The Woman Who Stole My Life Read Online Free

a nice car and a motorbike – he wanted for nothing. But he wanted for everything: he never felt fulfilled. The gnawing pain of incompleteness sometimes went underground but it always returned.
    And now here he is, standing wild-eyed in my hall, myself and Jeffrey looking at him in alarm. ‘It’s happened, it’s finally happened!’ Ryan says. ‘My big artistic idea!’
    ‘Come in and sit down,’ I say. ‘Jeffrey, put the kettle on.’
    Babbling unstoppably, Ryan follows me into the front room, telling me what has happened. ‘It started about a year ago …’
    We sit facing each other while Ryan describes his breakthrough. A stirring had started deep down in him and, over the course of a year, swam its way upwards to consciousness. It visited him in vague forms in his dreams, in flash-seconds between thoughts, and, this very afternoon, his brilliant idea finally broke the surface. It had taken nearly twenty years of toiling with high-grade Italian sanitaryware for his genius to burst into bloom but finally it had.
    ‘And?’ I prompt.
    ‘I’m calling it Project Karma: I’m going to give away everything I own. Every single thing. My CDs, my clothes, all my money. Every television, every grain of rice, every holiday photograph. My car, my motorbike, my house –’
    Jeffrey stares in disgust. ‘You stupid asshole.’
    All credit to him, Jeffrey seems to hate Ryan as much as he hates me. He’s an equal opportunities hater. He could have done that thing that children of separated couples sometimes do, of playing the parents against each other, of pretending to have favourites, but in all honesty you’d have been hard-pressed to know which one of us he hated the most.
    ‘You’ll have nowhere to live!’ Jeffrey says.
    ‘Wrong!’ Ryan’s eyes are sparkling (but the wrong sort of sparkling, a scary form). ‘Karma will see me right.’
    ‘But what if it doesn’t?’ I feel horribly uneasy. I don’t trust karma, not any more. Once upon a time, something very bad happened to me. As a direct result of that very bad thing, something very, very good happened. I was a
big
believer in karma at that point. However, as a direct result of that very, very good thing, a very bad thing happened. Then anotherbad thing. I am currently due an upswing in my karma cycle, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. Frankly, I’ve had it with karma.
    And on a more practical level, I am afraid that if Ryan has no money I’ll have to give him some and I have almost none myself.
    ‘I will prove that karma exists,’ Ryan says. ‘I’m creating Spiritual Art.’
    ‘Can I have your house?’ Jeffrey asks.
    Ryan seems startled. He hasn’t considered such a request. ‘… Ah, no. No.’ As he speaks, he becomes more convinced. ‘Definitely not. If I gave it to you, it might look like I wasn’t doing it for real.’
    ‘Can I have your car?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Can I have anything?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Fuck you very much.’
    ‘Jeffrey, don’t,’ I say.
    Ryan is so excited he barely notices Jeffrey’s contempt. ‘I’ll blog about it, day by day, second by second. It’ll be an artistic triumph.’
    ‘I think this sort of thing has already been done.’ A memory of something, somewhere, is flickering.
    ‘Don’t,’ Ryan says. ‘Stella, don’t undermine me. You’ve had your fifteen minutes, let me have mine.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘No, Stella.’ He’s all but shouting. ‘It should have been me. I’m the one who’s meant to be famous. Not you – me! You’re the woman who stole my life!’
    This is a familiar conversational theme; Ryan refers to it almost daily.
    Jeffrey is clicking away on his phone. ‘It
has
been done. I’mgetting loads here. Listen to this: “The man who gave away everything he possessed.” Here’s another one, “An Austrian millionaire is planning to give away all his money and possessions.”’
    ‘Ryan,’ I say, tentatively, keen to avoid triggering another rant from him. ‘Could you