control until she found Jerry Springer. But he wasn't enough to distract her from herself - normally the people he had on seemed like cartoon characters with their ridiculously convoluted private lives, but today she didn't feel any different from them.

She flicked to Emmerdale, then Home and Away, but nothing worked. She trembled with shock and disbelief at her own actions, at the devastation she'd wrought. Then she remembered she'd have to collect Molly from playgroup and had a panicky seizure of paralysis. She couldn't go out. She really couldn't. It was impossible.

She couldn't be on her own and she couldn't be with anyone else and for a horrible moment she wondered if she was cracking up. This beyond-the-pale thought held her in its grip for a nightmarish while, then she struggled from the embrace of the bed. Cracking up was even more unpleasant than having to face the outside world.

Note: Ashling = best friend, Marcus = Ashling's boyfriend