Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [10]
Dylan reached for her again and she slithered across the sheets out of reach, with a nimbleness borne of many months of practice.
A particularly hysterical bout of clattering wafted up from the room below.
‘Little fuckers,’ Dylan mumbled, sleepily. ‘They’ll knock the house down on us.’
‘I’ll go and shout at them.’ It was safer to get up.
By the time Ashling arrived later that morning, the scrambled-egg débâcle was but a distant memory and had been superseded by the atrocities of the breakfast table.
When Clodagh went to answer the door, she was involved in some kind of complicated negotiations with the angelic-looking, flaxen-haired Molly, concerning the wearing of a cardigan. Molly was insisting on wearing her orange one.
‘Hi Ashling,’ Clodagh said absently, then thrust her face down to Molly’s and insisted in exasperation, ‘But you’re too big for it, Molly. You haven’t worn it since you were a baby. Why don’t you wear this lovely pink one?’
‘Nooooooo!’ Molly tried to wriggle away to freedom.
‘But you’ll be cold.’ Clodagh held tight on to Molly’s arm.
‘Nooooooo!’
‘Come into the kitchen, Ashling.’ Clodagh dragged Molly down the hall. ‘CRAIG! GET OFF THE CAROUSEL!’
The equally angelic-looking, flaxen-haired Craig had clambered into the corner cupboard in the kitchen and was swinging himself backwards and forwards on the wire shelf, cushioned on bags of rice and pasta.
Ashling walked to the kettle and switched it on. Ashling and Clodagh had grown up two doors away from each other and had been best friends since the time when it was safer for Ashling to be in Clodagh’s house than in her own.
It had been Clodagh who’d broken the news to Ashling about her waistless condition. It was also Clodagh who’d enlightened Ashling on other aspects of herself by saying, ‘You’re so fortunate to have your personality. Me, all I have is my looks.’
Not that Ashling had ever taken umbrage. Clodagh wasn’t malicious, simply candid, and it would have been a total waste of time to deny how singularly beautiful she was. Short and shapely, with Scandinavian colouring and long, burnished ropes of blonde hair, she was traffic-stopping. Not that that was saying much in Dublin, where the traffic rarely moved.
Ashling had momentous news. ‘I got a job!’
‘When?’
‘I heard over a week ago,’ Ashling admitted. ‘But I’ve been at work every night until midnight tidying it all up for the new person at Woman’s Place.’
‘I thought it was funny you hadn’t been in touch. So tell me all about it.’
But each time Ashling tried, Craig insisted on reading to her, from an upside-down book. When the spotlight moved away from him even for a second, he clawed it back.
‘Go and play outside on the swing,’ Clodagh cajoled him.
‘But it’s raining.’
‘You’re Irish, get used to it. Go on. Out!’
No sooner had Craig gone than Molly was centre-stage.
‘Want!’ she declared, pointing at Ashling’s coffee.
‘No, that’s Ashling’s,’ Clodagh said.’You can’t have it.’
‘She can if she wants…’ Ashling felt she’d better say.
‘WANT!’ Molly insisted.
‘Would you mind?’ Clodagh asked. ‘I’ll get you another.’
Ashling slid the mug along the table, but Clodagh intercepted it before it reached Molly, which started a great caterwauling.
‘I’m just blowing on it,’ Clodagh explained. ‘So you won’t burn your mouth.’
‘WANT! WANT! WANT!’
‘But it’s too hot! You’ll burn yourself.’
‘WANT IT. WANT IT NOW!!!’
‘Oh all right then. Slowly now, don’t spill it.’
Molly put her mouth to the lip of the mug, then pulled back and started screeching. ‘Hot! Sore! Waaaaaaah!’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Clodagh muttered.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Molly enunciated, with crystal clarity.
‘That’s right,’ Clodagh said, with a savagery that shocked Ashling. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
Dylan rushed into