‘Does she mean I am or you are?’ Lisa asked anxiously, belatedly realizing that she might be wearing her heart on her sleeve too much.
‘You, lady.’ The old woman gave a gappy smile.
‘Naff off,’ Lisa muttered.
Instantly Oliver exploded into laughter, his beautiful lips stretched around his rows of strong, white teeth. ‘Touchy!’ he teased. ‘Must be because you do love me.’
‘Or maybe you love me,’ she replied huffily.
‘I never said I didn’t,’ he replied.
And though it wasn’t the kind of thing she normally went around feeling, there, in the unexpectedness of that surreal, beautiful wedding party, Lisa felt as though they’d been touched by the hand of God.
On Sunday morning, they’d awoken coiled around each other. Oliver bundled her into his car and belted up the motorway to Alton Towers, where they spent the day daring each other to go on ever more dangerous roller coasters. Even though she was terrified, she went on the Nemesis ride because she didn’t want to show fear with him. And when she went a bit green and staggery he laughed and said, ‘Too much for you, babes?’ To which she replied that she had an inner-ear disorder. Oliver challenged and interested her more than any man had ever done. He was like herself, only more so.
Then they went home for pizza and bed. Their first date lasted sixty hours and ended when he dropped her off at work on the Monday morning.
By their third excursion they were officially in love.
On their fourth, Oliver decided to take her down to Purley to meet his mum and dad. Lisa thought it was a fantastically good sign, but, as it happened, it was almost the undoing of them. The unravelling began when they’d been in the car about half an hour and Oliver remarked, ‘I’m not sure Dad will be home from work yet.’
‘What does he do?’ Lisa had never thought to ask before, it hadn’t seemed important.
‘He’s a doctor.’
A doctor! ‘ What kind of doctor?’ A doctor of road-hygiene – in other words, a street sweeper?
‘Just a GP.’
The shock rendered her speechless. Here, she’d been affectionately thinking of Oliver as a bit of rough, and it turned out that he’d been middle-class all along and she’d been the bit of rough. There was no way now that she could take him to meet her parents.
For the rest of the drive, she hoped and prayed that, despite the dad being a doctor, they might be poor. But when Oliver drove up to a big, square house, the fake-Tudor lead-paned windows, the Laura Ashley Austrian blinds and the plethora of knick-knacks on the visible window-sills declared that they weren’t exactly strapped for cash.
Before they’d set off, she’d expected Oliver’s mum to be a big-thighed, good-natured woman in Minnie Mouse shoes who drank Red Stripe at breakfast and laughed in a high-pitched, ‘Heee! Heee! Heee!’ Instead, as she answered the door, she looked like the queen. A few shades darker, but with the helmet curls and Marks & Spencer’s prim duds, all present and correct.
‘Pleased to meet you, dear.’ The accent was pure Home Counties and Lisa felt her self-esteem wither even further.
‘Hello, Mrs Livingstone.’
‘Call me Rita. Do come through. Daddy’s late at the surgery, but he should be here soon.’
They were led into the well-appointed sitting-room and when Lisa saw that the soft furnishings had had their plastic covering removed, it was the final blow.
‘Tea?’ Rita suggested brightly, stroking the golden labrador which had laid his head in her lap. ‘Lapsang Suchong or Earl Grey?’
‘Don’t mind,’ Lisa muttered. What was wrong with PG Tips?
‘This wasn’t what I’d expected,’ Lisa couldn’t stop herself from whispering when she and Oliver were alone.
‘What did you expect? Dat we be eatin’ rice’n’peas, drinkin’ rum,’ Oliver slipped into a perfect Caribbean accent, ‘an’ dancin’ to steel drums on de porch?’
Exactly! It’s the only reason I came.
‘I don’t think so, my dear.’ He changed swiftly to BBC wartime speak. ‘For we are Brrrritish!’
‘The correct name for us, so I’m told,’ Rita had reappeared with a tray containing a plate of unsweet, no-fun, handmade biscuits, ‘is “Bounties”. Or “Choc-ices”.’
‘Wh – why?’ Lisa was confused.
