Katherine should have been glad because Joe could easily be sacked for losing the account, but she wanted to go and give him comfort – lay his beautiful head in her lap and stroke her fingers through his hair.
‘Not your week, is it?’ Fred cackled at Joe. ‘What with your beloved Arsenal losing on Saturday.’
Better do some work, Katherine decided. She looked at the figures on her desk but they might as well have been written in Urdu. She turned her spreadsheet upside down to see if it made better sense and found Breda staring at her in alarm. ‘I’ll be with you shortly, Breda.’ Katherine tried to sound like a woman in control, ‘Just catching up here.’ Get it together, Katherine admonished herself. Joe Roth wouldn’t be the only one getting the boot if she didn’t watch it.
‘Is now a good time?’ she heard, and looked up to find Joe Roth standing over her.
‘For what?’ she stammered, her heart pounding.
‘Expenses.’
‘Again?’
‘Again.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Best if I do. Just in case I’m told to clear out my desk before the end of today.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ she asked, aghast.
‘Advertising. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.’ He smiled.
‘But it’s only your first offence,’ she protested. ‘That wouldn’t be fair.’
He put his hand on her desk and leant over. ‘Katherine,’ he said, with quiet intensity, laughter in his eyes, ‘calm down.’
She caught a whiff of him, the sharp, fresh smell of clean man. Soap and citrus and an undercurrent of something slightly more feral. He moved back, and she felt confused and abandoned. ‘Pull up a pew,’ she managed. She was glad she’d said ‘pew’. It sounded relaxed and casual.
Joe sat in front of her in a crisp white shirt. Clean-shaven, lean-jawed, sallow-skinned. As she sorted through the small bundle of receipts, his presence played havoc with her fingers on her calculator. She kept hitting the percentage key or the square-root button instead of the plus sign. ‘I’m sorry about your Multi-nut Muesli account.’
If he was surprised by her unprecedented forwardness he didn’t show it. He just shrugged. It’s life, isn’t it?’ He did a good job of pretending it didn’t matter, but she’d always sensed how important his job was to him. ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ He held her eyes when he finished speaking. Was she imagining there was meaning in his expression? ‘Or maybe you do,’ he added.
Did she always get what she wanted?
And as Joe watched, transfixed, tears filled Katherine’s eyes, then overflowed neatly, prettily, down her smooth face. Surprising them both. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, putting her head down and whisking the tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I had some – some bad news this morning.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He sounded like he meant it.
That made her cry even more. She wanted to go to him, to feel the hardness of his arms around the small of her back, pulling her against him, to lay her cheek on the cashmere of his lapel, to turn her face into the crisp cotton of his shirt and inhale him.
‘Would you like to…?’ He was about to ask if she’d like to go for a cup of coffee to talk, then stopped himself. Of course she wouldn’t want to.
Katherine was distracted by Angie slowly walking by, twisting her head into an impossible angle. Katherine realized she was trying to get a look at Joe. Come to think of it, she’d vaguely noticed Angie passing at least twice already during the conversation. What did it mean?
‘This is all fine.’ She indicated the expenses claim with a watery smile. ‘I’ll do a cheque in a day or so.’
As Joe returned to his desk, he was met by an excited deputation headed by Myles.
‘Was Icequeen crying?’ he demanded eagerly.
‘No,’ Joe said shortly, and turned away.
42
Fintan had flipped. There was no other explanation for his behaviour. He’d summoned Tara and Katherine to his bedside because he had a request to make of each of them, and they decided that the cancer must have spread to his brain when they heard what he wanted them to do.
It was five days since his diagnosis and he’d been given a day off from chemo because it was so gruelling. The cocktail of drugs had made him sick, he’d developed monstrous mouth ulcers and already his hair had started to fall out.
‘Jesus,’ he’d mumbled, when he could find the energy to speak, ‘I’d rather take my chances with the cancer.’
His reaction to conventional medicine sent everyone into a mad flurry of reading all the books on alternative cures they’d bought. ‘I’d normally laugh at this kind of thing,’ Katherine admitted, looking up from a page that suggested Fintan could be cured by imagining himself being bathed in yellow light, ‘but maybe it’s worth a try.’
