by Marian Keyes
Apart from these regular bursts from Shane, conversation was desultory.
“Well, look on the bright side.” I smiled at Megan, referring to her mutilated mouth. “You got the big split that you were promised by the fortune teller. But I bet you weren’t expecting it to be a split lip.”
At that, Meredia jerked up straight like she’d been shot in the back and grabbed my wrist, digging her nails into me.
“My God,” she hissed, staring straight ahead, a peculiar light in her eyes. Mad, actually, that was the word I needed. A mad light in her eyes. “She’s right!” she said, still talking in the hissy voice, still staring into the middle distance. “My God, she’s right!”
“I’ve got a name,” I said, annoyed at her histrionics. And my wrist hurt.
“Hey, you’re right,” said Megan, starting to laugh.
“Ouch!” she complained, as her laughter started her face bleeding again. “What a blast,” she went on, laughing in earnest, blood pouring in Niagraesque fashion down the side of her face. “Yeah, I got my big split, all right. Just like she said. I can’t see what good has come out of it, though.”
“Maybe all will become clear with time,” said Meredia, in a mysterious voice and giving Shane pseudo-covert looks and winking meaningfully at Megan and then jerking her head in Shane’s direction again.
“If you know what I mean…” continued Meredia, with heavy emphasis.
“Yeah, maybe,” laughed Megan lightheartedly.
I wasn’t sure if Meredia had Shane in mind for herself or Megan, but past experience told me that Meredia wanted him for her own. That situation had her hallmark stamped all over it.
Although, by rights, he really should have been Megan’s. Didn’t she break his fall? And she handled the whole trauma so bravely that she deserved a treat.
“So now it’s just you and Hetty, Lucy,” said Megan. “Soon it’ll be your turn for your fortune to come true.”
“Do the words ‘cold day’ and ‘in hell’ mean anything to you?” I asked, laughing.
“Oooh, you doubting Thomas,” admonished Meredia. “But you have to admit that it is peculiar.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “Don’t be so silly! You can adjust any facts to fit into any predictions if you try hard enough.”
“Such cynicism in one so young,” said Meredia, shaking her head sadly.
“Has anyone seen my radio?” croaked Shane, coming to again. “I’ve got to talk to my controller.”
“Shush, lovie, it’s fine,” said Meredia comfortingly, as she forced his head down onto her shoulder.
He mumbled some kind of protest, but it didn’t do him any good.
“Just you wait,” Meredia said threateningly to me, talking over Shane’s confused head. “You’ll see. It’ll all come true. And then you’ll be sorry.”
I smiled long-sufferingly at Megan, expecting her to smile long-sufferingly back but to my great alarm, she didn’t. She was too busy nodding agreement with Meredia.
Golly, I thought, my stomach tightening with shock, could her brain have been affected by the accident? I mean, Megan was possibly the most cynical person that I’d ever met, including myself—and I prided myself on having the highest standards of cynicism. I had my days when I was sure I could out-cynic some of the best cynics currently operating on the circuit.
Megan, like me, was so cynical that she didn’t even like Daniel. “He doesn’t fool me with his nice manners and his good looks,” she had said after she first met him.
So what had happened to her?
Surely she didn’t think that the predictions for herself and Meredia had come true? And worse again, surely she didn’t think that because of that, that the predictions for Hetty and me would come true?
Eventually, when the nurses had run out of heart-attack victims and other nearly dead people to deal with, they stitched up Megan’s face and said that Shane wasn’t concussed, that he was just diligent.
We were all finally allowed to leave.
“Where do you live?” Meredia asked Shane, as we stood in the hospital carpark.
“Greenwich,” he said warily.
That was in south London. Very south London.
“What a stroke of luck,” said Meredia quickly. “We can get a taxi home together.”
“But…” I started to protest, about to remind Meredia that she lived in Stoke Newington—which was northeast London—nowhere near Greenwich.
