Читать книгу Where Rainbows End - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 15
ОглавлениеYou have an instant message from: RUBY.
Ruby: Hey, you, happy Monday.
Rosie: Oh, great. Hold on while I get the champagne.
Ruby: What did you do over the weekend?
Rosie: Oh, wait till you hear this! I was just dying to tell you all morning, it’s so exciting! You’ll never believe it, I—
Ruby: I sense sarcasm here. Let me guess: you watched TV.
Rosie: Introducing Ruby … and her psychic powers!! I had to listen to it with the volume blaring just to drown out the loving couple next door screaming their ears off. Some day they’re going to kill each other. I can’t wait. Poor Katie didn’t know what was going on so I sent her down to stay at Toby’s house.
Ruby: Honestly, don’t some people understand the meaning of the word DIVORCE?
Rosie: Ha ha, well, it’s a magic word for you.
Ruby: I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t make fun of a devastatingly difficult time in my life that left me feeling shattered and emotionally distraught.
Rosie: Oh, please! Getting that divorce was the happiest day of your life! You bought the most expensive bottle of champagne, we got pissed, went out clubbing and you snogged the ugliest man in the world.
Ruby: Ah well, people have their different ways of grieving …
Rosie: Have you finished typing up all that crap Randy Andy gave us?
Ruby: No, I haven’t. Have you?
Rosie: No.
Ruby: Good. Let’s take a coffee break as a reward. We really shouldn’t overwork ourselves. I hear it’s quite dangerous. Will you bring your fags? I forgot mine.
Rosie: Yep, meet you downstairs in five minutes.
Ruby: It’s a date. Gosh, how exciting. Neither of us has been on one of them for a while.
You have an instant message from: RUBY.
Ruby: Where the hell were you? I waited for you in the café for half an hour! I had to force myself to eat two chocolate muffins and a slice of apple pie.
Rosie: Sorry about that. Randy Andy here wouldn’t let me leave the office.
Ruby: Oh, he is such a slave driver! You should complain to Head Office, get the asshole fired.
Rosie: He is Head Office.
Ruby: Oh yeah.
Rosie: Well, in all fairness, Ruby, he may be a prick but we did just take a break an hour ago … and it was our third one in less than three hours …
Ruby: You are turning into one of THEM!
Rosie: Ha ha. I have a child to feed.
Ruby: As do I.
Rosie: That child feeds himself, Ruby.
Ruby: Ah, leave my little fatso alone. He’s my baby and I love him regardless.
Rosie: He’s seventeen.
Ruby: Yes, and old enough to have a baby of his own, going by your standards …
Rosie: Well, he’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t go to his school ball with the most uninteresting man in the world, with the ugliest face. That way he won’t have to drink a sickening amount of alcohol to trick the brain into thinking that man is beautiful and funny and … well, you know the rest.
Ruby: Are you suggesting that my son could perhaps have a gay relationship at his debs?
Rosie: No! I was just saying—
Ruby: Oh, I know what you were saying, except I think that my poor darling son may be the exact person that girls will have to drink excess amounts of alcohol just to love.
Rosie: RUBY!! You can’t say that about your son!!
Ruby: Why not? I love him with all my heart but, bless him, he wasn’t born with his mother’s looks. Anyway, so when are you going to ever go out with someone, anyone?
Rosie: Ruby, we are not having this conversation again. Everyone you have tried to set me up with has been a complete weirdo! I don’t know where you meet these men and in fact I don’t think I even want to know, but after last weekend I can assure you that I’m never going to Joys again. Anyway, you can’t talk. When exactly was the last time you went out on a date?
Ruby: Ah, that’s a very different matter altogether! I’m a woman ten years your senior who has just been through a very difficult divorce from a selfish little bastard of a man and I have a seventeen-year-old son who only communicates with me in monosyllabic grunts. I think he is the son of an ape (actually, I know he is). I have no time for a man!
Rosie: Well, neither do I.
Ruby: Rosie honey, you’re twenty-six years old, you’ve got at least ten years of your life left before it’s over. You should get out there and enjoy yourself, stop letting the weight of the world rest on your shoulders; that’s my job. And stop waiting for him.
Rosie: Stop waiting for who?
