CV is probably as long as War and Peace .
Until she and her ex-boyfriend Shane had split up, they'd lived a hand-to-mouth, free-spirited existence. They were the type who'd pop out for ten minutes to buy a Kit Kat and the next time you'd hear from them they'd be in Istanbul, working in a tannery.
Their motto was “God will provide,” and even if God wouldn't, the dole did.
ANGELS / 29
I'd envied them their devil-may-care existence. Actually, that's a complete lie. I'd have hated it—the insecurity, never knowing if you could eat, buy exfoliator, that sort of thing.
The thing about Anna is that she can be acutely, almost shockingly, perceptive, but she's not great on practical things. Like remembering to get dressed before leaving the house, that sort of thing. There was a time when we felt her sweet, absent nature was caused by her fondness for recreational drugs, but she kicked that habit about four years ago, around the same time that Rachel did.
And though she's possibly a little more lucid than she used to be, I couldn't say for sure.
She'd moved back in with my parents a few months before, when she'd broken up with Shane—though she hadn't been given the same sort of grief as I expected to get. One, because she hadn't been married, and two, because they seemed to expect her to be unreliable.
Cautiously I opened the living room door. They were clustered on the couch watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ? and pouring scorn on the candidates.
“Any idiot knows the answer to that,” Helen threw at the screen.
“What is it then?” Anna asked.
“I don't know. But I don't HAVE to know. I'm not about to lose ninety-three thousand pounds. Oh, go on, then, phone your friend, for all the good it'll do, if he's as stupid as you—”
Why did they all have to be in? Why couldn't it just have been, say, Anna? I could have told her, then slunk off to bed like a coward, leaving her to break the news to everyone else.
Then Mum spotted me at the door.
“Margaret!” she exclaimed. For years I've been telling her that my name is Maggie, but she's in denial. “Come in. Sit down. Have an ice cream.” She elbowed Dad. “Get her an ice cream.”
“Chocolate? Strawberry? Or…” Dad paused before triumphantly delivering his pièce de résistance. “Or one with M&M's? They're new!”
There is always a wonderful selection of sweets available 30 / MARIAN KEYES
at my parents' house. Unlike most houses, though, this isn't in addition to the usual foodstuffs, it's instead of. It wasn't so much that my mother didn't enjoy cooking meals, it was more that we didn't enjoy eating them. Some time in the early eighties she had stopped preparing meals altogether. “What's the point if you ungrateful brats never eat them?”
“I eat them,” Dad bleated, a voice in the wilderness.
But it made no difference. Convenience foods were ushered in and it made me sad. I'd always yearned for an Italian-style family who gathered for their evening meal, passing platters and bowls of steaming homemade food along the scrubbed pine table while the roundy mama beamed from the stove.
All the same, unlimited ice cream was not to be sniffed at. Graciously I accepted a cone (an M&M's one, of course), peeled off the wrapper, and watched the end of the program. I might as well, there was no way I'd get their attention until it was over. Besides, it suited me to defer the moment when I had to spill the words
“Garv and I have split up.” I was afraid that saying it out loud would mean that it had actually happened.
And then it was time.
I sighed, swallowed away the nausea, and began. “I've something to tell you all.”
“Lovely!” Mum rearranged her features into her I'm-going-to-be-a-granny-again expression.
“Garv and I have split up.”
“Ah, here!” With a sharp rustle my father promptly disappeared behind his paper.
Anna flung herself upon me—even Helen looked startled—but my poor mother…She looked as though she'd
Until she and her ex-boyfriend Shane had split up, they'd lived a hand-to-mouth, free-spirited existence. They were the type who'd pop out for ten minutes to buy a Kit Kat and the next time you'd hear from them they'd be in Istanbul, working in a tannery.
Their motto was “God will provide,” and even if God wouldn't, the dole did.
ANGELS / 29
I'd envied them their devil-may-care existence. Actually, that's a complete lie. I'd have hated it—the insecurity, never knowing if you could eat, buy exfoliator, that sort of thing.
The thing about Anna is that she can be acutely, almost shockingly, perceptive, but she's not great on practical things. Like remembering to get dressed before leaving the house, that sort of thing. There was a time when we felt her sweet, absent nature was caused by her fondness for recreational drugs, but she kicked that habit about four years ago, around the same time that Rachel did.
And though she's possibly a little more lucid than she used to be, I couldn't say for sure.
She'd moved back in with my parents a few months before, when she'd broken up with Shane—though she hadn't been given the same sort of grief as I expected to get. One, because she hadn't been married, and two, because they seemed to expect her to be unreliable.
Cautiously I opened the living room door. They were clustered on the couch watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ? and pouring scorn on the candidates.
“Any idiot knows the answer to that,” Helen threw at the screen.
“What is it then?” Anna asked.
“I don't know. But I don't HAVE to know. I'm not about to lose ninety-three thousand pounds. Oh, go on, then, phone your friend, for all the good it'll do, if he's as stupid as you—”
Why did they all have to be in? Why couldn't it just have been, say, Anna? I could have told her, then slunk off to bed like a coward, leaving her to break the news to everyone else.
Then Mum spotted me at the door.
“Margaret!” she exclaimed. For years I've been telling her that my name is Maggie, but she's in denial. “Come in. Sit down. Have an ice cream.” She elbowed Dad. “Get her an ice cream.”
“Chocolate? Strawberry? Or…” Dad paused before triumphantly delivering his pièce de résistance. “Or one with M&M's? They're new!”
There is always a wonderful selection of sweets available 30 / MARIAN KEYES
at my parents' house. Unlike most houses, though, this isn't in addition to the usual foodstuffs, it's instead of. It wasn't so much that my mother didn't enjoy cooking meals, it was more that we didn't enjoy eating them. Some time in the early eighties she had stopped preparing meals altogether. “What's the point if you ungrateful brats never eat them?”
“I eat them,” Dad bleated, a voice in the wilderness.
But it made no difference. Convenience foods were ushered in and it made me sad. I'd always yearned for an Italian-style family who gathered for their evening meal, passing platters and bowls of steaming homemade food along the scrubbed pine table while the roundy mama beamed from the stove.
All the same, unlimited ice cream was not to be sniffed at. Graciously I accepted a cone (an M&M's one, of course), peeled off the wrapper, and watched the end of the program. I might as well, there was no way I'd get their attention until it was over. Besides, it suited me to defer the moment when I had to spill the words
“Garv and I have split up.” I was afraid that saying it out loud would mean that it had actually happened.
And then it was time.
I sighed, swallowed away the nausea, and began. “I've something to tell you all.”
“Lovely!” Mum rearranged her features into her I'm-going-to-be-a-granny-again expression.
“Garv and I have split up.”
“Ah, here!” With a sharp rustle my father promptly disappeared behind his paper.
Anna flung herself upon me—even Helen looked startled—but my poor mother…She looked as though she'd
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