For David,
who taught me how to fall in love
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1. How to Talk a Man Down
2. How to Leave Your Husband (Without Hurting Him)
3. How to Recognise a Miracle and What to Do When You Have
4. How to Hold on for Dear Life
5. How to Take Your Relationship to the Next Level
6. How to Quiet Your Mind and Get Some Sleep
7. How to Build Friendships and Develop Trust
8. How to Sincerely Apologise When You Realise You Have Hurt Someone
9. How to Enjoy Your Life in Thirty Simple Ways
10. How to Make an Omelette Without Breaking Eggs
11. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
12. How to Solve a Problem Like Maria
13. How to Recognise and Appreciate the People in Your Life Today
14. How to Have Your Cake and Eat It
15. How to Reap What You Sow
16. How to Organise and Simplify Your Life
17. How to Stand Out from the Crowd
18. How to Make Absolutely Everything Okay Again
19. How to Pick Yourself Up and Dust Yourself Off
20. How to Stand Up and Be Counted
21. How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World
22. How to Solve Will and Inheritance Disputes in Eight Easy Ways
23. How to Prepare Yourself for a Goodbye
24. How to Wallow in Your Despair in One Easy Way
25. How to Ask for Help Without Losing Face
26. How to Find the Positive in a Catch-22
27. How to Celebrate Your Achievements
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
How to Talk a Man Down
They say lightning never strikes twice. Untrue. Well, it’s true that people say it; it’s just untrue as a fact.
NASA-funded scientists discovered that cloud-to-ground lightning frequently strikes the ground in two or more places and that the chances of being struck are about forty-five per cent higher than what people assume. But what people mostly mean to say is that lightning never strikes the same location on more than one occasion, which is also untrue as a fact. Though the odds of being hit by lightning are one in three thousand, between 1942 and 1977 Roy Cleveland Sullivan, a Park Ranger in Virginia, was hit by lightning on seven different occasions. Roy survived all the lightning strikes, but he killed himself when he was seventy-one, shooting himself in the stomach over what was rumoured to be unrequited love. If people dispensed with the lightning metaphor and instead just said what they meant, it would be that the same highly unlikely thing never happens to the same person twice. Untrue. If the reasons behind Roy’s death is true, heartbreak carries its own unique brand of sorrow and Roy would have known better than anyone that it was highly likely that this highly unlikely misfortune could occur again. Which brings me to the point of my story; the first of my two highly unlikely events.
It was eleven p.m. on a freezing cold December night in Dublin and I found myself somewhere I had never been before. It is not a metaphor for my psychological state, though it would be apt; what I mean is that I literally had never geographically been to the area before. An ice-cold wind blew through the abandoned Southside housing development, causing an unearthly tune to play through broken windows and flapping scaffolding materials. There were gaping black holes where there should be windows, unfinished surfaces with menacing potholes and upturned flagstones, pipework-cluttered balconies and exit routes, wires and tubing that began randomly and ended nowhere, the place a stage set for tragedy. The sight alone, nothing to do with the minus-degree temperature, made me shudder. The estate should have been filled with sleeping families, lights out and curtains drawn; instead, the development was lifeless, evacuated by owners who had been left to live in ticking time-bombs with fire-safety concerns as long as the list of lies they were told by builders who failed to deliver on the promise of luxury living at boom-time prices.
I shouldn’t have been there. I was trespassing, but that wasn’t what should have concerned me; it was dangerous. To the conventional ordinary person it was unwelcoming, I should have turned around and gone back the way I came. I knew all these things and yet I ploughed on, debating with my gut. I went inside.
Forty-five minutes later I stood outside again, shivering, trembling and waiting for the gardaí as the 999 operator had instructed me to do. I saw the ambulance lights in the distance, which were quickly followed by the unmarked garda car. Out leapt Detective Maguire, unshaven, messy-haired, rugged if not haggard, whom I’ve since learned to be an emotionally hassled, pent-up jack-in-the-box ready to explode at any moment. Though his general appearance might have been a cool look for a member of a rock band, he was a forty-seven-year-old detective on duty, which took the stylish away from him and highlighted the seriousness of the situation I’d found myself in. After directing them to Simon’s apartment, I returned outside to wait to relay my story.
I told Detective Maguire about Simon Conway, the thirty-six-year-old man I’d met inside the building who, along with fifty other families, had been evacuated from the estate for safety reasons. Simon had talked mostly about money, about the pressure of having to pay the mortgage on the apartment he wasn’t allowed to live in, and the council, which had a case pending to stop paying for his replacement accommodation, and the fact that he had just lost his job. I relayed my conversation with Simon to Detective Maguire, what I’d said exactly already fuzzy, and I jumped between what I thought I’d said and what I realise I should have said.
