Further Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes Read Free Book Online Page A

manic wreck, with the taste of panic in my mouth.
    I spilt the terrible story to my boss, Charlotte, and she calmly advised me to apply for a new passport.
    ‘But it takes weeks to get a passport and I leave in two days’ time!’ I had to try hard not to screech.
    ‘Ring the Irish Embassy, tell them it’s an emergency and send a courier for an application form.’
    Within an hour, the application form was on my desk and Charlotte helped me read through the requirements because I was so frenzied the letters kept dancing in front of my eyes. First I needed a photo so she combed my hair, dispatched me to a nearby photobooth and reminded me to smile. (Thephoto is still in my passport; I’m a pretty pistachio-green shade.)
    Next, I needed a professional to endorse my photo and my bank manager seemed the obvious choice. However, despite the lively, almost daily correspondence that zipped from her to me, despite the audacious way she addressed me and the intimacy of her advice, she elected not to know me.
    So Charlotte got on the phone and tried a magistrate she knew, but he turned out to be on holiday. Undaunted she found a nearby barrister who owed her a favour and was prepared to bend the rules and pretend that he knew me. I nipped round to him, then back to the office where Charlotte told me I could catch up on work later and pushed me out through the door, shouting, ‘Go, go, go!’ like I was an SAS man parachuting into enemy territory.
    Then, gasping for breath, I was running through the streets of Belgravia, counting the numbers on the wedding-cake rococo mansions, looking for the Irish Embassy. I found it and panted up the steps to the fancy front door, then back down again with a flea in my ear: the passport office was round the side and in the basement. Down the rickety spiral staircase I went, burst in – and suddenly I was no longer in toney Belgravia but in a sub-post office in Athlone. It was a tiny little place, with four rows of plastic chairs cowering beneath merciless strip lighting and a serving counter with three glass hatches. I grabbed a ticket: number 792. When was my turn? I looked around for the number display and there in hellish red digital was the next number in line. It said 23. My heart almost leapt out of my chest with panic. I’d be here for ever! But no one was in sight, either in the waiting area or behind the counter…
    Then from some hidden back room, a plumpish young man appeared, came up to one of the hatches, looked at me and declared, ‘Next!’
    I looked in confusion at my ticket.
    ‘Next,’ he repeated.
    ‘But…’ I flapped my little piece of paper.
    ‘Oh we don’t bother with that yoke.’
    Fair enough. Up I stepped and blurted out the tragic tale of the missing passport, the cheap, non-refundable, non-changeable ticket, the lonely sister sitting out her first Christmas in New York, and he listened, leaning easily on his elbow, nodding in sympathy. ‘I see, I see, I see. Do you have a couch?’
    Nonplussed, I stopped in my tracks. What was going on? Was he trying to sell me furniture?
    ‘See, you wouldn’t credit the things that get lost down the back of a couch.’
    ‘I looked down the back of the couch.’
    ‘But did you
really
look?’ he persisted. ‘Did you put your hand in?’ He undulated his hand in front of my face. ‘Like this?’
    Yes, I said. Yes, I did. And he muttered to himself, ‘Looked down back of couch,’ and appeared to tick something on a piece of paper but it was to the side of the glass and I couldn’t really see it properly.
    ‘Okay. Have you drawers?’
    Excuse me?
    ‘Desk drawers?’ he elaborated. ‘Some of them have a spring mechanism and you’d be amazed what gets caught in them. You really need to give them a good shake.’
    I insisted that I had, although none of the drawers in my melamine chest of drawers had any kind of mechanism, but the panic was building again and threatening to choke me.
    ‘Shook out desk drawer,’ he