Last Chance Saloon (32 page)

Literally.

Liv was a terrible woman.

Because JaneAnn and Timothy were going home the following day and wanted to buy presents for Ambrose and Jerome and all the neighbours who’d helped run the farms while they were away, Katherine took them shopping. She decided on Harrods because that was what tourists usually seemed to want, but it was a mistake.

JaneAnn went on and on about how expensive everything was and how immoral it was to charge those kinds of prices, and Katherine was hard put to humour her because her head was full of the enormity of having to go to work on Monday and face Joe Roth – oh, the shame! As JaneAnn wondered loudly how they could ask twenty-five pounds for a bread-knife when she knew for a fact that you could get a fine one in Tully’s Hardware, Main Street, Knockavoy for four pounds fifty, Katherine was facing into the nightmare of what if, once Joe had ‘thought about it’, he decided he
didn’t
want to go for a drink with her?

‘And if it goes blunt on you, Curly Tully will sharpen it again at no extra cost.’ JaneAnn got her attention once more. ‘I can’t
see them doing that here, Katherine. I’ve a good mind to tell her,’ JaneAnn indicated a young girl on the pay desk, ‘and maybe she could mention it to her father.’

‘No, don’t,’ Katherine said wearily. ‘She only works here. I don’t think she’s actually part of the Harrods family.’

Timothy was keen to buy his wife Esther a present. ‘Keep JaneAnn talking,’ he muttered to Katherine, ‘and point me towards the linger-ee.’

Fifteen minutes later Timothy returned, trying to hide a bagful of red and black underwear that Esther would wear once to humour him, then pretend had been stolen.

They left Harrods and JaneAnn went to a street stall and purchased two ‘My mother went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ T-shirts, three ‘My mother-in-law went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ T-shirts and seven ‘My neighbour went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ T-shirts, bargaining the trader down from seven pounds fifty per shirt to sixty pounds for the twelve. Leaving him reeling and not at all sure that he hadn’t actually sold at a loss, they got a taxi to Sandro and Fintan’s flat.

To be greeted by a strange creature that had Fintan’s face, but waist-length blond hair.

There was a time when she would have scorned drugs and trusted solely in the power of prayer, especially when it was someone else’s relation who was sick. Countless times she’d stood on Main Street, Knockavoy mouthing sanctimoniously,
‘The doctors can only do so much, but the true healer is the power of prayer. The power of prayer can work miracles!’

Now it was a belt-and-braces-type scenario. She wanted to talk to Sandro about taking Fintan to Lourdes (or Knock, if funds didn’t run to France), but she was also keen that Fintan get every drug available. JaneAnn thanked Katherine effusively for having them. ‘I got you a little something.’ Discreetly she handed over a small, heavy bundle. ‘It’s a statue of the Child of Prague. Don’t worry if the head falls off. It’s good luck.’ She thrust her face into Katherine’s. ‘You’ll mind Fintan, won’t you? You’ll ring me regularly, won’t you? And we’ll see ye all at Christmas.’ She lunged even closer to Katherine. ‘And you’ll do your best to get off with the boy from your work?’ she urged. ‘Love makes the world go round, you know. Sure, look how happy Milo and Liv are together.’

‘I’m trying my best,’ Katherine muttered.

JaneAnn moved on to Tara, extracting a promise that Tara would guard Fintan with her life. ‘And you’ll tell your young man we’re sorry we didn’t get to meet him?’

Sharp, sudden rage stabbed Tara. She was deeply ashamed of Thomas’s rudeness. ‘He was very busy, you know.’

‘Sure I do, of course, and him a schoolmaster. It’s a highly responsible job. Well, maybe he’ll come home with you at Christmas? Unless,’ she added, mildly, ‘you do that thing that Fintan wants. I don’t suppose we’d meet him then.’

Tara shifted unhappily. She didn’t think JaneAnn would meet him either way.

She’d actually contemplated not coming in at all. Having to decide between wearing lots of make-up, to give a mask of brazen indifference, or wearing none at all, in the hope that her pale little face would disappear into invisibility, had nearly been too much for her. She tried to be positive. After she’d returned from the airport, she’d had an emotional reunion with her remote control. And Fintan was home from hospital. This was good news, was it not? Even if he was sour and bad-tempered – when she’d told him the whole sorry story of her mortifying apology to Joe Roth, he’d barely grunted in response.

