Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [110]
Ted’s bellowing tuned her back in to the present. ‘Ashling, speak to me! What do the tarot cards say about tonight?’
She recovered quickly, very, very glad that it was now and not then. ‘Not bad. Four of Cups.’ No need to mention that she’d plucked and discarded the more ominous Ten of Swords first. ‘And my horoscope in two of the Sunday papers is good,’ she continued. And not so good in two others, but what harm? ‘And the Angel Oracle card I picked was the Miracle of Love one.’ Eventually it had been anyway, after Maturity, Health, Creativity and Wisdom.
‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ Ted nodded at her black three-quarter-length pants and waist-tied shirt.
‘Why?’ Ashling asked defensively. She’d dressed very carefully, and was especially pleased with the shirt because, due to some trick of the light, it created a false-waist syndrome.
‘Haven’t you got a short skirt?’
‘I never wear short skirts,’ she muttered, wondering anxiously if she might have overdone her blusher. ‘I hate my legs. Have I too much blusher on?’
‘Which one’s blusher? The red stuff on your cheeks? No, put on some more.’
Immediately Ashling wiped some off. Ted’s motives were suspect.
‘Where are you meeting him? Kehoe’s? I’ll walk you there.’
‘No you bloody well won’t,’ Ashling said, firmly.
‘But I only…’
‘No!’
The last thing Ashling wanted was Ted hanging around, pestering Marcus adoringly, asking if he could be his new best friend.
‘Well, good luck then,’ Ted said plaintively, as Ashling flung her lucky pebble into her new embroidered handbag, thrust her feet into wedge sandals and prepared to leave. ‘I hope this is a romance made in heaven.’
‘So do I,’ Ashling admitted, then paid hasty lip-service to God or whoever was Celestial Minister for Romance, ‘if it’s meant to be.’
‘Bollocks to that,’ Ted scorned.
A brief orgy of Buddha rubbing, and Ashling was gone.
I will like Marcus Valentine and he will like me, I will like Marcus Valentine and he will like me… As she affirmationed her way along Grafton Street in her mince-inducing sandals, her Louise L. Hay-type chant was interrupted by a wolf-whistle. Marcus Valentine already?. God, that Louise L. Hay was good gear!
But it wasn’t Marcus Valentine. On the other side of the road, minus his orange blanket, was Boo. He was with two other men whose unshaven faces and funny clothes – the type that you couldn’t purchase were you to try – identified them as men without homes also. They were eating sandwiches.
Some impulse of politeness forced her to cross over.
‘So Ashling,’ Boo flashed his gappy grin, ‘you didn’t go away for the bank holiday?’
Ashling shook her head.
‘No, neither did I,’ Boo said with dignity. Then he smote his forehead at his rudeness and swung his arm to encompass the two men who were with him. One was young, straggly haired and skeletal, the waistband of his sweatpants barely clinging to his starved hips. The other was older and had his face buried in a huge beard and insane hair, as if wild cats had been Sellotaped all around the border of his face. He wore once-white plimsolls and a dinner suit that had manifestly been tailored for a much shorter man.
Boo, by comparison, looked almost normal.
‘Sorry! Ashling, this is Johnjohn,’ he indicated the younger of the two men. ‘And this is Hairy Dave. Lads, this is Ashling, my sometimes neighbour and all-round decent human being.’
Feeling slightly embarrassed, Ashling shook hands with both of them. What if Clodagh saw her now – she’d have a fit! Chewbacca in particular looked filthy and when his crusty hand clasped Ashling’s she fought back the urge to shudder.
A passer-by nearly twisted his head off as he took a good look at the unlikely quartet, Ashling so fresh and fragrant, the other three anything but.
‘You look deadly,’ Boo remarked, with naked admiration. ‘You must be meeting a man.’
‘I am,’ she