No, no and no. Maggie knew the answers. But Dr Phil hadn’t the benefit of Maggie Maguire’s Guide to Life.
Don’t stuff your bra to make your A-cups look like B-cups. Boys won’t get close enough to notice but nasty girls from school will. Nobody wants to be No-Tit Maguire for a whole month, as Maggie knew from experience.
Guys who say things like ‘I’ve never met anyone like you’ are not lying, exactly, but probably don’t mean it the way you think they do.
Maggie had a new piece of advice to add to the Guide:
When in doubt, put your running shoes on. Nothing will improve but at least you don’t have to stare your defeat in the face on a daily basis. And if you can’t see it, surely it can’t be there?
In a trendy little internet café close to the apartment, she ordered a latte and a session on the web. Flicking through flights to Dublin, she found one that left the following afternoon, giving her time to pack as well as to negotiate with the library for emergency leave. When she’d booked it, she knew there was only one more big task left: to go home and say goodbye to Grey.
Goodbye Grey, I’m going and we’re selling up so you’ll have to take your jail bait somewhere else from now on.
No, too bitter.
Bye, Grey, I’m going home to Dublin for a while to think. You cheating son of a bitch.
Again, too bitter.
Maybe she ought to stick at Goodbye, Grey.
When she got back to the apartment, Grey and the remains of a Thai meal were both in the living-room area. Maggie didn’t feel even mildly hungry.
The words ‘You lying, cheating bastard’ ran round in her head like a washing machine on final spin.
‘Hello,’ she said. See, not bitter.
‘Honey.’ Grey leapt off the couch and went to touch her, but the frozen look in Maggie’s eyes stopped him. They stood several feet apart, staring at each other, misery on both their faces.
‘I am so sorry,’ Grey said, and he sounded it.
He honestly was sorry. But sorry that he’d had sex with a stunning blonde student or sorry he’d been caught? Bastard.
‘I love you. You might not believe that, but I do.’
‘Then why did you do it?’ Maggie asked. She hadn’t meant to ask anything, had meant to tell him bluntly she was going home for a while. But the question had shot out of her mouth before she could stop it.
Grey’s gaze didn’t falter, she had to give him that. ‘I don’t know,’ he said dismally. ‘She was there, I could have her…it sounds dumb, but I still love you, Maggie. You’re different, special.’
The spinning washing machine still kept rattling out ‘lying, cheating bastard’ as Maggie struggled to make sense of Grey’s words. Her heart was broken and this was his sticking plaster?
‘She was there? Is that your only excuse, Grey? She was bloody well there? If I’m so special, why would you even want to make love with someone else whether she was there or not? If I’m so special, then you wouldn’t want to look crossways at another woman, never mind screw one in our bed. IN OUR BED!’
He looked taken aback at this. Maggie was not a shouter.
‘It wasn’t making love, it was sex. It’s not what you and I have. That’s…’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she snapped, ‘special.’ Infidelity must have a previously undetected side effect of robbing people of their linguistic skills. Even Grey. She had never known Grey to run out of words before.
‘I’m not explaining it correctly,’ he began.
‘Oh yes, you are, and it still doesn’t make sense. You’re the one who says he’s logical, I’m supposed to be the klutzy one who forgets her bank card numbers and can’t program her mobile phone.’ Maggie knew her voice was rising but she couldn’t help it. If Grey was tongue-tied, her word power was on 110 per cent. ‘So how can you come up with such an illogical explanation? If I’m so different and special, you shouldn’t want sex or love with anyone other than me. Simple. QED. That’s what I thought I was getting when we moved in together: fidelity, monogamy, no threesomes. Did I miss the briefing where you said we’d sleep with other people? Or were you just lying through your teeth when you said that I was the sort of woman you wanted, not a pneumatic blonde like all your previous girlfriends?’
‘I wasn’t lying and I do believe in fidelity, really,’ Grey said helplessly. He sat on the edge of the armchair, running a hand through his hair. He had such long, sensitive fingers, like a pianist, fingers that could elicit a ready response from Maggie. He still looked handsome and desirable, with sexily rumpled hair as if he’d been so lost in his books he had forgotten to comb it. Maggie, who spent all her time surrounded by books, had always found this combination of brains and beauty utterly captivating. She could totally understand Ms Peachy Skin wanting to sleep with him. Grey was gorgeous, clever, and powerful within his sphere, all wrapped up in one package.
Just not faithful.
‘I love you, Grey, I don’t look at other men,’ she said. ‘I don’t think about anyone else but you, I almost don’t see anyone else but you. If there was anyone else there, if Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Wesley Snipes and anyone else you can think of were there for the taking, you know what?’ She paused. ‘I’d still say no.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, so sorry.’ The long piano-player’s fingers ran through his hair again and for a flicker of an instant, Maggie thought of his hands running through the girl’s hair in the throes of passion, twisting it and pulling gently like he did with Maggie.
‘I love your hair,’ he’d mutter when they were naked together. Maggie almost never cut it now. Grey loved its length lying tangled on the pillow as he hung over her, cradling her face before he kissed her. He thought she was feminine and sexy, things Maggie had never felt in her life until he’d come along and made her feel them. Now he’d taken all that away.
When her mother or Shona or other people said she was beautiful, she didn’t believe them. They loved her, they were being kind to her. But when Grey said it, she had believed him. He made her beautiful because she glowed from being with him.
That he had so much power over her made her feel helpless now. Going back to the sort of woman he’d had before her made it a double betrayal – a blonde with curves that Maggie would never have. She felt so hurt that she wanted to hurt him too.
‘You’re lying. You’re not sorry, only sorry I got home early and ruined it all. You screwed her. In. Our. Bed,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s not love and respect.’ She paused. ‘Were there others?’
A strange look touched his face briefly, a look of sheer guilt, and it was gone so quickly that only someone who loved his face and knew it in every mood would have noticed. But Maggie was that person. She noticed.
‘No,’ he said. She didn’t believe him.
The armchair seemed to rise up to greet her. Collapsing into it, she hugged her knees to her chest, a gesture that said ‘keep out’.
There had been others, of that she was sure and she wasn’t strong enough to hear about them. Her mother was ill, crying and not coping. Her father was asking for her help. Maggie’s world was topsy-turvy.
‘Just tell me, what’s so hard about fidelity?’ she whispered, afraid she knew the answer.
It had to be her fault. This confirmed what she’d known all along. She’d always felt lucky to have Grey, astonished that he was with her.
Someone