Fintan responded to suggestions that he imagine breathing in pure, healing, silvery light or zapping his cancer cells as if he was playing Space Invaders by mumbling, ‘Fuck off, I’m too fucking sick.’
But today, as only saline solution dripped into him, despite being weak as a kitten, X-ray thin and greyish-yellow, he was better than he’d been in days. ‘Gather around!’ he croaked, in a travesty of his erstwhile flamboyance. ‘Now, you know the way you all keep saying that if there’s anything you can do for me…’
Tara and Katherine nodded eagerly.
‘Good. You promise?’
‘We promise.’
‘Promise, promise?’
They rolled their eyes – as if they wouldn’t do exactly what he wanted! ‘Promise, promise.’
‘Right, I’ll start with you, Tara.’
She assumed an attentive expression.
‘You’re to leave Thomas.’
The smile remained on her face, but the light behind it had gone, and her eyes were startled. ‘Excuse me?’ she managed. She’d been expecting him to ask her to bring in new pyjamas or – God forbid – visit an undertaker’s for leaflets for him, or even to extract a promise that she’d take care of Sandro if the worst happened. But not this.
‘I want you to leave Thomas,’ he repeated.
She elbowed Katherine. ‘Next he’ll want me to climb Mount Everest,’ she laughed, uncertainly, ‘and while I’m at it straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa and –’
‘Not funny, Tara.’ He silenced her. ‘This is no joke.’
Startled by his intense tone, she looked into his skeletal face for clues. Her heart banged in her chest, as she realized he was serious. ‘But why?’ she faltered.
‘Because I want you to be happy.’ His voice was faint but surprisingly firm.
‘I am happy.’ The erratic, inexplicable dissatisfaction she’d been feeling with Thomas was instantly wiped out. ‘I’d be very unhappy without him. Wouldn’t I?’ She turned to Katherine for support.
‘No point asking her,’ Fintan sang, hoarsely. ‘She agrees with me.’
‘What exactly does my relationship with Thomas have to do with you?’ Tara attempted defiance.
Fintan took a breath to speak, then paused. He looked at his blanket, seemingly for inspiration, before saying, ‘If I’m going to die, I’m damned if you’re going to waste your life.’
Tara was shocked, shamed – and angry. How dare he play God with her life just because he might die?
‘Yes, I am a bastard,’ Fintan said cheerfully, speaking her mind and embarrassing her. ‘Shamelessly manipulating my position. Might as well get what I can out of it. Christ knows, it hasn’t much else going for it.’
‘I’m sorry you don’t like Thomas.’
‘The only reason I don’t like him is because he’s bad to you.’ Fintan’s glittering eyes held hers. ‘Look at how he hasn’t even come to see me and I’ve been here nearly two weeks. Even Ravi’s been in to visit.’
Tara suspected that Ravi went to the hospital for the same reason that people slow down, their eyes out on stalks, passing a road accident, but all she said was, ‘That’s Thomas being bad to you, not
to me. If you want to see him that badly, Fintan, I’ll organize it.’
‘I don’t want to see him at all. Jesus, the very sight of him would set me back months. But I’m making the point that he’s not supporting you.’
‘Fintan, I’ll do anything else for you, anything at all,’ she flapped, ‘but there’s no way I’m going to leave Thomas.’
‘You promised.’ He thrust his chapped-to-bits lower lip out in joke sulkiness. ‘Look.’ He stuck out his tongue. ‘Do you want to see my mouth ulcers? They’re amazing.’
‘Fintan…’
‘Look at the ones on my tongue. Aren’t they huge? Look,’ he ordered her. ‘Look!’
‘Huge,’ she said, flatly. ‘Fintan, please don’t ask me to leave Thomas. He doesn’t treat me badly as such…’
‘No!’ Fintan attempted to sit up, but couldn’t summon the energy. ‘Katherine and I don’t want to hear about how it’s for your own good when Thomas insults you, a sign of how much he cares. And we don’t want to hear that it’s not his fault that he’s an obnoxious prick. If he treated his mother the way he treats you who’d blame the woman for scarpering? You said you’d do anything for me. So do it.’
