Hello, Heartbreak Read online

  Now I bent down to pick him up and nearly hurled over him. ‘Sorry, Dermot, feeling a bit rough this morning,’ I told him, as I placed him beside me on the bed. I hoped I wasn’t going to knock him unconscious with my stale-gin breath. He nuzzled his little pink nose against my hand, looking to be petted.

  ‘You’ve come a long way, Dermo,’ I said, playing with his ears. ‘I reckon we can stop backcombing your hair now that most of it’s grown back… although it does give you a nice bit of volume on the crown.’ He started to fall asleep as I teased his fringe with my fingers – he was a long-haired rabbit so we’d cut him a nifty side one. I felt so lucky to have him. My own little ball of love that was available for hugs round the clock. Better than a boyfriend. I sighed heavily.

  ‘Did you know that bollocks didn’t like you? Come to think of it, I don’t think he liked me all that much either.’

  I was so excited, phoning Cian to tell him of our animal-rescue operation. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the wisest way to tell him that the girls and I had adopted a rabbit.

  ‘Cian,’ I proclaimed giddily down the phone, ‘we’re going to be parents.’

  I didn’t know he was going to pass out and hit his head off a chair, did I? Anyway, after he’d come round and made himself a mug of sweet tea, he called me back. He wasn’t too impressed.

  ‘Who the hell keeps a rabbit in their house?’

  ‘Lots of people, actually. You can litter train them and they don’t need as much looking after as a dog. Cian, he’s just so cute, you’ll love him.’

  ‘Izzy, it’s a rabbit. Get a grip.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s our little adopted rescue rabbit. Actually, he’s far from little. He’s humungous – we think he weighs about two stone. Anyway, Keelin reckons she can train him to collect the post from the doormat. You have to call around later and see him –’

  ‘For God’s sake, Iz, it’s just stupid. Tenner says you’ll have brought it back by the end of the week.’

  Everything I did was ‘stupid’ in those last few months. Looking back now, I can’t understand why I didn’t see how impatient he was with me, how much I irritated him. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to see it. I remember thinking, Okay, he’s a bit off-hand with me, but all couples go through phases like this, right? After all, it was me and Cian. We were in love, mad about each other, always had been. He said we belonged together, and I believed that one hundred per cent.

  How. Bloody. Stupid.

  Oh, God. Now I remembered why I’d drunk so much last night. After doing a three-minute-mile to the off-licence, I’d arrived home with a bottle of gin and informed Keelin and Susie that my aim for the day was to end up in A & E with alcohol poisoning, and would anyone care to join me?

  Susie had still been greyish-green from the night before, but when she saw the state I was in she realized this wasn’t something she could wimp out of. ‘The hair of the dog that bit you!’ she said cheerily, as she disappeared into the kitchen to get glasses and ice. I could have sworn I heard some stifled gagging but, fair play to her, she didn’t complain and came back out a few minutes later with three tumblers in her left hand, a bag of ice in the right and a tortured smile plastered to her face.

  We sat for hours, drinking and bitching about Cian and Edna McClodmutton, which made me feel so much better. Keelin told me all about the TV ad Edna had done after leaving drama school. I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it.

  ‘No way!’ I screeched.

  ‘Come on, Izzy, you remember the one with the girl on roller blades on Dun Laoghaire pier going on about how her new winged sanitary towels helped her period fly by? That’s her!’

  Talking about Cian was harder, but as the girls reeled off anecdotes about his less attractive moments, I started to laugh. Susie reminded me about the time he had handed everyone his ‘new business card’, saying he’d been promoted in work, only for us to discover later that he’d printed it himself in the local Spar.

  ‘The stupid gobshite,’ I snorted, through fits of laughter. ‘What the hell did I ever see in him?’

  An hour later I was crying so much Keelin thought I needed sedation.

  ‘I want him back,’ I wailed. ‘I miss him so much.’

  Susie sat there handing me tissue after tissue, while Keelin put the used ones into the bin. It was a perfect chain of command, which continued until my eyes stung and my chest heaved with long, worn-out, defeated sighs.

  The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, but I think that after I’d cried myself to the point where I resembled a piece of dried fruit, I crawled up to bed and passed out. This morning, lying prone, I resembled one of those women you see on programmes with titles like When Plastic Surgery Goes Horribly Wrong.

