Page 75 of Such a Good Couple
‘Girls, we’re going to see the horses in a bit! We gotta get up.’
In the kitchen, she made them pancakes in the shape of teddy faces with chocolate buttons for eyes and a nose. Fionn had been away filming once again for the past few weeks but would be back the next day.
On Sundays all the staff had the day off. Maggie didn’t want the girls to look back at their childhood and only have memories of a rotation of strangers flitting around them cleaning up after them and preparing their every meal. Lately there’d been other advantages to having the house completely to themselves once a week. Sunday had become her ‘cheat day’. She could order takeout and more food on DoorDash without any eyeson her. Getting food in the quantities she needed had proved surprisingly hard with so many witnesses around the house at all times. Trying to intercept the staff getting to the door before her was nigh on impossible.
Then there was the disposal of wrappers. She was afraid to put the bags in the main garbage bins, where the cleaners threw all the other household waste and might see. She couldn’t bring the bags out on walks with her because Lime Orchard Road was a street of gated mansions, not a place dotted with handy public bins. So Sundays had become the best time to get rid of the week’s evidence when she drove the twins to the horse ranch.
After she dropped the girls off, she turned back and headed towards the Hollywood Hills Hotel. The bin area was fairly accessible and she’d taken to disposing of her crinkling trash bags there and then going for a coffee. The hotel – despite its gorgeous views of the city and Japanese-influenced architecture and ponds of koi fish – was not a celebrity haunt, so she felt safe there. If anyone caught her at the bins, she could just pretend to be a witless tourist and scarper.
With her drop-off completed, she went around to the restaurant and ordered the blue crab Benedict that was served with asparagus, crispy rice and Béarnaise sauce. A part of her Sunday treat. Since Provincetown, she’d managed to keep herself in check for the most part. She’d established a routine that she felt was balanced, without allowing old compulsions to take over. She ate very well for five days of the week – egg-white omelettes, grilled fish and the like – and then on Wednesdays and Sundays she could engage in what she referred to in her head as her ‘little routine’.
She checked the time and pulled out her tablet to tune into the episode ofDivorce Islandthat was airing at that moment in Dublin. On Sundays, they would be milking the week’s contentfor all it was worth. From 6.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. they were going to recap events of the week with a supercut of the biggest dramatic moments. Then, straight after, there was a new episode with all the goings-on of the previous night.
She slipped in her earpods and smiled at the waiter as he set down her plate. She carefully propped up the device and clicked the various links that eventually brought her to the stream of the show.
The opening credits scrolled through pictures of each couple being destroyed in different ways: torn apart, set on fire, being crumpled up. Clara and Ollie’s picture had a red liquid poured over it, seemingly to represent bloodshed. The last picture dissolved to reveal a smirking Jez Fuller.
‘It’s been quite the first week at the villa, with many of our couples road-testing the Intimacy Pods while others seem to be regretting the decision to let their partners stray quite so far … Let’s take a look.’
Maggie ate her food while scenes of the other couples fighting and crying played, with Jez narrating. Finally, Clara and Ollie appeared on screen and Maggie sat forward.
‘While Clara got romantic with Paul on the beach at sunset, Ollie and Mary were clearly developing a strong connection and were the very first couple to escalate their budding romance to an Intimacy Pod.’
Maggie rolled her eyes at the hyperbole. Clara had looked openly bored with that guy Paul, and from the audio recorded of Mary and Ollie in the Intimacy Pod, their so-called ‘budding romance’ was entirely centred around how much they were hurt by their respective partners.
Maggie knew Ollie was hating every second of being on the show but, Jesus, the man had follow-through when it came to grudges.
More footage followed documenting more of the week’s‘challenges’, which included contestants playing spin the bottle with the option of declining to kiss other members of the group if they didn’t want to hurt their spouse. On the night that had aired, Maggie and Annie, who often texted as they watched, had been enormously relieved that both Clara and Ollie refused to kiss anyone. Though, as Annie had said, they weren’t displaying any increased warmth towards one another either. Slags For Life had been quiet as Clara’s phone had been taken by the producers.
Jez reappeared. ‘Let’s leave our would-be divorcees for a moment and see what you the viewers are saying about the goings-on in Casa Amore No More.’