‘Brown on the outside, white on the inside.’ She flashed a sudden, melon grin. ‘That’s what my family call us. And you can’t win because the white neighbours hate us too! Next-door told me that the value of their house went down by ten grand when we moved in.’
Unexpectedly, totally at odds with her M&S appearance, she gave a high-pitched laugh. ‘Heee! Heee! Heee!’ And Lisa felt the chip on her shoulder dissolve like the sugar she didn’t take in her tea. Well, so long as the neighbours hated them, that was all right then, wasn’t it? They weren’t half as scary now.
On their fifth date Oliver and Lisa talked about moving in together. They explored the notion further on the sixth. Their seventh date consisted of driving a van from Battersea to West Hampstead and back again, as they ferried Lisa’s considerable wardrobe from her flat to his. ‘You’re going to have to lose some of this kit, babes,’ he said in alarm. ‘Or else we’re going to have to buy a bigger place.’
Perhaps, Lisa subsequently realized, even then there were signs that all was not as it should have been. But, at the time, she was blind to them. Nothing had ever felt so right. She felt that he truly saw and accepted her, with all her ambition, energy, vision and fear. She reckoned they were two of a kind. Young, keen, ambitious, succeeding against the odds.
Around then, the concept of a soul-mate was a very fashionable one, recently imported from LA. Lisa was now the proud possessor of one.
Shortly after they got together, Lisa moved to Femme as deputy editor. This coincided with Oliver becoming a red-hot property. Even though he wasn’t always popular on a personal level – some people found him just that little bit too difficult – all the glossies were suddenly scrambling and competing against each other to use him. Oliver shared himself out equally between them all, until Lily Headly-Smythe promised to use one of his photos for the Christmas cover of Panache, then changed her mind.
‘She broke her word. I’ll never work for Panache or Lily Headly-Smythe again,’ Oliver declared.
‘Until next time,’ Lisa laughed.
‘No.’ His face was serious. ‘Never.’
And he didn’t, not even when Lily sent him an Irish Wolf-hound pup by way of an apology. Lisa was full of admiration. He was so strong-willed, so idealistic.
But that was before his intractability was turned on her. She didn’t like it so much then.
21
Ashling wasn’t having such a fantastic Sunday either.
She’d woken up bubbling with anticipation concerning Marcus Valentine. Curious and expectant, she felt gloriously ready – for a date, a bout of flirting, a dose of flattery. Very definitely something…
The morning was spent mooning around, encapsulated in warmth, her positive faculties on full alert. But as the day faded without a phone call, her inner smile curdled into irritability. To pass the time and expend excess energy she did a bit of cleaning.
Not that Marcus had said when he’d ring. Her disenchantment wasn’t so much rejection as the feeling of missing a good opportunity. Because even though she couldn’t say for sure that she fancied him, she suspected that she might. Certainly, she was willing to give it her best shot. Emotionally, she was all dressed up with nowhere to go and it wasn’t nice.
Look at me, she thought, scrubbing the bath with frustrated force. I’ve been here before. Waiting for a man to ring. Too late, she realized how much she’d enjoyed that brief pocket where she was no longer cut-up about one man and before she’d become hung-up on another. Serves me right for being shallow enough to fall for a man-on-a-stage.
How she regretted not having bellez’ed him when she’d had her chance. And it was too late now because she c
ouldn’t find the note. She had no memory of actually throwing it out – she’d have remembered because she would have thought she was being cruel. But a rummage through pockets and bedside drawers yielded nothing, except guilt-triggering receipts and a flyer for a computer sale.
Back to the cleaning. But after wiping out the inside of the microwave, she needed a boost, so decided to try to get a sneak preview of her future. Her angel divination cards didn’t promise anything, so tö hurry along Marcus’s call, Ashling – rather sheepishly – unearthed her Wish Kit. Which hadn’t seen the light of day since the last days of Phelim. She was aware that this did not bode well.
The kit consisted of six candles, each emblazoned with a word – Love, Friendship, Luck, Money, Peace and Success – and six corresponding boxes of matches. The Friendship, Money and Success candles hadn’t even had their wicks lit, the Peace and Luck candles were burnt down slightly, but it was the Love candle that had seen the most action. It was the black fruit-gum of the packet. Reverentially, with the last Love match, Ashling lit the candle, which burned away merrily for about ten minutes until it ran out of wax, then flickered and died.
