Marian Keyes - Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married (26 page)

back, then I remembered what had happened, or nearly happened, in the hall, so I blushed and looked away.

I found some gin and finished that. And I still wasn't drunk enough. I was sure that I had a bottle of rum in the cupboard in the front room but search as I might, I couldn't find it.

"Gus probably stole it," suggested Karen.

"He probably did," I said grimly.

Eventually I admitted defeat, went to bed, alone, and passed out.

41 I jerked awake at about seven o'clock--it was Saturday, after all--and imme- diately knew that something was wrong. What was it?

Oh yes! I remembered.

Oh no! I wished I hadn't.

Luckily I was badly hung over, so I was able to go back to sleep.

I woke again at ten and the realization that I had lost Gus hit me like a clunk on the head from a frying pan. I got up and dragged myself down the hall and found Charlotte and Karen in the kitchen cleaning up. There was so much leftover food that I could have cried, but I didn't because they would have thought that I was crying about Gus.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning," they replied. 318 / marian keyes

I waited. I held my breath, hoping that one of them would say, "Oh, Gus called."

But they didn't.

I knew there was no point in asking if he had called. They both knew how important it was to me. If Gus had called they would have excitedly told me immediately. In fact, they would have come to me with the news, they would have awakened me.

But even knowing that, I still found myself asking tentatively,

"Did anyone call for me while I was asleep?"

I couldn't stop myself. In for a penny, in for a pound. I was hurt--why stop now?

"Er, no," muttered Karen, not meeting my eye.

"No," agreed Charlotte. "No one."

I had known that was the case, so why did I still feel so disappointed?

"How's your ankle?" I asked Charlotte.

"Fine," she said, looking sheepish.

"I'm just running out to buy the paper," I said. "And then I'll be back to help with the cleaning. Does anyone want anything?"

"No thanks."

I didn't even want the paper. But a watched pot never boils and if I did a vigil around my phone, Gus wouldn't call. I knew that if I was out of the house there was a better chance he might call me.

When I let myself back in, I held my breath, waiting for Karen or Char- lotte to run down the hall and say, breathlessly, "Guess what? Gus rang," or "Guess what? Gus is here. He was kidnapped last night and they just let him go a few moments ago."

But no one ran down the hall and breathlessly told me lucy sullivan is getting married / 319

anything. I was forced to go, cap-in-hand, to the kitchen, where I was handed a tea towel.

"Did anyone call for me?" I found myself asking, hollowly.

Again, Karen and Charlotte shook their heads. I shut my mouth grimly. I'm not going to ask again, I decided. I was tearing myself apart with dis- appointment and I was embarrassing them.

I followed the advice of thousands of women's magazines and Kept Busy. Keeping Busy is supposed to be very good for taking your mind off runaway men and, as luck would have it, there was an alarming amount of cleaning up to be done after the excesses of the previous evening--al- though I hadn't expected that I'd have to do any of it. I thought that I'd be given compassionate leave, that because Gus had dumped me, everyone would be nice to me, that I'd be given a special dispensation and Karen would let me off my chores.

Not a chance.

Karen wasted no time in setting me straight.

"Keep busy," she said cheerfully, as she loaded me up with filthy plates. "It'll take your mind off him."

That made me feel even more upset--I wanted sympathy, I wanted kid- glove treatment, I wanted to be treated like a convalescent invalid. What I didn't want was to do the cleaning up.

And anyone who says that Keeping Busy is a distraction from heartbreak is mistaken, because I Kept very Busy that day, and I thought about Gus constantly--how cleaning the bathroom was supposed to make me feel better about Gus disappearing had me baffled. All that happened was the one form of misery was temporarily exchanged for another.

I vacuumed the entire flat, I washed the unbroken plates 320 / marian keyes

and glasses, I put the broken plates and glasses into a trashbag and attached a nice little note for the garbagemen so that they wouldn't cut themselves. I emptied mountains of ashtrays, I covered bowls of untouched food and put them in the fridge, where they would take up valuable low-fat yogurt space for three weeks and grow mold before they would eventually be thrown out. I tried to get the candle wax out of the carpet and couldn't, so I moved the couch to cover it. And I thought continually about Gus.

