Friday, March 12, 2010
Clodagh - Part 6
Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes
On Sunday morning Clodagh woke, perched precariously on the six inches at the edge of the bed. Craig had shunted her to the margin of the bed, but it could quite easily have been Molly or both of them. She couldn't remember the last time she and Dylan had slept unchaperoned, and she was so well practised at sleeping hanging over the side that she was sure she could manage a great night's sleep on the edge of a cliff, at this stage.
Something was telling her it was very early. Five o'clock early. The sun was up and the gap where the calico curtains didn't quite meet glowed in a line of acid-bright light, but she knew it was too soon to be awake. The unseen seagulls beyond her window wailed shrill and plaintive. They sounded like babies from a horror film. Beside Craig, Dylan slept heavily, his limbs thrown across the bed in a random tangle, his breath whistling rhythmically in and out, each exhalation lifting his hair from his forehead.
Despondency lay heavy upon her. She'd had a bad week. After the disaster with the employment agency, Ashling had urged her to get a second opinion. So she'd put her expensive suit back on and tried again. The second employment agency treated her with almost as much disdain as the first had. But to her enormous surprise, the third proposed sending her for a two-day trial, making tea and answering the phone at a radiator-supply firm. 'The pay is ... modest,' the recruitment man had admitted, 'but for someone like you who's been out of the workplace for a long time, it's a good start. They're bound to love you, so off you go. Good luck!'
'Oh. Thanks.' As soon as Clodagh knew she might have a job, she didn't want it. Making tea and answering the phone, where was the fun in that? She did it at home all the time. And a radiator-supply firm? It sounded so dreary. In a strange way, getting a job and then finding she didn't want it was almost worse than being told she was unemployable. Though not much given to introspection, she vaguely realized that she wasn't actually looking for a job - she certainly didn't need the money - she was looking for glamour and excitement. And the reality was she wasn't going to find them at a radiator-supply firm.
So she rang Mr Recruitment and pretended she couldn't start because Craig had got measles. Children had their usus, she reflected. If there was something you didn't want to do, you could say they had a high temperature and that you were worried about meningitis. It had absolved her from attending Dylan's Christmas party last year. And the year before. And she fully intended to use it this year as well.
She shifted uncomfortably. Something sharp was digging into her back. A forage revealed it to be Buzz Lightyear. Outside the windown the seagulls shrieked again, their ugly folorn cries echoing within her. She felt trapped, painted in to a corner, blocked. As though she was locked in a small dark airless box, which was getting ever tighter - she couldn't understand it. She'd always been happy with her lot. Her life had happened exactly as it should and its progress had been ever forward, ever positive. Then, with no warning, it seemed to have stopped. Going nowhere with nothing to look forward to. A horrible thought wormed in - was it going to be like this forever?
