In fact, the improvements to my face were so subtle that Mannix didn’t even notice until I told him, and then he got angry. ‘You can do anything you like,’ he said. ‘But don’t do it behind my back.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. But I wasn’t. I was really very, very pleased with my perkified face.
However, despite my jabs and all the Pilates and running I’d been doing, Fletch deemed that I still wasn’t TV-ready. ‘Watch yourself on the monitor,’ he said. ‘See how round your torso looks.’
My cheeks flamed with shame.
‘Hey, you’re okay in real life,’ he said. ‘But this is our job. We’ve got to fix this before the great American public sees it. Get yourself a nutritionist.’
‘I already have one,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Gilda Ashley.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know her?’ I asked.
‘Just the name. So this is great, you have a nutritionist. Get her to turn you into a carborexic. No carbs like, ever. You don’t even look at bread. If you accidentally see a pastry, repeat this mantra in your head: May you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.’
‘Is the mantra for me or the pastry?’
‘The pastry. It can’t be part of your life but you don’t wish it ill, right?’
‘… Right.’
‘If you say it often enough, you’ll find that your attitude genuinely changes to one of love and compassion.’
‘… Okay.’
Funnily enough, I’d always heard it was Los Angeles that was full of nutters, not New York. Well, we live and learn.
So Gilda got total control of my diet. Every morning she delivered a chill-container with my food for the day. For breakfast I got a strange green juice including, amongst other things, kale and cayenne pepper.
‘Mid-morning, if you get really hungry – and I mean really hungry – you can eat this.’ She gave me a little Tupperware box.
‘What is it?’
‘A brazil nut.’
I looked in at it. It rumbled around in the box, seeming so small that it made me laugh and laugh and soon Gilda was laughing too.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit sad-looking, right?’
‘What would Laszlo Jellico have said if you gave him one of these?’ I changed my voice to a pompous boom: ‘This is no good to me, Gilda my dear. Bring me Amity Bonesman’s boobies! Let me suckle on them awhile.’
Gilda was still laughing – sort of – but she’d gone pink.
‘I’m sorry!’ I clapped a hand over my mouth.
‘That’s okay,’ she said, a little coldly.
I smiled, uncertainly. ‘I’m sorry, Gilda.’
I realized I was afraid of losing her. She was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend in New York. I missed Karen and Zoe, and I was working too hard to have time to make any other women friends.
‘It’s okay.’ Gilda smiled. ‘We’re good.’
Starting with Thanksgiving at the end of November, New York turned into party season. Blisset Renown had their Happy Holidays shindig on 10 December. But they held it in their offices because, as everyone kept telling me, ‘publishing was dying on its feet’ and it would be unseemly to spend a fortune on a big blowout.
I was making awkward small talk with two copy-editors when something sharp was poked into my bum. I turned around. It was Phyllis Teerlinck, whom I literally had not clapped eyes on since the day she’d done my book deal, all that time ago in August. ‘Hey there,’ she said, wielding the pen that she’d stuck into me. ‘My God, what have they done? They’ve “New Yorked” you! Shiny and skinny!’
‘Lovely to see you, Phyllis.’
‘No touching!’ She repelled my proto-embrace by showing me the palm of her hand. ‘I hate these things. Everyone kissing everyone else’s asses. Hey there, girls.’ She addressed the two women I’d been talking to. ‘I’m just picking up some cupcakes for my cats. Yeah, I’m the crazy lady who lives alone with her cats. Give me that tray.’ She decanted a tray of pastel-iced mini-cupcakes into a large Tupperware container, which she then put into a small wheely bag. ‘So, Stella, where’s that sexy man of yours?’
‘Over there.’
Standing nearby, leaning against some shelves, Mannix was talking to Gilda. Gilda said something that made him laugh.
‘Great teeth,’ Phyllis said. ‘Very white. Who’s that little popsicle he’s talking to?’
‘Her name is Gilda Ashley.’
‘Oh yeah? Why’s she here?’