You see, Simon Conway was holding a gun when I came across him. I think I was more surprised to see him than he was about my sudden appearance in his abandoned home. He seemed to assume I’d been sent there by the police to talk to him, and I didn’t tell him that wasn’t the case. I wanted him to think I’d an army of people in the next room while he held that black weapon in his hand, waving it around as he talked while I fought hard not to duck, dive and at times run from the room. While panic and fear welled inside me, I tried to coax him, soothe him into putting the gun down. We talked about his children, I did my best to show him a light in his darkness, and I managed to successfully talk Simon into putting the gun down on the kitchen counter so I could call the gardaí for help, which I did. When I hung up, something happened. My words, though innocent – and which I know now I should have left unsaid at that point – triggered something.
Simon looked at me, and I knew he wasn’t seeing me. His face had changed. Alarm bells rang in my head but before I had a chance to say or do anything else, Simon picked up the gun and held it to his head. The gun went off.
2
How to Leave Your Husband (Without Hurting Him)
Sometimes, when you see or experience something really real, it makes you want to stop pretending. You feel like an idiot, a charlatan. It makes you want to get away from everything that is fake, whether it is innocently and harmlessly so, or something more serious; like your marriage. This happened to me.
When a person finds themselves jealous of marriages that are ending, that person must know that theirs is in trouble. That’s where I had found myself for the past few months in the unusual way when you can know something but not really know it at the same time. Once it had ended I realised that I’d always known the marriage wasn’t right. When I was in the midst of it, I had felt moments of happiness and a general sense of hope. And while positivity is the seed of many a great thing, wishful thinking alone does not make a good foundati
on for marriage. But the event, the Simon Conway experience, as I was calling it, helped to open my eyes. I’d witnessed one of the most real things in my life and it made me want to stop pretending, it made me want to be real and for everything in my life to be true and honest.
My sister Brenda believed my marriage break-up was due to a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder and pleaded with me to talk to someone about it. I informed her I was already talking to someone, the internal conversation had begun quite some time ago. And it had, in a way; Simon just hastened the eventual epiphany. This of course was not the response Brenda had in mind; she meant a conversation with someone professionally trained, not a drunken ramble over a bottle of wine in her kitchen at midnight, midweek.
My husband, Barry, had been understanding and supportive in my hour of need. He too believed that the sudden decision was a part of some ripple effect from the gun-blast. But when he realised – as I packed my belongings and left our home – that I was serious, he was quick to call me the most vile things. I didn’t blame him, though I wasn’t fat and had never been, and was intrigued to learn I was much fonder of his mother than he believed. I understood everyone’s confusion and inability to believe me. It had a lot to do with how well I had hidden my unhappiness and it had everything to do with my timing.
On the night of the Simon Conway experience, after I’d realised the bloodcurdling scream had come from my own mouth, and after I’d called the police for the second time and statements had been taken for reports to be filed, after the Styrofoam cup of milky tea from the local EuroSpar, I’d driven home and done four things. First, I had a shower in an effort to cleanse myself of the scene; second, I thumbed my well-read copy of How to Leave Your Husband (Without Hurting Him); third, I woke him with a coffee and slice of toast to tell him that our marriage was over; and fourth, when probed, I told him that I had witnessed a man shoot himself. In retrospect, Barry had more detailed questions about the shooting than about the end of our marriage.
His behaviour since then has surprised me, and my own astonishment equally shocked me, because I thought I was well-read on such matters. I had studied before this great big life test, I had read up on how we both would and could be feeling if I ever decided to end the marriage – just to prepare, to be aware, to figure out if it was the right decision. I’ve had friends whose marriages have ended, I’ve spent many late nights listening to both sides. Yet it never occurred to me that my husband would turn out to be the kind of man he became, that he would have a complete personality transplant, become as cold and vicious, as bitter and malicious as he has become. The apartment, which was ours, was now his; he would not let me step one foot inside it. The car which was ours was now his, he would not let me share it. And anything else that was ours, he was going to do everything in his power to keep. Even the things he didn’t want. And that was a direct quote. If we’d had kids he would have kept them and never let me see them. He was specific about the coffee machine, possessive about the espresso cups, quite frantic about the toaster and had a rant about the kettle. I allowed him to flip out in the kitchen, as I did in the living room, the bedroom, and even when he followed me into the toilet to shout at me while I peed. I tried to remain as patient and as understanding as I possibly could. I was always a good listener, I could hear him out, what I wasn’t so good at doing was explaining and I was surprised I needed to as much as he required. I was sure that deep down he felt the same about our marriage, but he was so hurt about it happening to him that he had forgotten how there were moments we both felt trapped in something that had been wrong from the beginning. But he was angry, and anger often deafens the ears to reality; his did, anyway, so I waited out the fits of rage and hoped that at some point we could talk about it honestly.
I knew that my reasons were right but I could barely live with the pain I felt in my heart over what I’d done to him. So I had that, and the fact I had failed to stop a man from shooting himself, weighing heavily on my shoulders. It had been months since I’d slept properly, now it felt as though I hadn’t slept at all in weeks.
