Free Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

you be alone?' '
    'It will take a few minutes.'
    'I haven't timeGCa Can you just listen?'
    'Of course.'
    'Have you your car?'
    'No.'
    'Right, Barney's here. He has chest pains. I can't call the cardiac ambulance to come here, I want to call it to your house.'
    'Yes, of course.'
    'But it's a question of my getting him there.'
    'I'll get a taxi to you. I'll make the other call first.'
    At this stage the petulant voice of Orla could be heard. 'Dan-ny, come off the phone, come over here.'
    'And you'll get rid of whatever companion you have with you?'
    'Yes.' He was clipped.
    And even more clipped dealing with Orla. 'I'm sorry, Orla sweetheart. Brandy's overGCa I have an emergency.'
    'You don't call me sweetheart and then ask me to leave,' she began.
    She found herself propelled towards the door, while Danny grabbed his jacket and phoned an ambulance all at the same time.
    She heard him give the Tara Road address. 'Who's sick? Is it the baby arriving?' she asked, frightened by his intensity.
    'Goodbye, Orla,' he said, and she saw him running down the street to hail a taxi.
    Barney was a very grey shade of white. He lay in a chair beside the bed. Polly had made unsuccessful attempts to dress him.
    'Don't worry about the tie,' Danny barked. 'Go down and tell the taxi man to come upGCa to help me get him down the stairs.'
    Polly hesitated for a second. 'You know the way Barney hates anyone knowing his business.'
    'This is a taxi man, for Christ's sake, Polly. Not MI5. Barney'd want to get there quicker.'
    Barney spoke with his hand firmly holding his chest. 'Don't talk about me as if I'm not here, for Christ's sake. Yes, get the taxi man, Polly, quick as you can.' To Danny he spoke gently. 'Thank you for getting here, thank you for sorting it out.'
    'You're going to be fine.' Danny supported the older man easily and warmly in a way he would never have been able to hold his own father.
    'You'll look after everything for me, the way it should be?'
    'You'll be doing it yourself in forty-eight hours,' Danny said.
    'But just in caseGCa'
    'Just in case, then. Yes, I will.' Danny spoke briskly, knowing that was what was wanted.
    At that moment the taxi man arrived. If he recognised the face of Barney McCarthy he gave no sign. Instead he got down to the job of easing a heavy man with heart pains down the narrow stairs of an expensive apartment block to take him to another address from which the ambulance would collect him. If he had worked out the situation he had seen too much and been too long in the taxi game to let on anything at all.
    Hilary waited in the big shabby room outside the labour ward. From time to time she made further unsuccessful stabs at finding Danny. There was no reply from her mother's house when Hilary rang. She didn't know her mother was sitting there with the letter telling her that her working life was over.
    Nora Johnson was too despondent to answer the telephone until she had pulled herself together and decided what she would do next.
    'Danny!' That was the scream before the baby's head appeared. The sister was speaking and she could hardly hear. 'All right, Ria. It's over, you have a beautiful little baby girl. She's perfect.'
    Ria felt more tired than she had ever been. Danny had not been here to see his daughter born. The fortune-teller had been right, it was a little girl.
    Orla King felt that she was now losing her mind because of drink. Not only did the guilt of trying to seduce a man on the night that his wife was having their first baby hang heavily on her, but the subsequent confusion in her brain worried her. She knew that Ria must have been at home because she heard Danny call the ambulance to Tara Road. But then she heard from everyone else that Ria was at her sister's house and they had to get a neighbour to drive Ria's car to the hospital as Hilary couldn't drive. Orla knew now that she was hallucinating and having memory failure. She went to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
    And on the first