2014
Rose
Rose Grahame: An award and Hollywood beckons. I promise I’ll remember you all when I’m partying with the celebs! So proud of Cian!
A film deal! It was so incredibly exciting. Cian was like a new man – walking about, chest inflated like a proud peacock. I could hear him chatting to various journalists on the phone – saying he wanted to retain artistic control of the script and have a say in casting.
‘It’s very important that the story retains its integrity,’ he said. ‘I feel very strongly about that – I wouldn’t want to have the story made into something it’s not. It’s more nuanced than the average detective story – multi-layered. It would be important that it doesn’t get the full blockbuster treatment. I can think of nothing worse.’
I was impressed listening to his confidence in his work – it was such a transformation from the shy author I’d met seven years before who lacked self-belief and felt too nervous to share his work.
Now he’d talk openly about his achievements, his ‘craft’, his opinions on the literary world. I would never say it to him, but sometimes he came across as a bit pompous. I’d learned to keep quiet though – it was the best way. Don’t wake the Kraken. Don’t poke the bear. Just smile and nod, and make cups of tea, or pour glasses of wine and serve food at dinner parties in our home. Make sure the guest room was always in tip-top condition. Make sure he had peace to write – that he felt cherished and spoiled when he was in creative mode.
Even if it meant throwing the odd sickie at work to be there and be ‘his muse’. Even if it meant hiding my own reading habits from him like they were a dirty secret. Even if it meant being the butt of his jokes at times. ‘Oh, Rose wouldn’t get that. She prefers something a bit lighter – don’t you Rose? I feel grateful if she agrees to read my books.’
Everyone had laughed – so I had too. I didn’t see the point in correcting Cian. No good would come of it.
This was his author persona – the person he had to be to be a success. And I wanted him to be a success, didn’t I? I wanted him to win awards, to get the film deal. I enjoyed basking in his success – he said. I got my pay off – the nice house, the nice car, the jewellery, the fancy dinners out. The kind of lifestyle I could only have dreamed of when I was younger. He’d lifted me – lifted us – out of a crappy flat and into a lifestyle where it was entirely possible we could end up on the red carpet at the Oscars. ‘I’m giving you everything,’ he said and he was. So it would be churlish of me to be anything but grateful.
And who could I talk to about it? Who would understand? Poor Rose, in her double-fronted house with her designer kitchen and her Mulberry handbag and her hair coloured at the best hairdressers in town. And isn’t she just back from a weekend in London, eating at all the fancy restaurants, appearing in the newspapers? Yes, poor Rose, I’ll listen to her tell her problems while I’m trying to pay the bills and feed my children.
Cian was right; they’d get sick listening to me. My complaining would be pathetic. What would I tell them anyway? Admit what it was really like? Admit what he was really like? Admit what he did or more to the point what I let him do? What I let him get away with, because I did. I let him get away with it. All of it. I set the standard for how he treated me. How I bent over backwards to keep him happy. To try and keep him happy. It was my fault, because I didn’t challenge him. It was easier to keep the peace.
Maybe the house, and the clothes, and the status appealed to me too much to stand up to him?
I had to put up or shut up.