‘Oscar,’ I said to the client sitting in the armchair across from my desk. ‘The bus driver does not want to kill you.’
‘He does. He hates me. And you wouldn’t know because you haven’t seen him or the way that he looks at me.’
‘And why do you think that the bus driver feels this way about you?’
He shrugged. ‘As soon as the bus stops, he opens the doors then glares at me.’
‘Does he say anything to you?’
‘When I get on, nothing. When I don’t, he kind of grumbles at me.’
‘There are times when you don’t get on?’
He rolled his eyes and looked at his fingers. ‘Sometimes my seat isn’t free.’
‘Your seat? This is new. What seat?’
He sighed, knowing he’d been found out, and confessed. ‘Look, everyone on the bus stares, okay? I’m the only one who gets on at that stop and they all look at me. So because they all stare I sit in the seat behind the driver. You know, the sideways one that faces the window? It’s like a window seat, all tucked away from the rest of the bus.’
‘You feel safe there.’
‘It’s perfect. I could sit in that seat all the way into the city. But sometimes there’s this girl sitting there, this special needs girl, she listens to her iPod and sings Steps for the entire bus to hear. If she’s there I can’t get on and not just because special needs people make me nervous but because it’s my seat, you know? And I can’t see if she’s on it until the bus stops. So I check the seat to see if it’s free, then I get off if she’s there. The bus driver hates me.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘I don’t know, a few weeks?’
‘Oscar, you know what this means. We’re going to have to start this again.’
‘Ah man,’ he buried his face in his hands and slumped right down. ‘But I was halfway into the city.’
‘Be careful not to project your real anxiety on to another future fear. Let’s knock this on the head straight away. So, tomorrow you are going to get on the bus. You are going to sit anywhere there is a free seat on the bus and you are going to sit on it for one stop. Then you can get off and walk home. The next day, Wednesday, you will get on the bus, sitting anywhere, and you will stay on it for two stops and then walk home. On Thursday you will stay on for three stops, and on Friday for four stops, do you understand? You have to take it bit by bit, small steps and you will eventually get there.’
I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. Him or me.
Oscar slowly lifted his face up. It had drained of all colour.
‘You can do this,’ I said gently.
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘And it’s not easy for you, I understand that. Work on the breathing techniques. Soon it won’t be so difficult. You will be able to stay on the bus all the way into the city, and that feeling of fear will be replaced by euphoria. Your worst times will soon become your happiest because you will be overcoming huge challenges.’
He looked unsure.
‘Trust me.’
‘I do, but I just don’t feel brave.’
‘The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.’
‘One of your books?’ He nodded at the packed shelves of self-help books in my office.
‘Nelson Mandela.’ I smiled.
‘Pity you’re in recruitment, you would make a good psychologist,’ he said, pulling himself up from the chair.
‘Yeah, well, I’m doing this for both of us. If you can manage to sit on the bus for more than four stops it will broaden your job opportunities.’ I tried to hide the tension from my voice. Oscar was a highly qualified whizz-kid scientist who I could easily get a job for – in fact I had, three times already – but due to his travel issues, his job opportunities were limited. I was trying to help him overcome his fears so I could finally place him in a job that he wo
uld show up to every day. He was afraid to learn how to drive and I couldn’t stretch myself to becoming a driving instructor, but he had agreed to beat his public transport fear at least. I glanced at the clock over his shoulder. ‘Okay, make an appointment for next week with Gemma, and I look forward to hearing about how you got on.’
As soon as the door closed behind him I dropped my smile and scoured the bookshelf for one of my ‘How to …’ collections. Clients marvelled at the amount of books I kept, and I believed I alone kept my friend Amelia’s small bookshop open. The books were my bibles, my go-to fix-it helpers when I was personally lost or needed solutions for troubled clients. I’d been dreaming of writing one for the past ten years but had never gotten any further than sitting at my desk and turning the computer on, ready, wired to tell my story, only to end up staring at the white screen and the flashing icon, the blankness before me mirroring my creative flow.
My sister Brenda said I was more interested in the idea of writing a book than actually writing it, because if I really wanted to write, I just would, every day, by myself, for myself, whether it was a book or not. She said a writer felt compelled to write whether they had an idea or not, whether they had a computer or not, whether they had a pen and paper or not. Their desire wasn’t determined by a specific pen brand or colour or whether their latte had enough sugar in it or not – things that were distractions and obstacles to my creative process whenever I sat down to write. Brenda often came out with pathetic insights but I feared that for once her observation of me might be true. I wanted to write, I just didn’t know if I could and if I ever made a start I was afraid I’d discover that I couldn’t. I’d slept with How to Write a Successful Novel by my bed for months but I hadn’t opened the pages once, afraid that not being able to follow the tips would mean I could never write a book, so I hid it in the bedside locker instead, parking that particular dream until the time was right.