‘She asked if she could come. And … why not?’
‘You trust Mannix with her?’
To amuse Phyllis, I shook my head. ‘Nooooo.’
Phyllis laughed. ‘Wise, Stella.’
As if he felt our scrutiny, Mannix looked at me and mouthed, ‘Okay?’
I nodded. Yes, okay.
Then he noticed Phyllis and he came over, trailing Gilda with him.
‘I hear you did a deal,’ Phyllis said to Mannix. ‘With a teeny-tiny Irish publishing house. Good for you! Let’s hope I haven’t accidentally omitted any other territories from our contract, right? You’d make a good agent.’
Mannix inclined his head graciously. ‘Coming from you, that’s quite a compliment. So will we see you in the new year?’
‘What? You want me to take you two out for a fancy lunch on my dime? When Stella’s written her second book and the time is right, I’ll do a new deal and make you a lot of money. Until then, Happy holidays!’
She noodled her way through the guests, then lifted a tray of cupcakes from the hands of a surprised-looking intern and emptied it into one of her boxes.
‘She’s your agent?’ Gilda said. ‘My God, she’s … horrible.’
On 21 December, Mannix, Betsy, Jeffrey and I flew to Ireland for Christmas. It was all a bit weird because we had nowhere to live. My house had tenants in it and Mannix had no home at all. There wasn’t enough room in Mum and Dad’s for the four of us. Turbo-capable as Karen was, I didn’t think it was fair to land us all on top of her and her two young children. Rosa’s house was full because Mannix’s parents had come from France. Hero and her family had had to downsize to a two-bedroomed box when Harry had been made redundant from his banking job, so there was no space there either.
In the end, Betsy and Jeffrey stayed with Ryan, Mannix stayed in Roland’s little apartment and I shuttled between both places.
I was anxious about meeting Mannix’s parents, Norbit and Hebe and, as it transpired, I was right to be. Despite their reputation for being high-spirited and jolly, they clearly didn’t think I was good enough for Mannix. His mum eyed me coldly and treated me to a limp handshake. ‘So you’re the one,’ she said. Then she noticed Georgie, who had shown up at this Taylor family get-together, and she gasped, ‘Darling Georgie. Angel girl. Let me smother you in kisses.’
Mannix’s dad didn’t even bother shaking hands with me, just scampered around Georgie, like a dog wagging his tail, trying to get in to lick her. I swallowed down my hurt and decided to be adult about this. But it agitated the suspicion I always carried, that I was a gatecrasher in Mannix’s world.
Norbit and Hebe weren’t the only ones who took issue with me. Ryan, also, was quite horrible – nothing new there. One night he came home, totally scuttered, and said, ‘There she is. The woman who stole my life.’
‘Stop it, Ryan; you’re jarred.’
‘It should have been me,’ he said. ‘It was all over the papers here when you got your deal with Harp! And it’s only going to get worse when your shitty little book comes out. You’ll be on the telly and all. From now on I refuse to call you Stella. You are known to me as The Woman Who Stole My Life.’
The following morning, he said, ‘I remember what I said last night. And I’m not sorry.’
‘Grand. I’m going out to see Zoe. She’s nice to me.’
But Zoe told me she was ‘on the turn’. ‘I’m moving from sad to bitter.’
‘Ah, do
n’t,’ I said.
‘But I want to. I even have a mantra: Every day, in every way, I am becoming bitterer and bitterer.’
Not everything in Ireland was unpleasant – Karen and I had a great night out with Georgie. And I was really pleased to catch up with Roland. He was still decked out in his gaudy threads but had lost a bit of weight.
‘I know!’ he said, wobbling his still-enormous tummy. ‘Skinny, right? You’re worried? You think I have a wasting condition?’
He made me laugh so much.
‘I’ve been doing the Nordic walking,’ he said, with pride. ‘Soon I’ll look like Kate Moss.’
Back in New York, Gilda scolded me for gaining six pounds in Ireland. ‘We’ll put you on a juice-fast. Ten days to start with and then we’ll review it.’