But Meredia fixed me with a murderous glare and my protests died away.
“But I’ve got to get my bike,” said Shane backing away in fear. “And I really have to deliver these documents.”
“Don’t be so silly,” said Meredia, all faux-cheerful. “You can do that tomorrow. Come on now. Night, girls, see you both at work in the morning.
“If I’m able to walk,” she muttered in an aside—one that was loud enough for Shane to hear and flinch at.
“Know what I mean, eh?” she leered, gesturing in the direction of her crotch. And with a final meaningful wink off she went, dragging the terrified Shane along by the arm.
He looked back pleadingly at Megan and me, his face one big cry for help, but there was nothing we could do for him.
An innocent lamb to the slaughter.
Chapter 10
The following day all hell broke loose, when Megan and Meredia notified everyone in the whole world that I was getting married. They didn’t actually tell everyone in the whole world, they just told Caroline, the receptionist at work. But that was as good as—better probably than, actually—telling everyone in the whole world.
Meredia and Megan had decided, notwithstanding my lack of boyfriend, that Mrs. Nolan’s predictions for me would come true, just as her predictions for them had.
Of course they apologized later and said they hadn’t meant to do any harm and that they had really only been joking, etc., etc., but by then the damage was done and the idea had been planted in my mind and I had got to thinking that maybe a boyfriend would be a nice thing, a soul mate, someone to feel safe with, someone to be intimate with.
It opened up old longings. I began to want something from my life, which was always a mistake.
But all that was still ahead of me when my alarm went off, and I thought I felt miserable then. The only good thing was that it was Friday.
When I woke up I was as badly organized as I had been the previous day. I still hadn’t washed my clothes, so I still hadn’t any clean underwear, so I had to wear Steven’s boxers that he had left behind when I forced him to leave my apartment rather suddenly about three weeks before. I had washed them, with the vague intention of returning them to him, so at least they were clean.
At the station, the candy machine was a bastard, it worked for me—again! Machinery hated me. It gave me a bar of chocolate and I didn’t have the willpower not to eat it. I was becoming more and more convinced that I had an eating disorder.
I finally got to work and I was very, very late indeed, even by my standards.
As I rushed past reception I was almost knocked to the ground by Mr. Simmonds going at high speed in the direction of the Gents, his butt scurrying along about three yards behind the rest of him, trying hard to keep up. He looked flustered and agitated and he was a small bit red about the eyes. In fact, if I had thought the man was capable of human emotion, I would have sworn that he was crying. Something had obviously upset him.
My spirits rose.
I smiled brightly at Caroline, the receptionist, because it was more than my life was worth not to. She took offence easily and withheld my personal calls if she felt that I had slighted her. She smiled brightly back. As I raced past I thought I heard her call something after me—in fact it sounded oddly like “Congratulations”—but I was too eager to find out what disaster had befallen Mr. Simmonds to stop.
I breezed into the office, no longer so worried about being late. Mr. Simmonds obviously had bigger fish to fry.
Megan’s bruises had come up beauti
fully and a white bandage covered the lower right-hand corner of her face.
I stopped in my tracks when I noticed that Megan and Meredia weren’t fighting. Indeed, they compounded my confusion by talking civilly to each other.
How peculiar, I thought! Some kind of cease-fire must be in process. The pair of them were huddled around the cookies—always a great bonding area, the office cookies—and were whispering furtively.
It was unlikely that they were discussing Megan’s injuries or Meredia’s sex life. It would take a bigger event than either of those to bring Megan and Meredia together.
This had to mean that something was definitely up.
Great! My spirits rose even further. I loved a bit of excitement. Maybe Mr. Simmonds had been fired. Or his wife had left him. Something good like that, I hoped. I gave a quick glance around the office. Where was the diligent Hetty?
“Lucy!” declared Meredia dramatically. The way she often did. “Thank God you’re here. There’s something you have to know.”
