Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [140]
Tara shifted unhappily. She didn’t think JaneAnn would meet him either way.
51
Katherine slunk into work on Monday morning, nervy with anxiety and braced for shame. How could she face Joe Roth? Worse still, what if he didn’t respond to her blatant come-on? She’d die.
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