Ah, shite, Ashling thought, that better not be a Sign.
Early evening Ted showed up, suffering from the trough that comes after a great high. Despite having met lots of girls, he wasn’t taken with any of them.
‘What about that fantastic one you were talking to when I left? Did you sleep with her?’
‘No.’
‘Ted! You can’t say that. Even if you didn’t ride her, you have to say you did to protect her honour.’
But Ted wasn’t amused. ‘She said I smelt funny. Like her granny.’
‘Can’t people be very mad?’
‘No, actually.’ Ted was annoyed. ‘She was right. I did smell like her granny.’
As Ashling wondered aloud how Ted knew what the girl’s granny smelt like, Ted overrode her accusingly. ‘And do you know what I reckon it was?’
‘What?’
‘That fecking gear you rubbed on me before we went out.’
‘Oh, the lavender oil.’ Sometimes Ashling felt horribly unappreciated.
‘That’s a granny smell, isn’t it?’ Ted wouldn’t let it go.
‘I thought stale urine was more customary.’ Feeling hard-done-by made Ashling uncharacteristically sharp.
‘Ah, she wasn’t right for me anyway,’ Ted conceded grumpily. ‘They’re all too young and silly, and they like me for the wrong reasons… Your friend Clodagh,’ he asked, suddenly. ‘Still married, is she?’
‘Of course she is.’
‘Is something wrong with you?’ Ted had realized that he wasn’t the only one down in the mouth.
Ashling considered, and decided not to moan about Marcus not ringing. He hadn’t broken any promises and could ring at any stage. So instead she said lightly, ‘Sunday-evening blues.’ She’d often discussed with Ted, Joy, Dylan – anyone who had a job, in fact – the thunderclap of dread that clangs inside at around five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. When it hits like a ton of bricks that you’ve to go to work on Monday morning. Even though there’s still some hours of the weekend left to run, it’s to all intents and purposes over as soon as you get that deathknell despair.
Ted looked at his watch and seemed happy with that explanation. ‘Ten past five. Right on the button.’
‘I’ve got cabin fever. Let’s go out.’ Ashling had just remembered one of the basic rules of male-female engagement. Of course Marcus hadn’t rung – she’d been waiting by the phone! All she had to do was leave her flat and he’d be burning up the phone lines.
Before they left she grabbed a couple of books for Boo. She’d been caught humiliatingly on the hop the previous night when she hadn’t a novel in her handbag to give to him in place of the mushroom encyclopaedia. But as she shoved Trainspotting into her bag, she went into a loop. Would he be offended if she gave him a book about heroin addiction? Would he think she was implying something?
Best to be on the safe side. Back it came out of the bag. Instead she brought Fever Pitch and some science-fiction crap that Phelim had given her two birthdays ago and that she’d never read. A boy’s book. But, on the street, there was no sign of Boo.
Ted and Ashling went to the Long Hall for a couple of rather subdued drinks, followed by a low-key pizza at Milano’s, then home again. As Ashling let herself back in, the first thing she did was look for the red flashing light on her answering machine. And there it was! She’d been so poised for disappointment that she thought she was conjuring it up. She stood and watched, as the light blinked on and off. Little red circle, no little red circle, little red circle, no little red circle… It was a message, all right. As she pressed the ‘play’ button, an awful thought afflicted her. If this is from Cormac saying that hell be delivering a lorry-load of shrubs on Wednesday, I’ll scream.
But the message was from neither the mystery gardening supplier nor from Marcus Valentine. It was from Ashling’s father.
Oh God, what’s happened?
His voice was preceded by silence overlain with crackles, static scrapes and adenoidal breathing. Then he said to someone in the room with him, ‘Will I talk now?’
