Angels Read Online Free

said,
    “Maggie,” and tried to stop my incessant motion, I neatly sidestepped him and said, without eye contact, “I'll be late.”
    I left, carrying that empty, four-in-the-morning feel with me.
    Despite sidestepping Garv, I ended up getting to work late. The contract wasn't on Frances's desk by nine-thirty. She sighed, “Oh, Maggie,” in an I'm-not-angry-with-you-I'm-disappointed way. It's meant to reach the parts a chewing-out doesn't and make you feel shitty and ashamed. However, I appreciated not being shouted at.
    Not the reaction Frances was looking for, I suspect.
    I felt entirely lost, but at the same time unnaturally calm—almost as if I'd been waiting for a catastrophe and it was a weird sort of relief that it had finally happened. Because I had no idea how to behave in these circumstances, I decided to just follow everyone else's lead and immerse myself in work. Wasn't it strange, I thought, that after such a dreadful shock I was still functioning as normal?
    Then I noticed I kept botching the double click on my mouse because my hand was trembling.
    For seconds, I'd manage to lose myself in a contract clause, but all the time the knowledge surrounded me: Something is very wrong .
    Over the years, like every couple, Garv and I had had our fights, but not even the most vicious of those had ever felt like this; the worst scrap had been one of those odd ones that had started out as a muscular discussion over whether a new skirt of mine was brown or purple and had unexpectedly disintegrated into a bitter standoff, with

    ANGELS / 19
    accusations of color blindness and hypersensitivity flying about.
    (Garv: “What's wrong with it being brown?”
    Me: “Everything! But it's not brown, it's purple, you stupid colorblind fucker.”
    Garv: “Look, it's only a skirt. All I said was I was surprised by your buying a brown one.”
    Me: “But I DIDN'T! It's PURPLE.”
    Him: “You're overreacting.”
    Me: “I'm NOT. I would never buy a brown skirt; don't you know the first thing about me?”)
    At the time I'd thought I'd never forgive him. I'd been wrong.
    But this time was different, I was horribly sure of it.
    At lunchtime I just couldn't find it in me to care about my urgent piles of work, so I went to Grafton Street, looking for comfort.
    Which took the form of spending money—again. Unenthusiastically, I bought a scented candle and a cheapish (relatively speaking) copy of a Gucci bag. But neither of them did anything to fill the void.
    Then I stopped at a drug-store to get painkillers for my tooth and got intercepted by a white-coated, orange-faced woman who told me that if I bought two Clarins products—one of which had to be skin care—I'd get a free gift. Listlessly I shrugged and said, “Fine.”
    She couldn't believe her luck, and when she suggested the most expensive stuff—serums in tiny bottles—again I lifted and slumped my shoulders and said, “Sure.”
    I liked the idea of a free gift; I found the idea of a present very consoling. But back at work, when I opened my present, it was a lot less exciting than it had looked in the picture: funny-colored eye shadow, a mini-mini-mini tube of foundation, four drops of eye cream, and a thimble of vinegary perfume.
    Anticlimax set in, then, in an unexpected reprieve of normality, came guilt, which swelled big and ugly as the afternoon lengthened.
    I had to stop spending money . So as soon as I could reasonably leave, I hurried back to Grafton Street 20 / MARIAN KEYES
    to try and return the handbag—I couldn't return the Clarins stuff because I'd already tried the free gift—but they wouldn't give me a refund, only a store credit. And before I'd made it back to the car, my eye was caught by yellow flowery flip-flops in a shoe-shop window and, like an out-of-body experience, I found myself inside, handing over my credit card. It wasn't safe to let me out.
    That evening I went to a work thing and did something I didn't usually do at work things—I got