My nerves were shot. The phone rang all day long and every single time I jumped and twitched and frantically prayed, Please God, let it be Gus. I didn't dare pick it up, just in case it was Gus. Answering the phone was tantamount to admitting I cared and that would have been unforgivable. Karen or Charlotte had to leave their pot scrubbing (in Charlotte's case) or their dancing around spraying air freshener (in Karen's case) and do it for me.

And, as befitted a rejected woman, I insisted that they observe a five-ring interval before answering.

"Not yet, not yet!" I begged, time after time. "Let it ring a bit longer. We can't let him think that we're waiting for him to call."

"But, we are." Charlotte looked puzzled. "At least you are."

It made no difference. Only one of the calls was for me, and that was from--of all people--my mother.

"What took you so long to answer?" she demanded when Charlotte sadly handed me the receiver.

And suddenly it was Saturday night.

Saturday night had always played a starring role in my life. It had been a thing of beauty, a bright spot in a dark world, but an empty Saturday night, a Gus-free Saturday lucy sullivan is getting married / 321

night--well, I was shocked to find that I was almost frightened of it.

Every Saturday night for the previous--had it only been six weeks?--had been taken care of because I had been with Gus. Sometimes we had gone out, and other times we stayed in, but whatever we had done, we had done it together. And now I felt as if I had never, ever had a free Saturday night before in my life, so alien did it feel to me.

It had taken on a certain malevolence, as though someone had flung a snake at me and told me to amuse it for a few hours.

What was I supposed to do with it? And with whom? All my friends were paired up with someone. Charlotte was with Simon, Karen was with Daniel, Daniel was with Karen and anyway Daniel wasn't my friend any- more.

I could have called Dennis but that was a ridiculous idea. It was a Sat- urday night, he was a gay man, he would be at home shaving his head and revving up for a night of unbridled hedonism.

Charlotte and Simon invited me to go to the movies with them--as Charlotte said, the movies were about all she could stomach after the im- bibing of the previous evening--but I didn't want to go.

It wasn't that I was afraid of being a third wheel--I had no problem with that, after all I'd done it many times in the past, and the first ten thousand times are the worst--but I'm ashamed to say I was afraid to leave the apartment in case Gus arrived.

Like a fool, I was still hoping that I might hear from him. In fact, what I actually hoped for was that, at around eight, he would arrive in a borrowed, too-big jacket and a badly knotted tie, having made the mistake of thinking that Saturday night was the night for the dinner and not Friday.

It was possible, I told myself weakly. 322 / marian keyes

Things like that happened sometimes. Maybe it would happen to me and I would be saved. I could draw back from the edge of the abyss laughing because I hadn't needed to be there at all.

Karen and Daniel didn't invite me to join them in whatever they were doing. Somehow I hadn't expected them to. Anyhow I didn't want them to. I felt so uncomfortable around Daniel that we were barely speaking to each other. And I blushed when I remembered how I had thought that he was going to kiss me the previous evening, when it was obvious, in hind- sight, that he was only being nice because Gus had stood me up. How could I have thought such a thing? I asked myself in mortification. And worse again, how could I have thought that it was a nice idea? It was Daniel, after all. It would have been like thinking that kissing my brother was a nice idea.

Everyone left and I was alone in the flat on a bright Saturday evening in April.

Somewhere in between Gus entering and exiting my life, winter had changed into spring, but I had been too busy enjoying myself and falling in love to notice.

I found rejection that much harder to cope with when the evenings were bright.

At least when it was dark I could draw that curtains and light the fire and snuggle and hide and feel quite cozy in my aloneness. But the bright- ness of the spring evening was embarrassing. It highlighted what a failure I was--my rejection was too visible. I felt as if I was the only person in the whole world sitting in, alone, on a Saturday night.

