Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [107]
‘’Course,’ Lisa said irritably.
Actually, she had no idea what getting divorced entailed. For one so pragmatic and dynamic, she’d uncharacteristically dragged her feet on the ending of her marriage. Perhaps her mum was right and she should get a solicitor.
But after she hung up Lisa couldn’t stop thinking about Oliver. Pesky feelings popped to the surface like blisters and out of nowhere, in some sort of a mad lapse, she was on the verge of lifting the phone and ringing him. The thought of hearing his voice, of making up with him, filled her with surging hope.
She’d had compulsions to call him before, but this was the worst so far, and she was only able to talk herself down with the reminder that he was the one who had left her. Even if he had said that she’d left him with no choice.
She moved away from the phone, suffering actual physical symptoms from the effort. Her heart pounded from thwarted chances. Only moments before, reconciliation had seemed possible, and the low that followed the high made her giddy. Lighting a cigarette with a trembling hand, she urged herself to forget him. Out with the old and in with the new. Think of Jack. But Jack was probably having non-stop sex with minxy Mai.
Jesus, she yearned, she’d love some sex… With Jack. Or Oliver. Either of them. Both of them… Her head filled with an image of Oliver’s hard body, looking as though it had been carved out of ebony, and the memory made her actually groan out loud.
She looked at her watch. Again. Half past seven. Why couldn’t the day just hurry up and end?.
Then her doorbell rang, and her heart leapt into her throat. It might be Jack doing one of his unscheduled house-calls! Thrusting her face into the mirror to check that she was presentable, she quickly smoothed mascara away from under her eyes. Stroking down her hair, she hurried to the door.
Standing on her step looking up at her was a small boy in a Manchester United T-shirt and with an elaborate, shaven-headed, long-fringed haircut. All the little boys on the road had similar ‘dos.
‘How’s it GOING, Lisa?’ he said, in a remarkably loud voice. Confidently he leant against the doorpost. ‘What are you UP to? Will you come out to PLAY?’
‘Play?’
‘We need a REF.’
Other children appeared behind him. ‘Yeah, Lisa,’ they urged. ‘Come on out.’
She knew it was absurd, but she couldn’t help being flattered. It was nice to be wanted. Blocking out memories of other bank-holiday weekends when she’d variously helicoptered to Champneys, flown first-class to Nice and holed up in a five-star hotel in Cornwall, she fetched a jacket and spent the rest of Sunday sitting on her doorstep, keeping score while the children on her street played a very aggressive form of tennis.
Jack Devine had rung his mother on Sunday morning. ‘I’ll be out later,’ he said. ‘And can I bring a friend?’
His mother had nearly choked with excitement. ‘A lady friend?’
‘A lady friend.’
Lulu Devine tried very hard to keep her mouth shut and failed utterly. ‘Is it Dee?’
‘No, Ma,’ Jack sighed, ‘not Dee.’
‘Ah well. Any sightings of her?’ Lulu was torn between missing the woman who’d ditched her beloved only son and partisan hatred of her.
‘Actually, yes,’ Jack admitted. ‘I saw her in Drury Street carpark. She sends you her regards.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s getting married.’
Hope sprang eternal. ‘To you?’ Lulu gasped.
‘No.’
‘The bitch!’
‘Ah no,’ Jack soothed. At the time it hadn’t been the most welcome news he’d ever received, but not the worst either. ‘She was right not to marry me. We’d grown apart. She just saw it sooner than I did.’
‘And this girl you’re bringing today?’
‘Her name is Mai. She’s great, but a bit nervous.’
‘We’ll be nice to her.’
Wearing a demure fifties-style shirtwaister that she’d bought in an Oxfam shop almost as a joke, and sandals that were only a shameful three inches high, Mai sat beside Jack for the drive to Raheny.
‘Will they mind me being half-Vietnamese? Are they racist?’
Jack shook