Page 19 of Beautiful Losers

‘That makes sense to me. The beauty of all this’ – he gestures behind him, without looking, at the oil tanker in the distance – ‘is its impermanence. You need to understand loss to really appreciate life.’

I resist the urge to tell Cillian he already gave Ari an excellent education in loss when he walked out on us.

‘I don’t know why we came here,’ I say quietly.

‘To have an adventure! To live, for a change.’ Cillian leans forward in his chair. ‘The Fiadh I met at that Frames concert wouldn’t have questioned herself for a minute.’

‘The Fiadh you met at the Frames concert didn’t have a child and a mountain of bills to pay and a dad responsible for bankrupting the Irish economy. Oh, and a partner who moved eight thousand kilometres to get away from her.’

He looks wounded. ‘That’s not fair. We both agreed this was something I had to do.’

Ari had just taken his first steps when Cillian mentioned he’d been approached at a seminar by an agent representing some of the world’s biggest names in wellness and personal development. We were having a picnic in the Phoenix Park, Ari marvelling at the deer in the distance, Cillian and me marvelling at Ari. He wobbled between us to rapturous applause. We’d tucked into homemade red velvet cake (I got the ratio of flour to butter wrong. You could have taken out oneof the deer with the end result. Cillian said the density of the sponge was down to my lack of manifesting) when he mooted the idea of moving to California.

The marinading stage of his business plan had paid off, and in the space of three years he had become Ireland’s leading (and only) ‘lifestyle guru’. It started with a series of videos on YouTube. Each week, Cillian hosted an episode ofTake Back Control, in which he promised subscribers that ‘with a touch of ancient philosophy, a smattering of neuroscience, a whack of daily affirmations and a smidgen of meditation, you can reset your thought patterns and change your life’. He downplayed the Anglo-Irish accent he picked up at boarding school in order to appeal to a wider audience and soon had over a hundred thousand followers across his social media channels.

When ‘Take Back Control’ gained momentum as the slogan for Brexit and Cillian started to receive tweets in praise of tightening border restrictions, he rebranded as the Brain Alchemist, a moniker bestowed on him by a besotted journalist at my paper. She did a profile on him for the weekend magazine, in which she likened the ‘cognitive miracles’ he performed to the ancient practice of turning base metals into gold. The piece ran as a cover story with the headline ‘This Man Will Change Your Life’. Offers of work came flooding in. Startups and established businesses with their finger on the pulse asked Cillian to run motivational retreats for their employees. He was invited to host panel talks and seminars in the UK and Europe, and ran life-coaching sessions for a number of VIP clients. His local paper,The Gorey Gazette, hailed him as ‘Buddha-meets-Brené Brown for the millennial generation’.

Now, America was calling. He said he wanted Ariand me to go with him. That he wouldn’t dream of embarking on his journey – both literal and metaphorical – without us. I knew he would, he knew he would, but we agreed to carry on pretending.

‘Hey Feeeeeaaaah!’

A ripped abdomen fills the screen. It belongs to Nicole, Cillian’s forty-five-year-old girlfriend. She’s wearing a bralet and leggings with a flames motif up the sides. Nicole is third in command in the narcotics division at LAPD. She and Cillian met at an organic grocery shop that had a on-site psychic. Cillian was getting a palm reading. The woman told him that true love was around the corner. Ten minutes later, his trolley crashed into Nicole’s in the nut butter aisle.

I can’t say I was thrilled Cillian met someone a month after leaving us, though it could have been worse. He could have taken up with a twenty-five-year-old Pilates instructor. Whatever you say about Cillian, you can’t accuse him of being unoriginal. And I quite like Nicole. Cillian must have told her about my anal prolapse after Ari’s birth, because she sent me an email just to say hi and also, there’s this woman in LA doing amazing things with weak pelvic floors, and you might want to check out this link to her free demonstrations.

‘Hi Nicole, how’s it going?’ I say.

‘The usual. Couple of assholes in my department trying to bust my balls. Can’t stand having a woman calling the shots. How’s France?’

‘Oh you know,la vie en rose.’

‘I’d better run. I’m meeting a few girlfriends for a hike before heading into the office. Good to see you, Fiadh. Say hi to Ari for me.’

She leans over and kisses Cillian, her perfectly formed rear end swallowing the camera.

‘Run for the hills, Nicole! He’s a bollox!’ I say.

‘You’re so funny. She’s funny, Cil. See you guys later.’

She pronounces ‘Cil’ as though it’s spelt with an ‘s’. Cillian doesn’t correct her, his gaze following her out the door, utterly besotted.

‘Hey, guess who I might be taking on as a client?’ he says when he finally re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

‘Who?’

‘I’m not really meant to say. It’s all very hush-hush. Seriously, nothing might come of it …’

‘Oh just tell me already.’

Cillian looks around him, checking over the balcony for good measure.

‘Gwyneth Paltrow,’ he says in a deliberately poor attempt at a whisper. He sits back, interlocking his hands behind his head – the cat that got the vaginal jade egg.

‘I’m not being funny, but what does Gwyneth Paltrow need you for?’

‘We’re all students in life, Fifi. Even the master needs a sensei. Seriously, though, I’m helping her with her impostor syndrome.’

‘You do know impostor syndrome has been debunked as a theory? Self-doubt isn’t a pathology.’

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