The other person – Ashling’s mother, presumably – said something that Ashling couldn’t hear, then Mike Kennedy said, ‘There were a few short ones, and a long one. God, I hate these yokes… Ashling, Dad here. I feel like a terrible eejit talking to a machine. We were just thinking we hadn’t heard from you in a while. Are you all right? We’re grand here. Janet rang us last week, she had to get rid of the cat, he kept head-butting her while she was asleep. And we’d a letter from Owen, he thinks he’s discovered a new tribe. Not brand new, of course. Just new to him. I suppose you’re busy with your new job, but don’t forget us, will you? Hahaha. Ah, bye so.’
More crackles and breathing. Then, ‘What’ll I do now? Just hang up? I don’t have to press a button or anything?’
Abruptly the connection was severed.
Ashling stewed in guilt and resentment, Marcus Valentine completely forgotten. She could feel the pressure for a visit to Cork coming on. At the very least she’d have to call them. Especially if her younger sister Janet managed to circumvent the eight-hour time difference to ring from California, and her brother Owen could get a letter to them from the Amazon Basin.
She flicked a glance at the photo she kept on top of her telly. It had been there so long that she was usually blind to it. But the emotions stirred up by the phone call made her take it and stare at it, as if looking for clues.
It hit home, as it always did, that Mike Kennedy had been a good-looking man. Bold and tall, he laughed out at the camera, all early-seventies sideburns and hair curling on his patterned shirt collar. It was funny because on the one hand he was her dad. But on the other, he looked like the kind of bad man you’d see at a party and be drawn to, but whom your self-preservation would warn you well away from.
Mike had his arm around Janet, aged four. She was bent at the waist and had her fist shoved between her legs – she’d wanted to go to the toilet, the camera had always had that effect on her. Leaning against Mike, holding the three-year-old Owen in her pucci-swirled polyestered arms, was Monica. She was smiling happily, looking unfeasibly young, her hair smooth and set, her mascara Priscilla Presley glam. And stage centre, wedged between the two adults, her six-year-old’s eyes crossed comically, was Ashling.
Lucifer, Before the Fall, she always thought when she inspected this picture. They looked like such a perfect little family. But she often wondered if, even then, the rot had already set in.
Replacing the photo, she came back to the present. It had been about three weeks since the last time she’d rung her mum and dad. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten to since – she thought about it a lot, but could nearly always think of excuses not to.
However, she was never really at peace with her lack of communication. She was aware that Clodagh rang her own mother daily. Althoug
h Brian and Maureen Nugent were very different from Mike and Monica Kennedy. Maybe if Brian and Maureen had been her parents she’d be better at keeping in touch.
22
Monday morning. Traditionally, the bleakest of all mornings. (Except following a bank holiday, when Tuesday morning gets a go.) Nevertheless, it perked Lisa up no end. The thought of going into the office made her feel in control – at least she’d be doing something to help herself. Then she tried to have a shower and the water was stone cold.
But she temporarily shelved the notion of collaring Jack about the timer on her boiler when Mrs Morley let slip that he’d been working over the weekend, sorting out irate electricians and hard-done-by cameramen. He looked exhausted and black of mood.
Ashling, grey and late, was also finding the day hard. Even more so when Jack Devine stuck his head out of his office and said, curtly, ‘Miss Fix-it?’
‘Mr Devine?’
‘A word?’
Alarmed, she stood up far too quickly and had to wait for her blood supply to catch up and restore her sight.
‘Either you’re in big trouble or else you’re riding him,’ Trix whispered gleefully. ‘What’s going on?’
Ashling was in no mood for Trix and her antics. She hadn’t a clue why Jack Devine wanted to speak to her in private. With a presentiment of doom, she crossed to his office.
‘Close the door,’ he ordered.
I’m going to be sacked. She was in the horrors.
The door clicked behind her and instantly the room shrank – and darkened. Jack, with his dark hair, dark eyes, dark-blue suit and dark mood, tended to do that. To make matters worse, he wasn’t behind his desk, he was balanced on the front and there was very little space between the two of them. He made her so uncomfortable.
‘I wanted to give you this, without the rest of them seeing.’ She found herself leaning away from him, although there was nowhere to go. He thrust a plastic bag at her, which she accepted dumbly. Hazily, she noticed that it was a bit big for a letter of notice.