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The oncologists insisted that these things took time, that he had to get worse before he got better, but Tara remained on edge and retained an inordinate interest in any alternative remedy she heard about.

‘Twenty days today!’ Katherine and Joe burst into wild applause when Tara walked into the kitchen.

Tara flinched. ‘It’s Monday morning. How can you be so cheerful?’

‘Time for your morning whinge,’ Katherine glowed at her.

‘Thank you. Today’s grievance is that I hate having no one to go and see The Horse Whisperer with.’

‘But Thomas wouldn’t have gone with you, anyway.’

‘Permit me my rose-tinted view of my past, please,’ Tara asked, with dignity.

‘We don’t want to see The Horse Whisperer,’ Katherine said.

‘What night are we not going to see it on?’ Joe dazzled Katherine with an abundant smile.

There was a time lapse where they beamed goofily at each other, before she managed to reply, ‘Next Tuesday’

‘You don’t need to see it,’ Tara pointed out. ‘You’ve got enough romance in your lives. Right, I’m off to work.’

‘Enjoy your twenty-first Thomas-free day!’

‘I’ll be home late.’ She paused in the hope that someone might insist they wanted her to come home early but when they didn’t she continued, ‘I’m going to the gym, then I’m going out.’

‘Who with?’

‘Anyone I can find – Ravi, a Big Issue seller, whoever. Textbook, I know, all this pubbing and clubbing and drinking my head off.’

‘But at least you’ve broken with tradition by not having had at least one one-night stand,’ Katherine sympathized.

‘With a person you wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole if you hadn’t just broken up with someone,’ Joe added, with an I’ve-been-there smile.

‘Give it time. I haven’t sung yet.’

When Tara shut the front door behind her she was struck – it happened a lot – by how wrong it all was. Why was she opening and closing someone else’s front door when she had a perfectly good front door of her own only a few miles away?

It was out there somewhere. She stood in the street, aware of all the houses and flats and shops and offices that stretched between her and her real home, her real life.

I want to go home.

Well, you can’t, she told herself. Miserably, she girded her loins and trudged to her car.

‘Morning, Tara,’ Ravi brayed, when she walked into the office. ‘Great news. I read in ES there’s a new lipstick out by Max Factor. It doesn’t claim to be indelible, but it says it’s self-renewing, which – I don’t know about you but I think that’s as good as. I feel a trip to Boots coming on!’

‘Really?’ Tara was pleased. ‘Tell me what it said, Ravi.’

‘Apparently you put it on and whenever you’re worried that it’s faded or whatever the word is, you simply press your lips together…’ Ravi demonstrated by mashing his against each other ‘… and bosh! Fresh as the moment you put it on.’

Tara’s phone rang. It was Liv on the line. ‘What’s wrong?’ Tara demanded. ‘Is it JaneAnn?’

Liv sighed. ‘That woman is like a revenging angel. But it’s not her. Have you any drugs?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Hash.’

‘Not immediately to hand. What’s going on?’

‘It’s for Fintan. He still feels dreadful from the chemo two days ago and someone told him that hash takes away the nausea. But I’ve no idea how to get some – I work in interiors! Cocaine is the only narcotic I am ever offered.’

65

‘Got you some great red Leb, man,’ Tara waved a tiny brown slab and drawled her dealer-spiel for Fintan. ‘Or it might be Moroccan black, actually. I wouldn’t know the difference. The drama myself and Ravi had trying to track it down. A friend of a friend of a friend of his has a sister who has a boyfriend who has a colleague who met us in a pool hall in Hammersmith and sold us the gear. Man,’ she added. ‘Hey, what’s the lovely smell? Cake?’

Fintan ushered her into the kitchen, where a baking tray with one remaining bun on it sat on the worktop.

‘Hash brownies,’ Fintan explained. ‘Sorry, Tara. Sandro managed to score a twenty-spot of blem this afternoon. Could have saved you and Ravi the bother. Man,