Despite her best intentions to not look directly at Joe, as she took off her coat there was a flicker of eye-contact with him. She nearly slipped a disc in her neck with the speed that she ducked her head. She couldn’t avoid noticing that he’d been smiling at her. Smiling? her paranoid head asked.
Or laughing?

She’d prayed over the weekend and she prayed now that he’d erase her humiliation in one fell swoop by asking her out. She yearned for him to lounge over to her with his easy grace, perch himself on the edge of her desk and say, with an emphasis that
only the two of them would understand, ‘That project you mentioned to me on Friday? Why don’t we discuss it over lunch?’

But he didn’t. He stayed resolutely at his desk, and as the morning passed, she downgraded her hopes. It didn’t have to be lunch. A drink would be fine. Then she decided it needn’t be a drink. Just a walk with no offer of any refreshments would do. And he didn’t have to ask her personally. A phone call was acceptable. Or an e-mail. Or an internal memo. By one o’clock she’d have been delighted with anything. A paper plane emblazoned with ‘Fancy a shag?’ would have done nicely.

But nothing. Nor did he approach her in the afternoon, while she went into a loop trying to justify it. Perhaps he was going out with Angie – although she’d nearly discounted that. Wouldn’t Joe have just said, ‘I have a girlfriend,’ instead of ‘I’ll think about it’? But if Angie wasn’t the obstacle, that meant he simply didn’t want Katherine, which was far too unpleasant to contemplate. So, quick as a flash, she wondered if it was because of Angie. But wouldn’t Joe have just said, ‘I have a girlfriend’? Round and round she went, like a rat on a wheel, until going-home time. Trying to exude, I
have a life
,
I always had one
, she left and went to Fintan’s.

On Tuesday she got up and did it all over again while Tara rang almost hourly to monitor the non-existent progress. ‘Is he being unpleasant?’ she asked.

‘No. He seems friendly enough whenever I catch his eye. Which isn’t often,’ Katherine admitted. ‘My eyes are glued to the floor.’

‘It’s nice that he’s friendly,’ Tara consoled.

‘It’s not friendship I want from him. I have enough friends!’

On Wednesday, Katherine finally admitted it wasn’t going
to happen. She’d given Joe long enough, extending and stretching the appropriate time span to its furthest reach. The last piece of hope evaporated. He had rejected her – it was official. He’d ‘thought about it’ and decided he wasn’t interested.

She waited for the slump. A disappointment with a man usually moved her one step closer to death. Doused her joy in living a tiny bit more. But oddly enough, the plummet didn’t happen. Why? she wondered. Because she had other things on her mind, namely Fintan? But her worry about Fintan hadn’t stopped her getting her knickers in a twist about Joe Roth in the first place.

Whatever the reason, she had a strange faith that life would go on and she would survive. With untimely hope, she knew she had some sort of future. Joe Roth didn’t want her, but while she was alive anything could happen.

That evening she went tap-dancing for the first time in six weeks, then to All Bar One with Tara, Liv and Milo – Sandro had requested an evening alone with Fintan.

In the bar they gathered around a table and Katherine was surprised by the thrill of well-being that lunged at her. She was excited to be out, looking forward to some fun. Not only had the nervy anxiety about Joe Roth lifted but so had the worry for Fintan that she’d been dragging like a bag of rocks.

Milo was unrecognizable from the rough-hewn eejit who’d arrived in London less than a month before. His hair had been shaped and tidied so that it no longer looked like he’d trimmed it with a chain-saw, and he was decked out in shiny-new gear, the trendy, design-conscious hand of Liv apparent in every thread. He was astonishingly handsome, all bulk and black curls and navy-blue eyes. ‘Look at them.’ He laughed, pointing at the pair of peculiar, asymmetrical shoes he was wearing. ‘Aren’t
they the gassest things you ever clapped eyes on? They’re from some mad place. Reds under the Bed, or something.’ He looked at Liv for guidance.

