Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [13]
Malone’s Aparthotel was a strange new breed of hostelry – it had no bar, or restaurant, or room service or anything really, except for thirty rooms, each with small kitchen areas attached. Lisa was booked in for a fortnight and hopefully by then she’d have found somewhere to live.
In a daze, she hung up a couple of things, looked out at the grey view of the busy road, then flung herself out on to the damp streets, to inspect the city that now constituted home.
Now that she was actually here, the shock hit her with unprecedented force. How had her life gone so horribly wrong? She should be strolling along Fifth Avenue right now, and not in this drenched village.
The guide-book said that it would only take half a day to walk around Dublin and see all its important sights – as if that was a good thing! Sure enough, less than two hours was enough to check out the high spots – read shopping – both north and south of the river Liffey. It was worse than she’d expected: nobody stocked La Prairie products, Stephane Kélian shoes, Vivienne Westwood or Ozwald Boeteng.
‘It’s total pants! A one-horse town,’ she thought, in mild hysteria, ‘and the horse is wearing last-season’s Hilfiger.’
She wanted to go home. She longed for London so badly, then through the mist she saw something that made her heart lift – a Marks & Spencers!
Normally she never went near them: the clothes were too dowdy, the food too tempting, but today she flung herself through the entrance like a pursued dissident seeking asylum in a foreign embassy. She resisted the urge to lie, panting, against the inside of the door. But only because the door was automatic. Then she immersed herself in the food department because it had no windows and didn’t interfere with her fantasies.
I’m in the High Street Kensington branch, she pretended to herself. In a moment I’m going to leave and drop into Urban Outfitters.
She idled in front of the fresh fruit. No, I’ve changed my mind, she decided. I’m in the Marble Arch branch As soon as I’ve finished here I’m going to South Molton Street.
It gave her a peculiar comfort to know that the melon salads in front of her were part of the diaspora of melon salads in all the London branches. She pressed slightly on a taut cellophane lid and felt a sense of belonging – faint but real.
When she was restored to calmness she went to an ordinary supermarket and bought her weekly shopping. A routine would keep her sane – well, it had certainly helped in the past. Home she traipsed, the hood of her cardigan up to protect her hair from the rain that had started to fall again. She unpacked the seven cans of Slimfast and placed them neatly in the cupboard, the potatoes and apples went in the little fridge and the seven pieces of chocolate went into a drawer. Now what? Saturday night. All alone in a strange city. Nothing to do but to stay in and watch… It was then that she noticed that there was no telly in the room.
It was such a big blow she cried a flashflood of hot, spurty tears. What was she going to do now? She’d already read this month’s Elle, Red, New Woman, Company, Cosmo, Marie-Claire, Vogue, Tatler, and the Irish magazines that she’d be competing against. She could read a book, she supposed. If she had one. Or a newspaper, except newspapers were so boring and depressing… At least she had clothes to hang up. So while the streets below filled with young people en route to a night on the piss, Lisa smoked and shook dresses and skirts and jackets on to hangers, smoothed cardigans and tops into drawers, arranged boots and shoes into a perfect military parade, hung handbags… The phone rang, startling her from her soothing rhythm.
‘Hello?’ And then she was sorry she’d answered. ‘Oliver!’ Oh, bugger. ‘Where did you… how did you get this number?’
‘Your mum.’
Interfering old cow.
‘When were you going to tell me, Lisa?’
Never, actually.
‘Soon. When I’d got my own place.’
‘What have you done with our flat?’
‘Got tenants in. Don’t worry, you’ll get your share of the rent.’
‘And why Dublin? I