Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [116]
‘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