Page 91 of Such a Good Couple
God, I hope he’ll support this.
For the rest of dinner, the four of them looked at rough timelines for getting the show staged in just over a year, in time for the 2026 autumn/winter season. They also mapped deadlines for Maggie’s revised drafts, and Maggie left with a rambling stream of consciousness jotted in her Notes app and more enthusiasm than she could even contain. She wanted to scream or sing or skydive out of a plane. This was how Fionn must feel every time he booked a role and she looked forward to telling him. At last something was happening forherthat they could bond over.
She ended up walking all the way back to the Bowery, unwilling to break the spell of the evening with small talk in acab or the bustle and heat of the subway. She walked through the glittering city and daydreamed. She was imagining insane things: chatting to Seth Meyers onLate Nightor attending the Tony Awards. Mad shite. Fun mad shite!
Back at the apartment, shadows draped the floors and furniture. She only hesitated for a moment at the kitchen door before pushing away the temptation. Instead she crawled into the tangled sheets beside Fionn, who rolled over and encircled her waist with one thick, strong arm.
‘How did it go?’ he murmured.
‘Amazing.’ She smiled into the velvet dark of their bedroom.
‘Youare amazing.’ Fionn pulled her to face him and kissed her. ‘I’m glad they recognise that. It’s so brilliant that you’re creating again.’
Their kissing soon escalated and a little while later Maggie lay back spent but dreamily happy.
The next day, Maggie was buoyed through the tedium of Premiere Day by memories of her meeting with Drew, Jackie and Eric, as well as the satisfying ache of her body after the frantic midnight sex with Fionn.
That was twice this month. She smiled to herself as the make-up artist worked on her face. Yes, on paper it was a pitiful number, but by the last few months’ standards, it was not bad at all. She was feeling less inhibited and more in control of her body for the first time in a long time and that was definitely helping her feel more confident.
While prepping for a previous premiere six months before, she had cried multiple times over how she looked in her dress (like a ham stuffed into a sequined purse, she’d texted the girls) and had convinced herself that Fionn wouldn’t want her there, that he would be embarrassed by her presence. In the end, she’dpretended to be unwell to get out of it.
Today she was calm, her head clear as a cloudless sky. She had gone for a run and then donuts that morning. Then she’d gone to the bathroom as soon as she’d come home. She had become even quicker and more silent than she had been in her twenties.
‘Do you want to take a look?’ The young make-up artist stepped back and indicated the large mirror the stylist had brought with her.
Maggie didn’t bother to stand, just craned her neck slightly. ‘It looks lovely,’ she told the girl. ‘The great thing is, no one’s going to be looking at me. Like,at all!’
‘Oh, I’m sure they will, Mrs Strong.’
‘Nah.’ Maggie shrugged. ‘You wait and see. Fionn will walk the carpet with one of his co-stars. There won’t be a single piece of photographic evidence of me at this event – except maybe a bad shot of my upper arms from the side.’
Maggie messed with her phone. The young make-up artist paused in her work. ‘You know you’re, like, super skinny, right?’
Maggie just smiled. ‘That’s nice of you to say’. Her phone buzzed in her hand. It was Clara in Slags For Life. She and Ollie were coming back down to earth.
Clara: Well, we’re home and … it’s nice. A teeny bit awkward maybe.
Annie: But why? You guys had the cutest divorce ceremony of them all!
Clara: I know. It’s not that. It’s more like now we know we love each other but it doesn’t exactly fix anything. Also, I feel like shit. I’m having some kind of delayed panic reaction to having done the show. I can’t stop thinking of the kids. Theywent back to school this morning and I was convinced they’d come back hysterical, the other kids saying stuff. They appear to be fine but … how long will that last?
Maggie bit her lip. She’d thought before about her own daughters one day coming home having read or heard something about their father. But the conversation with Drew and the others last night suddenly played on her mind. It hadn’t occurred to her that the twins might hear something abouther. The show was going to be very public. A very public story she was writing about a mother killing her children. She could hide behind the fact that it was not her plot but an adaptation. Still, it was set in their world. In her mind, the scenes took place in their house in LA. Jason in the play was an actor just like Fionn. He had affairs …
But it was astory. The girls would have to understand that. They would never see it on stage and it’d be years before they’d give it much thought, if they even ever did.
Still, Maggie could feel the conflicting desires revving inside her: the desire to make something, tobesomething; and the desire to protect her children.
‘Well?’ Fionn leaned in the door to the bedroom looking half-amused, half-worried. ‘How do I look?’
‘Are they shorts?’ Maggie straightened up. ‘Is that a leather suit?’ She pressed her lips together to contain a laugh.
‘Yep, it’s a leather shorts suit with a skimpy cashmere vest and Chanel pearls.’ He took off the jacket to show her. ‘Sylvia knows what she’s doing. She says all the young guys are getting more “fashion forward”.’
‘And you’re joining them. You’d be bullied so hard at home right now.’ She giggled and held up her phone and snapped a pic as he did a coquettish pose. ‘This is going straight into Slags For Life.’ Before this drama-filled summer she would have sent it totheir old friend group chat but it’d been tumbleweeds in there since July.
On the other side of the door, Brody appeared with an earpiece and several phones clutched in one hand. ‘Twenty minutes, people,’ he called.
The traffic in and around Lincoln Square was the pits, not helped by the security and the fans who had all been corralled into a fenced pen that sprawled well beyond the sidewalk. Cabs were beeping incessantly and Maggie’s plan to exit the car before they delivered Fionn to the red carpet was scuppered; there was nowhere to pull up discreetly without them being mobbed. Maggie’s hopes to avoid the whole humiliating ‘unknown wife of the star at the premiere’ schtick were dashed.