Ten days!
The juice-fast was horribly difficult. It wasn’t simply that I was always hungry, but I found myself crying a lot. Three feet of snow fell in New York that January, bitter winds blew in straight from the frozen north and I was always cold and always weepy. Except for now and again when I found myself white-hot with rage, usually over something ridiculously small.
Gilda was kind but immovable. ‘All those pieces of pie you ate in Ireland? Now it’s payback time.’
One particularly miserable morning, it all became too much. The snowflakes were blowing in vicious flurries outside the window and I felt shaky and weak. Then the phone rang and a posh woman’s voice said, ‘May I speak with Mannix?’
‘He’s out at the moment. He’s at the swimming pool. This is Stella. Is that Hebe … er … Mannix’s mum?’
‘This is she. Please inform my son that I called. I trust you can do that?’
Then she hung up. Dumbfounded, I stood staring at the handset. I didn’t want to let myself cry, but there was no one in the apartment to see, so I gave in. However, when Gilda arrived, I was still sobbing.
‘Sweetie, what’s wrong?’ She was full of concern.
‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’ I wiped my face. ‘It’s just Mannix’s mum. She rang a little while ago and she talked to me like I was a … sneaky servant, a dishonest lowlife, and it scares me.’
‘But she lives in France, right?’ Gilda said. ‘You never have to see her.’
‘But what if Mannix thinks the same way? Like subconsciously?’
Gilda rolled her eyes.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘You don’t understand. You just think we’re all Irish, that we’re all the same, but Mannix and I come from different worlds. We don’t have much in common.’
‘Looks to me like you’ve got plenty in common.’
‘You mean … the sex?’ My red face went even redder. Okay, admittedly, that was lovely. ‘But what if that’s all we have? We’ll only get so far on that. Gilda, could we please not do our run today? I’m too upset. My legs feel like jelly.’
Sympathetically, she shook her head. ‘My job is to make you run. Your job depends on you doing it.’
I put on my running gear, and out in the street the wind hit my face like slaps from a cruel hand. As I ran, I cried, and the tears froze on my cheeks, and I thought: I’m not able for this life. I’m not tough enough. Only hard people survive in this city, people with abnormal self-belief and drive and inner strength.
‘Happy birthday,’ Mannix whispered in my ear.
I opened my eyes, blinking to wake myself up.
‘Champagne?’ I said. ‘In bed? For breakfast?’
‘It’s a special day.’
I sat up and sipped from the glass.
‘Are you ready for your gift?’ Mannix produced a miniature black carrier bag, which looked sheeny and expensive.
‘Is it a puppy?’ I asked.
He laughed.
‘Will I open it?’ I undid the bag’s ribbons and found a small black box within. That too had ribbons and I undid them slowly. Inside the box was a black velvet pouch and I emptied its contents into the palm of my hand. Out tumbled a pair of silver earrings, set with stones that glowed with a clear, intense fire.
‘Are they … diamonds?’ I was awestruck. ‘Oh my God, they are!’
I owned no proper jewellery. My engagement ring from Ryan had cost about a tenner.
‘This is awkward but, just so you know,’ Mannix said, ‘I paid for them, you know …’ Out of a different bank account, not from our joint account.
‘Is this how you thought your life would be at forty?’ Mannix asked.
I could hardly speak. I was living in New York, with this beautiful man, and in four days’ time I started my first book tour of the USA. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.
This was the moment to tell Mannix that I loved him. The words rushed into my mouth, but I swallowed them back – they would sound as if they’d been prompted by the gift of expensive jewellery, which was a whole world of wrong.
Gilda’s birthday gift to me was two tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert, because I’d always had a thing for him. To make things extra-great, Gilda gave me a one-day-only free pass on chocolate, ice cream and wine because she said that I’d dance it off. We went together to the gig and I adored every second: I shrieked every time Justin thrust his hips and wept buckets during ‘Cry Me a River’ and danced so much in an over-adrenalized state that my hurty-hurty high heels caused me no pain whatsoever. As we made our way home, me in a state of almost ecstatic happiness, Gilda observed, ‘We need to do this sort of thing more often. You don’t have enough fun in your life. Have you ever been to the ballet? To Swan Lake?’
