Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [104]
Moodily she lit a cigarette, breaking her rule about not smoking in bed.
What was it about living in Dublin? In London she’d never had spare time. There had been an endless pile-up of appointments awaiting her rejection. And, in the rare cases when there had been any unexpected leisure time, she could always fill it with work.
But not here. It had been impossible to organize any appointments for the weekend. All the lazy-bastard journos and hairdressers and DJs and designers were going away, and even if they weren’t, they were in kick-back mode and disinclined to meet her.
Worse still, she couldn’t go into work on Monday because the building wouldn’t be open. As soon as she’d heard on Friday morning, she’d marched straight into Jack’s office and kicked up a right stink. ‘Can’t the porter, what’s his name – Bill? – come to let me in and then go straight home again?’
‘On a bank holiday?’ Jack had seemed genuinely amused. ‘Bill? Not a hope of it.’
Lazy, shiftless pillock, Lisa had thought, in impotent fury. In London, they’d always come to let her in.
‘Why don’t you take it easy?’ Jack had advised. ‘You’ve achieved so much in such a short time, you deserve a rest.’
But she didn’t want a rest, she was too hyper. Three entire days, how was she going to fill them? And why didn’t he suggest that they did something together, she’d wondered in frustration. She knew he was interested in her, she’d seen it more than once in his face.
‘Go out on the town. Have a few drinks,’ he’d urged.
With whom?
She’d contemplated going to London for the weekend, but was too ashamed. Where would she stay? Her flat had tenants in and she’d let her friendships lapse – most of them bit the dust during the frenzied empire-building she’d done in the past two years and the only person she’d ever given any of her precious time to was Fifi. But she’d been too mortified to contact Fifi since she’d been banished to Ireland. If she went to London she’d have to stay in a hotel like a – she shuddered – like a… tourist
But on Friday night, when she realized that she’d be killing so much time over the weekend it would be a veritable bloodbath, she decided she could handle being a tourist in London. Which was when she discovered that all the flights out of Dublin were booked. Everyone was desperate to escape this foul little country. Who could blame them?
As it happened, Saturday wasn’t too bad. She got her hair cut, her eyelashes tinted, her pores steamed and her nails done, all twenty of them. Everything for free. Then she got in her weekly shopping. For the next seven days she was only going to eat food starting with the letter ‘A’ – apples, avocados, artichokes, anchovies and absinthe.
Because she was feeling so fragile, she bent the rules to let an apricot Danish into her basket. Which was greatly appreciated because the unpleasantness of spending Saturday night in, alone, was quite shocking, really.
And here she was on Sunday morning, still with two full days to go.
Go back to sleep, she begged herself. Go back to sleep and massacre a couple of hours.
But she couldn’t. Although it was no wonder, she thought bitterly, seeing as she’d been tucked up in bye-byes at ten o’clock the night before.
She got out of bed, had a shower, and even though she took an inordinate amount of time over it and almost scrubbed herself raw, she found she was dressed and ready by quarter past nine. Ready for what? Buzzing with energy that had nowhere to go, she wondered, what do people do?. They went to the gym, she supposed, throwing her eyes to heaven (and wishing there was someone there to see her do it). Lisa prided herself on never going to the gym, especially not in Dublin. It was wildly passé, all that