  ‘Oh, Dermot, I’m so fecking tired of feeling like this.’

  I tried to look on the bright side. Maybe bumping into them yesterday was supposed to bring me closure. If closure meant ripping open the wound and hosing it with vinegar.

  I wondered if he was in love with her, whether they had a lot of sex. And whether it was brilliant. Maybe she was into stuff like swinging upside-down in a gimp suit. Maybe he thought I was boring. Did they say, ‘I love you,’ to each other? Was ‘Love you always, Edna McClodmutton’ the new ‘Love you always, Izzy’?

  I rolled over and covered my head with the pillow, trying to block it all out. I’d have given anything not to be able to feel for one day. It was like that form of torture where someone has a drip of water landing on their head in the same spot over and over again. Drip, drip, drip, drip. Constant. Relentless. These miserable drips of thoughts would drive me mad soon.

  I was so bloody fed up with it all – fed up with myself. It was over. They were together. That was how it was. I couldn’t allow myself to go on wallowing. Getting nowhere. But how did I go about getting on with my life? Someone, anyone, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I don’t care what it takes. Give me a sign to show me the way out of the pit I’m in.

  There was a knock on my door.

  ‘Holy shit!’ I shouted, bolting upright in the bed. ‘Dermot? Did you hear that? Maybe it’s an angel! Jesus, Dermot, what if I’m blessed?’

  ‘What if you’re what?’ Keelin asked, opening the door and poking her head round it.

  ‘Er, nothing,’ I said breezily. I’d obviously been watching way too much Highway to Heaven.

  Keelin bounded in and plonked herself on the end of the bed. Where the hell had she mustered the energy to pull off that little display? I thought I’d got her totally polluted last night, but now, even though her pyjamas were on inside-out and back-to-front and she had chunks of hair matted to her left cheek, she looked a lot less hung-over than I did. She couldn’t look bad if she tried. She was the only chick I knew who could pull off a short black blunt-cut bob with a fringe, a nose-piercing, black nail polish, tank tops and jeans, and look absolutely stunning. Minus the PJs and with her hair brushed, she might have been on her way to a Vogue photo-shoot.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay, I think. Although I’m not in a fit state for any public appearances today.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity. You haven’t made any of the ribbon-cutting ceremonies you’ve been pencilled in for lately. Will I ring the mayor to cancel today’s or do you want to call him yourself?’

  ‘You ring him,’ I said, lobbing a pillow at her head.

  ‘Oh, Izzy! You look like one of those post-op plastic-surgery people on the telly.’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly how I feel.’

  ‘You’ve been doing really well. Except for last night’s mild to strong relapse, you’ve made serious progress, dipping your toe back into your social life after the recluse thing. Please don’t let this little fall keep you down too long.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said, only half believing myself.

  ‘Well, if you’re not heading out to that ribbon-cutting, it’s a darned good thing it’s a rainy miserable Sunday. I reckon we sit ourselves down in fro
nt of the telly for the day and eat ourselves sick.’

  ‘Sounds brilliant!’

  And that was exactly what we did. Susie, Keelin, Dermot and I sat huddled under a duvet on the couch in our pyjamas – except Dermot, who doesn’t wear them – and watched old movies all afternoon. And apart from the abject misery and feeling like a worthless unlovable cretin, I felt somewhat uplifted.

  Until Aidan, Susie’s idiot boyfriend, arrived. How I could love Susie so much and him so little remained a mystery to me. He let himself in (cheeky bollocks), came over and kissed Susie (euch), then flicked on the lights so he could read the sports pages in his tabloid. I did the squinting-and-shielding-my-face-with-my-hands thing in the hope that he’d get the hint, but he didn’t.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ he inquired. ‘Don’t tell me, you had another trial going-out night last night and someone abused you about Facebook again.’ He laughed so hard he almost choked.

  I wished he would.

  ‘Aidan!’ Susie snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Izzy, sorry,’ he said, still chuckling. ‘You just look a bit mad is all, like you’ve been crying. And there you are under another duvet. I just reckoned you’d had another meltdown.’

