Christmas Magic. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ gloomily, stirring two fat sugars into his latte. ‘Don’t tell me: the florist can’t get the exact shade you want for the roses and everything’s going to be ruined. Can we talk about something else?’

      Gwen looked at him, hurt.

      ‘How can you say that?’ she began, and then stopped. He was right. All they ever talked about these days was the wedding. Gwen had dreamed of her wedding day since, aged five, she’d seen Barbie resplendent in her meringue of crispy lace.

      ‘You’re fed up with all this wedding stuff, aren’t you?’ she said.

      The question took both of them by surprise.

      ‘A bit,’ he admitted. ‘I feel as if I’m stuck on a roller coaster and I can’t get off.’

      Brian looked at Gwen to see how she was taking this. She wasn’t gasping with shock or anything, so he took the plunge.

      ‘I always thought it would be nice to get married on a beach or somewhere simple. Without all the fuss.’

      Gwen thought of the elaborate plans for a wedding feast that was going to cost a fortune and which made her break into a cold sweat when she thought about the inevitable drama of the table plans. Imagine her wild uncles sitting beside Brian’s beautiful but shy girl cousins? Or Brian’s brother telling risqué jokes as best man, jokes that would shock Granny and make her reach for her heart tablets?

      ‘If we had a quick, tiny wedding, just for immediate family, we could use the money we’ve saved for a huge holiday. Like …’ she searched for a place ‘… San Francisco. We could tour the area, drive up Highway One, go to LA, everywhere …’

      Brian didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The huge smile lighting up his face said it all.

      Selena passionately believed in fortune tellers. She always had, but she couldn’t say that because the girls would tell her to give it a go, and if Madame Lucia took one look at her, she’d know.

      And Selena was terrified that someone would find out.

      She still had the money, hidden in an envelope in her desk under a spare pair of tights so that anybody seeing the tights would know this was her personal drawer, and wouldn’t look any further. Because two thousand euros was a lot of money and anyone with half a brain would realise that Selena, the office spendthrift, could never have saved that much in her life.

      She hadn’t meant to take it, she really hadn’t. She had never stolen as much as a notebook from the office supply box, but that day a month ago that Stanley Maguire forgot to put the money in the safe was coincidentally the same day Selena received the awful letter from the credit card people.

      How could she owe them that much money? Yes, she’d bought the shoes and that long suede skirt that everyone admired so much, but surely she didn’t owe nearly two thousand?

      She’d added it up with shaking fingers on her calculator. Incredibly, all those small amounts of money (€19.99 for sunglasses that were almost exactly the same as the ones all the Hollywood stars had; a yoga video; a new wallet) managed to add up to the same heart-stopping total on the bottom of the statement.

      Which made it seem like fate when Stanley, who turned absent-mindedness into an art form, had opened the safe to put the morning’s cash in and had left one wad of notes on his desk.

      He’d gone out to lunch then and Selena had picked up the money to give it to him later but somehow, once her fingers touched the cool, sleek notes, she’d known that this could solve all her problems.

      Only it hadn’t. Guilt burned her soul like the fires of hell and she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since.

      ‘I know you don’t believe in fortune telling,’ said Gwen, who looked utterly delighted with herself since she’d called off the wedding, ‘but Madame Lucia is different. She knows things. And she doesn’t tell you bad things; only good news.’

      What if you didn’t have good news to tell? Selena thought miserably.

      There was a lull in the office at eleven and Gwen urged Selena again.

      ‘Go on, I bet you won’t believe what she’ll tell you. Look at me and Brian and how it’s all worked out for the best.’

      Selena kept her glasses on. She only needed them for the computer, but she thought that if she had a protective layer of glass between her eyes and the piercing gaze of Madame Lucia, the fortune teller mightn’t see the guilt and the misery behind them.

      ‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ said Madame Lucia pleasantly when Selena sat down, clasping and unclasping her hands anxiously.

      Easier said than done, Selena thought. She tried to breathe deeply, but all that came out was a shaky, shuddering breath.

      ‘It’s not the end of the world, you know,’ Madame Lucia remarked, staring into her crystal ball. ‘Life tests us all every day: little temptations to see what kind of people we are. And you know what sort of person you are, after all. A good one.’

      Selena’s eyes brimmed. She wasn’t a good person, she wasn’t. If she had been, she’d never have been tempted by the money.

      ‘You should talk to someone about a possible debt plan,’ Madame Lucia continued. ‘Pay off a little a week, that sort of thing. The banks are happy once you’re paying something.’

      Selena realised the fortune teller was talking about the credit card bill. She didn’t know about the other money.

      ‘Spring cleaning,’ added Madame Lucia.

      Mystified, Selena looked at her.

      ‘The office hasn’t had a good clean for ages. You’d be amazed at how things can fall down into drawers and filing cabinets and get lost. A good spring clean will soon restore everything to its rightful place.’

      Her words sent a little jolt of excitement through Selena. Of course. It had been months since the office had been given a good sorting out. The back office was always cluttered with boxes and Stanley’s desk had a paper mountain as big as Everest on the floor behind it.

      A wad of money could easily have got lost in the mess. A wad of money that nobody would ever suspect had been hidden in Selena’s drawer for a month.

      ‘You’ll talk to the bank, won’t you?’

      Madame Lucia stared at her and Selena saw in that instant that the woman knew about the other money. But there was absolutely no judgement in Madame Lucia’s eyes. She was offering a way out, a solution.

      Selena beamed at Madame Lucia. ‘Yes, I’ll talk to the bank. And thank you, for everything.’

      She bounced down the stairs, her mind racing. A proper spring clean was definitely a good idea. Just because they’d all been busy lately didn’t mean that standards should slip.

      Carmel’s asthma flared up halfway through Selena’s office spring clean.

      ‘There might’ve been money behind Stanley’s desk, but there’s nothing but dust in that corner,’ she wheezed as Selena cleaned like a woman possessed.

      Selena СКАЧАТЬ