Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [207]
‘… Even if Marcus hadn’t met Clodagh he would still have done a legger sooner or later, he’s too insecure and needy and I should have seen the signs.’
‘Oh. And they were?’ Joy was tugging off her coat and doing her best to rally.
‘I knew he’d given a Bellez-moi note to another girl. Tell me, what kind of man goes around handing out his phone number? If he’s interested in you, he asks for your number, right? Instead of trawling for… for… what’s the word? A positive reaction, I suppose, by giving out his number and seeing who’ll bite.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, I gave him my number twice and he didn’t ring the first time. It’s clear now he was playing some sort of game. Seeing if I liked him enough to give him the number. He wasn’t really interested in me – he was interested in what I thought of him. It was only when I went to his gig that he deigned to ring me.
‘And when I wouldn’t sleep with him the first night. Sulky or what! Such a baby. And all that “Am I the best?… Who’s the funniest of them all?” And you know something else, Joy? I wasn’t exactly without sin, either. Part of the reason I went out with him was because he was famous. So if it backfired, I’ve only got myself to blame.’
‘But you’re making it sound like a total disaster,’ Joy objected. ‘You both got on really well. I know you liked him and you could see how much he liked you.’
‘He liked me,’ Ashling admitted. ‘I know he did, but he liked himself more. And I liked him but for partly the wrong reasons.’ Quietly she admitted, ‘Clodagh said I was a victim.’
‘Bitch!’
‘No, I am. Or rather, was,’ she corrected. ‘Not any more.’
‘But just because it’s all down to Marcus being insecure doesn’t mean you’re going to be friends with Clodagh again?’ Joy asked anxiously. ‘You still hate her, don’t you?’
A short, sharp throb of loss had to peak and disperse before Ashling was able to shrug, ‘Of course.’
63
On Valentine’s Day a big, impressive envelope skittered from the letter-box into Lisa’s hall. A card? Who from? Her blood racing with excitement she ripped open the envelope, then faltered… Oh.
It was notification of her decree nisi.
She wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite pull it off. The speed with which it had been dispatched by the courts to her solicitor had caught her right out. It had taken just over two months and in her subconscious she’d been sure it would be at least three.
With panicky clarity she realized that she and Oliver were on the home stretch. The way was free and, straight down the track, she saw the end of her marriage rushing towards her.
Only six short weeks to go before the final decree was issued.
Then she’d feel better. Closure and all that.
That night she went out with Dylan. He’d been asking her out for the last couple of months – every time he came into the office to see Ashling – and she thought it might cheer her up. Especially as she’d heard not a syllable from Oliver.
Dylan collected her after work and drove her to a pub in the Dublin Mountains, where the lights of the city were arrayed below them, twinkling like jewels. She awarded him top marks for location. He also scored seven out of ten for nice hair and eight out of ten for good looks. And technically, he was very charming and full of observant compliments, so he got seven or eight for that. But she couldn’t warm to him, she found him smooth and hard and beneath his gallant conversation she detected a jaundiced cynicism that would put hers to shame.
Or maybe the problem stemmed from her. She couldn’t shake off the residue of loss that had shrouded her all day.
She drank a lot, but couldn’t get drunk, and the encounter, far from lifting her spirits, only served to depress her. And when Dylan made it very clear how much he wanted to sleep with her, it depressed her even further.
She mumbled something about not being ‘that kind of girl’.
‘Oh, really?’ Dylan quirked his mouth in a manner that conveyed both regret and contempt, and all of a sudden, she wanted to be at home.
In