Graphics of social media posts began to scroll as Jez provided voiceover. ‘Imelda from Swords says: “It’s a toss-up between Paul and Liz and Mary and Derek for who’s most on the rocks on #DivorceIsland.” Meanwhile Eadaoin in Kerry thinks Clara and Ollie have a chance to reconcile: “Ollie is clearly hurt by what Clara did but the fact that every time he’s with Mary he’s talking about his wife speaks VOLUMES. #DivorceIsland.” A very interesting insight.’ Jez clasped his hands earnestly. ‘Our resident body language analysis also has high hopes for this couple.’
The screen cut to a heavily made-up woman with glasses and a serious expression. ‘From my observations of Clara and Ollie, these are two people who still love each other and may have a shot, if they can overcome some of the material issues in their lives.’
Well, that’s vague, Maggie thought, mopping up some of the Béarnaise with bread. Everyone’s trying to overcome the material issues. She thought of Fionn flying in tomorrow. Being in the same room was one oftheirmaterial issues. From the calendar, he actually had a pretty clear stretch of time in the next few weeks and Maggie had mixed feelings. It was so good thathe would be spending time with the girls. But she knew her own routine would be affected, though she hoped to be able to work around that. She’d already identified a couple of out-of-the-way drive-thrus she could get to on Wednesday. Then there was also the problem of sex. In Provincetown, Fionn was more shacked up in Edwin Ensel’s shack than shacked up with her and they hadn’t even attempted to have sex on the nights he was in the house. It wasn’t that unusual for them. With the age their girls were and the intensity of their schedules, they didn’t get to do it as regularly as other people.
When they were home in Dublin, they’d had one ‘middle of the night, don’t even turn on the lights’ session. Depressingly, this mode actually suited Maggie now; she found that in the dark she could relax into it more.
Of course, Fionn would be wanting the full audio-visual experience as soon as they had a private moment. She flashed on a memory of her body in the gym mirrors the night before, then hastily shook the image away.
Eva was the only person she’d confided in about feeling so inadequate on that front because, with her director husband routinely casting and directing hot young actresses in his films, Eva knew how hard it was.Of courseEva was rake thin and Botoxed to oblivion. Though at least she was so dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood, she hadn’t pretended Maggie looked amazing, like Clara and Annie insisted.
‘Why don’t you just get lipo and a tummy tuck?’ Eva’d asked, baffled. ‘Everyone in town has, even the Hollywood dogs get work done.’
Maggie had made mutterings about being fearful of major surgery but the truth was she mainly just preferred her way. It was the sense of total control. The exquisite abandon of eating without the fear of permanent damage and then the rush of the release afterwards when she could relinquish it all in a seriesof long, searing but somehow satisfying spasms. The high of emptiness was something not a lot of people could understand.
She signalled the waiter and ordered a coffee, then made her way to the toilets. A few minutes kneeling on the cubicle floor and she was free of the whole $50 breakfast. Her body was lighter, a deliciously numb feeling passing through her while her head felt instantly clearer. Still looking into the bowl, she pressed the flush and watched it all disappear.
‘Think of every flush as a year taken off your life, Maggie,’ a particularly hardline, aggressive therapist from her college days had said to her.
In a mode of therapy that would probably get your licence revoked now, she’d made Maggie kneel in front of the toilet as she repeatedly flushed, saying, ‘There goes another year. And another. And another. Is this worth it, Maggie?’
It had scared Maggie, though probably a better word was ‘traumatised’. Some of the warnings issued in that barbaric woman’s treatment room still crowded Maggie’s head at night. Long-term effects on the cardiovascular system. Words like ‘stomach rupture’. But she knew those were things that happened to the severe cases. She was not severe. Before this summer, she’d barely purged since her twenties. There’d been the bit of a stint after the twins were born, and, okay, the odd time in the lead-up to one of Fionn’s premieres the urge had overtaken her, but they had been short stretches. Just like this one would be.
Back in the dining room, she resumed watchingDivorce Island. Clara and Ollie were involved in an exercise that involved building a raft together and having an argument about how Clara had never once helped to assemble a piece of furniture in the history of their relationship. Maggie pulled out her phone and texted Annie:
Maggie: Watching the show and I am actually not even sure I know what the objective is … Like, the public votes but what are they voting for? The couple most clearly in need of a divorce or the couple they like best?