‘Anything other than this.’
‘It’s easy,’ he urged, weakly, as his burst of defiance dissolved and he was flung once more against his pillows. ‘Tell her, Katherine. Just throw all your things in the car and go!’
For the first time Tara visualized it and she contracted with fear. It was like being told to jump off a cliff.
Fintan moved his head along on the pillow and left a hank of thick, black hair behind. He didn’t notice, which somehow made it worse.
‘But what would become of me without Thomas?’ Tara managed, sick from witnessing the hair loss. ‘I’d never get anyone else and I hate not having a man.
‘And it’s not something I’m proud of,’ she added quickly.
‘I’m going to puke,’ Fintan interrupted, urgently. ‘Katherine, pass me that bowl.’ He empty-retched, then, sweating and exhausted, flopped back on his pillows. Everyone remained silent, and Tara and Katherine were both trying to work up to leaving when Fintan spoke again. ‘How do you know you hate being without a man, Tara? You’ve only been single for about a week since we moved to London twelve years ago! The minute it ends with one, you’re off with another. Go on,’ he urged weakly, ‘break the fear barrier.’
Like a fish on a line, she struggled and fought to get free. ‘No, Fintan. I’m thirty-one. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m in the Last Chance Saloon and –’
‘You and your Last Chance Saloon.’ Fintan laughed, bitterly. ‘If anyone’s in the Last Chance Saloon it’s me.’
Tara couldn’t speak. Anger and guilt and fear tangled together. This was blackmail.
‘Do you want to end up just like your mother?’ Fintan asked. Tara’s head shot up. ‘Living with a cranky old bollocks?’ he suggested archly. ‘Doing everything bar standing on your head yet never pleasing him? Sure, that’s what you’re like already!’
Tara was inflamed. It was one thing for her to complain about her father, but it stung to hear another person, even someone as close as Fintan, speak that way about her family. And, anyway, she was nothing like her mother, who was a pet but undeniably a doormat. Even though Thomas was sometimes difficult, Tara wasn’t a doormat. She was a modern, independent woman with choices and power. Wasn’t she?
‘You can’t deny me anything I want. I’ve cancer.’ Then he put the final boot in. ‘If you don’t leave Thomas,’ he twinkled, ‘I’ll die, just to spite you.’
Tara wanted to kill him. She was as furious as she was grief-stricken. Over her throbbing head she heard him saying, ‘All right, I’m prepared to compromise. Ask Thomas to marry you and if he says yes, then you have my blessing. But if he says no, then tell him to sling his hook. How about that?’
‘Maybe,’ Tara mumbled, thinking, No way. Not in a hairy fit. Not in a million years.
‘Good!’ In his exhausted, nauseous way, Fintan was pleased. Until it occurred to him that there was a small chance that Thomas might accept. Oh, no!
‘Now, your turn, Katherine,’ Fintan declared. ‘You, missy, are to take yourself out of cold storage.’
Katherine assumed an expression of polite interest, as if she had no idea what Fintan was on about.
‘Get yourself a man,’ he elaborated.
Tara erupted angrily. ‘Why does she get the nice task and I get the awful one?’
‘I don’t think Katherine sees it that way.’ Instantly, Katherine forced a smile. It looked as if it had been stapled on. ‘Haven’t you noticed a pattern? Because I sure as hell have,’ Fintan murmured. His eyes were closed again and he sounded almost like he was talking to himself. ‘Every twelve months or so you show up with some insanely handsome man on your arm. He sticks around for a couple of weeks, then, bam! he’s gone and you’re telling us you don’t want to talk about it. Can’t you pick someone who’s, like, moderately good-looking? Stop building failure into every relationship you embark on. And don’t think I don’t know why you do it.’ His voice was so low they both had to lean in on him to hear him. ‘You’re just like your mother. One bad experience with a man and you turn chicken. Bockbockbockbockbock.’ Still with his eyes closed, Fintan bent his arms at the elbow and weakly flapped them. ‘Chicken,’ he repeated meaningfully, and opened his eyes to stare directly at Katherine.