‘No, and to be honest, Gilda, it doesn’t sound like much fun to me.’
‘Oh, but you’re wrong, Stella, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s … transcendent. I’ll get tickets. I think you’d love it.’
‘… Okay.’
And, to my great surprise, I did.
And then it was time to start the book tour …
At Good Morning Cleveland, the make-up woman found me a challenge. ‘Your eyebrows, what am I supposed to do with them?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘They’re just … awful.’
How productive I was! Only 8.30 a.m. and I’d already been up for three hours, flown five hundred miles and had my eyebrows insulted.
‘I can colour them in,’ she said, ‘but you need to not pluck them.’
That was interesting, because one of yesterday’s make-up people in – where had it been? Des Moines? – had told me they were far too bushy. But I didn’t have the energy to go to bat on behalf of my eyebrows.
The feel of the soft make-up pencil on my forehead was lovely. I’d just close my eyes for a moment and …
‘… Stella?’
I jerked awake; I was looking into a young woman’s face. ‘Power nap!’ I said, thickly.
But there was nothing power-y about it – I could feel drool on my chin and I hadn’t a clue where I was.
‘I’m Chickie,’ the woman said. ‘You’re in Cleveland, Ohio, and you need to wake up; you’re on TV in seven minutes.’
‘How long was I out?’
‘Thirty seconds,’ Mannix said.
‘You’re Mannix,’ Chickie said. ‘And you’re going to need some base.’
‘Excuse me?’ Mannix said.
‘We need you on the show with Stella. We need to focus on, like, do you feel emasculated working for her?’
‘With me,’ I said, for what felt like the millionth time. ‘He works with me.’
This kept happening everywhere we went on this book tour. The media were obsessed with Mannix, and their questions always went one of two ways: how could I live with myself, having entirely emasculated a man? Or how did it feel, being a traitor to feminism by ceding management of my career to my fiendishly clever, controlling partner?
‘We need to talk to him,’ Chickie persisted.
‘No,’ Mannix said.
‘See!’ I said. ‘Not emasculated at all.’
But Chickie had her orders. ‘We need him in this slot.’
‘You don’t need my ugly mug on TV,’ Mannix said.
‘… You’re cute.’ Chickie seemed confused. ‘Like, for an old guy. I mean, older guy. Hey, I didn’t mean … I need –’
‘Stella is the star. You need her.’
‘But –’
‘I need to not go on your show.’
Chickie glared at him for the longest time, then stomped away, speaking rapidly into her headset.
‘I need people to stop saying they “need” stuff.’ Mannix watched her disappear. Regretfully, he said to me, ‘Sorry, baby.’
It was okay. I guessed we’d got away with it.
But we hadn’t. As a punishment, the host didn’t give details of my mid-morning book-signing, so no one came. But maybe no one would have come anyway. I was quickly learning that the whole book-signing business was impossible to predict. I’d assumed that it would be difficult to scare up a crowd in the bigger cities because they had so much more choice and that people would be more likely to come out in droves in the backwaters, but it didn’t always work that way.
Anyway, whatever the reason, Cleveland didn’t love me and I was too tired to care. It was nice to not have to talk to dozens of people, to not have to say the same thing again and again. Mind you, it was hard sitting upright, a smile fixed to my face. There was a very real danger that I was going to nod off and crash headlong onto the table.
For eleven days now, I’d been on the road promoting One Blink at a Time. There hadn’t been one day off. If you drew the route of the tour on a map of the USA and saw how often I was doubling back on myself, you’d laugh.
But I kept reminding myself of what Gilda had told me: I was lucky. I’m lucky, I told myself. I’m lucky, I’m lucky, I’m lucky. I was so tired I could barely dress myself, but I was living the dream.