Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [157]
‘Just a cup of tea is fine.’
‘I’ve Penguins,’ Monica tempted. ‘And butterfly buns. I made them myself.’
‘No, I… oh…’ The talk of home-made butterfly buns poleaxed Ashling. Monica opened a biscuit tin, displaying small misshapen buns, each with two sponge ‘wings’ arranged in a blob of cream on top. The cream was sprinkled with hundreds and thousands and as Ashling swallowed a bite – a wing, actually – she discovered she was also swallowing a lump in her throat.
‘I’ve to go into town,’ Mike announced.
‘I’ll come with you.’ Ashling catapulted up.
‘Oh, will you?’ Monica looked disappointed. ‘Well, make sure you’re back in time for your dinner.’
‘What are we having?’
‘Chops.’
Chops! Ashling almost sniggered – she hadn’t realized that such a foodstuff still existed.
‘Why are we going into town?’ she asked her father as they backed out on to the road.
‘To buy an electric blanket.’
‘In July?’
‘It’ll be winter soon enough.’
‘Nothing like being prepared.’
They exchanged a smile, then Mike had to go and ruin it by saying, ‘We don’t see you much, Ashling.’
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
‘Your mother’s delighted to see you.’
Some response was called for, so Ashling settled on, ‘How, um, is she?’
‘Marvellous. You should come and see us more, she’s back to being the woman I married.’
Another silence, then Ashling heard herself ask a question that she had no memory of ever asking before. ‘What was it all about, that terrible time? What made it happen?’
Mike took his eyes off the road to look at her, his expression a grisly mix of defensiveness and determined innocence – he had not been a bad father. ‘Nothing happened.’ His joviality seemed unexpectedly pitiful. ‘Depression is a sickness, you know all this.’
As children, they’d had it explained to them that it wasn’t their fault that their mother was a basket case. Naturally, none of them had believed it.
‘Yes, but how do you get depression?’ She struggled for under-standing.
‘Sometimes it’s triggered by a loss or a – what d’you call them things? – trauma,’ he muttered, the car full of his ghastly discomfort. ‘But it doesn’t have to be,’ he continued. ‘They say it can be hereditary.’
That cheery thought knocked all talk out of Ashling. She rummaged for her mobile phone.
‘Who are you ringing?’
‘No one.’
He watched Ashling continue to press buttons on her mobile phone. Affronted, he demanded, ‘Do you think I’m blind?’
‘I’m not ringing anyone, I’m checking my messages.’
Marcus hadn’t rung her since he’d departed her flat on Thursday night. In the two months that they’d been going out – not that she was counting – they’d slipped into a routine of ringing each other every day. She felt his absence of contact keenly. Holding her breath, she yearned for a message from him but, once again, there was none. Disappointed, she snapped her phone away.
That evening, after her time-warp dinner – chops, mash and peas from a can – she decided to ring him. She had a good excuse: wishing him luck with the Eddie Izzard gig. But she got his answering machine – again. She had a horrible vision of him standing in his flat, listening to her message but refusing to pick up. Unable to stop herself, she tried his mobile: it went straight to message service. Mercury is in retrograde, she told herself. Then she reluctantly admitted, or maybe it’s just that my boyfriend’s pissed off with me.
Plainly, he was hurt by her visiting her parents, but just how bad was the damage? For a moment she considered the possibility that it was irreparable, and the accompanying squeeze of terror left her weak. She really, really, really liked Marcus. He was the closest to Mr Right she’d met in a long time. She was dying for Sunday evening, because he’d asked her to call him then. But what if he still didn’t answer the phone… ? Christ!
‘We usually watch a video on a Saturday night,’ her mother informed her.
From Here to Eternity – how appropriate, Ashling thought, as the evening stretched like chewing gum. Chilled by exclusion, she ached to be in Dublin, with her boyfriend. All the while