Ruby: For Alex.
Rosie: I don’t know what you’re talking about! I am not waiting for Alex!
Ruby: Yes you are, my dear friend. He must be some man because nobody can ever measure up to him. And I know that’s what you do every time you meet someone: compare. I’m sure he’s a fabulous friend and I’m sure he always says sweet and wonderful things to you. But he’s not here. He’s thousands of miles away, working as a doctor in a great big hospital and he lives in a fancy apartment with his fancy doctor fiancée. I don’t think he’s thinking of leaving that life anytime soon to come back to a single mother who’s living in a tiny flat working in a crappy part-time job in a paperclip factory with a crazy friend who emails her every second. So stop waiting and move on. Live your life.
Rosie: I am not waiting.
Ruby: Rosie—
Rosie: I have to get back to work now.
Rosie has logged off.
Dear Rosie and Katie Dunne,
Shelly and Bernard Gruber proudly invite you to the marriage ceremony of their loving daughter, Sally, to Alex Stewart.
From Stephanie
To Rosie
Subject Re: No way in the world I’m going to that wedding!
I am so angered by your last letter! You cannot miss Alex’s wedding! That would be completely unthinkable!
This is Alex we’re talking about! Alex, the boy who used to sleep on a sleeping bag on your floor, the boy who used to sneak into my room and read my diary and look through my underwear drawer! Little Alex who you used to chase down the road and shoot at with a banana for a gun! Alex who sat beside you in class for twelve years!
He was there for you when you had Katie. He was so supportive throughout the entire thing when I’m sure it was difficult for him to adjust to the fact that little Rosie, who had slept in a sleeping bag on his floor, was having a baby.
Go over to him, Rosie. Celebrate this with him. Share in his happiness and excitement. Share it all with Katie. Be happy! Please! I’m sure he needs you right now. This is a huge step for him and he needs his best friend by his side. Learn to get to know Sally too, as she is an important person in his life now. Just as he has learned to get to know Katie – the most important person in your life. I know you don’t want to hear it, but if you don’t go you will be ending what was once and what still is one of the strongest bonds of friendship that I have ever seen.
I know you are embarrassed by what happened a few years ago when you visited, but swallow your pride, hold your chin up. You are going to be at that wedding because Alex wants you to be there for him; you are going to be there because you need to be there for yourself.
Make the right decision, Rosie.
Dear Rosie,
Hey there! I have no doubt you have received our wonderful wedding invitation that took Sally about three months to choose. Why, I don’t know, but it seems that a cream-coloured invite with a gold border was so much more different than a white invite with a gold border … you women …
I don’t no if I should be worried or not, but Sally’s mom hasn’t seemed to have received a reply yet! Now I no I don’t need one from you because I’m just presuming you will be there!
The reason why I am writing and not ringing is because I want to give you time to think about what I’m asking you. Myself and Sally would be honoured if you would allow Katie to be our flower girl at the wedding. We would need to no quite soon so that Sally and Katie can pick out a dress.
Whoever thought this would be happening, Rosie? If someone had told us ten years ago that your daughter would be a flower girl at my wedding we would have just laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Even though it has taken Sally and me so long to get round to actually getting married – what with doctors’ mad schedules ruling our lives!
The second question I have to ask you is the one I’m sure you will need to think about. You are my best friend, Rosie; that goes without saying. I have no best friend over here, no one that measures up to what you mean to me, therefore I have no best man. Will you be my best woman? Will you stand beside me at the altar? I no I will definitely need you there! And I trust you will organise a better stag night than any of my male friends over here!
Think about it and let me no. And say yes!
Love to you and Katie,
Alex
You have an instant message from: ROSIE.
Rosie: You won’t fucking believe it.
Ruby: You got a date.
Rosie: No, more unbelievable than that. Alex has asked me to be his ‘best woman’.
Ruby: I don’t suppose that means you’ll be standing to the left of him in the church?
Rosie: Eh, no … to the right.
Ruby: What about his brother?
Rosie: He’s an usher or something.
Ruby: Wow, so he really is going ahead with it?
Rosie: Yep. Looks like it.
Ruby: I think you should stop waiting for him now, honey.
Rosie: I know. I probably should.
