A Taste for Love Read Free Page A

the evenings, and had seemed to have less and less time to see her and be with her. He had become bored by the new bands and their gigs in Whelans and Tripod and Slatterys. Bored by her friends, bored with staying in watching DVDs, bored by her lack of funds to go anywhere different, do anything different!
    ‘Josh, I can’t afford to go to Paris to watch Ireland play a stupid rugby match! And I’ve no intention of going to a restaurant that is going to charge me half my week’s dole for a meal and a few glasses of wine!’
    ‘I’ll pay for you,’ he had offered. ‘I’m earning.’
    ‘Josh, I don’t want your money! I can pay my own way,’ she had insisted stubbornly.
    Being broke and trying to live on a tiny budget was no fun, and it hadn’t really been a surprise when he’d told her a few months later, ‘Lucy, maybe we need to take a break from each other … not be so intense, and just cool it for a while?’
    ‘Sure … maybe you’re right, Josh!’ she had said, trying not to cry or let him see how much he was hurting her. They’d gone from having fun and being crazy about each other to making each other unhappy. This way she hoped that they could still at least be friends.
    ‘You and Josh will get back together, just wait and see,’ Megan had reassured her. ‘Anyone can see you two are made for each other.’
    ‘Yeah, Josh will be back in your life again,’ Anna had insisted. ‘He’s far too great a guy to be an ex.’
    The girls had consoled her with fun girly nights and lots of wine, pasta and talk, until, after about three weeks, she had realized that Josh had stopped texting and phoning her and was no longer part of her life. Two months later she’d heard he was going out with a girl from his office.
    Then Megan had lost her job in one of the big banks. Two unemployed girls unable to pay the rent in their Ranelagh home was not going to work out, and they had all talked about downsizing to a small two-bedroom apartment. Then, out of the blue one day, Megan had announced she was taking off for Canada. She had cousins in Vancouver, and they were hoping to help her get a job there as a credit analyst.
    ‘There’s nothing to lose, Lucy. Why don’t you come with me?’ she had said.
    Lucy did consider it, but knew that finding a job might be very hard in Canada. Megan had qualifications and a hefty redundancy package from the bank to tide her over, whereas she would have to borrow the money from her parents.
    ‘I promise to let you know the minute I find a job for you. Then you just book a flight and come over,’ Megan had urged. ‘You’ve nothing to keep you here.’
*
    In August the three girls sadly said goodbye to ‘the party house’, Anna deciding to move in with her boyfriend Ted.
    ‘He’s been asking me for ages, so I guess now is a good time to try out living together … hopefully we won’t kill each other!’
    Lucy liked Ted. She was happy for him and Anna, even if it meant that she was temporarily homeless and had to move back home with her mum and dad.
    ‘Your room is still there for you,’ welcomed her mum. ‘It’s good to have you home, Lucy.’
    It was good to be home, but she felt embarrassed at twenty-five years of age to be dependent again on her parents. She knew they were puzzled and didn’t understand what was happening to her. Her brothers Niall and Kevin both had good jobs: one working in a big insurance company and the other in an upcoming green energy company which he had joined after qualifying as an engineer. Emma, her older sister, was not only married and had a little boy called Harry, but had a great job in Google’s Dublin head office. She knew her folks wondered where they had gone wrong with her. Why was she such a disaster compared to her brothers and sister?
    She had taken the studs from her ears and nose, lightened her hair colour and even purged her wardrobe of denims and Doc Martens, but it had been to no avail … there were just no jobs. Her