“What?” I demanded, a thrill of anticipation running through me.
“Is it you? Did you get lucky with Shane?”
A brief shadow passed over Meredia’s face. “We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “No, it’s something to do with here.”
“Really?” I gasped in excitement. “I thought something must be up. I just passed Poison Ivor in the hall and he was…”
“Lucy, I think you’d better sit down,” Megan interrupted.
“What is it?” I demanded, absolutely dying to know.
“Something has happened,” said Meredia, in a dramatic whisper, keen to create an atmosphere. “Something that you should know.”
“Well, if I should know it, why won’t you bloody well tell me?” I demanded.
“It’s Hetty,” said Megan solemnly, talking out of the uninjured side of her mouth.
“Hetty?” I hooted incredulously. “But what’s Hetty got to do with Poison Ivor? Or me? Oh God—she’s not having an affair with him, is she?”
“No, no, no,” said Meredia, shuddering. “No, it’s a good thing. But she won’t be in for a couple of days because something has happened to her.”
“Well, would you mind telling me just what that something is,” I said querulously. “Or do I have to sit here all day while you draw this out?”
“Hetty has met the love of her life,” Meredia finally intoned.
A silence followed. You could’ve heard a tab of acid drop. “Really?” I managed to ask, my voice hoarse.
“You heard me,” said Meredia with a smug smile. I looked at Megan. Hoping for a bit of sanity and normality. But she just nodded at me and she had the same smug smile.
“She’s met the love of her life and she’s left Dick and she’s moving in with Roger immediately.
“And Poison Ivor’s heart is broken,” guffawed Megan, slapping her slim, golden thigh.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said absently. “He hasn’t got a heart.”
More chortling from Megan and Meredia but I couldn’t bring myself to join in.
“He must have the hots for Hetty big-time,” said Megan. “Yuk, poor Hetty, how awful. Imagine! He must have been going around with a constant hard-on.”
“Shut up, Megan!” I begged. “Or I’ll throw up.”
“Me too,” said Meredia.
“So, have I got this right?” I asked weakly. “Roger is the other guy?”
“Yes,” smiled Megan.
“But Hetty doesn’t do this sort of thing,” I said.
I was upset and confused. I mean, Hetty really didn’t do that sort of thing. Well, at least, she certainly didn’t used to. It felt all wrong. Hetty was steady and steadfast and stable and stalwart and all those other words beginning with st. She just didn’t go around meeting the love of her life and leaving her husband and that kind of thing. She just didn’t.
I would have felt as upset and disoriented if the earth changed direction and the sun rose in the west instead of the east. Or if I dropped a slice of toast on the floor and it landed with the buttered side facing up. Hetty’s leaving Dick contradicted everything that I believed to be true, the very foundations of my universe were shaken.
“Aren’t you happy for her?” asked Meredia.
“Who is he?” I blurted out. “Who’s this love of her life?”
“Wait till you hear,” said Meredia with relish.
“Yes, get this,” interrupted Megan, also with relish.
“The love of her life is none other than Dick’s brother,” said Meredia with a flourish.
“Dick’s brother?” I whispered. Things were getting more bizarre by the second. “So what happened? She’s known the guy for all these years and she suddenly decides that she loves him?”
“No, no, no,” said Meredia, smiling at me as though I was a naughty child. “It’s so romantic. She’d never met him until three days ago and they just clapped eyes on each other and ‘voilà!’ a coup de foudre, l’amour, je t’adore, er…um…la plume de ma tante…” she trailed off, having run out of French phrases to describe Hetty falling in love.
“How come she’d never met him before?” I asked. “She’s been married for years.” A thought struck me. “Oh no,” I said in alarm. “Oh no. Don’t let it be so.”
“What?” gasped Megan and Meredia in unison.
