Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [108]
Finally, at ten to four, as their endurance stretched to snapping point, Dr Singh approached the bed. He seemed to recoil slightly when he saw the white-faced throng. ‘If I could have a word with my patient?’
‘No, I want them to stay,’ Fintan insisted weakly.
Dr Singh assented. ‘I’m afraid I’ve bad news,’ he said.
Katherine’s heart thudded in her chest. She couldn’t look at the others.
‘We won’t have the results today. The lab has been too busy,’ Dr Singh continued. ‘You’re going to have to wait until Monday.’
38
‘I reckon she’s looking for another job,’ Bruce said.
‘Nah, mate,’ Myles contradicted. ‘I reckon she’s ill.’
‘She don’t look ill,’ Bruce pointed out.
‘She don’t look too chipper neither,’ Jason replied.
Furious speculation abounded about Katherine’s absences from work, because in her three years at Breen Helmsford she’d never even taken a day off sick before. Darren claimed to have seen her crying on the phone on Monday morning, but this information was discounted because it was so unlikely. Besides, it wouldn’t have been the first time Darren had told an outrageous lie.
Then word filtered down via Fred Franklin that on Tuesday morning she’d told ‘Call me Johnny’ that she’d be taking some time off because of a ‘personal matter’. When this news reached the rank and file, great mirth broke out. ‘Do what? A personal matter? Leave it out.’ Myles guffawed. ‘The girl’s a machine!’
‘Maybe her dishwasher broke down,’ Bruce suggested. ‘That’d probably qualify as a tragedy for Icequeen.’
On Friday lunchtime in the Frog and Fawn, Joe’s team batted possibilities back and forth.
‘She might be getting married,’ Bruce theorized. ‘Girls take shedloads of time off to organize that.’
‘Maybe she’s had a breast enlargement,’ Jason suggested, hopefully. ‘You have to rest lots after one of them.’
‘Could be she’s getting divorced,’ Myles said. ‘She looks a bit creamed, like she’s having a hard time.’
Bruce agreed. ‘Normal times the girl looks like she lives in a bleeding dry-cleaner’s, but this week her clobber’s been wrinkled to fuck.’
‘Hard to iron with new tits,’ Jason reminded them. ‘They’d sting for a while.’
‘She looks like she’s not getting much sleep,’ Bruce said.
‘That’s ’cos she has to lie on her back until her new tits are better,’ Jason said.
Myles rounded on him in wild irritation. ‘What are you going on about? Do her tits look any bigger? Well?’
‘Suppose not,’ Jason admitted sulkily.
‘What do you think is up with her?’ Myles asked Joe, who’d sat in grim silence throughout the speculation.
He shrugged, and said shortly, ‘No idea.’
Myles exchanged a what-the-hell’s-up-with-him? look with Bruce and Jason. Joe Roth was off his usual sunny form.
‘Me and Joe saw her with a bloke yesterday lunchtime,’ Bruce surprised the others by saying. ‘Some poncy pop-star.’
‘You what! Now you tell us.’ Myles and Jason were agog. ‘This changes everything. Who is he?’
‘Don’t know his name,’ Bruce admitted. ‘But I think he might have been one of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Big bloke, wearing wanky dungarees, designer ones, natch. Looked like he’d been pulled through a hedge backwards.’
‘Definitely a pop-star,’ Myles conceded. ‘What happened to the days when our singers took pride in their appearance?’
‘Yeah. Well, Icequeen and Dexy were very cosy-looking,’ Bruce said. ‘Which backs up my theory that she’s getting married.’
‘Jesus!’ Myles was astonished. ‘Could be true. No accounting for taste.’ He glanced nervously at Joe.
Darren burst into the Frog and Fawn, agitatedly waving a piece of paper about. ‘Look at this,’ he ordered. ‘Icequeen’s paid my expenses.’
‘So what? It’s her job.’
‘But I included three copies of the bill from the Oxo Tower. Two of them were messy photocopies – I only put them in to wind her up. And she’s done a cheque for the whole lot!’
‘You lying toerag,’ Myles scorned. ‘I suppose she was crying again while she did it.’
‘On Alan Shearer’s life, she was crying Monday