Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [31]
‘Yes,’ she lied, sticking bread in the toaster.
‘I can’t remember what the state of play was the last time I talked to you about it. Had they actually made any decisions?’
‘They might have been just about to,’ Clodagh attempted.
‘OK, so after deliberating for ever, they finally narrow it down to three packages. Then they say they want to test them. Which, as you know, is a huge waste of fucking time so I offer them the reports from the trial sites. First they say OK, they’ll accept that. Then they change their minds and send over two techies from their Ohio office to run the tests…’
Clodagh stirred the saucepan and tuned out. She was disappointed. This was extremely fucking boring.
Slumped at the table, Dylan let it all pour out. ‘… Then I get a phone call this afternoon, they’ve only gone and bought a package from Digiware, and they’re not even going to test ours!’
This was the point where Clodagh tuned back in. ‘But that’s brilliant! If they’re not even going to test yours!’
10
In her cold lonely bed in the bleak room in Harcourt Street, Lisa tried to sleep, but she felt she was already in the land of nod. And in the middle of a terrible nightmare.
After the shocking day at the amateur office, she’d been quietly confident that things couldn’t get any worse. That was before she’d tried to find a home to rent.
She’d thought she’d be able to use a relocation agency, but the registration fee was extortionate. And a tactfully worded offer over the phone that she’d give them a nice mention in the magazine if they waived the fee was stonewalled.
‘We don’t need any publicity,’ the young man told her. ‘More business than we can handle due to the Celtic Tiger.’
‘Celtic what?’
‘Tiger.’ The young man had registered that Lisa’s accent wasn’t an Irish one, so he explained. ‘Remember when the economies of countries like Japan and Korea were booming they called it the Asian Tiger?’
Of course Lisa didn’t. Words like ‘economy’ just bounced right off her.
The young man continued, ‘And now that Ireland’s economy is going through the roof, we call it the Celtic Tiger. Which means,’ he said as tactfully as he could, which wasn’t very, ‘we don’t need any free publicity.’
‘Right,’ Lisa said dully, hanging up the phone. ‘Thanks for the lecture on economics.’
On Ashling’s advice, she bought the evening paper, scanned the letting columns for apartments and mews houses in fashionable Dublin 4, and made appointments to see a few places after work. Then she rang a taxi on the Randolph Media account to take her around them.
‘Sorry love,’ the taxi controller said. ‘I don’t know your name.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Lisa said silkily. ‘You will.’ It had been years since she’d used public transport – or paid for a taxi out of her own pocket for that matter. And she didn’t intend to start now.
The first property was a maisonette in Ballsbridge. It had sounded lovely in the paper – right price, right postcode, right facilities. Sure enough, the area seemed nice with plenty of restaurants and cafés, the quiet tree-lined street was attractive, all the little houses kempt and spruce. As the taxi inched along, looking for number forty-eight, Lisa’s spirits lifted for the first time since she’d clapped eyes on Jack. Already she could imagine herself living here.
Then she saw it. The only house in the road that looked like it was inhabited by squatters; torn curtains at the window, the grass several feet high, a rusting car on concrete blocks in the drive. She counted along the house numbers from where she was now, wondering which one was forty-eight. Forty-two, forty-four, forty-six, forty-ei… ght. Sure enough, number forty-eight was the house that looked like it had had a demolition order slapped on it.
‘Oh fuck,’ she exhaled.
She’d forgotten. It was so long since she’d had to look for somewhere to live that it had slipped her mind what a living hell it was. That it was a series of disappointments, each one more crushing than the previous.
‘Drive on,’ she ordered.