“Please don’t tell me that this is Dick’s younger brother and he’s been out in foreign parts—maybe Kenya or Burma or somewhere—for the past twenty years or so, like something out of Last Days of the Raj and that he’s come back and he’s all tanned and has blond floppy hair and he’s lounging around in a white linen suit, and sitting in a rattan chair and drinking gin and looking at Hetty with lazy, come-to-bed eyes. I mean, I just couldn’t bear it! It would be too much of a cliché.”
“Honestly, Lucy,” scolded Meredia, “you have such an overactive imagination. No, it’s nothing like that.”
“He hasn’t given her an ivory bracelet?” I asked.
“Well, if he did she didn’t mention it,” said Meredia doubtfully.
“Phew.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”
“It’s Dick’s older brother,” said Megan.
“Good,” I said again. “Already this is going against the stereotype.”
“And she had never met him before because there had been some kind of family fight,” continued Meredia. “Dick and Roger hadn’t spoken for years. But they’re the best of friends now…. Although maybe not, now that Hetty has…”
I stared at the pair of them, at their happy, excited faces.
“What’s wrong with you, you miserable cow?” demanded Megan.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Yes it does,” sang Meredia. “The fortune-teller told her that she’d meet the love of her life. And now she has!”
“But it’s all wrong,” I said desperately. “There’s something wrong with Hetty and Dick. I mean, that was obvious when she got upset on the drive home from Mrs. Nolan’s.”
Meredia and Megan sat silently and sullenly.
“But instead of doing something about it, she believes some cockamamie story from a charlatan of a fortune-teller…”
“She wasn’t a charlatan,” interrupted Meredia angrily. “I didn’t see her changing colour.”
“That’s a chameleon, not a charlatan,” I said in exasperation. “Anyway, she’s told that she’ll meet the love of her life, so she latches on to the first man she meets, one who hasn’t even got the decency to have a linen suit or a rattan chair, and without giving any thought to the consequences, she ups and runs off with him!
“In fact,” I added, “I think she was having some kind
of flirtation or something going with Poison Ivor—that’s how miserable she was.”
I paused in case either of them needed to vomit. They both looked pale and sweaty, so I waited a short while before I continued.
“We weren’t wrong to ge
t our tarot cards read, but we weren’t supposed to take it seriously. It was only a bit of fun. Not some kind of solution to real problems.”
They were both silent.
“Can’t you see?” I begged them, but they avoided my eyes and looked at their shoes. “This isn’t the right thing for Hetty.”
“But how do you know?” demanded Meredia. “Why don’t you have any faith? Why don’t you believe Mrs. Nolan?”
“Because Hetty has real problems with her marriage,” I said. “And they’re not going to be fixed because she wants to believe she’s met the love of her life. That’s just escapism.”
“You’re just scared,” Megan suddenly blurted out, lopsided but passionate. She sounded angry and her face was flushed and emotional.
“Of what?” I asked in surprise.
“You’re just afraid to admit that the predictions have come true for me and Meredia and Hetty, because you’ll have to admit that your prediction will come true also.”
“Megan,” I said in desperation. “What’s wrong? I rely on you to be the sane one around here. The voice of reason.”
Meredia bristled angrily and visibly expanded, which was quite something, as I had thought she was already at bursting point.
“Look, Megan,” I continued. “You don’t really believe all this nonsense about predictions. Tell me you don’t.”
“The facts speak for themselves,” she said haughtily.
“Yeah,” sneered Meredia, much braver once she knew she had Megan on her side. She even tried to curl her lip.
“Yeah. The facts do speak for themselves. So you’d better face it! You’re getting married!”
“I can’t listen to any more of this,” I said calmly. “I don’t want to have a falling out with either of you about this, but as far as I’m concerned the subject is closed.”
The pair of them exchanged a look, a funny one—worried? Guilty maybe?—which I chose to ignore.
I sat down at my desk, switched on my computer, fought back the urge to hang myself—which passed fleetingly, but intensely, through me—and started my day.