Stand by Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

rush of independence when she opened her pay packet.
     
    The following morning she went into Peter Mark in Grafton Street and asked for a new hairstyle with a bit more life in it.
     
    ‘You need to lose the fringe for starters,’ the stylist told her bluntly. ‘You can carry off something more fashionable. Anything like these.’ She handed Dominique a magazine with pictures of Kylie Minogue, Bananarama and the Bangles. Dominique looked doubtful.
     
    ‘Maybe not quite so . . . so big,’ she said finally as she looked at the styles. ‘And not too tarty.’
     
    The stylist sighed deeply. She liked giving people up-to-the-minute cuts but she could tell that the girl in front of her was a bit conservative for some of her favourites. She told Dominique that she’d give her something less radical than Cyndi Lauper but she’d try to make her look good all the same.
     
    ‘You should get contact lenses too,’ she advised. ‘That way people would be able to see your eyes. You’ve got lovely eyes.’
     
    Nobody had ever told her that she had lovely eyes before. Dominique felt unexpectedly pleased to think she had a feature that anyone could consider lovely. She couldn’t afford lenses, but she did buy herself some new frames for her glasses - big, white and square. They didn’t show off her eyes but they were very fashionable. She also invested in some bright blue eye shadow, dark red lipstick and high-heeled shoes. (Years later, when she’d learned what suited her and what didn’t, she shuddered to think that she’d been so proud of her primary colour make-up, oversized glasses and ridiculous hairdo.)
     
    She enjoyed her job at the restaurant. She had a good memory for faces and always recognised regular customers. She remembered their favourite meals and would ask if they wanted ‘the usual’, which made them feel welcome and a little bit special. And she never got an order wrong.
     
    So when the letters started to come back from the banks and the building societies and the insurance companies and everyone else she’d applied to for a job, saying that the positions had been filled by someone ‘more suitable’ or that she was on a long panel from which vacancies throughout the year might be filled, she didn’t feel despairing or rejected. She liked what she did, and even though Evelyn felt she should be chasing up office jobs, she was happy.
     
    Her social life began to improve because she started meeting some of the other waiters and waitresses after work and they’d go for a drink in the Old Stand or Bruxelles, which were always noisy and crowded and fun. Dominique enjoyed being with people who didn’t know everything about her and who hadn’t known her when she was spotty and unattractive. (Much to her joy, the spots had disappeared almost as soon as she’d left school and even though she still hadn’t quite cracked make-up, she realised that she seemed to be growing into her looks a little.) She saw her new friends more and Emma and her gang less. She felt as though she was breaking away from her past and setting out on the road to her future.
     
    Neither Evelyn nor Seamus was entirely happy with the lifestyle Dominique was beginning to lead. They wanted to know what the point of all this partying was. They believed that life was a journey towards something better and they wanted her to be a spiritual person, like Gabriel, and to spend her spare time doing good works, not just having fun. Dominique knew that she wasn’t a spiritual person. Especially not now that she was earning her own money and staying out until the early hours of the morning, something that caused intense rows between herself and her mother.
     
    The number of novenas that Evelyn left on her bedside table increased almost daily, especially whenever Dominique stayed out until dawn and threw clothes into the laundry basket that reeked of smoke and alcohol.
     
    ‘It’s not from me,’ she told her mother one day. ‘I only