Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

  MARIAN KEYES

  Lucy Sullivan

  is Getting Married

  For Liam

  Chapter 1

  When Meredia reminded me that the four of us from the office were due to visit a fortune-teller the following Monday, my stomach lurched.

  “You’ve forgotten,” accused Meredia, her chubby face aquiver.

  I had.

  She slapped her hand down on her desk and warned, “Don’t even think of trying to tell me that you’re not coming.”

  “Damn,” I whispered, because that was just what I had been about to do. Not because I had any objections to having my fortune told. On the contrary—it was usually good for a laugh. Especially when they got to the part where they told me that the man of my dreams was just around the next corner. That part was always hilarious.

  Even I laughed.

  But I was poor. Although I had just been paid, my bank account was a post-holocaust, corpse-strewn wasteland because the day I’d been paid, I’d spent a fortune on aromatherapy oils that had promised to rejuvenate and energize and uplift me.

  And bankrupt me, except it didn’t say that on the packaging. But I think the idea was that I’d be so rejuvenated and energized and uplifted that I wouldn’t care.

  So when Meredia reminded me that I’d committed myself to paying some woman thirty pounds so that she could tell me that I would travel over water and that I was quite psychic myself, I realized that I’d be going without lunch for two weeks.

  “I’m not sure that I can afford it,” I said nervously.

  “You can’t back out now!” thundered Meredia. “Mrs. Nolan is giving us a discount. The rest of us will have to pay more if you don’t come.”

  “Who’s this Mrs. Nolan?” Megan asked suspiciously, looking up from her computer where she had been playing Solitaire. She was supposed to be running a check on debtors overdue a month.

  “The tarot reader,” said Meredia.

  “What kind of name is Mrs. Nolan?” demanded Megan.

  “She’s Irish,” protested Meredia.

  “No!” Megan tossed her shiny, blond hair in annoyance. “I mean, what kind of name is ‘Mrs. Nolan’ for a psychic? She should be called Madam Zora or something like that. She can’t be called ‘Mrs. Nolan.’ How can we believe a word that she says?”

  “Well, that’s her name.” Meredia sounded hurt.

  “And why didn’t she change it?” said Megan. “There’s nothing to it, so I’m told. Isn’t that right, so-called Meredia?”

  A pregnant pause.

  “Or should I say ‘Cathy’?” Megan continued with triumph.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” said Meredia. “My name is Meredia.”

  “Sure,” said Megan, with great sarcasm.

  “It is!” said Meredia hotly.

  “So let’s see your birth certificate,” challenged Megan.

  Megan and Meredia didn’t see eye to eye on most things and especially not on Meredia’s name. Megan was a no-nonsense Australian with a low bullshit threshold. Since she had arrived three months ago as a temp, she had insisted that Meredia wasn’t Meredia’s real name. She was probably right. Although I was very fond of Meredia, I had to agree that her name had a certain makeshift, ramshackle, cobbled-together-out-of-old-egg-cartons feel to it.

  But unlike Megan I couldn’t really see a problem with that.

  “So it’s definitely not ‘Cathy’?” Megan took a little notebook out of her purse and drew a line through something.

  “No,” said Meredia stiffly.

  “Right,” said Megan. “That’s all the Cs done. Time for the Ds. Daphne? Deirdre? Dolores? Dennise? Diana? Dinah?”

  “Shut up!” said Meredia, clearly on the verge of tears.

  “Stop it.” Hetty put a gentle hand on Megan’s arm, because that’s the kind of thing that Hetty did. Although Hetty was rich, she was also a good, kind person, who poured oil on troubled waters. Which meant, of course, that she wasn’t much fun, but no one was perfect.

  Immediately upon meeting Hetty, you could tell that Hetty came from old money—mostly because she had horrible clothes. Even though she was only about thirty-five she wore awful tweed skirts and flowery dresses that looked like family heirlooms. She never bought new clothes, which was a shame because one of the chief ways that office workers bonded was by displaying the spoils of the post-payday shopping run.

  “I wish that Aussie bitch would leave,” Meredia muttered to Hetty.

  “It probably won’t be long now,” Hetty said soothingly.

  “When are you going to leave?” Meredia demanded of Megan.

  “As soon as I’ve got the cash,” Megan replied.

  Megan was doing her grand tour of Europe and had temporarily run out of money. But as soon as she had enough money to go, she was going—she constantly reminded us—to Scandinavia or Greece or the Pyrenees or the west of Ireland.

  Until then Hetty and I would have to break up the vicious fights that broke out regularly. Megan was tall and tanned and gorgeous; Meredia was short and fat and not gorgeous. Meredia was jealous of Megan’s beauty, while Megan despised Meredia’s excess weight. When Meredia couldn’t buy clothes to fit her, instead of making sympathetic noises like the rest of us did, Megan barked, “Stop whining and go on a bloody diet!”

  But Meredia never did. And in the meantime she was condemned to cause cars to swerve whenever she walked down the road. Because instead of trying to disguise her size with vertical stripes and dark colours, she seemed to dress to enhance it. She went for the layered look, layers and layers and layers of fabric. Really, lots. Acres of fabric, yards and yards of velvet, draped and pinned and knotted and tied, anchored with broaches, attached with scarves, pinned and arranged along her sizeable girth.

