No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [49]
“What?” she asked her friends, whose mouths were slightly agape.
“Nothing,” they said together.
“Do you want to change the music?” Sam asked, out of nowhere.
“No, it’s fine,” Mary said, unsure why he was asking – he’d taken over her CD player and been listening to nothing but American black women since he’d arrived.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I like it,” she replied.
“OK.”
Penny and Ivan laughed.
“We mentioned your analality regarding music,” Penny confessed.
“Analality isn’t a word,” said Mary.
“Well, it should be,” said Ivan.
“I’m not anal.”
“Hah!” Ivan said, snorting.
“When Mary listens to Radiohead…” Penny began.
“… she’s sad,” Ivan finished.
“When Mary listens to Dolly…”
“Happy.”
“And when Mary listens to Nirvana?”
“Frustrated,” Ivan said firmly, and Penny stuck out her tongue at her mortified friend.
“Wow!” Sam said. “The wall between us is pretty thin and she listens to Nirvana a lot.”
Mary bit her lip.
Penny and Ivan left together. As Ivan put on his coat, Mary asked after his ex-wife. He told her she seemed fine. Mary seemed unsatisfied by his answer. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.
“No.”
He crossed his arms and waited for the truth.
“I mean I don’t know,” she admitted, screwing up her face.
“What did you see?” he asked, a little alarmed.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Penny exclaimed.
“It’s nothing,” Mary said, embarrassed by Penny’s indifference to and Sam’s ignorance on the subject of her dubious psychic abilities.
“Mary!” Ivan had always believed in them and now he was worried that something wasn’t right with his ex-wife.
“OK.” She sighed. “I saw her calling for you.”
“Calling for me?”
“That’s it. She was calling out for you.”
“How?”
“What?” Mary wished the conversation would end.
“For God’s sake!” Penny said again. “Was she calling out in a Heathcliff-it’s-me-Cathy kind of way or in a kids-come-in-for-your-dinner way?”
“Oh. Neither. I don’t know.”
“Was it real?” Ivan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Penny harrumphed. “I wish you’d stop wrecking your head with all of this stuff,” she said to Mary.
Sam was wondering what the hell was going on.
Penny pushed Ivan out of the door. “I’ll give her a call tomorrow,” he said, then added, with a grin, “Tonight I’m on a date.”
Penny and Mary stopped in their tracks.
“A date?” Mary quizzed.
“Ah, yeah,” Sam remembered aloud, “good luck with that, man.”
Mary looked from Ivan to her uninvited guest.
Ivan laughed. “Sam’ll fill you in.” He winked and closed the door behind himself and Penny.
Mary was wondering what in the name of knickers was going on.
Sam, a practical stranger, filled Mary in on her cousin’s exploits in McCarthy’s bar the previous week. They had been having a few pints and a girl whose name he couldn’t remember had sidled up to them. She had sat beside Sam and asked him to a party. He explained to Mary that he had declined the invitation.
At this point Mary interrupted to clarify that the woman Ivan was dating had originally asked Sam out. He considered this for a moment, then conceded this was so. Mary screwed up her face at her cousin’s having opted for sloppy seconds. Sam laughed at her distaste, and explained that when it was his turn to go to the bar, Ivan and the girl had struck up a conversation and had got along so well that by the time he’d returned with the drinks they’d forgotten he was in the room. Mary gazed at him sceptically and he assured her it was true. She wondered how it was possible that a week had passed without her cousin confiding in her, and acknowledged inwardly that his omission was made all the more grievous by her uninvited guest’s delight in knowing something about him that she didn’t.
But of course Sam was delighted – the horror on her face was comical.
After that Mary cleaned the kitchen while he flicked channels, bored with TV but too tired to read.
During Sam’s