Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [122]
‘You don’t think she’ll find it hard in Knockavoy, so far from home?’ Tara felt obliged to say.
‘But she’s so far from home anyway,’ JaneAnn pointed out, with undeniable logic.
‘Well, what about her job?’
‘Milo has enough and more to take care of her. She won’t go short of anything with him.’
‘Maybe Milo will move to London,’ Katherine suggested carefully.
JaneAnn exploded into peals of laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed. ‘Have sense, child,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Have a bit of sense. And him with a fine farm of land. Live in London, how are you!’
‘Why is he doing this to me, O Wise One?’ Tara asked Liv. ‘O Swedish Anna Raeburn, tell me why he wants to ruin my life? He’s supposed to be my friend.’
It was Sunday afternoon and Tara, Katherine and Liv had escaped the hospital for a while and gone to a nearby pub.
The problem was that Fintan had done it again – reiterated his unorthodox requests. Then, to make matters worse, he’d told Sandro and his family about what he wanted.
JaneAnn had looked in shock from Tara to Katherine. ‘Girls,’ she stuttered, ‘you’ll have to do what he asks. How could you have that on your conscience?’
Tara and Katherine flicked around, searching for an ally, but all they saw was Milo, Timothy, Sandro, Liv and, of course, JaneAnn, looking at them as if they were murderers.
‘Fintan’s become aware of his own mortality,’ Liv explained to Tara, quoting directly from Good Grief, her book of the moment. ‘Because time might be in short supply, it suddenly seems very precious. Not just his own but everyone’s.’
All three had a short burst of empathy, then it passed.
‘The thing is,’ Tara said hopefully, ‘he hasn’t a leg to stand on because he’s not going to die. He’s on very powerful treatment and Hodgkin’s disease has a high rate of recovery.’
Liv couldn’t let that pass. ‘The lump on his neck hasn’t become any smaller, and the spot tests don’t show any response to the drugs. You’re in denial, you can’t cope with how bad things are.’
‘All this might pass in a couple of days,’ Katherine cheered. ‘He’s had a hard time of it. No wonder he’s a bit mental.’
Liv’s face darkened. ‘He’s not mental. I think he’s right. You should leave Thomas,’ she nodded at Tara, ‘and you,’ she headbutted in Katherine’s direction and shouted, ‘what you need is a good SEEING-TO!’
Most of the pub turned to look. Before the apoplectic Tara and horrorstruck Katherine got a chance to tell her to shag off and mind her own business, Liv stomped from the pub.
‘What on earth’s up with her?’ Tara exclaimed.
‘How the hell would I know?’ Katherine replied hotly.
They sat in resentful silence, Tara smoking, Katherine fiddling with Tara’s car keys.
‘Do you fucking mind?’ Tara exploded, slapping Katherine’s hand away with force. ‘You’re driving me mad.’
Katherine set her face in a mutinous expression, but left the keys alone.
‘We should go back to the hospital,’ Tara eventually said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Good, I don’t want to go, either. I’m terrified that they’ll all start on at us again.’
‘They can stick it.’ Katherine snorted.
‘How about if you leave Thomas,’ Tara suggested, ‘and I sleep with Joe Roth?’
They laughed nervously, shakily reunited.
‘You don’t think…’ Tara paused. She had to say this delicately. ‘You don’t think Fintan’s asked us to do these things because he’s bitter that he’s very sick and we’re not? You don’t think it’s a kind of revenge? That our lives have to be destroyed like his?’
That was going too far for Katherine. ‘I’d say this is simply a passing notion of his,’ she said, sharply. ‘He’s just having a shocking time, and gone a bit off the wall.’
‘I hope so,’ Tara threatened, ‘because if he doesn’t knock it off I’m not coming to visit him any more.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’ exclaimed Katherine, who had entertained the very same idea herself.
‘It’s easy for you.’ Tara was defensive. ‘You get the best part of the bargain. You’ll go to bed with a gorgeous bloke and in return I walk out on the man I love.’
‘It