Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes Read Free Page A

that makes him seem that way.

Maggie had embraced motherhood with a passion--not just the actual mothering, but the look.
One of the best things about having children, she said, was not having the time to worry about
what she looked like and she boasted that she had totally given up on shopping. The previous
week she'd told me that at the start of every spring and autumn she goes to Marks & Spencer and
buys six identical skirts, two pairs of shoes--one high, one flat--and a selection of tops. "In and
out in forty minutes," she said, gloating, totally missing the point. Other than her hair, which was
shoulder length and a lovely chestnut color (artificial--clearly she hadn't given up completely),
she looked more mumsy than Mum.

"Look at that hickey oul' skirt on her," Mum murmured. "People will think we're sisters."
"I heard that," Maggie called, "And I don't care."

"Your car looks like a rhino," was Mum's parting shot.

"A minute ago it was an elephant. Dad, can you open out the buggy, please."

Then JJ spotted me and became incoherent with delight. Maybe it was just the novelty value, but
I was currently his favorite auntie. He squirmed out of Maggie's grip and rushed up the drive,
like a cannonball. He was always flinging himself at me, and even though three days earlier he
had accidentally head-butted my dislocated knee, which was just out of plaster, and the pain had
made me vomit, I still forgave him.

I would have forgiven him anything: he was an absolute scream. Being around him definitely
lifted my mood, but I tried not to show it too much because the rest of them might have worried
about me getting too fond of him, and they had enough to worry about with me. They might even
have started with the well-meaning platitudes--that I was young, that I would eventually have a
child of my own, etc., etc., and I was pretty sure I wasn't ready to hear them.

I took JJ into the house to collect his "walk hat." When Mum had been searching out a wide-
brimmed, sun-deflecting hat for me, she'd come across an entire cache of dreadful hats she'd
worn to weddings over the years. It was almost as shocking as uncovering a mass grave. There
were loads, each one more overblown than the next, and for some reason JJ had fallen in love
with a flat, glazed straw hat with a cluster of cherries dangling from the brim. JJ insisted it was
"a cowboy hat" but really, nothing could have been further from the truth. Already, at the age of
three, he was displaying a pleasing strain of eccentricity--which must have been from some
recessive gene because he definitely didn't get it from either of his parents.

When we were all ready, the cavalcade moved forward: me, leaning on Dad with my unbroken
arm, Maggie pushing baby Holly in the buggy, and JJ, the marshal, leading the party.

Mum refused to join us on our daily constitutional, on the grounds that if she came there would
be so many of us that "People would be looking." And indeed we did create quite a stir: between
JJ and his hat and me and my injuries, the local youths felt like the circus had come to town.

As we neared the green--it wasn't far, it just felt that way because my knee was so sore that even
JJ, a child of three, could go faster than me--one of the lads spotted us and alerted his four or
five pals. An almost visible thrill passed through them and they abandoned whatever they'd been
doing with matches and newspaper and prepared to welcome us.

"Howya, Frankenstein," Alec called, when we were near enough to hear.

"Howya," I replied with dignity.

It had upset me the first time they'd said it. Especially when they'd offered me money to lift my
bandages and show them my cuts. It was like being asked to lift my T-shirt and show them my
knockers, only worse. At the time tears had flooded my eyes, and shocked at how cruel people
could be, I turned around to go straight back home. Then I'd heard Maggie ask, "How much?
How much to see the worst one?"

A brief consultation had ensued. "A