Read Online Tales From a Hen Weekend by Olivia Ryan - Free Book Online Page B

strangle bloody Perfect Prick. How dare he treat her with such… such coldness? Such bloody contempt? He could at least have pretended .’
    ‘Would you want a man to pretend to fuck you, though?’ points out Emily, and somehow this is so funny we all fall backwards on the beds laughing and yawning simultaneously.
    ‘Wake me up when it’s time for breakfast,’ I mutter, closing my eyes.
    ‘Jesus, God, are you not going to undress yourself and take your make-up off, Katie?’ asks Jude in disbelief. She should know me better by now.
    ‘No, I’m fucking not.’
    ‘Well, I’d best be going back to my own room,’ says Emily. ‘Night night.’
    ‘See you tomorrow,’ I start – but I’m asleep before I even finish the tomorrow , and fortunately, long before Jude’s finished in the bathroom and put out the light.
     
    Some of us are quiet at breakfast in the morning, and several of us have difficulty looking a fried egg in the face.
    First in the queue for black coffee is Mum, who looks like she can hardly bear the sunlight coming in through the dining-room windows.
    ‘How’s your head?’ I ask her gently, sitting down next to her with two slices of toast and marmalade.
    ‘Not good, dear, I’m afraid. Oh, move that food away from under my nose, please, if you don’t mind. The smell’s making me feel a bit faint.’
    ‘Sure you’ll be fine when you’ve got a bit of fresh Dublin air in your lungs, Margie,’ says Jude cheerfully, joining us and plonking her plate of sausages and fried potatoes down on the table. Mum winces and turns away, covering her mouth delicately with her serviette. ‘It’s a lovely day outside, so it is. I’ve been up since seven o’clock watching the world warm up.’
    ‘She’s a raving nutcase, Mum. She hasn’t been watching the world, she’s been doing her bloody hair and make-up!’
    Mum tries to laugh but it obviously hurts her head. She groans and has a mouthful of coffee.
    ‘I hope I wasn’t embarrassing last night,’ she says somewhat stiffly, ‘while I was feeling under the weather?’
    ‘Not a bit of it, Marge,’ says Jude stoutly, ‘You were grand altogether. Sure and we were all fluthered, were we not?’
    ‘Fluthered?’
    ‘Hammered, so we were – but didn’t we have a great time and all? Is it beating the shit out of your own hen night at Southend, do you think, Margie?’
    ‘Southend… did I mention Southend last night, for God’s sake?’
    ‘Of course you did, Mum! You never left off going on about bloody Southend!’ I laugh. ‘It must have been fan-bloody-tastic, I’ll give you that – the amount you keep going on about it!’
    ‘It wasn’t,’ she says, dropping her coffee cup into the saucer with a crash. ‘It wasn’t good at all.’ She looks stricken, like she’s going to cry. ‘I don’t know what I was blabbing on about last night, but I’ve never told anyone the truth. It was a terrible day. It was the worst day of my entire life!’
     
    ‘I feel awful leaving Mum and Auntie Joyce behind,’ says Lisa as we leave the hotel a little later. ‘Are you sure they didn’t want to come?’
    ‘I think Mum still feels a bit hungover. And Joyce looks knackered. I reckon she didn’t get a lot of sleep – she says Mum was groaning and carrying on in her sleep all night. They’ll both be fine if they stay here and rest, this morning.’
    I haven’t said anything to Lisa about Mum and the Southend Hen-Night Outburst. I feel pretty sure she’s just feeling tired and over-emotional, like we all do when we’re recovering from a piss-up, and probably didn’t mean it. Anyway, I’m hardly going to bother Lisa about it when she’s spent half of last night spilling the beans about her own personal disaster.
    ‘Are you feeling OK this morning?’ I ask her quietly as we walk down the street together.
    ‘Course I am!’ she says sharply. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
    Christ, has she forgotten it all already? Sobbing in our arms about the