  I couldn’t let this happen again. I couldn’t go back there. I couldn’t let Aidan, of all people, be right. I couldn’t have someone like him laughing at me. A wannabe actor who pretended to come from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’, complete with hugely annoying inner-city accent when he actually hailed from Dalkey. What a plank! No, an idiot like Aidan laughing at me was too much to bear.

  Mentally I gave myself two quick slaps across my face. I’ll show him! I’ll show them all!

  8

  I woke up on Monday morning convinced it was the first day of the rest of my life. A new beginning! I was going to transform myself into an updated, improved model of the old Isobel Keegan. I would be the ‘Izzy Turbo 3000’. Okay, okay, so I might not be all that new and improved but, sure as hell, I was going to get back to normal at the very least. I was going to get back to me. Enough was enough.

  First and foremost, I would make an effort to look like a member of the female species, starting with my legs even though there was no immediate prospect of any man seeing or touching them. I glanced down at them as I swung them over the side of the bed. Not a sight for the faint-hearted: they looked like two giant Velcro watchstraps.

  A full-length mirror was propped against the wall opposite my bed. Through the ten inches of dust layered on its surface, I could just make out the reflection of someone who looked a lot like Wayne Rooney. That someone was me.

  I shuffled over and wiped off the dust with a sock. Then I stood in front of it and forced myself to take a cold, hard look. Okay, not quite as bad as I’d thought, but still only some dim lighting and a Man U jersey away from you know who. So, what was needed? A haircut, pronto, and my highlights. Then I just had to pluck my eyebrows. Sorry, eyebrow.

  What else? Well, I wasn’t exactly fat, but I’d put on a few pounds over the last couple of months. What else was there to do at weekends? My initial intention had been to read the entire Jane Austen collection and learn a new language, but I’d passed the time by eating non-stop and watching films about scorned women on the True Movies channel. I pulled up my pyjama top and prodded my pot belly. Yes, the time had come to wean myself off the mayonnaise drip I’d become addicted to. Food loves mayonnaise? Tell me about it. I can actually hear my sandwiches say, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ if I don’t slap on lashings of it.

  Every couple of weeks I’d tell myself that, starting on Monday – it won’t work on any other day: it’s a well-known fact that you’re only allowed to wipe the slate clean on a Monday – I was going to look on life with a whole new attitude. It rarely lasted beyond Tuesday afternoon, but this time would be different because it had to be. I had two choices here: either I kept myself locked away and ate troughs of mayonnaise until I ended up with an arse I couldn’t squeeze through the front door even if I wanted to, or I sorted myself out. Which meant no more pining for that bollocks, no more playing ‘Spot the Difference’ between me and Edna McClodmutton, and no more self-loathing. It was time to look forwards, onwards and upwards. Eat All Bran! Drink green tea! Wear mascara! I would say my affirmation in front of the mirror every morning: ‘I will be a girl! I will be a girl! I will be a girl!’

  I marched over to my wardrobe, flung open the doors and pulled out my old grey tracksuit bottoms – the ones that retained my body shape even when I wasn’t wearing them – and threw them into the bin. They looked so abandoned. Would it be weird if I held on to them as a sort of comfort blanket? As a souvenir of what I’d been through? Okay, Izzy, they’re just ugly, worn-out skank pants that will impede my new life as a hottie.

  If I was going to look less like a native from the Land of the Dumped, I had to spruce up my work outfits too. Shiny black polyester trousers and a white shirt weren’t going to get people wondering whether it was Elle or Vogue I subscribed to. On the mornings I didn’t have time/couldn’t be arsed to iron a shirt, I’d throw on one of my long-sleeve cotton T-shirts, which I had in brown, blue and black. They came in a handy multi-pack from M&S and I’d managed to get them for eight euro, reduced from fifteen…

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I just heard myself.

  Hang on a second while I play that back in my head.

  Yep. Just as I’d feared – shocking. Exactly when had I turned into a euro-saving, unfashionable, hairy bloke with bad clothes and one eyebrow?

  A wave of nausea washed over me. Good God, if I hadn’t rescued myself now, I might have been only days, hours, minutes away from heading to the shops in a pair of brushed cotton pyjamas and fake Uggs.

