Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [106]
‘No, thank you. I definitely want it in wood.’
‘Or you can get ready-made blinds.’ He changed tack. ‘I know they wouldn’t be quite the right size and the material wouldn’t be as nice, but it’d be miles cheaper. Come over here and look.’ And grabbing her by the hand, he tugged her over to inspect some hideous vertical office-window blinds.
She dashed her hand away. ‘But I don’t want these! I want the wooden ones and I promise I can afford them!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said humbly. ‘I just didn’t want you having to shell out all that money, but if you’re sure…’
Lisa sighed raggedly. This fucking country. ‘I’ve been saving up,’ she decided to reassure him. ‘It’s OK.’
‘You’ve been saving up?’ All at once he rallied. ‘Well, that’s different, then.’
As she gave him her details, her irritation faded. When he leant over and confided to her that he thought the prices in the shop were shocking, that he and his wife waited for the sale, she became almost touched by his concern. I’m losing it, she suddenly thought. It’s official, I’m going round the bend. Touched by a curtain salesman who won’t sell me what I want.
It was barely six when she reached home. Scraping the bottom of the barrel in the search for activities, Lisa rang her mum and gave her her new phone number. Though she wondered why she bothered because her mum never rang her. Too worried about her phone bill. Even if there was some disaster, Lisa thought sourly, like if her dad died, her mum would probably still wait until Lisa rang to tell her.
After the usual enquiries into each other’s health, Pauline had some good news for Lisa. ‘Your dad says that that funny wedding of yours probably isn’t valid here anyway and that you probably don’t need to get divorced.’
The word ‘divorced’ slammed into Lisa with abrupt force. It was such a heavy, final word. Quickly she recovered to snippily tell her mum, ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong.’
Pauline swallowed at the expected censure. Of course she was wrong. She was always wrong around Lisa.
‘Oliver registered it when we got back.’
‘Well, that’s that, then.’
‘That is that, then.’
In the silence that followed, Lisa found herself remembering the Friday morning in bed when she and Oliver had decided on a We’re-young-and-fabulous-Londonites’ whim to fly to Las Vegas for the weekend and get married.
‘We’ll never get flights,’ Oliver had laughed, wildly taken with the whole idea.
“Course we will.’ Lisa had the confidence of one who always gets what she wants. And of course they did – those were the days when the world still worked for her. That very evening, giddy with excitement and alarm at what they were doing, they flew to Vegas. Where, weirded out by jet-lag and the spooky-blue desert sky, they found that getting married was frighteningly easy.
‘Should we?’ Lisa giggled, about to lose her nerve.
‘That’s why we’re here.’
‘I know, but… it’s rather extreme, isn’t it?’
Oliver’s exasperated eyes collided with hers. Lisa knew that look. With Oliver you didn’t start things that you didn’t mean to finish.
‘Come on, then!’ Exhilaration and terror gave her laughter a shrill edge.
They plighted their troth in the twenty-four-hour Chapel of Love, their vows witnessed by an Elvis Presley lookalike and a Starbucks server. The bride wore black.
‘Yew may kiss the braaaaade.’
‘We’re married.’ Lisa was in fits, as they were shunted out to make way for the next couple. ‘This is unreal.’
‘I love you, babes,’ Oliver said.
‘I love you too.’
And she did. But most of all she was dying to get back, to madden everyone with envy of the kitsch glamour of their marriage. Beach-side ceremonies in Saint Lucia didn’t hold a candle – this was a scoop! She couldn’t wait to go to work on Monday, for someone to ask, ‘Do anything nice at the weekend?’ – so that she could reply casually, ‘Actually, I flew to Las Vegas and got married.’
‘You’d want to get a good