Page 100 of Such a Good Couple
Fionn. Ollie was star-spotted at least half a dozen times.
Clara: Ugh I knooooow. I’m getting it too. A woman in the playground told me we were ‘goals’. That’s Ireland, they wouldn’t give an actual movie star the soot of paying them any attention but go on telly randomly for three weeks andyou’re famous.
Maggie: At least all the ‘think pieces’ about Divorce Island being the most toxic thing on telly since The Swan are going easy on you guys. Jesus, I’d hate to be Mary and Derek – people are STILL trying to ring Joe Duffy even though the man is literally retired. Every one of them probably siding with Derek if the posts on socials are anything to go by. Poor Mary.
Annie: I heard she’s doing her own spin-off show, though! There’s Something About Mary.
Clara: Yeah. The plan is she’ll be going on Divorce Cruises through January with a crew following her new single life.
Maggie: Demented. Ireland’s becoming nearly as batshit as America.
She then snapped a pic of the pizza and sent it through.
Maggie: Bed picnic and Encanto over here.
She switched over to her email to check if there’d been any updates from Drew; it was still office hours in New York.
She’d sent the latest draft on Monday and was anxious but also excited to hear his thoughts. She was quietly optimistic that it was getting close to being finished. Sure enough there was an email, the subject line of which gave her a powerful jolt of happiness.
You’re a fucking genius, honey!
Drew’s email confirmed she was right to have been optimistic.
A near-perfect script. I love what you’ve done with the ending. Medea being vilified in the press but also lionised by scorned women everywhere. It’s dark but such a funny take. I can see the op-eds now. ‘A merciless critique of Hollywood!’ ‘#MeToo Returns!’ ‘Feminism gone too far’, yada yada! And no doubt there will be some gossip in some circles about how autobiographical it might be. All excellent for selling the show. I suggest you take a break from the writing now. We’re going to work on casting. We want to net a big name, which will require major forward planning to iron out scheduling conflicts. These stars always think they want to do theatre but then they realise it’s a six-month commitment as opposed to six weeks on set! Obviously depending on the theatre availability Broadway shows can be open-ended. If tickets are selling, we go and go. We don’t want to be swapping cast too soon. I don’t want you to get your hopes up but we’ve been talking to Cate Blanchett’s people. She did Chekhov at the Barbican at the start of the year so fingers crossed she’s in the theatre zone.
Maggie stopped reading to sit with this for a moment, she wanted to savour this. Cate. Blanchett. Maggie knew how projects worked: people were attached and then unattached all the time. Fionn had only gotFires in Vermontbecause Ryan Gosling dropped out. Still, she allowed herself to picture Cate Blanchett in the opening scene spitting blind fury at Jason at the news that the press were about to expose his affair with Glauce.
She resumed reading.
Anyway, more on Cate as we have it. In the meantime, thescript is with Eric now and he has started putting the feelers out for the design team. There’ll be a new round of rewrites when we go to table read but that’s a ways off. For now, I want you to be so proud, Maggie. This is just the beginning for you. Every single one of us at Peek Show is so pumped for this project. To be quite honest, I am amazed at what you’ve accomplished in two months. I’m in awe. Brava.
Maggie sat through the rest ofEncantoin stunned joy. Every few minutes, she snuck a look at the email again to relive it. She couldn’t believe she’d actually done it, she had produced a piece of work after all these years. For so long, she’d existed under a shroud of failure made all the worse by Fionn’s success and the obvious satisfaction he was getting from making his art. Now she wondered if his success really had been at the expense of hers? Maybe not. She couldn’t keep blaming him; it was she who had allowed herself to be paralysed by comparison.
On the screen ‘All of You’, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s soaring ode to hope and family, started to play over the last scenes of the movie. Maggie took a screenshot of the email and sent it to the only people who would so fully understand its profound significance.
Maggie: Gals. I literally have no words.
Praise and victorious gifs streamed in from Annie and Clara, and Maggie found she had tears on her cheeks.
Maggie: Obviously, a lot of things have to line up and fall into place for this to get to opening night. And things get derailed all the time …
Clara: Maggie. Shut UP with the caveats. Just SOAK THIS UP.
And so she did. Maggie floated through wrangling the girls into their pyjamas. She wrestled with the knots in their fine golden hair, telling them a new instalment of the Hair Fairy stories that she’d always used to trick them into tolerating having their hair brushed. When she turned off the lights and kissed them, her tears left their velvet-soft cheeks damp.
‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ she told them. ‘You two have made my life.’
Later, she lay in her bed. Even though she felt intoxicatingly clean and weightless after completing her routine, her abdomen was sore from throwing up. It was then that the happiness finally, inevitably started to recede as thoughts of Fionn and the play began to creep in.
She would be telling him the news no matter what. It wasn’t a case of ‘if’. This was happening and he knew about it already so what was the point in waiting to update him? Maybe he’d be happy for her? She resolved to do it in the morning. From the family schedule, she knew he had an early call time, so he’d be awake.
She fell into an uneasy sleep, hunger clawing her awake every hour until at last around 4 a.m. she gave up trying to fend it off any longer. It was the one problem with the system: her body needed fuel. She was only sated for so long after each session then her appetite would return. Okay, maybe not theonlyproblem with the system. But it didn’t matter, she’d resolved that she was going to stop it altogether after Christmas and get back to good habits in January with a fresh slate. No more binges and no more throwing-up. She’d eat clean, no sugar, no refined carbs. Betty would cook nutritious meals and she’d stick to a plan without it becoming an obsession.
On the landing, she inched open the door to the girls’ bedroom and inhaled the milky, biscuity scent of their sleepingbodies that brought a rush of memories back. When they were babies, she would smell them constantly. She couldn’t be near them without burying her face in the folds of their necks and running her nose over the funny little fuzzy bald patches at the back of their heads where the rub of pillows meant the hair didn’t grow the same. She loved the sweaty little tendrils that curled at the nape of their necks after their naps.
The day ahead unfolded in Maggie’s mind. They’d have pancakes and lie around in their pyjamas. For the first time in weeks she wouldn’t be distracted by work, not needled by thoughts of scenes that weren’t fitting or flowing. The three of them would bundle up and meet her family for a walk up Killiney Hill, then back to Emer’s for dinner and chats.
Down in the kitchen, she began to raid the treats cupboard. She really was so hungry. She started on a packet of Jaffa Cakes. Then before she could do any more ruminating, she sent Fionn the screenshot of the email.
