Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [55]
‘Lisa,’ Ashling said anxiously. ‘It’s two-thirty and the invite is for three. Should we go?’
Lisa laughed in sardonic surprise. ‘Rule number one – never be on time. Everyone knows that! You’re too important.’
‘Am I?’
‘Pretend.’ Lisa returned to her pile of press releases. But after a while she found herself looking up and saw that Ashling’s avid eyes were fastened on her.
‘For crying out loud!’ Lisa exclaimed, bitterly regretting ever inviting Ashling.
‘Sorry. I’m just afraid everything will be gone.’
‘What everything?’
‘The canapés, the goody bags.’
‘I’m not leaving until three, and don’t ask me again.’
At three-fifteen, Lisa reached under her desk for her Miu Miu tote, and said to a quivering Ashling, ‘Come on, then!’
The taxi journey through the traffic-thronged streets took so long that even Lisa began to worry that all the canapés and goody bags would be gone.
‘What now?’ she demanded irritably, as a policeman thrust his meaty paw at them, indicating that they should stop.
‘Ducks,’ the driver said shortly.
As Lisa wondered if ‘ducks’ was a Dublin swearword along the lines of ‘feck’, Ashling exclaimed, ‘Oh, look, ducks!’
You what! Lisa wondered, then before her startled eyes a mother duck strutted across the road, trailing six ducklings in a line behind her. Two policemen were holding up both directions of traffic to guarantee a safe passage to the duck family. She could hardly believe it!
‘Happens every year.’ Ashling’s eyes were alight. ‘The ducks hatch on the canal, then when they’re big enough, they come down to the lake on Stephen’s Green.’
‘Hundreds of them. Shags up the traffic entirely. Annoy the shite outta you,’ the taxi-driver said fondly.
This fucking city… Lisa sighed.
As Lisa and Ashling alighted outside the Fitzwilliam hotel, the day was chilly and blustery, the mini-heatwave of the previous week but a distant memory.
‘One leg-wax doesn’t make a summer,’ Ashling thought sadly, back to wearing trousers again after a long summer skirt had enjoyed a too-brief airing the day before. Then she forgot the weather and ecstatically elbowed Lisa. ‘Look! It’s your woman, what’s-her-name? Tara Palmtree Yokiemedoodle.’
And indeed it was Tara Palmtree Yokiemedoodle, parading up and down on the pavement outside the hotel, surrounded by a throng of frantically clicking photographers.
‘Givvus a bit of leg there, good girl, Tara,’ they urged.
Ashling headed for the road, to walk around the ring of photographers, but Lisa marched determinedly into the thick of them.
‘Oi, who’s she?’ Ashling heard.
Then Lisa gushed, ‘Taaaaraaaaa, darling, long time no see,’ wrestled Tara into a reluctant air-snog, then swivelled them both to face the cameras. The photographers froze from their incessant clicking, then took in the golden, caramel-haired woman, cheek-to-cheek with Tara, and commenced their clicking with renewed fervour.
‘Lisa Edwards, editor-in-chief, Colleen magazine,’ Lisa moved amongst the photographers, informing them. ‘Lisa Edwards. Lisa Edwards. I’m an old friend of Tara’s.’
‘How do you know Tara Palmtree?’ Ashling asked, in awe, when Lisa returned to her on the sidelines, where she’d been completely ignored by the photographers.
‘I don’t.’ Lisa surprised her with a grin. ‘But rule number two – never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.’
Lisa swept into the hotel, Ashling trotting behind her. Two handsome young men came forward, greeted them and relieved Ashling of her jacket. But Lisa airily refused to relinquish hers.
‘May I remind you of rule number three,’ Lisa muttered tetchily, en route to the reception room. ‘We never leave our jacket. You want to give the impression that you’re very busy, just popping in for a few minutes, that you’ve a far more interesting life going on out there.’
‘Sorry,’ Ashling said humbly. ‘I didn’t realize.’
Into the party room where a see-through-skinny woman dressed head-to-toe in Morocco’s Summer collection established