Rose
2011
Rose Grahame: Glad rags on – tonight I help my amazing husband celebrate the launch of his incredible book, Unseen. Darling Cian, you have excelled yourself this time and I am so proud of you. Love you always, you are my light x #proudwife #buythebook!
Nails (a classic French manicure) done.
Spray tan (subtle) done.
Hair (elegant up-do) done.
I rolled the silky stockings up my legs before dressing in a beautifully tailored knee-length black dress, with a cowl neck that showed off just a hint of cleavage. I slipped my feet into three-inch court shoes. Looking in the mirror, I clipped my pearl earrings on, and a single strand of pearls around my neck. I looked, well, good. I felt elegant. I felt like a proper grown-up – stylish, well turned out.
I felt like someone who would make Cian proud – that he would be delighted to have me on his arm. That I would look like just the kind of wife who belonged beside him in literary circles – not just ‘Rose who worked in the dentists’. Not that I was ashamed of working in the dentists – far from it. Cian had said I could leave if I wanted – his significant six figure deal for Unseen gave us a financial freedom we hadn’t known before – but I was happy to stay working. After some convincing – making him believe I didn’t want to stay because I lacked faith in him, but because I actually enjoyed working and spending time with my work colleagues – he had backed off. However, he had warned me I mightn’t have much in common with what he called his ‘book crowd’.
So I’d spent the last fortnight reading The Bookseller and trying to get myself up to speed with who was who and what was hot in the book trade. I’d prepared for questions about what it was like to live with Cian (told myself not to mention how unbearably touchy he got when in edits) and, of course, I read his book from cover to cover to make sure I was able to talk about it with a degree of authority.
I’d spent a lot of time trying to calm Cian down. To assure him the book would be a success, that his publishers and his agent wouldn’t have got behind him in such a big way if they didn’t believe in him 100%. In his better moods, he had hugged me and told me he loved me for being so completely behind him. In his worse days, he had railed a bit, told me I didn’t understand, could never understand. That how could someone who’s ambitions only ever extended to helping clean teeth ever understand the pressure he was under? How hard it was?
His words had cut me to the quick. I’m not afraid to say I cried – but he had apologised over and over again and told me that he was just stressed and he didn’t mean it. I had held him, assured him I was okay and that we were okay while he had calmly told me that working at the level he was working at brought so many stresses he had never really thought about before. That I was lucky to have ‘a wee nothing job’ that I could ‘leave behind at the end of the day’.
I suppose in some ways he was right – it was just that I never thought of it like that before. I did my job well. We helped people. We worked together as a team. Okay, no one was going to give me a huge contract to do it. No one was going to review my work in the broadsheets or invite me to talk about it on panel shows where everyone wore tweed and twirled their moustaches. But it mattered to me.
I tried to shake those feelings off as I spritzed his favourite perfume on my neck and wrists and dropped the bottle into my clutch bag before walking out of the bedroom, down the hall of our flat, to where I knew he was waiting in the living room.
With a fairly confident ‘Ta da’ I walked in and he turned from where he had been looking out the window, waiting for our taxi, to look at me.
I’m not sure what reaction I was expecting – a ‘Wow’ would have been nice. God, even a ‘You look nice’ would have sufficed. I knew I had done my best – had scrubbed up well for want of a better turn of phrase – but his face was frozen as he looked me up and down.
‘Cian?’ I asked, a sinking feeling giving me a sucker punch in my stomach.
I heard a car turn into the gravel drive outside our flat, a horn sound and Cian swear.
‘Jesus,’ he swore under his breath. ‘Rose, now’s not the time for jokes.’
‘Jokes?’ I muttered, my face blazing and tears, to my shame, stinging at my eyes.
‘That dress? It’s a joke, right? Your tits are practically hanging out of it.’
I blushed harder. Felt a wave of shame hit me as the disappointment radiated off him in waves. Even that word. Tits. Horrible. It made me feel like a tramp. In a dress I thought made me look classy, elegant.
‘This is a book launch, not an episode of Footballers’ Wives,’ he said crossing the room in a couple of steps and grabbing my wrist, pulling me towards the bedroom – my shoes slipping on the tiled floor so I kicked them off.
‘I can’t believe …’ he said. ‘The taxi is here, Rose. Tonight of all nights. Could you not just get it right this one night?’
His words felt like blows – ‘just this one night’ – had I not got it right before? Did I really look like a joke? I thought the dress gave just the hint of cleavage – the cleavage he loved. He threw open my wardrobe. Pulled hanger after hanger out throwing dresses on the bed.
‘Get changed,’ he shouted at me, while he cast aside other clothes he deemed unsuitable. Not that I had much to choose from – I didn’t have a lot of special occasion clothes. I hesitated, felt a sob rise from my chest and sneak out.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, frustrated, as he threw a long sleeved, boat neck maxi dress at me – one I had been meaning to charity shop for a while because I didn’t feel it did me any favours. It was as close to a Burka as Western fashion could get and I don’t know why I had ever bought it.
‘I don’t like this one,’ I said as my lovely, elegant dress slipped to the floor.
‘Put it on, Rose. Stop being such a baby – this isn’t about you and what you like. I’ll be waiting in the taxi.’
He stormed out of the room – and part of me, the ‘Fuck you, Cian Grahame’ part considered putting my lovely new dress back on and going out to the taxi, telling him he could deal with it and putting him in his place.
But this was his night and I didn’t want to make things worse. I didn’t want to sour the whole evening. I knew this wasn’t Cian. Not the real Cian. Not the man I loved and who I knew loved me. I knew he would apologise and feel ashamed for his behaviour. When he saw the bruise that was starting to form already on my wrist, he would be sorry.
I pulled the maxi dress on and quickly patted some pressed powder on my cheeks to cover where tears had spilled.
This was not about me.
This was about my husband and the immense pressure he was under.
You hurt the ones you love, so they say. I was his safe place to let off steam.
Things would settle. Would calm down. I would get my Cian back. My wonderful, loving Cian. Usually loving anyway.