  And the more colours the better. Crimson and vermilion and sunburst orange and flame red and magenta.

  And that was just her hair.

  “One of us has got to go. It’s either me or her,” muttered Meredia, as she glared balefully at Megan.

  But it was just bravado. Meredia had worked in our office for a very long time—to hear her tell it, since the dawn of time; in reality, about eight years—and she had never managed to secure another job. Nor had she been promoted.

  This she bitterly blamed on a sizeist management. (Although there seemed to be no bar to any number of tubby men on the fast track to success, reaching all kinds of exalted positions within the ranks of the company.)

  Anyway, wimp that I was, I gave in to Meredia about the visit to the fortune-teller. I even managed to persuade myself that having no money would be a good thing—being forced to go without lunch for two weeks would be good for my diet.

  And Meredia reminded me of something I’d overlooked.

  “You’ve just split up with Steven,” she said. “You were due a visit to a fortune-teller anyway.”

  Although I didn’t like to admit it, she was probably right. Now that I had discovered that Steven wasn’t the man of my dreams, it was only a matter of time before I made some sort of psychic enquiries to find out exactly who was. That was the kind of thing that my friends and I did, even though no one believed the fortune-tellers. At least none of us would admit to believing them.

  Poor Steven. What a disappointment he’d turned out to be.

  Especially as it had started with such promise. I had thought he was gorgeous—his only average good looks were upgraded, in my eyes, to Adonis class, by blond curly hair, black leather pants and a motorcycle. He seemed wild and dangerous and carefree—well, he would, wouldn’t he? What were motorcycles and black leather pants if not the uniform of a wild, dangerous and carefree man?

  Of course, I thought I hadn’t a h
ope with him, that someone as beautiful as him would have his pick of the girls and that he certainly wouldn’t have any interest in someone as ordinary as me.

  Because I really was ordinary. I certainly looked ordinary. I had ordinary brown curly hair, and I spent so much money on anti-frizz hair products that it would probably have been more efficient if I’d had my salary paid directly to the drugstore near work. I had ordinary brown eyes and, as a punishment for having Irish parents, I had about eight million ordinary freckles—one for every single Irish person who died in the potato famine, as my father used to say when he was a bit drunk and maudlin.

  But despite all my ordinariness, Steven had asked me out and acted as if he liked me.

  At first I could barely understand why such a sexy man like Steven wanted to be with me.

  And, naturally, I didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth. When he said that I was the only girl in his life, I assumed that he was lying, when he told me I was lovely, I looked for the angle on it, walked all around it, inspecting it, to see what he wanted from me.

  I didn’t even really mind not taking his compliments at face value; I just assumed that those were the kind of terms on which you went out with a man like Steven.

  It took a while for me to realize that he was sincere and that he wasn’t saying it to all the girls.

  At this point, I tentatively decided that I was delighted, but what I really was was confused. I had been so sure that he had a whole secret other life, one that I was supposed to know nothing about—middle-of-the-night dashes on the Harley to have sex on the beach with unknown women and that sort of thing—he looked that type.

  I had expected a short-lived, passionate, roller-coaster of an affair, where my nerves would be stretched to the snapping point waiting for his call; my whole body flooded with ecstasy when he did call.

  Unfortunately, he always called when he said he would. And he always said that I looked gorgeous, no matter what I wore. But instead of being happy, I felt uncomfortable. What I saw was what I got, and I began to feel strangely short-changed by life.

  He had started liking me too much.

  One morning I woke up and he was propped on his elbow, staring down at me. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, and it felt so wrong.

  When we had sex he said, “Lucy, Lucy, oh God, Lucy,” millions of times, all feverishly and passionately and I tried to join in and be all feverish and passionate also, but I just felt silly.

  And the more he seemed to like me, the less I liked him until in the end I could barely breathe around him.

  I was suffocating from his adulation, smothering in his admiration. I wasn’t that attractive, I couldn’t help thinking, and if he thought that I was, it meant there was something wrong with him.

  “Why do you like me?” I asked him, over and over.

  “Because you’re beautiful,” or “Because you’re sexy,” or “Because you’re all woman,” were the nauseating replies that he gave me.

  “No, I’m not,” I would reply desperately. “How can you say that I am?”

  “Anyone would think you were trying to convince me not to like you.” He smiled tenderly.

  The tenderness was probably what drove me over the edge. His tender smiles, his tender gazes, his tender kisses, his tender caresses, so much tenderness, it was a nightmare.

  And he was so touchy-feely! Mr. Tactile—I couldn’t bear it.

  Everywhere we went he held my hand. When we were driving he planted his hand on my thigh, when we were watching television he almost lay on top of me. He was always stroking my arm or rubbing my hair or caressing my back, until I could bear it no more and had to push him away.

  Velcro man, that’s what I called him in the end.

  And eventually to his face.

  As time went on, I wanted to tear my skin off every time he touched me, and the thought of having sex with him made me feel sick. One day he said he’d love a huge backyard and a houseful of kids and that was it!

