Cecelia Ahern Short Stories Read Online Free PDF

lit the candle in the centre of the table.
    That night, on the 14th of February, the day she always hated, thirty-year-old Lucy fell in love for the first time, with the man at the table for one.
    It quickly became a table for two.

4 The Calling
    ‘Seven and eight, seventy-eight.’
    Her age.
    Mags threw her eyes up to heaven and grumbled under her breath, in her raspy voice.
    ‘What’s that love?’ Agatha shouted, moving her ear closer to Mags’s head. ‘You’re going to have to speak up, love, it’s me deaf ear you’re sittin’ beside.’
    Mags wrinkled her nose up in disgust as she watched the black wiry hairs clinging to Agatha’s chin bounce up and down as her mouth opened and shut. Her teeth became loose from her palette and were quickly clamped back into place as Agatha’s bloodshot, tired, grey eyes darted around the table to see if anyone had noticed.
    Mags threw her eyes up again and mumbled questioningly to the Good Lord.
    ‘Wha’?’ Agatha’s blue rinse brushed off Mags’s forehead as she leaned in to hear. Mags shook her head and swatted Agatha’s head away as though it were a fly. She concentrated on what was going on ahead of her again.
    ‘Two and two, twenty-two.’ The year she was born.
    She gritted her teeth and exhaled loudly. She leaned slightly to the left in her chair to sneak a glance at how her neighbour was progressing. The woman slowly raised her hand and covered her card. Mags raised her eyes slowly from the wrinkled hand blotched with brown patches, and came face to face with a tight smile.
    Mags cleared her throat awkwardly, sat upright in her seat and tried to look insulted as she covered her own card with her hand as if to accuse her neighbour of cheating. The woman grunted and pulled her chair away from Mags. The steel chair legs, which had long lost their rubber grips, screeched along the tired oak floor. Faces winced and looked up. Her neighbour’s face reddened and became buried in her hand as pained expressions stared at the cause of all the noise. Mags ‘hmmphed’ loudly as though she had been victorious in that particular round.
    ‘WHAT’S EVERYONE LOOKIN’ SO MOANY FOR, MAGS?’ Agatha shouted, while looking around confused. ‘DID SOMEBODY FART?’ She sniffed the air and moved her head around animatedly, not wanting to be left out of the group’s obvious discomfort. ‘I CAN’T SMELL IT, MAGS,’ she shouted again. ‘IS IT AWFUL? IT MUST BE AWFUL.’ She sniffed the air one last time, then shook her head, looking defeated. ‘CAN’T GET IT OVER HERE AT ALL.’
    ‘AAGH! JAYSUS, I’M DEAF, NOT NUMB, MAGS. WHAT’S WRONG WIT’ YA?’ She looked at her friend with a horrified expression while rubbing her sore side.
    ‘Would you ever shut your trap, Aggie O’Brien,’ she hissed.
    ‘WHA’?’ Agatha yelled, moving her head closer to Mags.
    Mags stared at the blue-rinse mound of curls that had been shoved in her face and tutted at the patches ofpink skin that were visible through the thin wispy hair. After not hearing a reply, Aggie turned to face Mags in order to read her lips. The two thin red lines were pursed, the deep cracks in her skin gathering around her mouth as though being pulled by a drawstring. A crooked finger stood perpendicular to her lips with a bright-red nail ordering her to, Stop!
    ‘Sshh!’ was all Aggie could just about make out. Then she realized what her friend meant.
    ‘OH JAYSUS, SORRY, MAGS,’ she yelled a little less loudly but not so much that the surrounding tables couldn’t hear. ‘I DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS YOU THAT DONE IT. SURE I CAN’T EVEN SMELL IT MESELF AND I’M RIGHT BESIDE YOU.’
    Mags’s cheeks pinked as they always did when she was embarrassed, looked as though she had dabbed two balls of baby-pink blusher onto her cheekbones. Her father used to say she was as pretty as the pink carnations that grew in her mother’s flower garden of their country home. A circus clown, her mother had always used to rant