  A hazy series of vague memories in which I was wearing nice clothes drifted from the back of my mind. I willed myself to bring them to the front. A sparkly pink hairclip… a gold handbag…

  Concentrate!

  … fitted jeans… a dusty pink wraparound dress…

  All from my Before days. I’d kind of split my wardrobe into Before and After I was dumped. Pathetic, I know. Feminists would have set fire to my bra (while I was still wearing it) to teach me a lesson.

  Back to those fitted jeans. I rummaged furiously through a mountain of threadbare hoodies and washed-out, oversized skater denims until I spotted a leg of my Citizens of Humanity jeans. I reefed the rest out and held them up triumphantly. I wanted to be a Citizen of Humanity again!

  Well, I was going to have to remain at refugee status for now because there was no way I’d fit into them any time soon. Not unless I lived off ice cubes for a month, got my stomach stapled and had a parasite implanted into my digestive system. Christ, I was a skinny bitch in my Before days.

  I slipped the jeans on a hanger and balanced it on the wardrobe door. I scribbled ‘Easy on the Miracle Whip, Izzy’ on a Post-it and stuck it to one of the front pockets, as a reminder. ‘Soon, my lovelies,’ I reassured them. ‘Soon we’ll be back together. Walking down the streets together, sitting in fancy bars together. And if you’re really good, I’ll do my best to find you a nice manly pair of jeans to wrap yourself around now and again.’

  Proactive and charged with enthusiasm, I rooted through my drawers for a photo of me in my pre-hermit days, so I could tape it to the mirror as a visual reference of my new goal. I stumbled on a photo of me, Keelin and Susie from a school trip in third year. We were no beauts – did we really think we looked good wearing our jeans up around our ribcages like that? With Paisley shirts tucked into them? I couldn’t believe I’d let the head of the Paisley Cult – my mother – brainwash me like that. As for the blue mascara and the wild, unruly fuzz on our heads – well, it wasn’t our fault the hair straightener had yet to be invented. No need to stick this one to the mirror.

  Ah, here was a cute one of me, Emma and Stephen on the sofa at home as kids. Maybe ‘cute’ wasn’t the right word. Emma and I looked traumatized, as if Stephen had just bashed us over the heads wit
h the fire truck in his left hand. That stood to reason – he was always a grumpy little shit.

  Shuffling around a bit more, I came across one of me and Cian – inevitable, really. I’d accumulated so many over the years, from different parties, family dinners, holidays. I’d taken this one when we were mucking about at his place. We’d just watched Notting Hill and he told me he wanted photographic evidence to keep as proof the next time I gave out that he never watched chick flicks with me. He’s holding up the DVD pointedly in one hand while taking the photo of the two of us, laughing, with the other.

  God, it could have happened only yesterday. I could still smell him, hear his laughter, feel his cheek against mine. I wanted to climb back in and relive it. And, just like that, my resolve was melting like ice cream on a hot stove. I felt defeated and exhausted at the prospect of attempting anything other than schlepping about feeling sorry for myself.

  But the longer I stared at the photo, the more I started to pull it apart. Had he met Edna McClodmutton at that stage? Had he cosied up on a couch with her? Watched a romantic movie with her? Had he already slept with her when it was taken? Bile rose into the back of my throat. I lunged for the scissors on my dresser and, with two swift strokes, hacked his face out of the photo. ‘Well, you cut me right out of your life, so I’m gonna cut you out of my photo!’ Hardly even stevens, but it was a milestone. Filled with a sense of purpose again, I taped the other half of the photo to the mirror.

  I wanted that old Izzy back, even if Cian didn’t.

  I did.

  I studied myself in the photo. Okay, so I didn’t have long, silky black hair like Edna McClodmutton, or dark brown eyes and slightly Asian features, but I did have honey blonde hair that fell in nice waves. And Susie said my face had far more personality than hers and that my wide blue eyes had more sparkle than Edna could even dream of. Keelin had said she thought Edna was very striking – which made me cry: why did she have to rub my nose in it? Then she told me to shut up and let her finish her sentence. Edna was not pretty, she said, but I was. And when I shook my head she furrowed her forehead and almost growled, ‘Don’t give me that, Izzy. You know it. You’ve been told you’re gorgeous your whole life.’