Marian Keyes - Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married Read Online Free PDF

difficult enough without the embarrassment of their mother having a love affair and leaving home."

    "Oh dear," I said sympathetically. "But it's only a fortune-teller's predic- tion. It probably won't happen."

    But that just made her tears flow faster. "But why shouldn't I meet the love of my life? I want to meet him."

    Megan, Meredia and I exchanged shocked looks. Good lord! It was most irregular. Was the normally sane and calm--I'd even go so far as to say boring--Hetty having some kind of nervous fit?

    "Why can't I have some fun? Why do I have to be stuck with boring old Dick?" she demanded.

    She thumped the steering wheel every time she said "I" and the car lurched alarmingly into the other lane. All around us cars were beeping their horns, but Hetty didn't seem to notice.

    I was amazed. I had worked with Hetty for two years and, while we were never soul mates, I thought I knew her quite well.

    There was a nonplussed silence in the car while Meredia, Megan and I swallowed and tried and failed to think of comforting things to say.

    It was Hetty who rescued the situation. She didn't have lucy sullivan is getting married / 27

    a fourteenth cousin, three times removed, as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen for nothing. She hadn't gone to a hugely expensive finishing school without learning to smooth over awkward social situations. "Sorry," she said, suddenly seeming to become Hetty again, the veneer of polite calm and reserve firmly clipped back in place. "Sorry, girls," she said again. "You must forgive me."

    She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders, indicating that there was nothing further to say on the subject. Dick and his boringness were not to be topics for discussion.

    Such a pity. I had always wanted to know. Because to be honest, Dick did seem extremely boring. But, then again--and I mean this in the nicest possible way--so did Hetty.

    "So then, Lucy," she said crisply, deflecting the last few remaining crumbs of interest away from her. "What did Mrs. Nolan predict for you?"

    "Me?" I said. "Oh yes. She says I'm getting married."

    Another silence fell in the car.

    Another stunned one.

    The disbelief of Megan, Meredia and Hetty was so tangible it was like a fifth person in the car. If it wasn't careful it would end up having to con- tribute to the cost of the gas for the trip.

    "Really?" asked Hetty, somehow managing to get sixteen syllables from the one word.

    "You!" shouted Megan. "She said that you are getting married."

    "Yes," I said defensively. "What's so wrong with that?"

    "Nothing really," said Meredia kindly. "It's just that, you know, you haven't been exactly lucky with men."

28 / marian keyes

    "Not through any fault of your own," said Hetty hurriedly, tactfully.

    Hetty was good on tact.

    "Well, that's what she said," I said sulkily.

    They didn't really know what to say and conversation remained subdued until eventually we reached civilization again. I was the first to be dropped off because I lived in Ladbroke Grove. The last thing I heard as I got out of the car was Meredia telling anyone who cared to listen that Mrs. Nolan had said that she would travel over water and that she was very psychic herself.

    5 I shared an apartment with two other girls, Karen and Charlotte. Karen was twenty-eight, I was twenty-six and Charlotte was twenty-three. We were a bad example to each other and spent a lot of time drinking bottles of wine and not very much cleaning the bathroom.

    When I let myself in, Karen and Charlotte were asleep. We usually went to bed early on a Monday night to recover from the excesses of the preced- ing weekend.

    There was a note on the kitchen table from Karen saying that Daniel had phoned me.

    Daniel was my friend and, while he was the closest thing that I had to a steady man in my life, I wouldn't have become romantically involved with him if the future of the human race depended on it. So that will give some idea of just how male-free my life was. lucy sullivan