‘Red or Dead,’ she murmured. It made a change being the person who corrected rather than the one who was corrected. She
loved
it.

Milo and Liv were still in the first, antisocial flush of love and while they made half-hearted efforts to speak to Tara and Katherine, they kept whispering and giggling to each other, touching fingertips, brushing kisses. Milo muttered something into Liv’s ear, and Liv lowered her eyes, smiled broadly, nudged Milo in his Diesel-clad ribs and murmured with put-on reluctance, ‘Stop.’

Milo muttered something else. Obviously even more suggestive, because Liv’s smile widened further and again she whispered, with a little giggle and an elbow, ‘Staw-hop.’

Milo leant his mouth against Liv’s ear once more, Liv squeezed his Carhartt knee and Tara and Katherine swivelled to look at each other, with deadpan expressions.

‘For God’s sake,’ Tara complained.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Katherine asked Milo. He ignored her and continued with his whish-whish-whishing into Liv’s hair.

‘What do you want to drink?’ she asked again, louder.

On her fourth go, Milo gave her a dazed look and said, ‘Oh, um, sorry, did you say something?’

Tara said to Katherine, ‘Looks like we’ll have to make our own entertainment tonight.’

When they had glasses of wine in front of them, Tara began her cross-examination. ‘Are you devastated about Joe?’

‘I don’t actually feel that bad,’ Katherine said.

‘But you wouldn’t say if you did,’ Tara said sorrowfully. ‘You never do.’

‘No, honestly.’ Katherine was earnest. ‘I don’t. It really stings that he didn’t want me, but I did something good. I was brave and I took a risk.’

‘You’re only saying that so I’ll leave Thomas.’ Tara drew on her cigarette as though she was sucking poison from a wound. ‘A blatant case of bumlickery. Doing what Fintan asked and showing me up for the scaredy-cat I am.’

‘I’m not. I’m not.’ Katherine flapped her hand. ‘Hold on and I’ll try and explain it. Do you remember when we tried to imagine that we only had six months left to live?’

At that Tara winced.

‘That feeling that life is for living?’ Katherine reminded her. ‘That you only get one shot at it. Remember?’

‘Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. You’ll be dead long enough. You only go around the once.’ Tara’s sarcasm was almost palpable.

‘Exactly! That’s –’

‘Didn’t you notice my irony?’ Tara asked anxiously.

‘Oh, were you being sarcastic? Each to their own. Well, anyway, I feel like I’m alive. And I’m glad,’ Katherine said, simply.

‘But you’re always so cynical,’ Tara said, helplessly, ‘and a lovely man has rejected you. Any normal woman would want to die.’

‘You never know.’ Katherine gave her a sly look. ‘I might meet another man.’

‘But…’ Tara was confused. Katherine never said things like that.

‘Like him.’ Katherine nudged Tara and directed her attention to a good-looking blond bloke leaning against the bar.

As Tara watched, he began to smile, and the smile was directed at Katherine. Tara whirled around to look at Katherine who, instead of giving the man a grade one (icy disdain) or a grade two (icy disdain with an undercurrent of steely hostility), was smiling back at him. Not a huge big ear-to-ear beam, but a smile nevertheless.

And then the really baffling truth dawned on Tara. Katherine wasn’t returning the blond bloke’s smile. She’d smiled at him first.

What was going on? There was an unusual slightly loose-cannonish air about Katherine tonight. She looked different, reminding Tara of someone. Who was it? A person familiar yet not. Ah! Something turned and settled into place. How unexpected. It was her mother, Delia.

Work was a great distraction. But in the midst of inputting a fixed assets schedule, the longing to look at Joe hurtled at her out of nowhere. She kept her head turned to the screen and resisted. And resisted. But the yearning tugged at her, until she couldn’t fight it any more. Shifting her head infinitesimally, she allowed herself the merest sliver of a glance out of the tiniest corner of her eye.

And her skin flamed when she saw him watching her. Sideways, furtively, but with great intensity. Then, his eyes locked on to hers, he smiled. Wide, intimate, meaningful.

What was he grinning at?

She turned back to her screen. In the top left-hand corner a little envelope was flashing.
You have mail
. She clicked her mouse and opened it. It was an e-mail.

From Joe.