After eight o'clock came and Gus didn't, I moved down one more step on the stairs of misery. Why couldn't I have just tumbled straight to the bottom and gotten it over and done with? I understood the wisdom of pulling a lucy sullivan is getting married / 323

Band-Aid off a cut with a single, flamboyant, eye-watering rip, but when it came to matters of the heart, I removed things from me with painful slowness.

I decided to go out to get a video. And a bottle of wine, because there was no way I'd get through the evening without a drink.

"Gus won't call anyway, Gus will be out with Mandy," I said, playing "it really doesn't matter" with the gods. If you can play that well, if you can convince the gods that you really don't want what you really do want, then you'll probably get lucky.

At the video shop Adrian greeted me like a long-lost sister. "Lucy! Where've you been?" he roared the length of the shop. "I haven't seen you in so long!"

"Hi, Adrian," I mouthed at him, hoping to lower his volume slightly by setting a good example.

"To what do we owe this pleasure?" he yelled. "Alone on a Saturday night? He must have dumped you!"

I smiled tightly and picked up Reservoir Dogs.

When Adrian had turned around to find my video, I gave him a half- hearted vetting. I owed it to myself, I told myself. Now that I was single again I had to keep my eyes peeled for the potential husband that Mrs. Nolan had predicted for me. He wasn't bad, I thought wearily. Nice butt, nothing wrong with it, couldn't fault it except for one thing, it wasn't Gus's butt. Nice smile, but it wasn't Gus's smile.

It was a total waste of time, my head was filled with Gus and I couldn't look at another man.

Anyway I didn't really believe that it was over with Gus--it was too soon. I needed to be hit over the head with proof, battered into the ground by it, before I could truly believe it. Giving up didn't come easily to me. Letting go was not one of my strong points.

On the one hand I knew for certain that I'd never see 324 / marian keyes

Gus again, and on the other hand I just couldn't stop hoping that there would be some explanation, no matter how unlikely, and that we could start over again.

I went next door to the liquor store. It was full of young, happy people, buying bottles of wine and cans of beer and hundreds of cigarettes. I was suddenly pierced with the old familiar feeling that life was a party to which I hadn't been invited. A feeling of belonging had made a guest appearance in my life while I'd been with Gus, but now I was back to feeling like an uninvited guest at life's feast.

As I walked slowly back to the apartment, trying to waste time, I was suddenly overcome with panic, convinced that Gus was calling me at that instant. I rushed up the road and back into the apartment and breathlessly ran to see if the little red light on the answering machine was blinking. But it wasn't. It stared and stared and stared at me and didn't blink once.

It took forever for the evening to inch painfully, slowly toward darkness, for other people to come home from their nights out, for other people to go to bed, for the gap between me and everyone else to narrow, for me to stop feeling like the only one...

I got drunk and once again I called the number that Gus had given me. Nobody answered--luckily. Although I didn't feel that it was lucky at the time, I was furious, beside myself with frustration and loneliness. I just wanted to talk to him, if I could have spoken to him I knew he would make it all right.

I even, in my drunken state, thought about getting a taxi to Camden and walking around and seeing if I could find him but thankfully, something stopped me--maybe the idea of stumbling across him with the mysterious Mandy. A little bit of sanity pierced my armor of obsession. lucy sullivan is getting married / 325

I woke to the stillness of Sunday morning. I knew, even before I got out of bed, that I was the only person in the flat, that Karen and Charlotte hadn't come home the previous night. It was only seven o'clock and I was com- pletely awake and completely alone.

How was I supposed to fill my head to keep the loneliness away? How was I supposed to stop myself from going mad thinking about Gus?

I could have read but I didn't want to, there was nothing I wanted to read. I could have watched TV but I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate. I could have gone for a run, that might have taken away some of the terrible anxiety, but I could barely get out of bed. I was buzzing with nervy adrenaline but I couldn't face getting up. It wasn't just Gus that had deserted me, but my dreams of marrying him had also evaporated. Letting go of the fantasy was almost as hard as letting go of the man.

Of course, it was my own fault. I should never have taken Mrs. Nolan's predictions seriously. I was the one who had berated Meredia and Megan for believing her. No sooner were their backs turned, than I had believed her also.