Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [82]
“It should be the way things work, and anyway, you’d know how to say it.” Noel was pleading with him.
“But she hasn’t done anything out of line. Your feelings about all this do you credit, but honestly there’s no way that outside interference is going to help. Can’t you get her to see sense? You live with her—you’re flatmates.”
“Sure, who would listen to a word I say?” Noel asked. “You always did, to give you your due. You used to make me feel I was a normal sort of a person and not a madman.”
“And you are, Noel.” Declan wondered was there anyone left who hadn’t told him how important he was to them.
Fiona was in great form. She said she had starved herself at lunchtime. Barbara had wanted them to go for lunch together for a long chat about the complexity of men, but Fiona had said that she was going to Anton’s that evening, so Barbara said there was no point in talking about the complexity of men to her anyway, that she had got a jewel of a husband and there weren’t enough of them to go round.
She was all dressed up in her new outfit: a pink dress with a black jacket. Declan looked at her proudly as they were settled in at the restaurant. She looked so beautiful. She had a style equal to any of the other guests. He took her face in his hands and kissed her for a long time.
“Declan, really! What will people think?” she asked.
“They’ll think we are alive and that we are happy,” he said simply, and suddenly he made the second biggest decision of his life. The first had been to pursue Fiona to the end of the world. This one was different. It was about what he was not going to do.
He wouldn’t tell her now about the letter from Dr. Harris. In fact, he might never tell her. It suddenly seemed so clear to him.
“I was thinking … I was wondering should we buy Number Twenty-two in the Crescent? It would be a home of our own, and we’d still be beside everyone.”
Chapter Eight
“I have a bit of a problem,” Frank Ennis said to Clara Casey as he picked her up at the heart clinic.
“Let me guess,” she said, laughing. “We used one can of air freshener too many in the cloakroom last month?”
“No nothing like that,” he said impatiently, as he negotiated the traffic.
“No, don’t tell me. I’ll work it out. It’s the brass plates on the door. We got a new tin of brass-cleaning stuff and I forgot to ask you? That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Truly, Clara, I don’t know why you persist in painting me as this penny-pinching sort of clerk instead of the hospital manager. My worry has nothing to do with you and your extraordinary and lavish expenditure on your clinic.”
“On our clinic, Frank. It’s part of St. Brigid’s.”
“I’d say it’s an independent republic—always was from day one.”
“How petty and childish of you,” she said disapprovingly.
“Clara, are you wedded to this concert tonight?” he asked suddenly.
“Is anything wrong?” She looked at him sharply. Frank never canceled arrangements.
“No, nothing is wrong, exactly, but I do need to talk to you,” he said.
“Will you promise that it’s not about boxes of tissues and packets of paper clips and huge areas of wastefulness that are bleeding your hospital dry?” Clara asked.
He actually smiled. “No, nothing like that.”
“All right, then. Sure, we’ll cancel the concert. Will we go out to a meal somewhere?”
“Come home with me.”
“We have to eat somewhere, Frank, and you don’t cook.”
“I asked a caterer to leave in a dinner for us,” he said, embarrassed.
“You were so sure I’d say yes?”
“Well, in a lot of areas of life you are quite reasonable—normal, even.” He was struggling to be fair.
“Caterers. I see …”
“Well, they’re quite young. Semi-professional, I’d say. Haven’t learned to charge fancy prices yet.”
“Slave labor? Ripe for exploitation, yes?” Clara wondered.
“Oh, Clara, will you give over just for one night?” Frank Ennis begged.
Maud and Simon were in Frank’s apartment. They had set a table and brought their own paper napkins and a rose.
“Is that over the top?” Simon worried.
“No, he’s going to propose to her. I know he is,” Maud said.
“Did