  I broke up with him immediately.

  And I couldn’t understand how I had once found him so attractive, because by then I couldn’t think of a more repulsive man on the face of the earth. He still had the blond hair and the leather pants and the motorcycle, but I was no longer fooled by them.

  I despised him for liking me so much. I wondered how he could settle for so little.

  None of my friends could understand why I had broken up with him. “But he was great” was their cry. “But he was so good to you” was another one. “But he was such a catch,” they protested. To which I replied, “No, he wasn’t. A catch isn’t supposed to be that easy.”

  He had disappointed me.

  I had expected disrespect and instead got devotion, I had expected infidelity and instead got commitment, I had expected upheaval and instead got predictability and (most disappointing of all) I had expected a wolf and had gotten a sheep.

  It’s upsetting when the nice guy you really like turns out to be a complete, lying, two-timing bastard. But it’s nearly as bad when the guy that you thought was an unreliable heartbreaker turns out to be uncomplicated and nice.

  I spent a couple of days wondering why I liked the guys who weren’t nice to me? Why couldn’t I like the ones who were?

  Would I despise every man who ever treated me well? Was I fated only to want men that didn’t want me?

  I woke up in the middle of the night wondering about my sense of self worth—why was I comfortable only when I was being ill-treated?

  Then I realized that the saying “Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen” had been around for hundreds of years. And I relaxed—after all, I didn’t make the rules.

  So what if my ideal man was a selfish, dependable, unfaithful, loyal, treacherous, loving flirt who thought the world of me, never called when he said he would, made me feel like the most special woman in the universe and flirted with all my friends? Was it my fault that I wanted a Schrödinger’s cat of a boyfriend, a man who was several directly conflicting things simultaneously?

  Chapter 2

  There seemed to be a direct link between how difficult it was to get to a fortune-teller’s house and how good their reputation was. The more inaccessible and off-putting the venue, the higher the quality of the predictions, was the widely held view.

  Which meant that Mrs. Nolan must have been brilliant because she lived in some awful, faraway suburb on the outskirts of London.

  On Monday, at five on the dot, Megan, Hetty, Meredia and I assembled on the front steps of our place of work. Hetty went and got her car from where it was parked, several miles away—because that was parking in central London for you—and in we got.

  The journey was a nightmare. We spent hours either stuck in traffic or travelling through anonymous suburbs, then we went onto a highway. After driving for ages more, we turned off an exit and finally turned into a housing project.

  And what a neighbourhood! It was downright apocalyptic. The neighbourhood I’d grown up in was pretty poor, but not this bad!

  Two huge grey blocks loomed like watchtowers over what seemed like hundreds of miserable little grey box houses. A couple of stray dogs roamed aimlessly, halfheartedly looking for someone to bite.

  There were no plants, no trees, no grass.

  In the distance there was a small concrete row of shops. It was nearly all boarded up except for a sandwich shop and a bookies’ office and a liquor store. It was probably just my overactive imagination but through the evening gloom I could have sworn I saw four horsemen loitering outside the sandwich shop. So far, so good—Mrs. Nolan was obviously better than I had already realized.

  “My God,” said Megan her face twisted in disgust. “What a dump!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Meredia smiled with pride.

  In the middle of all the greyness was a small patch of ground that some urban planner had obviously anticipated would be a little oasis of abundant greenness where laughing families would play in the sunshine. But it looked like it ha
d been a long time since grass had grown there. Through the twilight gloom we could see a group of about fifteen children gathered. They were clustered around something that looked suspiciously like a burned-out car.

  Even though it was a bitterly cold March evening, none of them was wearing coats and, as soon as they saw us, they paused from whatever criminal activity they were up to and ran toward us, whooping loudly.

  “Good God!” cried Hetty. “Lock your doors!” All four locks snapped shut as the children swarmed around the car, staring at us with their old and knowing eyes.

  What made them look even more scary was that they were smeared with black stuff, which was probably only oil or charred metal from the burned car, but it looked like war paint.

  They were mouthing something at us.

  “What are they saying?” asked Hetty in terror.

  “I think they’re asking us if we’ve come to see Mrs. Nolan,” I said doubtfully.

  I opened the window a fraction of an inch and through the babel of childish voices established that that was indeed what they were asking us.

  “Phew! The natives are friendly,” smiled Hetty, making a great show of wiping the sweat from her forehead and breathing deeply with relief.

  “Talk to them, Lucy.”

  Nervously, I opened the window a bit more.

  “Er…we’ve come to see Mrs. Nolan,” I said.

  A cacophony of shrill voices answered us.

  “That’s her house.”

  “She lives over there.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You can leave your car here.”

  “That’s her house.”

  “Over there.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “No, I’ll show you.”

  “No, I’m showing them.”

  “No, I’m showing them.”

  “But I saw them first.”

  “But you got the last lot.”

  “Fuck you, Cherise Tiller.”

  “No, fuck you, Claudine Hall.”

  A vicious fight broke out between four or five of the little girls while we sat in the car and waited for them to stop.