Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [43]
Indecision zigzagged across Ted’s thin face before he surprised everyone by saying, ‘Hold on, I’ll come with you.’
Outside, in the cool night air, Ashling exclaimed, ‘What are you at? She was into you.’
‘No point being too eager.’
Ashling felt a pang. She and Ted used to take it in turns to be the walking wounded. His new-found confidence had altered things between them.
‘Anyway, she’s a comedy groupie,’ he said. ‘I’ll see her again.’
You couldn’t get a taxi in Dublin for love nor money on a Saturday night. Those who lived in distant suburbs tried to beat the four-hour queues by walking out of town in the hope of flagging a taxi on its way back in. Which meant that on Ted and Ashling’s walk home into town, there was a constant stream of Night-of-the-Living-Dead-style drunken zombies lurching in their dozens towards them.
‘So how’s the job going?’ Ted asked, side-stepping another zigzagging reveller.
Ashling hesitated. ‘Great in lots of ways. It’s glamorous. Sometimes. When I’m not cross-eyed from photocopying press releases, that is.’
‘Have you found out why the Mercedes girlie is called after a car?’
‘Her mother is Spanish. Actually, she’s very nice, once you talk to her,’ Ashling elaborated. ‘She’s just quiet and extremely posh. Married to a rich fella, hangs around with a horsey crowd and I get the impression her job is only a hobby. But she’s nice.’
‘And how are you getting on with the boss-man who doesn’t like you?’
Ashling’s stomach tightened. ‘He still doesn’t like me. Yesterday he called me Little Miss Fix-it just because I offered him two Anadins for his headache.’
‘The bollocks. Maybe you were enemies in a former life and that’s why you don’t get on in this one.’
‘Do you think so?’ Ashling exclaimed. Then took one look at Ted’s grinning face. ‘Oh, you don’t, I see. Oh, ye of little faith. The next time you want your future foretold, don’t come to me.’
‘Sorry, Ashling.’ He flung his arm confidently around her neck. ‘Well, this will cheer you up – I’m doing a gig at the River Club next Saturday night. Will you come?’
‘Didn’t I just say that I’m not foretelling your future? You’ll have to wait and see.’
13
On Monday morning Craig followed his mother around the room, whining, ‘Why are you tidying?’ Clodagh snatched up a snarl of tights and flung them in the linen basket, then launched herself on the mountain of clothes on the bedroom chair, her arms a blur as she tossed jumpers into drawers, dressing gowns on to pegs and – after a short hesitation where everything became just too much – everything else under the bed.
‘Is Grandma Kelly coming?’ Craig pestered.
He fully expected the answer to be in the affirmative – this sort of frenzy was usually followed a short time afterwards by a visit from Dylan’s mother.
‘Nope.’
Craig ran behind Clodagh, as she Tasmanian-devilled into the en suite bathroom, and noisily jostled a toilet-brush around the bowl.
‘Why?’ he demanded.
‘Because,’ she hissed, irritated at the stupidity of the question, ‘because the cleaning lady is coming.
‘Molly, hurry,’ Clodagh roared in the direction of Molly’s elephant-friezed room. ‘Flor will be here any minute.’
The thought of staying in the house while Flor did her stuff was beyond the pale. Not just because all Flor wanted to talk about was her womb, but because Flor’s very presence made Clodagh feel horribly middle-class and exploitative. She was young and able-bodied – having her house cleaned by a fifty-eight-year-old woman with problems up the frock was indefensible.
She’d tried staying in for a couple of Flor’s visits, but ended up feeling like an outlaw in her own home. It seemed that every room she went into, Flor arrived seconds later, girt about with vacuum cleaners and varicose veins, and Clodagh never quite knew what to say.
‘Ah…’ followed by an uneasy smile. ‘I’ll just, er, move, ah, out of your way.’
‘Not at all,’ Flor would insist. ‘Stay right where you are.’
Only once had Clodagh taken Flor at her word, and sat flicking through an interiors magazine, pulsing with shame, while Flor huffed and puffed