No Dress Rehearsal. Marian Keyes

       CHAPTER ONE

      Lizzie has just died. She simply hasn’t realised it yet.

      You’d be amazed at how often this kind of thing happens. Usually to people who were never very popular in the first place. When everyone starts completely ignoring them, they just accept it. Like they’d always thought it might happen, anyway. Sooner or later.

      This wasn’t the case with Lizzie, though. She was a popular girl. She just happened to have a lot on her mind on the afternoon in question.

      Anyway, what happened was Lizzie was cycling home from work. Weaving her way through the cars. Most of the time, going faster than them. On the Ranelagh road she got caught by traffic lights. “Come on,” she muttered. “Change!”

      As soon as the lights changed to green she took off like a hare out of a trap. She cycled out into the clear road, heading for home. Next thing, her bike slid on a patch of oil. In slow motion she saw herself flying straight into the path of an oncoming Volvo. She watched the wheels speed towards her. Far, far too close to her head. This isn’t happening, she thought.

      A film-reel of pictures raced behind her eyes. All of them about her. Aged four, falling out of a tree. The dog she’d had when she was seven. The coolest pair of cowboy boots she’d got when she was twelve. Her first romantic kiss. Her last day at school. Meeting Neil for the first time. Moving in with him. Going to work this morning. Leaving work this evening …

      And then everything stopped. No more pictures. For a few shocked seconds she lay on the greasy road. Her cheek was pressed against the tarmac. So close that she could see hundreds of pieces of tar-coated gravel. They’d been smoothed by a million car tyres. So many little stones, she thought. Then, I wonder if I’m badly injured?

      Slowly, carefully, she told her leg to move. It did so without sending hot agony shooting through her. This could only be good. She tried her other leg. No pain there, either.

      Testing each limb, she gingerly climbed to her feet. All the while, she expected some body-part to object. But to her relief it looked like she had no bones broken. In fact, as she checked herself, it seemed that she wasn’t even cut. How lucky was that!

      It was then she saw that the driver of the car had got out. He came towards her. His face was twisted into a mask of horror.

      “It’s okay,” she said, shakily. “I seem to be in one piece. Luckily!”

      To make him feel better she faked a laugh. But he paid her no attention. From the shapes he was making with his mouth, he seemed to be trying to talk. But he wasn’t having much luck.

      “I swear to God,” she said, “I really am fine! Don’t ask me how, but I am.”

      Still he didn’t speak. Suddenly she went weak. She was hit by a longing to be at home.

      She left the driver to his silent mouthing and got on her bike. By some miracle it was undented. And away she cycled. Leaving her still and bloody body lying beneath the car wheels.

      As she wobbled off, she almost bumped into someone. A tall, pale figure in a long, black, hooded cape. He nodded at her in a friendly way. But she hardly noticed.

      She still didn’t know what had happened. Nor did she notice the crowd of curious and worried people gathering around her body. She didn’t hear the ambulance siren in the distance. She didn’t see the huge queue of cars along the Ranelagh road. All delayed on their way home because her body was blocking the road.

      But if she had, she would have burned with shame. Because she was wearing her worst knickers. They were arm-pit high and the colour of porridge. How could she not have realised that they’d get an audience? It was as good as guaranteed.

      Most days Lizzie arrived home breathless and sweating, with her thigh muscles on fire. The cycling was yet another of her many efforts to get fit and skinny. Especially skinny. But today the journey felt oddly effortless. She seemed to sail along, as if the entire route was downhill.

       CHAPTER TWO

      At the very moment that one of the ambulance men officially declared her dead, Lizzie arrived home. She shared a flat in Rathmines with her boyfriend, Neil. They’d lived there for a year-and-a-half. It was a bit of a kip. Which hadn’t mattered so much in the first flush of love. But it had started to get on her nerves a bit lately.

      She left her bicycle in the hall, and shoved her key in the lock. She took a couple of steps back, like she always did. Then she did a little run at her front door, heaving her shoulder against it. There was something wrong with the door. It kept sticking. And she kept meaning to do something about it. Like ring the landlord.

      She could hear the telly. Neil was home. She looked into the front room where he was flung on the couch.

      “That bloody door,” she complained. She made her voice sound light and good-humoured because she was nervous. They’d had a row that morning – yet another one. In fact things had been going badly between them for quite a while.

      What it came down to was this. They’d been going out with each other for two years. And living together for eighteen months. Lizzie wanted to settle down and Neil wasn’t so keen. To put it mildly. (That was why she had other things on her mind when she was knocked down.)

      She was thirty-two, and fed-up being a party girl. She wanted stability. To own their own place. To think about having children.

      “That bloody door,” she said again. But Neil didn’t speak. He continued to stew on the couch like someone in a coma.

      Lizzie swallowed and made herself ask, “So how was your day?” She said it gaily, happily. Trying to pretend to him that she didn’t really mind if he didn’t make a commitment to her.

      Of course she minded. She minded very much.

      Lizzie wasn’t the kind of woman who normally took nonsense from men. Shape up or ship out was her usual