‘I’m nothing like my mother.’ Katherine swallowed.
‘You’re just like her! Ducking men like a big scaredy-cat.’
‘My mother is bonkers.’
‘So will you be, eventually, if you carry on the way you’re going.’
‘Fintan,’ Katherine’s voice was controlled, ‘it’s not imperative for every human being to have a partner to be happy.’
‘Oh, God, puke bowl again, please.’
Wishing they could run away, they sat as, once more without success, Fintain tried to vomit. ‘If I could only throw up I know I’d feel better,’ he mumbled, when he’d given up on it again.
Katherine and Tara looked at their shoes and wished they were living someone else’s life.
‘So, Katherine,’ Fintan broke the silence, ‘I quite agree that some people are meant to be on their own. And you’re not one of them. Tara tells me there’s some fella at work.’
Katherine glared at Tara, redirecting all the rage she was forbidden to expel on to Fintan. ‘Not any more,’ it gave her sour pleasure to tell him.
‘Has he left work?’
‘No, he’s just gone off me.’
‘Why?’
Katherine didn’t speak.
‘You have to tell me,’ he ordered. ‘I have cancer. I might die!’
Resentfully Katherine elaborated, ‘I think it’s because I accused him of sexual harassment when he kept asking me out.’
‘What did you do that for?’
‘I didn’t want to go out with him.’
‘But why not? Is he a bad person?’
‘No! He’s so nice he’d get on your nerves.’
‘Aha!’ Fintan seemed to have perked up. ‘So you’d have gone out with him if he was a tosser? Then he’d dump you and you’d be safe once more – single, with your low opinion of men reinforced. Katherine, you have it all worked out.’
She shrugged, hating this.
‘Is he married?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘How good-looking is he?’
‘Very.’
‘Dangerously? Insanely?’
‘No, just very.’
‘Does he do any part-time modelling?’
‘No.’
‘Good, I like him already. Do you fancy him?’
There was a pause, then Katherine nodded shakily.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Joe Roth.’
‘Your mission, Katherine Casey, should you choose to accept it – and believe me, you’d better, if you ever want to see Fintan O?
??Grady alive again – is to bag this Joe Roth.’
‘I think he’s got another girl,’ Katherine protested.
‘You love a challenge!’
She said nothing.
‘Promise me,’ Fintan urged, weakly. ‘Promise me you’ll try.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘I know you both hate me,’ Fintan flashed a grin at them, ‘but if you could see what I see, you’d be downright disgusted by the way you’re wasting your lives. You’re enduring maintenance-level misery because you think that at some point in your future things will just click into being perfect.
‘Go on, go home now, the pair of you have worn me out. And remember, Tara, get packing your bags and, Katherine, wear your best knickers to work on Monday! And most of all,’ he urged, like a football coach, ‘get out there and live, live, live!’
Stiffly they bade him goodbye. As they left his bedside, Neville and Geoff arrived. ‘Sorry, girls,’ Fintan groaned at them, ‘I feel too shitty for visitors.’
Tara and Katherine didn’t speak as they went down in the lift or left the hospital, except to wave wanly at Harry, Didier and Will who were noisily en route to Fintan, laden with flowers, magazines and beer. The flowers and magazines were for Fintan but the beer was for them.
As Tara steered the Beetle out of the car park, a car was coming in. Katherine twiddled her fingers at the people in it – Javier and Butch. ‘I wonder if Didier is going to get off with Butch?’ she mused idly.
‘I wonder.’
Then they drove in silence for almost twenty minutes.
Finally Tara spoke. ‘Fintan’s a scream, isn’t he?’ She forced a laugh. ‘An absolute madman.’
Katherine caught her breath. Had she been tying herself in knots for nothing? ‘You think he was joking?’
Tara gave Katherine a wry look. ‘Sure, what else? Who could take that seriously? Isn’t he a hoot?’
Katherine looked anxiously at Tara. She wasn’t at all sure that Fintan had been having them on. But it was such a relief if he had been…
‘A hoot,’ she agreed, wildly. ‘He’s out of his mind.’
Then the laughter gathered steam and became real.